Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Lángos also became popular in surrounding areas, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Serbia. Today, fewer people make them at home, but commercial bakeries throughout Hungary specialize in lángos and vendors peddle them on the street.

  Lángos are commonly accented with garlic— drizzled with garlic oil, topped with garlic butter, or rubbed with a cut clove of garlic—and sprinkled with kosher salt. No self-respecting Hungarian would use garlic powder for this. Loaves are also served with sour cream, yogurt, creamy feta cheese, or grated Edam or Gruyère cheese. Lángos, without the garlic, are sometimes used as a dessert—topped with whipped cream or pastry cream and berries or jam, or simply sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar.

  Latke

  Latke, meaning "little oily," is a pancake. The predominate type is made from grated potatoes.

  Origin: Eastern Europe

  "Can you guess, children, which is the best of all holidays? Why Hanukkah, of course. You don't go to school for eight days in a row, you eat latkes every day..." (From "Hanukkah Money," an 1899 short story by Sholem Aleichem.)

  Before there were pans and long before ovens, ancient cooks dropped a little gruel on a hot rock of a campfire, resulting in thin cakes that were tastier than plain gruel or cakes cooked directly in the embers of the fire. From these rudimentary beginnings sprang a vast array of breads and pancakes, but the two were originally the same. After the advent of pottery, flatbreads like the Ethiopian injera and Yemenite lahuh, as well as legume patties, were commonly cooked on terra-cotta griddles and later on metal griddles or skillets. To prevent sticking, these pan breads were often cooked in a thin layer of fat or deep-fried in a lot of fat, producing fritters with added flavor and texture. Over the course of time, people tinkered with the basic concoction, differentiating pancakes from breads and fritters. The ancient Greeks used griddles to cook a flat loaf drizzled with honey called kreion and cakes of soft cheese. The Romans, as revealed in the cookbook by Apicius, made dishes similar to modern pancakes; one recipe directed cooks to blend flour, eggs, and milk and drizzle the cakes with honey and pepper. After the collapse of Rome, however, these lighter pancakes with eggs disappeared from Europe and cooks reverted to plain forms of breads and fritters, typically made from rye or barley.

  In the wake of the First Crusade and the subsequent improvement in Italian cooking due to Arabic influences, Italian cooks once again began to differentiate some of their pan breads by adding eggs and white wine or milk, then frying the loose batter in a thin layer of oil (rather than deep-frying or baking), creating a dish closer to the modern pancake. Medieval pancakes, frequently made from barley or rye and lacking leavening, were relatively heavy affairs. They were quite different from contemporary fluffy or tender versions. Gradually, Italian pancakes spread north through Europe, becoming a beloved treat. The English term pancakes—the dish is also known as griddle cakes, hotcakes, flapjacks, and by numerous other names—denoting thin cakes made from a starchy batter fried in a thin layer of fat, first appeared in England in 1430.

  Latkes derive originally from Italian ricotta pancakes. Being fried and made with dairy made them suitable for Hanukkah. The Germans began using potatoes for pancakes in the late 18th century, after which it evolved into the classic recipe of eastern Europe.

  As with many medieval Ashkenazic foods, pancakes first appeared among Italian Jews, who fried them in olive oil; then the concept spread north, reaching Ashkenazim around the fourteenth century. Pancakes, not yet containing any sugar, were frequently accompanied with honey or fruit preserves. Around the same time that pancakes were experiencing a revival in medieval Europe, two forms of food emerged as traditional Hanukkah fare—fried foods and dairy foods. The first association between Hanukkah and pancakes was by Rabbi Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (c. 1286—1328), who spent his career in Italy. He included pancakes in a list of dishes to serve at an idealized Purim feast, as well as in a poem about Hanukkah. After the Spanish expelled the Jews from Sicily in 1492, the exiles introduced their ricotta cheese pancakes, which were called cassola in Rome, to the Jews of northern Italy. Consequently, cheese pancakes, because they combined the two traditional types of foods—fried and dairy—became a natural Hanukkah dish.

