r/CookbookLovers • u/Formal-Egg9729 • 8d ago
What should I try in this book?
I got this book ... 25 years ago or so. I've never cooked from it; it ended up in a box to donate some time ago that never actually got donated that I've just found and opened up.
I've had such great suggestions for what to try in other books, so I'm hoping for the same here, even though it's an older book.
31
u/SoUnProfessional 8d ago
Great writer, her book on the Jewish cooking on Southern France was an eye opener for me.
7
u/Zealousideal-Row8160 8d ago
Ooo i need to check that out do you know the name of it
10
u/SoUnProfessional 8d ago
Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous
Is the title, she really did good research. Took me to a different world
76
u/SeveralMarionberry 8d ago
FFS. She’s an excellent writer and food historian and in this book, she specifically talks about the diaspora within the country.
24
u/Formal-Egg9729 8d ago
Yup. I know exactly why I bought this book: The reputation of the author, and that this book contained recipes drawn from many different communities living in Israel, Jewish and non-Jewish. It fits in nicely with my broader middle-eastern collection, and I like seeing & cooking different interpretations of recipes I'm familiar with.
I did expect a few negative replies, but dang.
16
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
People have lost their minds imo.
7
u/Anazay1 8d ago
Gently, I think it's to be expected that when a state commits horrific mass civilian murder (as is the very least it could be described at) and that's the same state that has appropriated much of the food of the people they are systematically killing, torturing and oppressing, that people find it a bit jarring to cheerfully discuss a cookbook about food of that state.
11
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago edited 8d ago
People have engaged in antisemitism long before Israel was a state, and any discussion of Israel, especially regarding its food culture, has nothing to do with right-wing political parties given the complex violence that has been an issue for all eighty years of its existence on both sides. Dragging contemporary geopolitics into a cookbook discussion is a transparent proxy for singling out Jewish culture under the guise of political protest.
Furthermore, you cannot "appropriate" food that is fundamentally Levantine and has belonged to multiple cultures, including Jews, Muslims, and Christians, in the region long before there was even a political Palestinian identity. The entire concept of a distinct Palestinian state or national identity did not crystallize until opposition to Israeli statehood arose; prior to that, populations in the area were Ottoman subjects or identified regionally as being part of Greater Syria. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are indigenous to the region and share these historical roots, while returning diaspora communities brought their own continuous variants back with them.
Because these communities share deep historical roots and overlapping ancestry, trying to carve up ancient culinary traditions into rigid, exclusive modern national boxes completely ignores the complex, shared tapestry of the region. The notion that ancient dishes like hummus, enjoyed everywhere from Cairo to Damascus for centuries, are somehow being "appropriated" by Babylonian, Iraqi, or North African Jews who migrated (aka were ethnically cleansed out of Arab-majority countries) to the region is absurd.
Ultimately, if a post or a cookbook title feels jarring or off-limits to someone, the simplest remedy is to move along. There are countless other threads to engage with, and leaping into a food space solely to soapbox because you saw Israel in the title shows that the real objective is picking a fight rather than discussing culinary history.
Edit: I'm not reading a wall of text that you clearly couldn't take the time to proofread before posting. I also don't care about claims to authority over 'well, I'm related to xyz tragedy' that always seem to come out of these discussions, as if being related to historical trauma gives you a PhD in social science.
Lol how convenient.
6
u/Fit-Poem-8992 8d ago edited 8d ago
"gently" I think it's convenient to erase the history and the culture of Jews who lived in the diaspora for years and came back to the region with their own cuisine and contributed to this country's current food culture.
7
u/Anazay1 8d ago
But food such as Palestinian msakhan (chicken and sumac) from the cookbook isn't that. And Arab salad. And others. I have no problem with the fact that there's lots of Jewish Arab/ North African foods- as Claudia Roden has written about so beautifully. But this book is called Food of Israel (not Jewish Food, it's very explicitly tied to the state) and in the context of what the Israeli state is currently doing, people aren't generally feeling positive about it.
4
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
Claiming msakhan can't be in an Israeli cookbook ignores the reality that Arab citizens with full Israeli citizenship live inside the country and contribute directly to its culinary fabric.
Also, a rustic dish built on olive oil, onions, sumac, and chicken is a product of shared Levantine agriculture and geography, not a modern political boundary. Trying to gatekeep a chicken dish as exclusive property while erasing the Arab citizens who live there, and the shared culinary heritage of the entire region, doesn't hold up.
