(aluminum foil crinkling) - [Marissa] Ooh.

- [Diane] Oh.

- [Narrator] Brisket.

Bagels.

Blintzes.

- [Bill] This is the way he would make them.

There we go.

(klezmer accordion) - [Narrator] Jewish cooks have added flavor to America ever since they arrived.

- [Melanie] These recipes are really a reflection of that melting pot ethos that was the predominant sort of American idea about immigration.

- [Narrator] Family recipes are more than they seem.

- [Emily] It's history and geography and politics and family and memory, and it's everything and you eat it.

- My mouth is literally watering when I smell this.

(happy klezmer music) - [Nora] The story of Jewish food is the story of adaptation.

This is what my grandmother made.

This is what her mother made.

This is what they made in Europe.

- For me it's about the recipes.

These are what is our family legacy.

- [Narrator] Take a historical, genealogical, and culinary journey through the Jewish diaspora in homes across America.

- [Lewis] Recipes really connect people.

Recipes reveal the story of communities.

(happy klezmer music) - [Narrator] Experience the personal history of the Jewish table in "Family Recipe: Jewish American Style."

(upbeat klezmer music) (guitar instrumental) - [Joan] In America, there's so many different kinds of ways of being Jewish, but Jews have always been in the business of food.

(light music) It's the dietary laws, the holidays, the intent of eating, and the history of the food that's been carried on for centuries and centuries that's made Jewish food Jewish.

(upbeat music) (shutter clicks) - [Narrator] One Jewish American food that has passed down through the generations is brisket.

Marissa and her grandmother Diane make it for the holidays, even if they don't always agree on the recipe.

- Say what you do differently.

- Well, you have to realize that I've been preparing myself to keep my mouth shut because... (Marissa laughing) I sometimes say too much.

(both laughing) - [Marissa] So the first step is trimming the fat and then she's gonna be cutting the onion as well.

(pan sizzling) Sear it on both sides until just it kind of browns a little bit.

My memories of the brisket are just something I make at home if I'm feeling homesick, it smells like her house when it's cooking so it makes me feel like I'm back home.

(meat sizzles) I put it in a pan that's on the bottom coated with sliced just white onion.

And then I take chili powder, mild chili powder, not spicy chili powder, sprinkle it all over the top.

My grandma will massage it in.

I don't.

I just leave it on there.

- [Diane] This recipe was given to me by my mother.

I have no idea who she got it from.

She gave it to me and I tweaked it a tiny bit.

I gave it to Marissa who tweaked it a lot more, which she tends to do with my recipes.

(Marissa laughing) - [Marissa] I think this recipe specifically and a lot of the recipes that come from her side connect me to like uniquely the American Jewish experience, especially 'cause her family's from Wisconsin and like, you know, I grew up in Chicago.

(guitar music) I think my family history is one that's very uniquely American on my mom's side.

We've been here since the late 1800s, coming from Russia, assimilated pretty quickly to American culture, especially Midwestern culture.

(slide guitar music) - [Diane] They must have had family here already that had immigrated here in Milwaukee 'cause that's where they ended up going to.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] The Center for Jewish History investigated Marissa's background to understand her family's culinary journey.

- [Moriah] Most Jews entered the U.S.

through some port on the East coast.

Baltimore specifically is where Marissa's family came to America.

(soft music) - [Marissa] So this, that they found, is your grandmother.

Zlatta was your grandmother.

- [Diane] Zlatta.

- [Marissa] And it has her like description on it.

So it says she was white, her complexion was dark, she had hazel eyes.

She was 5'2", so we know where we get the height in our family from.

- [Diane] She had red hair though, not brown hair.

- [Marissa] Uh huh.

It does say they came in through Baltimore.

May of 1912.

- [Diane] My niece interviewed my father.

She said, "How did you get to U-- the United States?"

And he said, "We took a train."

(both laughing) So I think what he probably did was take a train from Baltimore to Milwaukee.

(soft synths) - [Diane] We always knew we were Jewish.

We knew what, what had happened.

We knew everything that they went through.

I think my parents wanted to assimilate into the American lifestyle.

(soft synths) - [Joan] A lot of time new immigrants want to be American.

So, they wanna make what's American.

Jewish food has changed as we have changed in America.

(aluminum foil crinkling) - [Marissa] Ooh.

- [Diane] Oh.

(soft synths) - [Marissa] So we're just gonna dump the chili sauce on top.

I have never heard of another brisket recipe that uses chili sauce.

(soft synths) - [Diane] Can I just say what I usually do with that?

- [Marissa] Yeah.

- [Diane] I would have a big spoon and constantly be spooning the juice over that and then get it so it's all mixed together and it all becomes just like one sauce.

- [Marissa] I like when it creates kind of a crust.

The first time I made the brisket was senior year of college.

Me and my housemates were all Jewish.

So we all called our grandmas, every single one of us and said, "Can you give us your brisket recipe?"

And they all did.

A few of the grandmas used like onion soup mix.

Ours is the only one that uses the chili sauce.

One person used like Coca-Cola or Dr.

Pepper or some, you know, soda.

- [Nora] The Coca-Cola added flavor and also helped break down the toughness of the meat.

Things that people choose to put on their brisket tends to be regional.

There is a real love of a sweet brisket.

(guitar strumming music) I don't think there's that much to read into it unless it's, you know, this is what my grandmother made.

Now it becomes a generational recipe.

(foil crinkles) - [Marissa] I'm gonna cover it and put it back in the oven.

(uptempo guitar music) I think a big part of making Jewish food is the act of being openly Jewish at this point in time is something you have to really choose to do.

And that's something I think about a lot.

