French

This delicious cauliflower dish comes from Michelle Cahen Bamberger, whose family had lived in Lorraine since “forever,” as she told me, until World War II brought her to the south of France, where she was forced into hiding. Madame Bamberger says that she feels and cooks French. And she feels French first and Jewish second, despite all that she went through during the war. “One day, I was going home with a bottle of wine under my arm to the place we were hiding in Lyon during the war,” she told me in the parlor of the apartment in Toulon where she and her husband now live. “I saw the Gestapo coming, so, instead of going into the house, I kept walking and saved myself. When we were in hiding, our life wasn’t bad compared with others. Because my parents were in the clothing industry, we traded fabric for butter and rabbits. I remember one day we received a lamb roast. That was really something.” Her cauliflower dish, with its crunchy golden exterior, is similar to ones I have tasted in Israel and elsewhere.

When I was visiting the Luberon, we wound our way up to the top of the hillop village of Bonnieux and stopped at the Musée de la Boulangerie. There, in an ancient house, the history of bread and baking is traced. Among the ancient pots and pans were shallow unglazed earthenware bowls called at the museum “tians,” which were and are used much like Dutch ovens for cooking vegetables in the embers of a fire. In the south of France, there are many recipes for tians, layered casseroles of vegetables sometimes mixed with eggs and sometimes with rice and served in the Jewish way as a main course for a dairy meal. In this recipe, a nice substitute for the spinach would be Swiss chard, also a vegetable used since antiquity.

Like many French Jews today, Jocelyne Akoun (see page 28) is a cultural amalgam. She grew up in a Turkish-Spanish family that lived in Algeria for many years before immigrating to Marseille. This dish could as easily be Provençal as Algerian, the tomatoes having been added when they came to the Old World with the discovery of the Americas.

Eggplant came to Europe from India sometime around the eighth century, possibly with seeds carried by Jewish merchants. Often called the Jew’s apple, the eggplant has played an important role in Jewish cooking since early times. The old recipes found in the Vaucluse, such as the Ladino almodrote de berenjenas, are present today throughout the Sephardic world in the Mediterranean. Although the eggplant is sometimes sautéed in this dish, I prefer roasting it over a fire to bring out the smoky flavor, and then chopping it into chunks with two knives, a technique I learned from Sephardic French cooks. You can also roast the eggplant in an oven then pulse it in the food processor. With the increasing number of vegetarians even in France, this dish is becoming very popular, “modernized” with pesto, crème fraîche, or anchovies, or covered with tomato sauce. A purist, I like to serve it the old way—simply, with a salad.

Gerard Monteux, who is a descendant of the Juifs du Pape, told me that this was a very famous dish from Carpentras, eaten at Purim. (It is also a Lenten dish.) In this town, which had an oven in the Jewish quarter, cooks prepared the dish at home, putting it in an earthenware tian. They then brought it to the public oven and baked it, fetching it when it was done. Our modern-day casserole dishes have evolved from this tradition.

The secret of Hélène’s ratatouille is to cook the vegetables separately in the oven, intensifying their individual flavors. This may seem like using a lot of pans, but it is mostly waiting time. She assured me, “You can just let vegetables cook themselves and gently stir them all together.” The word “ratatouille” is related to the word touiller and the Latin tudiculare, meaning “to stir,” “crush,” or “toss.” After being cooked, the vegetables were originally assembled in a rectangular earthenware tian casserole, then gratinéed, and served hot or cold on the Sabbath. Now the cooked eggplant, pepper, zucchini, and tomato may be served together, or separately as individual salads. Ratatouille is similar to the Middle Eastern and North African dish tchoukchouka (see page 94), meaning “to shake up,” in both Hebrew and Arabic, and to other very old Mediterranean dishes of zucchini and eggplant. Hélène seasons her version with a hot but not fiery Basque pepper called piment d’Espelette, from Espelette, a town near her native Toulouse. If you don’t have piment d’Espelette, you can use hot paprika or New Mexico red chili powder.

Nothing tastes so good to me as the intense flavor of a fresh tomato, picked at the height of summer, cooked down and seasoned with fresh parsley, garlic, and olive oil. This recipe exemplifies southern-French vegetable cooking at its best. I have served these tomatoes as an accompaniment to roast lamb (see page 234) or, in the summer, as a scrumptious first course. They are also great with lox, bagels, and cream cheese to break the fast of Yom Kippur.

This risotto recipe from Natan Holchaker, a retired dentist and food hobbyist in Bordeaux, includes smoked goose breast. If you cannot find a kosher version, substitute smoked turkey breast.

