That vegetable life – Page 3 – Flavors of Diaspora

Three Easy 20th-Century Jewish Summer Salads

I get very lazy during the summer. Some of it is the heat, some of it is my rare-but-real Summer Seasonal Depression, and some of it is that things during the summer always feel a bit more hectic. So, as much as I love cooking, I do not necessarily have the energy for a long and involved preparation process. Hence, salads become central in my meals. Not a few leaves with a sad dressing, but weighty and substantial salads that are, in fact, very Jewish.

In the past seventy years or so, Jewish communities have been having a bit of a…salad frenzy. Some of this has to do with the central place salad takes in Zionist cooking, as a way of “becoming of the land.” Salad is also part of Jewish assimilation into surrounding countries. And though some Jewish communities have had “salads” for centuries, salad is far more popular and central now. The ingredients have, of course, changed with the times. The three salads here use three ingredient combinations popular in Israel and the United States at different points since World War II.

1950s: Potato Salad with Yogurt

In the 1950s, Israeli cuisine was in a strange moment. In a completely Eurocentric state, certain Middle Eastern and North African foods were still considered unhealthy or unsanitary, and new immigrants were encouraged to “switch” to European, Ashkenazi food. Yet at the same time, that food was being amended with ingredients and recipes taken from local Palestinian cuisine. Hence you ended up with beet salads with cilantro, hummus with European bread, and recipes in which original ingredients were swapped with Middle Eastern ones. This potato salad with yogurt and za’atar would not be out of place in this environment.

(For more history, I highly recommend Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nation.)

Potato salad with yogurt and za'atar

Potato Salad with Yogurt

Serves 4-8

2 lbs/1 kg new potatoes, chopped in halves

Juice of 2 lemons

1 cup thick plain yogurt or Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon za’atar

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Water

In a pot, boil the potatoes in the water until soft to the fork, but not mushy. Drain the potatoes, then let cool.
In a cup, mix together the lemon juice, yogurt, salt, za’atar, and pepper until thoroughly combined.
Put the potatoes in a large bowl, and pour the dressing over the potatoes. Mix to coat. Serve cold or at room temperature. The salad keeps for 4-5 days refrigerated.

1970s: Corn and Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Garlic

The midcentury was the time of canned corn – especially in the 1950s and 1970s. In the United States, it ended up in strange combinations; in Israel, it was campfire food (and my mother’s one true teenage love); in the Soviet Union there was an entire, extremely bizarre campaign featuring talking cans of corn. And so corn often found its way into salads, including a corn-chickpea salad one man at synagogue told me about. Without the recipe, I updated it with carrots and garlic for more contemporary tastes – and it is definitely delicious.

Corn and chickpea salad with carrots and garlic

Corn and Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Garlic

Serves 4-8

2 cups cooked corn kernels (you can use canned)

2 cups cooked chickpeas (you can use canned)

1 cup chopped carrots

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or white vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon molasses or honey

½ cup water+1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Mix together the corn and chickpeas in a large bowl. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, place the carrots, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, oil, vinegar, molasses, and ½ cup water. Bring to a boil, then let simmer on low heat for 5 minutes, or until the carrots are soft and the “sauce” has reduced.
Mix the remaining water and cornstarch, and add to the carrots and mix in. You should notice the sauce thickening.
Remove the carrot mixture from the heat, and pour over the corn and chickpeas. Mix thoroughly, and then let the dish cool to room temperature before serving. This salad keeps for up to a week in the refrigerator.

1990s: Cucumber Avocado Strawberry Salad

Avocados were not just hip now, but in the 1990s too. At that time, avocados were first beginning to make themselves common in the upper-middle-class neighborhoods of the United States and Canada – and they were already common in the Southwest, Israel, Australia, and South Africa. And just like the avocado toast craze today, in the 1990s, avocado seemed to pop up everywhere – and especially in salads. Avocados, of course, were largely seasonal then due to pre-NAFTA import restrictions, and limited to the summer – just like strawberries. When NAFTA allowed for avocados to be imported year-round from Mexico, consumption exploded. Israel, meanwhile, had been growing avocados since 1924. This salad combines avocado with another 1990s trend – fruit in salad.