With my grandparents and my great-grandparents, they didn't necessarily get that choice.

When people tell me that I'm very like my grandmother, it's really special to me.

She's one of the most strong-willed people I've ever met.

And I think I strive to be like that in a lot of ways.

And obviously our love for being in the kitchen.

(foil rustling) - That is not my brisket.

(Marissa laughs) - That should be the title of your memoir.

- Right.

(both laughing) - [Diane] I like that Marissa's doing some of the recipes that I did because it helps us share things and to see her carrying on traditions that were important and still are important to me even though we have different thoughts on it.

Uh... (laughs) (melodic synths) - [Diane] I'm eager to taste it because, although it's the same ingredients.

- [Marissa] Yeah.

- I, I think we need a few more forks.

- Wait, hold on.

(melodic guitar music) Is it good?

- It's very tender.

- See, it tastes like yours.

(Marissa laughing) - Mine has a little more flavor.

It's very good, Marissa.

- [Marissa] Thank you.

(uptempo guitar strumming) - [Narrator] Reserve another spot at the Jewish table for Vered's grandmother's Iraqi kubbah soup.

Like brisket, this flavorful dish, featuring the Iraqi dumpling, or kubbah, takes some time to make, but it's worth the wait.

- [Vered] So the first step is to make the shell of the kubbah.

I'm using farina and water.

(dishes clank) (water splashes in bowl) And it becomes a very, very, very tender, too tender to handle almost, dough.

The one thing she really insisted, my grandmother, is that I don't forget the salt.

Don't forget the salt, uh, so... if... this will make or break the soup.

So I did not forget the salt.

Now, this is a dish that requires a lot of work.

Unfortunately, these are exactly the type of dishes that the grandmothers used to make.

(light upbeat jazz) A lot of the dishes from the Middle East are labor intense.

And that's why I'm always a little nervous that we will lose these dishes with time, 'cause no one has the time or patience.

But it's so worth it, for tradition's sake and for this unbelievable taste and the love that you show your family.

(music resolves) Next I'm going to make the filling for the kubbah.

Ehh....I'm using the beef, I'm going to add some cilantro, and dried mint, and salt, so it will be very flavorful.

My Iraqi grandmother, Rahel, Rachel used to make the kubbah soup when we came to visit, which was every Friday.

This was one of my definite favorite of all of her wonderful dishes.

So both my Iraqi and my, eh, Ashkenazi grandmothers were named Rahel, Rachel.

Both of them were such good cooks.

Both my grandmothers continued to cook the dishes from Iraq and from Poland.

So I was very lucky to learn from both.

Ah, not very willingly.

Umm... (laughing) You know how Jewish mothers, they want to keep the secrets, because if you reveal your secrets and tell anyone how you make a dish, then they'll stop coming to your house to eat.

In my grandparent's generation, people continued to cook whatever they cooked wherever they came from.

But then my mother cooked all these dishes from all over the diaspora.

- Jews will go and take something local and figure out a way to make it Jewish.

For many Iraqis, if they were to go to an Iraqi Jewish home, they'll say, "Oh, that's an Iraqi dish," because it's both.

(music crescendos) - [Vered] The soup is the main flavor of the whole dish.

Let's add some lemon juice for that sweet and sour taste.

(stirring soup) Now you can already see the beautiful color of the soup.

Cover it, and time to make the kubbah.

- [Nora] Kubbah comes from the Arabic word "dome" or "shell."

It is essentially a dumpling in the way that you have kreplach, matzah balls.

- [Joan] Maybe kubbah was really the original matzah ball, because it's from the Middle East.

This was something that was eaten thousands of years ago, and it's still eaten.

(music crescendos) - [Vered] When I drop the kubbah into the soup, I want to make sure that I don't do it one on top of each other, I do it in a circle.

You- We don't want them to get stuck to each other uh, or break, although because the dough is so tender, a few will always break, and that's fine.

So you see, it's kind of a lot of work.

Nevertheless, it's uh... my youngest son's, uh, favorite dish.

It's my father's favorite dish, so, you know, I'm still making it.

I learned to appreciate, again, the simplicity of the traditional dishes of Iraqi, and Moroccan, and Yemenite, and Ashkenazi traditions, dishes that were um... perfected over sometimes hundreds of years, sometimes even more.

(thoughtful guitar music) These dishes are part of what makes the Jewish tradition and story and history so rich.

The soup is ready.

It's time to, to taste.

(choral music and guitar) Let's try it.

Mmm.

You want to have the kubbah itself, of course, but also a lot of the veggies.

Mm, it's really, really good.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Now, we'll travel the globe with Alex's family recipe.

It's a dish that she learned to make with her grandmother, sweet and sour cabbage with flanken and marrow bones.

- [Alex] As a Japanese Jew, I'm really proud of both sides of my family.

My Ashkenazi grandma would make this dish for like, um, high holidays or my birthday, 'cause it's one of my favorite things to eat.

It was passed down from her mother who probably learned it from her mother, and so forth and so on.

So it's been in the family for several, several generations, way over a hundred years.

So I really like flanken 'cause like, it's fatty.

I like the texture and the marbling.

It just has a lot of flavor and it's yummy.

So you've got your pot, and now you need to put some oil in the bottom.

So now that the oil should be nice and coated and hot, 'cause you wanna make sure it's hot, we're gonna add in the beef.

(beef sizzles) Yeah, there we go, hear the nice sizzle.

(beef sizzles) And you're just gonna keep rotating it until it browns.

I really learned these recipes by being in the kitchen with my grandmother.

I finally got her to write them down like, begrudgingly.

And even then, it's really hard to, you know... (beef sizzling) it's like a dash of this, a little dash of this until you get it to taste the way that you want it to taste.

