Medieval Jewish Banquet in Italy

Honey-nut sweets served on bay leaves. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

Biancomangiare, lentil soup, twice-roasted goose with garlic, sweet and sour baked onion salad, Ippocrasso (spiced white wine), honey-nut sweets.

These were the dishes served at a Medieval Jewish banquet that recreated a meal that Jews in Italy might have eaten in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The event took place in Bevagna, a stunningly beautiful town in Italy's Umbria region -- whose historic center looks much the same as it did way back then.

Entering Bevagna. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The dinner, in a so-called Medieval Tavern in the heart of the town, capped a little academic conference on medieval Jewish life in Bevagna. I wrote about the dinner for JTA, in an article that also included the recipes for the dishes we ate. The first course was Biancomangiare, a puree made from chicken breast, almonds, rice flour, rose water and spices.

It was followed by a spicy lentil soup and then the main course: heaping platters of crisp, twice-roasted goose with garlic served with a warm salad of baked onions in sweet and sour sauce. The meal was rounded out by a form of spiced white wine called ippocrasso and honey-nut sweets served on fresh bay leaves. 

"We love medieval cooking," said Alfredo Properzi, one of the dinner organizers. Properzi, a local doctor, belongs to a civic association that fosters study and re-enactment of life in the Middle Ages. The recipes for the dinner, he said, came from cookbooks of the period. 

"One of the big differences was the spices that they used -- much more than today," he said. "Also, medieval cooks liked to use various spices to color food as well as season it.

The main speaker at the conference -- and my partner across the dining table -- was Ariel Toaff, an emeritus professor of Medieval and Rennaissance history at Bar Ilan University, who is the son of the reitred, longtime chief rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff.

Ariel Toaff and a "medieval" waitress. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Ariel's wonderful book, Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, is one of my favorite books -- partly because I spend a lot of my time in Umbria (where so very few Jews live today that when my entire family is with me, we make up one of the major Jewish centers in the region) and partly because the book reads like a spicy novel, set in Assisi, Orvieto, Bevagna, Todi, Perugia, Terni, Foligno -- and other towns that I'm very familiar with.

The chapter headings say it all: "Sex, Love, and Marriage;" "Love of Life and Intimations of Mortality;" "Meat and Wine;" "The House of Prayer;" " Outcasts from Society;" "Witchcraft, Black Magic, and Ritual Murder;" "Converts and Apostates;" "The Pattern of Discrimination;" "Merchants and Craftsmen;" "Doctors and Surgeons;" "Banks and Bankers."

Ariel also authored Mangiare alla Giudia, an influential history of Jewish food and eating in Italy, which has not been translated into English. Both books served as inspiration for the Bevagna dinner. (See an article on Italian Jewish cuisine in English by Ariel by clicking HERE.)

"The dinner organizers asked me what would be a typical dish for the menu, and I immediately told them goose because goose was, so to speak, the Jewish pig," he said. "It had the same function for the Jewish table as the pig did for non-Jews. Every part of the animal was used, including for goose salami, goose sausage and goose ‘ham,’ and foie gras was also a Jewish specialty." 

Like today, he said, Jews in medieval times generally ate what the non-Jewish population did, adapting local recipes to the rules of kashrut. 

"Biancomangiare was also made sweet with milk, pine nuts, almonds and raisins," he said. "But if it was served with a meat dish, the Jews would substitute almond milk for dairy milk."
Also like today, certain dishes became Italian Jewish favorites. 

"Lentils were typically Jewish, and lentil soup was commonly eaten in the 14th and 15th centuries," Toaff said. "Being round, they symbolized the cycle of life. Another typical Jewish cooking style was sweet and sour, like the baked onion salad."

No Jews live today in Bevagna, but the city actively promotes its medieval history with festivals, pageants, Medieval dinners, and other events. The mayor told me that she was now thinking of how to add a Jewish component to all this -- and maybe even get a kosher winery started up.

There is particularly rich archival documentation about Bevagna's most prominent Jewish family in the 15th and early 16th centuries, the extended clan of the banker Abramo. Ariel Toaff recounts the story in great detail in "Love, Work and Death." it is a dramatic family saga that has a sort of rags to riches to rags again narrative framework.

Abramo owned banks in three towns, as well as a mansion, investment properties, farmland and many other holdings. But after his death in 1484, the family suffered a series of tragic setbacks, including deaths, bank failures and even a trumped-up claim by a young Bevagna boy that the family had lured him to their home and crucified him over Easter in 1485. Though apparently linked to a default on a loan to the Abramo bank by the boy’s mother, the allegations led to the banishment of several Abramo family members.

