Tag: Lower East Side
Episode 19 – Egg Cream: Nostalgia Value in a Refreshing Cold Drink
Famously, there are no eggs and no cream in an egg cream. Rather than rehashing the how’s and why’s of the name or the alleged origin story of this refreshing drink, I want to focus on what’s really important about it. How did it become a Jewish beverage, and why is its nostalgia value seemingly more important than its taste? […]
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 (Jewish Food Bookshelf)
The Jewish Food Bookshelf is wide and diverse. I have previously covered cookbooks, reference works, books that explored the food of a single cuisine, others that looked deeply at individual foodstuffs, and works of history both broad and on a specific topic. (And those links don’t even hit all of them.) But the book I’m covering in this post is […]
Episode 10 – Pastrami: The Uniqueness of American-Jewish Food
What makes American-Jewish pastrami different from other deli meats? How does it compare with its European precursors? How did the delicatessen embody the American-Jewish experience? And how similar are American-Jewish and European Ashkenazi cuisines? Among other questions, this is what I explore in episode 10, focused on the beloved food of New York City, pastrami. Interview: Ted Merwin Episode Notes
97 Orchard: From the Jewish Food Bookshelf
This book was not exactly what I thought it would be when I purchased it. And that was a very good thing! Let me start from the beginning as I explain a bit more about this different sort of entry “From the Jewish Food Bookshelf.” Before I bought 97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman, I knew that it was connected with […]
2021: The Year in Jewish Food
In what has now become an annual tradition, I’d like to welcome you to my Jewish Food Year in Review. To see how much (or little) has changed since last year, here is 2020’s Year in Jewish Food post. While the world has not yet fully emerged from under the cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a lot to […]
Q&A: All About American Jewish Deli
I love answering questions about Jewish Food history, and some time ago, in my newsletter, I asked people to email me with anything they wanted to know. My long-time friend Julie responded with some queries about American Jewish delis. As fate would have it, the most common topic I was asked about while on my recent lecture tour in America, […]
Bagel, Knish & Haroset, Oh My! (On Books About Iconic Jewish Foods)
Of all the books I’ve come across during my research into Jewish Food, there are many wonderful ones (and some that are less great, too, of course). They fall into a wide array of categories, from cookbooks to histories, dry-but-informative academic texts to just entertaining (whether more or less informative). One of the more interesting breakdowns I’ve encountered is how […]