There's no, like, There's no "Oh, you use one fourth of a teaspoon of sugar and one, a pinch of this."

It's literally just shake in, shake in, what does it taste like?

Does it taste the way that she made it?

Great.

Just tastes like Grandma's recipe.

(beef sizzling) I made this for the first time by myself when I moved to New York City.

So I would make it then for the holidays 'cause I wasn't always able to get back home.

Because I had my grandma on FaceTime, she was really able to help me with it, and it came out really good, and it's something that my friends really enjoy that I make for them.

(upbeat cafe music) I have a lot of Asian Jewish friends randomly, so it's been really lovely finding this community where we can be ourselves.

There's so much commonality between cultures.

Rice I think is very prominent and cabbage is very prominent as well.

Also the short ribs.

Mm!

(pan sizzling) Now I'm getting hungry.

(soft synth music) - [Lewis] If you go and find Jewish communities all over the world, you now begin to spot certain similarities, certain traits.

What bonded them wasn't uh... some biological technical thing.

It was a connectedness as a community.

(pan sizzling) - [Alex] So now that the meat is browned, (sizzling) we're gonna add in tomato sauce.

(crackling and pouring noise) (metal clattering) And I usually let it get to a simmer before I add in the sour salt and sugar for taste.

It's also called citric acid crystals, and it's really sour.

Sprinkle in delicately.

And sugar.

I usually take like a bit of a tablespoon and just sprinkle it in.

(wooden spoon hitting pot) And you taste.

(gentle slurping) Almost there.

(jaunty uptempo jazz) It'll change again though.

(upbeat music) I have to say, the cabbage is probably one of my favorite parts of the dish.

(jaunty uptempo jazz music) (leaves rustling) I love cabbage, whether it's kimchi, or pickled cabbage from like the Japanese side, I think it really retains the flavor of other ingredients really well, and it kind of melts in your mouth.

Now that the meat is nice and tender, (wooden spoon scraping against pot) and you can see like the olive oil and all the fat from the meat.

I mean, it's really a hearty dish, a stick to your bones dish, in my opinion, and... and I just love it.

Then you're just gonna layer the cabbage in.

Doesn't have to be pretty.

Just wanna get the cabbage in.

(cabbage leaves rustling) Okay, break this one up.

(electric piano arpeggio) Just wanna make sure there's enough room then after the cabbage cooks down for the marrow bones.

(soft reflective music) - [Nora] The thing about keeping kosher is really significant in Jewish cooking, the animals you can eat, the animals you can't eat.

So marrow bones are acceptable parts of an animal, and they contain a lot of flavor, particularly when they are cooked for a long time.

- [Hasia] Wherever Jews lived, they had a dish which is, um, we could call it in English, a Sabbath stew.

And marrow bones were great in that.

- [Alex] Because my great-grandmother, grew up in Paris, I like to think that, you know, maybe, maybe they didn't bring in marrow bones from Romania and maybe it was from Paris, and it's her Parisian touch to the dish.

We'll never know.

Now that the cabbage is a lot softer, my mouth is literally watering when I smell this.

(stew bubbles) You're gonna just throw the marrow bones in.

(stew simmering) and then you'll just let it simmer until the marrow bones are cooked, and then it'll be done.

(nostalgic piano) Food is love, and that's something I think you see in both Asian and Jewish cultures.

We show our love through food.

Being in the kitchen with my grandmother, it really felt like love.

(nostalgic piano continues) Losing my grandma was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in life It took me probably about a year until I could make any of her food.

Every time it's really hard 'cause I go to call her and ask her like, "Hey, should I add a little bit more of this or that?"

(gentle music continues) I, I just really have a sense of my grandma when I, when I make it and eat it.

(gentle music continues) It's literally history in a pot that was from Romania, went to Paris, went to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then Los Angeles, and now New York City.

So I think it's a way to keep history alive.

(gentle music continues) - [Narrator] Alex invited her mother to have a taste and see if the stew was just like her grandmother's.

- [Alex] I think it looks good.

I don't know, you taste it.

(gentle music continues) - Good job.

- Yay.

- [Jacquie] Yay.

- [Alex] Yay, alright.

(gentle music continues) - [Jacquie] It reminds me of mom.

- [Alex] Yeah.

(gentle music continues) - [Nora] When immigrant groups come, they are afraid that they're gonna lose touch with the place that they left behind.

You can hold on to your past and your family by cooking the dishes that they once cooked.

(lively music) - [Narrator] And coming up, we'll discover more delicious dishes from kreplach to blintzes to red lentil stew when "Family Recipe: Jewish American Style" continues.

(music crescendos and fades) - (soft music) - [Narrator] Welcome back to "Family Recipe: Jewish American Style."

(flamenco guitar) - I tell everybody that they should document what their mothers or grandmothers are doing.

Stay in the kitchen with them.

You can learn who you are and where you came from.

You'll learn more than just about food, you'll learn about life.

(guitar continues) - [Narrator] Susan's Sephardic dish has been in her family for generations, but she was the first to write down the recipe for prasa kon tomat, also known as leeks with tomato.

(guitar melody resolves) - First... (knife chopping) we have the leek.

People are very intimidated by leeks and getting them clean, and I have a super easy method.

Some people will just split them down the middle and wash it that way.

(knife cutting) You're not gonna get a leek really clean that way.

So I cut it down the long way, and then I cut it into quarter inch pieces.

(knife chopping) We'll just take a moment, rinse it off.

(water running) Boop, into the bowl.

So you can see how clean they are.

(nostalgic piano music) I never had this dish growing up until, (vegetable prep sounds) in 1960, my father's first cousin, Dora, one day she made this leek dish.

