Primary Format: Cloth | |
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ISBN: | 9781611683127 |
Published: | 05/06/2014 |
Pages: | 300 |
Size: | 5.5 x 7 in. |
Subject(s): | New England History Food and Gastronomy |
Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food
Laura Silver
E-book: $14.99
Laura Silver has elevated the common knish to its rightful place in the pantheon of Jewish soul foods along side bagels and lox, pickles and pastrami. She reminds us with equal parts passion and humor that the knish is much more than simple street food. It represents a whole culture worthy of admiration, preservation and enjoyment.
—Mark Russ Federman, author, “Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes From the House That Herring Built”
For 70 years, Mrs. Stahl’s bakery in Brighton Beach served a delicious array of knishes to Jewish and gentile devotees. The bakery’s closing in 2005 filled one enthusiast — Laura Silver — with Proustian remembrances of knishes past. These nostalgic memories launched her on a global quest to pay homage to the knish. She has collected stories about her voyage in her deliciously appetizing book. The reader is left with only one question: Where’s the nearest knish shop?
—Andrew F. Smith, author of New York City: A Food Biography
Truly riveting, Laura Silver’s Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food weaves personal taste memories with the intricate past of knishes, making for a compelling, well-researched biography of these iconic Jewish pastries.
—Joan Nathan, New York Times food writer and author of award-winning cookbooks, including Jewish Cooking in America
Laura Silver’s at-times poetic meditation on knishes is not only a cultural history of this filled lump of dough, as meticulously researched as any doctoral thesis, but also a Proustian personal memoir that hints of James Joyce, no less, in the way Silver intones and uses the rhythms of Aramaic Jewish liturgy, Yiddishkeit, and Yiddish humor to tell her story. The knish has never been put to better use. I loved it.
—Arthur Schwartz, author of Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited
A lovingly researched book that elevates the knish, arguably the humblest of Jewish foods, into a weighty symbol of history, identity, and family. Knishes haven’t met anything this good for them since the invention of mustard.
—David Sax, author of Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen
LAURA SILVER is an award-winning journalist whose writing on food and culture has appeared in the New York Times and the Forward and on NPR. Laura has been a writer in residence at the Millay Colony, the Banff Centre, and the New York Public Library. She is considered the world’s leading expert on the knish.