Panel Discussion with Leah Koenig, Arthur Schwartz and Rozanne Gold

Celebrate the publication of Leah Koenig’s new book Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen with New York’s beloved food maven Arthur Schwartz and four-time James Beard award-winning chef and author Rozanne Gold.

Join us in the Museum at Eldridge Street’s beautiful Main Sanctuary on October 17th at 6pm for a lively panel discussion delving into the riveting history and aromatic foodways of Rome’s Jewish community, among the oldest in Europe. Vibrantly portrayed in Leah’s captivating cookbook, published this Fall by W.W. Norton & Company, Leah chronicles a tale of modern-day Roman Jewish food culture, enlivened with anecdotes from the chefs, butchers, and waves of immigrants who helped shape the Jewish cuisine of the Eternal City.

As leading authorities on both Jewish and Italian food, Leah and Arthur, guided by moderator Rozanne Gold, explore the origins of la cucina ebraica romana (Roman Jewish cuisine) with research, recipes, and recollections. Discover how Rome’s millennia-old community became home to the food of the Diaspora, including those of the Libyan Jews who came to Rome in the 1960s and ‘70s. The result is a uniquely beguiling cuisine whose aromas fill the streets of Via del Portico d’Ottavia (the main road in Rome’s Jewish Ghetto) and beyond. Come fill your senses!

Click here to purchase a ticket.

"Iconic New York Jewish Food:" June Hersh, Niki Russ Federman, Rozanne Gold

Dear friends:

How wonderful it will be to see you at this upcoming event at the Eldridge Street Museum -- one of the most alluring and historical museums in the city. Seeing Kiki Smith's extraordinary blue stained-glass windows is reason enough to come. But here's another temptation: On May 2nd at 6 pm there will be a free event and panel discussion to celebrate the publication of June Hersh's new book Iconic New York Jewish Food. Another powerhouse, Niki Russ Federman, fourth-generation owner of the beloved Russ & Daughters will join us. Together we will acknowledge the moxie of the ingenious immigrants who helped shape the city's culinary streetscape and rejoice in collective memories. Since the event is right before Mother's Day, a signed copy of June's book -- chock-a-block with fabulous recipes -- would be a wonderful gift. Noshes, book signing, and maybe a poem or two from my new poetry collection, Mother Sauce, will add to the festivities. Hope to see you there.

Happy Spring.

Warmly,
Rozanne

Mother Sauce: Now Available on Amazon

MOTHER SAUCE by Rozanne Gold
Four-time James Beard award-winning chef turns from food to poetry 

“This book was created by a singular poet - death doula, legendary chef, geographer of women’s souls - who writes with a memorable voice. Deft, wise, and delicate, the poems of Mother Sauce are powerful recipes for wisdom and compassion.”

—Annie Finch, author of Spells and A Poet’s Craft 

Brooklyn, New York (Dec. 27, 2022)   After more than four decades in the food world, award-winning chef, celebrated author, food writer, and international restaurant consultant Rozanne Gold turns her formidable creativity to poetry with her first poetry collection Mother Sauce published by Dancing Girl Press.   

Mother Sauce refers to the five classic sauces created by chef Auguste Escoffier, and the subsequent “daughter sauces” that form the basis of all French cuisine. This metaphor weaves itself through Gold’s “spare and deceptively simple” poems which, like her minimalist style of cooking, resound with unexpected complexity that “tease the senses and excavate bliss.”    

This poetic memoir, a bildungsroman, takes the writer from an unhappy childhood in Fresh Meadows, Queens, finding nourishment through men, to becoming a chef and food writer in order to nourish herself, and an end-of-life doula to deal with her grief after her mother’s death.

It’s about the heartache of "motherlessness" -- caught between not being one and not having one; a story of endometriosis; a powerful connection to Nefertiti, and what it means to become a poet in her 60s. It’s about trading the language of food for the language of words and images; it’s about the search for spiritual nourishment and what it means to become a mother at age 53; and what it means to care for dying people. It’s about a psychological dimension that gives rise to a city of women, of women carrying women home, and ultimately about God as a woman… the ultimate source of nourishment.  

Buoyed by her singular career, both glamorous and gritty, Gold delves deep into her own experiences of feeling unworthy, unseen, and taken for granted; taken from, not celebrated, known and yet not known. It is a quiet reclamation of the divine and the feminine in her later years.  And while Gold’s story is uniquely her own, women, men, humanity at large can relate in their own way to the book’s many steps, both in its path and pathos.

 “Mother Sauce is nourishment for the heart and soul. Exploring loss and joy in motherhood and motherlessness, these poems entice the reader into a feast of contemplation and experience. We are served a savory and well-balanced meal ranging from “how to grieve” to “how to peel a carrot.” From the Imaginative leap of the first poem – God as cook creating Mother Sauces – the culinary serves spiritual Inquiry, seasoned with everything from razzmatazz to gravitas.”  --Krista Leahy, Nothing but Light 

“With a chef’s touch Rozanne Gold’s debut chapbook exquisitely gathers memory, loss, and boundless love into a redolent bouquet garni. With a keen eye for lush detail and epic sweep through the sensorial necessity of food, Gold offers process, where a recipe holds the future, where we grow memories older than water. Step into this kitchen. There is nourishment here.” –Robert Balun, Acid Western and Traces

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rozanne Gold is an award-winning chef, food writer, journalist, and end-of-life doula. At age 23 she was first chef for New York Mayor Ed Koch and later the consulting chef for the Rainbow Room and Windows on the World. Considered “one of the most important innovators in the modern food world,” by Bob Spitz, (Julia Child’s biographer), she is the author of 13 acclaimed cookbooks, and winner of four James Beard Awards. Rozanne has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Gourmet and Bon Appetit, where she was entertaining columnist for five years. When Gourmet closed its doors, Gold bought their expansive library and donated it to New York University. After Hurricane Sandy, she ran a pop-up kitchen in Park Slope for 1-1/2 years, preparing 185,000 meals for those in need. A finalist of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Prize, she is a board member of Brooklyn Poets and co-founder of the Death & Living Project. 

DETAILS                      

Title: Mother Sauce
Author: Rozanne Gold
Publisher: Dancing Girl Press
ISBN #: 979-8-218-06304-7     
Price: $8.00
No. of pages/51  
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON    

Tricycle Magazine | 10,000 Dharmas in a Bowl

Click here to read the complete article in Tricycle Magazine.

