The best Jewish food not only fills the stomach, but warms the heart. If you tell someone that you top your chopped liver with grieben, their face may light up at the memory of an Ashkenazi grandmother’s cuisine. Served “dag,” at a friend’s Shabbat table, they may remember having eaten this homey Moroccan fish dish every Friday night growing up. As you can see, the best Jewish food is comfort food based on regional traditions, whether Ashkenazi gefilte fish, or Yemenite kubaneh. While the list of Jewish foods is long, all of these yummy dishes have their roots in the wanderings of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, after the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash.
Traditional Jewish foods were created by creative Jewish cooks who were forced to work with unfamiliar ingredients in unfamiliar surroundings. Moroccan Jews who settled in seaside locations close to the Mediterranean or Red Sea area, learned to cook fish with local vegetables and spices. Ashkenazi Jews ate kasha or buckwheat in Russia, while Jews who landed in Romania, ate mamaliga or cornmeal mush. Jews who settled in Milan ate rice, while Jews in other parts of Italy were more likely to eat wheat, in the form of pasta. Jewish women were forced to always adapt and to develop kosher dishes based on newly encountered ingredients as they journeyed throughout the Diaspora with their families. A Jewish momma had to find some way to fill her children’s bellies so that they would survive.
Jewish Penicillin
Soup was a way to get the most out of every comestible. Take chicken: in Eastern Europe, meat was more plentiful than chicken. For this reason, chicken was too dear to eat for any but the most festive occasions. Even then, a single (expensive) roast chicken could only properly serve a family, depending on the size of the family. Chicken soup, on the other hand, made from a single chicken, could serve many. A delicious, rich chicken and carrot soup called “goldene yoich” (golden soup), was mostly reserved for weddings, a rare treat for the guests. For some shtetl locals, a wedding celebration was the only time they could dream of tasting chicken in any form.
Soup was and still is, a means for feeding a crowd. Most people associate Jewish cooking with chicken soup, universally known as “Jewish penicillin.” It is pretty much a staple at an Ashkenazi Friday night meal, often enjoyed best with Lokshen or Kneidlach (matzah balls). But soup in Jewish cuisine is not limited to those made from chicken. It takes many forms, including the vegan cold sour summer soup known as “schav.” Not everyone likes schav, mind you, but it is quite refreshing on a hot summer’s day for aficionados of this murky green soup made from sorrel leaves, known for their sour taste.
The Humble Beet
Yet another soup, borscht, based on the humble beet, has an important place in the canon of traditional Jewish foods, at least for those Jews of Eastern European stock. The hearty or not-so-hearty soup, according to the cook’s preference, could be prepared in a variety of ways, and with or without meat. Meat-free beet borscht, hot or cold, is mildly sweet and traditionally served with a boiled potato and a dollop of sour cream. The sour cream turns the borsht an attractive pink. Meat borscht, aside from meat, may contain not only beets, but cabbage and other root vegetables, depending upon availability.
Like other root vegetables, beets were stored in cellars to be eaten all winter long. By the time Pesach arrived, for many struggling Jewish families all that was left to eat were the humble beets, by now somewhat wrinkled and over the hill. Borscht thus became associated with the Passover meal at the end of the long winter, but before the new spring vegetables came in. Soup in the form of borsht, here came to the rescue of Jewish mothers once again, because a pot of meaty, flavorful borsht could always be stretched with more water and maybe some salt, to serve unexpected Passover Seder guests.
Do Make a Tzimmes
At the Shabbos or holiday table, a braised brisket might feature as the main course, having been cooked on a bed of root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots. Brisket may be a cheaper, tougher cut of meat, but Jewish women in Eastern Europe learned how to make it soft enough to yield to a fork and melt on the tongue. Brisket is sometimes prepared as the sweet and savory dish known as tzimmes, a dish traditionally served on Rosh Hashanah, when sweet foods are eaten to symbolize our hopes and prayers for a sweet new year. Tzimmes usually refers to a carrot-based dish and often includes such ingredients as sweet potatoes, prunes, and honey, and sometimes meat. Sometimes, small matzoh balls are braised alongside the rest in the delicious meat juices, to serve as little dumplings.
Because this dish has many more ingredients than most foods, the word “tzimmes” came to signify something complicated or fussy. One might say “Don’t make such a tzimmes” to someone who is upset and needs to calm down, or to spare a hostess extra effort on your behalf. This typically food-derived Jewish expression can also mean: “Don’t complicate things.”
Gefilte Fish: Sweet or Savory?
Gefilte fish is another dish that may be sweet or savory depending on where your ancestors came from. Polish Jews developed a taste for sweet foods. Jews from Lithuania, not so much. Regional differences in how traditional Jewish foods are prepared have come to signify pride in one’s heritage. A Litvak (Lithuanian Jew) might say, only half-jokingly, “Galicianers [Polish Jews are largely from the Eastern European region known as “Galicia”] put sugar in the gefilte fish to cover up the taste of the spoiled fish.”
