Eat Something: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews

Text copyright © 2020 by Beck and Bloom, LLC.

Photographs copyright © 2020 by Maren Caruso.

Illustrations by George McCalman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-7903-2 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-7874-5 (hardcover)

Prop styling by Jillian Knox.

Food styling by Robyn Valarik and Kristene Loayza.

Design by McCalmanCo: George McCalman and Aliena Cameron.

The photographer wishes to thank Jennifer Thomas, Josh Lewis, Carolyn Schneider, and Daniel Hurlburt.

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A Jewish Life in Meals

a.k.a. the

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Recipe List

pg. 10

Introduction

pg. 12

THE EARLY YEARS

Bris

pg. 22

On Pastrami & Penises

An odd but traditional pairing

Leftover Pastrami All Day 26

Breakfast Tacos 26

Pastrami Carbonara 26

Raid-the-Fridge Reuben 27

Hanukkah

pg. 28

Christmas Inferiority Feelings, with Latkes

True, Hanukkah isn’t as fun as Santa’s big day. But that’s OK—it’s not supposed to be.

Latkes for All Eight Nights 33

Lots of Kinds of Latkes 34

Kimchi Latkes 34

Waffle-Iron Latkes 34

Masala Latkes 34

Make It a Latke Bar 34

Rustic Applesauce 35

The Battle of the Tree 36

In Defense of Socks 37

PURIM

The Jewish Wonder Woman 40

Hamantaschen 41

Variations 41

Visiting the Grandparents in the Sunshine States

pg. 42

Eat Something

You’ve got to go. You want to go. What you’ll eat when you do.

A Light Poolside Lunch 46

Evan’s Dad’s Sour Cream & Peaches 46

Everything Dust Potato Chips 46

Cobb Salad 47

Overheard in the Buffet Line 47

The Club’s Club Sandwich 49

Horseradish Mayonnaise 49

We Found It in Grandma’s Pocketbook 50

Sick Days

pg. 52

Nourishment for the Neurotic

It’s called Jewish Penicillin for a reason.

Wise Sons’ Chicken Soup 55

Matzo Balls 56

Schmaltz 56

Leftover Chicken Broth 58

Chicken Tortilla Soup 58

Pho Ga 58

Egg Drop Soup 58

The Cure-All of the Twelfth Century 59

On the perfect size chicken for making chicken soup: 59

THE AWKWARD YEARS

Mitzvah Moments

pg. 60

Turning Thirteen Means Big Money

Must it also mean professional dancers and mountains of food?

Pigs in Blankets 68

Other Things in Blankets 68

Cocktail Hour at a Post-Modern Long Island Bar Mitzvah 69

Tweenagers Review Their Favorite Bar & Bat Mitzvahs 70

The Last Supper

pg. 72

Cheeseburger Time

’Twas the night before summer camp . . .

Big Macher Burger 74

Russian Dressing 76

On Care Packages: Disguising Camp Contraband 77

Christmas Dinner

pg. 79

Can We Get a Lazy Susan–Topped Table for Twelve, Please?

An ancient Jewish tradition

A Sampling of Iconic Chinese Restaurants, as Chosen by the Chosen People 84

Sunday Night Takeout

pg. 86

It’s Like Every Week Is Christmas

Meditation on the Jewish-Chinese bond

Cold Takeout-Style Noodles 89

Whitefish Toast 91

Everything Spice Crunchy Chili Oil 92

Everything Spice 92

Chinese Chicken Salad 93

Sweet Sesame Dressing 93

Ode to the Unofficial JCCs 94

Is this a one-way relationship? 94

Pastrami Fried Rice 95

THE YOUNG-ADULTING YEARS

First Meal Home from College

pg. 96

Feed Me, Mom

Reconvening in the family kitchen feels good.

Sweet & Sour Meatballs 101

Ode to Our Parents’ Pantry 102

J Dating

pg. 105

Are You Meeting New People? (I Hope They’re the Right Kind.)

But what are you really trying to say, Grandma?

Manny’s Morning After Matzoquiles 108

Tomatillo Sauce 108

Real-Life Food Stories from the Frontlines of Dating While Jewish 110

Bagel Texting (Bexting?) 111

On Drinks & Drinking 112

The Goldie 113

Bloody Moishe 113

Ode to the Old Bar 114

Whiskey 114

Peach Schnapps 114

Caffeine-Free Diet Coke 114

Seltzer 115

White Zinfandel 115

Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda 115

Crown Royal 115

Shabbat

pg. 116

Friday Night Lighting

The only way to end the workweek

Jewish Chicken 121

Next Generation Health Salad 122

Wise Sons’ Braided Challah 125

Strawberry Challah Shortcake 127

Challah Onion Rolls 127

It’s Sukkot Season, 128

Harvest Partying 129

Not a Lower East Side Knish 131

Brunch

pg. 133

Why Wait So Long on the Sidewalk?

