Kat­ja Gold­man, Judy Bern­stein Bun­zl, and Lisa Rot­mil are the authors of the new cook­book The Com­mu­ni­ty Table: Recipes and Sto­ries from the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Man­hat­tan and Beyond. They are blog­ging here this week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

Real­ly? Anoth­er cook­book? Anoth­er Jew­ish cook­book? Well, actu­al­ly yes. 

This one start­ed a few years back when JCC Man­hat­tan was approach­ing a major mile­stone (a 10 year anniver­sary). Judy Bern­stein Bun­zl was the one who first imag­ined doing a cook­book to cel­e­brate the vision and mis­sion of the JCC Man­hat­tan on this occa­sion. We had no idea how many years it would take to actu­al­ly com­plete the task!

Judy asked Kat­ja Gold­man to join her right away because she is Judy’s go-to food and gar­den­ing soul­mate. Kat­ja then insist­ed that we need­ed Lisa Rot­mil to com­plete our team. Thus our book, The Com­mu­ni­ty Table: Recipes and Sto­ries from the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Man­hat­tan and Beyond, was born.

Who knew that it would be three years of cook­ing, tast­ing, test­ing again, writ­ing, and then styling every pho­to shoot? While some might wor­ry that three chefs is too many in the kitchen, for us, it was the per­fect num­ber for cre­ativ­i­ty and culi­nary inspi­ra­tion. Indeed, com­ing from dif­fer­ent cook­ing styles, dif­fer­ent kitchens, and dif­fer­ent palates, our micro-com­mu­ni­ty was a tem­plate for the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty we were cook­ing for.

So what did we come up with? Well there is cer­tain­ly a lot to be inspired by. Jews have been cook­ing for cen­turies in lands far and wide. Often what con­sti­tutes Jew­ish cook­ing is some amal­ga­ma­tion of the res­i­dent cul­ture mixed up with Jew­ish tra­di­tion. Think car­ciofi al guidea, the Roman arti­choke dish asso­ci­at­ed strong­ly with that Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. Or chick­en paprikash from Hun­gary, served with­out the sour cream. This book rev­els in that kind of adap­ta­tion. We’ve includ­ed recipes from Sri Lan­ka, an Indi­an masala, corn bread from Atlanta, and pot-au-feu from Alsace (one of the old­est Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties in Europe). We also want­ed to reflect how we cook right now, with an empha­sis on grains, veg­eta­bles, sal­ads, roast­ed meats, and fish. Plus we couldn’t leave behind the tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish clas­sics we grew up with and many that we’ve updat­ed to turn them into some­thing new — adap­ta­tions for the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry in New York City and beyond. There is a lot to sample!

We are asked repeat­ed­ly what inspired some of our favorite recipes. We have so many to choose from, but here is a great exam­ple of how our Iraqi Lamb Burg­er came into being:

On a rainy day in New York City, we all yearned for a burg­er. ​“Let’s not use beef,” was the start­ing point. With the three of us com­ing from Ashke­nazi back­grounds, we decid­ed to try some­thing dif­fer­ent and draw upon Mid­dle East­ern influ­ences. We also love lamb, so that became the spring­board for our think­ing. Throw in fresh mint, all­spice, pine nuts, cin­na­mon, and of course Ital­ian pars­ley, and the result was an unex­pect­ed­ly deli­cious har­mo­nious mouth­ful. And of course we didn’t stop there, because every great burg­er has its own spe­cial condi­ments. So in our book, we also give you recipes for Mint Pesto and Caramelized Saf­fron Onions.

As we were writ­ing the book, we all real­ized how much we love it when recipes dis­cuss vari­a­tions of the base recipe. Don’t like lamb? Sub­sti­tute beef. Crav­ing a grandma’s stuffed cab­bage? Use the meat mix­ture and just wrap it up in cab­bage leaves. And we tried to do the same thing. Direc­tions found in our book.

Some may ask: what do the main val­ues of JCC Man­hat­tan — diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, health and well­ness, and a fresh new way of think­ing of Jew­ish life — have to do with food? As it turns out, every­thing! The Com­mu­ni­ty Table is filled with sto­ries and recipes that con­nect our past with our future, encour­ag­ing us to explore tastes and fra­grances from around the world because, after all, that is what Jews have always done. 