Our sages tell us to eat fish at the Sabbath meal. However, fish can be a problematic dish to eat on Shabbat (or Shabbos, in Ashkenazi pronunciation) because of the need to remove bones during consumption. On Shabbos, one is not supposed to separate the bad from the good —which in the case of fish is about the removal of the inedible bones from the flesh of the edible fish. Gefilte fish is made of ground fish so that there is no worry that one might encounter the troublesome bones, and come to violate Shabbos.
Gefilte fish is best enjoyed with chrain, a traditional spicy relish made from horseradish and beets.
Ashkenazi Food
The list of Jewish foods prepared by Ashkenazi Jews is long – much too long to comprehensively cover here. One might say that the aforementioned dishes are “only a taste” of typically Ashkenazic food. Some other traditional Jewish foods that have their origins in various parts of the European Diaspora include:
- Blintzes – a thin rolled pancake filled with cheese, potatoes, or fruit and then fried or baked.
- Cholent – a Shabbos dish of a slowly cooked mixture of meat, barley, beans, vegetables, and more, prepared on a Friday and cooked overnight
- Eyerlekh – unlaid eggs found inside just-slaughtered chickens and typically cooked in soup
- Gedempte fleish – pot roast
- Helzel – a skin of the neck of poultry stuffed usually with fat and flour
- Kishke – a beef intestine stuffed with a seasoned filling, often cooked in cholent
- Kichel – a slightly sweet baked product made of eggs, flour, and sugar usually rolled and cut in diamond shape and baked until puffed
- Knishes – a dumpling of dough that is stuffed with a filling, usually of potatoes, and baked or fried.
- Latkes – pancakes, especially ones made with grated potato or cheese, often served on Chanukah, when it is traditional to eat oil-fried foods
- Lekach – Honey cake, often baked for Rosh Hashanah, as a symbol for a sweet, new year
- Kugel – a baked casserole, most commonly made from potato or lokshen (egg noodles)
- Mandel brodt (lit. Almond bread) – almond cookies similar to biscotti
- Matzah brei – A dish made from matzah fried with eggs
- Miltz – cooked spleen of the cow, with a texture similar to liver
- Pletzl – a type of flatbread similar to focaccia
- P’tcha – a kind of aspic prepared from calves’ feet
- Rugelach – a bite-size cookie made with cream-cheese, yeast, or flaky dough, and rolled around a filling of nuts, poppy seed paste, chocolate, cinnamon, or jam. A real Jewish favorite!
- Shlishkes – a potato-based small dumpling of Hungarian Jewish origin
- Teiglach – small, knotted pastries boiled in a honeyed syrup
- Vorschmack – an originally East European dish made of salty minced fish or meat
- Yapchik – a slow-cooked layered dish of potato kugel mixture and meat of Polish and Hungarian origin
Colorful, Spicy Sephardi Cuisine
Sephardi cuisine distinguishes itself from Ashkenazi food in a variety of ways. Those who enjoy eating Sephardi-style cooking, often describe Ashkenazi food as “bland.” While this is arguably false, it is however true that Sephardi dishes tend to be more colorful than Ashkenazi dishes and often include liberal lashings of pungent spices, among them hot peppers. Sephardic Jews are descended from Iberian Jews, and include those who left Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century to parts of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Red Sea area, North Africa, and even to India.
Soup to Stretch
Soup, for Sephardic Jewish moms too, was a way to stretch ingredients to feed a growing family. Marak Temani, or Yemenite meat soup, loaded with potatoes and other vegetables, is seasoned with Hawaij, a spice mixture that typically includes cumin, black peppercorns, cardamom and turmeric but may also contain other spices such as coriander, cloves, or nutmeg. A Yemenite diner might add the hot condiment s’chug to the soup, to add more bite. Another typical condiment that one might stir into a bowl of this meaty soup is hilbeh, made from fenugreek. There are different types of hilbeh and you may see two types of this condiment on the table to add to your meat soup. Some diners will use both in a single bowl of soup.
Jews with roots in Iraq, might eat kubbe hamusta, a sour soup with chard and meat-filled dumplings made of bulgur or semolina (or both). Kubbe hamusta may have chicken soup as its basis. In winter, you might find a red kubbe soup containing beets, not dissimilar to the Ashkenazi borsht. Red kubbe soup usually contains tomatoes or tomato paste to enhance the red color of the soup.
Egg Lemon Soup
Turkish Jews, and those from the Balkan states, and from the Greek port town of Thessaloniki (“Salonika” in Ladino), make a chicken soup brightened with lemon, and enriched with eggs. This soup is called sopa de huevos y limon. The eggs help to thicken the soup and make it creamy. Whether Ashkenazi- or Sephardi-style, soup is not only economical, but comforting. Egg lemon soup is no exception to this comfort food rule.
Savor Your Sofrito
Sofrito is the tomato and onion or garlic base popular for cooking Sephardi dishes that originally hail from Latin America and Spain. While sofrito is used to prepare many dishes, in Israel, “sofrito” refers to a stew-like dish which may include chicken or beef chunks, plus potatoes and other root vegetables. Many season the sofrito with only salt and pepper, while others prefer to jazz things up with paprika, turmeric, or cardamom. No matter the ingredients you choose to make this delectable dish, the cooking method is the same. Fry the potatoes (sofrito means “fry first”) and reserve. Then brown the meat or chicken and place the potatoes on top to steam. This dish is cooked with very little or no liquid so that the flavor is more intensely concentrated.