The joy of making your own breakfast

The Ideal Brunch Spread 136

The Go-To Guide to All Kinds of Shmears 138

To Toast or Not Toast or Double-Toast? 139

The L Word 139

Shmear v. Cream Cheese 140

The Smoking Section 141

DIY Cured Fish 142

The Big Bacon Debate 145

THE ALL-GROWN-UP YEARS

Rosh Hashana

pg. 146

Why the Jewish New Year Is the Best New Year

Half the fun without all the pressure of December 31

Fall Vegetable Hash 150

Honey Cake from the Box 153

Challah Apple Fritter Monkey Bread 154

How to Blow a Shofar like a Billionaire 155

Passover

pg. 156

Confessions of a First-Time Seder Host

A wine-soaked celebration of freedom

The Whole Twenty-First-Century Seder Shebang 160

Really Good Matzo 162

Charoset 164

Chopped Liver 165

Wise Sons’ Brisket 167

Apricot Chicken 169

Carrot Tzimmes 170

Potato Kugel 171

K for P Pineapple Upside-Down Cake 172

True Complaints from the Kids’ Table 174

In Praise of Parsley 175

On the Afikomen 175

Yom Kippur

pg. 176

Fasting Is Trending

But breaking the fast is the fun part.

Deli Salads 180

Chicken Salad 180

Smoked Fish Salad 180

Tuna Salad 181

Egg Salad 181

Potato Salad 183

Coleslaw 183

Wedding Party

pg. 184

Premarital Misery

Everyone loves a Jewish wedding, except maybe the people planning it.

Always-Perfect Oven-Poached Salmon 190

Chicken Schnitzel 192

Lemon-Caper Mayonnaise 192

Roumanian Skirt Steak 193

Scallion Sauce 193

Silver Dollar Potatoes 194

. . . And the Passed Apps 194

Gyoza Kreplach 194

Fish Roe on a Mini Latke 195

Chopped Liver Toast 195

Dinner with the Goyim In-Laws

pg. 196

So, You Didn’t Marry a Jew

What to cook? You’re not going to serve them chopped liver! Or are you?

Everything Onion Dip 199

Bagel Chips 199

Green Bean Casserole 200

Intermarriage Meat Loaf with Melted Onions 202

Melted Onions 203

Are You Pregnant Yet?

pg. 205

No Better Excuse to Eat . . .

. . . a lot, frequently, and plenty of pickles

Baby Naming 207

Old Jewish Names We Bet Will Never Come Back 207

Wise Sons’ Chocolate Babka 209

Babka Milkshake 210

Loaded French Toast 210

Challah Grilled Cheese 213

Pastrami Jam 213

Pickles for the People 214

Sweet Brine 214

Pickled Beets 214

Pickled Mustard Seeds 215

Pickled Red Onions 215

Pickled Cucumbers Bread & Butter Style 215

Basic Brine 216

Pickled Carrots 216

Pickled Green Tomatoes 216

The Kvetching Department 218

THE SNOWBIRD YEARS

Shivah’s Silver Lining

pg. 220

Jews Do Death Right

For so many reasons

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons 222

Safta’s Mohn Cookies 223

Mandel Bread 224

Rugelach 226

Walnut Filling 227

Chocolate Filling 227

Apricot Filling 227

Return to the Sunshine States . . .

pg. 228

Will We Head South, Though?

Ruminations on retirement

The Candle-Lighting Service, a.k.a. Acknowledgments

pg. 234

Image Credits

pg. 235

Index

pg. 236

Recipe List

BRIS

Breakfast Tacos (pg. 26)

Pastrami Carbonara (pg. 26)

Raid-the-Fridge Reuben (pg. 27)

HANUKKAH

Latkes for All Eight Nights (pg. 33)

Lots of Kinds of Latkes (pg. 34)

Make It a Latke Bar (pg. 34)

Rustic Applesauce (pg. 35)

PURIM

Hamantaschen (pg. 41)

VISITING GRANDPARENTS

Evan’s Dad’s Sour Cream & Peaches (pg. 46)

Everything Dust Potato Chips (pg. 46)

Cobb Salad (pg. 47)

The Club’s Club Sandwich (pg. 49)