When Violette Corcos Abulafia Tapieri Budestchu makes this spice-scented lentil dish, its subtle flavors bring back memories of the Morocco of her childhood. Now, when her grandchildren or great-grandchildren prepare it, it smells like afternoons and evenings they spent when they were growing up, visiting her in her apartments in Jerusalem or near Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. Born in Mogador, Madame “Granny” Budestchu, a fabulous cook, is descended from Kabbalists, prominent merchants, and royal counselors to the sultans and kings of Morocco. Her recipes, traveling from country to country, like the path of the Jews, can be traced back at least to twelfth-century Spain. When she makes this dish, she grinds each spice separately with the mortar and pestle that she brought with her to Paris in the 1940s, enlivening the spices with the fresh tastes of mint and cilantro leaves.

This old Alsatian dish of rice and fruit sautéed in veal fat is typical of so many simple, seasonal recipes. It is adapted from La Cuisine Juive en Alsace by Freddy Raphaël. The dried fruit, mixed with an onion and sautéed in a little veal fat with prunes and raisins, transforms the rice into a magnificent dish. I have substituted vegetable oil for the suggested veal fat, and I usually serve this rice dish alongside a meat dish.

If Jewish-Arab relations are better in Marseille than in any other city in France, it is in part due to people like Martine Yana. A Moroccan-born Jewish sociologist married to a Tunisian, she is the head of the Centre Culturel Juif (Jewish Cultural Center), near the Grande Synagogue in downtown Marseille. When La Radio de la Communauté Juive (Radio of the Jewish Community) went on the air in 1981, Martine hosted a weekly talk show in which she invited Jews to chat about their culinary customs. “We followed people’s holiday traditions in Tétouan, Salonika, Turkey, and Marseille,” she told me in her office. “And we got their stories.” This was the period when people were beginning to open up about their experiences in World War II and their Jewishness in general. Like many other French people, Martine thinks philosophically about food. She asks the guests on her programs why they eat certain foods and about the symbolism surrounding them. “I was surprised that so many people didn’t see the greater meaning in what they were doing,” she told me. As head of the cultural center, she has taken it upon herself to present Jewish traditions in France proudly to the outside world. When the mayor of the city of Marseille chose to feature the country of Algeria at a city exhibition, for example, she made sure that there was a Jewish presence and set up a pavilion featuring traditional handmade costumes and cuisine. Last year, during the annual Ramadan festival in Marseille, she suggested to the head of the Arab Cultural Center that there be a Jewish booth. He agreed, and her team of assistants joined her in organizing Hanukkah games for the children and distributing pamphlets on Jewish religion and customs. To their surprise, the curiosity about Judaism made the booth a huge success. Clearly, the time was right. In her cookbook, Trésors de la Table Juive, Martine gathers stories and recipes that cover the breadth of Judaism in France. She includes dishes like this old Provençal spinach-and-herb omelet. The omelet, often served cold, is similar to the North African omelets called m’hemmer, flavored sometimes with chicken and calves’ brains, sometimes with vegetables. Today they are mostly eaten cut into small squares as an hors d’oeuvre on special occasions, such as weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. I love this rendition, with its bright-green color, served hot or cold as an appetizer, or as a main dish for brunch. Use the recipe as a guide, and vary the greens and herbs seasonally, according to your whim.

Agar Lippmann, age eighty-two, is a living encyclopedia of Alsatian Jewish food. Born Agar Lippmann in a little town near Colmar, and raised in Bollwiller, she married another Lippmann (no kin) and moved to Lyon during World War II. When her son Henri opened a kosher catering company there almost thirty years ago, she started out helping in the kitchen, and has been helping him ever since. Now, using local chefs—some Jewish and some not—the two cater kosher events all over Lyon and as far away as Besançon, bringing their kosher pots and pans and sometimes portable ovens. For Passover they take over a hotel in nearby Aix-les-Bains, where French Jews can have their Seder while enjoying the baths. Today most of the Lippmanns’ cooking is North African and modern French. Only for the holidays do they make traditional Alsatian and Ashkenazic food for their clients. “At holidays, people come back to their roots,” she told me in her catering office, just steps away from the Grande Synagogue. Recipes like this savory matzo kugel predate noodle kugels in general, and certainly the noodle kugels we eat in America today. Although the original recipe called for veal fat, I substitute melted butter or vegetable oil.

People often ask me what kind of latkes were eaten before potatoes came to the Old World from the New. This onion pancake gives us a taste of that past. Buckwheat, called farine aux Sarrazins or blé noir in French, is used for this recipe. Although rendered goose fat was traditionally the oil used in Alsace and elsewhere in Europe, oils made from safflower, walnuts, and other nuts and seeds were also used, probably pressed by the farmers who brought them to markets where they were sold. The recipe, although attributed as Alsatian in one cookbook, is clearly from eastern Europe, as the word “gretchenes” means buckwheat in Polish.

