Comments on: Funny, You Don’t Cook Jewish

By: Lois Leveen

Lois Leveen — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:58:00 +0000

I think the pears, which were organic and locally grown (a good start), were so overripe that they were really juicy and flavorful. Since the oven was on a low temperature for Chuck’s recipe, I cooked them slowly for a long time, resulting in a carmelized flavor. There was no dough or crumb or anything with flour/oatmeal/starch, plus the liquid of the booze. A pearfect storm, as it turned out.

By: Judith

Judith — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:28:10 +0000

How DiD you get the pears to taste so peary? Could it be that the pears were so delicious and succulent to begin with? Then the props should largely go to A) the tree and/or B) the dedicated organic farmer who lovingly tended it? No farms no dinner party.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:06:56 +0000

You could also argue the following analogy: The “Christian” cook is the pastry chef, and the “Jewish” cook is the regular chef.

Pastry chefs follow recipes. (They have to; you can’t futz with the amount of flour too much in a cake recipe and still have it come out OK.) Ordinary chefs glance at recipes and then replace ingredients, substitute, shift proportions, and do crazy things like “add a touch of something boozy.”

Or experienced chefs vs. inexperienced chefs. (I’m not saying Chuck is inexperienced, just that cooking newbies tend to follow recipes slavishly.) Or people who ignore rules vs. people who toe the cookbook line.

By the way, you can always blame the recipe if you need to. Plenty of recipes are terrible, even those in “edited” cookbooks. So blame that book that Chuck was using and tell all your friends to shun it.

By: paula

paula — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:24:26 +0000

Touche, Karen. If we knew each other, we would be friends since I’m a Sagittarius also. I think you’re on to something!

By: karen

karen — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:12:27 +0000

I think it’s related to your astrological sign. As a Sagittarian, I like to take risks and seldom plan ahead enough to follow recipes. It’s enough to “think like a chef,” doing variations on methods and ingredients I know and then incorporating new stuff from other people, like Paula above! I, too, can seldom reproduce what I made, but it’s usually good the next way anyhow! Now my husband, a Cancer, clings closely like the crab to his habits of wide research and recipe-following, at least the first time he makes the recipe. Then he riffs on elements of the other recipes he’d researched until he has generated the recipe “My Way.” It’s good, too, but to me, it seems like it takes a very long time, and slap-dash Sagittarian me can’t wait that long to get done, and EAT!

By: marlene gross

marlene gross — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:10:49 +0000

I can attest to the wonderful creations my son and daughter-in-law create, often using odds and ends they find wherever (see Paula 2/9/09). I love eating at their home. Often when I make a pasta, chili or meat loaf, I throw in almost anything red that’s in the fridge.

By: Lois Leveen

Lois Leveen — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:57:53 +0000

I’m pretty sure there may be a bias about “The White Trash Cookbook” in particular. . . but it seems that this is one of those things I can’t blame on religious upbringing per se.

Or, more accurately, I suppose I can keep blaming it on that, but it’s not necessarily true.

The part where he puts mayonnaise on everything, though, that’s because he was raise Protestant, right?

By: paula

paula — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:40:47 +0000

Hah! My daughter correctly noted, when she emailed me the link to this blog post, that this is NOT the case in our kitchen, where EVERYONE cooks…wives, husbands, daughters, friends.

I, the former Presbyterian and “jew by choice but not by rabbinic decree” for over 25 years, usually cook in one of two ways:

METHOD A
Perusing our pantry, fridge and freezer for ingredients that may (or may not!) be likely companions, haven’t been infested by vermin, haven’t shown up on the table for three days straight…and concoct something. The downside of course is that when asked how I made a dish, its tough to recall…Drives said daughter and her younger sister nuts! Entertaining for me, aggravating for them, apparently.

METHOD B
Peruse several recipes (which is dependent on my mood, budget, biorhythms, moon cycle, holiday??), then revert to METHOD A and proceed.

However, when it comes to baking, I generally follow a recipe, then improvise with flavors, but not the “science” part of the recipe, thereby, averting disaster.

In fairness, I will let my husband, Jew by birth, speak for himself.

I also wonder if there is a gender or religious bias towards using the internet for recipe search and resource or an actual real life cookbook? I relish handling the cookbook myself, and collect goofy titles like “The White Trash Cookbook” but do occasionally use recipe websites…How about others?

By: Larry Lennhoff

Larry Lennhoff — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:30:32 +0000

Nah. I’m a born Jew who never cooked as a child or young adult and consequently follow a recipe as though it was a chemistry experiment, right down to a conviction that if I mess it up it will explode. My wife is a convert who brilliantly improvises with whatever is around, and whose base rule of thumb is ‘double whatever spices the recipe recommends’.

By: Bobbi

Bobbi — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:08:23 +0000

My husband and I are both Jewish – German parents/Israeli born for him, NYC’s suburbs/Eastern European for me. Both raised in the San Fernando Valley of LA. He’s left brain, business/science oriented. I’m right brain, your basic liberal arts major. He proudly refuses to follow recipes. I love to bake because a recipe is comforting and I can follow it obsessively. What does this do to your theory?