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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Lilly Zabar’s famous chicken soup and matzo balls
This recipe is from “Zabar’s: A Family Story, with Recipes” by Lori Zabar. Chicken soup is the perfect balm for homesickness as well as for physical ailments. While Louis, Ada, Rose, and Lilly were acclimating to their new country, chicken soup with matzo balls evoked memories of the childhood warmth and security that had been…
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How Zabar’s became Zabar’s: an insider’s story
As a kid growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I always wanted to be a West Sider — and I can sum up the reason in one word: Zabar’s. I crossed the park every chance I got. That’s where my best friend lived, and two blocks up from her apartment — occupying not one…
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It’s artichoke season: here’s your harvest dinner menu
My artichokes took a beating in the December storms, which they liked. By last week the wide dusky green leaves and stalks, swollen fat from all the water, produced bouquets of tight, cone-shaped flower buds. That’s when I called dinner. Last winter at the Forward’s virtual gala, I auctioned off an Artichoke Harvest Dinner for…
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An Italian Jewish cookbook in time for Passover
To some, orecchiette is just a pasta shape. To Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, it’s infuriating. “The history of orecchiette literally enrages me,” she said of the pasta whose name translates as “little ears.” Italians tell her the pasta shape comes from the Puglia region, unaware that it originated with the Jews who settled there from the…
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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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