What’s Moroccan Fish Really Called?
As in Eastern European Jewish cuisine, fish is a requisite dish for the Shabbat table. The Moroccan fish dish known simply as “dag” (fish), has layers of vegetables topped with fish. No liquid is added to the pot; instead, the fish is topped with a generous portion of olive oil mixed with a liberal amount of paprika. The resulting red oil is seasoned with the vegetables to make an unctuous sauce that makes a wonderful dip for challah bread.
To make dag, one begins with potato slices, and builds up layers of vegetables in the pot, one vegetable at a time. Vegetables typically added to dag, aside from the potatoes, include whole garlic cloves, sliced red peppers, and whole hot green peppers. Fish pieces, usually perch, are placed atop these vegetables, and the whole is capped with thinly sliced tomatoes, peeled, seeded lemon slices and chopped cilantro.
Chraime is another fish dish much enjoyed by Moroccan Jews. A firm fish, such as the easily available perch, is cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. The sauce, aside from tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, and garlic, is typically seasoned with hot paprika and cumin. This dish is quick to prepare, and served with crusty bread or over a bed of rice or couscous, makes a hearty, filling meal.
Fluffy, Light Couscous
Couscous consists of semolina grains steamed over vegetables and meat. The vegetables generally include onions, pumpkin, carrots, and vegetable marrow, a type of Mediterranean squash similar to zucchini. Prepared in a special pot called a couscousier, the rather largish chunks of vegetables go in the bottom with broth, lamb or mutton, and chickpeas. The top of the pot is the steamer section for the couscous, which is flavored with the steam from the soup below, while the semolina grains remain fluffy and light. At table, the stew is served atop the couscous grains. This dish, which has many regional variations, is often seasoned with turmeric, cinnamon, and hot paprika.
Eat Your Eggplant
Eggplant is ubiquitous to the Middle East. One of the favorite ways of preparing this vegetable is baba ghanoush. In this dish, the whole eggplant is roasted, peeled, and mixed with lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, and tahina (sesame paste).
Sephardi Food
The list of Jewish foods enjoyed by Sephardim is, like that of the Ashkenazim, too long to detail here. Among the traditional Jewish foods you might find on the Sephardi table are:
- Adafina/hamin/tabit – similar to the Ashkenazi cholent, a slowly cooked stew of meat and vegetables, eaten on Shabbat
- Baklava – a dessert originating in the Middle East made of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey
- Bourekas – a popular baked pastry, filled with any of a large variety of fillings, in Sephardic and Israeli cuisines
- Carciofi Alla Giudia – Jewish-style fried artichokes
- Dolmades – vine leaves stuffed with a filling of meat and rice
- Falafel – a Middle Eastern dish of spiced mashed chickpeas or other pulses formed into balls or fritters and deep-fried, usually eaten with or in pita bread
- Fazuelos – Moroccan sweet fried pastry
- Gondi – Persian Jewish dumplings made from chickpea flour and ground lamb, veal or chicken, traditionally served on Shabbat
- Hummus – a thick paste or spread made from mashed chickpeas and tehina, olive oil, lemon, and garlic, made originally in the Middle East
- Jachnun – a Yemenite Jewish pastry, traditionally served on Shabbat morning
- Kibbeh – refers to a variety of dishes made of bulgur and lamb or beef, such as stuffed dumplings served in soup or deep fried as appetizers.
- Ma’amoul – date- or sometimes nut-paste filled cookies, often containing semolina flour
- Malawach – A round made from fried layers of puff pastry, traditional to Yemenite Jewish cuisine
- Mufletta – a Maghrebi Jewish pancake traditionally eaten during the Mimouna celebration, the day after Passover
- Mujadara – a dish of lentils and rice topped with caramelized onions
- Pita – A round, thin bread with a pocket, eaten plain or with filling as a sandwich
- Sabich – a sandwich of pita or laffa bread stuffed with fried eggplants, hard boiled eggs, chopped salad, parsley, amba and tahini sauce
- Sambusek – savory turnovers filled with chickpeas, ground meat, cheese or potatoes
- Shakshuka – a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, chili peppers, onions, which is often spiced with cumin
- Tabouleh – a salad of Lebanese origin consisting chiefly of cracked wheat, tomatoes, parsley, mint, onions, lemon juice, and olive oil
Love – The Universal Ingredient
Some Jewish dishes no doubt arose out of desperate privation and poverty, for example the eminently stretchable soup. Others, meanwhile, were adaptations of the native cuisine, employing local, seasonal ingredients, and altered to suit the kosher diet. No matter which cuisine you choose to eat, however, whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi, the best Jewish food, like any other food, is prepared with lots of love. These traditional Jewish foods are still eaten by Jews wherever they are today, and serve to document the long history of the Jewish people.
By Varda Epstein
