Gur’s latest cookbook, Jewish Soul Food: from Minsk to Marrakesh, More than 100 Unforgettable Dishes Updated for Today’s Kitchen, has an important Jersey connection.
Nirit Yadin of East Brunswick, a fixture on the Central Jersey food scene, collaborated on the book with Gur, a long-time friend who’s also founder and editor in chief of Israel’s leading food and wine magazine, Al Hashulchan (which Yadin translates as “On the Table”).
Gur’s previous volume was the acclaimed The Book of New Israel Food.
On Wednesday, November 19, the two will appear in conversation at a women’s luncheon at the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum Jewish Community Center in Bridgewater. The following evening, November 20th, Gur will make a solo appearance at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills.
The more than 100 recipes in Jewish Soul Food reflect the exciting new multicultural cuisine that Yadin says “has as a base local Palestinian cuisine mixed with large immigrant groups.”
These groups include the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish traditions that range from North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania to Poland and Russia. Gur rhapsodizes about how they mesh.
“Ashkenazi chopped liver," she writes, "feels right at home next to the smoky flavors of North African Mashawia salad [tomatoes and roasted peppers]. And the lemony Sephardic Apio [celeriac and carrots in lemon sauce] is a lovely garnish for Aleppan meat and herb latkes."
Yadin contributed a recipe to the book: her Ukrainian grandmother’s schmaltz and gribenes (rendered chicken fat and cracklings).
Gur asked Yadin to help with Jewish Soul Food because, Yadin says, “Janna wanted another set of eyes to help translate it from Hebrew to English.” Yadin was raised on an Israeli kibbutz but is a veteran cooking instructor here in the U.S. She says that American readers expect more detailed instructions and that she had to find substitutes for ingredients like sheep fat. In some cases, Yadin tweaked the recipes to be healthier.
The two met 17 years ago. Yadin, a new mother living in Berkeley, California, having attended a cooking school in San Francisco, decided to get into food writing. For many years Yadin wrote the In Season column for Gur’s gastronomic magazine. In a recent article she featured Princeton’s Shibumi Farms mushrooms. In Jewish Soul Food, Gur calls Yadin “one of the most gifted food writers I have ever worked with.”
If Gur is on her way to becoming the Julia Child of Israeli cooking, the James Beard of Israeli cooking just might be Yotam Ottolenghi, even though he lives in London.
Yadin, a freelance culinary marketing and communications professional in Central Jersey, has worked with the Terra Momo Restaurant Group and Cherry Grove Farm. For six years she ran the culinary center at the Whole Foods Market in Princeton. Most recently she organized the Forrestal Village Farmers Market, which just ended its first season.
Yadin says that spending her first 22 years on a kibbutz paved the way for her food career.
“I had no awareness that I was part of a social experiment,” she says. “I really was raised by a village! I ate with 700 people every day, so food has always been about community. And it was also about reconnecting with the land, a back-to-the-land movement.”
To register for the November 19th Bridgewater luncheon and conversation, see ssbjcc.org or call 908-725-6994 x201.
For information on the November 20th event in Short Hills, call Congregation B’nai Jeshurun at 973- 379-1555.