Click here to read full JTA article

Matzo Apple Cake in Budapest -- Rachel Raj's Recipe

Rachel Raj and ingredients. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 This originally appeared on the En Route blog of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.


I’ve been meaning to link to this piece I did for The Forward’s The Jew & the Carrot blog, about the Budapest Jewish chef and pastry cook Rachel Raj. (I had written about her in the past, in an article about the Budapest Jewish food scene in general.)

It was a delight to research—eating pastries in Budapest and talking about food! I like the Cafe Noe I write about here…. it’s a nice, intimate place with a hidden little terrace garden.

Enjoy!  Oh—and here is Rachel’s recipe for matzo apple cake, which is nice and light and good all year round.

Rachel’s Matzo Apple Cake:

Ingredients:

- 3.3 lbs apples
- sugar
- Cinnamon
- 6 eggs
- 6 Tbsp. sugar
- About 5 oz ground walnuts
- Matzos
- Approx. 1-1/2 cups of white wine, sweet or dry

Grate the apples and mix with sugar and cinnamon to taste

Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

Beat the yolks separately with the 6 Tbsp of sugar, then mix the yolk mixture with the ground walnuts and the beaten eggwhites.

In an oiled baking pan, place a layer of matzo that has been well moistened with wine. On top of this place a later of the apple mixture. Cover this with another layer of wine-moistened matzo, then cover that layer with the nut and egg mixture. Add more layers, making sure that the top layer is the nut and egg mixture.

Bake in a moderate oven (325-350 F) for about 35 minutes, cool and cut into squares. It’s good lukewarm, room-temperature, or even cold.

Matzo Apple Bake in Budapest -- Rachel Raj's Recipe

Rachel Raj and ingredients. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

 This originally appeared on the En Route blog of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.


I’ve been meaning to link to this piece I did for The Forward’s The Jew & the Carrot blog, about the Budapest Jewish chef and pastry cook Rachel Raj. (I had written about her in the past, in an article about the Budapest Jewish food scene in general.)

It was a delight to research—eating pastries in Budapest and talking about food! I like the Cafe Noe I write about here…. it’s a nice, intimate place with a hidden little terrace garden.

Enjoy!  Oh—and here is Rachel’s recipe for matzo apple cake, which is nice and light and good all year round.

Rachel’s Matzo Apple Cake:

Ingredients:

- 3.3 lbs apples
- sugar
- Cinnamon
- 6 eggs
- 6 Tbsp. sugar
- About 5 oz ground walnuts
- Matzos
- Approx. 1-1/2 cups of white wine, sweet or dry

Grate the apples and mix with sugar and cinnamon to taste

Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

Beat the yolks separately with the 6 Tbsp of sugar, then mix the yolk mixture with the ground walnuts and the beaten eggwhites.

In an oiled baking pan, place a layer of matzo that has been well moistened with wine. On top of this place a later of the apple mixture. Cover this with another layer of wine-moistened matzo, then cover that layer with the nut and egg mixture. Add more layers, making sure that the top layer is the nut and egg mixture.

Bake in a moderate oven (325-350 F) for about 35 minutes, cool and cut into squares. It’s good lukewarm, room-temperature, or even cold.

Italy -- Italian Jewish Food lets you travel via your taste buds

Sign advertising kosher products in Pitigliano, Italy. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

If you can't hop over to Italy, you can "get a taste of Jewish Italy" by sampling  of the recipes of Italian Jewish dishes Joan Nathan spotlights in an article in Tablet Magazine. She also recommends a sampling of cookbooks featuring Italian Jewish cuisine.

If you want to dine less vicariously on Jewish Italian favorites -- there is a growing number of Jewish (even kosher) restaurants in Rome, Florence and elsewhere.

One of my favorites in Rome is called Ba' Ghetto -- it is in the old Ghetto neighborhood, around the corner from the main synagogue. Nice selection of local and Mediterranean Jewish food; relaxed but slightly upscale ambience.

Eating Jewishly

By Ruth Ellen Gruber


A couple of months ago, Saveur magazine published a series of articles by David Sax about eating Jewishly in Budapest and Bucharest. I advised him on the piece and pointed out people to talk to in Budapest -- essentially the same people that I noted in my own article about Jewish food in Budapest for JTA.....

A visit to eastern Europe reveals the origins of the cured and smoked meats, matzo balls, pickles, and other beloved staples of Jewish delicatessens around the world. "It hit me that it's nothing short of a miracle that these foods, these traditions, have survived," writes author David Sax.

