Books

The Joy of Bold Fork Books

I have not yet reviewed a bookstore on this blog, despite a decade of writing. Today, that will change, because I want to tell you about one of my favorite bookstores in Washington DC: Bold Fork Books.

Bold Fork Books is in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in northern Washington DC. It is an unusual bookstore in that it pretty much only sells cookbooks and food writing.

Of course, I love it. The store is small and has a tall wall shelf of cookbooks, which is quite frankly an ideal number of cookbooks. You can find cookbooks from all six continents, and food writing and history on many topics – as well as plenty of food-themed books for children. I rarely go in and leave without buying anything. It is, shall we say, dangerous for my wallet.

Bold Fork Books - entrance to a store in a narrow row house with a row of books inside — Photo from Bold Fork Books

Bold Fork sells – and prioritizes – books that often do not get “airtime” at larger bookstores. The store features books about cuisines from many, many more countries than one would find in a typical cookbook selection: Sierra Leone, Georgia, Barbados, Myanmar, Kenya, and Romania among them (including Irina Georgescu’s excellent Tava). I especially appreciate the hefty and growing selection of indigenous cookbooks on offer – including one of my favorites, Sean Sherman’s Sioux Chef. And while you can find your more “traditional” cuisines on the shelves as well, many of the cookbooks and other books are those that are perhaps not as renowned – and, incidentally, often easier for a cook new to a culinary tradition to follow. I first encountered Vietnamese Vegetarian – Uyen Luu’s wonderful book that I reviewed earlier this year – at Bold Fork.

The store also features many cookbooks that straddle the boundaries of cuisines and audiences. Many bookshops jettison the cookbooks that straddle cuisines or that do not have the right “authentic” sheen. I can also often tell a bookstore’s political leaning by the cookbooks on the shelf: a left-leaning shops will often have a focus on whatever cuisines are most popular at the time, and right-leaning shops often focus their cookbook selections on entertaining and baking. Bold Fork eschews this segregation and offers it all.

Bold Fork is worth a visit, and a wonderful way to support a local business that is a beloved space for the community. And if you do visit, I should note that the bookstore often hosts wonderful food events. When I go, I often see a cheese tasting or another event happening in the back of the store. I was fortunate enough to attend one such event last year – a talk on the links between opera history and food by Rita Monastero, who can best be described as the doyenne of Italian food television. (The talk included the memorable line, “Nelly Melba was very fond of the ice cream.”) Do try to attend an event – it is very cozy and you often get a lovely treat. In my case, it was Monastero’s wonderful artichoke and Parmesan pinwheel pastry.

Let me know what you think of Bold Fork and I hope to see you there.

Bold Fork Books, 3064 Mount Pleasant Street NW, Washington DC

Great Books: Vietnamese Vegetarian, by Uyen Luu

My husband loves Vietnamese food. The balance of flavors speaks to him; he loves the textures and the forward tastes; and he likes lemongrass more than anyone I know. He asked me to make more Vietnamese food recently. (Reader, I lovingly cater his meals.) I decided to buy a cookbook, and chose Vietnamese Vegetarian, by Uyen Luu, because we do not eat much meat. This quick purchase was an excellent one, which I now recommend to you.

Book cover of Vietnamese Vegetarian by Uyen Luu: with stylized vegetables and the subtitle "simple vegetarian recipes from a Vietnamese home kitchen"

Vietnamese Vegetarian is an incredible book for three reasons: its approach, its flexibility, and of course, the recipes.

First – this book is a perfect example of what an accessible showcase of a cuisine can be. The recipes are rooted in what Vietnamese people eat in Vietnam and the diaspora, of course. Many common favorites are in this book – pho, sour soups, noodle salads, and summer rolls among them. However, Luu does not insist that you always find the exact ingredient someone might use in Vietnam, and offers options and substitutions, especially aimed for someone not near Vietnamese or other Southeast Asian stores. For example, she offers quite a number of potential substitutions in her noodle recipes – and explains how you may need to adjust the recipe.

Secondly – this book accounts for flexibility in recipes in a way that I will seek to emulate more on this blog, now. Many of her recipes come with a dizzying array of options: be it to bake or fry the spring rolls, which herbs to include in your banh xeo crepes, or the multiple seasoning options for simple stir-fried greens. After reading this book, I will now include more “choose your own adventure” posts here.

