Miri Rotkovitz - Bubbe and Me in the Kitchen: A Kosher Cookbook of Beloved Recipes and Modern Twists

Copyright 2016 by Miri Rotkovitz

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Photography by Evi Abeler

Food styling by Laurie Knoop

Author photo () by Dan Wagner

ISBN: Print 978-1-943451-04-3 | eBook 978-1-943451-05-0

CONTENTS

My Family, Our People, a World of Recipes

Breakfast and Brunch

Mezze and Snacks

Salads and Vegetables

Grains

Soups

Fish

Poultry and Meat

Meatless Mains

Desserts and Bread

INTRODUCTION

I was floored when I learned, several years after her death, that my grandmother was a short woman. Maybe it was her regal bearing, or her tremendous personality. Maybe it was my childs perspective, with its perpetual upward gaze, which convinced me she possessed a stature that far surpassed her 5 foot, 2 inch frame. Maybe its that memory is figurative as much as it is literal, and this is why Ruth Morrison Simon, my mothers mother and the only grandmother I knew, always loomed so large in mine.

Though I was blessed to have her in my life for just 10 years, they were incredibly formative ones. At the table in her kosher kitchen, she introduced me to new foods, shared wisdom about the ingredients she loved, and let me help, even when mess-making was my forte. She imparted lessons about manners (licking the iced tea spoon did not constitute cleaning it), nutrition (fish was brain food), and cultural awareness (people around the world had their own distinctive food traditions).

She shared tales of her travels, and inspired my own fascination with international cuisine. Her cooking followed the rhythms of the seasons, and of the Jewish calendar. Working on this book, Ive come to realize just how deep and unceasing an influence she had.

Theres something universal about the way our grandmothers personalize our family stories while linking us to our greater heritages.

What I didnt realize until the manuscript was nearly written was that this woman, who symbolized for me everything a Jewish grandmother should be, never knew her own bubbes. Her mother, Shifra, passed away shortly before my mother was born, so my mom and her sister were bubbe-less as well. When she became a grandmother herself, she had no direct family example to emulate.

And yet, she had her mothers recipes and, through them, a tether to generations of bubbes who came before her. She knew the flavorliterallyof how theyd nurtured her forebears, and shared it with us. The baby of her Russian Jewish family, my grandmother was the only sibling of seven to be born in the United States. She adored the traditional kosher Eastern European fare on which she was raised. But she was also fascinated with the foodways of Jews from around the globe. She upheld tradition, but looked forward; she was vested in America, and the modern state of Israel.

Shed have loved todays kosher landscape, and its atmosphere of (re) discovery. The embrace of seasonal, internationally-inspired fare has us challenging biases about what Jewish food is. Very old traditions feel fresh and exciting. But whats equally fascinating (and what some have pointed out for years) is that this spirit of creative experimentation has its roots in the very foundation of traditional Jewish cuisine. Throughout history, expulsions, dispersions, and widespread migrations have characterized the Jewish experience. Even as kashrut served as an anchor to Jewish practice wherever in the world we laid down roots, it also offered a framework for adapting and connecting to host cultures, while retaining our unique identity as a people.

Theres no doubt that Jewish food is having a heyday. Were beginning to shift our gaze from surrounding cultures to each other. Theres growing recognition that the labels Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi dont begin to describe the diversity of cuisines that make up the Jewish canon. Chefs at acclaimed (and generally non-kosher) restaurants are exploring traditional Jewish foods from throughout the diaspora. The pressand foodieshave trained their eyes on Yotam Ottolenghi, Michael Solomonov, Alon Shaya, and Einat Admony, with their exciting riffs on Israeli cuisine. Gorgeous cookbooks, nearly all with titles declaring their new or modern takes on kosher, are filling bookstore shelves, a testament to the literal and figurative hunger for a way of eating that has sustained the Jewish people for generation upon generation.