A Great Start
This is the very first Jewish cookbook I bought when I was 18 years old. I have cooked these dishes for my family for the past 10 years, and they have become family favorites. My nephew is always excited when I cook with this book, because he knows that I'm making "Jewish food."
What makes this cookbook a step above the rest its accessabilty and encyclopedic knowledge of several Jewish cuisines. The cookbook is a fusion of Ashkenazi, Sepharidic, and Mizrahi recipes. This is important in my family because we are Jews of Color. My sister won't touch Ashkenazi food on a ten foot pole, yet I've always managed to find delicious Sephardic foods in this recipes that she enthusiastically praises everytime.
My only issue with the recipes is that they truly require more spices than she recommends. Try doubling the spices in her Rosh Hashanah Spice Cake or her kugel. The taste is manna from heaven.
I recommend this cookbook for the beginning Jewish cook. Greene knows how to make you feel at ease and seems to whisper expert advice for every recipes. Even the proverbial cooking dunce can deliver a quality Yom Tov for her family.
Jewish Soul Food Done Right
My mother bought this book for me about 4 years ago. Since then it has become an invaluable tool in my kitchen to help create wonderful Jewish holiday traditions. EVERY recipe I have tried from this book has tasted wonderful, was easy to prepare, and made me look like a fabulous cook. I highly recommend the salmon croquettes. As other reviewers have said, the additional information the author gives regarding holidays and customs is great. I've even taken the book out during festivals to read excerpts - my guests were really impressed to learn new information about traditional foods served at Hannukah.
I love this book so much I've started to give it as a gift for every new bride I know. The recipes in this book have already become traditions in my new family.
Best of a very spiritual breed of cookbook. Buy It.
`The New Jewish Holiday Cookbook' by Gloria Kauler Greene and `The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking' by Phyllis Glazer and Miryam Glazer are two leading representatives of a great cookbook subgenre which may be unique among all cookbook flavors in that they represent that extraordinary relation between Judaism and food. Like the exceptional `Jewish Holiday Cookbook' by Joan Nathan and unlike the encyclopedic `New York Times Cookbook of Jewish Recipes', both books spend much space and words on the practice of kashrut or keeping kosher. But this is not the whole story. There are numerous Jewish culinary traditions which are not directly related to kashrut, such as the traditions surrounding the number of challah loaves baked for the Shabbat or the number of bumps on the challah loaves (The magic number here is 12, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, so the tradition is to have 12 loaves. More practical is the tradition to have two loaves each with 6 bumps created by the braiding of the bread before baking.)
There is one major difference among these three books which is evident in their titles. Ms. Glazer's book deals with `festival' cooking while Nathan and Greene deal with `Holiday' cooking. The subtle difference here is that the festival book does not cover Shabbat and the two `holiday' books do.
To a non-Jew, my guess is that since there are 52 shabbats in a year, while there are at most seven or eight major `festivals', it is much more important to have a book covering Shabbat as well as the yearly holidays. Between Greene and the Glazers, I find at least one other big difference in that Ms. Greene gives far more coverage to the creation of challah, which may be the single most important Jewish holiday recipe in any of these books, as it seems to be the one food which tradition calls for at every Shabbat. In fact, even though Joan Nathan's book combines two books, one of which is on Jewish holiday baking, Ms. Greene's treatment of challah, at least in the details she give for braiding several different numbers of dough strands is the most extensive. Among the recipes from the three books, the amateur bread baker in me prefers Ms. Nathan's recipe, as it uses the least (1 packet) yeast and calls for the longest raising time. She (and Ms. Greene) also use my preferred `active dry yeast' rather than the `rapid rise' yeast.
All three books deal in depth with Jewish holiday traditions, although Ms. Glazer and Ms. Greene seem to have better rabbinical sources and seem to be more dedicated to the details of the traditions. Of the three, Ms. Greene seems to touch me more effectively in her discussion of these traditions than the other two.
All three writers are primarily from the Ashkenazy tradition, although all three also give fair treatment to Sephardic dishes and menus. If you are really interested in Sephardic menus primarily, Ms. Nathan spends much of her space on Sephardic menus.
If you are willing to take a recommendation from a goyem, I recommend Ms. Greene's book most highly, followed by Ms. Nathan's book for her many baking recipes; however, all three are quality books.
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