And, of course, the recipes are delicious. Many of these recipes are a bit complex – especially the ones involving rice flour (which is very easy to mess up!) – but well worth the time. On the simpler side, I have really enjoyed the tofu with tomato and Thai basil (called rau húng quế in Vietnamese) and the lemongrass tofu, and the cold noodle dishes are all really tasty. I also recommend the many-recipes-in-one garlicky greens close to the beginning of the book. Even with my experience in cooking, that recipe gave me many new ideas.

Vietnamese food culture is a wonderful world, and Luu’s book is a great place to start. I recommend the book and hope you enjoy it. Be sure to also explore Vietnamese eateries in your area if you are so able: this cookbook has heightened the joy of going to these businesses for me as well. I now deeply appreciate, even more, the creativity and human endeavor of this cuisine.

Vietnamese Vegetarian, by Uyen Luu

Is Authenticity Out of Fashion? Please Be So.

As you can probably guess, I read a lot of cookbooks. Not as many in the form of books that I own, as of late: instead, I have come to love e-cookbooks on my tablet and borrowing – and xeroxing – copies of cookbooks from libraries. There are many wonderful books that I have found – the electronic version of Uyen Luu’s book on vegetarian Vietnamese cooking is a particular favorite, as is Hetty McKinnon’s Tenderheart.

Most of this reading is “comfort” reading or “research”: I get many ideas for recipes on and off the blog from these books, and it is helpful to be familiar with different recipes. Besides, I have somehow become a bit of a “go-to” person among my friends for cooking questions – and so it is helpful to know about lots of different recipes, even if I stick to my comfortable rotation. (Which includes several recipes on this blog.)

Cookbooks, largely vegetarian, on a shelf — Photo Emdot via CC/Flickr

Authenticity used to be all the rage, and longtime readers will know that I am not a fan. Even five or six years ago, cookbook publishers were fawning over to prove their volumes as the most authentic, most unadulterated, or most “true” to a certain form of the cuisine. Note that I say publishers and not authors – because, in most cases, this was a marketing ploy for the consumer. Yet none of this fawning made authenticity any more real. And many of the most interesting things about culinary traditions – the use of new ingredients, or how social norms and practices have changed over time, or even some of the tastiest recipes – fell by the wayside.

Yet in recent years, I have seen newer cookbooks embrace authenticity less. Some flat out never use the word. Others, and especially those by people from the country whose cuisine is documented, often acknowledge – and celebrate – the “inauthentic” things they are doing. One example is Uyen Luu’s aforementioned cookbook. She uses capers to replace other, non-vegetarian ingredients common in Vietnamese cuisine, and encourages her readers to use the ingredients they actually have, with her recipes as a guide. Similarly, Naz Deravian’s fantastic Bottom of the Pot, which contains many delicious and fantastically photographed Iranian recipes, includes her own creations from common ingredients in North America, as well as recipes that push boundaries – like her sour cherry crostini. (Which I highly recommend.)

Rainbow bagels in plastic bag — Rainbow bagels (Photo Louise McLaren via Flickr/CC)

I think this is a good thing. Since I wrote my authenticity piece back in 2017, I have noticed something curious: authenticity, rather than guaranteeing the trueness of a cuisine, is often a prison. Food, and cooking, become something that has to be performed when you seek authenticity – often at great energy, expense, or waste. Seeking the “authentic” also often traps people in a time capsule – even as the purported owners of the cuisine are trying new things. For a particularly poignant example: while some may decry rainbow and cinnamon raisin bagels, many New York bagel shops now include quinoa in bagels for a healthier variety of the “everything” bagel. (I am mildly allergic to quinoa, so if someone could review these for me, that would be appreciated.) I would rather have a living Jewish cuisine, not a time capsule version thereof.

Every cuisine deserves room to grow and change – and people are creative! And so I hope instead of the strange and confining bounds of authenticity and nostalgia, we see cookbooks not only acknowledge the wonders of mixing, but also inspire new traditions. What will be Jewish cuisine in 50 years? I cannot wait to find out.