My father took one taste, and, like, his eyes rolled back in his head.

He just was like, "Oh my God, (uptempo nostalgic piano) that tastes exactly like my mother's."

My father loved to cook, and he's the one that passed the knowledge of Sephardic food onto me.

This dish is very symbolic for Sephardic Jews in terms of the ingredients and the preparation.

- [Nora] The term Sephardi comes from "Sepharad," which is Hebrew for Spain.

Jews from Spain and Portugal were expelled due to the Inquisition in the 15th century if they didn't convert.

(mysterious flamenco guitar) Almost 200,000 Jews leave that area and moved to different places.

The Jews who either converted or pretended to convert, so Conversos or crypto-Jews as they're sometimes known, had to be very careful if they wanted to continue to keep their foodways, and a lot of them did.

(light music) - [Susan] My ancestors lived in Spain pre-Inquisition.

When my family left Spain, most of them went to the Ottoman Empire.

Where my grandmother was from is very close to Greece, and so the, the cooking was different.

So this recipe actually descends from my grandmother.

And there was no written recipe.

So finally, I actually have a written recipe so that we can continue.

(soft piano) I can teach my son to make Sephardic food, and that's a huge part of what matters to me.

(quiet piano music) We're gonna start doing the tomato here.

(knife thudding) Just to chop it up.

You know, it doesn't have to be beautiful, but it does need to be seeded.

Now, you might ask, "Hmm, tomatoes aren't Old World.

How did they start cooking with tomatoes?"

(light piano) - [Lewis] If people are moving around and there are trade routes, (soft piano) "Jewish-ness" is going to incorporate things that weren't historically there.

There are so many Jewish dishes that may have things such as tomatoes.

(quiet piano music) - [Hasia] For most of Jewish history, Jews were involved in transatlantic trade between Europe, America, the Caribbean, Africa.

The role of Jews in global trade really deserves a lot of attention.

(quiet piano concludes) - (spoon thudding) - [Susan] The next step is garlic.

I mean, we all know what garlic is like, life.

You can either crush it or you can use a zester to do garlic.

(clove rubbing) What we're going to do here is make what's called a sofrito.

So I'm putting about two tablespoons of oil, and add these tomatoes and let them cook for about five minutes.

And you'll be surprised 'cause they're not oily if you cook it right.

(bowl thudding) (liquid pouring) (sizzling tomatoes) A great sound.

(pot sizzling) Some of the dishes that, when I cook, I feel my ancestors.

For the secret Jews, the crypto-Jews in Spain and the Conversos, food was an act of resistance.

You know, if you were cooking something, you were resisting the Inquisition through your food.

And there were people who died for that.

But it really also is heritage.

(piano arpeggio) Now that these have softened quite a bit, I'm gonna go ahead and just add all of these leeks in.

I know it looks like a lot.

They cook down like crazy.

When I cook dishes like these, I do really feel um... my father.

And... (bowl thudding) it's quite lovely of a feeling to think that I am doing this.

And he's been gone for many years, my poppy, but I'm still carrying on.

Quite wonderful.

(piano arpeggios) The last thing we add is some lemon.

This brings dishes to life.

Cover it back up.

(pot sizzling) (lid thudding) And we'll leave it do its thing.

(inspirational piano) It's quite amazing when you think about food from medieval Spain.

Food that's in Inquisition records from the 1400s, I cook.

(guitar strumming) It doesn't mean recipes don't change at all, but the basic dish, even the name for it, can endure.

It's got that tomato, it's got the garlic, the lemon.

It's fabulous.

Okay, that's probably a little conceited.

(laughing) (inspirational guitar) Mm.

It's good.

(inspirational music) The dishes are so full of that history.

I think that the food is the real connectors to the future.

I'm passing it on.

(gentle music) (knife chopping) - [Narrator] Tamar loves being able to pass on what she learned from her mother to her daughter, Lenoy.

One of their favorite Friday activities is making Ethiopian misir wot, a red lentil stew.

(gentle guitar music) - [Tamar] I was young when I came from Ethiopia, but I see everyone cooking around me, my aunt, my mom, my grandma, everybody cooking.

You see my daughter here next to me.

I was next to my mom.

- [Lenoy] Usually, we cook together on Fridays.

It's one of our kind of, like, traditions.

(knife chopping) But I think it's one of our favorite things to do, as well.

- She follow what I'm doing, and it's incredible how she is adding also her own things.

(gentle music) When I was two or three, we came from Ethiopia to Sudan, we walk, and then from Sudan to Israel.

(gentle guitar music) - [Lewis] What we call Judaism has been in Ethiopia for nearly three millennium.

(gentle guitar music) - [Tamar] My dad, my mom, it was important for them to show me the culture by food.

(gentle guitar music) The way my parents teach me, that's what I'm showing my kids.

(gentle guitar music) This is our red lentil.

(lid snapping) We need to wash it.

(water pouring) - [Nora] Red lentil stew is one of those things that really dates to the Bible.

In Genesis, there is a story about Jacob and Esau.

And Jacob's a bit of a trickster, and Esau was hungry, and he sold his birthright for a cup of red stuff.

It was understood to be a red lentil porridge or soup.

It is seen as one of kind of the oldest recipes that we know of.

(solemn music) - [Lewis] Among Ethiopians, because of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, there was a lot of trade that would create the use of turmeric, the use of cumin, the use of certain items in the foods.

For Ethiopians, there's a way of putting together spices called berbere.

- [Tamar] The flavor, it's, uh, it's remind me uh, my home.

The berbere, it's kind of between 10 to 12, uh, different kind of spices.

