The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
Product Description
A monumental work–the story of the Jewish people told through the story of Jewish cooking–The Book of Jewish Food traces the development of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish communities and their cuisine over the centuries. The 800 magnificent recipes, many never before documented, represent treasures garnered bu Roden through nearly 15 years of traveling around the world. 50 photos & illustrations.Amazon.com Review
Claudia Roden, author of The Book of Jewish Food, has done more than simply compile a cookbook of Jewish recipes–she has produced a history of the Jewish diaspora, told through its cuisine. The book’s 800 recipes reflect many cultures and regions of the world, from the Jewish qua… More >>
The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
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November 1998 — I just checked this book out of the library yesterday and stayed up until midnight reading from it to my husband. Now, he’s not interested in recipes – it was the stories about Jews in Cairo, Jews in ancient Babylon, Arab and Jewish cooking under the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad, Jews in India, and most of all — ANDALUCIA and the glories of Spain before the “Reconquista” that kept him entertained. Claudia Roden, culinary Scheherezade…
Born in Cairo to a Sephardic family who left Spain in the 15th Century, Roden has a lot of good things to say about Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. She doesn’t gloss over the difficulties but she’s much more interested in talking about the long, long shared history of the two peoples.
And she’s interested in great food. You should check out the recipes from the various Indian Jewish peoples. I am planning to cook at least twelve of her recipes in the next month.
Roden’s writing style is direct, simple and wonderful. I am such a fan!!!
As a Lebanese American Gentile married to a Jew (of Ashkenazi descent), I feel so grateful to have this book. It confirms my passion for all things Sephardic/Levantine, and gives me a culinary bridge to my extended, multicultural family.
Thank you, Claudia! You’re a beacon of peace, besides being a culinary star!
Rating: 5 / 5
Nowadays, when hundreds of cookbooks flood the book market, and each regional or ethnic cuisine type gets its share of ink and paper, choosing a cookbook is not an easy task. Well, this task becomes much easier when one book of its kind stands far above the rest – and I believe that this is the case with Claudia Roden’s book of Jewish Food. This book is remarkable in many ways – the clear and simple way in which the recipes are presented, the wonderful historical inserts, and above all – the feeling that there’s someone with you in the kitchen when you cook, someone who’s deeply informed about the recipe and its cultural background, and who’s also there with you, helping you to make the best out of it. The book is masterfully organized – the grouping of recipes is so logical and yet not annoyingly rigid, and the index is a masterpiece on its own – there’s no way you can miss a recipe that you want: you’ll find it under its name, or under any of the principal ingredients used in it. Timing given for each recipe is relatively realistic, and so are the serving amounts. I strongly reccomend this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
The book is filled with delightful illustrations, photographs, and the sort of Jewish history I hungered for. But speaking of hungry, if you plan on doing more than just reading this book you may be disapointed, as I was.
The recipes were too basic. Once I followed through with them, I realized that Ms. Roden had to be leaving fairly important things out. She states that she chose the versions of the recipes that she found most appealing, but I believe her choices in fact reflect her desire not to frighten more simple and less experienced chefs with too many instructions or ingredients. But it is not helpful to leave out basic instructions, ie: in the “Pot Roast” recipe she fails to instruct the reader to brown the meat before adding the water. For Ashkenazi recipes there are many more helpful books on the market. For myself, I’m still searching for a good Sephardi cooking resource.
In the end, I’m not sorry I bought the book, while it is not a great cookbook, it is a beautiful treasure of a book and an outstanding tribute to our culture.
Rating: 3 / 5
This is a great Middle Eastern and Central Asian cookbook. It’s not such a great Ashkenazi cookbook — there are shelves full of better, more complete, and more varied Ashkenazi cookbooks out there — but it does make a nod in that direction, which is rather more than a lot of Ashkenazi books do towards Asian cooking.
As an Asian cookbook, it’s wonderful. The recipes are plentiful and varied. There is indeed more to Sephardic cooking than eggplant. Each recipe comes with twiddles and variations, which are liberating. If you don’t have quite enough of an ingredient, it’s helpful to have suggestions for adjusting the dish. The quantities are reasonable, and listed in several different systems (i.e. metric/imperial, weight/volume), and the cooking techniques are pretty simple and thoroughly explained. One should be aware, however, that many of the dishes date from an era when women stayed home and had all day to make a single dish. Some things, in particular the Salonika Meat Pies and some of the pastry sweets, take far longer to make than one would anticipate.
For me, this book’s two greatest strengths are its asides and its scope. It’s great to see essays on some of the remoter Jewish communities. The Bukharans, the Bene Israel of India, and the Jews of Caucasian Georgia just don’t get the press in the United States that the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities do. There is even a wonderful story on the lost Kaifeng community in China. The traditional foods of these cultures (except the Kaifeng and the Ethiopian Jews) are well represented, making this very much a world cookbook.
After I served a dessert from this book (the quince compote) to my cousin, we started talking, and we discovered that we had both independently discovered and enjoyed it. It strikes me that such a varied book as this could be a useful tool for reaching across cultures and forming diverse friendships. The quince compote is a pretty good place to start.
Rating: 4 / 5
I first heard about Claudia Roden from a magazine feature that was written about her. In this article she gave a receipe which I tried out and also a short history about this dish. I happen to be studying Old Testament Scripture in College, and I decided to order her book on The Book of Jewish Food. This book I found really fascinating. In it she writes in great detail of the history of the Jewish culture and origins and the many receipes (0ver 800) she has collected down through the years. A lot of research has gone into this book and I am very interested in how most of these dishes originated. The receipes are well laid out in various sections and the fact that there are no colour photos of the dishes does not detract from the book at all. I found through reading this book that it has helped me in my studies in Scripture. For anyone who is interested in the whole Jewish culture and cooking this book is definately worth getting
Rating: 5 / 5