European

“I so miss Shabbat meals in France,” a young North African man from Marseille living in Washington told me when we were seated next to each other on a plane. “My mother never makes fewer than ten to fifteen salads.” One of these salads might be a combination of oranges and olives. It is very refreshing, and looks beautiful as one of many Moroccan salads. The black and orange colors remind me of black-eyed Susans. Prepared with argan oil, which comes from argan pits harvested from the argan tree, the salad is balanced with the oranges and grapefruit. These are all 2,000-year-old Moroccan flavors.

This classic french potato salad is very simple. A non-Jewish version might include lardons (a type of bacon) and shallots, but instead I use a tart mayonnaise. For a North African touch, you can add sliced hard-boiled eggs and cured black olives. I often add julienned basil with the parsley, or other compatible herbs.

Little Tunis and the multicultural and bustling Belleville market in Paris are populated with French farmers and merchants from North Africa. In the restaurants and stores bordering the market, you feel as if you are in North Africa, as Tunisians and others congregate at kosher and halal restaurants, bars, and bakeries. You also feel the influence of the Italian tenure in Tunisia: Italian bread, beignets shaped like the Italian manicotti, and canned tuna in olive oil. An everyday snack that Jews and Muslims make from the ingredients found in this market is a large brik filled with parsley, tuna, and a raw egg, then quickly deep-fried and served with a salad called mechouia. The word mechouia, which means “grilled” in Arabic, can be applied to grilling an entire lamb or just the vegetables that go with it. Some sprinkle salt on the grill to keep away the evil eye. The trick to making a good mechouia is grilling more tomatoes than peppers. To retain the flavor of both vegetables, sprinkle them with salt after they are grilled and peeled, and let them drain overnight, to help the water seep out. In the market, Tunisians use corne-de-boeuf peppers, the ones they grew up with in Tunisia, but you can substitute Anaheim peppers, which are very similar, or others.

When we were visiting Galimard, one of the perfume factories in Grasse, our guide was an adorable young French girl with huge hazel eyes named Cyrielle Charpentier. After we finished the tour, learning about the flowers from around Grasse that go into perfumes, Cyrielle let us try some of the essences. Noticing a chai, the Jewish symbol for “life,” on a chain around her neck, we asked her if she was Jewish, and she said that she was. Her father, a Holocaust survivor, and her mother, an Italian Jew who also suffered during the war, lived near Grasse. When I asked her what foods she liked, she immediately named her grandmother’s tchoukchouka, a North African dish with tomatoes, peppers, and sometimes eggplant. The purists’ versions of tchoukchouka, this salade cuite, include lots of garlic and no onions, but I have seen some with onions as well. The beauty of this delicious recipe is that it is prepared in advance and tastes even better the next day, especially helpful for the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays, when cooking is prohibited and there is little time to prepare food—you do not have to fuss with a last-minute salad. It can also be used as a base for an egg or sausage dish, and is great as a sauce over pasta.

When I embark on a cookbook, it’s like going on a scavenger hunt. One clue leads to another. Sometimes they lead to unexpected findings, such as this wonderful cooked salad of Jewish origins. Someone in Washington had told me that Élisabeth Bourgeois, the chef and owner of Le Mas Tourteron, a restaurant just outside of Gordes, in the Lubéron, was Jewish. One Sunday afternoon, a friend and I drove two hours from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence to the charming stone house with old wooden beams and antique furniture that is her restaurant. Although I had no idea what mas tourteron meant, an atmosphere of bonhomie filled this farmhouse (mas) of lovebirds (tourterons) as soon as Élisabeth and her husband greeted us. When I explained my quest to Élisabeth, asking her if she was Jewish, she replied, “Pas du tout” (“Not at all”). I thought our journey would be for naught, but since we arrived at lunchtime, we sat down to eat. And what a meal we had! Our first course was a trio of tiny late-summer vegetables served in individual cups on a long glass platter: a cucumber salad with crème fraîche and lots of chives and mint; a cold zucchini cream soup; and a luscious ratatouille-like tomato salad, the third member of the trio. When I asked Élisabeth for the recipe for this last dish, she said without hesitation, “Ça, c’est la salade juive!” (“That is the Jewish salad!”) She explained that the recipe came from a Moroccan Jewish woman who had worked in her kitchen for about thirty years. Now it is part of her summer cooking repertoire and mine. This recipe calls for coriandre, a word that the French use for both the fresh leaves and the seeds of the coriander or cilantro plant. This dish uses both. I serve it either as a salad or as a cold pasta sauce, and make it during every season, even with canned tomatoes in winter. It is always a hit.

