Deeply rooted in ancient rituals, the seasonal rhythms of the land of Israel, and biblical commandments, the Jewish holidays mark a time for Jews around the world to reconnect with their spiritual lives, celebrate their history, and enjoy tasty foods laden with symbolic meaning. With Phyllis and Miriyam Glazer's The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking as your guide, you will gain a rich understanding of the Jewish calendar year and its profound link to the signs of nature and the produce of the earth in each season. This landmark volume addresses a central question often left unanswered: Why do we eat what we eat on these important days? Organized by season, the ten chapters cover the major holidays and feast days of the Jewish year, providing more than two hundred tempting recipes, plus menus and tips for creative and meaningful holiday entertaining. In-depth essays opening each chapter illuminate the origins, traditions, and seasonal and biblical significance of each holiday and its foods, making the book a valuable resource for Jewish festival observance. Inspired recipes add a fresh, contemporary twist as they capture the flavors of the seasonal foods enjoyed by our ancestors. For Passover, prepare such springtime delights as Roasted Salmon with Marinated Fennel and Thyme, alongside Braised "Bitter Herbs" with Pistachios. On Shavuot, characterized by the season's traditional bounty of milk and the wheat harvest, try fresh homemade cheeses; creamy, comforting Blintzes; or luscious Hot and Bubbling Semolina and Sage Gnocchi. At Purim, create a Persian feast fit for a king and learn new ideas for mishloah manot, the traditional gifts of food. The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking offers accessible, healthful, and intensely flavorful recipes with a unique and tangible connection to the rhythms of the Jewish year. The Glazer sisters will deepen your understanding of time-honored traditions as they guide you toward more profound, and delicious, holiday experiences.

How this book began: It began one day when my mother was making Chanukah latkes. I had to stand on tiptoe to see the latkes frying in the oil. What magic to see the batter turn to round, golden-brown pancakes! Could I do it? Could I turn them? I begged my mother and she let me. The wonderment of it still lives. It began at another time when I had to write a story as a child. I wrote about how I loved the Sabbath and our holidays and how sad I was when they were over. The book began when I went to college and studied home economics. Now is the time, I thought, to set down my mother's recipes and my aunt's and some of our neighbors'. My five sisters all wanted copies so that they could really prepare the dishes as Mother made them. The book became a reality when Gertrude Blair said, "Fannie, why don't you do a Jewish Festival Cookbook? You know, of course, how much the traditional dishes are in demand around the holidays." And I said, "Why don't we do it together?" What we have tried to do: In this book we have assembled traditional dishes for the important festival seasons of the year. We have included also a brief word on the history and significance of each festival so that the colorful customs and traditions that have grown up over the years can be seen as a meaningful part of each holiday. Although the book includes recipes from many parts of the world, showing the international character of Jewish dishes, it is not written as a history of Jewish cooking. It is designed to place emphasis on the particular dishes that have a background in the rich customs, legends, and symbols connected with Jewish life. Throughout the book these dishes are placed in their holiday pattern. It is truly a guide in preparing and serving the symbolic and traditional special foods and meals eaten during festival times. We have intentionally taken the Orthodox Jewish observance as our standard, but it is hoped that this book will also be used by Reform and Conservative groups, by non-Jews, by schools, by cooks everywhere.

Jewish holidays are defined by food. Yet Jewish cooking is always changing, encompassing the flavors of the world, embracing local culinary traditions of every place in which Jews have lived and adapting them to Jewish observance. This collection, the culmination of Joan Nathan’s decades of gathering Jewish recipes from around the world, is a tour through the Jewish holidays as told in food. For each holiday, Nathan presents menus from different cuisines—Moroccan, Russian, German, and contemporary American are just a few—that show how the traditions of Jewish food have taken on new forms around the world. There are dishes that you will remember from your mother’s table and dishes that go back to the Second Temple, family recipes that you thought were lost and other families’ recipes that you have yet to discover. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan spices these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who have kept these traditions alive. Try something exotic—Algerian Chicken Tagine with Quinces or Seven-Fruit Haroset from Surinam—or rediscover an American favorite like Pineapple Noodle Kugel or Charlestonian Broth with “Soup Bunch” and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book, which combines and updates Nathan’s classic cookbooks The Jewish Holiday Baker and The Jewish Holiday Kitchen with a new generation of recipes, will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your table on the holidays and throughout the year.

When Iberian Jews were converted to Catholicism under duress during the Inquisition, many struggled to retain their Jewish identity in private while projecting Christian conformity in the public sphere. To root out these heretics, the courts of the Inquisition published checklists of koshering practices and "grilled" the servants, neighbors, and even the children of those suspected of practicing their religion at home. From these testimonies and other primary sources, Gitlitz & Davidson have drawn a fascinating, award-winning picture of this precarious sense of Jewish identity and have re-created these recipes, which combine Christian & Islamic traditions in cooking lamb, beef, fish, eggplant, chickpeas, and greens and use seasonings such as saffron, mace, ginger, and cinnamon. The recipes, and the accompanying stories of the people who created them, promise to delight the adventurous palate and give insights into the foundations of modern Sephardic cuisine.

In 2006, a group of Jewish women began meeting every Monday morning. They cooked, ate, drank endless cups of tea and - often heatedly - discussed the merits of different recipes. After just a few weekly meetings, the Monday Morning Cooking Club was born. Five years and hundreds of dishes later, six members of the sisterhood handpicked their favourite recipes to go into their book - the result is a generous, rich and inspiring cookbook featuring the best, most treasured recipes from a culturally diverse community.

A James Beard Finalist in the International Cookbook Category In Jewish Holiday Cooking, Jayne Cohen shares a wide-ranging collection of traditional Jewish recipes, as well as inventive new creations and contemporary variations on the classic dishes. For home cooks, drawing from the rich traditions of Jewish history when cooking for the holidays can be a daunting task. Jewish Holiday Cooking comes to the rescue with recipes drawn from Jayne Cohen's first book, The Gefilte Variations -- called an "outstanding debut" by Publisher's Weekly -- as well as over 100 new recipes and information on cooking for the holidays. More than just a cookbook, this is the definitive guide to celebrating the Jewish holidays. Cohen provides practical advice and creative suggestions on everything from setting a Seder table with ritual objects to accommodating vegan relatives. The book is organized around the major Jewish holidays and includes nearly 300 recipes and variations, plus suggested menus tailored to each occasion, all conforming to kosher dietary laws. Chapters include all eight of the major Jewish holidays -- Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, and Shavuot -- and the book is enlivened throughout with captivating personal reminiscences and tales from Jewish lore as well as nostalgic black and white photography from Cohen's own family history.

From the award-winning cookbook author and host of the upcoming PBS series "Jewish Cooking in America" comes 250 delicious recipes for main courses, soups, appetizers, breads, and desserts.