Dry onion, dry garlic, cardamom, rosemary, cinnamon, black pepper, white pepper.

You need to wash them, you need to dry them.

You need to put them in the oven.

There is a process.

It can take about a week and a half to make that.

(pot sizzling) My mom was here last year, and she bring me some.

Uh, the one she bring me can last me for a year or a year and a half.

(gentle music) - [Lenoy] When my grandmother came to the United States, it was very special to me to see where my mom learned how to cook.

- [Tamar] I'm going to add the spices.

You can see.

(lid clanking) (onions sizzling) I-- I'm gonna put more on.

(soft scraping sounds) When we cook th- the food, the Ethiopian food, there is no measure.

We just, you know, we put in from your eyes, from your hand the way you feel it's-- it's good enough.

I'm making the cardamom a little bit because almost it's gonna be done.

And I think Ethiopian food, it's all about the spices.

That's what make it unique and delicious.

- [Lenoy] I feel like definitely food is a way to bond with people because there aren't a lot of Ethiopian Jews here.

Growing up, it was important to me to show where my family history is, where we come from, and just share that wi-- a little bit with people.

- [Tamar] And I think our lentil stew ready.

Yes.

(upbeat music) So when you eat Ethiopian dish, uh, Ethiopian Jewish or Ethiopian Christian or Muslim, it doesn't matter, you put the injera and different variety dish, and it's welcoming everyone to eat.

We're not eating with small plate.

We're welcoming everyone to eat together.

The injera is a flatbread.

It's a little bit sour and spongy.

It's a hundred percent teff.

(gentle guitar) - [Lewis] All Jewish foods use some kind of grain, but in Ethiopia, teff is holy.

I mean, teff, teff is amazing, so it's used not only to make breads, but it's used also to thicken food.

It's used in all kinds of dishes.

- [Tamar] We serve it this way, and people's gathering around that's make us to be unity, together.

If guests coming, to make them welcome, we take amount of the food and we feed them also to make them part of the family.

You taking a little bit part of the injera.

I like the lentil stew, and I'm gonna take - Me too.

- ...the lentil stew When, especially I'm cooking, I feel the connection.

I'm putting all my heart, all my attention, all my love in that dish to celebrate the happiness, make you feel so good.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] While Tamar shares her beloved dish with her daughter, Lenoy; Bill treasures his father's handwritten blintz recipe.

(upbeat music) (paper folding sound effect) - [Bill] It's been passed down from my grandmother to my father, now to me.

I have actually the recipe in his chicken scratch from many years ago.

I'll start by making the cheese mixture.

When you make a blintz, you can do cheese.

I've done apple, I've done cherry.

I've done all the different flavors, but today we're doing cheese.

We'll start with our farmer's cheese, which is really solid.

Adding the eggs directly in.

Some of the things that I think would be really interesting to find out is the history deeper of this recipe.

My grandmother, where did she get it?

Was it from the old country?

Funny enough, my dad's recipe also calls for typical Jewish measurements.

So, salt: enough.

Cinnamon: yes.

So the cheese now just sets aside and now we make the actual blintzes themselves.

Egg, milk, and water.

How much?

Ah- about this much.

And then we blend it, and my dad used to do this by hand with a whisk, and he'd stand there, and you'd hear that whisk hitting against the pan.

And when I was little, I would always be in the other room and you'd hear that metal on metal, and, it's, it's like Pavlov.

I heard that and I knew what was going on.

(mixer clicks to a stop) All right, so now we've got the actual batter made.

(gentle upbeat music) As you cook them, you lay them out on the table.

As my sister and I laugh, you hock them out of the pan, even though they slide out.

Uh, there's something about the specific sound of, of hitting that, it- it just comes to memory of, of my dad making blintzes for all the holidays.

If you don't hit it, it just isn't the same.

(gentle music) (pan thudding) And that's the hocking sound.

(gentle music) After that, it's just rinse and repeat.

(lively festive music) (pan thudding) My dad was great at it.

He could have three or four pans going.

I'm lucky to get one pan going.

Even my kids know when they hear that, the hock, (pan thudding) they know what's coming.

Much like when you go into a deli and you get that deli smell.

(gentle music) My grandmother owned a deli and my dad owned a deli.

(gentle music) - [Nora] The word delicatessen means delicious things to eat.

When Eastern European Jews came, they also had kind of different traditional foods.

They start to become like hangout places.

And it became really popular and in a way it allowed for Jews to feel American because everybody went to the delis.

(soft music crescendos and fades) - [Bill] This is a recipe that my dad made for his deli.

The best part about making my dad's recipes is... Wow.

It evokes him.

Um... (gentle piano) He passed away five years ago.

He had been sick for a while, but uh, it, it, it's great because it's that instant connection.

(gentle piano) One of the best things my wife and I did for our children, we actually bought them cookbooks, and in there, we put family recipes.

(pan clattering) Do I think they'll ever make 'em?

I don't know.

I hope so, but I know they've got them.

And for me that's what's important.

(nostalgic piano) As you grow up, you don't know what you don't know and you don't know to ask those questions.

I knew sort of generically that my family was from Eastern Europe, but nothing specific.

Where do you go from there?

(nostalgic piano) - [Narrator] The Center for Jewish History took on the challenge of answering some of Bill's questions.

- [Jenny] Bill came to us with a bunch of family stories and so I was able to trace the family.

His great-grandfather, Morris Ginsburg, had a friend who lived in Youngstown, Ohio, the story goes, and the friend convinced him, "No, come to Youngstown.

Youngstown is great."

And so he went and he ended up settling there.

(gentle music) - [Bill] I had always wondered, of all the places in the world, how did they settle in Youngstown, Ohio?

Well, now it explains it.

