Jewish

No large sign—just a plaque next to a simple security button—tells you that this is the gate to a simple building housing the Cercle Bernard Lazare. The center was named in memory of Bernard Lazare, who, during the Dreyfus Affair, was a left-wing literary critic, anarchist, Zionist, and newspaper editor. He bravely defended Captain Dreyfus, and won over Jewish artists such as Camille Pissarro to the cause. The center sponsors Jewish cultural events, choosing not to advertise its location because of previous anti-Semitic attacks. When I entered this very bare-boned building, it was full of activity. Jeanine Franier came out of the kitchen to greet me, bringing along a waft of the delicious aromas from her oven. Every Thursday, before the center’s weekly lectures, she cooks. She believes that people listen to lecturers more attentively if they know a little food will be served. Regardless of what her staff cooks as a main course, this cheesecake from her Polish past is served for dessert. It has become an integral part of the lectures, and was published in the Cercle’s cookbook, called Quand Nos Boubés Font la Cuisine (When Grandmothers Cook), which she wrote in part as a fund-raising device, in part as a way of preserving a culture that is rapidly being forgotten. The cheesecake reminds me of many I ate all over France, including the one at Finkelsztajn’s Delicatessen in Paris. It tastes clearly of its delicate component parts, unlike the creamy block of cheesecake with a graham-cracker crust we find in the United States.

Ever since Ana Bensadon moved to Madrid from her native Tangier in the 1950s, she has been writing to Sephardic Jews all over the world asking for recipes. “My idea is to leave a legacy for the young women,” she told me, while visiting her daughter in Florida. “It is very important to maintain fidelity to our traditions and to transmit them to the new generation.” Many recipes, like fijuelas (see page 360) and flan, are commonly known, but others, like this chocolate mousse using olive oil instead of cream, is a fascinating adaptation of a local French delicacy to comply with the laws of kashrut.

This is one of my favorite winter Alsatian vegetable combinations, and a common winter vegetable dish of French Jews. It is best made a day in advance and left to meld the flavors. Serve as an accompaniment to roast goose, chicken, or duck.

When I was in the southwest of France in mid-October, the farmers’ markets had an abundance of large dried white beans. These lima beans, which came to Spain from the New World, have now become an integral part of the Old World’s cuisine. Before the discovery of the Americas, only fava beans, chickpeas, and lentils were to be had. My cousin Richard Moos’s wife, Hélène, cooked her white beans with carrots in goose fat rather than lard. The day before, I had eaten the same combination in a soup at a farm nearby. Either way, this is a great fall dish.

I used to think that this dish, called carciofi alla giudea, originated in Rome. But now I am not so sure. When I was visiting Barcelona last spring, it seemed as if every restaurant, every bar, every street vendor was selling this crispy delicacy of deep-fried artichoke flavored with herbs and garlic and served cold. I love it. This is a recipe that has come down in the family of Violette Corcos Abulafia Tapiero Budestchu of Paris.

I tasted this simple bleeding of two green vegetables at Irene Weil’s home in Nice (see page 170). Always a big hit, it is colorful, delicious, and a perfect vegetable dish, particularly for Passover. “You can make this dish with fresh peas, green asparagus tips, fava beans—the list is endless,” said Irene.

When I was visiting the Luberon, we wound our way up to the top of the hillop village of Bonnieux and stopped at the Musée de la Boulangerie. There, in an ancient house, the history of bread and baking is traced. Among the ancient pots and pans were shallow unglazed earthenware bowls called at the museum “tians,” which were and are used much like Dutch ovens for cooking vegetables in the embers of a fire. In the south of France, there are many recipes for tians, layered casseroles of vegetables sometimes mixed with eggs and sometimes with rice and served in the Jewish way as a main course for a dairy meal. In this recipe, a nice substitute for the spinach would be Swiss chard, also a vegetable used since antiquity.