Cucumber avocado strawberry salad

Cucumber Avocado Strawberry Salad

Serves 4-8 as a side dish or 1-2 as a main dish

1 large cucumber, diced

1 large avocado, peeled, pitted, and diced

2/3 cup chopped fresh strawberries

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon soy sauce

Mix together the cucumber, avocado, and strawberries.
Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, and soy sauce separately.
Add the dressing to the cucumber mixture. Serve cold or at room temperature. This keeps refrigerated for a few days but is best served within 24 hours of preparation.

A bonus salad: last year, I published a recipe for a Chickpea Arugula Salad with the Jewish Daily Forward. It is very 2010s. Take a look!

Thank you to Dov Fields and Dana Kline for participating in User Acceptance Testing.

Eggplant Salad

Recently, I have found myself craving eggplant all the time – and I have perhaps become addicted to the tannic and earthy taste of a vegetable that is actually a giant berry. And so, given my passions and my interests, I have also been researching the Jewish history of this most extraordinary plant. Today, the eggplant is so associated with Israel that it is difficult to believe that eggplants were not, in fact, present during the First and Second Temple period. Rather, the plant is from India – and the word “aubergine” in English and French comes via Arabic and Persian from the Sanskrit vatiga-gamah, which might be related to the word for flatulence. I cannot speak to that effect, but I can say that eggplants reached the Jewish Mediterranean in about the 7^th century CE.

White, five-petaled flower of a wild eggplant, with little green fruit behind. — Flower of a wild eggplant. (Photo Michael Khor/CC-Flickr)

Eggplants have long been a beloved mainstay of Sephardic cooking – and show up in all sorts of pastries, stews, and salads. Folk songs wage a fight between the eggplant and tomato (another newcomer), which were long considered the two favorite vegetables of the Sephardi community. In Morocco, Jews and non-Jews make a pungent and delicious salad called za’alouk with eggplant, as well as a lovely eggplant jam. Moroccan Jews even candy eggplant! Ashkenazi Jews historically only ate eggplant in Hungary and Romania, but developed an attachment to the plant there as well. Eggplants were one of the first foods adopted by settlers in Israel and Palestine in the early 20^th century, and today eggplant might as well be a food group in Israel.

Eggplant pieces — Delicious eggplant, before cooking. (Photo mine, March 2016.)

This salad is a riff on a recipe more typical in Israel today – one often called a “Moroccan” eggplant salad, though it is somewhat different from typical salades cuites. As in North Africa and Turkey, “salad” in Hebrew, or salat, can also refer to small plates of vegetable dishes served at the beginning or as part of a meal. Even in English, the term salatim is now frequently used among Hebrew-speaking Jews. The eggplant used in Israel is smaller and fried more deeply in oil, whereas I have used the larger Mediterranean eggplant. I also have added more garlic, because garlic is delicious. In any case, this eggplant salad – though given that it is cooked I hesitate to say “salad” – is easy, delicious, and goes well with many other dishes.

–

Fried Eggplant Salad (Salat Khatzilim Metuganim)

2 small-to-medium eggplants, chopped into 1cm/ 1/3 inch slices (optionally salted)

1 bell pepper, finely chopped

1 chili pepper, finely chopped

6 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tbsp lemon juice

Salt, to taste

Olive or vegetable oil

Heat a wide skillet or pan, then add about 2cm/1 inch of oil. Fry the eggplant in the oil until soft and darkened on both sides, flipping as necessary.
Remove the eggplant with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil in the pan. Set the eggplant aside to cool.
In the same oil, sauté the peppers and garlic until the pepper begins to soften and the garlic is thoroughly browned. Remove, with the oil, from the heat. Set aside to cool.
Mix the leftover oil-garlic-pepper mixture with the lemon juice. Then, pour this “dressing” over the eggplant, and mix well.
Add salt to taste. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rhubarb for Pesach

Rhubarb sauce with rosemary in a highball glass, with a sprig of rosemary perched on top

I was recently asked by a friend of a friend if there are any Jewish rhubarb recipes – he had found good rhubarb and wanted to make some for Pesach (Passover). Initially, I was stumped – rhubarb is not even mentioned in Gil Marks’ otherwise encyclopedic Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. So I went to the various corners of the academic food internet to do some research – expecting to find a Greek, Russian, or Iranian Jewish rhubarb sweet, given that those are rhubarb-laden areas that historically had many Jews. Instead, I found something savory: a series of rhubarb sauces used for fish and meat in Greek and Turkish Sephardic communities. Some sources noted that this dish is, in fact, traditional for Pesach. It sounded intriguing – and delicious.