SICK DAYS

Wise Sons’ Chicken Soup (pg. 55)

Matzo Balls (pg. 56)

Leftover Chicken Broth (pg. 58)

MITZVAH MOMENTS

Pigs in Blankets (pg. 68)

THE LAST SUPPER

Big Macher Burger (pg. 74)

SUNDAY NIGHT TAKEOUT

Cold Takeout-Style Noodles (pg. 89)

Whitefish Toast (pg. 91)

Everything Spice Crunchy Chili Oil (pg. 92)

Chinese Chicken Salad (pg. 93)

Pastrami Fried Rice (pg. 95)

FIRST MEAL HOME

Sweet & Sour Meatballs (pg. 101)

J DATING

Manny’s Morning After Matzoquiles (pg. 108)

The Goldie (pg. 113)

Bloody Moishe (pg. 113)

SHABBAT

Jewish Chicken (pg. 121)

Next Generation Health Salad (pg. 122)

Wise Sons’ Braided Challah (pg. 125)

Strawberry Challah Shortcake (pg. 127)

Challah Onion Rolls (pg. 127)

SUKKOT

Not a Lower East Side Knish (pg. 131)

BRUNCH

The Go-To Guide to All Kinds of Shmears (pg. 138)

DIY Cured Fish (pg. 142)

ROSH HASHANA

Fall Vegetable Hash (pg. 150)

Honey Cake from the Box (pg. 153)

Challah Apple Fritter Monkey Bread (pg. 154)

PASSOVER

Really Good Matzo (pg. 162)

Charoset (pg. 164)

Chopped Liver (pg. 165)

Wise Sons’ Brisket (pg. 167)

Apricot Chicken (pg. 169)

Carrot Tzimmes (pg. 170)

Potato Kugel (pg. 171)

K for P Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (pg. 172)

YOM KIPPUR

Chicken Salad (pg. 180)

Smoked Fish Salad (pg. 180)

Tuna Salad (pg. 181)

Egg Salad (pg. 181)

Potato Salad (pg. 183)

Coleslaw (pg. 183)

WEDDING PARTY

Always-Perfect Oven-Poached Salmon (pg. 190)

Chicken Schnitzel (pg. 192)

Roumanian Skirt Steak (pg. 193)

Silver Dollar Potatoes (pg. 194)

Gyoza Kreplach (pg. 194)

Fish Roe on a Mini Latke (pg. 195)

Chopped Liver Toast (pg. 195)

DINNER WITH THE GOYIM IN-LAWS

Everything Onion Dip (pg. 199)

Green Bean Casserole (pg. 200)

Intermarriage Meat Loaf with Melted Onions (pg. 202)

PREGNANT

Wise Sons’ Chocolate Babka (pg. 209)

Babka Milkshake (pg. 210)

Loaded French Toast (pg. 210)

Challah Grilled Cheese (pg. 213)

Pickles for the People (pg. 214)

SHIVAH

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons (pg. 222)

Safta’s Mohn Cookies (pg. 223)

Mandel Bread (pg. 224)

Rugelach (pg. 226)

INTRODUCTION

(the genesis of this book)

I’M AT WISE SONS DELI, in San Francisco’s Mission District, slurping a bowl of matzo ball soup while the owners give me a convincing spiel about a book that doesn’t exist yet—but should.

It would be about Jews and food, Evan Bloom began, speaking on behalf of his partners: his brother, Ari, and his buddy Leo. OK, not just another book about Jewish food, there are plenty of those—but about Jews and food. Get it? Do you have thoughts about Jews and food? Do I, a Jewish food writer raised in a suburban home where platters of tongue and boxes of Entenmann’s crumb cake poured like rain, have thoughts about Jews and food? Oh yes, I assured them, I had thoughts. Many thoughts.

Good, Evan said. That’s what we wanted to hear, because we want to probe the depths of this subject. Go where no Jew has gone before. We don’t want it to be a standard cookbook, per se, he explained. "Something more along the lines of the Bar Mitzvah Disco (2005)? I suggested. Yes! Evan replied. But for bagels and brisket and babka and the people who eat them, we decided. With photos and illustrations and shared memories and schmaltz. And food, lots of food. Will you write it with us? Bring home a dozen bagels and think about it. What kind of shmear do you want? (‘You mean cream cheese?’ I, a native East Coaster, replied.) Ari, get her the shmear with horseradish. (‘I do love horseradish.’) Where did you go to camp? (‘Basically the same one as you, but in New Hampshire.’) How was the food there? (‘I liked the Dixie cups of Manischewitz on Shabbat—does that count?’) Did you know Adam Goldberg? (‘Of course I knew Adam Goldberg.’)"