Fourteen years ago, when Jonathan and Diana Rose created the magnificent Garrison Institute, a repurposed monastery on the banks of the Hudson River, they asked if I’d cook a meal for the Dalai Lama, who was coming to visit. I declined. Maybe insecurity got in the way, but it felt more like fear. Although I was well known as a chef with a Zen-like approach to cooking, I believed that the honor should go to a practitioner of Buddhism or at least someone who would be more fully awake to the experience than I would have been. Ever since, I’ve had a recurring thought whenever I shop, cook, or daydream. “What would I have made?” Sometimes the question makes me smile; other times it triggers great anxiety. But in the end, I realized that the food itself was not at all what mattered.

Brooklyn Poets | Rozanne Gold

It was a great honor to be chosen "Poet of the Week" by BROOKLYN POETS from October 24th to the 30th. The timing coincided with the publication of my first poetry collection called Mother Sauce published by Dancing Girl Press (October 28, 2022). I was delighted to be interviewed by this esteemed organization dedicated to celebrating and cultivating the poets, poetry and literary heritage of Brooklyn, the birthplace of American poetry. You can read the full interview and listen to a recording of my poem Kitchen Work, chosen as a finalist for the 2020 Sappho Poetry Prize below. Mother Sauce can be purchased from Dancing Girl Press .

Click here to read the full interview.
Listen to Rozanne read her poem, “Kitchen Work.”

Brooklyn Magazine | The Life and Rhymes of Rozanne Gold

Oh, my God. Rozanne Gold — the four-time James Beard Award-winning chef known as “one of the most important innovators in the modern food world” per Julia Child’s biographer, Bob Spitz — has come for lunch.

I’m not sure why or how it seemed like a good idea at the time to offer to cook a meal for the author of 13 cookbooks, but here we are.

Lauded as a food influencer before everyone was some kind of influencer, she seems to have done it all: At age 23 she was living at Gracie Mansion as the private chef for Mayor Ed Koch, and by the time she was 40, she had cooked for a president, prime minister and brigadier general; created the original menus for both the Rainbow Room and Windows on the World; helped usher in the small-plate craze; and written her first book, “Little Meals: A Great New Way to Eat and Cook.”

Click here to read the complete article in Brooklyn Magazine

The Year Ahead: Hottest Food & Restaurant Trends 2022

Every year, for the past twenty years, my intrepid husband, the international food and restaurant consultant Michael Whiteman, publishes a wonderful, sometimes irreverent, but always prescient trends report about the world of food, dining, and technology. His forecast, affectionately known as “The Whiteman Report” gets picked up quickly all over the world, and was recently highlighted in Forbes (Nov. 25, 2021). From a list of 12 sizzling predictions and 17 mouthwatering buzzwords that comprise his forecast, Forbes journalist, Eustacia Huen, chose four that she deemed to be the most salient. This, too, becomes an interesting prism from which to view the coming year. For me, I loved the case made in support of what we once so passionately cared about: “No! Fine Dining Is Not Dead.” Add to that, Korean hot dogs, mac-and-cheese ice cream, tater tots casserole, and the robotization of commercial kitchens, means the hi-low debate will no doubt continue well into 2022.

Baum+Whiteman, the renowned restaurant consulting group, develops high-profile restaurants, hotels, and luxury dining destinations around the world, including six of New York’s three-star restaurants (Windows on the World, Rainbow Room, Hudson River Club, Aurora, Market Bar & Dining Room, and Cellar in the Sky). Their annual hospitality predictions follow ...

Vegan chicken everywhere ... Ghost kitchens’ runaway population explosion ... Quirky fast-food trends from Asia ... Heritage cooking in the spotlight ... What’s a boozetarian? …Plus 17 buzzwords for the year ahead. Read all about it!

Wishing you a healthy, happy, and delicious New Year.

Collective Wisdom

I remember how delighted I was, many months ago, when Niki Russ Federman asked me to be part of a wonderful new book project, envisioned by the gifted writer, thinker, and design guru Grace Bonney.  That book, Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women over 50, was published by Artisan on November 9, 2021. In this gorgeously produced tome, weighing almost 3-1/2 pounds, are the compelling, real-life stories of more than 100 "trailblazing women" (hence, my delight at being included). Grace is the best-selling author of In the Company of Women which illuminated the tales of over 100 women entrepreneurs who overcame adversity.  In tandem, Collective Wisdom shines a light on the lessons learned from women over 50 shared in multi-generational layers by a vast array of women in multitudinous fields who have broken through impenetrable barriers with courage and conviction.  In an interview conducted by Grace between Niki and me we get to celebrate each other.  Niki, the fourth generation Russ of the iconic appetizing store Russ & Daughters, is among the food world's most interesting visionaries and I get to say: "Niki embodies what it means to be a whole human being who has the capacity to metaphorically nourish the world. All her qualities make that possible; she also gets to preserve the past and create a new future."  From Bobbi Brown to Roxane Gay, from Elizabeth Gilbert to Cecilia Chiang, these women inspire. According to Grace, "Your whole world can change when you change whom you listen to." Maybe "intergenerational" will become the byway to a new world order.  How divine that would be.  

Click here to read the interview.

