Lucie Monk Carter
(Clockwise from left) Holly Clegg’s strawberry kugel, Alon Shaya’s peach and mascarpone hamantaschen, and B’nai Israel congregant Robbie Rubin’s chopped liver (served with matzah and rye crackers).
This year, Baton Rouge’s B’nai Israel, one of the oldest Reform temples in the country, celebrates its 160th anniversary with a food festival. Bubbe’s Kitchen and Zayde’s Bar, named for common Yiddish terms for female and male grandparents, will spotlight Jewish foods—but what are Jewish foods? For a people partly defined by diaspora and dietary laws, the answer isn’t always clear-cut. The pickles and cured meats of the classic Jewish deli, or the latkes and brisket of the Ashkenazi cuisine brought by Jewish immigrants from eastern and central Europe, are probably the immediate examples most Americans would give… until they thought about Alon Shaya, who’s bringing modern Israeli cuisine to Louisiana tables. (And for his part, Shaya also notes the diversity of Israeli cuisine, which draws influence from the wide-ranging backgrounds of its citizens.) Holly Clegg has built a successful brand on healthy recipes—including lighter takes on the beloved but famously heavy latkes and matzah balls. Robbie Rubin, a congregant at B’nai Israel, swore that everything she makes is Jewish food: whether it’s her schnecken (a rolled-up cinnamon pastry named for the Yiddish for “snail”) or her cornbread, it comes from a Jewish kitchen. Jewish food is as diverse as the Jews themselves, and as varied as the food cultures they’ve encountered—which here in the South means that Jewish cooking has taken on some distinctive regional characteristics even as it’s maintained its own identity.
The first question many people have about Jewish food is “what can they eat?” Kosher food rules, kashrut in Hebrew, are more complex than many non-Jews realize—and exclude some local favorites. Sea animals chosen for the Chosen must have scales and be neither bottom-dwellers nor scavengers, excluding catfish and all shellfish. Land animals must chew cud and bear uncloven hooves, letting out not just swine, but frogs, raccoons, possums, camels, and, incidentally, all apes, including human beings. Additional rules govern birds and insects, define kosher wine, and forbid the mixing of meat and milk, though you may be reassured to learn that fish and eggs are wild cards, able to join meat or milk on the table as the cook wishes. Passover adds another layer of complexity; in commemoration of the Jews having left Egypt so quickly they didn’t even have time for their bread to rise (a good call, given Pharaoh’s attempt to welsh on the deal), leavened grain products (chametz in Hebrew) must be removed from the house, temporarily sold to a Gentile, or rendered inaccessible behind taped-up cabinets. This includes not just the wide world of breads but those beloved aids to surviving family holidays, beer and whiskey. (One of the people-watching highlights of attending a largely Jewish university was overhearing a Jewish girl, far from sober and far from home, call her mother and attempt to sound both alert and casual as she asked which liquors were kosher for Passover. Rum, made of sugar cane or molasses, is the safest bet.)
Sea animals chosen for the Chosen must have scales and be neither bottom-dwellers nor scavengers, excluding catfish and all shellfish
The level of observance of these rules varies among denominations, congregations, families, and individuals, running the gamut from some people who avoid red food colorings made from a non-kosher insect to the crawfish boils some Louisiana synagogues have. Louann Bombet, who married into a Jewish family, agonized over her first Passover with her husband’s family, researching recipes for side dishes and desserts that contained no speck of flour—only to be told by her laid-back mother-in-law to just go ahead and make a peach cobbler. Observance of dietary laws can also change over time, especially for people who move from a heavily Jewish community to the South, where Jewish populations are less concentrated and less likely to be strict in this regard. Cookie Dubois grew up in a Jewish area of Cincinnati, surrounded by “a temple and a deli on each corner.” When she moved to Baton Rouge as an adult, she was surprised to hear that there was no Jewish neighborhood—and no Jewish deli. She approached her first crawfish cautiously, lifting it with two fingers; now, she “makes a mean étouffée for a Jewish lady.”
She approached her first crawfish cautiously, lifting it with two fingers; now, she “makes a mean étouffée for a Jewish lady.”