Gerard Monteux, who is a descendant of the Juifs du Pape, told me that this was a very famous dish from Carpentras, eaten at Purim. (It is also a Lenten dish.) In this town, which had an oven in the Jewish quarter, cooks prepared the dish at home, putting it in an earthenware tian. They then brought it to the public oven and baked it, fetching it when it was done. Our modern-day casserole dishes have evolved from this tradition.

When I met Lionel Barrieu, practically the only Jew living in Auch, a small town in the sparsely inhabited department of Gers, in the southwest of France, I thought he was an ordinary Jewish policeman. But as his story unfolded, his saga became more complicated. Lionel, who also goes by his Hebrew name, Ariel, is the grandson of a Roman Catholic Paris-born police inspector. When the Germans took over Paris in 1940, the other policemen encouraged his grandfather to help round up the Jews living in the capital. As Lionel tells the story, his grandfather smelled a rat and, not wanting to be part of this witch hunt, went underground. Lionel, in his early forties, followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, going to the police academy while also studying theology, Greek, and Latin at the University of Strasbourg. “When I discovered the biblical texts in Hebrew and French,” he told me in his office, “I realized the two Bibles were different. The Hebrew was richer and more spiritual.” After moving to Auch, he converted to Judaism with the help of the rabbi in Toulouse, about one and a half hours away, even getting circumcised at the age of thirty-nine. Today Lionel leads a Jewish life with his wife, also a police officer, who does not follow his religious practices. “I go to buy kosher meat at a little store in Toulouse,” he told me. “I feel as if I can now respect the animal.” For the Jewish Sabbath every week, which he observes, Lionel makes challah. He used to bake it on Friday, during his lunch hour, but too many police emergencies disturbed his bread-making. Now, to be extra careful, he makes it on Thursday evening, after work. One of the dishes that he missed most after taking on the obligation of keeping kosher was his meat lasagna. To satisfy his craving, he created this version, using soy milk instead of cow’s milk in the béchamel sauce. It is hearty and rich, and can fool almost anyone.

This risotto recipe from Natan Holchaker, a retired dentist and food hobbyist in Bordeaux, includes smoked goose breast. If you cannot find a kosher version, substitute smoked turkey breast.

While I was having lunch at Au Rendez-vous/La Maison de Couscous in Paris (see page 112), the owner brought out some of the magnificent Tunisian Sabbath stew he was cooking for that evening. It was made with a special North African kind of wheat berries, meat, a large amount of oil, onions, and a mixture of coriander, caraway, and harissa, the spice combination of peppers and garlic. This is certainly a later variation of the thirteenth-century recipe for orisa, a famous nutritious porridge brimming with soaked wheat berries, chickpeas, pounded meat, melted mutton fat, and cinnamon, found in the Manuscrito Anonimo, an Arabic-language Andalusian cookbook. Among the Jews of Tangier it was a simple meatless dish consisting of crushed wheat spiced with red pepper. I have made a vegetarian version that can accompany any meat dish or be served alone.

When Violette Corcos Abulafia Tapieri Budestchu makes this spice-scented lentil dish, its subtle flavors bring back memories of the Morocco of her childhood. Now, when her grandchildren or great-grandchildren prepare it, it smells like afternoons and evenings they spent when they were growing up, visiting her in her apartments in Jerusalem or near Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. Born in Mogador, Madame “Granny” Budestchu, a fabulous cook, is descended from Kabbalists, prominent merchants, and royal counselors to the sultans and kings of Morocco. Her recipes, traveling from country to country, like the path of the Jews, can be traced back at least to twelfth-century Spain. When she makes this dish, she grinds each spice separately with the mortar and pestle that she brought with her to Paris in the 1940s, enlivening the spices with the fresh tastes of mint and cilantro leaves.

