Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook

Twenty-five years ago, Nathan published The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, a landmark work that juxtaposed recipes with oral histories. Although she acknowledges that the past quarter century has brought some changes to Jewish cooking--e.g., Kosher caterers are lightening their foods;""young American superstar chefs"" have come onto the scene; California wineries now produce award-winning kosher wines--Nathan still relies on traditional recipes, such as My Mother's Brisket, Cabbage Strudel, Romanian Beet Borscht, Vegetable Kugels and Babka in her new volume. Revising and updating recipes from Holiday Kitchen and another previous work, The Jewish Holiday Baker, Nathan shares instructions for making nearly 400 dishes, dividing them by holiday: the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot and the minor holidays. Lengthy introductions accompany each recipe, and Nathan's ability to balance interesting tidbits with useful instructions make this a supremely worthwhile resource. She covers every cuisine of the Jewish tradition, from Central and Eastern European to Middle Eastern to American.