In honor of this history and the season, I made a stewed rhubarb side dish that is kosher for Passover. It is based on the rhubarb sauces from the Mediterranean, but with the addition of rosemary, which complements the tart rhubarb nicely. Though you may still prefer sweet rhubarb in a very-much-khametz pie, I hope you enjoy this method of preparation as well.

—

Rhubarb with Rosemary and Garlic (for Pesach)

1 pound/500 grams fresh rhubarb stalks (about 5)

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon butter or olive oil

1 cup water

Wash the rhubarb, and discard the ends. Then chop into 1 cm/1/2 inch chunks.
In a shallow pan, melt the butter (or heat the pan and add the oil). Add the rosemary and garlic and sauté for thirty seconds.
Add the rhubarb and mix thoroughly with the garlic and rosemary. Distribute evenly flat across the pan.
Add the salt, sugar, and water, and bring the mixture to a boil.
Simmer for ten minutes, or until the water has cooked down and the rhubarb has just started to disintegrate. Serve hot or cold.

Simple Chickpeas for Purim

Purim is soon upon us; in true Leibowitzian fashion, Purim is quite possibly my least favorite holiday in the Jewish calendar. The noise! The gaudiness! The drunken shenanigans! I am perhaps too serious to truly appreciate Purim as anything other than a day for calmly reading the story of Esther and eating some delicious traditional foods. The famous food here in the United States is hamantaschen, for which I gave a recipe last year – delicious cookies that really should be consumed whenever it is not Passover or a fast day. (Including Hanukkah.)

A chickpea field in Israel with a hill in the background — A chickpea field in Israel – notice the luscious green of the leaves! (Photo Eitan F via Wikimedia commons)

But other food traditions exist too – among them, eating beans. It is said in Talmud and Midrash that Esther ate legumes whilst in the palace of King Ahasuerus so as not to ingest food that was not kosher. Hence many Jewish communities choose to eat beans and nuts on Purim in commemoration of the Purim heroine. Among those beans are chickpeas – a legume that has been part of the Jewish diet for thousands of years – as I wrote five months ago for another recipe. From the agriculture of the Second Temple Period to medieval Spain, from 19^th-century Eastern Europe to today’s stylish Jewish restaurants in Buenos Aires, chickpeas have a long and storied history on the Jewish table. In the context of Purim, chickpeas have long been specifically associated with Esther herself as the food that she ate while in the palace – and have thus been considered traditional to Purim in Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities for centuries.

Chickpeas in a tomato sauce in a Pyrex bowl — The chickpeas – completed. I prefer to chop the onions very roughly; you can dice them if you would like. (Photo mine, March 2017)

Anyway, here is a simple and delicious recipes for chickpeas that you can make for Purim – or whenever. The hearty beans are paired with a piquant tomato sauce not unlike that served with chickpeas or other beans in parts of Turkey. It is very easy to make and is a good weekday dish that will also keep well for leftovers for lunches. On the other hand, it is also a very good and reliable dish for a dinner party that can please folks with many habits of diet – it is vegan and gluten-free. Even Esther, I hope, would approve in all her glory!

Spicy Garlicky Chickpeas

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

8 medium cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more, to taste – I like a bit more)

1 teaspoon white wine or apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup water

6 cups cooked chickpeas (1 pound dried*)

Olive oil

Heat a saucepan and add the olive oil. Then, add the onion and garlic and sauté for two minutes, or until the onion begins to wilt.
Add the salt and red pepper flakes and stir in thoroughly. Sauté for another 30 seconds, then add the vinegar. Sauté for another minute, or until the onions are softer.
Add the tomato paste and mix in thoroughly, then add the cup of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the sauce has thickened.
Remove from the heat and add the chickpeas. I recommend that the chickpeas be hot when you add them. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature. When hot, the chickpeas go well with rice or noodles; when at room temperature they are particularly good with a dense bread.