If Jewish-Arab relations are better in Marseille than in any other city in France, it is in part due to people like Martine Yana. A Moroccan-born Jewish sociologist married to a Tunisian, she is the head of the Centre Culturel Juif (Jewish Cultural Center), near the Grande Synagogue in downtown Marseille. When La Radio de la Communauté Juive (Radio of the Jewish Community) went on the air in 1981, Martine hosted a weekly talk show in which she invited Jews to chat about their culinary customs. “We followed people’s holiday traditions in Tétouan, Salonika, Turkey, and Marseille,” she told me in her office. “And we got their stories.” This was the period when people were beginning to open up about their experiences in World War II and their Jewishness in general. Like many other French people, Martine thinks philosophically about food. She asks the guests on her programs why they eat certain foods and about the symbolism surrounding them. “I was surprised that so many people didn’t see the greater meaning in what they were doing,” she told me. As head of the cultural center, she has taken it upon herself to present Jewish traditions in France proudly to the outside world. When the mayor of the city of Marseille chose to feature the country of Algeria at a city exhibition, for example, she made sure that there was a Jewish presence and set up a pavilion featuring traditional handmade costumes and cuisine. Last year, during the annual Ramadan festival in Marseille, she suggested to the head of the Arab Cultural Center that there be a Jewish booth. He agreed, and her team of assistants joined her in organizing Hanukkah games for the children and distributing pamphlets on Jewish religion and customs. To their surprise, the curiosity about Judaism made the booth a huge success. Clearly, the time was right. In her cookbook, Trésors de la Table Juive, Martine gathers stories and recipes that cover the breadth of Judaism in France. She includes dishes like this old Provençal spinach-and-herb omelet. The omelet, often served cold, is similar to the North African omelets called m’hemmer, flavored sometimes with chicken and calves’ brains, sometimes with vegetables. Today they are mostly eaten cut into small squares as an hors d’oeuvre on special occasions, such as weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. I love this rendition, with its bright-green color, served hot or cold as an appetizer, or as a main dish for brunch. Use the recipe as a guide, and vary the greens and herbs seasonally, according to your whim.

People often ask me what kind of latkes were eaten before potatoes came to the Old World from the New. This onion pancake gives us a taste of that past. Buckwheat, called farine aux Sarrazins or blé noir in French, is used for this recipe. Although rendered goose fat was traditionally the oil used in Alsace and elsewhere in Europe, oils made from safflower, walnuts, and other nuts and seeds were also used, probably pressed by the farmers who brought them to markets where they were sold. The recipe, although attributed as Alsatian in one cookbook, is clearly from eastern Europe, as the word “gretchenes” means buckwheat in Polish.

Agar Lippmann, age eighty-two, is a living encyclopedia of Alsatian Jewish food. Born Agar Lippmann in a little town near Colmar, and raised in Bollwiller, she married another Lippmann (no kin) and moved to Lyon during World War II. When her son Henri opened a kosher catering company there almost thirty years ago, she started out helping in the kitchen, and has been helping him ever since. Now, using local chefs—some Jewish and some not—the two cater kosher events all over Lyon and as far away as Besançon, bringing their kosher pots and pans and sometimes portable ovens. For Passover they take over a hotel in nearby Aix-les-Bains, where French Jews can have their Seder while enjoying the baths. Today most of the Lippmanns’ cooking is North African and modern French. Only for the holidays do they make traditional Alsatian and Ashkenazic food for their clients. “At holidays, people come back to their roots,” she told me in her catering office, just steps away from the Grande Synagogue. Recipes like this savory matzo kugel predate noodle kugels in general, and certainly the noodle kugels we eat in America today. Although the original recipe called for veal fat, I substitute melted butter or vegetable oil.

These days, there are all sorts of packaged Passover cereals and baked goods, even in France. But every Jewish family has a Passover breakfast dish to break the monotony of matzo and butter. I like this typically French omelet, served as is or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

When the French make noodle kugel, it is more delicate and savory than the rich, creamy confections that Americans know. This nudel schaleth or pudding is derived from the Sabbath pudding baked in the oven overnight. Here is where linguistic immigration gets all mixed up—some call it noodle schaleth, others noodle kugel.

