422: Joan Nathan

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. She wanted me to write about the Jews, and she said, I want you to write about how Jews have changed food in America and how America has changed Jewish food. I thought, what a great idea. And I think this book changed America's feeling about Jewish food. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

0:59How cool was it to have Joan Nathan into our studio? Joan is a longtime chronicler of Jewish food culture around the world and author of many cookbooks on the topic, including her latest and final book, My Life in Recipes, Food, Family, and Memories, which she put out this spring. In this episode, we talk about Joan's long journalism career, including working at the Washington Post and the New York Times and writing across the world of food. We also get into some of her favorite lasting recipes from Jewish traditions around the world. You're going to want to stick around for this great conversation.

1:34I hope you enjoy it.

1:45Joe Nathan, welcome to This is Taste. How are you? Fine. How are you? I'm really happy you're here and we can talk about your book, My Life and Recipes. And I'm going to take a little bit of a chronological approach. I typically don't do that with guests, but this is a book about your life and really does go in order a bit. And I want to talk about, obviously, the Jewish diaspora, about the Middle East, about your history, reporting for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and also your time working in Israel, in Jerusalem. And there's a lot in between. You're a Wolverine as well. You surprised me.

2:25I took about three hours with your book last night, and I just couldn't stop reading it. Wow. Good. I like that. I like that. I love it. No, I'm a fan of your work broadly. But then when you read this book, you really get a sense of who you are and not just the recipes. And I really want to start with your grandparents and your parents' generation. This is like the first generation Jews coming from Europe. Let me ask you broadly, how was their relationship with food changed as they immigrated to America? That's interesting. My mother, who was a typical, I guess she's considered first generation American.

3:01She was born here. She wanted American food and her mother and father wanted American food. And that was very typical of some of the immigrants. There's a wonderful, I forget her name, but there's a wonderful writer who talks about the immigrant of my mother's, you know, the Eastern European immigration. and that some people wanted pastrami and they thought of salad as cabbage. My mother wanted lettuce and lettuce for them was lettuce, you know. And there's a wonderful book where the sweatshop operator takes out one of the women and he says, where do you want to go to eat it? He said, I want to go to a restaurant with lettuce and salad.

3:55And he said, oh, that's not food. So he wanted to take her to a regular like Katz's. Yeah. So when your grandparents moved to America, how different was the food for them? Oh, it was totally different. I mean, it was Eastern European food. There wasn't a lot of it, first of all. And don't forget in those days people didn't have fresh food from all over. And this is Eastern European. My father's family on the other hand. The Germans, right? The Germans. They came over because of Hitler. They didn't come over to have a better life. They had a good life in Germany. And they came over and they really wanted to replicate a lot of the recipes like brains with capers and Schaller and Weber, you know, frankfutters.

4:51That kind of like the Bavarian cuisine, like the real German cuisine. And it was good. I would go over to my aunts on Saturdays and eat with them. And I think that was partially how I got interested in food. Yeah. Well, your career, it's not just cookbook writing and food writing. You had an interesting career. And I love this line. When I was 26, there were two things I knew. I wanted to fall in love. But more than that, I wanted to live an interesting life. Right. And I love that line because you clearly did. And it wasn't with food. When you wrote that or thought that, what were you doing in your life at 26?

5:31Well, I was single in New York City. I was working at the Institute of International Education doing PR for them. But more than anything else, I was trying out recipes that Craig Claiborne put in the New York Times. But I, you know, somebody who had been in the peace corps told me the most interesting place he had ever been to was Israel. And so I thought, oh, I'll go to Israel. Even though my father pushed it down, you know, he was a Zionist. He pushed it down my throat. I never wanted to go there. But then when somebody my age said that, I thought, oh, good, I'll do that. So I went and it just blew my mind.

6:12It was sort of like the Wild West in those days. I mean, it's the summer of 1969. And, you know, that's a time with the moon landing and great cultural change in America. And you're going to this country that's very young and is the Wild West. Literally, it is like the desert. Joan, what's it like in Israel in 1969 for you? Well, it was just what you were saying. You know, I just remember going to the desert more than anything else and feeling very free, you know. And I actually, in the moon landing, I arrived the day before, and the president of NYU was visiting the president of the Technion, who was a very good friend of my father's in Haifa.

