NorthEast Classified Network A book for all holiday bakers Joanna McQuillan Weeks assistant features editor/columnist Slice of Life jweeks@s-t.com Index CRANBERRY-WALNUT TART While cooks across America are gearing up for Thanksgiving, cookbook author and food historian Joan Nathan is crisscrossing the country to promote her new book, "The Jewish Holiday Baker." I caught up with her in Houston, her fourth stop in a 14-city tour, as she prepared for a day that would include a recipe demonstration for a PBS station and a class at a supermarket. Ms. Nathan's 211-page cookbook, with charming woodcut-like illustrations by Emma Celia Gardner, collects 49 recipes from a baker's dozen of Jewish bakers and their families, along with their fascinating stories. "This is a personal book filled with stories and baking lore from people I have met and admired through the years and a few I have discovered in my travels," she explains in the book's introduction. Among the personalities readers of "The Jewish Holiday Baker" will meet are Ben Moskovitz, who at 74 still works a 14-hour day at his Michigan bakery, because, he says, "I don't want my recipes to die"; Michael London, a disaffected literature professor turned baking guru; and Ms. Nathan's late aunt, Lisl Nathan Regensteiner, who emigrated from Germany in 1937, bringing along her cooking pots and pans and her heirloom handwritten cookbooks of Bavarian recipes. "The Jewish Holiday Baker" is divided into chapters of specialties devoted to the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover and Shavuot. | |
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