Food maven Arthur Schwartz spoke about American-Jewish culinary history and offered recipes from his latest cookbook, Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, April 6 at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth. Photos by Debra Rubin
April 22, 2008
In Arthur Schwartz’ opinion, if a Martian were to land today in Brooklyn or some other Jewish enclave, he would think traditional Jewish food was sushi and pizza.
“Sushi is everywhere,” said Schwartz. “It has replaced gefilte fish. I recently saw in an Italian restaurant kosher Neapolitan-style sushi. In Brooklyn there’s a kosher pizzeria on every corner.”
Schwartz is seemingly bucking this trend in his latest book, Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, which came out April 1. A food maven known for his work in radio and television, Schwartz said the book represents his first foray in his 37-year-career into the Ashkenazi and Eastern European food that he grew up with.
In an April 6 talk at Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth, Schwartz, a former host of WOR Radio’s Food Talk, presented a culinary history of Jewish food in America, or at least New York, from the old fashioned delis to the ubiquitous kosher pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, and sushi.
Schwartz took his audience on a nostalgic journey, displaying menus, photos, and postcards of famous old-time restaurants and delis, Jewish shopping streets, Catskill Mountain resorts, and ethnic delicacies.
Those attending were served a handful of the 100 recipes from the book, including chicken “like my grandmother used to make,” sweet and sour meatballs, kugel, barley, and a variety of desserts from mandel bread to apple cake and halva.
“Jews eat the food of the culture they are living in,” said Schwartz, the author of five other cookbooks who served as the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years. He is a regular on the Food Network and PBS, was a food critic on Good Day New York and has appeared on many other television shows, including Good Morning America.
Schwartz’ presentation spanned from explaining how kosher regulations affected culinary tastes to providing helpings of humor.
“You know how you can tell which are the gefilte fish?” he asked his audience. “They’re the ones with the carrots on their backs.”
He spoke of the traditional dishes that have survived the test of time, such as kasha varnishkes, which he described as Jewish health food. After all, kasha is a whole grain, said Schwartz.
Arthur Schwartz signs copies of Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited during an April 6 appearance at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth.
Even staples like the knish, which at one time was stuffed only with potato, now come in an assortment of modern fillings, including broccoli, spinach, and sweet potato.
“They used to sell hot potato knishes on the beaches of Brooklyn when I was a kid,” reminisced Schwartz.
That’s a far cry from the Manhattan bistro that charges $42 for a plate of what they call “short ribs,” and which Jews know as flanken. Beef cheeks have become all the rage in culinary circles, although Jewish cooks have been using them in Sabbath cholent for generations.
And much as American culture has affected Jewish food, that same food has passed into mainstream culture, said Schwartz.
“We even have people named Mohammed cutting lox,” he said.
For more information on Schwartz, to view some of his recipes, or to receive his newsletter, visit his web site.
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