From Publishers Weekly
Twenty-five years ago, Nathan published The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, a landmark work that juxtaposed recipes with oral histories. Although she acknowledges that the past quarter century has brought some changes to Jewish cooking—e.g., Kosher caterers are lightening their foods; "young American superstar chefs" have come onto the scene; California wineries now produce award-winning kosher wines—Nathan still relies on traditional recipes, such as My Mother’s Brisket, Cabbage Strudel, Romanian Beet Borscht, Vegetable Kugels and Babka in her new volume. Revising and updating recipes from Holiday Kitchen and another previous work, The Jewish Holiday Baker, Nathan shares instructions for making nearly 400 dishes, dividing them by holiday: the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot and the minor holidays. Lengthy introductions accompany each recipe, and Nathan’s ability to balance interesting tidbits with useful instructions make this a supremely worthwhile resource. She covers every cuisine of the Jewish tradition, from Central and Eastern European to Middle Eastern to American.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
It has been 25 years since Nathan's Jewish Holiday Kitchen was first published. This volume gathers recipes from that book and from the food writer's Jewish Holiday Baker (1997) for a celebratory revision. And what a collection it is: 400 recipes accompanied by personal commentary and culinary history passed down through generations of Jewish cooks. That's part of the charm here as readers learn that "eating fish symbolizes the hope of redemption for Israel" and other snippets of fact and folklore. Keyed mostly to eight major Jewish holidays-- from Shabbat to Shavuot--the recipes represent both eastern European and Sephardic traditions, and are nicely adapted for modern cooks: processors speed preparation, and ingredients such as packaged onion soup are occasionally used. There's even a recipe for "low-cholesterol challah." It's a tasty assortment for Jewish cooks but also for anyone interested in ethnic cuisine. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
Jewish holidays are defined by food. Yet Jewish cooking is always changing, encompassing the flavors of the world, embracing local culinary traditions of every place in which Jews have lived and adapting them to Jewish observance. This collection, the culmination of Joan Nathan’s decades of gathering Jewish recipes from around the world, is a tour through the Jewish holidays as told in food. For each holiday, Nathan presents menus from different cuisines—Moroccan, Russian, German, and contemporary American are just a few—that show how the traditions of Jewish food have taken on new forms around the world. There are dishes that you will remember from your mother’s table and dishes that go back to the Second Temple, family recipes that you thought were lost and other families’ recipes that you have yet to discover. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan spices these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who have kept these traditions alive.

Try something exotic—Algerian Chicken Tagine with Quinces or Seven-Fruit Haroset from Surinam—or rediscover an American favorite like Pineapple Noodle Kugel or Charlestonian Broth with “Soup Bunch” and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book, which combines and updates Nathan’s classic cookbooks The Jewish Holiday Baker and The Jewish Holiday Kitchen with a new generation of recipes, will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your table on the holidays and throughout the year.

About the Author
Joan Nathan is the author of eight books, including Jewish Cooking in America, which won the coveted IACP Julia Child Award as Best Cookbook of the Year and also the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. She appears on television cooking programs, including her own PBS series based on Jewish Cooking in America, and lectures around the country. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and also writes for such publications as Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, and Hadassah magazine.

Nathan grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and was educated at the University of Michigan and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She worked in Jerusalem in the early 1970s as foreign press officer for then-mayor Teddy Kollek and was among the founders of New York’s Ninth Avenue Food Festival under then-mayor Abraham Beame. Nathan lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, attorney Allan Gerson, and their three children.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Only the best cookbooks stand the test of time, and this rich assemblage of holiday recipes by Joan Nathan, award-winning food writer and host of the PBS series Jewish Cooking in America, has brought the joy and festivity of holiday cooking to Jewish households for more than two decades.
Here are 250 recipes for main courses, soups, appetizers, breads, and desserts culled from around the world to help you enhance your family's celebrations of the sixteen major holidays. In addition to the foods you remember from your mother's table, there are dishes that date as far back as the Second Temple, as well as contemporary American Jewish creations. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan peppers these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who make them today.
Try exotic dishes like the Yemenite High Holiday Soup Stew or the Persian Pomegranate-Walnut Chicken. Or, closer to home, choose the Charlestonian Broth and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your holiday table year round.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Not merely a revision of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, first published 25 years ago, Nathan's big new book also includes recipes and material from The Jewish Holiday Baker and her numerous articles for the New York Times. The hundreds of recipes, representing both the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic traditions, come from Jewish communities all over the world: Moroccan Challah, Greek Leek Patties, Mexican Banana Cake, and Haroset from Surinam. There are regional and cultural variations of many recipes--for example, in addition to the one from Surinam, there are also Egyptian, Venetian, Persian, and Yemenite harosets. Recipes are organized by holiday, from Rosh Hashanah to Shavuoth, with separate chapters on the Sabbath and "The Life Cycle," a selection of traditional dishes for events such as bar mitzvahs and weddings. Detailed, thoroughly researched head notes provide historical and religious context, and numerous boxes cover a wide variety of topics. Highly recommended. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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