*If you are using dried beans, soak the chickpeas overnight or for eight hours in water with 2 inches/5 centimeters to cover. Then, drain the beans and boil in four quarts/four liters of salted water for one hour or until soft.

Zucchini with Za’atar

A quick recipe this week for a delicious item I tried for the first time in a Palestinian restaurant many years ago – fried zucchini with the tart thyme-based, sesame-laced spice blend za’atar. The recipe is Palestinian in origin, but is similar to many zucchini-based dishes that come from Greek and Turkish Jewish communities. Like other Palestinian foods, fried vegetables with za’atar have been appropriated and reworked by Israeli culture in the past fifty years.

Two large zucchini, chopped into thin medallions of about ½cm/1/5” inch

Olive, coconut, or vegetable oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp za’atar

Heat a skillet and add about 3 tbsp of oil. Then, add the zucchini flat on top of the oil in the pan – you may need to fry multiple batches. Fry on each side for two minutes, or until browned, then remove from heat and lay out on a plate. Mix your spices together and sprinkle liberally over the zucchini pieces. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Thank you to Jay Stanton, Daniel Moscoe, and Alex Cooke for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

Cilantro Heaven: Aliyah da Gomi

Chicken stew with tomato, cilantro, and onion, with cornmeal porridge and zucchini medallions — *Aliyah da Gomi* – chicken stew with tomatoes and cilantro (Aliyah), served with cornmeal porridge (Gomi), and some zucchini is in there too. (Photo mine, January 2017)

My love for cilantro is legendary among my friends. I eat it raw when I cook with it; I garnish many dishes with it; my colleague once brought me cilantro from her father’s garden. So when I happened on a Georgian recipe for chicken stew with tamarind, tomatoes, and much cilantro in Claudia Roden’s book, I pounced: here indeed was a recipe I absolutely had to make. But, on a whim, I also decided to add a very different ingredient – ginger. The result tasted somewhat different from the nutty, rich food I had eaten in Georgian restaurants in New York and Israel – it was almost Thai. Delicious, though, with the fine dance of cilantro. In many ways, I had made an authentic-inauthentic recipe.

Interior of The synagogue in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. — The synagogue in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. (Photo Uri Yachin via Flickr/Creative Commons)

The ingredients, though, are all indeed common in Georgia’s delicious and incredibly rich cuisine. The Caucasus country – which has been home to Jews for 2,500 years – has been well known for its rich spice combinations, succulent cheese, incredible love for all forms of tree nuts, and hearty food since ancient times; in the Soviet era, Georgian food swept across the socialist empire and outpaced that of the Russian overlords. The food recalls both the tart and sweet tastes of Eastern Europe and the sour, earthy tastes of nearby Iran and Anatolia. The wine, too, is spectacular – and, after all, Georgia is likely the first place where wine was produced. The Jewish cuisine of Georgia is no less rich, and merits much attention.

Fresh cilantro — Delicious, fresh cilantro. (Photo QFamily via Flickr/CC, July 2008)

This dish is based on a Georgian one called Aliyah, from the Hebrew word for migration to Israel – and “to rise up.” Indeed, the cilantro and sweet-sourness does make one feel that a culinary ascent is occurring. I served the recipe with gomi – a simple cornmeal porridge common in Georgia. Like in Italy, Romania, and Southern Africa, corn became a hit crop when it was introduced in the Caucasus from the New World in the 17^th century via Spanish and Ottoman trading networks. Today, it is so common so as to be local – but belies the very global traditions of Georgian cuisine.