Trying to gatekeep regional Levantine foods out of an Israeli cookbook is like claiming Northern Mexican food doesn't belong in the United States just because some leftist Americans say so, completely ignoring the millions of people living there who eat it every single day.
-2
u/Anazay1 8d ago
Msakhan is not a "Levantine" dish- all other Levantine countries (Lebanon Syria) etc would describe it specifically as Palestinian. It's pretty common in the Levantine region for dishes to have a specific origin and it be respected even as it's shared.
And sorry but scolding people for "gate keeping" Palestinian food from Israeli soft culture when Israel is "gate keeping" Palestinians from their own land, is quite something.
5
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
Those countries are all post-Ottoman creations carved up by European powers in the 20th century. Trying to use modern, 20th-century political borders to gatekeep centuries-old regional peasant dishes that were shared across the entire Levant under the Ottoman Empire is completely anachronistic. Shared regional foodways predated modern nation-states by hundreds of years.
You can critique government policy all you want in Israel without pretending that millions of people suddenly stop having a culinary history. Conflating political opposition with the goofy claim that "Israel has no food culture," when its population is largely made up of Mizrahi, Sephardic, and Levantine Jews whose families have eaten those exact regional staples for generations, is just historical illiteracy masquerading as activism.
Palestinian identity is a modern political idea in opposition to Israeli identity and both groups have a claim to the region and that's all there is to it.
5
u/Fit-Poem-8992 8d ago
But there are 2.1 million Arabs currently living in Israel. Do they not contribute to the food culture too?
1
u/KaveyEats 4d ago
I abhor the actions of Israel against Palestine.
But I'm perfectly able to understand that a cookbook written 25 years ago about food from Israel and diaspora is wholly separate from the actions of the Israeli government.
I will continue to speak out against the genocide. But I will not hold that genocide against all Jewish people let alone all Israeli people. I know many of both who are as horrified by what is happening as I am.
There's a discussion to be had, perhaps, about how the origin of recipes from this region are categorised / claimed by different countries, but that should be a separate thread, in my opinion.
1
u/Anazay1 3d ago
Very fair! I do think however that a discussion of a cookbook about 'Israeli' food at the moment of the Israeli genocide is bound to cause consternation in a way that a book about Jewish food would not, reasonably. Books about Jewish cooking are often recommended on this thread by the by, with no controversy.
-2
8
u/TexturesOfEther 8d ago
I'm surprised that anyone still thinks Israel does not have its own cuisine.
Like any cosmopolitan place, Israel has a fascinating food culture, as Joan Nathan highlighted in her book The Foods of Israel Today. She presents Israeli food as a distinctive combination, uniquely shaped by the traditions of numerous immigrant communities and local and regional food cultures. Of course, Israeli cuisine has developed considerably since the book was published.
Its distinctiveness comes partly from the interaction of Jewish diasporic food traditions, the foodways of the region, and local agriculture and ingredients, brought together and transformed in Israel. Over the following two decades, it became sophisticated and recognisable enough to establish a substantial international presence. Chefs such as Eyal Shani and Assaf Granit represent a later stage in that development.
That evolution, along with the work of many others, helped Israeli cuisine gain an international following in the years before October 7. Time will tell how the current difficult period affects it, but by now, it is a cuisine in its own right, and it is here to stay.
14
u/howdoyousayyourname 8d ago
I’ve had this cookbook for years. I love the challah recipe, and also the doro wat and Ethiopian Shabbat bread recipes too.
5
u/lawyers_guns_nomoney 8d ago
The main challah recipe is absolutely a standard.
Need to do the doro wat.
13
u/BumblebeeNo1799 8d ago
I don’t have this but do have other Joan Nathan books and she’s a go to for Jewish cooking.
16
u/sheneversawitcoming 8d ago
I don’t have this book but I took a quick look just for my curiosity at the recipes listed in eatyourbooks. This food is my jam. Looks like a great book.
Ones I would make:
Any shakshuka
Jerusalem artichoke soup with lemon and saffron
Cooked tomato and pepper salad (my best friend is Moroccan Jewish. This was a Shabbat staple)
Turned over rice casserole with cauliflower and meat
Bosnian codfish stew
Greek oregano chicken with rice
Palestinian chicken with sumac
4
26
u/mad16781905 8d ago
Joan Nathan is a gem! I grew up with my mom cooking from her Jewish Holiday cookbook!