  Yiddish contains numerous words for pancakes, mostly interchangeable, including chremslach, bubeleh (a term of endearment equivalent to "dear/sweetie"), fasputshes, grimsel, placki, pontshkes, razelach, and pfannkuchen. A biblical term for pancakes, as well as the modern Hebrew word, is levivot (possibly from lev, "heart"). But the most prominent Ashkenazic term for pancake is the eastern European latke, derived from the Ukrainian word for pancake and fritter, oladka, by the way of the Greek eladia (little "oilies") ultimately from the Greek elaion (olive oil). Elaia (olive), by way of Latin, is also the source of the English word oil. For most of history—until in the mid-nineteenth century, high-quality milled flour became prevalent, baking powder was invented, and less expensive cooking oils became available—pancakes were a limited, seasonal treat, not an everday food. Since pancakes were still a seasonal food, chremsel and bubeleh were frequently specified to mean matza pancakes, while the word latke became attached to Hanukkah.

  Hanukkah pancakes in southern and central Europe were made from soft cheese and fried in olive oil, butter, or any available and relatively inexpensive oil, such as oil from poppy seeds or, after their arrival from America, pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Sour cream was a popular accompaniment. During the winter months in northeastern Europe, however, soft cheese and butter were luxury items and, at all times, oil was scarce and expensive. The principal fat available for frying was schmaltz, but animal fat was unacceptable for cooking with cheese. Therefore, people began substituting rye batter (roshtshine latkes) and batter made with the recently arrived buckwheat flour (buckwheat reached Europe around the fourteenth century) making pancakes akin to blini (but without the caviar). Turnips and other vegetables were also used to make patties, including the Slavic knysz, which gave rise to the knish. And then the potato arrived.

  Although the potato latke has become the iconic Ashkenazic Hanukkah food, it is actually a relatively new innovation. The Maccabees never saw a potato, much less a potato pancake. When the Spanish first brought the potato to Europe from its native South America, it was considered poisonous and many centuries passed before it gradually gained acceptance as food. The first Europeans to fully embrace the potato were the French in the late eighteenth century, made desperate due to the famine in the wake of the Revolution. The Germans joined the potato bandwagon and by the end of the century they were producing potato flour and a variety of dishes, such as dumplings, salads, soups, and pancakes, variously called kartoffelpfannkuchen ("potato pancakes" in southern Germany), reibekuchen ("grated cakes," made from coarsely grated potatoes and frequently omitting any flour and egg), rievkooche (in the Rhineland), and kartoffelpuffer (in Berlin, made with finely grated potatoes).

  German Jews also began making potato pancakes, although not for Hanukkah per se. Pancakes were made from mashed cooked potatoes, potato flour, or, the most popular form, grated raw potatoes. Since geese were the source of much of the schmaltz in central and western Europe, potato pancakes were generally fried in it and frequently were served with gribenes (cracklings) as an accompaniment to roast goose for Hanukkah. This new positive attitude toward the potato, however, was initially limited to the common folk, as upper-class Germans viewed the potato as "poor person's food." Most Germans opted for the other popular form of pancake, made from wheat flour.

  The potato took longer to gain acceptance in eastern Europe. It was not until a series of crop failures in Ukraine and Poland in 1839 and 1840 that potatoes were planted for the first time in large numbers in that part of the world. Within a short period, potatoes—which can grow in abundance relatively quickly, even in poor soil, and can be stored through the winter—emerged as the staple of the eastern European Jewish diet, providing a cheap way to fill the hungry stomachs of the exploding Jewish population.
Eastern European Jews adopted potato dishes prepared by their coreligionists from Germany, notably kugels, dumplings, and pancakes; they also invented their own dishes, including knishes, kreplach, potatonick (potato bread), and bondes (Lithuanian baked grated potatoes).

  After some initial resistance, the potato pancake gained respectability and took its place in the pantheon of Jewish foods, becoming in eastern Europe the kartofel latke or simply latke. Since potatoes were much cheaper than wheat flour or cheese, potato latkes became the most widespread eastern European Hanukkah pancake. The inevitable scraped knuckles from a metal grater—some cooks still insist that this is the only way to achieve the proper texture—became an all-too-common feature of Hanukkah. Braised brisket supplanted roast goose as the predominant eastern European Hanukkah dish, typically accompanied with potato latkes. Applesauce (epl tzimmes) became the most popular topping, replacing sour cream, which was forbidden with meat dishes.