Great Books: Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, by Deborah Madison

As regular readers know, I do a lot of vegetarian cooking – though I do enjoy some meat and fish. Nowadays, it is not very hard to find excellent, vegetable-centric cookbooks. Today, though, I want to discuss one of my favorites – Deborah Madison’s classic Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The book has been a cult classic since it was first published in 1997. It is widely lauded, too. And with good reason: there are 1,400 delicious recipes for a full range of vegetarian dishes, all straightforward to cook. Madison’s book is as much a reference on what to do while centering plants as of ways to do so.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone book cover

The recipes are good, both for simple dinners and entertaining. There are many “classic” recipes for common American favorites like pasta sauces and pancakes – but also food from all six continents and featuring many delicious vegetables. There are ten-minute recipes, and day-long project recipes. Pretty much every recipe I have tried so far from it has been easy to follow and has turned out well. Many of the recipes are modular and build on one another too – and they lend themselves to easy experimentation, which Madison encourages.

I appreciate that Madison generally does not try to imitate meat or fish foods. Doing so was especially in vogue when vegetarianism was still considered a “fad” – and remains so in many quarters. As a meat eater, I can verify that sometimes the vegetarian version is better (burgers, anyone?) – but generally, it is not. And vegetarian ingredients often sing best when they are treated on their own terms rather than as a substitute. Madison understands this instinctively – and while there are a few imitation recipes, the hundreds of recipes in the book treat their main ingredients as the star of the show. As they should be!

This book is very much of its time. Many of the things reflect food trends of the 1990’s – particularly quite a bit of higher-fat cooking and many Mediterranean recipes. That said, many of the recipes are timeless – as are the techniques and lateral tricks Madison includes throughout the book. In addition, the compendium is so wide that there is always inspiration in this book’s pages.

Brussels sprouts broccoli rabe and radishes for sale in a market — Inspiring vegetables (photo mine, October 2022)

To finish, here are a few of my favorite recipes from this book. Page numbers are in the second printing of the 1997 edition, and may vary for more recent versions.

Chickpeas and Greens with Moroccan Spices, page 309
Five-Minute Beets, page 339
Green Beans Simmered with Tomato, page 337
Nutmeg Pie, page 700
Peruvian Potatoes with Peanut Sauce and Garnishes, page 161 (this is essentially papas a la huancaina)
Somen in Broth with Silken Tofu and Spinach, page 482
Sweet Corn Soup, page 206

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison

Great Books: The Moosewood Cookbook

A few months before he passed, the late Jon Henner wrote a tweet that immediately made sense to me:

Working theory. The Moosewood Cookbook by @MollieKatzen is one of the most important mid to late 20th century Ashkenazi diaspora cookbooks. My grandma cooked Moosewood and not really cholents and stuff.
@JMHenner – February 2, 2023

This book, the first of Mollie Katzen’s twelve works, indeed had a big influence on Jewish communities. It is a very Jewish cookbook – and a great one, too.

The Moosewood Cookbook stems from the namesake restaurant which Katzen co-founded in Ithaca, NY – which still operates today. (If you are in the Finger Lakes, I recommend a visit.) Moosewood was very much a product of its time – a vegetarian, plants- and ethics-forward restaurant with a very global focus – perfect for the “People’s Republic of Ithaca.” The cookbook – and several of the following books – are hand-lettered and -illustrated by Katzen herself, and compile many of the “hit recipes” from the restaurant’s early years.

Pasta with vegetables and cheese — Farfalle primavera at Moosewood Restaurant itself! (Photo mine)

The recipes themselves are great – and very rich and hearty! Among other hits, I can highly recommend the soups and many of the casseroles in the book, as well as the pies. The Brazilian Black Bean soup is a particular favorite. Katzen writes accessibly and in a very intuitive way – the recipes are organized in a way that makes chronological sense for the recipe. Many of the portion sizes are generous.

The book is also deeply Jewish. Katzen herself credits her kosher upbringing with her interest in vegetarianism, and she included many Ashkenazi classics – such as noodle kugel, cabbage borscht and other soups like solyanka, blintzes, stuffed cabbage, and cholent-like casseroles in the book and on Moosewood’s menu. These vegetarian, well-flavored, rich renditions are exemplars of their recipes. And it is not hard to find Jewish influences elsewhere too – the pie made with a grated potato crust akin to yapchik, the zucchini pancakes akin to latkes, or the spices that pair with the many wonderful mushroom dishes.

