Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Joan Nathan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2004

Jewish holidays are defined by food. Yet Jewish cooking is always changing, encompassing the flavors of the world, embracing local culinary traditions of every place in which Jews have lived and adapting them to Jewish observance. This collection, the culmination of Joan Nathan’s decades of gathering Jewish recipes from around the world, is a tour through the Jewish holidays as told in food. For each holiday, Nathan presents menus from different cuisines—Moroccan, Russian, German, and contemporary American are just a few—that show how the traditions of Jewish food have taken on new forms around the world. There are dishes that you will remember from your mother’s table and dishes that go back to the Second Temple, family recipes that you thought were lost and other families’ recipes that you have yet to discover. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan spices these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who have kept these traditions alive.

Try something exotic—Algerian Chicken Tagine with Quinces or Seven-Fruit Haroset from Surinam—or rediscover an American favorite like Pineapple Noodle Kugel or Charlestonian Broth with “Soup Bunch” and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book, which combines and updates Nathan’s classic cookbooks The Jewish Holiday Baker and The Jewish Holiday Kitchen with a new generation of recipes, will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your table on the holidays and throughout the year.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Twenty-five years ago, Nathan published The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, a landmark work that juxtaposed recipes with oral histories. Although she acknowledges that the past quarter century has brought some changes to Jewish cooking—e.g., Kosher caterers are lightening their foods; "young American superstar chefs" have come onto the scene; California wineries now produce award-winning kosher wines—Nathan still relies on traditional recipes, such as My Mother’s Brisket, Cabbage Strudel, Romanian Beet Borscht, Vegetable Kugels and Babka in her new volume. Revising and updating recipes from Holiday Kitchen and another previous work, The Jewish Holiday Baker, Nathan shares instructions for making nearly 400 dishes, dividing them by holiday: the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot and the minor holidays. Lengthy introductions accompany each recipe, and Nathan’s ability to balance interesting tidbits with useful instructions make this a supremely worthwhile resource. She covers every cuisine of the Jewish tradition, from Central and Eastern European to Middle Eastern to American.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

It has been 25 years since Nathan's Jewish Holiday Kitchen was first published. This volume gathers recipes from that book and from the food writer's Jewish Holiday Baker (1997) for a celebratory revision. And what a collection it is: 400 recipes accompanied by personal commentary and culinary history passed down through generations of Jewish cooks. That's part of the charm here as readers learn that "eating fish symbolizes the hope of redemption for Israel" and other snippets of fact and folklore. Keyed mostly to eight major Jewish holidays-- from Shabbat to Shavuot--the recipes represent both eastern European and Sephardic traditions, and are nicely adapted for modern cooks: processors speed preparation, and ingredients such as packaged onion soup are occasionally used. There's even a recipe for "low-cholesterol challah." It's a tasty assortment for Jewish cooks but also for anyone interested in ethnic cuisine. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Schocken; Rev Upd edition (August 17, 2004)
• ISBN-10: 0805242171
• ASIN: B0028N72EY
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,957,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joan Nathan is the author of ten cookbooks and a regular contributor to The New York Times. She is the author of the much-acclaimed Jewish Cooking in America, which in 1994 won both the James Beard Award and the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award; as well as An American Folklife Cookbook, which received the R.T. French Tastemaker Award in 1985. She most recently wrote The New American Cooking which also won the James Beard and IACP Awards as best American cookbook published in 2005. Her other books include Foods of Israel Today, Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook, The Jewish Holiday Baker, The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen, The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, and The Flavor of Jerusalem. She is currently working on a new cookbook on the foods of the Jews of France.

In 2004 she was the Guest Curator of Food Culture USA, the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC, based on the research for her book, The New American Cooking.

Ms. Nathan's PBS television series, Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan, was nominated in 2000 for the James Beard Award for Best National Television Food Show. She was also senior producer of Passover: Traditions of Freedom, an award-winning documentary sponsored by Maryland Public Television. Ms. Nathan has appeared as a guest on numerous radio and television programs including the Today show, Good Morning, America, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, and National Public Radio.

An inductee to the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who in American Food and Beverage, she has also received the Silver Spoon Award from Food Arts magazine. In addition, Ms. Nathan received an honorary degree from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Culture in Chicago and the Golda Award from the American Jewish Congress.

Joan Nathan was born in Providence, Rhode Island. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a master's degree in French literature and earned a master's in public administration from Harvard University. For three years she lived in Israel where she worked for Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem. In 1974, working for Mayor Abraham Beame in New York, she co-founded the Ninth Avenue Food Festival. The mother of three grown children, Ms. Nathan lives in Washington, D.C. and Martha's Vineyard with her husband, attorney Allan Gerson.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellently Deep Survey of Jewish Culinary Holidays., January 7, 2006

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B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook (Hardcover)

`Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook' by the `Paula Wolfert' of Jewish cooking, Joan Nathan, is an updated composite of two of her earlier books, `The Jewish Holiday Baker' and `The Jewish Holiday Kitchen' on the 25th anniversary of the publication of the latter volume.