  The potato pancake came to America in the mid- nineteenth century along with German immigrants; recipes for it are included in both Aunt Babette's (Cincinnati, 1889) and the first edition of The Settlement Cook Book (Milwaukee, 1901), both composed by German Jewish authors. The term latke arrived later, toward the end of the century, with eastern Europeans and was first recorded in America in the December 22, 1916, issue of the weekly publication The Jewish Child. In 1919, Aunt Jemima, which in 1869 was the first national prepackaged pancake mix, began running an advertisement in Yiddish newspapers for "the best flour for latkes." Soon thereafter, Crisco, the vegetable shortening introduced in 1911, advertised itself for frying "Hanukkah latkes." Vegetable oil later became a common frying medium. Sour cream once again became acceptable with a latke.

  In 1927, the latke received wider exposure in America in an article entitled "The Jewish Cuisine" by Nettie Zimmerman in The American Mercury Magazine, published by H. L. Mencken. The article stated, "Similarly, Hanukkah, to the Jewish bocher, meant not only yellow candles in a glistening menorah, but luscious potato latkes—pancakes made of grated, raw potatoes, mixed with flour and shortening and fried in schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). Dozens of these were eaten by after-supper guests who came to participate in the Hanukkah revelry." Beginning in 1931 and continuing through the early 1950s, the radio and, later, television program The Goldbergs introduced mainstream America to the latke, with lines such as, "Vhen de latkes get cold, dey ain't got no taste."

  Although potato latkes remained primarily a Hanukkah treat, they did begin appearing at other times of the year and became a standard in Jewish delis. Latkes, a common subject among Jewish comics and literati, emerged as one of those iconic dishes associated with Judaism. The featured bird of Isaac Bashevis Singer's story set in Brooklyn, "A Parakeet Named Dreidel," had a passion for eating latkes. In a 1996 episode of Seinfeld, in which Kramer runs a Jewish singles night, Kramer tells the caterer, "Ya know these latkes are going like hotcakes." Beginning in 1997, the James Beard House in New York City, the epitome of American gastronomy, conducted an annual Latke Lover's Cook-Off featuring some of America's top chefs.

  In the 1950s, packaged dehydrated potato pancake mix appeared (it was even used by many restaurants and some grandmothers, to replace hand peeling and grating), later followed by commercial frozen latkes. But nothing compares to fresh. As the twentieth century progressed, cooks began using ingredients in latkes unheard of in eastern Europe, such as cauliflower, spinach, and zucchini. Others added unorthodox seasonings, such as Cajun spices and jalapeño chilies. Miniature potato latkes, topped with sour cream and caviar, even became chic fare at cocktail parties.

  Some people continue to prepare the original latke made from cheese, which is soft and creamy, like a New York cheesecake or a blintz without the crepe. Nevertheless, potato—crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, alone or smothered with the contrast of a cool topping—remains the favorite type of Ashkenazic Hanukkah pancake. Some cooks insist on coarsely grated spuds, producing a delicate lattice of crispy, golden brown shreds, while others prefer minced. There are also those who like a combination of the two, yielding a softer, more cakelike latke. Latkes are typically complemented with the characteristic Ashkenazic seasoning, onion. Most latkes also contain eggs and a little matza meal or flour to bind, the amount varying. The secret to making crispy potato latkes without absorbing a lot of fat is to fry the batter in enough hot oil or schmaltz (about ¼ inch), enough so that the latkes glide in the pan.

  (See also Blini, Hanukkah, Pannekoek, Potato, and Sufganiyah)

  Ashkenazic Cheese Pancakes (Kaese Latkes/Levivot Gevinah)

  about twenty-six 3-inch pancakes

  [DAIRY]

  2 cups (16 ounces) farmer cheese, pot cheese, or drained ricotta cheese

  4 large eggs

  About ¾ cup all-purpose flour

  2 tablespoons sugar or honey

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  About ½ teaspoon table salt or 1 teaspoon kosher salt

  Vegetable oil or butter for frying

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the cheese, eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, and salt until well combined.

  2. In a large skillet or griddle, heat a thin layer of oil over medium heat.

  3. In batches, drop the batter by heaping tablespoonfuls and fry until the top is set and the bottom is lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Turn and fry until golden, about 2 minutes. Serve with sour cream, yogurt, maple syrup, jam, cinnamon-sugar, or fresh fruit.

