Roden - The book of Jewish food : an odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the present day

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE BOOK OF JEWISH FOOD

Far and away the best food book of the year A work of devoted scholarship, written with love and a most becoming humility, it has already achieved the status of a classic Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph

Much more than a cookery book with delicious-sounding recipes, some centuries old, drawn from throughout the Jewish world. She crams this fascinating treasure-house with history, personal memories and anecdotes and, as with the best teachers, entertains as she informs Claire MacDonald, Mail on Sunday

Curried chicken with capsicums served with coconut rice, tagliatelle with roasted chicken and pine kernels and Moroccan couscous in various forms can all lay claim to being as Jewish as, well, chicken soup. All these dishes, and many more, have been lovingly researched, collated and compiled by cookery writer Claudia Roden over a period of fifteen years Simon Round, Jewish Chronicle

Learned, evocative, very well written and eye-opening to anyone who thinks of Jewish food as salt beef sandwiches and chicken soup Richard Ehrlich, Independent on Sunday

We are not just given instructions on how to make, say, chopped liver; each dish comes with a short commentary on where it came from in the first place, which allows for regional differences Claudia Roden has come up with the goods Jay Rayner, Observer

Roden never loses sight of what makes Jewish food Jewish, whether it is in Aleppo, Rome or New York. If ever a cookbook proved that food is one of the best introductions to an understanding of a culture, this is it Rowley Leigh, Guardian Weekend

For the intellectual cook, you cant better Claudia Roden, last of the scholar/cooks in the tradition of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson: her books are learned, loving, delicious, The Book of Jewish Food is definitive Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Coffee: A Connoisseurs Companion

Mediterranean Cookery

The Food of Italy

Everything Tastes Better Outdoors

Tamarind and Saffron

AN ODYSSEY FROM SAMARKAND AND VILNA TO THE PRESENT DAY

ClaudiaRoden

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL England

First published in the United States of America by Alfred A. Knopf 1996

Published in Great Britain by Viking 1997

Published in Penguin Books 1999

10 9 8

Copyright Claudia Roden, 1996

Illustrations copyright John Spencer, 1996

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

CIS Publishers: Excerpts from Pathway to Jerusalem: The Travel Letters of Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro, translated by Yaakov Dovid Shulman, copyright 1992 by CIS Publishers.

Reprinted by permission of CIS Publishers. Commentary and Allen Mandelbaum: The poem From the Hungry, Praise by Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Commentary, 1951). All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Commentary and Allen Mandelbaum. International Universities Press, Inc.: Excerpts from Life is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl by M. Zborowski and E. Herzog (1952).

Adapted by permission of International Universities Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-192851-7

In memory of my parents, Nelly and Cesar Douek,
and my brother Zaki.

For my children, Simon, Nadia and Anna,
and my grandchildren, Cesar, Peter and Sarah,
with love.