Eat, Drink & Think is your daily destination for recipes, restaurant news, holiday menus and great food journalism — all through a Jewish lens. From the traditional to the cutting edge, we explore the worldwide Jewish culinary landscape and bring…
Food
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Did Jews name this classic Italian cookie?
When the Italian bakery and cafe Il Fornaio opened its first American branch in San Francisco, I was hired as a cookie baker. The night before my first day on the job, I tried my first pot brownie, and then, rookie mistake, my second. I spent the night in a paranoid wakefulness, arrived at work…
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Drink spring: Make your own bittersweet aperitif
Every spring morning I walk into my backyard, take a deep inhale, and wish I could bottle that smell. This year, I did it. The artichokes put an herby bitterness into the air, the verbena adds citrus, the bay notes of grass and menthol. It is a delicious, fleeting smell, so present in the air…
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An L.A. doctor revives the tradition of Persian Jewish winemaking
Wine flows freely in the ancient story of Purim, which takes place in ancient Persian. Buzzed on wine, King Ahasuerus asks the beautiful Vashti to come party. At two other wine-soaked feasts, the heroine Esther sways the king against the evil Haman. Wine all but disappeared from modern-day Iran following the country’s takeover by Muslim…
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Shamrock-taschen? This year make corned beef and cabbage hamantschen.
This Purim, which happens to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, there are two kinds of hamantaschen you should consider buying or making. The first are any of the traditional three-cornered Purim cookies that are being sold to raise money for Ukraine. Check this list for bakeries participating in Hamantaschen for Ukraine and buy some. The…
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Overwhelmed by Purim guests? Make giant hamantaschen.
Purim always sneaks up on me. I find myself relaxing in post-Chanukah bliss, drinking cocoa with no holidays on the horizon. Then the snow melts and BAM! Time to get ready for Purim! Time to get organized for Passover! Order costumes! Make mishloach manot! See that tulip? Now bake 600 hamantaschen! This time of year…
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I tested three non-dairy shortenings. Guess which made the best hamantashen.
It depends on your tastes
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When Purim falls on St. Patrick’s Day, drink a Haman O’Reilly
If Purim and St. Patrick’s Day, which both fall on March 17 this year, have one thing in common, it’s drinking. To mark the two holidays’ joint appearance on the calendar, Jay Sanderson, the former CEO and president of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, concocted a cocktail that combines the flavors of each. He…
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Recipes Hamantaschen Pizza is a genius Purim snack
If you plan to follow the Purim directive to drink until you can no longer tell the difference between “blessed is Mordechai” and “cursed is Haman,” then it would be advisable to have something of substance in your stomach when you do. What if this year’s hamantaschen could stand in for an actual meal —…
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Ukrainian rugelach are the cookie you should be making now
The historian Timothy Snyder called them the “bloodlands:” the region including Russia and Ukraine that gave us the massive killing fields of Stalin and Hitler, and that now gives us Russia’s vicious war. But that same span of earth has also yielded, in quieter times, a bounty of wheat, milk, fruit and vegetables that all…
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Gary Shteyngart is stress-eating Ukrainian stuffed cabbage. You can too.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, author Gary Shteyngart posted on Instagram that he was “stress eating holubtsi.” That makes perfect sense. The Ukrainian-Russian-Jewish Shteyngart, who spoke of his passion for food to the Forward earlier this month, chose one of the country’s great comfort foods: warm, filling, forgiving to make, and stuffed, not…
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Mechaia wine blends Italian grapes with a Yiddish name
Yiddish was spoken in Howard Paul ’s home until he was 5. That’s when “my father was explaining to a friend some stupid thing I did, and I turned and said to him, I understand what you’re saying. And that ended Yiddish as his code language.” Fitting then, that the East Bay winemaker has a…
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