Kashrut observance is also often generational, with immigrant generations and their children often more invested in that aspect of traditional foodways. Celia Strickler described a slow transition away from strict kosher observance after the death of her grandfather. Her parents had been eager to respect his traditions, and their adventurous cook Addie, a Louisiana-born African-American lady, had conferred with Strickler’s grandmother on proper, kosher preparation of Old World foods, grinding liver and whitefish by hand. After her grandfather’s passing and the family’s subsequent slow but enthusiastic venture into local foods, Addie introduced them to gumbo, red beans, and other Louisiana classics—though Strickler said they had to work up to pork. Later in life, she married a pescetarian and changed her foodways again. She and her husband make matzah ball soup with vegetable stock now, she said, sounding a bit wistful at the absence of schmaltz, the chicken fat Jewish cooks deploy to great effect instead of bacon grease and lard.
One of the consolation prizes for the long and often turbulent history the Jews have endured is a full calendar of holidays, summarized pithily as “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.” Rubin, who grew up in rural Arkansas with a family who “imported” Jewish heritage foods like blintzes and bagels from Memphis, prepares a Southern-fried Hanukkah every year. Unfairly dismissed as “Jewish Christmas,” the holiday commemorates a miraculously long-lasting store of oil that kept the great temple in Jerusalem lit during its rededication after a Jewish army had expelled invaders. And what better way to celebrate oil than fried foods? Hamantaschen are another Jewish holiday treat: the triangular fruit pastries are making their way into more and more non-Jewish bakeries, and not everyone who savors the apricot, poppyseed, or raspberry fillings know that the shape mocks the distinctive hat of a Persian government official who failed in his attempt to purge the Jews from the kingdom and ended up having his drunken daughter empty a chamber pot on his head. (Jewish humor, it seems, is another long tradition.)
One of the consolation prizes for the long and often turbulent history the Jews have endured is a full calendar of holidays, summarized pithily as “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”
Ingredient substitutions always arise in fusion cuisine, either through unavailability of the original or a burst of creativity in the kitchen. A number of recipes that originally called for walnuts can and are made with pecans here where they’re plentiful, and in the other direction, Strickler’s family’s first foray into red beans and rice substituted knockwurst for the favored andouille or Cajun sausage. Modern groceries stores make this less of a necessity, with Whole Foods producing Jewish-mother-approved braided challah loaves—though Louann Bombet’s are said to be the best in town. What problems wide selection can’t solve, the kindness of strangers sometimes can. Dubois was once so lost in Albertson’s, unable to identify the ingredients her mother instructed her to buy for a family recipe, that a store employee took the phone from her, had Dubois’ mother explain what she needed, and ended the call with a promise to order whatever other ingredients might be called for in future recipes.
Few beliefs or associations are truly universal—there’s always some counterexample to what we want to describe as “human nature,” and it’s as likely to be found down the street as in the highlands of New Guinea—but perhaps the closest we’ll get is the association of food with love, family, and friends. I’d never heard of schnecken before, and when I asked Rubin how they were made, she said first, “well, there’s a lot of love in them,” before going on to a description of the butter, cinnamon, and other physical ingredients that make up the gooey snail-shaped buns. My more buttoned-up grandmother, from whom I learned the Depression-hued Southern dishes that make up the bulk of my kitchen know-how, wouldn’t have said that aloud—but she didn’t have to, not with the table all but creaking under the dishes she’d spent hours over. Whether it’s described in the chewy consonants of Yiddish or the drawn-out vowels of Southern English, food, and the love it represents, is truly a universal language.
In working on this story, I had the rare and pleasant problem of getting more information, anecdotes, and recipes than I could include. I’d like to thank Cookie Dubois, Adrian Hirsch, Celia Strickler, Louann Bombet, Alon Shaya, Holly Clegg, Gail Sherman, Dany Kaplan, and Robbie Rubin for their help.
See here for full information on the Bubbe’s Kitchen and Zayde’s Bar Jewish Food Festival.
Explore recipes from the congregants of B’nai Israel and those we experimented with in the Country Roads kitchen here: Chopped Liver; Strawberry Kugel; and Peach and Mascarpone Hamantaschen.