(gentle music) - I was particularly happy to find, uh, Bill's grandmother, Eve, who's the one the recipe came from, owned a delicatessen.

So I did manage to finally track down an ad for the delicatessen.

It's not very large, but it was definitely an ad for different types of, you know, salami and corn beef and things that she was selling at that time.

- [Bill] It was just so fascinating to see that there was really an ad from her place.

It was just... I was speechless as I was reading it the other night...uh... I called my kids.

It was, uh, amazing.

Amazing what was able to be found.

(gentle inspiring music) The family recipes really do tell the story.

I know that my whole extended family in San Antonio remembers my father's blintzes.

That's everything.

That says it all.

(gentle inspiring music) So growing up, I would watch my dad fold the blintzes.

It's ingrained in my brain.

We've got our blintzes and you let 'em fry up, you let 'em get nice and golden.

(blintzes sizzling) (nostalgic piano music) I think what I miss most is being able to talk to him.

(nostalgic piano) I miss being able to bounce recipes off of him and cook with him.

(nostalgic piano continues) And it's hard, even five years down the road.

(music swells) The blintzes are cooked and now we get to my favorite part.

(knife scraping plate) There we go.

(soft uplifting music) Like dad.

(soft uplifting music) It's as if he had made them himself.

(soft uplifting music) - [Joan] Food is memory.

You have to have repetition to make traditions.

It has to be food; something that you remember that you're eating.

- [Lewis] Too many people look for food simply to be, uh, ingredients.

(uplifting piano music) We transform it into something meaningful.

The endorphins, the joy.

Recipes really connect people.

(uplifting music soaring toward crescendo) - [Narrator] More connections, more dishes, and even some classic recipes transformed with a modern twist when "Family Recipe: Jewish American Style" continues.

(music fades) - [Narrator] Family recipes can be passed down through cookbooks, but a cookbook is more than just a repository of ingredients.

(plucky guitar music) - [Melanie] Cookbooks are excellent documentation of a lot of different aspects of the American Jewish experience.

(plucky guitar) - [Joan] Not only do you learn cultural history, but then you learn culinary history.

What was available, what were people using?

(plucky guitar) - [Melanie] The oral tradition is wonderful, but the fact is, is that writing things down is a much better level of permanence that allows these things to survive to a much more significant degree.

(quirky music builds) - [Narrator] Written recipes can become treasured heirlooms telling a story richer than any meal.

Emily shares a recipe she wrote down in 1995, while studying abroad in Paris at a pivotal moment in her life.

- [Emily] This is a North African recipe.

Uh, the first thing we're gonna do is char some peppers.

We try to char them on each side.

(gentle music) My late father was Jewish, my mom is not, and so, my brother and I were raised not in any religious tradition, but then I had this really interesting experience when I was a student studying in, in France and I lived with a Sephardic Jewish family, and it really made me want to strengthen my connection to Judaism.

This is something that my French mother, as I would call her, uh, Annie Zémor used to make.

Madame Zémor was an amazing cook, very North African.

I joked that she put cumin in everything.

(jaunty jazz music) She was very proud of their story, of their background of being from North Africa, and of being Jewish.

So, this is what you're looking for.

You're just looking for them to be charred on all sides (jaunty jazz music) and then you just wanna cover them (jazz continuing) and they're gonna essentially steam.

This is like my travel... it was a travel journal.

(mysterious synth arpeggio) From... this is from 1995.

(Emily laughing) And then that's the recipe.

(gentle music) I think I was panicking about never eating these delicious things again.

I remember following her around and writing stuff down, like every mother, grandmother, you know, in the history of time when you were asking them for the recipe, they say, "I don't know.

You know, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that."

(gentle guitar music) - [Joan] A lot of cooks are superstitious.

If there's a beloved recipe, if they give it up to other people, the other people aren't gonna come to them anymore.

When I tell people that you should really document recipes, you should never leave the room, and you should bring teaspoons and measuring cups.

- We're gonna get started on the tomatoes.

On the original recipe that I copied down from her, it says, "Scald the tomatoes, then slip the peels off."

So this is my own adaptation.

(chuckles) (upbeat music) Once you've got the soft skin peeler, you're never blanching again.

(Emily laughing) Our tomatoes are peeled and I'm just going to take out the seeds.

The seeds are gonna make it watery if you leave them in.

(uptempo music continuing) Slice up these tomatoes.

Any dish that I make, you know, that has a connection to someone that I care about, it's, it's...it's really emotional.

It's also feels like you're honoring them in a sense.

(gentle guitar strumming) The thing that to me is really interesting too, is when I learned these dishes from her, I was a 20-year-old student.

As time has gone on, I feel like I have way more context.

She was my doorway into this very rich, pre-existing culinary tradition.

(nostalgic guitar music) - [Joan] Pepper salad, that's a recipe Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian families would make that for Shabbat.

It would be one of maybe a dozen appetizers.

- [Emily] I feel that when I'm cooking Sephardic food, it may not be like technically my family's, but again, we're all Jews, we're all one family.

I think it's really beautiful to start bridging those divides and cross-pollinating in that way.

But I think any recipe that's got a memory, a story, some significance to it, that's a family recipe.

(gentle guitar music resolves) I think the last thing I have to do is peel some garlic.

Uh, I'm gonna do it the way she would do it.

(knife thudding) Something I visually remember is like visible chunks of garlic in there.

Now, we're just gonna cook this.

The first thing that's gonna go in is the garlic.

Once the garlic's kind of fragrant, we're gonna add the tomatoes.

(tomatoes sizzling) This is a good moment to just add the peppers.

(pan sizzling) I'm gonna grab cumin, 'cause it wouldn't be an Annie Zémor recipe without cumin.