Spring Lake & Brandywine

Two weeks ago, at the very last minute we cancelled our gorgeously-planned trip to Italy, Florence and northwest Tuscany to be exact. Instead, we landed in Spring Lake, New Jersey, a posh enclave among the Jersey shore’s beaches, the very day we were to have been picked up at the Pisa airport by a man named Luca and whisked to the Hotel Kraft in Firenze, a hotel I stayed in when I was 19. Only blocks from the Ponte Vecchio, with a rooftop restaurant looking onto the Arno River, it was where I first fell in love with the food of Tuscany and the hotel’s handsome assistant manager, Pepe Regoli. And so we pretended.
The memories flooded me as did the torrential rains of Hurricane Henri that would barely escape us as we checked into, alas, not the Hotel Kraft mind you, but into Spring Lake’s pristine Chateau Inn & Suites. Italy would have to wait (for better, post-Covid times). As everyone hunkered down for the impending storm we crazily headed straight to what is considered the most elegant of the Jersey shore towns. Despite the rain and gray skies, the sun found us anyway, long enough to enjoy the beach (and our daily game of scrabble), brunch at Breakers on the Ocean, and a surprisingly very Italian inspired meal, sitting outside under a full moon with pots of blooming hibiscus, a starry night, stone walls, a credible pasta alla vodka, scallops with basil, and a waiter named Tony, at Arugula. Before dinner began, we ran to our car to retrieve one of the wine bottles stored in the trunk – these places are all BYOB, which makes eating incredibly reasonable. A bottle of Sambuca came with the excellent espresso at the end of the night. Earlier that day there were salmon cakes and crab cakes and great clams on the half shell at Spring Lake Café. Was I imagining, but did some of this – deep blue ocean, ancient white sand, long walks, lush greenery, Italianate-villas, and a church fashioned after the Sistine Chapel, feel a bit like…
Next stop: The Inn at Whitewing Farm in the Brandywine Valley, run by the extraordinary owners Lance and Sandy Shortt. For decades we have wanted to visit Longwood Gardens and Winterthur, the magnificent estate of the DuPont family, and the equally impressive Nemours Estate and Gardens owned by another of the DuPont family clan. We first heard about Winterthur, now a museum of American decorative art, from a friend who became a high-end furniture restorer. His adoration of the displays in the 175 rooms of the mansion, viewed by many who took decorative arts and American craftsmanship seriously, was infectious. Due to Covid, however, we were limited to a dozen or so rooms but the visit was well worth it. The grounds are extraordinary, the trees more majestic than most any we’ve seen anywhere, and the adjacent galleries were notable (including a permanent soup tureen exhibit funded by Campbells – but we preferred the simplicity of the tureens we had at home!) The Inn at Whitewing Farm is a gem. There is a beautiful pool, sumptuous home-cooked breakfasts, tennis court, wide expanses of huge, lush greenery, and Adirondack chairs for simply gazing into a gushing geyser in the pond, one that refracts sunlight to allow a rainbow of colors to settle on the water. We stared. We relaxed. We swam and pretended we were in Italy. It wasn’t difficult at all. There were the Italian fountains at Longwood Gardens; outdoor dining behind an old stone barn where we sipped pinot grigio with our burrata and fried green tomatoes, and Montelpuciano with our steamed mussels and semolina bread at The Gables at Chadds Ford.
Before heading off to the wonderful Brandywine River Museum and a tour of N.C. Wyeth’s home and studio, we enjoyed an al fresco breakfast of spinach frittatas, fresh figs and espresso at the Inn. Not quite Italy, but…
Here’s how to do it: Two nights at the Chateau Inn & Suites in Spring Lake (or the Ocean House); dinner at Arugula, breakfast at Breakers on the Ocean, lunch at Spring Lake Café. Two nights at the Inn at Whitewing Farm in West Chester, PA; visits to Longwood Gardens, Winterthur, Nemours Mansion & Gardens, the Brandywine River Museum, dinner at The Gables in Chadds Ford.
But the most unexpected part of this “pretend-Italy” happened today in Northport, Long Island, where we landed at a Tuscan-inspired winery called Del Vino Vineyards, sitting in a vast vine-laden garden, eating truffle ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta, and burrata with arugula, to be washed down by few glasses of a really good super Tuscan red wine ~ “the family’s proprietary blend.” Just didn’t see that coming. Not quite Italy, but…

The flower path at Longwood Gardens

Winterthur Garden, Museum and Library

Tastes of the Month

It’s been a splendid month of tastes, many now taking place beyond the four walls of my own Brooklyn kitchen.  From the summer’s first lobster roll at Captain Scott’s Lobster Dock in New London, Connecticut, to the exquisite cuisine of Persia by way of Brooklyn’s Sofreh; from the gorgeous beet, fennel and goat cheese salad at Trattoria Bianca (in the New Yorker Hotel), to the four-course tasting dinner on the patio at Claro; from a stalwart tuna salad on seeded rye at the New Amity on Madison Avenue, to the fabulous aged burger with bacon jam and taleggio at Tribeca’s Kitchen, many restaurants are humming.  Loudly.   Add to that, the cacaphony at home.  From a bag full of voluptuous heirloom tomatoes from Saturday’s farmer’s market (um, $18 worth), sliced thick and drizzled with my friend’s organic olive oil (by way of Los Olivos, California and her amazing company, Global Gardens), to the always-fun whirl of pesto made entirely from the basil on my windowsill; from roasted cod and buttery corn consumed in our flowering backyard, to the ripe flesh of succulent nectarines (from Coney Island Avenue where good fruit is both a luxury and commodity), our chins have been sticky with the juice of summer.

Tostada de esquites (heirloom corn, bottarga, queso fresco)

But first, Claro.  Located on Third Avenue off Union Street in Brooklyn (an exuberant 15-minute downhill walk from our house), this early-on trendy dining spot, boasting the authentic flavors (and ingredients) from Oaxaca,  both surprised and surpassed a memory of a pre-Covid meal there long ago. First time around, their menu was prickly and oddball, so there was nothing I really cared to eat or drink; except for the freshly-made charcoal blue-gray tortillas, and anything that sounded remotely bug-free. The menu, with its cricket vinaigrette and challenging wine list, had me order, instead, a large glass of tequila (my first) on the rocks (lime wedge on the side).  My husband told me I never stopped talking.  (Wine does not have that affect on me).  Although I love the word “claro” and recently used it in a poem, I never had the urge to return. 

Aguachile (scallops, melon, serrano)

But our friend, the food journalist from Newsday, was eager to try it and we’re so glad we did.  Sitting outside at a wonderful stone bar overlooking a towering kitchen window, we pretended we just landed in Mexico. The food was mostly exceptional (and even worth its $72 prix fixe, four-course meal). In fact, the first courses (we each tried something different) would together have created one of the best meals I’ve had all year: Aguachile (scallops, galia melon, serrano); Tostada de esquites (heirloom corn, bottarga, queso fresco, chintextle); and Tosdada de Tuna (Montauk yellowfin, salsa negra, puffed amaranth) were sensational.  Mole rojo with pork cheeks and pea shoots, and mole negro with pekin duck, potato and spring onion were also excellent and although complex, were a tad sweet.  Full to the brim, after our last bites of churros and arroz con leche, we welcomed the walk (uphill) back home, clutching chocolate bars given to us by Shari, the seriously experienced and brilliant host, who explained the micro-batch collaboration between La Rifa and Claro BK (#elchocolaterifa).  Recommended with a shot of mescal (their list is extensive).

And then there’s Sofreh. One of my very favorite places to dine in New York, with extraordinary tastes that linger still, deserves a blog post of its own. Coming soon.

Reinventing Radical

There I was, giving a cooking demonstration in New York City’s vibrant Union Square Market, when I ran out of food. The line for “free tastes” was growing ominously that sultry summer afternoon. What to do? I begged a farmer for a bushel of overripe heirloom tomatoes and started pureeing the heck out of them in a blender that teetered atop a rickety melon crate. In minutes, the natural pectin bound the tomatoes into a mousse-y froth worthy of a snapshot in Molecular Gastronomy Digest. A touch of fleur de sel made the flavor soar. Everyone wanted a taste of “Pink Tomato Frappe.”

