Joan Nathan is Tablet Magazine’s food columnist and the author of ten cookbooks including the forthcoming Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and Food Arts Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Washington, D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard.
Intermarried couples must learn new holiday recipes and traditions
| 7:00 AM Sep 1, 2010
I was leading a tour of Jewish culinary sites in Philadelphia at a conference about 20 years ago when Julia Child showed up. “Why are you here?” I asked. Always direct, she told me that she was interested in what I was doing, and one of her relatives had married a Jew, and ...
For some people, the best thing about summer is the tomatoes
| 7:00 AM Jul 23, 2010
In the heat of summer, nothing beats a really fresh tomato. As I sit at my desk on Martha’s Vineyard, I take frequent breaks to go to the deck to pluck a potted Sun Gold and pop it into my mouth. It is a mid-summer treat that I dream of as I pass by grocery ...
Noshing at the White House, last month and through the years
| 7:00 AM Jun 24, 2010
When I visited the White House a few weeks ago, for a celebration to mark the first Jewish American Heritage Month, I was reminded that the excitement of being in the stately building can overpower any appetite a person might bring there. The platters of Moroccan-Israeli eggplant salad, slices of rare beef, very fresh and ...
Shavuot and cheese, past and present
| 7:00 AM May 13, 2010
For as long as I have been writing about food I have thought about the cycles of the Jewish year and how seasonality impacts what Jews have traditionally eaten. After all, before globalism, before localism, before organic, before refrigeration, before the microwave, we all had to live by the seasons.
Shavuot, known as the Festival of ...
A tour of restaurants in the Holy Land
| 7:00 AM Apr 22, 2010
Last month, just before Passover, I escorted six journalists on a culinary quest through Israel. For six days, we met with food writers, chefs, and ordinary people, touring colorful markets overflowing with fresh spices and pomegranates so ripe you wanted to bite into them, asking the question: Is there a genuine Israeli cuisine? Israeli cooking ...
Comparing charosets—the date, nut, and wine concoction that sweetens the seder
| 7:00 AM Mar 25, 2010
Perhaps more than any other food, charoset, the delicious fruit-and-nut paste eaten at the Passover seder, tells the story of the Diaspora, the wandering of the Jewish people. At my own seder this symbol of the mortar used by the Jews while enslaved in Egypt is one of the most popular dishes and certainly the ...
Making Palestinian chicken and Moroccan challah for a Shabbat dinner with Alice Waters
| 7:00 AM Feb 25, 2010
A few weeks ago, I invited Alice Waters for Shabbat.
The legendary chef-owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, a longtime friend, was in town to work with me on a fundraiser for Martha’s Table and DC Central Kitchen, two organizations that feed the less fortunate in Washington, D.C., where I live. It seemed only natural to ...
