Chewish

Winter is definitely in full swing here in NH.  As I sit here on my couch surrounded by books about food, there is a snowstorm blowing around outside.  The weather outside is frightful and our natural tendency is to look for comfort foods to cook and eat.  They will warm us up physically and emotionally. 

Here is a book that reads like the memoir of a food lover, bringing you histories of different kinds of “Jewish” foods and how they became the icons of our collective memory. This is not a cookbook.  It has some recipes, but it is really  more the history of our people through food. 

Sarah Goldberg Wendel writes in her soon to be published book, Chewish: 36 Recipes of Love with Stories from Nama”, “The kitchen is the center of the universe, and the dining room table is the United Nations of world order where the world’s problems can be solved, I am certain, over a nice bowl of matzo ball soup.”  Her book is a mix of personal stories of growing up in the Midwest with a grandmother who cooked Jewish comfort foods, that now Wendel remembers fondly and recipes she tries to replicate in her own kitchen.  She is trying to share the foods and culture of her Jewish childhood with her children.  She is not following any rules of kashrut and her recipes are mainly from the memory of cooking with her grandmother.  There are also recipes and stories from other friends of her grandmothers, who were also transplanted from a more religious and culturally Jewish environment to the less observant world of Middle America.