I didn’t need to think about it for long. Soon, I returned to Wise Sons’ Twenty-Fourth Street deli—a twenty-first century, Califortified version of the New York staple—for inspiration. And brunch. And the first thing I noticed: There was not a guy in this place who didn’t have a beard. (And there were a lot of guys in the place.)

There was also not a single diner with blonde hair, which is neither here nor there—other than to say that it appeared, at first, to be a deli filled with traditional deli-going types: i.e., Ashkenazi Jews. That is, until a dude sporting a turban strolled in and ordered lox, eggs, and onions. Then an Asian American man came calling for two dozen bagels, followed by an African American woman with dreads (as long as co-owner Leo Beckerman’s used to be), craving a hunk of babka.

. . . at Wise Sons, every day is a day to devour Jewish food. And, well, for those of us who are Jewish, every day is a day to devour.

Of course, there was no shortage of stereotypes: a pair of tiny elderly ladies complaining about the wait; a New York expat mulling the Big Macher sandwich versus the corned beef; a mother-daughter duo digging into a plate of latkes with house-made applesauce, two months before Hanukkah.

After all, at Wise Sons, every day is a day to devour Jewish food. And, well, for those of us who are Jewish, every day is a day to devour.

•••

AS JEWS WE CAN SAY THIS: Our people—in general—tend to lack certain life skills. We can’t fix our own cars or repair our own appliances. We can’t talk without yelling or walk without talking or hide our feelings or help but feel anxious. But, if there’s one thing pretty much every Jew can do, it’s eat.

And we do. With more fervor and focus than most. More than Italians? (Hard to believe, but yes. Although Bubbe’s brisket probably wasn’t as good as Nonna’s meatballs.) More than Asians? (Yes. Even a Chinese wedding banquet isn’t as excessive as a Florida gated-community clubhouse buffet.) More than most Episcopalians? (God, yes. A dried-out holiday ham flanked by five string beans does not a feast make.)

Two guys named Sean Altman and Rob Tannenbaum once wrote a song called They Tried To Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Eat, performed by bands like Jewmongous and Good for the Jews. It was intended to usurp Dayenu as Passover’s top hit. It didn’t, but it does pretty much speak to every Jewish holiday, to Jews’ centuries-old relationship with food.

No doubt, thousands of years of persecution and near starvation have seeped into our subconscious, contributing to our modern-day obsession with what to eat, when to eat, how to eat. There’s got to be some deep-seated connection between our great-great-greats’ painstaking commitment to keeping kosher and our picky, particular eating habits. (Ode to Jew Nora Ephron, who penned Sally’s famed diner-order diatribe in When Harry Met Sally.)

Then there are our it’s-my-way-or-the-highway feelings about Jewish food in general. You can’t be a deli if you serve milk and meat! customers at Wise Sons will declare. You call these Manhattan half-sours!? they complain. Seriously, ‘kale salad’ at a Jewish deli? Oy. What’s next, kosher kombucha? they’ll email. (See The Kvetching Department, page 218.) People walk into Wise Sons, into all delicatessens, with their own food memories, with preferences that have been ingrained since childhood. And those are not easy to shake. It’s why Wise Sons’ menu wisely includes this printed caveat with their matzo ball soup: Not as good as your bubbe’s.

Our lives, as Jews, revolve around food in a way that’s at once fanatical, logical, and comical, and, to be honest, kind of pathological. Especially when family is in town. Meals are plotted with the care and calculation of a presidential campaign. While spreading the cream cheese on our bagels, we discuss where we should go for lunch; while the Russian dressing drips from our Reubens, we ruminate over dinner reservations; while arguing over the best way to get to the airport in the morning, we wonder if we’ll have time to pick up egg-and-cheese sandwiches on the way. (We won’t.)

Of course, this laser focus on food—on both being well fed and feeding others—is not unique to Jews. Indians and Iranians, Chinese and Koreans, we’re all passionate about scoring prime reservations and packing plenty of snacks and serving abundant platters. God forbid someone goes hungry: Eating—along with studying and practicing and striving and surviving—it’s an immigrant thing. Whether we came to America last year or last century, our roots run deep. Food is life, our need to overorder is real.

Chinese takeout, at least in my family, is ordered amid hot debate, a pen-in-hand process presided over by my father, while my mother (who doesn’t do Chinese) barks in the background, "How many are you planning to feed,