7:01And so they invited me to come. And here I was watching the moon landing on television, probably a small box with this president of NYU. It was just sort of astounding for me. and then the president offered me a job to come to Haifa to work for him and I didn't want to leave. I was in Jerusalem and I really didn't want to leave Jerusalem. I mean Jerusalem also was the stone was so extraordinary. It was so different. It was great. Yeah, you mentioned Jerusalem seems to be your favorite place to visit in Israel And when you're living there in 69 and later on, we'll get to that. What's the food like in Israel in 1969?

7:50Well, there was this unusual dish called hummus. I had never had it in my life. And people, you know, that was what you would get in the old city. And Israelis, it was a cheap protein. It was, you know, the oldest protein known to mankind. And that's what everybody was eating. They also ate falafel, again, from chickpeas, which was a cheap protein. It was different. I mean, no hot dogs, no, you know, it was just, I loved it. So with hummus, you know, it's definitely like this staple of the cuisine. So you've got your hummus in 1969, but are there restaurants outside of the hummus shias? What's it like?

8:32No, I'll tell you what there were. There were restaurants, quasi or ersatz Italian. There was a place called Fink's, which is all the journalists went there. Tiny little restaurant that had German food, good schnitzel. There was a Cohen's, which was I think he was Moroccan. He had stuffed every kind of stuffed vegetable that was another tiny little restaurant. There weren't that many restaurants and they were expensive for tourists and they weren't very good. They weren't very good. I mean, the cuisine was just starting to figure out itself as a nation. The country was starting to figure out itself.

9:13Yeah, right. The country's cuisine, right? Now, you end up working for the mayor of Jerusalem as an attaché. And really, the narrative in this book is amazing. You get to rub shoulders with dignitaries and celebrities and lots of amazing food writers and people in the food world. I love it. It feels very cinematic. Hope you can get that movie made one day. Let me ask you about being an attaché. You're kind of like the liaison. You're showing celebrities and dignitaries around Jerusalem. What are some of the meals you're having at that time? Well, that's really what made me learn about Jerusalem.

9:48Because let's say you went to the Sisters of Zion convent with the mayor of Jerusalem. Well, they would make for you delicious pies, French pies, and really good food. or the Russians would serve Russian food and religious Jews would serve heavy-ish food. And Teddy Kalik would eat with such vigor. And I noticed that if you ate people's food, then you liked them. And I remember one instance in particular. It was after there had been a terrorist attack. I don't know if you remember this. It was a Japanese terrorist attack on a plane. And there were a lot of people that were hurt. And Teddy and I went to visit them in the hospital.

10:39And then he said, well, you want to go out to eat? And I had just heard about a tiny little Moroccan restaurant. And it cost maybe five shekels. It was very cheap. And it was delicious stuffed vegetables and just delicious, delicious food. And Teddy said to me after we were there, you know, all these Americans go to the King David Hotel and get really expensive, horrible food. And look at this hole in the wall, delicious for so cheap. And that's what I found all over Jerusalem. And so you start showing people around to these restaurants and kind of, I would say, probably inadvertently helping bring this cuisine into more of a lexicon, right?

11:28I think this is such a— Well, that's a good word to use because it did—you know, what is the lexicon of Jewish food, really? Right. I mean, of Israeli food. That's different from Jewish food. Of course, right. And that's a good distinction to make. And it was beginning. You know, it was like, what did people like to eat? So they were, let's say you were a Libyan Jew. There was this thing called mafroum, which was pieces of potato with a sandwich between ground beef. And it was delicious. And that has become part of the legacy of Jewish Israeli food. And other things, the wonderful Moroccan salads and the Tunisian salads, and that too has become Israeli.

