Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  When the English colonists arrived in Virginia in 1607 and Massachusetts in 1620, they brought domesticated turkeys with them and were surprised to find the American woods full of wild turkeys—which were smarter, scrawnier, and livelier than the domesticated Mexican ones. Over the centuries, turkeys have been bred from the gaunt, tough forest dwellers into full-breasted birds capable of reaching a massive sixty-five pounds, a size so large that they can no longer procreate naturally, but must be bred through artificial insemination. Selective breeding and more nutritious and purer feed have produced larger birds and shorter growth cycles.

  Until the eighteenth century, there was little discussion in Ashkenazic rabbinic literature about turkey or guinea fowl. Then, after the American turkey had become widespread on Jewish tables across Europe, questions and disagreements broke out over the kosher status of both birds. A kosher home is allowed to use any bird that has a mesorah (oral tradition) without further investigation. Although some of the Jewish communities of northwest Africa maintained a mesorah for the guinea fowl, Ashkenazim had no such tradition and in Europe the guinea fowl was generally considered unkosher. The guinea fowl, like the peafowl, never became widespread in the Ashkenazic parts of Europe and never became fare for the common man, so its kosher status there was a moot point.

  On the contrary, the American turkey relatively quickly spread through much of Europe to all segments of society, and a large majority of common Jews accepted the "Indian" bird as kosher. There were a few European rabbis who forbade both the African and American birds for lack of a mesorah. Some misidentified the American turkey as the guinea fowl. On the other hand, most authorities believed that the turkey was a relative of the chicken from India, a misconception that was widespread well through the end of the nineteenth century. Some associated the American turkey—which was assumed to have come to England by way of India—with red chickens mentioned in the Talmud and, therefore, considered it acceptable. Even among most of those who understood that the turkey was an American native (Americanisha huhn) and had never previously had a mesorah, many rabbis contended that it possessed all the appropriate Talmudic signs of a kosher bird and considered it acceptable with a retroactive mesorah. Some relied on the approval of Sephardim, who were generally more lenient with establishing a new mesorah, while a few contended that it had a valid mesorah among the Jews of India. Consequently, the turkey became accepted as kosher although it did not originally have a mesorah. Turkey has since emerged as an important part of Jewish cookery and has been embraced by every facet of the community. On the other hand, the guinea fowl, which did have a mesorah among some from the Maghreb, is considered questionable or unkosher by most Ashkenazic authorities, and generally not allowed.

  The first American Jewish cookbook, Jewish Cookery (Philadelphia, 1871), mentioned turkey first in its list of poultry, followed by chickens, geese, and ducks. The author's recipes all called for whole turkeys, which were prepared either by roasting or boiling.

  Despite turkey's New World origins, no American country leads the world in turkey consumption. From almost the time of its inception as a modern state, Israel has consumed more turkey per capita than any other nation, far more than Americans. Part of turkey's success in Israel is due to a lack of grazing land for cattle, which creates a need for alternative sources of animal protein. Turkey provided a less expensive alternative to meat and could be transformed into pastrami, packaged coated strips, ground meat, kebabs, schnitzel, and shawarma (in place of lamb). Since the fatty dark meat works best in shawarma, Israelis developed a preference for it, and much of the white meat is typically shipped to Europe. Whole turkeys are rarely cooked in homes or restaurants or even sold commercially in Israel. Instead, turkey is usually found in parts or ground.

  Israeli turkeys, once raised by small farms, now come from large facilities. Established in 1971, Ramit in Hadera is Israel's preeminent force in turkey, producing 80 percent of the breeding stock in the domestic market; it also produces turkeys for parts of Europe and is Israel's largest egg producer. The Israeli turkey industry suffered a blow in 2006, when a bird flu outbreak forced producers to destroy many birds. However, the country's quick reaction to the disease mitigated the potential damage, while demand was met from birds outside the infection radius. The worldwide economic slump of 2009 lessened export demand, flooding the local market with excess white meat. Still, Israel remains passionate about turkey.

  (See also Bird and Schnitzel)

  Turmeric

  Turmeric, a member of the ginger family native to southeastern Asia, is the orange-colored rhizome of a perennial herb. After the plant is harvested in the winter, the rhizome is boiled for up to an hour or steamed, then dried and ground. Today, it is grown in China, Japan, Java, and Haiti, but India remains the world's major producer and user.