When it comes to cooking, less indeed is more. I have found that three ingredients of uncompromising quality often are all you need to create dishes that taste more delicious than the sum of their parts. Everyone wants recipes that work, but the outcome of cooking depends mightily on the ingredients you choose. Good ingredients are essential to simple cooking because when you cook with just three, there’s nothing masking inferior quality. Three ingredients mean less shopping, less preparation, and less clean-up, too. Keeping it simple means you can intensely focus on your relationship with each ingredient, which in today’s parlance means cooking “mindfully.” Your kitchen becomes a more welcoming place. It’s magical watching a chocolate cake evolve from a trio of eggs, chocolate, and butter; or an entire meal blossom from just twelve ingredients. So commit to buying the freshest vegetables, herbs, and fruits—preferably in season—from a farmer’s market or top-quality supermarket. Although we pretend to escape dependency on the seasonal cycles of nature, we delude ourselves. Raspberries shipped from Chile in sealed gas containers in December, broccoli harvested before a frost, tomatoes plucked green and trucked two thousand miles— all are dilute imitations of the real thing that seduce our appetites but corrupt our tastes. My radically streamlined approach to cooking – the antithesis of “molecular” – exploits the qualities of fresh ingredients with a highly original approach that has unknowingly influenced some of the world’s best chefs. Like the minimalist movement in art, which reacted to the excesses of abstract expressionism, many contemporary chefs are exploring a radicalized mode of cooking. Laurent Gras made headlines at the Waldorf by cooking with only two ingredients. Daniel Boulud, said “Cooking with three ingredients is the way a chef really wants to cook at home.” Boston’s Lydia Shire once said “some of the world’s best dishes have no more than three ingredients.” Charlie Trotter made his opulent scramble with only three ingredients — organic eggs, crème fraiche, and butter. And the late Joel Robuchon not long ago proclaimed, “We’re aiming for simplicity. We’ve moved towards a cuisine where the original flavor of the natural product is a recipe’s most important element.”

But celebrating the inherent qualities of today’s superlative ingredients is by no means new. “Let a cabbage soup be entirely cabbage…and may what I say about soup be a law applied to everything that is eaten,” said Nicholas de Bonnefons, a valet in the court of Louis XIV. Likewise, Curnonsky, known as the prince of gastronomes, surmised that “cuisine is when things taste like themselves.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Pink Tomato Frappe

Nothing expresses the idea of summer better than this one-ingredient recipe. Each pound of tomatoes makes 2 cups of soup. Bonus: After a few minutes, the pectin in the tomatoes firms it up, making a kind of mousse.

3 pounds very ripe red tomatoes
Fleur de sel or Maldon salt

Wash and core the tomatoes. Cut in half through the equator and squeeze out the seeds. Cut half the tomatoes into chunks and put in a blender. Process until completely smooth and foamy. Transfer to a bowl. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes. Add fleur de sel to taste. Sprinkle more on top before serving. Serves 6

Three Hours in Greenport (at Alpina)

Last week I was in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  This week it was Greenport, Long Island -- on the North Fork -- where I dined at Alpina, a wonderful new wine bar, sporting what may be the town’s most ambitious culinary thinking, executed by an equally ambitious and gifted young chef, George Musho. With stints at the four-star Del Posto and three-star Marea, Musho brings intelligent exuberance to the food of Ticino (an Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, where owners Christoph and Robin Mueller are from), which evokes the spirit of the menu.

Spending a few days on the North Fork with our friends, the Adlers, we thought it would be fun to take a 20-minute ride from Mattituck to Greenport. Searingly hot, we opted to sit outside anyway, even though the dark cool look of an alpine ski-chalet beckoned one inside.  But our spacious table with comfortable chairs, under an ample umbrella shielding us from the waning sunlight flickering over the nearby Sound, we didn’t miss a minute of the street life of Greenport, which starts early and feels like the passiagiata one experiences in Italy. We made new friends and bumped into a few old ones – including Josh Tupper from Russ & Daughters, who with his wife and dog, were stealing a few days away, as were we. The lucky dog would later become the recipient of a leftover bone from an enormous and fabulously-cooked wiener schnitzel. Clearly this was the place to be.

Chef George Musho

What we appreciated so much about the schnitzel was, of course, its perfectly crisp and bubbly crust, but also its seductive flavor heightened by a sprightly parsley side-salad that was suggested as a “go-with.”  It was a felicitous pairing, especially when a lemon wedge was squirted about.  And this is precisely what we appreciated about so much of the food – the careful attention to exciting, yet balanced flavors, with acidic verve and yin-and-yang dulcet notes.  Cheese toast raclette blanketed homemade cherry mostarda; a salad of melon, goat cheese and basil (thinned with a bit of whey from the cheese); the best steak tartare I’ve ever had (made from Piedmontese beef) with a welcome dosage of chardonnay vinegar and shards of parmesan cheese.  The chef is best known for his delicate homemade pastas and we were enthralled with the ‘agnolotti, cacao e pepe’ (filled with veal and pork), ‘spicy gricia’ with guanciale, red onion and peperoncino, and were sorry not to have enough room in our bellies for ‘orecchiette with clams and emmental.’ 

It’s an interesting feat to combine casual with sophistication, but nonetheless, here it is, and despite being open only 3-1/2 weeks, the execution of the menu was flawless. Ditto the superb and attentive service by our waiter and highly knowledgeable somm who recommended a Chasselas from the wine list comprised almost exclusively of Italian and Swiss wines. Another feature of the restaurant are wine flights – and one can go just for that a nibble from a menu that features ‘toasts,” “small plates,” and cheese and charcuterie (many choices imported from Switzerland) for sharing.  Or you can opt for a bubbly or fortified wine to have with dessert – bomboloni, an Alpine tort, or excellent gelato.  The chef sent out “pine” gelato for us to try.

Needless to say, there is more to do in Greenport, a historic seaport, than eat.  One can stroll the streets at dusk and peek into delightful clothing shops, enjoy a ride on the antique carousel, take a ferry to Shelter Island, or rent a house for next summer.

Other North Fork attractions: the private beach in Mattituck, Rose Hill Vineyards for lunch (former Shinn Estate), Paumanok Vineyards, pies from Hallock’s Cider Mill, Castello di Borghese Vineyards (for wine tastings and music).

