Saffron Shores: Jewish Cooking of the Southern Mediterranean

Rating:
Summary: Delightful Resource for KosherCuisine. Great for Foodies too
Review: `Saffron Shores' is the first of Joan Goldstein's Jewish Mediterranean cuisine books I have read, and it is easily the best book of Jewish cuisine I have read and reviewed. I say this with the reservation that there are several books on Jewish cooking out there which have excellent pedigrees, such as Claudia Roden's `The Book of Jewish Food', so you may have to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

That said, I still believe this is an excellent book on Jewish cooking and an excellent book on southern Mediterranean cooking. I am surprised this book makes no mention of the fact that that Ms. Goldstein is the author of a really excellent general book of Mediterranean recipes entitled `The Mediterranean Kitchen', published in 1992 by Morrow. While there are dozens of good, well-known books on Mediterranean food by a pantheon of authors headed by Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, and Clifford Wright, Ms. Goldstein has a light touch in all of her books which make her recipes especially easy to follow.

The very first thing which impresses me about `Saffron Shores' after the delightfully designed dust jacket is Ms. Goldstein's history of the Jewish peoples after the Diaspora, especially the Shepardim who, unlike the Askenazim of eastern and central Europe, settled around the Mediterranean in lands dominated by the Arabic, Moorish, Berber, and Ottoman cultures of Islam. This essay goes far to explain the similarities between Islamic cuisines and the Jewish `dhimmis' who on average had a better time of things under Islam than their Northern brethren had under Christians.

The next thing that impressed me and should impress you is the sketch of Jewish kosher dietary laws. As a gentile, what I knew about these traditions and laws was entirely based on hearsay. My only surprise with this description is that the primary categories of food (fleishig, milchig, parve) are named in Yiddish not Hebrew or Spanish or any other language more familiar to the Shepardim than the Askenazim.

The kosher dietary laws are not only covered in general, they are also discussed as they are applied to the major holidays of the Jewish calendar, including the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, and Passover.

`Saffron Shores' means primarily the modern lands of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, also known collectively as the Maghrebi. As such, reading this book immediately sounds like an echo of writings by Paula Wolfert. Among the appetizers are the classic chickpea preparations, olive dishes, and salt preserved lemons.

I also detect Ms. Goldstein's drawing a bit outside the lines when she selects some dishes. The `Savory Pastries chapter includes dishes from Iraq and Lebanon. Closer to home, the Maghrebi, we have the b'stilla, a version of savory pie of North Africa which seems to pop up in some form or other in every Mediterranean land from Morocco to Armenia.

Among soups, there are several recipes for specific holidays including Passover and Rosh Hashanah. Lentils and fava beans are the stars in many of these recipes. Some recipe headnotes include comments which reveal some parallels between Jewish and Islamic (Ramadan) fasting traditions and meals designed to break one's fast.

A large number of fish recipes seems quite natural, as fish with scales seem to have very few limitations on cooking technique and we are talking about the shores of the Mediterranean here. This section includes a Moroccan tagine, fish with couscous, and fish with citrus. All very Moroccan. I am tickled to see fish braised here, as I was just a bit surprised to read fish braising recipes in a book dedicated to braising.

Chicken is another Jewish / Mediterranean culinary favorite. The chapter on same has the usual tagines, couscous dishes, and roasts, but no Frenchy game bird dishes here, thank you, as kosher rules forbid food killed in the wild. More Moroccan inspired b'stilla recipes appear here. As chicken was rare in North Africa and more valuable for its eggs than its meat, many of the chicken dishes are specifically allocated to important holidays.

What would a North African cuisine be without a few lamb dishes done in a tagine? I'm surprised to see some sausage recipes here. This is simply a reminder that sausages do not have to be made with pork.

It is fun to see in North African cuisine some dessert themes which made their way all the way to Vienna at the high tide of the Ottoman incursion into Europe. As raw sugar is uncommon in the desert, desserts are made mostly with dried fruits, nuts, and honey, and are typically done in small portions.

This is not a scholarly book, but it was created with scholarship from scholarly sources in English, Arabic, and French. For scholarly sources, see the excellent bibliography at the back of the book, especially the works of Ms. Wolfert and Ms. Roden, which will be much more accessible than most of the other works.

For one who cooks for a family that observes Jewish dietary laws, this book should be a delight. I can easily imagine the constraints of kosher cooking can lead to a limited palette without some inspiration, as you will find in this book. General readers who are fond of the cuisine of the Maghrebi will also find much to enjoy in this book; however, if you already have a sizable collection of books on North African and Mediterranean cuisine, you may find a fair amount of overlap.

All in all, I recommend this book to foodies and strongly recommend it to kosher foodies.