12:13But it came from Morocco. It came from Tunisia. The hummus is of the region. It had been around for thousands of years. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh mentions hummus. And so does the Bible, where a shepherd was, a farmer was preparing food for the farmhands. And he, you know, he made pita bread. And then it said that it was dipped in vinegar. But vinegar is, it's not the word that it really was. It was hummus. Wow. Because if you think about it, if you have people working for you and you just let them have it dipped in vinegar, that people are working hard. They're not getting any protein. So it was an ancient word for hummus, and that's what they were dipping it in.

13:05But it was like a substantial meal and not the condiment. Right. And it might not have had the sesame because sesame came from China. We don't know when it really hit the Middle East. Right. It came from China. Did it come from Ethiopia, too, the sesame? Well, you know, that's a good question because I did go to Ethiopia to the tahina harvest. it probably was there too. Yeah, it probably came from both sides as well. It's an interesting path of hummus. We could do a whole episode on hummus if we wanted. But we end up back in America after 1973, and you're thinking about a cookbook. You're pitching this idea that you collaborated with somebody with.

13:46And you went to 16 publishers, and they all said no. One eventually said yes. And let me ask you, why was it such a tough sell? Well, I wrote it with another person, Judy Stacey Goldman, and who worked in the mayor's office as well. And by the way, I recommend this if you're doing your first cookbook because you'll end up not doing it unless you have somebody pushing you. Yeah, that's good advice. Lots of the publishers said that if you want to write something on Jerusalem, it has to be kosher. And we felt, we were young, we felt, wait a minute, you know, there are Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Jerusalem.

14:25And that's what I wanted to portray. So I didn't want it to be totally kosher. Yeah. I mean, from the jump, you wanted to show this complex population, mosaic of people in Jerusalem, which is such a great journalistic instinct and not trying to do this book that was only for one population. Exactly. And, you know, we felt strongly about it. So there was one journalist who had been in Jerusalem, who knew us, and he worked for Time magazine that owned Little Brown. at the time, and they accepted it. But what they did do, which was really kind of stupid, but they did it, when they were doing marketing, there was one recipe from an Israeli art school, and it was a shrimp teriyaki.

15:14I don't know where this is going. In their marketing tools, they had this shrimp teriyaki on sending it to all the Hadassah ladies in America. Yeah, the Hadassah ladies aren't going to be loving that shrimp cocktail or shrimp on the Barbie. Yeah, that's an unforced error from your publisher. But certainly you were able to redeem yourself. And this is book 12 that you're on. Exactly. And we'll talk a little bit more about your career. Let's move outside of cookbooks, though. And you end up in Boston. You wrote a column there and then you ended up in The Washington Post in 1987 or until 1987. And what are you covering at both Boston and Washington Post?

15:56What type of way you're you're not just writing about Jewish or Israeli food. You're writing about other things, too. Well, you know, at that time I thought maybe I wanted to get a Ph.D. in anthropology. I didn't know what. Oh, a Ph.D., why? That's exactly I didn't do it. I thought, what would I do differently? I wouldn't do anything differently. So when I went to the Boston Globe, I showed the then editor of the magazine, somebody named Tony Spinozola, who was a beloved individual in Boston at that time, that I was writing this book, The Flavor of Jerusalem. And he said – and I said, I just want to write about ethnicity in Boston because it was such an interesting – and it's an interesting city.

16:39At that time, there were lots of ethnic pockets. So he said, well, why don't you write about ethnicity and food? So I did. And I found all these wonderful people. But, you know, it was baptism by fire. I'd never really written for a newspaper. Yeah. And it has its own process and standards. And you end up in the Washington Post and you write candidly how you're offered a weekly column and you turn it down. And you openly acknowledge, you know, did I make a mistake? Because that's a pretty big deal to be given a weekly column. But you had a reason why you turned it down. Well, you know, I mean, at that time I was at the – how old was I?

17:2032 years old. And my mother, of course, had always – all she wanted was for me to get married. And here I was when I went in there, I was pregnant with this baby and who's a journalist now. But I'd been working since I went to college. So that was like almost 10 years of working. And I just got panicky when they asked. And so I thought, is it OK if I just do it when I want to? And they said, yeah. I mean, they were really nice. Yeah. I mean, they just saw talent and they clearly wanted more. And you made the wise decision to have work-life balance before that was even a term. It's funny that you say that because I was just looking at something that Marion Burroughs wrote about me when I hadn't ever seen or I'd never noticed it before.