Laying out tomatoes, garlic, tamarind, spices, and onions for the stew (Photo mine, January 2017)

Georgian-Style Chicken with Cornmeal Porridge (Aliyah da Gomi)

Based on the recipe by Claudia Roden

Chicken

2 tbsp olive oil

1 lb/500 grams onions, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced (or ¼ tsp powdered ginger)

2 lbs/1 kg chicken meat, chopped or cubed into 1-inch pieces

1 lb/500 grams tomatoes, diced

1.5 tbsp salt

1.5 tsp black pepper

1 tbsp tamarind paste (substitute: 1 tbsp lime juice mixed with 1 tbsp brown sugar)

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

¼ cup water

¾ cup fresh cilantro, chopped, plus more for garnish

1 tbsp dried basil

Gomi (Corn Porridge)

8 cups water

2 cups cornmeal

¼ tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

Heat the oil in a deep skillet or pan. Add the onions, garlic, and ginger and sauté for two minutes, or until the onions begin to wilt.
Add the chicken, tomatoes, salt, pepper, tamarind, vinegar, and water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the chicken is tender and the sauce has reduced. Stir occasionally.
In the meanwhile, bring the water for the gomi to a boil in a separate pot. When the water is boiling, add the cornmeal and salt and cook, stirring regularly, for ten minutes or until all the water is absorbed.
Turn off the heat for the gomi and add the olive oil. Let sit, covered, until ready to serve.
When the chicken is soft and tender, and the sauce has reduced to be somewhat thick but still soupy, turn off the heat. Add the cilantro and dried basil and mix in thoroughly with the stew.
Serve the stew hot with the gomi, which should have thickened. Add some fresh cilantro for garnish.

Thank you to Jay Stanton, Daniel Moscoe, and Alex Cooke for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

Reader Contributions – My Hanukkah Presents!

And now, a few mini-posts based on reader contributions! Happy Hanukkah! Though your author does not follow the prevailing American custom of giving gifts on Hanukkah, he does appreciate them.

Next month, we’ll have a guest recipe from Dalya and Adele, friends of the blog in Oxford, for her grandmother’s traditional German-Jewish Potato Salad. As quotidian as it sounds, the salad is absolutely phenomenal: the balance of flavors between sour and earthy, hearty and delicate, and sweet and salty is phenomenal. Like their Gentile neighbors, Jews in Germany took quite a shine to the potato – Kartoffel – in the eighteenth century.

Peeled potatoes about to meet their fate as latkes. Photo mine, November 2015.

The salad merits a full-length post, but to quell your hunger in the meantime, I found through the Jewish food internet the incredible work of Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and her daughter Sonya Gropman, whose website German Jewish Cuisine is an incredible treasure trove of German Jewish culinary history and Weltanschauung – worldview. Their German Jewish Cookbook is coming out next year and I absolutely cannot wait to buy it. Check the website out here: https://germanjewishcuisine.com/.

A reader from Pittsburgh, Steffi, sent me a fascinating paper about tea and Mormon feminism that she completed in her master’s studies at Chatham University’s Food Studies program. This paper made me realize that many of you have been doing incredible work at school or in your jobs writing about food, thinking about food, and doing the work of studying food. So, if you want some eyes on something you are justly proud of, feel free to send them my way!

The cover of The Yemenite Kitchen: Hawaij, Love, and Folklore, by Professor Avshalom Mizrahi. — The cover of *The Yemenite Kitchen: Hawaij, Love, and Folklore*, by Professor Avshalom Mizrahi (Photo mine, December 2016, book is from 2002)

Our reader – and my dear friend – Hadassah in the United Kingdom has requested more Yemenite Jewish recipes. Though I have written about Yemenite Jewish foodways in the past – first on samneh and then on hilbeh – I have not made many Yemenite recipes for the blog. Nor do I have much experience with Yemenite Jewish cooking – as rich and multifaceted as it is. In honor of Hanukkah, I turned to the one book I do have on the subject – the Hebrew-language “The Yemenite Kitchen: Hawaij, Love, and Folklore” (Ha-Mitbakh ha-Teimani: Khawaij, Ahavah veFolklor) by Avshalom Mizrahi. The book itself is a fascinating interspersion of discussions of Yemenite Jewish food practice and recipes themselves. In the book I found, for Shavuot and Hanukkah, the appealing zalabye, a sort of Yemenite sfenj:

Zalabye – Fritters – “The Yemenite Sufganiyot”

Originally printed in “The Yemenite Kitchen: Hawaij, Love and Folklore” by Avshalom Mizrahi, translated from the Hebrew by me

Makes ten zalabye

½ kilo/1 lb flour

20 grams yeast

2 cups water

Salt

Mix all of the ingredients together: flour, yeast, salt and water until the rough parts in the dough are gone. Heat oil well in a deep frying pan. Roll out the dough into big balls and add into the hot oil. Fry on both sides until brown. The zalabye will not be uniform in shape.