  Ground turmeric is a golden powder that imparts a rich saffron-like color, although it lacks saffron's flavor and aroma. There are two main varieties: Alleppey, which has an orange-yellow color, and Madras, which is a bright yellow. Turmeric imparts a slightly bitter, musky flavor to foods. The color and flavor are more intense and pungent when it is sautéed in oil before being added to other ingredients.

  Turmeric is particularly popular in Indian, Persian, Yemenite and Moroccan cuisines. Indians use it in practically every vegetable, legume, and meat dish and it is an essential component of curry powder. Turmeric may be the root mentioned in the Mishnah, zargun (Persian for "gold-colored," the Farsi is zard-chub). By the early medieval period, turmeric was already an essential spice in Persia, where it was common in ash (soups) and khoresht (meat stews). It also tints the Jewish gundi (chickpea and chicken meatballs). The spice was subsequently spread westward by the Arabs, and the name became kurkum in Arabic and Hebrew, a confusion with the ancient word for crocus, karkom, the source of saffron. In Mizrachi and Sephardic communities, turmeric is added to Sabbath stews, soups, poultry, rice, and eggs. In Morocco, it enhances tagines, stews, and salads. Because of its preservative effects, turmeric became common as a pickling spice. In America, turmeric is commonly used to give a yellow color to prepared mustard.

  Turnip

  Among the world's first recorded recipes, all imprinted in cuneiform on a four-thousand-year-old Sumerian tablet, involved the cooking of turnips. The recipe stated, "No meat is needed. Turnips. Boil water. Throw fat in. Add onion, dorsal thorn [an unknown seasoning], coriander, cumin, and kanasu [a legume]. Squeeze leek and garlic and spread juice over dish. Add onion and mint." Since the inscribed recipes were intended for the upper class, turnips were obviously considered a choice food at that time.

  The turnip, a cool-weather crop that is drought tolerant, was one of the earliest cultivated vegetables. This member of the cabbage family has fleshy tuberous taproots with a sharp flavor and coarse texture. The greens, which have a mustardy flavor that intensifies as the leaves grow larger, were also consumed during the autumn and winter and used for animal fodder. The root, which has a white flesh, comes in numerous shapes, sizes, and exterior colors. Fresh young turnips can be eaten raw and are added to salads, while more mature roots must be cooked or pickled.

  Rutabaga, also called yellow turnip and swede, is a round relative of the turnip that was first recorded in 1620. It is probably a hybrid of the turnip and a form of cabbage. It has a tan peel with a violet neck and orange-yellow flesh and contains more vitamins than white turnips.

  Turnips, which thrive in temperate climates, soon spread far and wide from their home in western Asia. Cave paintings in France depict prehistoric man boiling these roots in clay pots, and evidence of turnips has been found in Chinese caves from the same period. Well before Roman times, turnips along with barley served as the staple of the European diet. The Roman author Pliny the Elder noted that "turnip prevents the effects of famine." He also pointed out another attribute—it could be left in the ground until the next harvest.

  The Hebrew word for turnip is lefet, derived from lahfaht (to twist/to turn),
connoting the action of harvesting a root vegetable, which is twisted from the ground. During the Talmudic period, the word lefet, specifically denoting "turnip," was sometimes also used generically to mean "vegetables," since the turnip was then the most common vegetable, while leaftan came to mean "relish."

  As history progressed and more vegetables became available, however, the turnip was generally disdained by the elite and relegated to poor person's food and animal fodder. This attitude is reflected in the Talmudic statement, "Woe to the house where the turnip is common." In the early nineteenth century, the potato, a native of South America, supplanted the turnip, particularly in Europe and America. As a result, few Westerners today are aware of the turnip's true role throughout much of human history. Nevertheless, turnips remain important in much of Asia, where they are made into pickles (turshi) and added to stews. Turnip stews and soups are commonplace in Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India. Shalgham (boiled turnips with date honey) is a popular Iraqi treat and is sold by street vendors.

  (See also Pickle and Turshi)

  Turshi

  Turshi is a vegetable pickled with vinegar and salt, but it also denotes the most common type of Middle Eastern pickle, turnip.

