Cilantro

Better than burritos and tacos, these wraps have crunch and the lettuce lets the flavors of the fillings shine through.

A lower-carb alternative to pot stickers and other dumplings.

Unreal! Forget Buffalo wings—not only are these healthier than deep-fried wings and way lower in fat, they simply are the best chicken wings you’ll ever have! They are super, über-snacks that can be a simple supper, with salad or veggies on the side. The only carbs come from natural juice and honey. Unlike the small, snipped wings served in some bars and restaurants, homemade wings are larger and have more meat. Allow three or four for a full dinner portion per person, though my sweetie and I can eat all twelve if we’re watching a double feature that night!

This dish is so good that if you ever share it with friends they’ll each be calling you the next week for home delivery. Ask for a generous tip.

Thai-style food made with ingredients available in any grocery store. If you’re not into beef, try it with pork or chicken, instead.

Exotic, easy, and healthy, too, this simple dish is just delish.

Remove the seeds from only half the jalapeño pepper. The heat lives in the seeds and this dish is a balance of heat with sweet.

Have one of each! Serve with spicy refried beans.

When Elie Wiesel stopped in Bordaeux to give a speech, he asked members of the Jewish community for suggestions on where to eat. They told him to go to Jean Ramet, a marvelous thirty-seat southwestern-French restaurant. Run by a Jewish chef, it is located right down the street from the eighteenth-century Grand Théâtre. Raised in a Polish Jewish home in France, Jean doesn’t have many culinary memories from his childhood. He grew up in Vichy, where his parents, like so many other Jews returning to France after the war, had priorities other than food. But food became a career for Jean. He apprenticed at the three-star Maison Troisgros in Roanne, learning pastry skills. “Pastry-making gives you discipline; it is very important for a chef,” he told me. “You need the rules of pastry first.” In the 1970s, Jean met Tunisian-born Raymonde Chemla on a youth trip to Israel. They have now been married for more than thirty years, living mostly in Bordeaux, where they run the restaurant. On vacations, they often travel to Morocco, because they love the food of North Africa. “Moroccan food is sincere,” said Jean. “When I met Raymonde, I fell in love with North African spices, such as cinnamon, mint, and cloves.” This gratin of figs with a zabaglione sauce and a splash of orange-flower water is a dish that celebrates North African flavors and classic French techniques. It also captures the essence of the flavor of fresh fig. As the French Jewish sage Rashi so beautifully stated in his commentaries on the Bible, “Summer is the time of the gathering of the figs and the time when they dry them in the fields, and it [the dried fig] is summer.”

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.

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.

Jocelyne Akoun (see page 28) also served me meatballs with tomato sauce for Friday night dinner, a typical Sephardic dish for the eve of the Sabbath. I had found centuries-old recipes for these almondeguilles or albondigas, but without tomato sauce. For me, the post–Columbian Exchange marriage of tomatoes and meatballs greatly enhances the flavor of this dish!

“To be Jewish is to be conscious of what one says and what one does,” Jacqueline Meyer-Benichou, who cooks some of Paris’s most elegant kosher food, told me. The head of a real-estate company, with a degree from Les Beaux Arts in architecture, Jacqueline treats cooking as her avocation and considers the presentation of food to be as important as the menu. Living near branches of great gourmet stores in Paris, such as Lenôtre, she window-shops, looking at their food preparations and presentations, and tries to replicate the recipes for kosher dinners at her home. For dessert, she often fills little golden cups with soy-based iced soufflés, as Lenôtre does. “I love perfection,” she said. At Passover, Jacqueline makes beef cheeks or even veal shanks seasoned the Algerian way, with hot pepper and cilantro, and serves them as a main course, accompanied by her Algerian take on cabbage with cilantro and hot pepper. If you can’t find beef cheeks, use veal shanks, stew meat, or flanken—any slightly fatty cut will do. Slow cooking makes the meat tender and delicious. Since it tastes even better prepared a day in advance, reheat just before serving.

Sweetly glazed and flavored with preserved lemons, this chicken, a recipe from Irene Weil, brings a Moroccan flavor to a classic French roasted chicken. Recipes like this represent the new France, with its influences from all over the world. Irene, married to a Frenchman for more than thirty years, was born in the United States to parents who came from Vienna. Even though she raised her children in France, she still has an American sense of adventure in her cooking.

In markets all over France, I saw stalls with freshly boiled and peeled beets, which saves cooks from dyeing their hands the telltale pink that comes from handling beets. Since we seldom have this convenience in America, I prefer to roast my beets to intensify their earthy flavor, and then carefully peel and cut them. Beets and cumin marry well and look beautiful when sprinkled with lots of green cilantro.