Serve and eat hot. Those with a sweet tooth can add or dip the fritters in sugar or honey.

These fresh, hot fritters are a treat to eat on winter mornings and on the holiday of the giving of the Torah – Shavu’ot.

And, as a bonus, later in the book Professor Mizrahi discusses zalabye again: (also my translation)

Zalabye – Fritters for Hanukkah and Shavuot

The fritters zalabye, though eaten throughout the year (mainly in the time of winter), were one of two components of Jewish festivals. Yemenite Jews treated themselves to eat these “sufganiyot”[-like fritters] on Hanukkah and to be eaten especially for the morning meal on the holiday of the gift of the Torah, Shavuot.

Baked Fennel and Comfort

A recent memory, to begin:

It was a cold and depressing day in New York – and the venom of Trump’s recent election polluted the entire city in the many hushed voices whispering between the trees’ falling leaves. Dark, threatening, and draining. I sat with my friend Karen – almost an aunt really – in her Bronx apartment, and we spoke of our fears as we ate pieces of raw fennel. The beautiful flavor of the raw fennel – earthy and vegetal, licorice and dilly, cooling and sweet in its anise strength – was cooling against our tongues. Healing, interesting, and fuel for our work. In the time when our Presidents eats food for its ease and not for what it is, who think the poor must work to even deserve food – the basic, simple tastes can give us the power to continue. Strength and power and comfort – from fennel.

Baked fennel with breadcrumbs and cheese. (Photo mine, December 2016)

This community dates to the earliest days of the exile after the destruction of the Second Temple – and perhaps before, since Jewish migrants, merchants, slaves, and soldiers were present in Rome from the 1st century BCE. Jews brought foods familiar to them to and encountered the same foods in Italy – and these foods often became both a comfort and an integral part of memory on festivals. Fennel, which is known as shumar in Modern Hebrew but as gufnan in Mishnaic Hebrew, was among these. Sicilian Jews ate fennel for centuries – and, after being expelled in the Inquisition by the Spanish then-rulers of the island, brought fennel to the rest of Italy. In times of anti-Semitism, poverty, welcome, and having the ear of the Doge of Venice, fennel was part and parcel of Jewish cuisine. Elsewhere, fennel was also consumed by Jews – in Morocco and in Germany – but became a marked part of Italian Jewish cuisine.

Holding fennel in my hand (Photo mine, December 2016)

The smell of licorice takes over as I chop the fennel. (Photo mine, December 2016)

Fennel is also a testament to the cosmopolitan worlds past of Jewish Livorno, Venice, and Rome. Historians of Italian cuisine have noted that these communities traded foodstuffs extensively with both the great communities of the north – such as Germany and Poland – and the neighboring Arab world. Foods such as coffee, goose, and fennel were introduced by Jewish traders to the wider population – and certain foods, including fried artichokes and fennel risotto, were known as “Jewish” in Rome and Venice respectively. This history was largely erased by the mid-twentieth century, when the twin pushes of nationalism and fascism sought to “make Italy great again” by creating a monolith of heritage and cuisine. But Italian cuisine – to the chagrin of nationalists – is deeply Jewish and Arab, and Jewish cuisine likewise can sometimes be deeply Italian. In this age of cuddly white nationalism, it is a helpful fact to remember. Once, fennel was the comfort introduced from the not-so-foreign “other.”

Fennel growing (Michal Waxman, link in Hebrew)

This recipe for fennel is simple and tasty. The licorice taste of the fennel, which is too strong for some, is balanced out by the garlic and cheese, which make this dish quite hearty. If you want a lighter dish or a more vegetal one, remove the cheese and cut the garlic in half. It is also traditional to make this dish with large chunks of fennel that retain the shape of the vegetable – which makes for a wonderful final presentation.

