The Foods of Israel Today (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Modern Israel is one of the world's great culinary melting pots, and Nathan (author of the highly successful PBS series and cookbook Jewish Cooking in America) does it justice in this exceptional and comprehensive examination of its diverse cultural lineage. Israeli flavors include those of the Middle East like Classic Israeli Eggplant Dip, new inventions such as Israeli Revisionist Haroset and imported traditions like Judith Tihany's Transylvanian Green Bean Soup. Nathan collects recipes from both ordinary Israelis including 97-year-old Shoshana Kleiner, whose instruction for her Fourth Aliyah Vegetable Soup is "Cook until cooked!" and popular restaurants, such as Jerusalem's Eucalyptus. Nor are local Arabic traditions given short shrift, spotlighting dishes like Zucchini with Yogurt. The book also offers information ranging from the best places to eat falafel and notes on Israeli wine to a good-sized glossary. Nathan, who spent more than two years working for Teddy Kollek when he was mayor of Jerusalem, generously sprinkles the pages with her personal memories as well as descriptions of the pioneering spirit of early Israelis: in the days when a home oven was a luxury, they often made a dessert "salami" of crushed cookies, wine, cocoa and nuts. Agent, Susan Lescher. (Mar. 15) Forecast: As one of the first books to concentrate on the breadth of Israeli cuisine, rather than Ashkenazic or Sephardic cooking, this is a true original. Moreover, given Nathan's established following and a first print run of 50,000 copies, stores should anticipate energetic sales.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Nathan is the author of Jewish Cooking in America and an authority on the subject. In her ambitious new work, she explores the food and culinary traditions of modern Israel, which she describes as not a melting pot but rather a multicultural "mosaic." Most of the more than 300 recipes she collected come from home cooks, and their stories make this title almost as much a cultural history as cookbook. The bread chapter, for example, includes Pita Spinach Turnovers from a Bedouin family, Yemenite Pancakes, Sesame Bread from the Armenian community in Jerusalem, Ethiopian Shabbat Bread, and Pan de Casa from a Moroccan grandmother. The extensively researched text provides background on the many immigrant groups that make up Israel's population; there are also photographs of many of the people she encountered, literary and biblical quotations, and even a brief Guide to Good Eating in Israel. Although Israeli recipes appear in other Middle Eastern and Jewish cookbooks, Nathan's impressive work is unique. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (March 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679451072
• ISBN-13: 978-0679451075
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #87,876 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oral gratification, March 22, 2001

By	Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" (nyc) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

With 300 recipes, two pages of suggested Israeli restaurants, two web sources for ingredients, and nine suggested menus, Nathan shows the diverse cuisines of Israel?s sabras and immigrants. THIS IS ISRAELI CUISINE that is being eaten in Israel. Includes turkey schnitzel, quick kibbutz apple cake, eggplant salad, and halvah chocolate cake. Includes Transylvania Green Bean Soup, a dessert salami (made of cookies) and the Chocolate Cake recipe from the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. It includes over a dozen poultry recipes, including Doro Wat, a spicy chicken of Ethiopian Jews; and Hamim, an overnight chicken dish with cloves, spaghetti, cumin, cinnamon, and cardamom. Ms Nathan felt compelled to write this 400 page book on the night Itzhak Rabin was assassinated (Nov 4, 1995). Three decades ago, she lived in Israel for three years and worked in Jerusalem for Mayor Teddy Kollek for over two years (where Nathan co-wrote her first cookbook). The book is in the style of her earlier American Jewish Cooking book, namely, each recipe is preceded by an oral history, and there are histories, classic photos, and stories between the recipes. For example, to complement the recipe for Shakshuka, the reader learns about the Doktor Shakshuka Restaurant in old Jaffa and its owners. For the burekas recipe, we read about eating burekas at Jerusalem?s city hall in the Seventies. While discussing the Friedman?s farm in Rosh Pina, we get lots of farm recipes. A recipe for Kaiserschmarrn is coupled with an old picture of Beit Ha?Pancake?s roadside gas station and a story about the search for the dish?s Viennese roots. In addition to salad, tahina, and hummus recipes, Nathan lists 19 of the best places for hummus from Jerusalem to Akko to Haifa. Plus 12 happening places for falafel. There are 23 salads, including Hamutzim (pickled vegetables). Some of my favorite recipes are Mish Mish Apricot Jam (with cinnamon stick); Egyptian Coconut Jam; Triple Citrus Marmalade (coupled with a story on Etrog picking); Israeli Onion Jam (from Neot Kedumim), a guide to how to make your own Za?atar spice; Carmelized green Olives; Shortcut Potato Burekas; Marhooda; Bulgur Patties from the Black Hebrew community in Dimona; and a Revisionist Haroset (from Hemda Friedman). The Palestinian Fruit Soup uses cinnamon stick and was found in a 1930's Cleveland cookbook of all places. There is a Bukharan style Tomato Gazpacho and Bulgarian Eggplant Soup with Yogurt. Speaking of Za?atar, Nathan includes the recipe for Abouelafia?s Sunny Side Up Za?atar Pita Pizza (if you haven?t had it in Jaffa, either buy the book or fly ElAl to the bakery immediately). Speaking of soup, she has the Hummus Soup recipe from Keren Restaurant, as well as Aramaic Chicken Soup; and the Goulash Soup recipe from Fink?s Bar (on King George at Ben Yehudah mall). The Olive Bread recipe uses black and green olives and oregano. The Mahlouach recipe is from Nahlaot, and the Chocolate Bread recipe is from Lehem Erez Komarovsky. The Jerusalem Kugel recipe is heavy on the pepper and the Barsch is Uzbeki style from Holon. There is Yotvata Potato Mushroom Casserole from Kibbutz Yotvata (and all you thought they made was milk), and the 16 fish dishes include Khremi, a Libyan style fish from Beit Shikma; Ima Sharansky?s gefilte fish; and Chef Steinitz?s Salmon Trout dish (Dan Hotel, Eilat). What more can one want? Oral recipes and oral histories results in oral gratification