Katzen was part of a trend, of course: many Jewish people were involved in the vegetarian, environmental, and “hippie” food movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Other non-Jewish chefs active in this time include Jewish recipes in their works too – for example, the women behind Bloodroot Restaurant in Bridgeport, CT, and Deborah Madison, the author of several authoritative cookbooks on vegetarian and plant-forward cooking. Other Moosewood co-founders – and members of the staff who took collective ownership in 1978 – were Jewish too, including Katzen’s brother.

Handlettered Sweet Potato Pancakes recipe — A handlettered recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook (copyright Mollie Katzen via Glamour magazine)

Yet Katzen’s influence went back to the Jewish community in a way unparalleled by these other books. By the time I grew up in the 1990’s, many of Katzen’s recipes were in my and others’ experience frequent guests on the tables of synagogue events and Shabbat dinners. Though my own family did not cook Moosewood, many others’ did. Others have written about this experience, too. As an experiment, I asked my heavily-Jewish friends circle what they like to cook from Moosewood. Many of the recipes I mentioned appeared – alongside the pasta al cavalfiore, no-boil lasagna, and the Ukrainian poppy seed cake. I was not surprised to hear so many entries – after all, many others have been in communities heavily influenced by the cookbook too.

Pasta with cheese and cauliflower — Pasta al cavalfiore from The Moosewood Cookbook (Photo Margaret Wessel Walker, February 2024)

I have many times made a recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook or Katzen’s subsequent The Enchanted Broccoli Forest to find that I had recreated something I had eaten before, at a Jewish community event – especially in the left-leaning communities I have frequented as an adult. I think this has happened for many reasons: Katzen’s own continued links to Jewish life, the strong Jewish presence at Cornell University and in Ithaca, and in particular, the way Moosewood reflects how American Jews actually eat. The recipes were not preserved jelly-like in nostalgia, but rather in a mix alongside Indonesian salads, Brazilian soups, and an array of pastas.

And so this is why Jon’s tweet resonated with me so much. It was not just his grandmother who cooked from Moosewood – many of the people I knew in my communities, across generations, vegetarian or carnivore, left-wing or conservative, did. I do too, now – and I am grateful to this book for very much enriching Jewish tables across the country.

This post is dedicated to Dr. Jonathan Henner, z”l, who passed away in August. I knew him through this blog and our shared Jewish networks – he suggested that someday I write a post on Moosewood. In the wider world, he was known as a proud Deaf advocate and an achieved linguist who studied American Sign Language and children’s education. His work and activism have had a profound effect on many people, especially Deaf children. You can read more about him here; he will be missed.

The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen, is available from many wonderful independent bookstores across the world.

Thank you to my friends for contributions and particularly Margaret Wessel Walker for the photo!

Neurodivergent-Friendly Cookbooks and Sites

This post has two parts, but both are about resources to help neurodivergent people in the kitchen. One is a very exciting new cookbook coming out, and the other is a list of other beneficial cookbooks.

As a refresher – neurodivergent refers to a series of disabilities that comprise differences in brain structure. Neurodivergent people think and process differently from others. Some types of neurodivergence include autism, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, bipolar disorder, intellectual disabilities, and Tourette’s syndrome – among others. (I often use “neurodivergent” or the slang “neurospicy” to describe myself, since “I am autistic and have OCD” is a bit of a mouthful.) Neurodivergence is not always a disability – but it usually is, and like other disabilities, affects cooking.

A Book for Neurodivergent Folks by a Neurodivergent Author!

Cover of Color Taste Texture: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt. Has images of cinnamon rolls, chicken tenders, and kids at a party eating. — Broberg-Moffit’s book (Photo from Penguin Random House)

Good news: there is finally a cookbook coming out by a neurodivergent person, for neurodivergent people! Matthew Broberg-Moffitt is an autistic author who has written Color, Taste, Texture– a cookbook designed for neurodivergent and other cooks with food or texture aversions. These sensitivities are more than a dislike, and few cookbooks for adults effectively address this aspect. The recipes are varied, and meet various common aversions and sensory sensitivities. The book comes out in August; I urge you to pre-order it.

