I tend to avoid cakes made with matzo meal instead of flour. Also, most prepared dessert products and mixes. Sometimes the packaging they come in tastes better than the product.
A Jewish food is one that is almost sanctified, either by its repeated use or use within the holidays or rituals. So food that may have not been Jewish at one point can become Jewish within the cultural context.
Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.
I have been collecting recipes and information for over 20 years, but three years ago, my editor said to me, 'You're a walking encyclopedia of food, so why don't you do an encyclopedia?'
If I'm doing an olive oil tasting, I would do a very lean bread: an Italian style or pita bread. You want the flavor of the oil to shine; you don't want the bread or anything else to mask it.
In Judaism, almost every ritual entails either food or the absence of food. Yom Kippur, for instance, is the absence of food. Part of it is Talmudic, part of it is custom. So much of Judaism was bound up in dietary laws. So everything you ate - the very act itself - was part of religion.
Judaism is not just a religion but a people, and the food and customs of one part of the people is connected to the other part of the people. They are part of a larger story.
Most of the traditional foods we eat on Jewish holidays start out with a seasonal reason as to why we eat them, and later a religious significance is tacked on.
People remember the different variations of stuffed cabbage based on their mothers and grandmothers. It's not just about food. Eating something as traditional as this is a cultural experience, one that is spiritual and nostalgic. It manages to transcend time; it's food for the soul.
Preparing foods from other Jewish communities is broadening. It's interesting to sample the foods of other Jewish communities and see what they developed.
There is a biblical injunction to tell your children, but the sages who created the Seder several thousand years ago understood that it had to be more than just speaking: that in order for something to connect so emotionally in human beings, it had to be relived.
Throughout history, particularly in the last 2,000 years, Jews have been key in adapting local foods to Jewish sensibilities and dietary laws and then spreading them.
