Author: Emily
Theodore Herzl’s Christmas Cookies: Spiced Chocolate Hazelnut Krokerle
December 24, 2018
Ever have ambivalent feelings about Christmas? So did the Jews of nineteenth-century Germany. While you might have though Chrismukkah is a modern invention, it actually wasn’t dreamed up by the writers of The O.C.—its history is much longer and, arguably, more distinguished than that. Prewar German and Austrian Jews were well known for having been […]
Everything Bagel Mixed Nuts
December 17, 2018
There are a bunch of different ways Poppy and Prune recipes come to be. Sometimes I stumble across a cool recipe or historical factoid that I can’t wait to share. Sometimes I get a request. Sometimes I have a brilliant (or not) idea for an original recipe. And sometimes, there’s something I want to make […]
Flaming Tea: The Wildest Hanukkah Tradition
December 10, 2018
You know about latkes (even, if you’ve been keeping up with Poppy and Prune, obscure varieties like chestnut and brain). You know about sufganiyot and its predecessors, from awwame to zvingous. But have you ever heard of the flaming tea ceremony? No? Me either, until a few years ago when I was leafing through Phyllis […]
Luqmat: A Little Fritter With A Long History
December 4, 2018
Luqmat. Bumuelos. Sfenj. ʿAwwamé. Lokma. Zvingous. So many names for one deep-fried dough ball. How did these little-yeasted fritters—whatever you want to call them—spread all across the Mediterranean? And how did they become the preeminent Ḥanukka treat of the Sephardi world, from Morocco to Turkey? This Hanukkah, I covered the world of Sephardi fritters (and […]
Lazy Latkes: The Poppy and Prune Guide
November 26, 2018
Hanukkah is one week away! But let’s say you’re not in the mood to lovingly recreate three historic latke varieties from scratch this year—what’s a Jewish foodie to do? Don’t worry. I got you. The fact that I did lovingly recreate three historical latke varieties last week notwithstanding, I’m actually a pretty lazy cook myself […]
Latkes Before Potato: Taste-testing Cheese, Buckwheat, and Chestnut Pancakes
November 19, 2018
Nothing says “Hanukkah tradition” better than a crispy potato latke, right? WRONG! Even though potato latkes have come to dominate the Hanukkah food scene here in the US in the twenty-first century, they’re actually a relative newcomer to the Jewish culinary repertoire. The potato, a native of South America, didn’t even arrive in Europe until […]
Eating Black-Eyed Peas in the Caribbean’s Lost Jewish Colony
November 13, 2018
Winter weather getting to you? How about a little trip to the warm, sunny Caribbean.. more specifically, the lost Jewish colony of the Caribbean? “But P&P, that’s not a thing,” I hear you protesting. Okay, maybe it’s a little bit of an exaggeration—there is no Jewish Roanoke in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle—but the […]
From Colewort to Cabbage: The Incredible Evolution of Cabbage Noodles
November 5, 2018
Cabbage is one of the world’s oldest cultivated vegetables, and even today it remains one of the most widely grown and eaten. But turns out the original cabbage was pretty different from the green (or red) stuff you might find in your basic 21st-century coleslaw. Wild cabbage—which, as I just learned in the course of […]
The Unexpected Origins of the Common Marble Cake
October 22, 2018
Originating in early nineteenth-century Germany, the marble cake is a relative newcomer to the Jewish baking pantheon (at least compared to such venerable sweets as honey cake). But it turns out that marble cake as we know it is even newer than that: rather than the familiar chocolate and vanilla, the earliest variants consisted of […]
Potatoes Are the New Chestnuts: German Chestnut Crème from The German-Jewish Cookbook
October 15, 2018
Orange is the new black. Thursday is the new Friday. 30 is the new 20. Potatoes are the new… chestnuts?! Yes, while our sad Eastern European forefathers and mothers were busy chowing down on, like, black radishes and parsley root, their Southern and Central European brethren were living the (comparative) good life on a chestnut-based […]