Joan Nathans Jewish Holiday Cookbook or Gourmets Guide to Cooking with Wine

Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook

Author: Joan Nathan

Jewish holidays are defined by food. Yet Jewish cooking is always changing, encompassing the flavors of the world, embracing local culinary traditions of every place in which Jews have lived and adapting them to Jewish observance. This collection, the culmination of Joan Nathan’s decades of gathering Jewish recipes from around the world, is a tour through the Jewish holidays as told in food. For each holiday, Nathan presents menus from different cuisines—Moroccan, Russian, German, and contemporary American are just a few—that show how the traditions of Jewish food have taken on new forms around the world. There are dishes that you will remember from your mother’s table and dishes that go back to the Second Temple, family recipes that you thought were lost and other families’ recipes that you have yet to discover. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan spices these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who have kept these traditions alive.

Try something exotic—Algerian Chicken Tagine with Quinces or Seven-Fruit Haroset from Surinam—or rediscover an American favorite like Pineapple Noodle Kugel or Charlestonian Broth with “Soup Bunch” and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book, which combines and updates Nathan’s classic cookbooks The Jewish Holiday Baker and The Jewish Holiday Kitchen with a new generation of recipes, will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your table on the holidays and throughout the year.

Library Journal

Not merely a revision of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, first published 25 years ago, Nathan's big new book also includes recipes and material from The Jewish Holiday Baker and her numerous articles for the New York Times. The hundreds of recipes, representing both the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic traditions, come from Jewish communities all over the world: Moroccan Challah, Greek Leek Patties, Mexican Banana Cake, and Haroset from Surinam. There are regional and cultural variations of many recipes--for example, in addition to the one from Surinam, there are also Egyptian, Venetian, Persian, and Yemenite harosets. Recipes are organized by holiday, from Rosh Hashanah to Shavuoth, with separate chapters on the Sabbath and "The Life Cycle," a selection of traditional dishes for events such as bar mitzvahs and weddings. Detailed, thoroughly researched head notes provide historical and religious context, and numerous boxes cover a wide variety of topics. Highly recommended. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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Gourmet's Guide to Cooking with Wine: How to Use Wine to Take Simple Recipes from Ordinary to Extraordinary

Author: Alison Boteler

Building on the concept of The Spaghetti Sauce Gourmet, this book shows how to use wine as the ultimate convenience ingredient that will add big impact to recipes and simple dishes. Why? Wine is versatile. It can be used with nearly every type of food. Use it to marinate meats, flavor stews, punch up sauces for fish, chicken, pasta, vegetables, and take desserts from everyday to elegant. Add a splash (even from that half-drunk bottle in the fridge from two days ago) and you instantly add class to the most humble fare.

Alison Boteler is the author of eight books on cooking, crafts and entertaining children including The Disney Party Handbook and Creative Children's Parties. She has contributed to magazines as well as Family Fun's website. Television credits include appearances on NBC's Today Show and a regular guest on Lifetime's Our Home.

Ann Weber - Library Journal

Boteler (The Great American Bake Sale) has produced a winner with this collection of classic recipes and innovative renditions. She gives a brief description of wine varietals and the wine regions of France and Italy as well as other parts of the world. Also included is a table for determining the percentage of alcohol that burns off during various cooking methods. Ten chapters are replete with appetizers and soups, salads and salad dressings, great European classics, main dishes, side dishes, brunch dishes, and desserts. The recipes for European classics, including beef bourguignon, coquilles Saint Jacques, and veal marsala, evoke memories of past elegance. Many recipes put a new twist on old favorites, such as adding mirin, Japanese rice wine, to green beans with slivered almonds and shiitake mushrooms. Food traditions from Europe, Asia, the American South, and other corners of the world are integrated. Both aspiring new nesters and seasoned cooks will appreciate the book's elegant simplicity. All instructions are easy to follow, and the ingredients are readily available. Highly recommended.