The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day, by Claudia Roden, Viking, 582pp, £20 in UK
The first thing one is made aware of when reading The Book of Jewish Food is that there are two distinctive styles - the Ashkenhazi and Sephardi - which go to make up what is referred to in general as "Jewish" cooking. As a goy who grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood in the Mid-West of the US, I am familiar with the Ashkenhazi style, and always regarded it as the only Jewish cuisine there was. This style of cooking originated in Russia, Poland and Eastern Europe and was brought by emigrants to Western Europe and America. It is characterised by such familiar foodstuffs as gefilte fish, borscht, blintzes and cheesecake - not to mention chicken soup with matzo balls (called Goldene Yoich Knaidlach in Yiddish and known, because of its alleged healing powers, as "Jewish penicillin"). This last item was immortalised for me by the - probably apocryphal - story about Marilyn Monroe, who, over Sunday lunch at her in-laws', asked Arthur Miller's mother: "Mrs Miller, do you ever eat any other part of the matzo?"
Askenhazi cooking has its roots in peasant fare, taking its ingredients from what was available to the poor. Its basis is cheap cuts of meat, lots of offal, heavy, darkgrained breads, lots of fruits - used in everything from soup to pancakes - and root vegetables. Potatoes, onions and bread formed the staple diet of impoverished communities in the 19th century. The artistry of Jewish cooking lies in its transformation of these humble ingredients into mouthwatering dishes, as is amply demonstrated in this volume.
The cooking methods employed are dictated by the ingredients - slow cooking of meat so that through stewing it becomes tender and digestible, pickling of vegetables to preserve them for consumption in wintertime, and much home baking to provide cheap but tasty, filling food. As Ms Roden remarks, "Food in the shtetl was always chopped, mashed, kneaded, rolled, longsimmered - never left alone." Some of my childhood Jewish friends argued that their mothers carried this axiom too far by applying the last principle to methods of child rearing.
The recipes in this section of the book owe nothing to nouvelle cuisine, but are rich and satisfying to eat. All the notes preceding the recipes give fascinating histories and anecdotes, and offer many thoughts on the foods they present.
As the sub-title indicates, this book is an odyssey, and the second section wanders away from Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean and the Orient, where the Sephardi style of Jewish cooking has its origins.
This cooking comprises JudaeoSpanish, North African, JudaeoArab, and the Jewish cooking of Iraq and Iran. Because the Sephardim only left their homelands in the last forty years, their cooking has not become as standardised or familiar as that of the Ashkenhazi. Sephardi cooking developed from the intermingling of Mediterranean cultures within Islamic civilisation and resulted in a cuisine based on a more urban style than that of their Ashkenhazi brethren. The foods we recognise in this style are kebabs, pilafs, stuffed vegetables, couscous and pasta (yes, pasta, from the Italian contingent of Sephardic Jews).
What is most fascinating in this section of the book is the recounting of how such diverse cultures managed to exchange and influence one another's cuisines. They found practical and ingenious ways of accommodating each other and tolerating one another's existence. Believe it or not, there is a recipe in this section of the book for "the way of roasting a pig", with an accompanying explanation that converted Jews in Spain made a point of cooking pork to protect themselves from charges by the Inquisition of continuing to practise their old religion. Jews were reported to have hung hams outside their doors as a way of proving that they had abandoned their faith. Is this an illustration of hypocrisy, or a practical solution to harassment?
This book is much more than a mere history of Jewish cooking. It is a handsome, encyclopaedic volume with wonderful illustrations and photographs. It combines excellent recipes with their historical background, explains clearly all of the geographic migrations, and still manages to present the whole in a most readable, enjoyable and ultimately edible form - there is nothing half-baked in any section of the book.
Janet Dunham is a weaver