Stacked fennel bulbs — Fennel for sale at a market in Holon, Israel (photo Ariel Palmon via Wikimedia Commons)

Finocchio Gratinato/Baked Fennel

Based on recipes by Claudia Roden and Luca Marchiori

2 large fennel heads, roughly chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon dried basil

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

4 tablespoons breadcrumbs or gluten-free breadcrumbs

4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese.

Preheat your oven to 425F/210C.
Boil the chopped fennel in salted water for five to ten minutes, or until tender but not squishy. Drain and put at the bottom of a baking dish – 20cm x 20cm or 9 inches by 9 inches should do.
Mix the garlic, basil, and butter together, then pour over the fennel. Stir in a little to make sure the fennel is evenly coated.
Sprinkle the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, salt, and pepper over the fennel evenly.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until the cheese is browned and the fennel is noticeably darker.

Thank you to Alex Cooke for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

Iraqi Beet Salad

Life goes on. Despite the election there are still friends to feed, Shabbats to observe, and foods to comfort us. Trump can take away our dreams but he can never take away our ability to use our hands to rebuild love, even by means of the easiest recipes. Like this one.

In Pittsburgh there is a little restaurant – kiosk, really – called Conflict Kitchen. At this restaurant, the food of whatever country the US is “at conflict with” – armed, political, or social – is served on a rotating basis. When I visited Pittsburgh, Conflict Kitchen were serving delicious Venezuelan arepas; currently they are honoring the water protectors of Standing Rock (donate!) and other indigenous resistance by serving the food of the Haudenosaunee – whose lands historically reached their southern extent at Pittsburgh. Other versions have included Iran, Cuba, and Palestine. The effort allows those in Pittsburgh to see a more human side of the oft-demonized “enemy” – and call into question the way US power works. But one cuisine seemed obviously missing: the bright, fresh flavors of Iraqi cuisine – much of which is also Iraqi Jewish cuisine, found in the diaspora centers of Ramat Gan, London, and Los Angeles. As I watched another one of Trump’s speeches as I browsed the Conflict Kitchen website, looking for the Iraqi version that never was, I wondered: how could I use Jewish food and cooking to recreate their mission in my kitchen?

A piece of beet on the spoon — Eating the salad at work. The garlic made my colleagues hungry! (Photo mine, November 2016)

Channeling the spirit of Conflict Kitchen, I sought to start by making an Iraqi recipe myself – a beet salad that is simultaneously fresh and light, but hearty and deeply warming. I first had this salad in Israel, at the house of a friend of a friend; I had been surprised there to learn that beets and other root vegetables were part of everyday Iraqi fare. Then, with the first bite, I was stunned by the light, dancing flavor of the salad: the heaviness of the beets was offset by the sharpness of the garlic and the happy dance of the mint. When I got home, I did more research and found that Iraqis have been eating beets since well before my own Eastern European ancestors: recipes with beets are mentioned as early as 1500 BC. I have often thought of the salad since that day, but had never bothered to actually make it. But after the election of Trump, I decided that one way of resistance to his racism and demonization was to pay homage to those we have oppressed – and to our own heritage – in the kitchen. So I invited a few friends over for Shabbat, with the salad as the main centerpiece dish.

Beyond Iraq, beets have also been a food of Jewish comfort in the darkest times for millennia. The greens of the beet have been consumed since the time of the Second Temple, when beets were considered a prized delicacy. In fact, it is stated in the Talmud in Masekhet Shabbat that one can show delight in the Sabbath day with “beets, a large fish, and garlic.” (The rabbis and I have something in common.) In later centuries beets became a common food across Central and Eastern European Jewish cuisine – showing up in soup, pickles, and even confectionary. Even today, beets are key in the comfort food of many Jewish communities – from the Kurdish and Iraqi Jewish soup for kubbeh to the Ashkenazi borsht. This humble root is the bridge.

Cooking beets. (Photo mine, November 2016)

And perhaps from beets other bridges can be built too.