  Lavash

  Lavash is a very thin bread often used as a wrap.

  Origin: Middle East

  Other names: cracker bread, mountain bread; Arabic: khobiz sajj; Farsi: nan-e lavash; Lebanon: markouk; Turkey: lavas.

  After humans discovered bread, which was originally cooked as slender cakes in the embers of campfires, the next phase was baking the batter on heated rocks; then, after the invention of pottery, it was baked on terra-cotta griddles. In order to cook the batter in this manner without burning it, the bread had to be rather thin, as it was in the biblical bread rakik (literally "thin"). With the advent of rudimentary ovens, slightly thicker loaves, known today as pita and flatbread, became possible. Cooks could roll out the same simple yeast dough to various thicknesses to create an array of peasant breads. Unleavened doughs called yufka in Turkish and phyllo in Greek were stretched to extremely thin dimensions that were ideal for pastries but too flimsy for bread.

  Despite their antiquity, leavened loaves similar to those early, very thin, rock-cooked breads are still popular today throughout the Middle East and Caucasus. Lavash became the most well-known term for this bread in America. The thin breads were adopted throughout much of central and western Asia and the name lavash became ubiquitous on Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian tables. Lavash was the bread of the common man, made at home on a sajj, a convex metal oven, or on the interior wall of a vertical clay oven without the need of a professional baker or advanced oven. A Persian way to eat lavash is to crush the crispy loaves, mash them with clarified butter, and form the mixture into small balls to pop in the mouth.

  To keep the bread soft, the loaf is baked only until it begins to color on the bottom, then lightly sprinkled with water, stacked or folded into quarters, and, soon after baking, wrapped in cloth or plastic. If cooked a bit longer and left uncovered, the dough becomes crisp like a cracker. Soft lavash is used to scoop up stews and to enclose a variety of fillings, notably grilled kebabs, kufta, and pieces of cheese. Today, wraps made from lavash, providing an easy way to make handheld meals, are suddenly stylish and can be found in a variety of different restaurants and cafés.

  Leben

  Leben is a coagulated milk product fermented with a different microbial culture than yogurt.

  Origin: Israel

  Other names: zivdah.

  In the beginning of the twentieth century, small Ashkenazic-run dairies in Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire, began producing a variation of a Turkish cultured milk product, which the Israelis called leben
(from the Arabic meaning "white"). Israeli leben is made from partly skimmed pasteurized cow's milk to which a lactate ferment culture is added; the milk in a liquid state is then poured into individual containers and allowed to ferment and thicken, a process that takes four to six hours. Israeli regulations forbid the use of artificial thickeners in leben. A version containing 4.5 percent fat is known as lebenia or eshel. Leben is tarter, thinner, and less smooth than yogurt, and the live cultures are absent. Undisturbed leben is eaten with a spoon, but with a little shaking, it can be drunk from the container like buttermilk.

  The importance of leben to Israelis during the British Mandate and especially during the early years of the new country cannot be overemphasized. Almost every Israeli dairy, large or small, produced a line of leben. At first, it was sold in glass bottles, but the tart fermented milk was soon typically packaged in small transparent plastic containers. During the decade of tzena (austerity) following the founding of the state in 1948, the small containers of leben qualified for the rationing system as "small quantities of milk"; as a result, they became even more indelibly engrained in the Israeli culture. Due to government price setting and subsidies, milk and leben remained rather inexpensive. For many decades, an Israeli breakfast and dinner typically consisted of white bread or rolls, a few simple jellies, Israeli salad, perhaps a bowl of Shalva (slightly sweetened puffed wheat), and any or all of a trio of leben in plain, strawberry, and chocolate flavors. Leben made a refreshing part of a meal or snack.

  In 1977, Strauss—one of Israel's largest dairies— went into partnership with Danone of France to produce a line of yogurt that was creamier and thicker than leben, with more vibrant flavors. By 2002, yogurt sales in Israel surpassed those of leben and continue to expand with each passing year. The flavored leben has disappeared from Israeli stores, while the plain version is now packaged in containers similar to those of yogurt. As a result, Israelis under twenty have never seen the once-ubiquitous strawberry and chocolate leben and generally consider the surviving plain leben to be "old people's" food.