The first time I tasted a simple French lettuce salad of greens tossed in a mustardy vinaigrette, I marveled at how uncomplicated and delicious it was. Presented after the main course, as is traditional in Europe, the lettuce dish cleanses the palate. In France, with its varied climate and wonderful produce, salad greens are in season all year long and have been eaten forever, both cooked and raw. Serve as is, or with chopped fresh basil, cilantro, dill, tarragon, or chives sprinkled on top. Tiny slices of radish are a nice addition and, according to the Talmud, help digest lettuce.

When Dr. Sylviane Lévy (see page 65), a physician in Paris, got married, she had a Passover dilemma. Her husband’s Tunisian family ate m’soki, a verdant soupy ragout with spring vegetables—like artichokes (considered a Jewish vegetable), spinach, and peas—and meat; her family, originally from Toledo, Spain, and later from Tétouan, Morocco, ate a thick meat- and- fava- bean soup. So which did she choose? Instead of picking sides, she serves both at her Seder. Now her grown children associate these soups with the taste of home. M’soki, also called béton armé (reinforced concrete) because of its heartiness, is so popular in France today that Tunisians, Algerians, and anyone who has tasted it now prepares it for Passover, and at special events throughout the year. This very ancient soup, probably dating from the eleventh century, would have included lamb, cinnamon, rose petals, and white or yellow carrots. It would not have included harissa, as peppers were a New World import.

Eveline Weyl remembers growing up in France with a green-wheat soup, served every Friday evening. “We called it gruen kern or soupe au blé vert, and it was made, basically, by simmering onions and carrots and using green wheat to thicken the broth,” she told me. “My mother said it was very healthy for us children.” I asked all over for a recipe for this dish but couldn’t find one. Then, watching a Tunisian videographer from Paris taking photographs of his mother making soup, I realized that the soup Tunisians call shorbat freekeh, made with parched wheat, is nearly the same as the green-wheat soup for which I had been searching. Young green wheat is available at select health-food stores these days, and made into juice. Ferik or freekeh is the parched substitute. I like this soup so much that I often use barley, bulgur, wheat berries, or lentils if I can’t find the green wheat. In fourteenth-century Arles, Jews ate many different kinds of grains and legumes. Chickpeas, which came from the Middle East, and green wheat were probably two of them. The original recipe for this soup called for lamb bones, but I prefer a vegetarian version. The tomato paste is, of course, a late addition.

I love gemarti supp, or selbst gemarti supp, which means “homemade soup” in the local Alsatian dialect. Unbeknownst to most Alsatians, this is an ancient Jewish recipe, as its name reveals. Selbst means “myself ” in German, but gemarti is a Hebrew word meaning “I have completed.” So this delectable mushroom soup thickened with semolina flour is named “I made it myself.” I found this simple recipe at a tiny Jewish museum (Musée Judéo-Alsacien de Bouxwiller) in Alsace. Similar to potage bonne femme, the broth is thickened with a roux made of oil or goose fat and semolina or barley, a common thickening technique brought to the United States and especially to Louisiana by Alsatian immigrants, including many Jews. “We’d take the leeks out of the ground at the end of summer,” recalled Jean Joho, the renowned Alsace- born chef and proprietor of Everest, Brasserie Jo, and Eiffel Tower Restaurant in Chicago. “We would keep them fresh in sand in the root cellar so that we would have them all winter.” In the Middle Ages, people believed that everything that grew in the soil, including mushrooms and truffles, was from the devil. Potatoes at first went into that category, but by the first half of the eighteenth century, potatoes, introduced in about 1673 by Turkish Jews, were well established in France, and this recipe changed. Little by little, gemarti supp, with its marriage of mushrooms and leeks, became almost extinct when the mixture of leek, potatoes, and cream became so popular.

