Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

1½ teaspoons table salt or 1 tablespoon kosher salt

  About 4 cups (20 ounces) bread or unbleached all-purpose flour

  Egg wash (1 large egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water)

  1. Dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup water. Stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and let stand until foamy, 5 to 10 minutes. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture, remaining water, remaining sugar, eggs, oil, anise, salt, and 2 cups flour. Gradually add enough of the remaining flour to make a mixture that holds together.

  2. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough until smooth and elastic, 10 to 15 minutes. Place in an oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours.

  3. Punch down the dough, knead briefly, cover, and let rest for about 15 minutes. Divide in half or 26 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball, cover, and let rest for about 10 minutes.

  4. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or grease and flour the sheet. Shape each dough half into a flat 6-inch round or 8-inch-long oval. For the small pieces, shape into balls. Place on the prepared baking sheet, cover, and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1½ hours.

  5. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  6. Brush the loaves or rolls with the egg wash. Bake until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped on the bottom, 30 to 40 minutes for a large loaf or about 20 minutes for rolls. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. Store wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 4 days.

  Bomba

  Bomba is a baked, molded rice cake. It is made with the varieties of rice used in risotto, but is not cooked in the same manner as risotto.

  Origin: Italy

  Other names: bomba al salto, bomba di riso.

  The Arabs introduced rice to Sicily during their control of that island. Later, in the sixteenth century, this grain became widely planted in northern Italy and the people became avid rice consumers. Risotto originated in Lombardy and, by the nineteenth century, had spread throughout Italy, with every northern part of the country developing its own version. Tuscan housewives tended to cook large batches of risotto for the Sabbath and holidays and then used the leftovers to make assorted dishes, most notably the large bomba di riso and stuffed croquettes variously called suppli di riso and arancini di riso (literally "little oranges of rice"). Later, as these dishes gained in popularity, people began making them in their own right, not merely to repurpose leftovers.

  The name bomba derives from the Italian word for swelling, referring to the action of the pancake while frying, the original method of preparation. As the home oven became more prominent in the late nineteenth century, cooks began baking the bomba as a casserole rather than frying it in a skillet. Thus today bomba is typically a molded form of risotto. The same rice mixture can also be used to make the more tedious fried bomba al salto (large rice pancakes) as well as the smaller suppli and arancini. A more elaborate version, con piccione (with pigeon), is made with poultry. Bomba is served as a main course with a vegetable stew or green salad, or as a side.

  Italian Baked Rice Cake (Bomba)

  6 to 8 servings

  [DAIRY]

  5 cups vegetable broth or water (or 4½ cups broth and ½ cup dry white wine)

  2½ cups (16 ounces) risotto rice, such as Arborio, Carnaroli, Vialone, or other short- or medium-grain varieties

  About 2 teaspoons table salt or 4 teaspoons kosher salt

  ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric or saffron threads (optional)

  4 large eggs, slightly beaten

  1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

  2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter

  About ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (optional)

  1 pound (4 cups) mozzarella cheese, shredded, or 12 ounces (3 cups) mozzarella and 12 ounces (1½ cups) ricotta cheese

  1. In a large saucepan, place the broth, rice, salt, and, for a yellow color, turmeric. Cover and bring to a boil, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, without removing the lid, until the rice is tender, about 15 minutes. The cooking time depends on the age and type of rice. Spread over a flat tray and let cool.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 2-quart baking dish or 9-by-2¼-inch ring mold.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the rice, eggs, Parmesan, butter, and, if using, nutmeg. Spread half of the rice mixture into the prepared dish, scatter with the cheese, and top with the remaining rice mixture. Alternately, mix the mozzarella and ricotta into the rice mixture instead of layering it.

  4. Place the dish into a large baking pan and add about 1 inch of boiling water to the pan. Bake until set and golden, about 25 minutes. Run a knife along the inside of the dish to loosen the rice. Place a large serving platter over the top, invert, and remove the dish. Serve warm, if desired, accompanied with a tomato sauce or vegetable stew.

  Bonda

  Bonda is a vegan fritter coated with besan (chickpea flour) and fried.

  Origin: India

  Other names: mysore bonda.

