Mimi Sheraton travels to Bialystok, Poland to explore the history of bialy. A tribute to the human spirit.

For Jewish deli devotees and DIY food fanatics alike, The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home is a must-have collection of over 100 recipes for creating timeless deli classics, modern twists on old ideas and innovations to shock your Old Country elders. Photographs, historical tidbits, reminiscences, and reference material round out the book, adding lively cultural context. Finally, fifty years after I started eating pastrami sandwiches and knishes at Wilshire’s Deli in Cedarhurst, Long Island, Nick Zukin and Michael C. Zusman have written a cookbook that allows delicatessen enthusiasts to make their favorite deli dishes at home. Making your own knishes? No problem. Rustle up your own pickles? Bring it on. Michael and Nick manage to make deli food simultaneously contemporary and timeless, which is no easy feat. If reading The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home doesn’t make you hungry, you’ve never rhapsodized over a pastrami sandwich or driven a hundred miles for a transcendent plate of latkes. If my grandmother, the greatest Jewish deli–style cook I’ve ever known, were alive she’d be kvelling over this book.” —Ed Levine, founder of Seriouseats.com “Michael and Nick’s handsome book brings some of your favorite deli recipes and memories into your home kitchen. Their pickles, knishes, and pastrami are just like you remember, only better!” —Joan Nathan, author of Jewish Cooking in America “Before you open this book, be sure to crack a window, because your house will soon reek of the glorious funk of delicatessen. The mouthwatering scent of baking bagels, bubbling soups, and steaming pickled meats will conquer every square inch of available air, bathing it all in a rich, delicious patina of schmaltz. Don’t be surprised if a sarcastic waiter named Abe appears in your kitchen. The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home will turn any house into a delicatessen worth its weight in knishes.” —David Sax, author of Save the Deli If you don’t happen to live near one of the new wave of artisan-style Jewish delis that have sprung up around North America over the last few years, not to worry. With this book, the world of Jewish deli, in all its unsubtle splendor—can be yours in the comfort (and privacy) of your own kitchen. And it’s not that hard. Really. On top of all the Jewish deli classics, The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home offers updates and new angles on the oldways that are bound to thrill the palates of a modern generation of eaters focused on quality ingredients and a lighter-handed approach to a traditionally heavy cuisine. The chapters are organized into: Starters and Sides; Soups and Salads; Eggs, Fish, and Dairy; Beef; Bagels, Bialys, and Breads; and Pastries, Desserts, and Drinks. The range of favorite recipes include: Crispy Potato Latkes with Chunky Ginger Applesauce; Summer Chicken Salad with Tomatoes, Cucumber and Cracklings; Wise Sons’ Chocolate Babka French Toast; Home Oven Pastrami; and Celery Soda. Added cultural context comes from quick-hitting interviews with Joan Nathan and other Jewish food luminaries; histories of a few deli stalwarts such as bagels and pastrami; and first-hand reports from within the walls of the authors’ favorite temples of modern Jewish gastronomy located across the country including: Mile End Delicatessen in New York City; Wise Sons Delicatessen in San Francisco; Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen in Portland, OR; Stopsky's Delicatessan in Mercer Island, Washington; and Caplansky's Delicatessen in Toronto.

Bake authentic multiethnic breads from the New York City bakery with a mission, with The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook, Yahoo Food's Cookbook of the Year. At first glance Hot Bread Kitchen may look like many other bakeries. Multigrain sandwich loaves, sourdough batards, baguettes, and Parker House rolls line the glass case up front in the small shop. But so, too, do sweet Mexican conchas, rich m’smen flatbreads, mini bialys sporting a filling of caramelized onion, and chewy Indian naan. In fact, the breads are as diverse as the women who bake them—because the recipes come from their homelands. Hot Bread Kitchen is a bakery that employs and empowers immigrant women, providing them with the skills to succeed in the culinary industry. The tasty corollary of this social enterprise is a line of authentic breads you won’t find anywhere else. Featured in some of New York City’s best restaurants and carried in dozens of retail outlets across the country, these ethnic gems can now be made at home with The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook.

Presents a collection of baked bread recipes; outlines key baking techniques; and offers complementary information on ingredients, equipment, and baking chemistry.

The ultimate gift for the food lover. In the same way that 1,000 Places to See Before You Die reinvented the travel book, 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die is a joyous, informative, dazzling, mouthwatering life list of the world’s best food. The long-awaited new book in the phenomenal 1,000 . . . Before You Die series, it’s the marriage of an irresistible subject with the perfect writer, Mimi Sheraton—award-winning cookbook author, grande dame of food journalism, and former restaurant critic for The New York Times. 1,000 Foods fully delivers on the promise of its title, selecting from the best cuisines around the world (French, Italian, Chinese, of course, but also Senegalese, Lebanese, Mongolian, Peruvian, and many more)—the tastes, ingredients, dishes, and restaurants that every reader should experience and dream about, whether it’s dinner at Chicago’s Alinea or the perfect empanada. In more than 1,000 pages and over 550 full-color photographs, it celebrates haute and snack, comforting and exotic, hyper-local and the universally enjoyed: a Tuscan plate of Fritto Misto. Saffron Buns for breakfast in downtown Stockholm. Bird’s Nest Soup. A frozen Milky Way. Black truffles from Le Périgord. Mimi Sheraton is highly opinionated, and has a gift for supporting her recommendations with smart, sensuous descriptions—you can almost taste what she’s tasted. You’ll want to eat your way through the book (after searching first for what you have already tried, and comparing notes). Then, following the romance, the practical: where to taste the dish or find the ingredient, and where to go for the best recipes, websites included.

In making her new home in Poland in 1989, Applebaum had to cook with ingredients that were local, fresh, and available. She learned how to make food that was, if not exactly traditional, in the Polish spirit. The national rebirth of Poland in the last two decades has meant the rebirth of its cuisine, and the authors have modernized many of its dishes, without losing any of the centuries-old flavors. Collects ninety Polish recipes, including roasted winter vegetables, stewed beef rolls with kasha, pork loin stuffed with prunes, and fruit pierogi.

“Your gift giv­ing prob­lems are now over—just stock up on The 100 Most Jew­ish Foods. . . . The appro­pri­ate gift for any occa­sion.” —Jewish Book Council “[A] love letter—to food, family, faith and identity, and the deliciously tangled way they come together.” —NPR’s The Salt With contributions from Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Maira Kalman, Melissa Clark, and many more! Tablet’s list of the 100 most Jewish foods is not about the most popular Jewish foods, or the tastiest, or even the most enduring. It’s a list of the most significant foods culturally and historically to the Jewish people, explored deeply with essays, recipes, stories, and context. Some of the dishes are no longer cooked at home, and some are not even dishes in the traditional sense (store-bought cereal and Stella D’oro cookies, for example). The entire list is up for debate, which is what makes this book so much fun. Many of the foods are delicious (such as babka and shakshuka). Others make us wonder how they’ve survived as long as they have (such as unhatched chicken eggs and jellied calves’ feet). As expected, many Jewish (and now universal) favorites like matzo balls, pickles, cheesecake, blintzes, and chopped liver make the list. The recipes are global and represent all contingencies of the Jewish experience. Contributors include Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Gail Simmons, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Maira Kalman, Action Bronson, Daphne Merkin, Shalom Auslander, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Phil Rosenthal, among many others. Presented in a gifty package, The 100 Most Jewish Foods is the perfect book to dip into, quote from, cook from, and launch a spirited debate.