(pan sizzling) (pan sizzling) (nostalgic piano melody) Madame Zémor had been born in Algeria.

She wouldn't have thought of herself as anything special, just a normal French Algerian wife and mother, but she was a wonderful cook.

(nostalgic piano) (pan sizzzling) She was... I loved her so much.

(nostalgic gentle piano) The year of living in France, taught me what it's like when Jews are a tiny minority.

It was so, so core to her identity, but it would be very hard to separate the North Africanness of it from the Jewishness of it.

It was all of a piece.

I definitely came back with the sense that there was a much bigger tradition than I had been aware of.

You know, the idea of this diaspora that encompassed so many different traditions and kinds of Jews.

Experiencing their food and their cooking has been incredibly impactful on my life.

This very notion of being in a diaspora, having to move to a new place that is absolutely one of the most distinctive features of Jewish cuisine across the board.

(nostalgic piano melody resolves) This is exactly kind of how I want this to look.

It's- it's soft and saucy.

It's refrigerated and served cold.

That's exactly kind of what it looked like in 1995.

(soft chewing noise) It's such a simple dish.

It's so beautiful.

It's summer produce at its best, but you get that North African hit of the cumin and you're just there.

(playful music) - [Narrator] For some cooks, knowing where a recipe comes from can be as important as its ingredients.

Lahm b'ajeen, a miniature meat pie, is a recipe that tells the story of Jamie's Middle Eastern roots adapted to fit her dietary restrictions.

- [Jamie] I have celiac disease, so I had to modify the recipe to be gluten-free.

So, I actually, found this amazing gluten-free dough that I can actually use for the lahm b'ajeen.

When I was in my late twenties, early thirties, I realized how unique my background was and that not everyone ate foods like me.

So, I started cooking more with my dad, asking more questions, and I just became aware that nothing was gonna last forever.

And these recipes that were just handed down from generation to generation verbally were gonna be gone.

And so, I started trying to work with him to like document the recipes.

To make the filling I'm using beef, a little bit of onion, and then tomato paste.

For holidays, it was a whole big deal, it was a whole day.

My mom and dad together with us would just cook and cook and cook and cook and my mom would al- like so much so that the table would be filled.

And if it weren't filled, my mom would be like, "I didn't make enough food."

Food was the way to their heart.

It was the way like we celebrated holidays, the way we connected to Judaism, the way we connected to like our many different cultures that we come from.

(somber music) My father's family's from the Middle East and we don't even know where they're from.

I called my aunt and I was like, "What's the story?

Was our grandpa from Turkey or Syria?"

(gentle piano music) - [Narrator] The Center for Jewish History searched through Jamie's family background.

- [Moriah] I started with the information that Jamie had provided about her grandparents.

They were both born in the early 1920s, one in Aleppo, Syria, and one in Turkey.

I was curious to find out more specifically where her grandfather Moshe had come from in Turkey.

I came across a brief article, which revealed the fact that he had actually come from a town called Kilis.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Jamie] It totally makes sense now, because we just never understood how he was like legally born in Turkey, but was, you know, very Syrian.

And so, it was like really mind blowing.

(gentle uplifting music) It's very important to know where we came from.

I want my kids to know we eat this food, not because it's tasty, but because that's what our family made.

This could just be a traditional meat pie, but what makes it unique to cuisine from Aleppo is tamarind paste.

The trade route was open through Syria and so, they got things that other places couldn't get, specifically tamarind.

I actually couldn't find the tamarind paste, and so, I'm gonna use the pomegranate molasses, which is also something that my grandmother used to make from scratch.

- [Nora] Jews love pomegranates.

There are 613 commandments.

The tradition is there are 613 seeds in a pomegranate.

A lot of Jews in Persia and surrounding use a lot of pomegranate and tamarind in cooking.

Pomegranate molasses is a staple.

(music fades) - The pomegranate and the tamarind makes it a little bit sweeter, tangier.

And then the next thing is this spice.

It's called baharat.

It's Middle Eastern spice blend, but you gotta mix it well, 'cause it is such a distinct flavor.

I have to like make it look like I remember with my dad.

And so, a lot of the recipe really just comes back as you make it.

(gentle thoughtful music) When my dad died, I never really got to learn all the recipes.

So I've turned to aunts and cousins and my mom and family to sort of learn how to recreate those recipes, which is a very funny process.

I'll call one aunt and she's like "Let me call the other aunt and call my cousin and go to your mom."

And so it's like this whole thing and I end up with like half a recipe that I still don't really know how to make.

But I actually turned to Poopa Dweck and she actually created a few cookbooks but one is called "Aromas of Aleppo" which documents all of these Syrian recipes and y'know, I spoke with her and she actually said, "I did this because I knew our food would never live on.

No one documented this."

(emotional piano music) - [Melanie] I think that everybody just assumed that the oral tradition would suffice because it had for so long.

Many generations of people learned by doing and learned by somebody who just told you how she did it.

But then once you get really more widespread migration, we need a different mechanism.

Things like cookbooks.

(music crescendos and fades) - [Jamie] My dad would never do a garnish because he was just a very like straightforward chef and it was for taste, not for like how it looked and so, um, one of the steps I actually just forgot and remembered now is you- you'd top it traditionally with pine nuts.

(gentle music begins) I want our recipes to live on and so it's pretty hard to go through the emotional process of remembering my dad's cooking.

That generation, I think because they never learned from a recipe, they were so hesitant to write something down and I still thought even like 'til the day he died, I was gonna write down his recipes.

(gentle nostalgic music) But then I just had to say like "I know more than I think I do and I can do it."