Iraqi Beet Salad

Based on a recipe by Nawal Nasrallah

Serves 6-10

2 pounds beets, peeled and diced

1 fistful fresh mint, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp sumac

½ cup Greek yogurt or other plain yogurt (optional)

Salt and black pepper to taste

Boil the beet pieces until soft. Drain and let cool.
Mix with the other ingredients except the salt and pepper until thoroughly combined.
Add the salt and pepper to your liking. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Beet juice stained hand — Nothing like beet juice to stain your hands! (Photo mine, November 2016)

Thank you to Derek Kwait, Meggie Kwait, Berakha Guggenheim, and Sara Liss for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew with Collard Greens

First, a note of housekeeping: there will be a brief hiatus of blog post for the next three weeks, due to the onslaught of Jewish holidays. I will continue to link holiday-appropriate recipes on the Facebook page for Flavors of Diaspora, the Instagram page, and my personal Twitter. I wish all readers a shana tova u-metukah – a Happy and Sweet New Year.

Here is a stew, filled with the flavors of autumn, that is Jewish in character but somewhat of my own creation – and it makes for both a delicious weeknight dinner and a Rosh HaShanah centerpiece! Moreover, it is that rare combination: vegan and gluten-free. Thus I present a Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew, interspersed with the lush color of collard greens.

This recipe comes from requests from several readers. Adele M. in Oxford has requested more vegan-friendly recipes for a vegan member of the family, and Amram A. in New York requested additional pumpkin recipes. Emmett T. in Toronto also requested more gluten-free recipes – a sometimes difficult task in the gluten-heavy world of Jewish cuisines. This recipe is for all of you. Though it is my own creation, it is based on several ingredients and recipes common to Jewish and non-Jewish traditions in Turkey: collard greens (karalahana) has been grown in the Black Sea region since ancient times, and chickpeas (nohut*) have been eaten throughout the country for millennia too. Pumpkin (kabak) became a hit across the Mediterranean after it was introduced from the New World in the 16th century. Italian Jews called it zucca barucca – a Hebrew-Italian mishmash meaning “holy squash” – and Turkish Jews made fritters from the squash. Even today, a delicious pumpkin halva is popular in Turkey. This is an inauthentic combination of familiar ingredients.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew with Collard Greens

Serves 5-10

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon table salt

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

2 teaspoons za’atar

1 teaspoon ground sumac

1 teaspoon oregano

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (any white vinegar should do)

3 cups chopped collard greens, both leaves and stems (about 300 grams/10 ounces – you can also use another green, leafy vegetable)

2 cups cooked pumpkin, chopped (you can also used canned pumpkin, which changes the final texture)

2 cups cooked chickpeas (this is one drained 400 gram/15-oz can)

2 cups diced tomatoes (also, one 400 gram/15-oz can)

1 tablespoon ground kuzu root, arrowroot starch, or cornstarch mixed in 3 tablespoons water

3 cups water, separated into one cup and two cups

Olive oil for sautéing

Salt and pepper for final garnish

1. Heat a deep saucepan, paella pan, or wok over a high flame. Add the oil, then the onions and garlic. Saute for one minute or until the onions begin to soften.

2. Add the salt, pepper, za’atar, and mix in thoroughly with the onions and garlic. Continue sauteeing for another minute or until the onions are becoming translucent under the spices.

3. Add the chopped collard greens and mix in thoroughly. Then, add the vinegar and one cup of water.

4. Cook, stirring frequently, for two minutes, or until the collard greens have begun to wilt.

5. Add the pumpkin, chickpeas, tomatoes, and remaining two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. Stir every few minutes.

6. When the collard green stems are soft to the fork, the leaves are wilted, and the liquid has reduced, it is time to add the starch. Mix the starch with water, and then mix in thoroughly with the entire stew. Simmer for 2 more minutes.

7. The sauce should now be thicker and hang longer on a spoon held sideways. Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with your preferred carbohydrate. For the non-vegans, the stew goes well with a dollop of fresh ricotta, fromage frais, queso fresco, or tsvorekh.

*The Turkish word nohut is the source of the Yiddish word for chickpea, nahit.