  Snacks are a beloved part of southern Indian culture and among the most popular is the bonda, meaning "naked," which is strange since these vegan fritters from Mysore are actually encased in a crisp shell. Chickpea flour produces a crisp, nongreasy crust that contrasts with the smooth interior. The most popular bonda is made from mashed potatoes (aloo bondas), but others include hard-boiled eggs (mutta bondas), manioc (tapioca bondas), or curd cheese mixed with soaked bread (panir bondas).

  Besides loving the taste of potatoes (aloo), Indians consider them to be an aphrodisiac. There are two predominant types of aloo bondas, of which Cochinis generally prefer the slightly sweet variety made with raisins and coconut, while northerners typically opt for a spicy one (also called batata varda). Westerners generally tone down the chilies. The filling can be solely potatoes or potato with various chopped or mashed vegetables. They are eaten as a snack accompanied with chutneys, or as part of a lunch, and are popular as Hanukkah treats.

  Cochini Potato Fritters (Aloo Bondas)

  about 30 croquettes

  [PAREVE]

  Filling:

  3 pounds (6 large) baking (russet) potatoes, peeled

  2½ teaspoons table salt or 5 teaspoons kosher salt

  2 tablespoons fresh lime or lemon juice

  3 to 6 fresh small green or serrano chilies, minced

  ½ cup minced fresh cilantro

  2 teaspoons ground turmeric

  1 to 2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

  Coating:

  1½ cups (5.25 ounces) chickpea flour (besan) or lentil flour (gram dal)

  1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour (maida), or ½ cup rice flour and 2 tablespoons cornstarch

  1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon ground turmeric, 1 teaspoon garam masala, or ¼ teaspoon asafetida (hing)

  ¼ to 1 teaspoon cayenne

  About ¾ cup water

  Vegetable or peanut oil for deep-frying

  1. To make the filling: Place the peeled potatoes in a bowl of cold water until ready to use. (Do not cut the potatoes as this lets in excess water.) Rinse the potatoes under cold running water. Place in a large pot, add cold water to cover by 1 inch, then add 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a low boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer until fork-tender, about 25 minutes. Drain.

  2. While still warm, run the potatoes through a food mill or ricer. Or return the potatoes to the warm cooking pot and mash with a potato masher, heavy whisk, or pastry blender over medium-low heat. You should have about 6 cups.

  3. Combine the potatoes, lime juice, chilies, cilantro, turmeric, remaining 1½ teaspoons salt, and ginger.

  4. To make the coating: In a large bowl, combine the flours, salt, baking soda, turmeric, and cayenne. Stir in enough of the water to form a medium-thick batter.

  5. In a wok or deep saucepan, heat at least 1 inch oil to 350°F over medium-high heat.

  6. Form the potato filling into 1½-inch balls (the
size of a small lemon). Dip into the coating, letting the excess drip off. In batches, fry the balls, turning, until golden brown, about 2 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Serve hot or at room temperature with a slightly sweet chutney, such as coconut, mint, and tamarind.

  Borani

  Borani is a cold yogurt and vegetable salad and dip.

  Origin: Persia

  Other names: buranee, burani, mast-e esfanaj.

  No Persian dairy meal, including Shavuot, Passover, and Hanukkah, would be considered complete without a borani, a dish quite refreshing in hot weather. The name derives from the first woman to rule Persia thirteen hundred years ago—a queen named Poorandokht (or Pouran), who purportedly had a particular fondness for yogurt. Over the centuries, the pronunciation of pouran evolved into boran/buran. (The suffix i or e means "with".) By the thirteenth century, spinach borani was already recorded in Damascus. Each type of borani consists of a garlic-enhanced yogurt sauce with a single vegetable, including spinach, eggplant, beet, cardoon, celery, and cucumber, with mint as a common flavoring. Borani can be rather plain, with only a hint of garlic, or vibrant with caramelized onions and spices or mint. If the vegetables are chopped coarsely, the borani is served as a salad or side dish; if chopped finely, it becomes a dip for bread.

  Borani is popular in neighboring countries as well, especially Afghanistan and Georgia. It also most certainly inspired the Turkish yogurt-cucumber cacik, called tzatziki by the Greeks, as well as Indian raitas.

