Jewish

No bread form is so complety identified with Jews as the bagel, which came from eastern Europe with immigrants, mostly from/Lód´z, Poland, at the turn of the last century. Unlike American bagels, French bagels were rather like rolls that were baked but not boiled. When Euro Disney and the United States Army in Europe wanted bagels in the late seventies, they asked Joseph Korcarz, whose family ran a bakery in the Marais, to go to the United States to learn the commercial technique of boiling the dough before baking. Two older bread forms, however, might shed new light on the origins of the bagel. In the mountains of Savoie, near the Swiss border, an area with few if any Jews today, there is a specialty of the region—an ancient anise-flavored bread called riouttes, which were boiled before baking, a technique that kept the bread fresher a longer time. Riouttes might have come to the mountains with Jews or with Arabs, who make ka’ak (“bracelet” in Arabic), small, round, crispy rolls with a hole, flavored with anise and sesame seeds. Probably the oldest bagel-like roll in France, however, dating back to antiquity, is the Provençal brassado, also called brassadeau. Sweet and round, with a hole in the center, they are also first boiled and then baked, much like bagels. The word brassado is related to the Spanish and Portuguese words for the physical act of an embrace or a hug. The unusual inclusion of floral scents like orange-flower and rose water could be the influence of Jews involved in the perfume industry in Grasse. This particular recipe is an adaptation of brassados found by Martine Yana in her Trésors de la Table Juive.

Like many Moroccan Jews who came to France after Morocco became independent in 1956, Deborah Lilliane Denino, a psychologist, and her family were welcomed by the Jewish community in Strasbourg. Down the street from her apartment is a kosher bakery, grocery, and butcher shop called Délices Cacher, where she buys merguez lamb and beef sausage and other Moroccan items on which she grew up in Marrakesh. When she is busy, she asks one of her three children or the American students with the Syracuse University Junior Year Abroad program who live with her to fetch the groceries. She teaches those not familiar with a kosher kitchen about the color- coded forks, towels, and other utensils, to identify and keep separate the meat and milk dishes she cooks in her apartment. For Shabbat, this great cook with a fun- loving family always makes Moroccan challah. But because her children, who were born in Strasbourg, like soft pretzels (as do most Alsatian children—they call them bretzeln), she sets aside some of the dough, forms long fingers out of it, twists them into pretzels, and bakes them as a snack.

On a recent visit to the Marais, I stopped in at Florence Finkelsztajn’s Traiteur Delicatessen, as I always do. The quarter has two Finkelsztajn delicatessens, one trimmed in yellow (Florence’s ex-husband’s) and one in blue (Florence’s—now renamed Kahn). According to Gilles Pudlowski, the gastronomic critic of Polish Jewish origin who writes the popular Pudlo restaurant guides, Florence’s store is the best place to satisfy a nostalgic craving for eastern European cooking. In addition to Central European Yiddish specialties, like herring, chopped liver, and pastrami, Florence also sells Pudlo, baked in the back of the shop. I have made her recipe, which she gave me a few years ago, and I can assure you it is delicious. Pletzl, short for Bialystoker tsibele pletzl, refers to a circular eastern European flat onion bread, often studded with poppy seeds, that came from the city of Bialystok, Poland. The bread is known in America in a smaller version as the bialy. Try it as a snack hot from the oven, or make a “big pletzl sandwich,” as Florence does. Her fillings vary as much as the different ethnicities of Jews living in Paris today: Alsatian pickelfleisch (corned beef), Romanian pastrami, Russian eggplant caviar (see page 34), North African roasted peppers, and French tomato and lettuce.

When Huguette Uhry married a local butcher from the town of Ingwiller in Alsace, her sisterin-law lived with her, helping with the cooking. They usually had eighteen people for lunch and dinner, including children, friends, and workers. Today, retired and living in nearby Bollwiller, Madame Uhry is known throughout Alsace as a great cook. Some of her recipes appear on the Web site judaisme.sdv.fr. Here is her brioche, which she starts one day and bakes Rosh Hashanah morning for breakfast, before the family goes to synagogue.

Once, I asked two-star Michelin chef Thierry Marx of Cordeillan-Bages in Pauillac, the greatest wine-producing area of France, why he uses beets in so many of his dishes—beets for color, beets for sweetness, beets for texture, and beet borscht purée. He replied that he likes to play with the flavors and shapes of his childhood, reminding him of his Jewish grandmother from Poland, who raised him in Paris. “Cooking is a transmission of love,” he told me. One wouldn’t necessarily think of the food Thierry serves in his stunning restaurant as particularly Jewish—it is so molecular, so Japanese (because of where he studied), and so French (because of where he grew up). The dining room of the château, decked out in sleek blackand-white furniture with hints of red, looks out on a vineyard laden with ripe dark grapes ready for picking. But when the bread basket arrived, it contained what looked like a miniature chocolate or poppy-seed babka. My first bite, though, told me that I had still been fooled. This trompe l’oeil was in fact a savory babka, filled with olives, anchovies, and fennel—a delicious French take on a sweet Polish and Jewish classic.