We neurodivergent folks often cook differently, as I have discussed in the past on this site. We experience the senses differently – and aversions and sensitivities often have a greater impact on us. In addition, we often cook with this sensory experience as front-and-center as taste, health, or craving. Yet few books and blogs address this reality – so Broberg-Moffitt’s book is very exciting. It will also be good to see both the way the recipes are presented, and what recipes are in the book. I am looking forward to seeing the book, and I expect to learn myself from this work.

Other Neurodivergent-Friendly Cookbooks

books file on book shelves — Photo by Gül Işık on Pexels.com

In addition, I wanted to highlight some additional cookbooks that I find to be particularly friendly for neurodivergent folks. Though they are not necessarily designed specifically for someone who is neurodivergent, they do offer things that are helpful – such as substitutions, clear directions, and recipes that do not depend on doing a certain thing a certain way. Note that you will need to read carefully to figure out what things you need for recipes.

Many of the recipes in these books are personal favorites. I hope you enjoy.

Ruby Tandoh’s Cook As You Are is one of the most neurodivergent-friendly cookbooks out there. She includes very detailed, clear directions and offers options if you have trouble with chopping, or standing, or a host of other things. She actively consulted neurodivergent people while creating the book. Her chili-stewed greens with black eyed peas are now a regular thing for me.

Leanne Brown’s Good Enough is a really good book on imperfect, do what you can cooking with some great ideas and suggestions – including a really great “assembly” bit that guides you through making food out of whatever you find around. I love the “TL;DR” summaries of recipes – but I recommend only using those if you have prior cooking experience.

Gwyn Novak’s How to Cook for Beginners is an excellent book for those of you just starting out in the kitchen. Even though I’ve been cooking almost my whole life, I myself found the book to have some good recipes.

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything: The Basicshas lots of really wonderful, direct illustrations and directions and some good recipes as well. This book is a good resource, especially if you eat a lot of vegetables.

Tanorria Askew’s Staples+5 is an excellent cookbook filled with simple recipes, and has one of the best pantry-stocking lists I have seen.

Megan and Jill Carle’s College Cooking: Feed Yourself and Your Friends is a very neurodivergent-friendly guide for beginner cooks.

Sites

Woks of Life is a lovely site run by a Chinese-American family that has many delicious recipes, and teaches you the basic “building blocks” of traditional Chinese cooking. If you want detailed instructions on how to prepare a new ingredient, this site is a good place to check.

Just One Cookbook, by Namiko Chen, is an excellent and simple resource for all things Japanese cooking. The directions are straightforward, and she provides excellent advice on techniques – especially for basic things. I use this site all the time.

Jessica in the Kitchen, by Jessica Hylton,is an excellent vegan food blog with excellently explained recipes. This blog has some really wonderful recipes.

My Forking Life is an excellent blog with many quick recipes, including those that use air fryers and pressure cookers. Tanya, the author, also includes many of the Jamaican recipes she grew up with.

Laura Mauldin, a professor at the University of Connecticut, has a great website called Disability at Homethat catalogues all sorts of things disabled folks, including neurodivergent people, do to make life more accessible at home. Many of the kitchen things may help you – they have helped me!

Neurodivergent Cooking Crew is an excellent, very helpful Facebook group for neurodivergent cooks from all backgrounds.

Autistic readers, I encourage you to join Autism Meals, a food group on Facebook for autistic folks. NOTE: You do need to be autistic to join.

Shows

Nadiya Hussain’s Time to Eat has lots of simple, straightforward recipes – many of which use prepared food products such as pre-peeled garlic or packaged cooked beets. The accompanying book is great too.

It’s a bit dated, but Alton Brown’s Good Eats is a really fun show where you can learn about the science of food. My sister and I watched it a lot as kids.

Great Books: Tava by Irina Georgescu

One of the great things about Romanian food is that there is something for everyone. Luscious corn porridge, mamaliga, with salty curd cheese, hearty soups, elegant salads, spiced meats, and ethereal fruits. Many communities, including Jews, have lived in Romania and influenced its cuisines – and this shows up in Romanian baking. Germanic, broad-shouldered fruit pies, light shortbreads common across the former Ottoman Empire, and swirled fruit-and-nut breads reminiscent of Eastern Europe all stand side by side. Romania is an underrated baker’s paradise.