Hungary -- Rhapsodic recipes

I provided some Hungarian Jewish recipes to go with my JTA story last week on Jewish eating in Budapest. They include my friend Antonia Szenthe's spinach and fish casserole and Andras Singer's recipe for solet (cholent), as served at his restaurant Fulemule.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

BUDAPEST -- Antonia Szenthe likes to read Jewish cookbooks such as "Spicy Eszter" Bodrogi's "Spice and Soul: Jewish Cooking Here and Now" and adapt the recipes to her family's taste. She also enjoys experimenting to adapt pork-laden traditional Hungarian recipes to kosher style.

"Instead of bacon or smoked pork, I'll use smoked goose leg," she says.

One of Szenthe's favorite main dishes is baked fish and spinach. She varies the quantities to taste.

BAKED FISH AND SPINACH

Ingredients:

Fillets of cod, or some other saltwater fish (enough for 4 people)

Just over 1 pound frozen spinach (or better, fresh spinach leaves)

About 10 ounces fresh mushrooms

2 cloves of garlic

About 1 1/2 tablespoons) butter for the sauce, plus butter to saute the mushrooms

1 cup and a bit milk -- or cream, if you do not mind the calories

2 tablespoons flour

Half a lemon

Grated Parmesan cheese

Grated nutmeg

Vegetable stock cube or powder, without MSG

Freshly ground pepper (preferably 4 colored peppercorns)

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (or "moderate"). Arrange the fish fillets in an oven-proof, buttered pan, grind pepper and squeeze half a lemon on them. Thaw the spinach, or wash the fresh spinach and simmer it on a slow flame until soft. Wash and chop the mushrooms, saute them on high flame in butter.

Prepare the sauce: Melt the butter, mix it with the flour and add the cold milk. Season with plenty of ground pepper, vegetable stock or soup powder, ground nutmeg and mashed garlic. Cook it on slow flame, constantly stirring with a whisk, until it thickens. The sauce should be overly seasoned, as the spinach, the mushrooms and the fish absorb a lot of flavor.

Layer the spinach and the mushrooms on the fish fillets, pour on the sauce and grate plenty of Parmesan cheese on the top.

Place the pan in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the cheese on top becomes a nice golden brown.

SOLET

Everyone has his or her own solet (cholent) recipe, and family recipes are passed down from generation to generation. Some folks like dark beans, some like white beans and others, like me, prefer to mix them. All agree that for a good solet you need both smoked and regular meat.

Classic solet is baked for hours in an oven. Traditionally it was put in a sealed oven Friday before Shabbat fell to be ready to eat on

Saturday. But you can also prepare it on top of the stove.

For Facebook users, there is a solet interest group, which includes a recipe that uses four types of meat -- including ham! See www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=132617699568&v=info.

Andras Singer serves six types of solet at his Fulemule restaurant: solet served with eggs, with goose leg, with smoked meat and eggs, with goose liver and onion, with mixed meats and a non-traditional-sounding Mexican solet with chili.

He provided this basic recipe, which of course can be varied to suit individual taste.

Ingredients:

About 2 cups dried beans (Singer prefers dark beans)

1 large onion, chopped

4 tablespoons goose, duck or chicken fat (schmaltz is recommended, but you can substitute cooking oil if you wish a lighter taste)

Meat:

Singer's basic recipe calls for 1 1/2 pounds smoked beef brisket plus poultry legs -- 1 or 2 turkey legs, or 2 goose or duck

legs. But you can vary this to taste. Just make sure that you use at least 2 types of meat, and that one of them is smoked -- in Hungary it is easy to get smoked turkey or goose legs.

6 eggs in their shells, washed (Note: make sure that the eggs are fresh, as one bad egg could ruin the dish. Some people recommend cooking the eggs separately; others leave them out entirely.)

1 cup pearl barley, washed

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic, or to taste

About 2 teaspoons powdered mild Hungarian paprika (or to taste)

Preparation:

Rinse the beans and soak them overnight. Preheat the oven to 275. While the oven is heating, saute the onions in 2 tablespoons of the fat until they become soft, using a very large flameproof baking dish, casserole or oven-proof pot. Stir about half of the drained beans into the onions. Add the meat, the eggs in their shell (see note above) and the barley. Cover with the remaining half of beans. Add salt, pepper, garlic and paprika, to taste, plus the remaining 2 tablespoons of fat or oil. Cover everything with water.

Cover the casserole tightly, place in the oven, and cook for 6 to 7 hours until the beans are very tender. (Check the solet after 4 or 5 hours and, if needed, add hot water.) When the solet is done, turn off the heat, but leave the solet in the cooling oven for another 2 or 3 hours. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

To serve, shell the eggs and quarter them. (Some people prefer to leave them whole or slice them.) Slice the brisket and remove the poultry meat from the bones. (Some people prefer to leave the poultry legs intact.)