These days, there are all sorts of packaged Passover cereals and baked goods, even in France. But every Jewish family has a Passover breakfast dish to break the monotony of matzo and butter. I like this typically French omelet, served as is or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

When I ate lunch at the elaborate Hôtel Daniel, located between the Champs-Élysées and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, I felt as though I were transported to a salon in Proust’s Paris. I met the young chef, Denis Fetisson, who brought out an array of dishes. Among them was this wonderful Roquefort soufflé, which Denis serves to vegetarians and to his kosher clientele. It is easy and elegant and makes a wonderful meal when served with a large salad.

“I was lucky during the war,” Albert Jacobs, a tiny man whose personality belied his stature, told me at his home in Ingwiller. “When war broke out, I was eighteen years old and was mobilized into the French army. I left Ingwiller with my knapsack on my back, marching in the middle of the road. My beret and wooden shoes gave me the air of youth.” Instead of taking the train he was supposed to take, he and his comrades had a picnic and took the following one. As luck would have it, the Germans bombed the first train. Later, when it got dangerous for the Jews in the army, Monsieur Jacobs had to go into hiding. “Here too I was lucky,” he told me. “An old grandmother who owned eight farms let me stay with her. She never told anybody that I was there.” Until he was almost ninety, Monsieur Jacobs dressed up three days a week, drove his car slowly into town, and ate lunch at the Cheval Blanc, where he also often dined with the local priest. “Everybody knows that I don’t eat pork,” he told me shortly before his death. When I asked him why he didn’t move to a larger city, like Strasbourg, his response was quick: “Here I am someone, and there I would be just an old Jew.” At Monsieur Jacobs’s home, a virtual museum of Alsatian Jewish history, the jewels were the old cookbooks in the attic and basement libraries. The books contained some handwritten recipes and were those of his late wife. “Books were her life,” he said. She collected all the old recipes from her mother, who lived with them until she died at ninety-five. When I looked through her handwritten book, I saw recipes like grimserle, which I know as krimsel or chremslach, a Passover fritter with nuts and raisins (which I wrote about in Jewish Cooking in America), schaleth (see page 251), cou d’oie farci (stuffed goose neck), gemarti supp (see page 76), and this grumbeerekugel, a potato kugel with onions, eggs, and soaked bread—all humble dishes of country Jews who used the food that was available. In the old days, they cooked with goose, chicken, or veal fat. In the recipe that follows, I have substituted vegetable oil or butter for those not serving a meat meal, and I often mix the potatoes with celeriac and sometimes cooked peas or green beans. By microwaving the grated potatoes for a minute, I cut down the cooking time from 2 1/2 hours to 45 minutes. This kugel is crisp and very delicious.

When the French make noodle kugel, it is more delicate and savory than the rich, creamy confections that Americans know. This nudel schaleth or pudding is derived from the Sabbath pudding baked in the oven overnight. Here is where linguistic immigration gets all mixed up—some call it noodle schaleth, others noodle kugel.

Bosc pears and Italian blue plums (dried for use in the winter) are fruits that were most often put into kugel. This very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel uses leftover bread that is soaked in water, squeezed to remove any excess moisture, and then mixed with the dried or fresh fruit and left to stew in the oven overnight. Some, like this version, include onions, which add a savory dimension to the sweetness of the fruit and the dough. I love this dish, which I serve in my home for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath as a side dish with brisket.

If anything is typical of Alsace, it is tarte flambée, a pizzalike flat bread covered with runny white and tangy cheese (a thin mixture of farmer’s cheese, crème fraîche, heavy cream, and fromage blanc or Gruyère, depending on your preference) and a sprinkling of diced onions and lardons. Dating back hundreds of years, tarte flambée is served everywhere in Alsace, with connoisseurs arguing about their favorite versions. In the old days, the farmers would take leftover bread dough, roll it out paperthin, spread some heavy cream mixed with egg over it, scatter some lardons or ham and onions on top, put it in a hot, wood-burning oven, and—voilà!—dinner was ready. The tradition still stands today, and tarte flambée is particularly enjoyed accompanied by a green salad as a simple Sunday night dinner. At the end of a late Sunday afternoon in April, I was driving Yves Alexandre, a traveling salesman who loves to cook, near fields resplendent with signs of spring—white asparagus and rhubarb, and yellow rapeseed flowers (more commonly known in the United States as the flowers that produce canola). We stopped at Le Marronnier, a charming winstub in Stutzheim, a little town about ten miles from Strasbourg. It was here that I tasted my first tarte flambée. Most of the patrons were seated at outdoor tables in the cobblestoned courtyard with wisteria climbing over the brick walls. A marronnier, a sprawling chestnut tree, stood smack in the center of the patio. “You have to eat the tart hot,” Yves told me as tarts were being rushed to tables near us. The two Mauritian tarte-flambée bakers make a few hundred every Sunday, with a topping of farmer’s cheese and crème fraîche. This Jewish version, with leftover challah dough as a base, of course omits the ham or bacon. At Passover, Yves told me, some Alsatian Jews use matzo for their Sunday night tarte flambée.

Harissa is available supermarkets all over the country, or you can make your own (see page 33).