Newly single, Jewish chef Jake Cohen is bringing his style of easy entertaining to TV
Cohen has parted with his husband of six years, whose Mizrahi family recipes he credits with widening his Jewish food horizons.
Jake Cohen wears a Jewish star necklace on his TV show “Jake Makes it Easy.”(Courtesy A+E Networks 2024)
(New York Jewish Week) — A lot has changed in Jake Cohen’s life since he finished filming his first TV show, a cooking show that incorporates but does not solely focus on his Jewish identity.
“Since we recorded, I have split with my husband. I am currently single,” Cohen said in an interview. After six years of marriage, Cohen has moved from Queens into Manhattan, where he is living with two other celebrity Nice Jewish Boys: EGOT-winning singer-songwriter Benj Pasek and comedian Alex Edelman.
Still, when “Jake Makes it Easy” begins airing on Monday night on A&E’s Home.Made.Nation, Cohen’s fans will recognize the effervescent Jewish cook that they have come to know through his best-selling cookbooks and Instagram and TikTok accounts, where he has a collective 2.5 million followers. And Cohen is looking forward to gaining a new audience, too.
“The most exciting thing about this is that it is going to be on cable and speaks to a different audience of people that are just as passionate about cooking and passionate about food,” Cohen said. “They haven’t met me yet and once they do, new people will fall in love with my recipes, which is the goal.”
The series’ trailer does not mention Cohen’s Jewish identity, but in the first episode, he clearly announces who he is. The 30-year-old New York City native is wearing a Star of David necklace that is hard to miss, talks about past travel to Israel and refers to his husband and his in-laws, who are Jews from Iraq.
He also shares two recipes with roots in the Middle East — Iraqi salmon that he learned to make from his mother-in-law and date brownies, the idea for which came to him while walking through the shuk, or open air market, in Tel Aviv.
Cohen has long credited his husband’s Mizrahi family with widening his Jewish food horizons. Middle Eastern recipes play a prominent role in his last book, “I Could Nosh,” and many of them, says Cohen, “have become so integral to my life and my story.”
Now, even though his marriage is ending, those recipes, he said, “are still part of the fabric” of what makes him who he is. “I look at the past fondly,” Cohen said. “I don’t try to predict the future. I am in the moment.”
In his newly single era, those moments include lots of time on Citi Bikes, traversing New York City and visiting favorite haunts such as Gertie’s and Laser Wolf in Williamsburg, Theodora in Fort Greene, Katz’s Deli on Houston Street and appetizing store Barney Greengrass near his new home on the Upper West Side.
It also includes tying up his third cookbook, out next year, and launching his 10-episode cable show. Both aim to give their audiences the confidence to entertain with ease.
“It is time to inspire a generation of home cooks who not just love to cook but love to entertain,” said Cohen. “My job is to give people the tools to understand how recipes go together in order to properly host the people you love without losing your mind.”
In each episode, Cohen guides the viewer in the art of making a main course and dessert that make sense together and are special enough for company. Some of the recipes spring from his Jewish background, but others do not. Other dishes that he will be sharing include a balsamic and soy brisket, baked gnocchi, and what he is calling soup-less chicken soup.
The recipe he describes as his favorite in the series has Jewish roots, too. “It’s a play on matzah brittle that I make for Passover,” said Cohen. “I thought what if instead of using matzah I use a Tate’s cookie. It is by far the most incredible thing I have ever made in my life. I just did Yom Kippur with Benny Blanco in L.A. and I made tubs of it and everyone went crazy.”
Among those praising Cohen’s cooking is his new roommate Edelman, who recently won an Emmy for his stand-up show about antisemitism and Jewish identity, “Just For Us.” Calling Cohen “one of the great chefs on planet Earth as far as I can tell,” Edelman said he had also been impressed by how Cohen provides sustenance that goes beyond food.
“I think one of the reasons that he is so successful is because he manages to somehow infuse his cooking with himself, which means that that cooking is full of personality and generosity and community and is respectful of tradition but innovative at the exact same time,” Edelman said. “I can’t say enough good things about the guy.”
That blend is visible on the show. Some lovers of Jake Cohen’s challah recipe – he devotes more than 20 pages to challah in his most recent cookbook and said he would pick challah if he could make only one Jewish recipe for the rest of his life – may be surprised to see that while it shows up on the series, it does not do so in the classic, braided form.
The dough that he demonstrates on the show is used to make challah-wrapped hot dogs and as the base for monkey bread, in which the dough is sweetened with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and then glazed with a mixture of confectioner’s sugar and vanilla bean paste.
“There’s a lot of intimacy that comes with foods that are a living, breathing thing that adapt every time you make them and really express to someone how much love and effort you put into the interaction,” Cohen said, adding that he introduced challah early in the series on purpose. “I wanted to get it out of the way so it was really universal, and not just for Jewish people to take away this beauty, but for anyone.”
Does that mean that Cohen is blurring his self-definition as a Jewish cooking guru? After all, in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which sparked a spike in reports of antisemitism around the world, some Jews have grown wary about broadcasting their identity publicly.
Cohen says no. “If I’m writing it, it’s Jewish,” he said. But that doesn’t mean Oct. 7 hasn’t changed him.
“I am 100% more committed to being authentically myself publicly and I’m more aware of the people around me, which is all you can do,” he said. “I am a big proponent of Stoicism and what it all comes down to is that you can only control your actions, you can’t control the actions of others.”
He added, “I am not going to let it change who I am publicly. I am making a show about entertaining and it is still so inherently Jewish even if it is not an exclusively Jewish cooking show.”
The clearest evidence may come in the form of the Jewish star necklace he wears in real life, and on the show.
“I wear it every day,” he said, adding that he also wears his trademark overalls, and jewelry by the Jewish designer Susan Alexandra. “There was no budget for fashion so I wear what I wear.”
With the first season wrapped and the heaviest lifting on his third book complete, Cohen is cooking and busy. He recently prepared a brunch made from recipes from his third cookbook for Erin Lichy, one of the Jewish women featured on “Real Housewives of New York.” He also traveled to Pennsylvania with Pasek and Edelman to canvass for Kamala Harris.
Cohen is also looking forward to heading farther afield. Although he hasn’t been back to Israel since last Oct. 7, he said he definitely plans to return when he can for an extended visit.
“I’m in a house-guest era,” he joked. “I need someone to give me their apartment for a month.”
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