SPICY ESZTER

"Spicy Eszter" Bodrogi is an influential Jewish food writer whose cookbook "Spice and Soul: Jewish Cooking Here and Now" and blog fuszereslelek.hu/ have had a powerful impact on the Jewish culinary lifestyle of today's younger generation of Jews in Hungary.

Her recipes, all kosher or kosher style, center on fresh ingredients and are elegant and often simple to prepare. Both her blog and her book also provide recipes for traditional foods and holiday fare, such as hamentaschen and matza balls. Hungarian speakers will find a treasure trove of gastronomic delight. Unfortunately, neither the blog nor the book is (yet) translated into English.

Budapest -- Eating Jewish

 Flodni advertised at Cafe Noe. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Here's a repost of an article I've written on  trends in Jewish eating in Budapest -- mentioning old classics (like the Fulemule restaurant and its six types of solet) as well as nouvelle places such as Koleves and Spinoza.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber (May 12, 2010)

BUDAPEST (JTA) -- Rahel Raj calls herself a 21st-century Yiddishe mama. The daughter of a rabbi and mother of a toddler, she and her family run a pair of popular Budapest bake shops that specialize in Jewish pastries such as flodni, a calorific confection of layered nuts, apple and poppy seeds that is one of the symbols of local Jewish cuisine.

"A modern Yiddishe mama is not someone who sits in a chair and says, 'Eat!,'" said Raj, a slim 29-year-old with long, dark hair. "I like to dress up, I have a profession, I have a baby -- but on Shabbat I serve a four-course Friday-night meal."

Raj is part of a burgeoning Jewish food scene in Budapest that’s making an impact on restaurant menus in the city and on the way Hungarian Jews eat at home. In addition to her pastry business, Raj writes a column for a local Jewish magazine and two years ago anchored a 10-part Jewish cooking series on a Hungarian TV food channel. On the show, Raj prepared dishes with several local Jewish cooks to demonstrate how old-style traditions now coexist with new forms of culinary practice, as Jews use food both to connect with their roots and reflect a contemporary Jewish lifestyle.

One of her guests was Andras Singer, whose award-winning Fulemule restaurant goes heavy on cholesterol-laden recipes handed down from his mother and grandmother. They include stuffed goose neck, chopped liver, spiced goose fat and six types of solet -- the Hungarian version of cholent, the slow-baked dish of beans and meat traditionally served on Shabbat.

But Raj also featured a young Jewish working mom who prefers to feed her family salads and Israeli favorites such as hummus and pita, which have become popular and easily available in Budapest in recent years thanks in part to an Israeli-run chain of hummus bars downtown.

Another guest was the influential Jewish food writer Eszter Bodrogi, who goes by the pen name Spicy Eszter. Bodrogi, who is in her late 30s, has helped spark new trends in Jewish at-home eating with a popular food blog and lavishly illustrated cookbook, "Spice and Soul."
Her message is that contemporary kosher (or kosher style) cooking can be elegant, easy, healthy and fun.
"Things are really different today," Raj said. "We want modern, lighter, quicker versions of the old traditional recipes -- using olive oil, for example, instead of goose fat. Or making gefilte fish with salmon, flavored with orange. Or instead of solet, maybe serving a barley risotto with smoked duck."
 [...]

Read Full Article at JTA web site

Budapest -- Bob Cohen leads an audio culinary tour

 Me in Froelich's pastry shop in December.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've pointed out a lot of Bob Cohen's wonderful blog posts about food, travel and music and link to his blog, Dumneazu.

But now you can hear him -- Tablet Magazine's audio "Vox Tablet" runs a wonderful 10-minute visit with Bob to two of Budapest's most famous Jewish (or Jewish-style) eateries -- the tiny little Kadar lunchroom on Klauzal ter, and Froelich's kosher pastry shop on Dob utca.

Both are favorites with locals (and a five-minute walk from my apartment).

I vividly remember my first visit to Kadar, back in about 1990 or 1991. I was taken there by the  Peter Wirth, an architect who has carried out restoration work on several synagogues in Hungary and also produced a photographic book on Jewish cemeteries in northeast Hungary. (He won the Europa Nostra award for his restorations of the synagogues in Apostag, in the 1980s, and in Mad, in 2004.)

With Peter that first time, I remember I ordered the solet -- cholent -- with goose leg, a specialty. Kadar is not kosher and even serves sholet with pork. But for many local Jews it is a ritual to go there to eat solet on Saturday. One Saturday lunchtime my brother Sam and I shared a table with a man and his son eating solet -- and we then ran into him later at the Rabbinical Seminary synagogue, where he was the gabbai...