  Persian Spinach and Yogurt Salad (Borani Esfanaj)

  about 5 cups/6 to 8 servings

  [DAIRY]

  ¼ cup (½ stick) butter or vegetable oil

  2 large onions, chopped or thinly sliced

  4 to 5 cloves garlic, minced

  2 pounds fresh spinach, destemmed, washed, and chopped; or 20 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

  2 cups strained plain yogurt

  About 1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt

  ¼ to ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint, or 2 tablespoons fresh dill

  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until golden, about 20 minutes. Stir in the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the spinach and sauté until wilted, 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool.

  2. In a medium bowl, combine the yogurt, salt, and pepper. Stir in the spinach. The mixture should be rather thick. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 1 day to let the flavors meld. Serve chilled or at room temperature as an appetizer, side dish, or dip.

  Boreka

  Boreka is a pastry turnover.

  Origin: Turkey

  Other names: Greek: bourekakia, pastelle; Hebrew: borekas; Italian: burriche; Ladino: empanada, empanda; Turkish: boureka, bureka.

  Borekas, along with boyos and bulemas, form the trio of preeminent Ottoman Jewish pastries. Among these Sephardim, borekas have long been a sign of hospitality, comfort, and culinary capability. As with most Jewish foods, borekas are a synthesis of cultures and styles; over the course of history, they have been transformed and transferred, on their way to becoming a ubiquitous treat in modern Israel.

  Turnovers and Filled Pastries. Cooks discovered an efficient and tasty way to use up leftovers or stretch meager resources—wrapping them in dough. 1 Spain—empanada, pastelito; 2 Morocco—breewat; 3 Algeria—bourak; 4 Tunisia—brik; 5 Italy—buricche; 6 Poland—knish; 7 Ukraine—piroshke; 8 Georgia—khachapuri; 9 Greece—boreka, pasteliko; 10 Turkey—börek, boreka, borekita, pogaca, sambusak, samsa; 11 Syria, Lebanon—sambusak; 12 Iraq—burag, sambusak; 13 Persia—sanbusaj; 14 Uzbekistan—bichak, samsa; 15 Afghanistan—sambosa; 16 India—samosa

  When the Turks relocated from central Asia to the area that now bears their name, among the foods they brought with them was a deep-fried filled dumpling, burga. According to some, the name derived from the Turkic bur (to twist). By the fifteenth century, this simple fritter evolved into a myriad of Ottoman filled and layered pastries—baked and fried, large and small, sweet and savory—collectively known as börek or burek. Börek are the cornerstone of Turkish cuisine; the classic pastries are so highly regarded that the head börek baker held one of the most important positions in the Ottoman imperial household. The common denominator among börek is a pastry and filling. Authentic börek are made from yufka, which by the fifteenth century had evolved into a sophisticated, very thin dough; at around the same time, the modern Turkish börek were developing. Due to their numbers and diversity, börek must be identified by cooking style or region. The Turks spread the börek throughout their empire and variations are still found in those areas.

  Among the foods the Sephardim brought with them when they arrived in the realm of the sultan, at the same time börek were developing, were half-moon-shaped turnovers called empanadas, made from an oil pastry and a rudimentary puff pastry. The newcomers, proudly clinging to their traditional foods and language, did not immediately adopt Turkish foods, but by the eighteenth century, Sephardim in Turkey and Greece merged the Iberian empanada with the börek (adding the Spanish feminine ending a) to create one of the favorite Ottoman Jewish pastries, the boreka.

  Many cooks retained a traditional Iberian dough for their homemade borekas, while others opted for the Ottoman yufka. In any case, borekas generally call for a slightly heavier, thicker dough than the Turkish börek. In texture, the boreka is somewhat thicker than both the boyo and the very thin, very crisp bulema. Many Sephardim reserve the term boreka for the empanada-type pastries and called the triangular phyllo-type by the Ladino term ojaldres. Today, however, these terms are frequently used interchangeably, at least by the general public.