Three Hours In Greenpoint

The sun broke abruptly through an Elsa-whipped sky of rain and clouds and we jumped in the car eager to book a spot at the Faurschou Foundation in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We’d tried to visit the oddly-sited private museum once before, only to find it closed, and feared it could happen again. Located on a sleepy street of warehouses, black glass apartment towers and low-rise homes of red brick or wood, it was indeed open, and we were greeted by a hipster who was both gate-keeper and cheerleader. In less than twenty minutes we were transformed by the exhibit of sculptor Christian Lemmerz.

Clearly we were witnessing the future in the eerie power of five marble human forms chiseled by computer, in the way I imagine one experienced the power (or divinity) in Michelangelo’s “David” ages ago. Whereas the latter embodies the grandiloquence of the human body, Lemmerz subverts the human form into figures that feel at home in “the night of the living dead” and yet possess unimaginable grace and religiosity (although I am certain the German-born artist would scoff at that word). And yet. Lemmerz works in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Pietrasanta (Italy) where we coincidentally are headed this summer. Maybe we’ll run into him at the quarries in Carrara. The Faurschou Foundation, headquartered in Copenhagen and Beijing, was established in 2011 to exhibit important works of contemporary art and foster dialogue between the East and West. It opened in this “becoming” area of Brooklyn in 2019. The museum is free and will, next year, house a restaurant by a well-known Danish chef. Coincidentally, there is a timely article in the New York Times today about technology, robots, and the future of sculpture.

If you’re hungry now, at it’s 5 p.m., head over to Madre’s, around the corner on Franklin Street (and next to the tony Franklin Guesthouse, who knew?). Lurking behind two imposing wooded doors, is a trendy place to dine on croquetas with gruyere, black truffle and vinegar powder, fluke ceviche with coconut leche de tigre, artic char with spring onion dashi, fava beans & wild mushrooms, chicken with papas bravas, spiced jus & salsa verde, accompanied by a great selection of drinks.

The Springs

Or, if you’re ready to party in a huge outdoor patio with pink flamingos, sofas and tents, a food truck, Tivoli lights, and a welcoming GREENPOINT mural, try The Springs “inspired by the retro oasis vibes of Southern California.” You can have a Aperol slushy and a side of guate-yucca fries. Why not.

More our speed (since we are probably decades older than most who hang out here), was shopping at AS Warehouse, a Polish authentic-as-they-come smoked meat-smoked fish herring-kielbasa-fresh sauerkraut-homemade pickle-food emporium. It made us so hungry we shared a stuffed cabbage in the car and bought a mess of sausages, porky and aromatic, strewn with sweetly cooked peppers and onions, atop a mound of fresh-cooked buckwheat groats to take home for dinner. Three hours in Greenpoint.

Faurschou Foundation/ 148 Green Street
Madre /214 Franklin St
The Springs/ 224 Franklin St.
AS Warehouse/276 McGuinness Blvd.

The Search for Red Tahina

Ivory-hued tahina (also spelled tahini) is everywhere. Red tahina is not.

I first encountered the brickish-red tahina in the fascinating cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen, a gift from a Palestinian friend, who referred to it as “the very great Gaza specialty.” In Gaza, where a unique twist of Arab cuisine includes fresh dill and chilies, it is red tahina that lubricates many of their most noteworthy recipes. It’s a key ingredient in the area’s most famous dish – sumagiyya, a stew made with beef or lamb with sumac, chard, chickpeas, dill, and chilies. And it’s an important flavor in salata maliha, which translates as “beautiful salad,” a toss of old bread, tomatoes and cucumbers, and in Gaza-style potato salad, where red tahina is drizzled over boiled and fried potatoes tossed with a garlic and lemon dressing.

With dishes like these to entice me, is it any wonder that on a recent trip to Israel I felt compelled to search for red tahina, determined to carry home this highly valued ingredient found almost exclusively in Gaza. Given the burgeoning fascination in the U.S. with Israel’s Arabic-inflected cuisine, I could taste its destiny in our ever-expanding global pantries. Tahina, made from raw, steamed sesame seeds, is a critical component of hummus, which Americans are consuming in stratospheric quantities, so red tahina, I surmised, was something we should know about.

Try finding it in New York City, where we think we can get anything in the world. You cannot. You’ll even have epic difficulty finding it in Jerusalem. My food-obsessed Israeli friends had never even heard of it.

To acquire red tahina, you must know someone who knows someone. It took an hour of explaining, cajoling, pointing, and sweating through the fragrant, serpentine maze of cubbyhole shops that crowd the Old City’s souk to identify someone who might sell the stuff. Then we got a lead – a friendly spice merchant at a far corner of the marketplace wrote a note in Arabic describing the location of an obscure vendor. There was no GPS for the souk, and we ran past his shadowed stall twice before guessing we were there.

Feeling like Indiana Jones, my comrades and I slipped the note to the proprietor, whereupon he disappeared into the back of his shop and silently rematerialized with a jug that looked as if it might contain a genie – or something more exciting than sesame paste. He gave us several tastes, then poured a lava-like substance into white plastic jars. These would be gifts to friends in Tel Aviv who doubted the stuff’s very existence.

The note looked like this:

More ruddy than red, this tahina is fashioned from pounded and pulverized sesame seeds that have been dry-roasted in small batches over direct fire, then processed into an oozing stream of intriguing, earthy complexity. The roasting imparts red tahina with its deep terracotta color and nutty, caramel flavor, in contrast to the more one dimensional flavor of the familiar cream-colored tahina, or black tahina, made from nigella seeds and known in the Arab world as an aphrodisiac.

Hummus is even more seductive when made with this stuff. (Interestingly, Gaza is also known for its rich red clay, which looks a lot like their brick-red tahina.) But since you won’t find red tahina at your local specialty store, you can approximate its taste --but not its unique color, texture, or its rich history – by using Chinese sesame paste (also made from roasted sesame seeds), or by adding ½ teaspoon of dark Asian sesame oil to the more ubiquitous tahina that appears to be everywhere.

Dinner-on-a-Sheet Pan

As a chef and food-trends pundit, I anticipate emerging trends and occasionally even create them. To name a few -- Little Meals, culinary minimalism (Recipes 1-2-3), Hudson River cuisine, herbs in dessert (Venetian Wine Cake), new Israeli cooking, the doughnut craze and more; I have often been called “too previous.” Now, with a sheet-pan revolution well underway I can, with pleasure, add it to my list.  