(soft piano, violin music) I'm proud of myself.

(soft piano, violin music) Oh wow, it's good.

(food crunching sound) (soft piano fades) (jaunty klezmer music begins) - [Narrator] Like Jamie, many modern Jewish American cooks adapt family recipes for changing dietary needs but strive to maintain the distinct flavors of their childhood.

Micah creates a vegetarian version of her grandmother's kreplach, a little soup dumpling that is traditionally filled with meat.

- [Micah] It's one of my favorite things to make when I'm thinking of her.

So the first thing we need to do is make the dough.

She always made hers in the food processor.

She was obsessed with the food processor, so I do the same.

(dishes clanking) Just some regular all-purpose flour.

(sound of zesting) Growing up, the kreplach I ate were made with meat, whatever leftovers my grandmother had in the fridge but I'm vegetarian now, so I add potatoes to mine.

I really got more into cooking when I stopped eating meat.

I was trying to just make something vegetarian but I didn't really think about could I make this Jewish or Jewish-ish or Ashkenazi?

So now it's time to make the filling.

My grandmother always used her leftover brisket or her maybe roast chicken from Shabbat dinner.

I like to use leftover mashed potatoes with caramelized onions.

There's nothing better than the smell of caramelized onions.

It reminds me of going into my grandmother's house, of her frying onions with everything.

Kreplach was really born out of the necessity of using something up because you didn't have something new to eat.

(jaunty jazz guitar music) - [Nora] Ashkenazi communities were typically rather poor.

You see this in all kinds of cuisines.

In Italy, it's called cucina povera, which is "poor kitchen" and it's this idea of stretching what you can.

- [Micah] Everything tastes better if you understand the food and understand how it came to be.

(solemn reflective music) My mom's family came mostly from Ukraine and Poland.

So my upbringing was very much shaped by the Eastern European kitchens of my grandparents.

(solemn music fades) So my dough has been resting and I'm going to flour my work surface.

And now for the elbow grease.

We're gonna roll it out nice and thin about an eighth of an inch thickness.

(rubbing noise) (rattling rolling pin) It feels good.

And now into little squares.

I think we're just about ready to fold.

My grandmother learned to make kreplach from her mother as well, who was a very skilled cook and, and hostess and she would make kreplach and also vareniki and she would put them in little Pyrex dishes on Greyhound buses across Canada to her four daughters who lived in different places and so the bus drivers all knew Frieda to put a Pyrex dish of dumplings essentially, front seat Greyhound bus to go to her kids around the country as a way to say "happy New Year" or "I'm thinking of you."

And so there's something special about like folding the dough and putting love and thought and attention into it and it's something that the women in my family have been doing for generations to show each other that we love each other.

(light piano music) Holidays in our house were typically my mom, my grandmother and myself cooking and prepping.

It was a time for learning kind of the oral history of our family.

Yes, the recipes were passed down but just also family stories were passed down.

Talking about my great-grandmother who fled pogroms in what is now Ukraine to come to Canada all by herself and she was such a cool woman and so I was able to learn all these cool stories about my great-grandmother Frieda.

So it was so much more than just getting food on the table.

It was always a story to be told.

(piano music resolves and fades) So I ha- have made all of my little kreplach.

So it's time to boil and you know that they're done when they start to float.

Hot!

Please don't break.

(piano music) I talk a lot about a specific cookbook that my grandmother had called "The Pleasures of Your Food Processor."

This was her original copy I believe but if you look through it, like it's taped on, handwritten notes, some pictures, some newspaper clippings.

- [Melanie] I love to see marks of use.

A lot of times, they're a snapshot of a very particular place in time and very particular lives.

That's what makes history wonderful-- to see those snapshots and really feel that you can understand what's happening in that kitchen.

- [Micah] Oh, here she is cutting a pie (laughing) Um... and this is, this was like gospel in our house.

It was specifically earmarked for me.

I don't live in the same country most of the year and so when she passed away, my mom called and told me, I- I didn't know what to do and I said, "How am I supposed to mourn... mourn her and celebrate her if I can't be there?

I want to be with you guys."

And so she just said, "Do something that you guys would've liked to do together that she would be proud of."

(uplifting inspirational music) And so that day, I- I just rolled and... ...and cut and folded dozens and dozens of kreplach.

I made so many because that- I wasn't done processing after the first batch and it was that moment in time where I was like, "Why have I not been eating these foods that I grew up with just because I'm vegetarian?"

I want to connect with her, I want to connect with that part of who I am and it was really how I mourned but also celebrated her life and passing at the same time.

(relaxed music) - [Melanie] You treasure these recipes because you treasure the memories and there's obviously really this renewed desire to make sure that these recipes and the cultural traditions and the memories don't become forgotten.

(nostalgic music) - [Micah] The fact that I eat differently than my grandparents shouldn't mean that the tradition stops with me.

I feel compelled to keep the dishes alive and to recreate them and make them to preserve and memorialize the people who taught me.

(gentle music resolves and fades) So this is my grandmother's kreplach in my two favorite ways to eat them.

But honestly, I'll just eat them plain out of the bowl.

You might want to cut them, but I'm not here for that.

(gentle music fades) (soft chewing) It just tastes like my grandma's kitchen.

It's just so comforting.

(inspirational music) - [Joan] Family recipes are so important.

That's what makes you who you are.

It gives strength to your family.

(inspirational music continuing) It makes family important.

(inspirational music continuing) - [Narrator] Family recipes bring us to the table, celebrating our heritage, our personal stories and our love through food and together we keep the vibrant ingredients, the delicious flavors and the powerful meaning alive.

(music crescendos and fades) (uptempo klezmer music) (music crescendos and fades)