Irina Georgescu captures this fantastic diversity in her latest book on baked treats, Tava. This dessert-focused book chronicles both traditional Romanian and Balkan recipes like the plăcintă cu mere – and apple and walnut pie – and gogoşi doughnuts, and newer creations like a crepe recipe with a toffee apple and rosemary sauce. Georgescu writes in a relaxed, yet passionate style, and provides a richly illustrated journey through the diverse regions and culinary traditions of her homeland. This book follows Carpathia, an excellent and not dessert-focused compendium of traditional and modern Romanian cooking.

The recipes in the book are fantastic. One of my personal favorites is the apple and caraway seed loaf cake, which is beautifully simple and very delicious – the juice of the grated apple is what moistens the cake, so it feels luscious and light at the same time. I can also vouch for the malai dulce – sweet cornbread – recipe, and the wonderful pinwheel swirl shortbreads, which were fun to make. Something that I deeply appreciate about the recipes is that the sugar content is much reduced compared to other books, so none of the recipes I have tried are either too sweet or cloying at all. I wonder if this is common across Romanian confectionary, or simply attributable to Georgescu’s (obvious) culinary genius. I’m excited to soon try the courgette (zucchini) fritters and the various pies.

Dumplings in breadcrumbs on a lined table in a book — *Curd cheese dumplings in* Tava (photo Irina Georgescu/2022)

Georgescu openly celebrates the Jewish influence – and other influences – on Romanian cuisine. Some of these are in the recipes that many communities share – for example, noodle puddings or doughnuts. She also adds a well-written and very nice discussion of Jewish baking traditions in Romania at the end of the book, followed by a hamantaschen recipe with plum butter that looks absolutely divine. I appreciated also that hamantaschen were in the section on gifts – after all, they are a traditional part of mishloach manot. Along with the Jewish insert – again, appropriately placed – there are also entries on Hungarian-speaking, German-speaking, and Armenian communities in Romania, with wonderful recipes attached.

hamantashen with powdered sugar on a plate — *Georgescu’s hamantaschen with plum butter* (photo Irina Georgescu, 2022)

Beyond the celebration and the recipes, Georgescu’s book gives one more gift: an excellent antidote to authenticity discussions in food. Georgescu explicitly focuses on the diverse origins of Romanian food, and resists the urge to mush them into a single narrative – in fact, she rejects authenticity! She states,

“I prefer to say ‘this is how we eat in Romania’ – a kaleidoscope of old, traditional and regional recipes, relevant to who we are now.”

I hope many more authors and cookbook creators take this lesson from this excellent book.

Tava: Eastern European Baking and Desserts From Romania and Beyond, by Irina Georgescu

Fun at the Capital Jewish Food Festival

DC had its first Capital Jewish Food Festival the day before Sukkot this year. A new museum, the Capital Jewish Museum, is about to open Downtown, and this institution put together and hosted this festival. The goal: celebrate Jewish food loudly, publicly, and in a fun and delicious way in the nation’s capital.

A brick and glass building with steps and a terrace. Drawing — A rendering of the forthcoming museum. (Image Capital Jewish Museum)

I bought tickets as soon as I heard that this event was happening. After all, how often is there going to be a brand-new Jewish food festival near me – and five blocks from my office, no less? I had a lot of fun, and thought I would write up my experience to share with you. For those of you local to Greater Washington, the festival was held on F Street NW between 3^rd and 2^nd Streets, right by the Judiciary Square Metro. I got there a bit early – but the crowd really started packing in shortly after I arrived. There were throngs of people!

About fifteen to twenty vendors were present, offering samples for ticket holders and additional delicious things for purchase. Some of my favorites included a fantastic challah apple bread pudding from Bread Furst, Venezuelan flan (very Shavuot-appropriate!) from Immigrant Food, and a fantastic hummus with winter squash from Little Sesame. For those who did not want to limit themselves to samples, there was more to buy. If my pantry had not been already packed, I would have absolutely gotten some delicious baked goods from Baked by Yael (what fantastic challah!).