18:14When I wrote my American Folklife Cookbook, she wrote this. She said something about that I was fast becoming an expert on ethnicity in America. And I thought, oh, or something like that. And I was like, she noticed that? But, you know, it was like I just did things because I wanted to do it. I mean, it was really kind of. You're naturally inquisitive person. You've got the reporting chops and it kind of all lined up at some point. I think so. Yeah. I'd love to get Marion on the podcast. Oh, yeah. You should call her. I know you need to call her and you talk about that plum tart recipe. Oh, yeah.

18:46The most famous recipe in the New York Times. Right. Absolutely. I'll give a segue here. You end up at the New York Times, which I believe is probably when you really, you know, became Joe Nathan. And as we know today, writing regularly about cuisine, about ethnicity and writing about Jewish food to this day. I feel like you've written. I saw your byline in The Times recently. Right. And that's prolific that more than than most. And let me ask you, when you join The New York Times, you know, there's a deep bench of reporters there. You know, Ruth Roysel is there as well, who I know your friends with and interviewed you recently here in New York.

19:20What's it like being like on the staff and so to speak of The New York Times food desk? Well, I was always freelancing. Yeah, I said so to speak because you're so regular. You weren't technically staffed, but you were there writing a lot. Well, I mean, things have changed a lot at times. It used to be a lot, in a way, more difficult. There's much nicer now. Everybody's nicer. It seems that way. Yeah. They're very nice there now. Yeah. The food desk, they're very nice people. Really and truly, it's been a pleasure. I've just found that people, I don't know if they've respected me, but they've always been really respectful.

19:55and I remember when I first started, when Sam Sifton started as the editor and he's also somebody who's, I think he knows who he is and he came up to me and he said, thank you so much for writing for the New York Times and I thought, wow, that's really something and he's always been sort of embarrassingly, when I come in sometimes he'll say, Joe Nathan's here I love it well you are a fixture and Sam knows that to pay respects to somebody who's written so many I looked back at your archive I mean it's a lot of articles gosh it's a lot and do you just pop it out of your head favorite story in New York Times favorite story you worked on I'm going to pop in this random question do you have like a moment that you're just so happy to report that oh I'll tell you it was not a Jewish article It was somebody's 100th Thanksgiving.

20:57Her name was Maddie Ball Fletcher. She was a woman. I loved her. She was from Little Washington, Virginia. And she remembered when there were ice blocks bringing oysters up the Rappahannock River. And when she planted Salsafee, and she had this great accent, loved to cook, loved to garden, and she made candied grapefruit peels for the Inn at Little Washington. Oh, which is an absolute legendary restaurant, absolute legendary. And she was very Southern. I mean, she was the real deal. I loved her. I mean, 100 years old at that time, she probably knew people who fought in the Civil War. I mean, that's the age that you're talking about.

21:45And this was in 19—must have been about 1987. Yeah. And I remember when I was writing the article on her, the then editor, Margot Slade, was on the phone with me because you were on the phone those days, right? And my husband and I were going to a dinner. It was just when the Soviet Union was collapsing.

22:13And Gorbachev was walking, you know, I said a pay phone, right? Gorbachev was walking by me and I said to her, can I call you back? She said, no, we've got questions and this is going to be one of the most important food articles in the New York Times. And I thought, but I want to look at Gorbachev, you know. Wow. What an amazing context for that piece. And yeah, so like your editors are ringing you up for fact check and last minute edits because there's no there's no email. There's no word doc with copy changes in it. It's a different time. Let's take a food break. I want to we'll get back to your narrative.

22:46But I want to I don't want to get too far without talking about food. I'm just asking you straight up, Joe Nathan. How do you do brisket? Your brisket. Slow, long, with tomatoes, red wine, a lot of red wine, thyme, all kinds of herbs, and lots of onions and carrots. Very simple. Salt and pepper. Do you feel that briskets served at Passover and throughout the year are too lean? Oh, you need the fat to make it delicious. And then what I do is I make it, refrigerate it, cut off the fat, and then slice it. And sometimes freeze it or just slice it in the sauce. And I reduce the sauce. Yeah, you always reduce the sauce.