“I was lucky during the war,” Albert Jacobs, a tiny man whose personality belied his stature, told me at his home in Ingwiller. “When war broke out, I was eighteen years old and was mobilized into the French army. I left Ingwiller with my knapsack on my back, marching in the middle of the road. My beret and wooden shoes gave me the air of youth.” Instead of taking the train he was supposed to take, he and his comrades had a picnic and took the following one. As luck would have it, the Germans bombed the first train. Later, when it got dangerous for the Jews in the army, Monsieur Jacobs had to go into hiding. “Here too I was lucky,” he told me. “An old grandmother who owned eight farms let me stay with her. She never told anybody that I was there.” Until he was almost ninety, Monsieur Jacobs dressed up three days a week, drove his car slowly into town, and ate lunch at the Cheval Blanc, where he also often dined with the local priest. “Everybody knows that I don’t eat pork,” he told me shortly before his death. When I asked him why he didn’t move to a larger city, like Strasbourg, his response was quick: “Here I am someone, and there I would be just an old Jew.” At Monsieur Jacobs’s home, a virtual museum of Alsatian Jewish history, the jewels were the old cookbooks in the attic and basement libraries. The books contained some handwritten recipes and were those of his late wife. “Books were her life,” he said. She collected all the old recipes from her mother, who lived with them until she died at ninety-five. When I looked through her handwritten book, I saw recipes like grimserle, which I know as krimsel or chremslach, a Passover fritter with nuts and raisins (which I wrote about in Jewish Cooking in America), schaleth (see page 251), cou d’oie farci (stuffed goose neck), gemarti supp (see page 76), and this grumbeerekugel, a potato kugel with onions, eggs, and soaked bread—all humble dishes of country Jews who used the food that was available. In the old days, they cooked with goose, chicken, or veal fat. In the recipe that follows, I have substituted vegetable oil or butter for those not serving a meat meal, and I often mix the potatoes with celeriac and sometimes cooked peas or green beans. By microwaving the grated potatoes for a minute, I cut down the cooking time from 2 1/2 hours to 45 minutes. This kugel is crisp and very delicious.

Bosc pears and Italian blue plums (dried for use in the winter) are fruits that were most often put into kugel. This very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel uses leftover bread that is soaked in water, squeezed to remove any excess moisture, and then mixed with the dried or fresh fruit and left to stew in the oven overnight. Some, like this version, include onions, which add a savory dimension to the sweetness of the fruit and the dough. I love this dish, which I serve in my home for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath as a side dish with brisket.

If anything is typical of Alsace, it is tarte flambée, a pizzalike flat bread covered with runny white and tangy cheese (a thin mixture of farmer’s cheese, crème fraîche, heavy cream, and fromage blanc or Gruyère, depending on your preference) and a sprinkling of diced onions and lardons. Dating back hundreds of years, tarte flambée is served everywhere in Alsace, with connoisseurs arguing about their favorite versions. In the old days, the farmers would take leftover bread dough, roll it out paperthin, spread some heavy cream mixed with egg over it, scatter some lardons or ham and onions on top, put it in a hot, wood-burning oven, and—voilà!—dinner was ready. The tradition still stands today, and tarte flambée is particularly enjoyed accompanied by a green salad as a simple Sunday night dinner. At the end of a late Sunday afternoon in April, I was driving Yves Alexandre, a traveling salesman who loves to cook, near fields resplendent with signs of spring—white asparagus and rhubarb, and yellow rapeseed flowers (more commonly known in the United States as the flowers that produce canola). We stopped at Le Marronnier, a charming winstub in Stutzheim, a little town about ten miles from Strasbourg. It was here that I tasted my first tarte flambée. Most of the patrons were seated at outdoor tables in the cobblestoned courtyard with wisteria climbing over the brick walls. A marronnier, a sprawling chestnut tree, stood smack in the center of the patio. “You have to eat the tart hot,” Yves told me as tarts were being rushed to tables near us. The two Mauritian tarte-flambée bakers make a few hundred every Sunday, with a topping of farmer’s cheese and crème fraîche. This Jewish version, with leftover challah dough as a base, of course omits the ham or bacon. At Passover, Yves told me, some Alsatian Jews use matzo for their Sunday night tarte flambée.