  Origin: Middle East

  Other names: Arabic: mekhelal; Balkans: turshi; Farsi: torshi; Hebrew: chamutzim; Turkish: tursu.

  Pickles were an essential food throughout the ancient Middle East. Since the time of the earliest records on cuneiform tablets, turnips have been the most common pickles in the region. More than twenty-four hundred years ago, the Chinese mastered the technique of lacto-fermentation, in which only salt is used to pickle vegetables. Ancient and early medieval Middle Easterners were unfamiliar with this technique and, consequently, Middle Eastern vegetables were pickled with vinegar and a little salt, which was added to forestall the growth of bacteria. Therefore, turshi (torsh means "sour" in Farsi) tend to be more acidic than Ashkenazic pickles. The variation in which salt is used with little or no vinegar, a practice more common in Turkey than Iran, is known as shoor ("salty" in Farsi).

  The Talmudic term leaftan (relish), derived from the Hebrew word for turnip (lefet), denotes both pickled turnips and pickled vegetables in general. The Talmud teaches, "One is not permitted to recite the blessing [Hamotzi] and break bread before salt or leeftan [relish] is placed before each and every one [of the diners]." In the ancient Middle East, bread was very different from the refined loaves of the modern world—bread was typically coarse and hard, as it was frequently made from barley or emmer that was coarsely ground. Consequently, to make the bread palatable, people ate it with a relish or salt.

  Among Ashkenazim, the cucumber is the most popular type of pickle. The turnip still serves that role in much of the Middle East, where it is called turshi left. The Iraqi cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh (Book of Dishes) by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan Al-Baghdadi, written in 1226 but based on a collection of ninth-century Persian-inspired recipes, included a recipe for turnips pickled in vinegar with honey, saffron, and herbs. The Turks picked up the Farsi term torshi and the pickles and variations of the name spread throughout their Empire; turshi were enjoyed in the Balkans and by Sephardim in the Mediterranean. The term turshi also became common in the region extending east through the Persian sphere of influence, including Afghanistan. In addition to turnips, other common types of turshi include beets, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, green tomatoes, and zucchini. Mixed pickles are turshi khodar.

  Unlike many other prepared foods, which most people now purchase in stores, turshi are still made in a vast number of households and restaurants throughout the Middle East and Balkans. Massive jars of turshi are often seen in the windows and at the counters of restaurants. Vegetables are pickled in large glazed-clay vessels and stored, alongside sharbats (fruit syrups) and date honey, in cool, dark cellars. A few slices of raw beet are typically added to tint the turnips pink, or occasionally turmeric is used for a yellow hue. A dark red color is usually an indication that red food coloring has been added. Many people prefer pickles with a pronounced garlic flavor, but some also like a little heat from small hot red chilies. In Turkey and the Balkans, cooks generally make a mélange of pickled vegetables.

  Pickled turnips, accompanied with ouzo or raki, are a mainstay of a mezze (appetizer assortment); they are also an essential condiment at most meals. A few slices of pickled turnips are frequently added to falafel sandwiches for a little crunch and zing.

  (See also Pickle and Salt)

  Tzimmes

  Tzimmes is a sweetened root vegetable stew that sometimes includes meat.

  Origin: Germany

  Other names: tsimmes.

  Cooking root vegetables, primarily parsnips and turnips, with honey was a common medieval German practice. Cooking meats with vegetables was another venerable medieval practice of central Europe. By the thirteenth century, yellow carrots (originally they were violet) were being planted in France and Germany, but remained a rarity and luxury item through the following century. Around the early fifteenth century, after the flavor of the roots had improved through selection and hybridization over the centuries, cultivation grew widespread and carrots became a significant European food. At this time, the carrot emerged as one of the foremost vegetables in the cookery of central European Jews, a position it would shortly achieve among the Jews of eastern Europe as well. Also at that time, a soon-to-be-widespread honey-sweetened carrot stew emerged among German Jews as a Sabbath side dish. This dish was initially differentiated from the carrot stews of their non-Jewish neighbors by its lengthy cooking time, which allowed it to be served hot on the Sabbath.

