For Jews who spent time in Central and Eastern Europe, a ¾ done dill pickle made a perfect teething ring. A pickle has everything you could want in abundance: it’s cold, crunchy, salty, sour, and redolent with dill. A real dill pickle is fished out of a barrel. Pickles are like most Jewish food, born …

The story of Jews in the Diaspora was one of making things stretch. Clothes, food, wood, coal. All of these things were to have every last drop of use squeezed out of them, in the case of Kvass, quite literally. Kvass was a rough homemade liquor made out of the stale ends of Russian black …

When it’s too hot to cook, you want simple things you can make. Things without a lot of ingredients but with lots and lots of flavor. Borscht, the dairy version, fits the bill. It’s plain, healthy, and can be served cold. It’s so easy to make it’s almost not a recipe. If your mom opened …

Coffee a Jewish food? Why not? A new study shows that coffee is the key to longevity. What’s so Jewish about that? Think about it: what do Jews say when they toast each other? They say, “L’Chaim,” to life! Wishing someone longevity is definitely a Jewish thing, ergo coffee is a Jewish food.

Food writer Patti Shosteck wrote a wonderful book back in 1981 called A Lexicon of Jewish Cooking, that gives the reader the history and religious background of various Jewish foods. The first entry is for Adafina, of which Shosteck writes: “Uncovered, the aroma and taste of adafina enticed Jew and non-Jew alike. Compared to the sardines, …

Moroccan carrot salad is one of the most popular salads on the Shabbat table or at a simcha. There’s a reason for that: the salad is cool, but spicy, light, yet somehow substantial. It makes your palate tingle for what comes next, which is the purpose of any good salad worth its salt. To make …

Eggs are a staple no matter who you are and where your ancestors came from unless you happen to be a “veggan” and no, that’s not a typo. If you’re Jewish, depending on where you come from, you eat eggs and onions—which is pretty much chopped liver without the liver—or shakshuka, a delectable dish of …

It’s an expression: not to make a tzimmes out of something. A Tzimmes is a traditional Jewish dish that mixes disparate ingredients that somehow manage to work together well. Since the dish has so many ingredients, it’s seen as complicated and complex. Making a tzimmes out of something means to overcomplicate a situation. When people …

Shavuos is a fun holiday in lots of ways, mostly because we get to eat dairy products at our festive meals, making for a lovely change of pace. Cheesecake and blintzes are traditional. But considering that 70 percent of Jews are lactose intolerant, one wonders why we have a holiday where we eat something that …