The cook­book tells a sto­ry of JCCs through­out the coun­try who wel­come thou­sands into their doors each day, often using food as the vehi­cle by teach­ing how to grow it, pre­pare it, and learn about its role in Jew­ish life. Alto­geth­er The Com­mu­ni­ty Table cel­e­brates food as a tool to help build com­mu­ni­ty, make new friends, learn a new skill, and find strength in being a part of some­thing larg­er than oneself.

Recipe: Lamb Burgers

Serves 6

Mint Pesto

3 cups packed fresh mint leaves
1 1/4 cups olive oil
1 to 2 tea­spoons hon­ey
4 gar­lic cloves, peeled
1 tea­spoon kosher salt
1/2 tea­spoon crushed red pep­per flakes (option­al)

Burg­ers

6 table­spoons pine nuts
2 pounds ground lamb
½ cup fine­ly chopped fresh flat-leaf pars­ley
½ cup fine­ly chopped fresh mint leaves
1 medi­um onion, fine­ly chopped (about ½ cup)
2 to 3 tea­spoons kosher salt
1½ tea­spoons ground all­spice
1 tea­spoon ground cin­na­mon
½ cup ice water
2 table­spoons bread crumbs or matzah meal
6 pita breads

To make the pesto, com­bine all the ingre­di­ents in a food proces­sor and purée. Trans­fer to a small bowl and set aside. (The pesto lasts in an air­tight con­tain­er, refrig­er­at­ed, for up to two weeks).

In a small pan over medi­um-low heat, toast the pine nuts, watch­ing care­ful­ly and stir­ring, until light­ly col­ored, about 3 min­utes. Trans­fer to a bowl.

To make the burg­ers, pre­heat the broil­er or light­ly oil a grill pan. In a medi­um bowl, com­bine the pine nuts, lamb, pars­ley, mint, onion, salt, all­spice, and cin­na­mon. Knead well by hand, squeez­ing the meat through your fin­gers. Add the ice water and con­tin­ue mix­ing by hand. Add the bread crumbs and knead well again until the meat is very soft and all the ingre­di­ents are well blend­ed, about 3 min­utes. Shape the meat into six 2½-inch pat­ties by first rolling it between your palms into 1‑to-1½-inch-diam­e­ter balls and then flat­ten­ing them. 

Trans­fer the pat­ties to a broil­ing pan and broil, turn­ing once, until brown and cooked through, 2 to 4 min­utes per side. Alter­na­tive­ly, grill over high heat for 2 to 4 min­utes per side. Remove from the heat and set on a serv­ing plate.

Before serv­ing, warm the pitas in foil in a 300°F oven for a few min­utes. Serve the burg­ers with the pita, mint pesto, and saf­fron caramelized onions.

Kat­ja Gold­man is known as the unof­fi­cial chal­lah teacher of the upper west side, hav­ing taught lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of men and women to bake chal­lah. She co-authored the Empire Kosher Chick­en Cook­book: 225 Easy and Ele­gant Recipes for Poul­try and Great Side Dish­es.

Lisa Rot­mil has a Ph.D in Art His­to­ry from The Insti­tute of Fine Arts, New York Uni­ver­si­ty. She has worked at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Brook­lyn Muse­um, and the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary of Amer­i­ca. She is an avid cook and has an inter­est in design. 

Hav­ing stud­ied cook­ing in Milan, Lon­don, New York and any­where she found her­self, Judy Bern­stein Bun­zl’s inter­ests in all three voca­tions came togeth­er with the pub­li­ca­tion of this cookbook.

Relat­ed Content:

• Essays: Food, Eat­ing, and Recipes
• Jerusalem: A Cook­book by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
• Quich­es, Kugels, and Cous­cous: My Search for Jew­ish Cook­ing in France by Joan Nathan
• Mat­zoh Ball Gum­bo: Culi­nary Tales of the Jew­ish South by Mar­cie Cohen Ferris