23:34I always reduce the sauce. And then what I do is just serve it in a casserole. It's done. It's just done. The 90s were tough when it came to home cooking because it was like this era of fat-free cooking. And I feel like a lot of these recipes need fat for flavor. No question. How did you negotiate that era being someone who was writing Jewish cooking and having this subtext of it needs to be fat-free, but you obviously know it can't be? Well, I think I tried those really lean cuts and it just didn't work for me. And I thought, well, you know, I'm cutting off the fat, but I'm getting the flavor of the fat.

24:14And I just you just don't tell people. It's my policy, too, with cooking. You should never let people know how much butter you cook with. Absolutely. You just never want to like it's like a restaurant, of course. And that's right. Absolutely. Musa Khan. Oh, my God. It's the most delicious chicken dish in the world. It seems like it. Let's go through this dish. It really stuck out to me. It's a dish that I want to cook. Well, I mean, and I learned it from the real, I learned it from the, believe it or not, he was, I wanted to learn to make it. I was writing this cookbook. I was at Harvard in a mid, I forget what it was called, mid-career program at the Kennedy School.

24:57And somebody that was in my class with Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the minister of information from Jordan. And he didn't know anybody in Boston. So knowing me, I went up to him in the first class and I said, you know, I lived in Israel and I want to learn to make Musachan. And he said, absolutely, invite me to your house. And he didn't have his family there. And his name was Adnan Abu Odeh. And he was a wonderful, wonderful man. He became a really good friend of my husband's and mine. Of course, my husband being kind of political, he just loved anyone political. So he came over and showed me how to make it.

25:40And honestly, I still think I make the best musakhan. Let's go through the recipe that you have in the book. Okay. So you just take, you know, just regular cut up chicken. And you put a lot of onions. And I usually use red onions now. And a lot of sumac. Yeah. Yeah. Lemony sumac is the best. It's really delicious. And then sautéed onions, sumac, a lot of pine nuts. And you can put a tiny bit of cloves if you want to. I don't usually, or cinnamon. I'm pretty much straight, but that's the way he was. And then you cook it for maybe an hour in the oven. And then what you do is you take a big piece of lavash if you want to or two pieces of lavash, put them on a big tray, and then you put the chicken on top and put the onions on top and the pine nuts on top.

26:41Dills over it, right. And then bake it in the oven just to really clinch it. And then you serve it on a big tray and eat it by hand so that you can soak up all those. A lot of olive oil. I think I'm doing this for Passover. I'm like debating about a chicken dish. Oh, so put it on matzah. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Oh, it would be delicious. I'm thinking like if I was exactly, that was my thought. like maybe with a matzah, some lavash, but with sumac, which I have some I got in Israel last year. So I'm going to do that. I wish we could go over more recipes, but I want to continue on your journey in writing.

27:22Tell me about working with Judith Jones. You know, at Knopf, this is a big topic now. There's a great book coming out about Judith Jones that Sarah Franklin wrote. And I want to get your experience working with Judith Jones. Well, I spoke to Judith just after I wrote my first cookbook. Wow. I went to visit her, and I was very young, and she wanted me to write an American cookbook, and I didn't want to do it. I thought, I know about Jerusalem. I don't know about being Jewish. So I turned them down. So then later I had a new agent and she said, Judith Jones wants to speak to you. She was doing Knopf Cooks America.

28:11Oh, right. She wanted me to write about the Jews. And she said, I want you to write about how Jews have changed food in America and how America has changed Jewish food. And I thought, what a great idea. I'd already written, by the way, a Jewish cookbook with Shaken, which is now part of the Random House group, in 1979. So this was 19, about 1990. And I thought, what a great idea. So I plunged in. And it was really interesting. And I think in a way this book changed America's feeling about Jewish food. It became something more of a cuisine. And then it became a classic. So this is the Knopf Cooks book?