Hummus with pita and winter squash from Little Sesame (photo mine, October 2022)

What I loved about the vendors is that they were neither limited to explicitly Jewish vendors, nor to specific interpretations of Jewish tradition. One stall had a delicious Venezuelan-style flan – which some Jews probably eat at Shavuot, but it was not marketed as either Jewish or for Shavuot. It was a delicious flan that you could eat Jewishly! In addition, other community groups were there as well with their wares – including a Chinese-American heritage association with delicious mooncakes. The message seemed to be “these things are part of Jewish tables too.” This mixing also gave rise to some pairings most would not think of – that flan was an excellent counterweight to the bread pudding I just mentioned.

Two plastic cups with fried foods and sauces — Vegan nuggets and fries from PLNT Burger (photo mine, October 2022)

There were keynote speakers too – including the inimitable Joan Nathan and Michael Twitty. Both held book signings after their talks. I was not able to make Twitty’s because of a prior conflict with his speaking time – though I’ve had the fortune to meet him before, in 2016 – but I was able to meet Joan Nathan! As longtime readers know, I have relied quite a bit on her work over the years as I’ve developed my own Jewish culinary practice and knowledge. She, like Twitty, is incredibly sweet in person. If you have a chance to meet Twitty or Nathan, take it! Meeting your heroes is a fabulous opportunity.

The crowd was awesome – and though it got a bit overcrowded, it was wonderful to see people enjoying the joyfulness of Jewish tradition. A lot of Jewish tradition is indeed “Remember that we suffered,” but there is a streak of joy too, and that is what I like to share. Food is a huge part of that, and this festival amplifies that opportunity for joy. It was really awesome to see Jews and their friends just enjoying a very public day out, eating tasty Jewish things. I heard people introducing their friends to Jewish foods, or talking about what they learned or particularly enjoyed. It was also wonderful to hear folks say things like “I’m not Jewish but I love Jewish food.” The joy of Jewish food really should be for everyone, and I appreciate that the Museum consciously pushed back on the often insular and exclusionary approaches to Jewish cultural celebrations. After all, we are never just Jewish either.

A street with pedestrians and covered stalls on both sides. No cars are on the street. — The festival early on – about three times as many people were present just 45 minutes later! (Photo mine, October 2022)

I hope the festival continues next year. I am planning to write to the museum for two suggestions: one on space and one for accessibility. The festival was popular – which is good – but the street space was perhaps too small for the number of folks who wanted to attend. Next year, if possible, I would suggest that they spread out along more than one block to accommodate everyone. Related to that, the seating areas were a bit hidden, which made it hard for folks who cannot stand for a while or eat and walk. These areas should be more clearly marked.

I hope to see you at the festival next year!

The Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum will open soon at 575 3^rd Street NW in Washington DC, by the Judiciary Square station on Metro’s Red Line.

Great Books: Koshersoul, by Michael Twitty

Great Books: Koshersoul, by Michael Twitty

Several years ago, Michael Twitty came out with The Cooking Gene, which was a fantastic exploration of African-American culinary history. I gave it a rave review on this blog. That book explored the West African roots of both African-American food and Southern food as a whole, with Twitty’s own personal experience intertwined. Twitty has followed this work with another magnificent book: Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African-American Jew. Twitty writes about his own Jewish journey, the experiences of America’s many Black Jews (both African-American and of other backgrounds), and how these play out both in the kitchen and in White Jewish communities.

A Black man with a beard and short hair in a green print kente shirt at a lectern — Michael Twitty, the author, delivering a book talk at the Library of Virginia and looking fabulous. (Photo Library of Virginia in the public domain, undated)

Koshersoul is memoir, history, food book, and conversation all at once – and Twitty balances these very deftly. Historical explorations, ethnography, and analysis are intertwined with Twitty’s own well-narrated stories. You learn a lot as a reader – but also come to appreciate not only the intersections Twitty experiences every day, but also the way he can connect these to wider ranges. Twitty also is the rare memoirist that does not come off as self-indulgent – and, in fact, he shows a great deal of empathy and care for the many people he chronicles as well.

The book meanders – which I think adds to its excellence. The stories Twitty tells are not chronological, but rather go back and forth across his life and across history. What this structure does is make the book feel more like a story being told in person, rather than a tome. In addition, because it reflects how we tell stories in person, I found that the structure made it easier for me to envision certain things – particularly when it came to the discussions of food, or some of the more intense stories from Twitty’s Hebrew school teaching years.