I wrote the first story about sheet-pan cooking for Bon Appetit on November 7, 2011 (it appeared in March 2012). Editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport immediately went on the Today Show, and demonstrated the recipes.  The article was called "Dinner on a Sheet Pan” but could easily have been called “cooking in two dimensions” where all the elements of a single dish were cooked together, but separately, on a rimmed baking sheet. And that idea came from a cookbook I wrote for teens called "Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs" where I featured a new-style of chicken parm coated with grated parmesan cheese (instead of breadcrumbs) with roasted grape tomatoes, olive oil and herbs on the opposite side of the pan, all choreographed so that they cooked at proper times and then assembled and stacked before service. The idea was that individual ingredients come together as a beautiful whole once the dish is plated. That was 2009.

And that idea emerged from my collaboration with French chef Gerard Pangaud in our three-star kitchens at restaurant Aurora and the Rainbow Room.  Pangaud, as well other nouvelle cuisine chefs at the time, believed they could pre-plate (but not cook) entire main courses, and pop a dish to order into a hot oven – hoping to speed peak service and produce a nifty entrée.  It didn’t always work well but indirectly led to my sheet-pan discovery – which worked like a charm. Success has many mothers. 

The original recipe ideas for that first article were as follows:

Wasabi salmon with bok choy, red cabbage & shiitakes
Parmesan chicken & roasted apples on cashew “Caesar”      
Herbed pork medallions with “braised” fennel, grape tomatoes & carrots  
Sizzling “steak-style” tofu with string beans, red onion & lime 

And the introduction went like this:  Cooking on a sheet pan is a blast:  A blast in a super-hot oven to exude, concentrate, “braise,” roast, or caramelize ingredients to their most delicious end.  It is also a blast to think about this as a new minimum-effort, low-fuss approach to cooking, with unexpected results.  Using a standard-size rimmed sheet pan one can assemble all the components for a main course, side dish, or even dessert.   The recipes have been devised so that the disparate ingredients cook to maximum perfection.  Not until the entire dish is assembled on the plate will you remark at the professional “finish” of each dish and the multi-layers of flavor within.   

As a bigger idea, I proposed using this new technique for cooking large quantities of spinach (as in sheet-pan spinach, radicchio & thyme, where the leaves are spritzedwith water from a spray bottle), and decided it was a great way to handle lots of mussels. Four pounds of mussels and two cups of dry white wine fit perfectly on a rimmed baking sheet (which later get served with a red curry-garlic broth).  I also deployed the technique, unexpectedly, for a voluptuous dessert called “baked pineapple with wildflower honey & pistachio dust.” Viva la revolution.  A trend was born.

Mid-Year Food Trends 2021

Happy Summer!  It is mid-way to the year-end food trends report joyfully undertaken by our company, Baum + Whiteman -- a restaurant consulting group dedicated to the creation of immersive food and restaurant projects all over the world. We are excited about the most recent good news! Restaurant sales last month beat all records, besting their previous high recorded in January 2020, just before the Covid pandemic exploded.

With summer travel expected to soar, restaurant sales will continue their upward trend – particularly as vaccinated Americans feel safe about returning to indoor dining.  This surge in restaurant spending seems to accompany a down-trend in retail sales.  That’s probably because consumers have used all the money that the government’s been sending out to purchase almost everything they’ve wanted.  So they’re now redirecting those dollars toward pleasurable pursuits.

However, it’s not all roses.  Next time you visit your favorite restaurant, you’re likely to encounter some startling price rises, and there are three reasons for this.  First, restaurateurs need to replenish their cash reserves after losing about $280 billion since the pandemic’s onset.  Second, shortages of practically everything – from paper cups to chicken wings – are triggering higher prices for restaurant supplies.  And, most important of all, there’s an extreme shortage of labor.  This also suggests that along with higher menu prices, you’re likely in many places to endure disjointed service. (The flip side to that is those who are working seem especially kind and grateful.)

Low wages, tough working conditions and this year’s focus on “worker equity” all have prompted about one-third of restaurant employees to move to different industries – or to move from big cities to places where living is easier and cheaper.  And this labor shortage is occurring as thousands of restaurants are reopening, adding to demands for labor while putting upward pressure on simple hamburgers, lofty rib steaks, or decadent desserts. Value meals, in fact, are disappearing at fast food locations. 

No matter.  The big news is that it’s great to have our restaurants back!

Here are five trendlets for the summer:

-- Boozed-up seltzer, with or without added flavorings.  Most contain about 5% alcohol but they vary up to about 12%, which is the same jolt you’d get from a glass of wine.  They’re for people who are drinking “lighter.”  Keto-maniacs like them.  And they offer cheap thrills.

-- Tajin.  The perfect summer spice mix from Mexico.  You can make your own simple version.  Or buy jars that contain ground mild chilies, dehydrated lime and sea salt. Dip the rim of your Bloody Mary glass in the mix, or sprinkle the stuff on scrambled eggs, roast chicken or, as they do on New York City streets, dip slices of mango in it.  

-- Calabrian chilis packed in oil.  During Covid, house-bound consumers began cooking again, and searching for “interesting” ingredients.  This one, driven by social media, is pretty hot but with lots of flavor.  They’ve gone from esoteric to mass-market in no time – from gourmet shop shelves to Trader Joe’s and Target.

--Upmarket “new Chinese American” takeout. We’re thrilled about the recent New York Times article (6/21/21), “More than Just Take Out” by Cathy Erway, featuring our friends at the growing fast-casual chain NICE DAY by Junzi.

--Devoted watching of “High on the Hog” – a Netflix docu-series illuminating how African- American cooking transformed America (based on the book by Dr. Jessica Harris).

--The global tofu market is soaring and will continue until 2027.  

Buzzwords and favorite bites:

Sake on tap (and sake bars); pistachio-filled croissants at Carissa (in East Hampton); salmorejo (a silky gazpacho-like puree, the color of lipstick – my version is made only with bread, olive oil, ripe tomatoes, garlic and a splash of sherry vinegar); vegetarian Reuben sandwiches made with roasted beets, truffle-infused hot sauce (by Truff); sunflower butter; tonburi, and Friendly’s Forbidden Chocolate ice cream (not kidding).

Will Write For Food

Will Write for Food. Was there ever a better book title to pique your curiosity?

Dianne Jacob, journalist, author, and writing coach, said during our recent chat (she in her beautiful home in Oakland Hills, California, and me sitting in a big comfy chair in my Brooklyn dining room), that the original title of her book was “How to Write about Food.” But “Will Write for Food” engages all the senses, going way beyond didactics, almost begging the reader to explore hidden desires and latent hungers – because, after all, who doesn’t want to scribble about edibles?

Lesson #1.  A provocative title is a good start. But it is the subtitle to Jacob’s fourth edition: “Pursue Your Passion and Bring Home the Dough Writing Recipes, Cookbooks, Blogs, and more,” that says it all. 

