Bloomberg:
All too often, and to the dismay of everyone who knows better, Jewish food gets boiled down to bagels, matzo balls, and brisket.
These are staples, to be sure, but they all hail from the same part of the world—Eastern Europe—while Jews have, at one point or another, populated almost every corner of the earth. Thanks to their historic roles as both merchants and, often, refugees, Jewish cuisine encompasses flavors from Tunisia to Toronto, India to Israel, Babylonia to Brooklyn.
I’m a big fan of food in general and a bigger fan of “ethnic” food and, while I haven’t had a lot of it, I really enjoy Jewish food, especially for the stories behind it.
Try making this, it’s easy and amazingly good.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013086-olive-oil-matzo
I bake a lot of bread but hadn’t ever made matzo although grew up eating it on Jewish holidays. This stuff is better than any store bought stuff I’ve ever had.
If you and your family make traditional Thanksgiving dinner, try making something called “tzimmes” (sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, prunes) which, according to my non-Jewish wife who’s been making it for our family from my late mother’s recipe for 25 years, it’s a way of having sweet potatoes without the marshmallows. Goes great with turkey and is a nice alternative (for some) to regular old mashed potatoes. It’s traditionally made and served with pot roast but it goes well with Thanksgiving too.
This is pretty close to my mother’s/wife’s recipe:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017195-nava-atlass-sweet-potato-tzimmes
Switch channels, different culture. If you’ve ever seen the movie, Bend it Like Beckham the director, Gurinder Chadha has an extra on the DVD of her cooking Aloo Gobi (curried cauliflower and potatoes) with her mother and her aunt watching (and commenting). It’s a brilliant short but it years ago when I saw it it got me going on cooking Indian food. I found the recipe online and tried it out. A few iterations later when the fire in my mouth had calmed down (too much fresh chili) I had it down and I’ve been making it for many years, modifying it with all sorts of things: once you make curry, you can “curry” anything really, and this is an amazing curry, from scratch. Easy too. Here’s the recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/aloo-gobi-from-bend-it-like-beckham-51133841
Here’s another one:
http://scrumpdillyicious.blogspot.com/2015/02/aloo-gobi-with-cauliflower-new-potatoes.html
Great dish, and once you get it worked out, you can really have some fun experimenting with it.
We don’t live in New York (rural NW Connecticut) but when we get in there we’re almost always game to try a different ethnic place. Too many good ones to list here but if you find yourself there, get in touch, I’ll send you a list or no doubt, you know folks there who have their own lists.
Bon appetite.
I’m a descendant of Eastern European Jews, which means I can usually distinguish between food that actually came from Eastern Europe, and food that was created here by people who emigrated from there. There’s a bit of difference.
Also, thanks to most of my mother’s cooking, I was highly motivated to try almost anything different that’s ever crossed my path.
You’ve been a great audience.