Here is Paul Bocuse’s kosher rendition of his famous soup with black truffles and foie gras. He first created it for a dinner in 1975 at the Élysée Palace (the White House of France) when he received the Légion d’Honneur from President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing for valor on the battlefield during World War II. I have omitted the fresh foie gras, because obtaining it both fresh and kosher is difficult. This soup is refreshingly delicious, one you can prepare ahead that will still make a grand splash at any dinner. Either make one big soup or use eight 8-ounce ramekins, as the recipe indicates.

This Tunisian holiday chicken soup that Yael calls consommé nikitouche is filled with little dumplings that have become so popular in France because of the growing Tunisian population. Nikitouches, similar in size to Israeli couscous, are today prepackaged. When presenting this recipe for her blog, Yael wrote, “It is winter; you are feeling feverish. Nothing replaces the nikitouche soup of our grandmothers.” Here it is. Just remember that you must start the recipe two nights ahead.

Thanks to emigrants from North Africa, Passover is once again being celebrated in the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, which had a flourishing Jewish community until the fourteenth century. Now Jews reunite for the holidays, and at a recent Passover in one house, several couples got together for a traditional meal. Jocelyne Akoun, the hostess of this event, told me about a springtime soup filled with fresh vegetables and fava beans. Because I always have vegetarians at my own Seder, I have taken to making this refreshing and colorful soup as an alternative to my traditional matzo-ball chicken soup. If making the vegetarian version, sauté the onion in the oil in a large soup pot, then add 8 cups water, the bay leaf, cloves, peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon salt, and cook for about an hour. Then put through a sieve and continue as you would with the beef broth. Fresh fava beans are a sign of spring for Moroccan Jews, because the Jews supposedly ate fava beans, poor man’s meat, when they were slaves in Egypt.

Sorrel (Eastern European tchav) has been made a little more soigné in the hands of the French, by adding herbs and cream. Whereas Jews often substituted spinach and rhubarb to achieve the tangy flavor when they couldn’t get sorrel, and ate the soup cold, the French, until recently, ate sorrel soup hot. Austin de Croze, in his 1931 cookbook, What to Eat and Drink in France, thought that sorrel soup had come to France with emigrants from eastern Europe. This particular recipe comes from Gastronomie Juive: Cuisine et Patisserie de Russie, d’Alsace, de Roumanie et d’Orient, by Suzanne Roukhomovsky, a book I found years ago while browsing in the Librairie Gourmande, a cookbook store I love to frequent on the Left Bank of Paris. Published by the distinguished house of Flammarion in 1929, it was the first comprehensive cookbook on the Jews of France. Madame Roukhomovsky, also a novelist and poet, called French Jewish cooking cuisine maternelle. This recipe surely has its roots in her own Russian background. If you can’t find sorrel, substitute 1 pound of spinach or kale with 1/2 cup rhubarb to attain that tart flavor, as Jews from Russia did.

This is a very quick recipe, even quicker today because of Picard Surgelés, the French chain of grocery stores selling superb frozen food products. Although the vegetables are not certified kosher, even the Beth Din of Paris, the religious governance, approves of their use. I tasted this particular soup at a Shabbat dinner at the home of North African–born Sylviane and Gérard Lévy. Gérard, who is a well-known Chinese-antique dealer on Paris’s Left Bank, recited the prayer over the sweet raisin wine sipped on the Sabbath in French homes. Everyone then went into the next room for the ritual hand-washing. When they returned, Gérard said the blessing over the two challahs before enjoying the meat meal, which began with this creamy (but creamless) frozen-pea-and-tarragon soup.

Beets and beet soup are as old as the Talmud, in which the dish is mentioned. Borscht, brought to France most recently by Russian immigrants before World War I, is still very popular served either hot or cold, depending on the season. Although there is a meat version, made with veal bones and thickened with eggs and vinegar, I prefer this lighter, dairy beet soup. The French use a bit more vinegar and less sugar than in American recipes, proportions that allow the beet flavor really to shine through. The soup is traditionally topped with dill or chervil, but I use whatever is growing seasonally in my garden, often fresh mint. The combination of the bright-pink beets, the sour cream or yogurt, and the green herbs makes a stunning dish.

