Customer Reviews

Hadassah Jewish Holiday Cookbook

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I ordered this book with a few other kosher cookbooks and found that this book was the best out of all of them. The recipies are delicious at very straight forward. I found them more stimulating to actually make, as I enjoy complex recipies. Not all the recipies are complex. In fact, most of them are simple. This was definately a good buy!

I am not a cook. I am a rabbi who cannot cook. In fact, it is dangerous to put me in the kitchen. This book though is not just a great cookbook. It is an incredible historical read. If I could cook I probably would give it ten stars. Remarkable, unique, different, poignant, profound are just some of the words that describe this cookbook. Joan Michel came up with a briliant idea. The contributors from Hadassah Magazine's readership tapped into some resovoir of knowledge and history and produced a profound souffle of goodness, down- home historical family recipes filled with the holiness and history of the ages. This one is more than a keeper, it is a gift giver to all your friends.

Rabbi Yehudah Fine
Times Square Rabbi-Finding the Hope in Lost Kids' Lives
Yehudahfine.com

This is an excellent book for the preparation of fine
Kosher dishes. For instance, the authors explain how to prepare
Yosi's Israeli Salad, Esroq cookies and Biblical Kugel- to mention just a few of the fine preparations. Biblical Kugel is prepared with sugar cinnamon, cloves, oil, ginger, raisins, figs, almonds and brandy (optional). The book depicts the
layout of the dish so that readers have a visual model in order
to prepare the food for family and guests. Lastly, there is
an extensive presentation of Kosher offerings appropriate for
almost every dining experience imaginable.

I notice that none of the reviews actually mentions having cooked any of the dishes. I agree - the book is gorgeous - but the recipes are not. I tried three of them - all failed - and I am a good amateur cook. I donated the book to the thrift shop.

I am new to Jewish cooking but have made the vegetarian stuffed cabbage, the brisket, Israeli salad, several kuggles - all for Sisterhood dinners at my temple and they have ALL been well-received, even raved about! Wonderful book, clear directions, helpful pictures and food you would eat even if you weren't Jewish!

I am a cookbook collector, and I specialize in Jewish/Kosher cookbooks (I have over 60 in that category alone) and I must admit this is a beautiful cookbook, really more a coffee table book than anything else. There are gorgeous photos of ancient Judaica and interesting bits of history on almost every page and many of the recipes are tempting. BUT... although the book is organized by season, beginning with Autumn and the Jewish New Year, the holidays are listed in the wrong order! Chanuka is listed as the Winter holiday and then we immediately jump to Spring and Passover, followed by Purim which is also included in the spring section. Hello?! How hard is it to go to your local Kosher butcher and get a Jewish calendar? Or look on the internet? Presumably there was at least one Jewish person on the editorial staff who would have known whom to ask. Purim falls in Adar which coincides with February and/or March - clearly still winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Purim is followed by Passover which is THE spring holiday followed seven weeks later by Shavuout (which translates as Weeks in Hebrew, because of those sevens weeks).
Hadassah places Purim between Passover and Shavuout! This major error continues to be so much of a turn off to me that the book sits on my shelf gathering dust and causing aggrevation whenever I think of it.