When Jayne Cohen and her sister returned home after their grandmother had passed away, they were determined to recreate the holiday dishes they had grown up on. But neither had ever attempted these traditional recipes. Those had been Grandma\u2019s province.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had never thought to copy down her recipes,\u201d Cohen lamented. \u201cBut we shared a secret suspicion that allowing her foods to vanish from our table meant losing something much greater and more vital. And we could not bear another loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Together the sisters experimented with recipes, using cookbooks for inspiration, questioning and reinterpreting, just as the rabbis through the ages have questioned and reinterpreted the meanings of Biblical texts, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided to make foods familiar enough to taste like Grandma\u2019s, yet still be fresh and inventive. Dishes reimagined so that they reflected our changing palates and insatiable culinary curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n
That experiment led Cohen on a decades-long quest to preserve these timeless family recipes before they disappeared, while updating them with new flavor profiles.<\/p>\n
The result is \u201cJewish Holiday Cooking: A Food Lover\u2019s Classics and Improvisations\u201d (Wiley), with nearly 300 classic and contemporary recipes for all the holidays that unite old and new traditions. In each chapter Cohen provides a history of the holiday as well as touching personal narratives chronicling her own family\u2019s experiences and celebrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou walk a fine line trying to make foods familiar enough to taste like the holidays, yet still be fresh and innovative,\u201d said Cohen, talking to me by phone from her home in New York. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to wind up with something very chef-y.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say, how could you touch the sacred? But when you look at how Jewish food has evolved throughout the ages, as has its ritual, people are constantly using new ingredients and new techniques, which have kept the cuisine vital and the traditions vital. We\u2019re all sophisticated these days in terms of taste \u2013 heavy food is not appealing to us \u2013 we have to keep it fresh and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Case in point: Purim.<\/p>\n
\u201cPurim was one of those holidays that was very minor when we were growing up,\u201d she recalled. \u201cWe had hamantashen and groggers in Hebrew school. But now Purim has become very cool. There are Purim parodies, and comedians like Lewis Black and the Daily Show comedians are doing these Purim rabbi-type things in their political commentaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsaac Mizrahi lives in my building, and one year the Jewish Museum did a Purim fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria \u2013 it was a masked ball \u2013 and he did these fashion designs, Esther as a fashionista, and had all these designers that he knew submit designs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In adapting recipes that invoke the spirit of the holidays, Cohen fashions a chickpeas cocktail nibble for Purim. Why chickpeas?<\/p>\n \u201cEsther was supposed to have eaten only pareve vegetarian food,\u201d she explained, \u201cgrains, nuts and seeds, because the food at Ahasuerus\u2019s court would be non- kosher, so she couldn\u2019t have any of the meats. Supposedly all those legumes and grains kept her beautiful. That alone is a reason to indulge.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Eating kreplach is another Purim tradition.<\/p>\n \u201cKreplach are associated with three holidays, Yom Kippur, Simchas Torah and Purim,\u201d Cohen noted. \u201cThe filling is hidden, and to me the real reason we eat kreplach on Purim is the theme of disguise and revelation. The whole Purim story is very interesting \u2013 the whole theme of revealing yourself and coming out that goes so well with kreplach and other covered kind of foods, the truth that is hidden but will be revealed. Also, there\u2019s the idea that God\u2019s will was hidden, so that really ties in very neatly with kreplach.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And how did poppy seeds come to be associated with Purim? \u201cOn some level they have been said to symbolize Haman\u2019s fleas. Any negative things that you could heap upon Haman you would do. So we bake mohn cookies and pound cake with poppy seeds or cabbage mixed with poppy seeds and noodles.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamantashen translates to \u201cHaman\u2019s pockets,\u201d and the three corners have nothing to do with his hat, she revealed. \u201cThat was a Middle Ages kind of hat. The triangle could be his pockets in which he kept the lots. The whole idea of consuming your enemies is very interesting. The Sephardim eat Haman\u2019s ears fried in syrup. The whole idea is you are consuming a part of him.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently Cohen wrote an article on sweet and sour Jewish dishes and found another Purim connection. \u201cIt\u2019s not in the book, but I realized when doing the research that a lot of Jews from different parts of the world eat sweet and sour dishes, and the whole Purim story started out sour \u2013 or bitter \u2013 and then turned sweet, so combining both tastes in a food became popular among some Jews. I love Jewish food! There\u2019s never one single reason. Cabbage is always considered to be an antidote to drunkenness, so what could be a better food for Purim?\u201d<\/p>\n
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