“Look at that beautiful brioche,” I overheard a guest saying at a Bat Mitzvah in Geneva. The brioche was the glistening round challah made by Nicole Garai, the rabbi’s wife. During the service at the hidden Quai du Seujet Synagogue, located near the Rhône River, Nicole helps her husband by escorting assigned readers to the bima (platform). The Garais, French Jews, came to Switzerland to start this synagogue in the 1980s. Nicole told me that she bakes challah for people of whom she is fond, like her congregant, Juliette Laurent, braiding it in a round to signify the circle of life for Rosh Hodesh (the first of the month); she also makes it for the new year, and for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I especially liked the way she decorated the challah, by first liberally sprinkling a thick band of sesame seeds, then poppy seeds all over the top of the bread. Another trick she uses is to brush the bread twice: once at the beginning of the second rise, after the bread is braided, and again just before she pops it into a cold oven. The procedure of turning on the heat after the bread is in the oven must date back a long time, at least to the beginning of home wood ovens.

Walking through the colorful Belleville market in Paris one Friday morning, I came across a Jewish bakery. Glancing in the window, I was surprised to see a triangular Tunisian Friday night bread called bejma, made out of three balls of dough. It was similar in flavor to a good eastern European challah. A few years later, I passed by a branch of Charles Traiteur, on the Boulevard Voltaire, and there was the bejma again, this time placed right next to the eastern European challah.

Daniel Helmstetter lives his life by the sign that hangs above his bakery in Colmar: “Le talent et la passion.” A fourth-generation baker, he told me that he “fell into the mixer and never came out.” The Helmstetter Bakery was started by his grandfather in 1906 in the central square of Colmar, a town once known for its large Jewish population. Each Thursday and Friday, Daniel still makes barches au pavot, an oval-shaped challah with poppy seeds and a thin braid on top, for his Jewish clientele. Barches (also spelled berches), which means “twisted,” is also a derivation of the Hebrew word birkat (blessing), from the verse in Proverbs 10:22, Birkat Adonai hi ta-ashir, “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich.” “A local rabbi said that the braid represents the tribes of Israel,” Daniel told me over coffee and pastry at his home near the bakery. “And the poppy seeds, the manna in the desert.” Poppy seeds, once grown in the region, may have disappeared from the fields, but the taste from them lingers on. For his barches, Daniel makes a dough that is tighter than his baguette dough, so that it can be easily braided. In a few nineteenth-century versions, boiled potatoes were substituted for some of the flour in the dough, perhaps to help preserve the loaf over the course of the Sabbath.

In the Middle Ages, pain pétri (kneaded bread) got its name because women kneaded and formed the bread at home and then baked the loaves in public ovens, a tradition that remained in Morocco until recent years. Even in the late Middle Ages, when bread could be easily purchased from a baker, Jewish women still made the pain pétri as one of the three mitzvoth that a woman performs for the Sabbath. (The other two are to light candles, and to go to the ritual bath, or mikveh.) The Sabbath tables of even Reform and Liberal Jews have two loaves of bread. These represent the double portion of manna that was gathered on the eve of the Sabbath during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Except on the eve of the Sabbath, manna had to be gathered daily, for it spoiled overnight. Madame Hamier made her recipe using cake yeast, something not readily available in the United States these days, so I have substituted dry yeast here.

This is a recipe that Natan Holchaker, an avid cook, makes in Bordeaux. In a take on the classic frisée and lardons, Natan uses duck instead of the prohibited pork. I have found that in France even the most secular French Jews avoid pork, substituting smoked duck instead. You can also substitute turkey bacon or kosher beef fry (akin to pastrami).

Kalonymus Ben Kalonymus, a Provençal Jewish philosopher, writer, and translator who wrote in the early part of the fourteenth century, satirized the Jewish community of Arles for dreaming, while at synagogue, about the honey, milk, and flour that they would use to make their ladder breads for Shavuot. Although fougasse was and is usually made with oil, at this Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah and the abundance of dairy products at the time of the barley harvest, the Jews used milk. The fougasse was baked in the shape of a so- called ladder, with holes, and candied cherries or candied orange peel hung or embedded in the dough. Ladders to heaven are a common metaphor for holiday breads in Judaism. The fougasse, kneaded and shaped by hand at home for the Sabbath and holidays, was then carried on a board to the baker, sometimes Jewish and sometimes Christian, depending on the size of the Jewish community in the town.

At a recent Kiddush after a Bat Mitzvah service in France, the wine was French, unlike the sweet wine usually served at American synagogues. The food was elegantly prepared, as only the French can do it: spread out on a large table were thin slices of smoked salmon on toast, eggplant rolled and filled with goat cheese, a North African sautéed-pepper salad, squash soup served in tiny cups, and celery-root rémoulade. If you have never eaten celery-root salad, then start now! And if you’ve never made mayonnaise before, it’s an exhilarating and rewarding experience that I highly recommend. Any leftover mayonnaise can be kept in a jar in the refrigerator for a few days.