Okra stacked on a table — Okra – one of the foods that Twitty discusses in his examination of African influences on Jewish cooking and the food of African-American Jews and the communities in which they live. (Photo Postbear/public domain)

I think this book is an important one. White Jews like myself would do well to read it. Twitty is not only unflinching about racism and racial dynamics in the Jewish community, but also the impacts of “mainstream” Judaism’s headlong rush to whiteness on their fellow Jews’ very real lives. There is also a very important analysis embedded in the book of Jewish food culture – and how much of the politics around Jewish food comes from a distinctly unsavory tradition.

The food discussions in the latter part of the book are fascinating, and also have a realness to them that I find refreshing. Discussions of Jewish food are oftentimes sappy with nostalgia or a distinct unrealism about the cultural balance Jews – and especially Jews of color – face. Twitty faces these head on, with frank discussions about the role of enslaved Black folks and domestic workers in cooking Jewish cuisine, their influence on Jewish foodways, and also the balancing Jews by birth and choice do between cuisines and kashrut. I think a lot of Jewish food writing could learn from Twitty in this regard.

Twitty ends his book with some fantastic recipes. These recipes combine West African, African-American, and various Jewish traditions. Some are by him, and some are by the many Black Jews who Twitty worked with as he crafted the book. Keep the book because these recipes are ones you will want to come back to again and again. Two personal favorites are the Jollof Rice and the Tahini-Nokos Dressing.

Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African-American Jew, by Michael Twitty. I provided the book link here, but please try to buy this from a Black-owned bookstore if you can.

Great Books: Perfection Salad, by Laura Shapiro

I am far from the first person to believe that the kitchen can change the world. In fact, such a belief motivated the domestic science movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which was largely led by women. This push – though not feminist – sought to give honor and credit to women’s work in the kitchen, and to transform how women ate. Laura Shapiro’s 1986 book Perfection Salad narrates the history and impact of this movement – and how the legacy on the kitchen was “devastating” – and how it also, in many ways, strengthened patriarchy rather than lending respect to women.

About two dozen white women in aprons and caps looking at a camera in a library — A home economics class in early 20th-century Toronto. (Photo public domain via Toronto Public Library)

The book charts the fascinating history of “domestic science,” the ancestor to today’s “home economics.” The movement stemmed from a desire to standardize and give respect to women’s domestic work – and rather than changing gender norms or the distribution of labor, social reformers sought to do so by standardizing and making scientific this labor. Much of the change happened in cuisine – with ideas of foods being controlled, and determined for nutrition or morals alone rather also for nourishment and flavor. (Hence creations like the book’s titular salad.) The book also charts the way women interested in chemistry and economics were shunted off to the gendered world of home economics – and how this whole development tied in with the popularization of industrial foods. The book is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

One surprise for me, while reading the book, has been the type of presence Christianity has in many of these reformer’s narratives. I am unsurprised by the presence – social reform has always had a strong Christian overtone – but rather the tenor of it. Many of the reformers presented “orderly” households as analogous to Heaven itself – and one even narrated Heaven as such an establishment! Even as scientific methods were incorporated into home economics, the base of the enterprise was still a very patriarchal one of the woman as keeper of the hearth and imparter of Christian morals (with all sorts of rather biased assumptions attached). Shapiro’s depiction of this phenomenon is unflinching but also deeply engaging – she draws the reader into the minds of the authors who she writes about from a century’s distance. As I read, I reflected on similar tendencies in many Jewish social reform cookbooks in the early 20^th century – like the famed Settlement Cook Book. Even with their secularizing and assimilationist tendencies, these books still relied also on older, very patriarchal ideas of what the kitchen was spiritually – and what women should be doing there.

Shapiro published this book in 1986, but many of the notes and observations carry over to much of domestic culture today. One is: the constant pushback that people – mostly women – get for following instinct and embodied knowledge rather than something “improved,” “rational,” or “new.” We saw it with domestic science, and now we see it with much of the “health food movement.” Instinct, of course, is not always right – but there is something about knowing what will work when, and the knowledge that comes from things that cannot always be measured or codified, and the action of doing. For this insight alone, Perfection Salad remains as relevant as ever.

Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century, by Laura Shapiro