  Because of the prohibition of cooking on the Sabbath and the Jewish predilection for hot food on that day, Jews have always had a particular fondness for slow-cooked foods. In addition to mellowing and harmonizing the ingredients, the long, slow cooking time and moist environment break down the connective tissue of tough cuts of meat, transforming them into a tender, flavorful dish. One of the most popular of these dishes among Ashkenazim is tzimmes, a food that was intentionally designed to be heated for a long time for Friday night dinner or even Saturday lunch. The word tzimmes—and a number of its permutations—is probably derived from two Yiddish words, zum (a contraction of the preposition zu and the article dem, meaning "to the") and essen (eat), which were combined to form a word meaning "side dish." Others contend that it is derived from the Middle High German word zuomuose, denoting a side dish, which in essence is the same idea. In any case, the vegetables were sometimes cooked with meat, transforming tzimmes into a more substantial dish.

  As tzimmes spread eastward, it gained even greater popularity, providing a hearty, hot dish to combat the cold weather of northeastern Europe, and emerging as a mainstay of Sabbath cooking and Jewish culture. In a 1970 collection of memoirs about the town of Krynki, Poland, by former residents living "in Israel and the Diaspora," Berl Zakon reminisced about the lifestyle in pre—World War II Krynki:

  "Sabbath morning, coming from praying, the men receive a veritable feast for lunch, which they look forward to the entire week. Here in Krinik the Jews knew nothing about dieting and people ate as an appetizer mashed eggs with onions, radish with chicken fat; after that—fatty meat (people would complain that the fattest meats would be sold to the wealthy, not to the poor) and a cholent with noodle kugel (even with two kugels), tzimmes, and so forth. The Krinik revolutionaries were freethinkers. But as for the resurrection of the dead, they believed a sign, they would say. The men lay down for a nap after such a heavy meal, and later got up and were healthy."

  Sholem Aleichem wrote of a shadchan (marriage broker) who describes how well she was treated at the home of a hopeful bride: "They serve me the best portions of the meat and feed me tzimmes even on weekdays." In another of his tales, a Vilna housewife prepares her yontefdiker tzimmes (holiday tzimmes) in the morning and leaves it to cook in the stove of the shared sukkah in a communal courtyard while she visits an ill sister. By the time she returns before dinn
er, the contents have gradually vanished.

  Tzimmes certainly did not remain limited to carrots and turnips, nor was it restricted only to the Sabbath. Over the centuries, various new ingredients, as well as symbolic touches and meanings, were added. Tzimmes emerged as the prototypical Ashkenazic Rosh Hashanah dish. This holiday's fare was traditionally enhanced with honey to symbolically usher in a sweet year; in addition, the Yiddish word for carrot is mehren, which is similar to the word "multiply/increase," so tzimmes represented good wishes for the new year. Also, the shape of sliced carrots in the tzimmes resembled golden coins, auguring a prosperous year, and various added fruits represented a sweet and fruitful year. During the harvest festival of Sukkot, tzimmes' vegetables and fruits served as apt reminders of the earth's bounty. Vegetarian versions were sometimes served as a side dish at the meal before Yom Kippur, but generally these were made without spices because it was customary to eat bland dishes before the fast. Cooks began making it for Passover as well, as none of its ingredients were prohibited during the holiday. A farfel tzimmes was sometimes served on Shavuot—it was made with pasta nuggets, dried plums, and honey, but no vegetables or meat. Epl tzimmes became an Eastern Yiddish term for applesauce.

  The vegetables in tzimmes are never left whole, but rather cut into chunks or slices. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, inexpensive white potatoes were frequently added as well, as a way of stretching the dish. In America, sweet potatoes, which share many of the carrot's attributes, became a popular ingredient, frequently replacing white potatoes. Ukrainians add chickpeas on Rosh Hashanah, combining two traditional holiday symbols in one dish. Lithuanians, in particular, continued to combine only carrots and turnips, while Romanians and Galitzianers began adding a variety of dried fruits, especially plums (flaumen tzimmes) and dried or fresh apples, for additional sweetness and flavor. In Europe, large dried sour plums, once available at any Jewish appetizing store, were a standard addition, giving the dish a slight sweet-and-sour accent. To replicate this flavor today, many American cooks add some sweet-tart dried apricots with the sweeter American dried plums. Pineapple is another American contribution. Some people cook a kishke (stuffed derma) or helzel (stuffed poultry neck) in the tzimmes along with or in place of the meat, while Lithuanians often simmer knaidlach (dumplings) atop the stew.