As a lifelong vegetarian who often cooks for Jewish friends who keep kosher, I’m always looking for a good Jewish vegetarian cookbook.
Paola Gavin’s “Hazana” will likely find a permanent home on my crowded cookbook shelf soon, after I take my borrowed copy back to the library.
Because Jewish people moved around for many hundreds of years, they incorporated foods, dishes and ingredients from other cultures into their cooking repertoire. Thus, this book includes recipes from Austria, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Hungary, Iraq and Iran, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Turkey and Greece. I find this fascinating!
I initially thought of this as a Mediterranean cookbook, but there’s much more to this cookbook than hummus, stuffed grape leaves and falafel!
Chapters include:
- Appetizers and Salads
- Soups
- Pasta and Dumplings
- Grains
- Main Courses
- Eggs
- Vegetables
- Desserts
I am most intrigued by the Russian Potato Dumplings Stuffed with Curd Cheese and Chives, and will likely make that recipe over the weekend. I also want to try making the Artichoke Tart.
I appreciated that most of the ingredients needed in the recipes here are everyday items like eggs, flour, onions, spinach, etc. Only a couple of things might be difficult for people in small American towns to source and shop for, such as saffron and pomegranate seeds.
The food photography is lovely, but as always, I’d prefer if each dish had its own color photograph to show me the way it should look.
Check out my Cookbook Lookthrough on YouTube:
-Carrie
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