What is Jewish food? Avoiding shellfish and pork and never eating meat with dairy? Hummus? Kreplach? Whatever your Bubbe used to make?

What makes a cuisine Jewish?  Other East Asian cultures have vegetarian diets, which by default wouldn’t be mixing meat with dairy.  Hummus is wildly popular throughout the Middle East. And are kreplach so very different than Italian tortellini?

So what is Jewish food?  It’s like what is asking what your comfort food is.  Probably whatever your family makes.  If you have an Eastern European background, brisket, matzoh ball soup and knishes may be the norm.  A Sephardic background may involve more Mediterranean dishes.

But can this identification with food change?  When I was in college, my comfort food was Macaroni and Cheese out of a box.  As an adult, my go-to comfort dish is sautéed mushrooms and kale.  So yes, I’m a believer that people can change.  So can what we think of as Jewish cuisine change?

As the generations pass our diets change.  As technology improves, as do our diets -with the invention of preservations methods we were able to enjoy food differently.  So why not our ethnic cuisines change with the modern sensibilities and technologies?  Vegetable oils were not readily available in Eastern Europe so many of the Ashkanzi dishes involve using rendered animal fat (schmaltz).  Yet today vegetable oils are plentiful and can be used in kosher meat dishes.

Now, for full disclosure changing what we think of as Jewish cuisine was not entirely my idea.   Last year I was fortunate enough to have a lovely dinner with Rabbi Ponet at the Yale Hillel.  He had set up a meal at Miya’s Sushi in New Haven (more on that in a minute) and challenged the table to talk about what made cuisine Jewish.  At Chanukah, he pointed out, we talk a lot about the miracle of the oil then deep fry potatoes in oil.  But if Chanukah is a festival of lights, why couldn’t we make the foods we eat about light?  Flambé anyone?

And as many of us become far more aware about how our eating practices have an environmental impact, could we also evolve our traditional cuisines into environmental sustainable ones?  This is where I get back to Miya’s Sushi.  My boyfriend and I were passing through Connecticut on New Year’s day and we decided to go back for their creative (and sustainable) sushi rolls and firecracker sake.  But what really caught my eye was the chef, Bun Lai’s new conceptual menu.

Photo by Jim Oca, reprinted with permission

The concept is pretty simple.  Due to globalization we have introduced invasive species of plants and seafood into areas that can’t sustain the interlopers – often choking the natives species.  So if there is an abundance of plants and seafood that are bad for the local environment, can you put these invaders to use in some other way?  That is what Bun is proposing – eat these abundant, and otherwise unwanted plants and seafood.  Although these dishes are not yet available on the menu, I can’t wait to try them when they are.  Using what is available, and make the environment healthier by doing it.

Now I’m not proposing that shellfish is going to be okay to eat for all Jews, but kashrut aside the idea of using invasive species as part of our ethic cuisine is an interesting concept.  It’s eating sustainably to a whole new level.  And something I think is very Jewish.

Photo by Jim Oca, reprinted with permission