I have reviewed only one other book of Jewish cooking, the big `New York Times' book of Jewish recipes and I can unequivocally say that as a first book on Jewish cooking, Nathan's book is a far, far superior starting point. The only reason you may want to buy the `New York Times' volume is if you are already so thoroughly knowledgeable about Jewish cuisine that all you want is a big book of good recipes.

I get the sense from this book that the fact that it deals only with `holiday' cooking does very little to limit the scope of the recipes, as it not only deals with the yearly holidays but also that cooking which is particular to the restrictions on observing the Sabbath.

I think it is no accident that in my survey of cookbooks so far, there are far more Jewish holiday cookbooks than there are for any other ethnic cuisine, as long as you don't count Christmas cookie cookbooks. In my somewhat limited experience with only English language cookbooks, I know of seven for Jewish holidays and only two for that great culinary dynamo, Italian cooking. And, Joan Nathan has written four of those titles!

Not only on holidays but also throughout their whole life, food and religion are more tightly intertwined for the Jews than with any other culture I know. The Christian use of unleavened bread and wine in their most important sacrament pales in comparison to the strictures of orthodox kashrut, the laws governing kosher, parve, and unclean foods and food combinations. I know the Muslims, being fellow Semites from the Middle Eastern deserts have similar strictures against pork, but I believe their rules are not nearly as pervasive.

The book provides seven (7) chapters on the major holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, and Shavuot plus a chapter on `The Minor Holidays' including Israeli Independence Day. The first and longest chapter covers the Sabbath which, in orthodox tradition, requires prohibits any cooking between sundown on Friday evening and sundown on Saturday evening. It's a bit more involved than that, in that what is really prohibited is lighting a flame during that time. That means stoves or ovens can be turned on before sundown to start slow cooking dishes, but no flame can be started in that 24-hour period.

For people who are simply interested in culinary folkways, the book is an excellent study in the intersection of culinary laws and the seasons. Not only were Jewish folk constrained by extreme poverty and the barrenness of winter, they were prohibited from access to the single most tasty and most easily preserved source of fat and protein, the pig. This was an even bigger hardship for the Jews of central Europe who lived outside the range of cheap olive oil, since it forbade them from using the very best animal fat for cooking. Even butter was proscribed in that one could not use butter together with any meat product, due to the kashrut prohibition against mixing meat and dairy. This more than explains the central role of chicken fat in the culinary traditions of Jewish cooks.

Ms. Nathan does not spend much time exploring the anthropological sources of kashrut, but she does an excellent job of showing us how it affected Jewish cuisine.

Not only does she give us dishes appropriate to the various holidays, we are also treated to menus which reflect differences in the Sephardic (Iberian) and Askanazy (Central European) traditions.

I find it eminently satisfying that the very first recipe is for challah bread, the braided egg bread typically made for Sabbath. I also find it very interesting that much more attention is paid to recipes for the American bialys than to the European bagel. I am also interested in the fact that Hanukkah is much more of a culinary and political holiday than it is a religious feast, since, according to an Orthodox Jewish friend, there are not even any standard rituals for the Synagogue for Hanukkah. This is hearsay, but Nathan does confirm that until the late Middle Ages, Hanukkah was a relatively unimportant date on the Jewish calendar.

I have yet to review some other Jewish holiday cookbooks, but for a good understanding of the traditions behind the culinary facts, this book is excellent.

Highly recommended.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book for newbies, experts, historians, and foodies, March 28, 2007

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WordGirl (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook (Hardcover)

Jewish Holiday Kitchen is/was my favorite Jewish cookbook to use and to give, and this is the revised version. I don't know if it has all of her recipes from the first, plus some from her baking book, or if some from Kitchen have been left out. Unless you are looking for specific recipes from the first book (see below) this new one is a safe bet.
Great Gift: the descriptions of holidays include both the basic (for those without much Jewish education), and the deep, fascinating details of traditions unique to regions, history, etc.
Great recipes for the basics: yes, Holiday Kitchen had the best cookie dough hamentaschen of dozens tried, challah, and more. The hamentasch recipe is different from the one in her Holiday Baking, and in her Kids Jewish cooking. I don't know which made it into this revised version.
Great recipes for foodies: I've eaten my way across Morocco and tried dozens upon dozens of recipes for bastilla, the fillo pie from Morocco often filled with pigeon and dusted with powdered sugar. Her version, with chicken, is absolutely positively the best. Her potato kugelettes are another favorite; they are an elegant, simple, delicious addition to Passover, Hanukah, or any meal you want to look special.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious recipes, January 8, 2006

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D. Zakar - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook (Hardcover)

I absolutely love using this cookbook. I use one of the recipes weekly, for Shabbos Challah and, I have also made Rosh Hashana sweet Challah from this cookbook. I have also made other side dishes from this book and everything comes out delicious, with good reviews from my guests! I highly recommend it for any Kosher home.