When Alexander Zbirou came to France from Tunisia in 1966 to study marketing, there were few good kosher restaurants in Paris. In 1976, he opened a French restaurant, called Au Rendezvous/La Maison du Couscous, in the Eighth Arrondissement near the Champs-Élysées. Four years later, he turned it into a kosher Tunisian restaurant, the only one of its kind in the quarter. Today, there are more than thirty-eight in the Eighth Arrondisement. “I saw Jews arriving in the quarter,” he told me over lunch at his restaurant. “They came, and I was waiting for them. It was home cooking for Tunisians and Ashkenazim. After all, there are lots of mixed marriages here in France.” In 1988, his mother, Jeanne Zbirou, immigrated to Paris, and is now directing the cooking in the kitchen. Well into her eighties, she comes to the restaurant every day to work with her son. His restaurant, although technically kosher, does not close on Friday night or Saturday. “I feel that we are rendering a service to kosher clientele, to give them a kosher meal for the Sabbath,” he said. Other restaurants, under the supervision of the Parisian rabbinical authority, the Beth Din, are either closed for the Sabbath or open only to customers who pay in advance. Sitting down at the restaurant, we were first served an array of kemia, similar to the ubiquitous mezze at Arab restaurants. We began with flaky brik, filled with potatoes, parsley, and hard-boiled eggs (see page 30). At least a dozen salads followed, served on tiny plates, all brimming with bold colors and flavors. Some of my favorites were raw artichoke slivers with harissa, oil, and onions; turnips with bitter orange; and this delicious carrot salad with harissa and caraway seeds. When I asked how much salt they used to cook the carrots, Jeanne said, “Enough salt to make a raw egg rise in water.” In my own kitchen, I prefer roasting the carrots, because it brings out the sweetness of the vegetable.

Chef Daniel Rose (see page 68) served the following salad with brandade potato latkes (see page 308) at his Spring Restaurant during Hanukkah. The secret to this colorful winter salad is to keep the fennel very cold. This recipe, and all Daniel Rose’s recipes, may change according to the market and ses humeurs (the chef’s moods).

When I visited my cousins in Annecy, they served me this unusual salad. Its variety of colors and textures is stunning. As with many other cooked salads, it tastes even better the next day, making it a great dish for dinner parties or picnics. The kosher dill pickles came from shopping trips to Geneva and were a big treat.

This classic french potato salad is very simple. A non-Jewish version might include lardons (a type of bacon) and shallots, but instead I use a tart mayonnaise. For a North African touch, you can add sliced hard-boiled eggs and cured black olives. I often add julienned basil with the parsley, or other compatible herbs.

This is a surprising and appealing melding of squash, coriander, and harissa that I tasted with couscous when I was recently in Paris. It is also served on Rosh Hashanah.

“I so miss Shabbat meals in France,” a young North African man from Marseille living in Washington told me when we were seated next to each other on a plane. “My mother never makes fewer than ten to fifteen salads.” One of these salads might be a combination of oranges and olives. It is very refreshing, and looks beautiful as one of many Moroccan salads. The black and orange colors remind me of black-eyed Susans. Prepared with argan oil, which comes from argan pits harvested from the argan tree, the salad is balanced with the oranges and grapefruit. These are all 2,000-year-old Moroccan flavors.

Artichokes, one of my favorite vegetable, are edible thistles that were prized by the ancient Romans as food of the nobility. They have been a springtime food in the Mediterranean for thousands of years and particularly loved by Jews. Usually the French serve artichokes as a cold salad appetizer with a vinaigrette. Although I have seen this recipe in many Jewish cookbooks from North Africa, I hadn’t tasted it until Paula Wolfert cooked it for me on my PBS show, Jewish Cooking in America. It was a merveille, as my French friends would say. In the years since, I have eaten many different versions of this salad. Céline Bénitah, who lives in Annecy but came from Berkane, on the Algerian border of Morocco, said that all North African Jews who grew up in this orange- growing region have their own versions of this recipe. Hers includes saffron. Of course, this salad tastes best when fresh artichokes are used, but frozen artichoke hearts or bottoms work as well.

While attending a Catholic-Jewish wedding in Aussois, a quaint French alpine village near the Italian border, I wondered aloud to the bride’s uncle if this wasn’t the first time most of the villagers had ever met a Jew. In response, he told me this chilling story. During the Second World War, under the Italian occupation of France, 125 Jews were hidden in a house at the base of the town’s fortress, which was a confinement center. Villagers brought them a little bread and some potatoes to supplement their meager provisions. When the Italians left, the Jews were sure they were liberated and took a train home, only to run into German soldiers, who sent them all directly to Auschwitz. Even today, stories like this one are often hushed up because they are so painful to hear. Before the wedding ceremony, my husband and I sat down in a tiny café overlooking the mountains and tasted this salad with fresh lettuce, smoked salmon, tomatoes, and local walnut vinegar, a prized ingredient that I had never tasted but have since found on the Internet. Dill is such an important flavor in Jewish cooking that the French eleventh-century biblical commentator and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote that if dill is used for flavor, a special blessing over the earth must be recited before tasting it. If, however, it is simply added to decorate the dish, it is not intended for food value, so just a general prayer over food must be recited.