I wish this book existed in the mid-1970s when I got started in this business – first, as a chef, and then as a food writer.  I’d have had all the tools I needed and the confidence a new writer longs for. Yet, even now (13 cookbooks and 600 articles later), Dianne’s fourth update still reveals professional secrets to me and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Each edition is a sociological map of the culinary landscape harkening back to 2005 when the first “Will Write for Food” was published -- well before the riotous world of blogging began. The second edition published in 2010 was early to food writing’s more entrepreneurial vibe, while the 3rd edition, published in 2015, inched away from gastronomy’s Eurocentric point of view.  Now Jacob’s newest edition embraces roiling diversity and the artful virtue of “voice.” Not necessarily “storytelling,” according to Dianne, but the development of personality on the page. 

What’s most different today, she observes, is that “to be a food writer also means to be a business person.”  So while Jacob stirs in ample amounts of editorial prowess about how to structure a story, do an interview, or invent a good lede, she serves up multitudinous interviews and real-life experiences shared by the food writers who are joyfully, and successfully, singing for their supper. “I love unearthing this information and talking to really smart people about it. I love the learning.  The people who want to write want to learn,” she said.

In this newest edition, Dianne demystifies the process to make it possible for anyone (imagine!) to write about food.  “And,” she says with great earnest, “there is now money in it. A website with ads and high traffic can bring in a six-figure income.”  

“Is anything being lost?” I innocently asked, “in this bulging-influencer-foodie-zeitgeist?” “The writing is suffering,” she replied. “Those who are interested in business are not necessarily focused on the writing.”

Dianne, for whom writing is paramount, comes armed with two degrees in journalism and decades of positions as an editor-in-chief and senior editor at a handful of publications, in addition to being the restaurant reviewer for the San Francisco Weekly (where she misheard   be “edgy” as be “bitchy,” and so a riveting style ensued.)

More riveting still may be Dianne’s childhood table: laden with Bombay-Baghdadi food, Japanese food, Iraqi Jewish food, and Chinese food. Curious? Her parents, Orthodox Iraqi Jews who lived in China, were obsessed with food, and cooking became a metaphor for identity. Her book is dedicated to them: “For my parents who cooked to remember who they were.” I especially loved hearing about a beloved family dish that was prepared for the Sabbath: Hamin, a multi-layered complex recipe of rice-stuffed chicken with more rice and spices and boiled eggs, gets baked overnight, and then served with radishes and green onion.  But that’s another story for another time.

For now, you may enjoy as a special treat, one of Dianne’s personal favorites – about comfort food and memory

https://www.diannej.com/MediaFiles/MumsComfortFood.pdf

or you can simply devour Will Write for Food, 4th edition, 2021.

Radically Simple Recipes: A Surprise Review

Just the other night I came home to an email from a friend/colleague (she's an end-of-life doula and therapist) which stated: "Yesterday we made Almost Confit, the dark and brooding Onion Soup, and Olive Oil Biscuits. Three meals, no waiting. We love the cookbook and wanted you to know.  --Abby"

That cookbook is Radically Simple, named by Cooking Light as one of the 100 most important cookbooks of the last twenty-five years. "Almost Confit" refers to a super-succulent chicken dish that almost makes itself; "dark and brooding" is a reference to my Onion Soup with Apple Cider & Thyme, and the olive oil biscuits are exactly that. They take 2 minutes to prepare and 14 minutes to bake, so you can make them while your soup is simmering.

This morning I decided to look up Radically Simple on Amazon (something I rarely do) and found a wonderful surprise! A book review written on January 1, 2021, more than eleven years after the book was published! What I respected most about this particular review was the reviewer's skepticism: Would the book and the recipes reflect the way we eat now?, she pondered.  I love what followed...

I was recently alerted to this cookbook. It was published in 2010, so I thought it might not reflect the way we eat now, but I was proved wrong. The author, Rozanne Gold was clearly way ahead of her time when she wrote this. The intensity of flavors in the dishes she creates is as fresh and new as any by Melissa Clark or Alison Roman. If you like those two chefs' ways of cooking, you will very likely love Rozanne Gold. The ingredients - primarily, spices like za'atar, sumac, and such - that were probably much more difficult to find when the book was originally published, are largely available in many regular supermarkets now.

The first thing was trying to choose which of the delicious-sounding recipes to make. They are all easy and fairly quick to make, and so far have been crazy delicious. And although this is a general cookbook, I have found that most of the recipes fit well into my grainless lifestyle.

I started with the
~ Reddened Steak with Pimiento Cheese. It was so easy. Both the steak and the pimiento cheese sauce were independently outstanding, but together, they were sublime. I recommended this to a friend who made it over the holidays and received raves from her family.

Next, I made the
~ A Radically Simple Chicken Parmesan. It has no breading and was too easy to be as delicious as it was. It was the best thing I've made on a sheet pan in a while. My husband asked for it again two days after first trying it.
~ The "Little Black Dress" Chocolate Cake was a 4-ingredient, flourless chocolate delight. Super easy yet special enough for New Year's Eve dessert. It was like eating a wedge of chocolate ganache truffles. The suggested fresh raspberry accompaniment was the icing on top... without being icing! As a dessert for company, it will be hard to beat.

I have another chicken dish planned for tonight - one with prosciutto, tomatoes and white wine. And a Pork Loin in Cream with Tomatoes, Sage and Gin for Sunday. Or maybe Lamb Shoulder with Figs, Lemon, and Chartreuse. Or perhaps the Miso Chicken with Fresh Chicken. Are you with me yet? The Seafood Dishes and Salads all look amazing as well. Very highly recommended.

If you don't have the book and want any of the recipes, just let me know (rozannegold@mindspring.com) and I will email them to you. The book is slowly going out of print but will thankfully be republished by Lemur Press. This may be the perfect time for something radically simple in your life. 

Warmest regards, rg.

Hanukkah 1-2-3

In 1999, Gourmet Magazine featured my "1-2-3 Hanukkah" as one of their cover stories.  The Miracles of Hanukkah (as the article was called), not only commemorated the Maccabees' victory in battle but the miracle that happened when the temple was rededicated. Miraculously, barely a day's worth of oil for the menorah lasted for eight.  The story's author, Ann Hodgman, went on to say..."Here in Rozanne Gold's kitchen 2,200 years later, a whole series of smaller  miracles is taking place as she prepares a Hanukkah dinner for family and friends.

