The Gefilte Variations: 200 Inspired Re-creations of Classics from the Jewish Kitchen, with Menus, Stories, and Traditions for the Holidays and Year-Round (Hardcover)

by Jayne Cohen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Jewish food--the cuisine of the Diaspora--has remained largely unchanged, even as other venerable cooking traditions have been renewed. But this savory fare was meant to be potchkeyed, or played with, writes Jayne Cohen, author of The Gefilte Variations. To prove her point, she offers 200 kosher recipes that reinterpret the classics of American, European, North African, and Asian Jewish cooking. Resisting the obvious pitfall of devising hybrid "cheffy" concoctions, Cohen has found a way to be satisfyingly innovative, lightening kasha, for example, with caramelized onion marmalade and melting eggplant cubes, or boosting matzo-ball flavor with smoky roasted fennel. Cooks, kosher and not, who have long sought a fresher take on Jewish fare, as well as those who relish hearty but sophisticated dishes, should welcome the book. Cohen first presents year-round favorites, organized by categories like breakfasts and brunches, dairy dishes, and sweet kugels and desserts. Among these, readers will want to try Aromatic Marinated Brisket with Chestnuts, Potato-Onion Kreplach Potsticker-Style, Sorrel-Flavored Mushroom Barley Soup, and Rich Noodle Pudding Baked with Fresh Plums and Nectarines. The book's second section offers a contemporary look at Jewish holiday cooking and introduces international dishes, such as Cheese Latkes with Persimmon Sauce, that would make a delicious Hanukkah-table addition. A pantry and procedures section, a collection of menus, and a glossary of useful terms, both culinary and cultural (finally--a right-on definition of ongepotchken, that onomatopoeic Yiddish word for "fussed with to tackiness"), round off this useful and imaginative book. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
Few can explain the essence of Jewish food as charmingly and lyrically as freelance writer Cohen does in this outstanding debut. In this collection of innovative yet tradition-based recipes--what she calls "the autobiography of one palate"--Cohen often takes a simple, familiar dish (matzoh brie, for instance), dissects all its possibilities (in this case she explains how to make it crispy or fluffy), then offers experimental versions (Savory Artichoke Matzoh Brie and Overnight Caramelized Apple Matzoh Briesame). Cohen incorporates both international Jewish tradition (Chopped Chicken Liver from the Rue des Rosiers, Veronese Rolled Turkey Loaf, Bombay Pineapple-Coconut Milk Kugel) and her own fertile imagination (Pastrami-Style Salmon, Chicken Soup with Asparagus and Shiitakes, served with Roasted Fennel Matzoh Balls) to offer new takes on the classics. She also invigorates some forgotten customs: her grandmother's habit of sprinkling fresh latkes with sugar lives again in Crispy Shallot Latkes with Sugar Dusting. Cohen also happens to write beautifully; her stories about relatives and her portraits of Jewish communities around the world and their individual customs could stand alone in a book of essays. This well-rounded cookbook will appeal to the observant and the nonobservant--even to those who are not Jewish at all. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (March 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684827190
• ISBN-13: 978-0684827193
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #944,793 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Jewish Cookbook that would make J.S.Bach proud, March 24, 2000

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

These are the GEFILTE VARIATIONS by Cohen, not the GOLDBERG Variations by JSBach as performed by Glenn Gould. Just a note of history first. The Goldberg Variations (Aria with 30 variations) were composed by J. S. Bach for Count Herman Carl von Keyserlingk of Dresden to be played to soothe him by his harpsichordist and 15 year old prodigy Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756). The variations explore the full palette of emotions: joy, contemplation, happy, quiet, tragic, resurrection. Okay, now what about this Jewish recipe and story book? Just as Bach showed full range and innovation, the Gefilte Variations is innovative in its presentation and reinterpretation of the Jewish musical, I mean recipe, standards, such as matzo balls (with fennel and seasonal changes), kasha (with melted eggplant) chopped liver, kugels (with peaches), entrees (like fish and rhubarb and tomato), soups, latkes (with persimmon), and matzo brei (with artichoke hearts, with wine and dried plums, or french toast style, or fritatta style, or fluffy egg style, or pancake style). Oh their are so many variations. Speaking of matzo, Cohen provides a recipe for recrisping matzo to give it that fresh from the Williamburg oven taste (toasting it at 400 degrees), as well as at least five variations of flavored motzot, from lemon to cheese to sweet to onion, garlic, thyme, or herb. I hope I have given you a flavor of the book's contents.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Entirely New Gourmet Cuisine, April 4, 2000

By	edward m kabak (Westport, Connecticut) - See all my reviews

Jayne Cohen's The Gefilte Variations not only is an exceptionally well written collection of personal and historical Jewish memorabilia and literary and folk,scholarly and pungent and often quite humorous anecdotes;it is also that rarest of creations, a truly and compulsively readable food book. What makes it so exceptional is the author's obvious lifelong passion for memorably earthy,redolent food and her creativity in rendering five-star meals out of what so many of us (non-culinary cognoscenti)grew up thinking was a clunky, Eastern European poor substitute for appealing French Italian or Asian meals. The international range of these dishes-from Iranian Stuffed Chicken, Egyptian Ground Fish Balls with Tomato and Cumin to Bombay Pineapple-Coconut Milk Kugel and the numerous inspired pomegranate based creations, make this even more appealing than the finely-tuned work of Joan Nathan and Claudia Roden-and that's pretty rarefied territory. Gefilte Fish itself, a dish one would never normally consider in the same breath with gourmet foods, rises to ethereal levels in the author's several fish-ball recipes, using as alternatives to pike combinations of lean fish like red snapper or striped bass mixed with the more succulent flavor of pompano,whitefish or salmon.Or as another alternative,inspired by Chinese dumplings, quickly steamed between cabbage leaves. And the directions for cooking are literally a treasure trove of generations of secrets perhaps not seen before in this form in the light of day. In addition to mining culinary traditions, one also gets the impression from this book that much of the author's creation of these tantalizing and often tart-sweet dishes arose in the night kitchen of her fertile mind. The book is elegantly divided into sections for dairy, fish meat etal and a separate easy to follow section suggesting various alternatives for the holidays-all nicely mixed in with family story-telling,folklore and easy to read scholarship. This is plainly one of the most exciting cookbooks I have ever come across-one which transcends in its universality, humor and sauciness any one religion while remaining faithful to the tenets of underlying rules. Listen to the author describing Rich Noodle Kugel Baked with Plums and Nectarines-"The paradigm of ongepotchkeh(the author's all-time favorite Yiddish word, meaning overly fussy) is taking noodle kugel- a luxurious confection of pasta eggs butter and milk or cheese-and then slathering it with some sweet stickiness that may have been a fruit in another life.The very lushness of a noodle pudding demands an innocent topping. .." This is a book to take on vacation. An outstanding culiniterary work.