The Gefiltefest Cookbook: Recipes from the World's Best-Loved Jewish Cooks

by Claudia Roden (Foreword)

2015 Gourmand Awards WINNER BEST JEWISH CUISINE


Everyone eats - but in the Jewish community food really matters. Eating is not a casual enjoyment but an expression of culture, history and philosophy. The Jewish communities’ tastes have developed in distinct ways according to family traditions and homeland cultures. To showcase the great variety of cooking styles the Jewish food charity Gefiltefest invited Jewish cookery writers from around the world to contribute their favorite recipes to The Gefiltefest Cookbook. In total, more than 65 internationally-renowned Jewish cooks have contributed to this collection.

Among the many well-known writers are, Nadine Abensur, Ekhlas Ahmed, Ken Albala, Michal Ansky, Tori Avey, Claire Berson, Jayne Cohen, Sibel Cuniman-Pinto, Linda Dangoor, Rachel Davies, Ovi Duri, Poopa Dweck, James and Michael Eder, Florence Fabricant, Sue Fishkoff, Jamie Geller, Tamar Genger, Sharon Glass, Stan Ginsberg, Simi Goldberg, Marcy Goldman, Joyce Goldstein, Todd Gray, Richard Grausman, Gil Hovav, Clarissa Hyman, Judy Jackson, Ruth Joseph, The Jewish Princesses, Faye Levy, Sharon Lurie, Deborah Madison, Gil Marks, Silvia Nacamulli, Helen Nash, Joan Nathan, Russell Norman, Yotam Ottolenghi, Philip Pell, Denise Phillips, Fred Plotkin, Victoria Prever, Rose Prince, Steven Raichlen, Rosalind Rathouse, Claudia Roden, Evelyn Rose, Judi Rose, Alan Rosenthal, Michael Ruhlman, Lady Sacks, Nigel Savage, Michael Shafran, Leah Shapira, Paula Shoyer, Marlena Spieler, Nanny Ten Brink-De Lieme, Eran Tibi, Fabienne Viner-Luzzato, Tina Wasserman, Michael Wex, Paula Wolfert, and Orly Ziv.

Gefiltefest’s founding patron Claudia Roden has written that ‘every recipe tells a story’. No culinary concoction exists in isolation and each has a rich history. For the Jewish community each dish reveals the writer’s roots, global wanderings and also modern practicalities and passions. The book includes a foreword by Ms Roden. The book also features an introduction by Maureen Kendler (with additional research by Claudia Prieto) discussing Jewish cookbooks from the 1840s to the present day.

Sales of the book will support the food charity, which organizes an annual London Jewish Food Festival and other events. Check Gefiltefest's website (www.gefiltefest.org) for more information.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2014

About the author

Claudia Roden was brought up in Cairo. She finished her education in Paris and later studied art in London. Starting as a painter she was drawn to the subject of food partly through a desire to evoke a lost heritage - one of the pleasures of a happy life in Egypt.
With her bestselling classic, A Book of Middle Eastern Food, first published in 1968, Roden revolutionized Western attitudes to the cuisine of the Middle East. Her intensely personal approach and her passionate appreciation of the dishes delighted readers, while she introduced them to a new world of foods, both exotic and wholesome. The book received great critical acclaim.
Mrs Roden continued to write about food with a special interest in the social and historical background of cooking.
Then came the BBC television series, Mediterranean Cookery with Claudia Roden and the accompanying book entitled Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Cookery.
In 1992, she won the Glenfiddich Trophy, the top prize in the Glenfiddich Awards.