Miracle #1: Every offering on the menu has only three ingredients. 
Miracle #2:  Each dish is as intensely flavored, exotic, and elegant as if it had a thousand. 

Miracle #3: Our setting, a perfect jewel box of a Brooklyn brownstone, with treasures everywhere you look and a kitchen masterminded by James Beard." 

I remember the chaos in the house at the time.  My mother had grated a bit of her knuckle along with the par-boiled potatoes, my father had trouble standing for a photo shoot which he claimed felt like eight days itself; the phone was ringing every three seconds, guests were coming in minutes (including food critic Arthur Schwartz) and I was doing my best to keep my composure. It worked.  At one point in the article, Ann wrote "For all her slender elegance, Gold is a woman who knows how to boss food around." This Hanukkah menu featured Seared Smoked Salmon with Cucumber Presse, Rib-eye Roast in the style of Gravlax, The Gold Family Latkes*, Apple-Cranberry Sauce*, Sweet-Garlic Frenched Green Beans and for dessert, Chocolate Mousse Sponge, Baked Sabra Oranges with Orange Sorbet, and Chocolate Sesame Cups.  And yes, every recipe was made with only three ingredients!

Rib-Eye Roast, Gravlax-style

A wonderfully  salty exterior and a hint of dill make this easy-to-prepare roast one of the best we’ve tasted.   The beef is “cured” in a similar way to salmon in preparing traditional gravlax – with a mixture of salt, pepper, sugar and dill (remember salt and pepper “don’t count” as ingredients but rather as staples in Gold’s kitchen.)

3-1/2-pound boneless beef rib-eye roast, rolled ad tied
3 tablespoons sugar
(¼ cup kosher salt)
(1 Teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper)
1 cup finely chopped fresh dill

Pat beef dry with paper towels. Stir together sugar, salt and pepper and rub all over beef. Pat dill over salt mixture and wrap beef tightly in plastic wrap. Put I a small roasting pan and weight with a small baking sheet with a 4-pound weight on top.  Chill beef 18 hours.  Unwrap and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.  Scrape dill and salt mixture from beef.  Roast in middle of the oven for approximately 1-1/4 hours or until a thermometer reaches 130 degrees F for medium-rare.  Let rest 5 minutes before slicing and serving.  Serves 6

Baked Sabra Oranges with Orange Sorbet

Baked oranges:
5 thin-skinned juice oranges
1-1/2 cups sugar
¼ cup Sabra liqueur (chocolate-orange liqueur)

Sorbet:
6 thin-skinned oranges
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons Sabra liqueur

Make baked oranges:  Cover oranges with cold water in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil, then keep at a boil for 20 minutes.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Drain oranges and cover with cold water.  Boil 5 minutes more. Drain and cool 15 minutes. Cut each (with peel) into 8 wedges and arrange, cut side down, in a 13-x-9-inch glass baking dish.  Boil 2 cups water with 1-1/2 cups sugar until sugar is dissolved. Pour syrup over oranges and bake 30 minutes.  Turn oranges and bake 30 minutes longer. Pour liqueur over oranges and cool.  Refrigerate, covered, at least 3 hours. 

Make sorbet:  Grate zest of oranges to get 1 teaspoon.  Cut oranges in half and squeeze to get 2 cups juice.  Boil ½ cup water and ¼ cup sugar in saucepan until sugar is dissolved.  Stir in juice, zest, and liqueur. Chill, covered, until cold.  Freeze in an ice-cream maker.  Serve chilled oranges with syrup and sorbet.  Serves 6 

Little Chocolate-Sesame Cups

These get made tiny paper-lined 1-inch candy cups (they look like tiny muffin tins).  Makes 18.

½ cup dried currants
8 ounces fie-quality semisweet chocolate
3-1/2 tablespoons tahini

Lightly spray 18 (1-inch) candy/petit-four cup lines with cooking spray.Soak currants I 1 cup boiling hot water for 5 minutes.Drai and pat dry with paper towels.Melt chocolate with 3 tablespoon tahini in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of summering water, stirring until smooth, and stir in currants.Spoon chocolate mixture into cup liners and cool 5 minutes.Decorate candies by dipping the dip of a skewer or toothpick into remaining ½ tablespoon tahini, swirling over tops.Chill until set.These keep covered and chilled, 1 week.

Happy Hanukkah!

Books to Love: HUMMUS (Magica, 2019)

It’s been hard to focus.  Yet the spaciousness created during this unprecedented time allows us to control, analyze, and make adjustments to the rhythm and meaning of our days. It took me a week to calm down enough to welcome time for reading.   And what did I read? HUMMUS, written by three colleagues: Dan Alexander, Orly Peli-Bronshtein Ariel Rosenthal. What might have begun as a cookbook project morphed into a triumphant work of non-fiction, with the Biblical chickpea, as its protagonist.  But there are as many important characters in this enormous undertaking as there are characters in a Dostoevsky novel. While HUMMUS may sound like the title of a recipe, here it summons a way of life whose subtitle tells a bigger story: “on the hummus route: a journey between cities, people, and dreams.”  

So here we go!  During this time of isolation and seclusion, we can take our imaginations on a trip and follow the borderless migration of a legume worshipped by cooks and poets alike.  To tell the story of the chickpea is to sing the story of mankind – with all its joys and hardships. From Cairo to Damascus, Gaza, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Acre, and Beirut, the chickpea has no country of its own – the very point the authors long to make.  It makes its home everywhere.  

And so the book opens with an introduction by Dan Alexander…”a Palestinian, a Lebanese, and an Israeli walk into a bar…”  Not a joke exactly, but the first step of the journey that takes the reader back into history, to biblical roots, and agricultural routes (including a recipe that’s 1000 years old) – to the childhood memories of celebrated cooks (Claudia Roden), of superstar chefs (Sami Tamimi, Ariel Rosenthal), and of the men and women in both exotic and humble climes, who unabashedly, and unknowingly, share a common love.  While the authors explore nine locales or “hummus hubs” in the Middle East, there are no doubt hundreds of cities elsewhere in the world that could be added to their colorful, hand-drawn map. But the book is already 400 pages, and thousands of miles, long.

It is truly a cookbook as there are seventy mouthwatering recipes to enjoy (from Egyptian koshary, to Palestinian hummus with hot peppers, to hummus with buttered lamb from Aleppo). But it is also an art book, directed by Dan Alexander, one of the world’s most accomplished graphic designers with gorgeous images and personal stories of more than thirty contributors. Most of all, HUMMUS allows us to become vicarious travelers and inspired cooks, but citizens of a larger community, one chickpea, and one page, at a time.