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW! A Top-10 Cookbook! An Epiphany!, August 19, 2003

By	Aidan Gilbert (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

I would emphatically disagree with the person who characterized this as a coffee table book! It only leaves my kitchen so I can read it on the train or before I go to sleep! It has completely changed the way my family eats! I have often bemoned not being able to have fresh bread with dinner because my wife and I both work. Now we have homemade pita most days with dinner, and couscous has completely replaced pasta as our staple starch. My wife and 6-year-old love everything I've made from it -- from the Moroccan meatballs with tomato-olive sauce to kubbanah (a sabbath bread baked overnight) to fishballs in a spicy tomato sauce to chocolate challah! I now even make my own harissa (Tunisian hot hot hot sauce)! Joan Nathan, already one of my favorite cookbook authors, has really created a masterpiece. I can't imagine anyone being disappointed with it -- it is such a joy and opens the door to the cuisine of Israel to the American home cook. My only suggestion for improvement -- and it is small -- would have been to include a resourse for purchasing some of the exotic or esoteric cookware mentioned in the book. I would love to own a kubbanah pan and a large couscousierre, but don't know where to get either in the states. I love this book and will probably buy a second copy to tuck away for when I wear this copy out! I wouldn't want to live without it! Bravo, Ms. Nathan!

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Israeli Cooking and Dining, with Reservations, September 3, 2001

By	Ellen Shapiro "trdmrkesq" (Irvington, NY United States) - See all my reviews

I tend to stick to the classic cookbooks (Claudia Roden for Middle Eastern food, for example), but I know I will be cooking from "The foods of Israel Today" for a long time. There are some terrific recipes in here.

I do have a few problems with the book, though. One is its references to obscure ingredients, usually spices, with little help on where to get them or what substitutions might work. For example, what do you do if you don't happen to have ground sumac? Some recipes call for 'baharat', with no reference to what it is. The index points to Jaffa Orange-Ginger Chicken with Baharat, which offers a rather vague definition of a spice mixture that "varies from cook to cook." What to do?

Another problem is the pictures, or lack of them. There are lots of somewhat murky black-and-white historical snapshots, some of them pretty interesting. But this food is out-of-the-ordinary for most cooks, and I'd like to see pictures of it. How to cut a potato in half and then get the stuffing to stay between the layers or cut a casserole into diamond shapes? Instead of a picture of the dish, there's a guy on a camel. Line drawings would be a big help for some of the techniques. The three 8-page tip-ins of color pictures are a strange selection, and to me, they don't capture the color and variety of Israeli food. They also make Israel look more third-world and primitive than it is.

Another matter is whether everything can actually be made as it's described. For example, those stuffed vegetables. You are supposed to cut the top off tomatoes and onions, stuff them with a meat filling, and then brown them on all sides? I envision a mess, with most of the filling falling out into the frying oil. Wouldn't they brown sufficiently in the oven?

It's hard to believe this book was edited by Judith Jones, of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" fame; if you follow the instructions in "Mastering I and II" carefully, everything, no matter how complex, comes out beautifully. Luckily, that's how I learned how to cook. So I can take these somewhat sketchy recipes that often read if they were compiled from family and friends' recipe cards, clippings from newspaper food columns, oral instructions from proprietors of funky restaurants -- and make them work. Perhaps, today, publishers insist that recipes fit on one page; they feel that if the recipes look "too long," people won't buy the book. That's too bad, because the longest recipes (unless youre Elizabeth David) are often the easiest to cook from.

However, none of the above will stop me from using this book and reading it the way I read books in the Time-Life Foods of the World series. I'm not so sure I would go as far as a previous reviewer and call Nathan a "cultural anthropologist," but she does delve into history, society, culture, and personalities in sidebars and recipe introductions the way few cookbooks have since the days of Foods of the World. Too bad she didn't have the photography and production budget.

All in all, a worthwhile addition to your cookbook shelf, and a fine gift for your cooking friends (Jewish and not).