I have always thought that the best part of fish soup is the rouille, a peppery, garlicky sauce that is slathered on toasted rounds of baguette and floated on the surface of the soup. I also like to stir some rouille into the broth. Similar to the Provençal aioli, a garlic-flavored mayonnaise, rouille is flavored with hot pepper and saffron, which give it its signature rust color. (Rouille literally means “rust” in French.) Today I have noticed that North African Jews often spice up their rouille even more, by adding a little harissa (see page 33) to it. Traditionally, a mortar and pestle are used to pound the garlic, pepper, and egg yolk, gradually incorporating the oil to make a mayonnaise. Today it is easy to put everything in a food processor and slowly add the oil, drop by drop. Leftover sauce is good on sandwiches or as a dip.

In the Charming Town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, whose Jewish population of four hundred comes mostly from Morocco, I tasted a delicious fish soup. This particular recipe is one that painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who lived in the town, would have relished.

When I stayed at La Royante, a charming bed-and-breakfast in Aubagne just outside of Marseille, I tasted the delicious homemade jam from the fig, cherry, and apricot trees near the terrace, and enjoyed the olive oil made from the olives in the orchard. I talked with Xenia and Bernard Saltiel, the owners, and learned that Bernard is Jewish and traces his ancestry in France to about the thirteenth century, when his people became tax collectors for the king of France in Perpignan. Then they went to Narbonne, and finally to Montpellier, where a Saltiel helped found the University of Medicine. When the Jews were expelled from France, the Saltiel family moved to Greece, and lived in Crete, Macedonia, and then Thessalonika. Ever since Bernard’s grandfather returned to France in 1892, Saltiels have lived in the Marseille area. Today Bernard is a man of Provence, sniffing vegetables at the local market in Aubagne to make sure they are fresh enough for a good soupe au pistou. This soup originated in nearby Italy, most probably in Genoa. Provençal Jewish versions include a selection of dried beans as well as fresh green, wax, or fava beans, fresh basil, and an especially strong dose of garlic. Make it in the summer with perfectly ripe tomatoes. In the winter, I substitute good canned tomatoes.

It was in Paris in the 1960s that I first tasted buckwheat blini. My friend Nanou took me to a tiny, chic Russian restaurant near the Champs- Élysées. Russians, many of them Jews, came to France at the end of the nineteenth century, not long before the Russian Revolution, and congregated in restaurants like this one. We ordered the elegantly presented blini, and ate them daintily with smoked salmon and crème fraîche. Twenty years after Nanou died, her son Édouard got married. The wedding party took place at Maxim’s, where we drank lots of champagne and danced until the wee hours of the morning. I was touched to taste blini with smoked salmon and crème fraîche, the same appetizer that Édouard’s mother and I had enjoyed so many years ago. For me, it was as though she were present at the wedding. This recipe was adapted from Lynn Visson’s The Russian Heritage Cookbook.

On a late-june evening, I entered a courtyard in the Fifth Arrondissement, right near the picturesque Rue Mouffetard, one of my favorite streets in Paris when I was a student there so many years ago. Beyond the courtyard, I found myself in a large garden in front of an apartment building. After climbing two flights of stairs, I arrived at the home of Irving Petlin, an American artist, and his beautiful wife, Sarah. The two expats have lived here on and off since 1959. Sarah frequents the local markets, going to the Place Monge for her onions and garlic, making sure she visits her potato man from North Africa. Having chosen peonies for the table, she arranged them in a vase next to a big bowl of ripe cherries, making her table, with the Panthéon in the background, as beautiful as a perfectly orchestrated still life. At the meal, I especially liked the soup, which calls for lettuce leaves—a good way, I thought, of using up the tougher outer leaves that most of us discard, but which still have a lot of flavor. The French have a long tradition of herb- and- salad soup, something Americans should be increasingly interested in, given all the new wonderful greens we’re growing in our backyards and finding at farmers’ markets. I often replace the zucchini with eggplant and substitute other herbs that are available in my summer garden. This soup is also delicious served warm in the winter.