The New Jewish Holiday Cookbook: An International Collection of Recipes and Customs [Hardcover]

Jewish cookbooks have become a rapidly burgeoning category. Appearing at the beginning of the annual cycle that starts with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, three of these four new titles focus on Jewish holidays and holy days, while Friedland's concentrates just on the Sabbath. Greene's book, a revision of her 1985 title, is by far the most ambitious of the group, with more than 250 recipes (80 or so entirely new, the others thoroughly revised) for all the major holidays and some minor ones, and including Israel's Independence Day as well as religious celebrations. A cooking teacher and the longtime food editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, Greene also offers extensive background on each holiday, and her diverse recipes are from all around the globe. Highly recommended. Recently, a growing number of Jews have found themselves returning to their religious roots and observances they have let lapse, making Friedland's book on celebrating the Sabbath particularly timely. A cookbook editor and author of The Passover Cookbook, Friedland presents 175 recipes for the three meals of Shabbat (Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, and the "third meal," marking the end of the Sabbath later on Saturday). Like Greene's, her recipes are international in scope, reflecting both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic heritages, and her text is readable and informative. Recommended for most collections. Brownstein, the former art director of Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful, offers a lavishly illustrated crafts book with recipes and ideas for the holidays. For each holiday, there is a menu, several crafts projects, and decorating suggestions. Brownstein's approach will not be to everyone's taste (the three sukkahs for Sukkot, for example, include a "fantasy" Penthouse Sukkah, "high-tech and sleek," but the minimatzo vases for the Passover seder are pretty cute). For larger collections. Rubin seems like a nice woman, but would her cookbooks have been published if she weren't actor/singer Mandy Patinkin's mother? Her second book, which opens with "testimonials" from grandchildren and other family members, includes recipes for Thanksgiving, a bridal luncheon, and a barbecue as well as for four major Jewish holidays. The recipes are simple, and many of them rely on convenience foods; some have little to do with traditional Jewish holiday cooking (the buffet menu includes Mexicali Layered Dip and two shellfish dishes). Only for collections where Rubin's Grandma Doralee Patinkin's Jewish Family Cookbook is popular.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Holidays are the anchor points for Jewish life. They illustrate the ancient Hebrew stories, offering specific lessons about Jewish history, new learning for the young, and recollection for the old. Greene has expanded her earlier cookbook for Jewish holidays, adding new recipes that reflect even more holiday traditions. Starting with the chief and weekly holiday, Sabbath, Greene offers tasty recipes that occasionally draw on ingredients outside traditional ones. Her cornbread uses both cornmeal and canned creamed corn, thus employing two forms of a grain not usually associated with historic Jewish cuisine. Other recipes, such as an Israeli potato-and-ground-beef casserole, seem ordinary and unthreatening even to non-Jewish cooks. Greene labels each recipe as "meat," "dairy," or "pareve" so that readers may determine instantly how the recipe correlates with dietary laws. Recommended for public libraries serving Jewish populations. Mark Knoblauch