  Borekas can be large or small, the fillings either sweet or savory—cheese, eggplant, potato, and spinach have long been the most traditional and more recently mushroom and pizza have become popular. So as not to use a dairy boreka at a meat meal, Jewish cooks developed several means of differentiating among the various fillings, including diverse toppings, such as grated cheese, sesame seeds, and plain; varied shapes; and different border designs.

  Homemade turnovers are rather labor-intensive and, therefore, in most instances in most cultures, were reserved primarily for special occasions or for the very wealthy. Not totally so borekas, which were sometimes eaten throughout the day as well as to celebrate life-cycle events and holidays. In nineteenth-century Turkey and Greece, breakfast often meant a boreka or two with yogurt, while in modern Israel, it is frequently borekas and coffee.

  Turnovers with cheese or cheese and vegetable fillings, sometimes called borekitas, are ubiquitous at desayuno (brunch), Shavuot, and other dairy meals. At Sabbath dinner and other meat meals, the borekas might be meat, fish, or pareve. In Salonika, spinach-filled borekas or the phyllo version, ojaldres, were the traditional Friday night pastry, accompanying the main dish of avicas (bean stew). Pumpkin and winter squash fillings are traditional on Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. Purim pastries contain a nut paste filling, borekas de muez (walnut) or borekas de almendra (almond). So beloved were these pastries that cooks invented a Passover version utilizing soaked matzas. It is not uncommon for hosts to offer several or even five different varieties of borekas at a single meal.

  In modern Israel, borekas (the Ladino plural form is used as singular in Israel) follows only falafel in popularity as a street snack food and rank among the favorite home treats for the Sabbath or a simple weekday nosh. They are also common appetizers at weddings, bar mitzvahs, brits, and almost any buffet. Commercial brands, generally made from puff pastry or phyllo, are found frozen (baked and ready-to-be-baked) in Israeli grocery freezers and fresh in most bakeries. Some locales, such as parts of Tel Aviv, have so many borekas outlets in close proximity, aficionados argue over who bakes the better borekas. Many, of course, insist that honor belongs to borekasim ema (my mother's).

  By the end of the twentieth century, borekas were finally beginning to impact America, influenced by Israeli immig
rants and American visitors to Israel; they have gradually appeared in kosher pizza shops and bakeries, and as frozen imports in Jewish markets.

  (See also Empanada, Pastelito, and Phyllo/Fila)

  Borscht

  Borscht is a soup made with beets. It may be hot or cold and it may contain meat or be vegetarian.

  Origin: Ukraine

  Other names: Polish: barszcz; Russian: borshch; Ukranian: borshch; Yiddish: borsht.

  Northern Poland and the Baltic States are rather far north, lying in a region with long dark winters, a relatively short growing season, and a limited number of (as well as sometimes an aversion to) available vegetables. During the early medieval period, eastern Europeans began making a chunky soup from a wild whitish root related to carrots, called brsh in Old Slavonic and cow parsnip in English. Possibly originating in Lithuania, the soup spread throughout the Slavic regions of Europe to become, along with shchi (cabbage soup), the predominant dish, each area giving the name its local slightly different pronunciation. In May, peasants would pick the tender leaves of the brsh to cook as greens, then gather and store the roots to last as a staple through the fall and winter. Typically, a huge pot of brsh stew was prepared, using whatever meat and bones one could afford and variously adding other root vegetables, beans, cabbage, mushrooms, or whatever was on hand. This fed the family for a week or more and was sporadically refreshed with more of the ingredients or what was found. The root's somewhat acrid flavor hardly made the most flavorsome of soups, even with the addition of meat, but the wild roots were free to foragers; brsh was one of the few vegetables available to peasants during the winter and provided a flavor variation essential to the Slavic culture. The mainstays of the eastern European medieval diet were bland starches—black bread and gruels—and, to provide an essential sensory offset, eastern Europeans would always accompany them with acidic foods, which Ashkenazim called zoyers (sours), notably sauerkraut, pickles, sorrel, rhubarb, sour cream, and brsh. Augmenting the tartness of the cow parsnip, as well as contributing essential nutrition and helping to slightly thicken the broth, peasants commonly topped the soup with tangy sour cream (smetana), which was always added individually at the table to achieve the desired texture and flavor, and never stirred into the pot.