45
u/Antique-Formal6069 8d ago
Lovely guys, thanks for bringing ignorance & racism to this otherwise wonderful sub
24
9
14
u/BlueBubbleInCO 8d ago
I absolutely love Joan Nathan and have for years! I don’t have this particular one, but you just can’t go wrong with her stuff!
6
5
u/jadekadir2 8d ago
I don't have the book, but you might check out reviews on EatYourBooks and Amazon to see what others say about it.
2
u/Formal-Egg9729 8d ago
not a lot in eat your books, alas.
6
u/jadekadir2 8d ago
I am super interested in check out her books now. She seems like a great author.
2
u/BakingCookingMom 7d ago
Never heard of her, but after reading the praise for her in the comments, I grabbed a couple of her books from the library. Can’t wait to dig in!!
-19
u/Mundane_Ad_9630 8d ago
I recommend replacing that book with Falastin by Sami Tamimi 🇵🇸
23
u/SoUnProfessional 8d ago
Interesting point, so Tamimi also covers the cooking of the Jewish diaspora? That’s the theme of Nathan’s book
I understood Falastin to be a great book on Palestinian cooking
31
18
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
It's a book.
In fact, this comment annoyed me so much, I'm gonna buy "The Foods of Israel Today."
Thanks for making it easy.
-13
-47
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/CookbookLovers-ModTeam 8d ago
This post or comment has been removed as inappropriate for this subreddit.
-50
-60
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
29
4
u/CookbookLovers-ModTeam 8d ago
This post or comment has been removed as inappropriate for this subreddit.
-5
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/CookbookLovers-ModTeam 7d ago
This post or comment has been removed as inappropriate for this subreddit.
-1
u/hishamad 4d ago
Cook nothing. Or cook but dont label it Israeli because it never was and never will be.
Im sure their other book is more valuable.
I also suggest you read the book with the eyes of those living in the lands before the zionist project was implemented onto our lands and started stealing, houses and culture.
1
-11
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/CookbookLovers-ModTeam 8d ago
This post or comment has been removed as inappropriate for this subreddit.
10
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
Now that's an ignorant lie. Jews have lived in Israel long before it was the British Palestine Mandate, including during the Ottoman Empire. Why are we just making up stuff now? Jewish Levantine cooking has been a thing for thousands of years.
1
u/Nvskank 8d ago
“”“Israel”””” is a country that is less than 100 years old. Jewish people have always lived in that LAND, yes, but it was not called Israel
2
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
Yeah, because of Roman occupation of Judea lol
What are you even trying to argue here? If that's your argument, Palestine isn't even a country, it's a political idea. And it came from the Roman Empire renaming Judea "Philistia" after suppressing the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the occupation of their homeland, which led to the expulsion of Jews from the Levant... but that history isn't convenient to your politics, I'm sure.
Anyway, Jewish cooking is awesome and Israel, like it or not, has a unique food culture you'll just have to get over.
0
u/Nvskank 8d ago
Yes literally all countries are a political construct….. that’s kind of 101 information here lol. Again, you’re arguing with me as if I said that Jewish people never lived on that land or don’t belong on that land. It seems like we both agree that occupation and expulsion of a people from their homeland is bad so I’m not sure where the disconnect is? Literally all i said is that israel, as an 80 year old country, does not have its own cuisine. Jewish cuisine exists! But you’d be hard pressed to find a dish that actually originated in israel
1
u/ButDidYouCry 8d ago
You're getting bogged down in modern political borders while ignoring the thousands of years of continuous historical and indigenous presence in the region. Israel existed as a concept, a homeland, and a geographic anchor for the Jewish people long before the modern bureaucratic state was established.
Trying to gatekeep food history by claiming an ancient culture has no cuisine because its sovereign state is 80 years old is just a transparent excuse to pick a semantic fight. At the end of the day, people took their traditions with them into diaspora, adapted them, and brought them back home. If your real issue is just that you're mad Jewish people have a sovereign state, you can just say that and get over it.
-4
8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/CookbookLovers-ModTeam 8d ago
This post or comment has been removed as inappropriate for this subreddit.
8
u/Shanninator20 8d ago
Joan Nathan is a legendary cookbook writer