I Could Nosh: Classic Jew-ish Recipes Revamped for Every Day

Dedication

For Jamie, my sister, best friend, and toughest critic

This is literally the worst thing I’ve ever tasted!

—Jamie Cohen, a hater of rose water and cardamom, upon trying my Havdalah Snickerdoodles

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

Nosh It

10 Commandments of Kitchen Life

1. Challah Back

Jake’s Challah

Moses in a Blanket

Burger Buns

Garlic Knots

Chall-Zones

Pletzel

Monkey Bread

Babka

Schnecken

Sufganiyot

2. Pantry Powerhouses

Harissa Honey

Tahini Ranch

Spicy Green Sauce

Dill-Pickled Jalapeños

Sweet & Salty Onion Crunch

Sumac-Pickled Onions

Master Meat Rub

Susi’s Dressing

Sandwich Schmear

Baharat (Arabic Spice Mix)

Spicy Vodka Sauce

Za’atar Bread Crumbs

Roasted Garlic Butter

Dukkah

Preserved Lemons

3. The Breakfast and the Furious

Schmear Campaign

Pickled Everything Schmear

Preserved Lemon & Harissa Schmear

Lox & Seeds Schmear

Sugar & Spice Schmear

Veggie Supreme Schmear

Hot Honey Schmear

Herbalicious Schmear

Za’atar & Tahini Schmear

Frizzled Scallion & Garlic Schmear

Brown Butter Schmear

BEC Challah Strata

Cacio e Pepe Matzo Brei

Whipped Avocado-Ricotta Toast

Blueberry-Lavender Blintzes

Corned Beef Hash Spanish Tortilla

BEC (Bialy, Egg, and Cheese)

Fried Challah PB&J

4. Nosh Pit

Barely-a-Recipe Baked Brie

Honey-Whipped Ricotta with Sage

Sweet & Smoky Baba Ghanoush

Sweet Potato Hummus

French Onion Spinach Artichoke Dip

Baked Feta & Cherry Tomato Dip

Nanny’s Liptauer (Slovakian Cheese Spread)

Matbucha

Watermelon & Feta Tartines

Finger Beans

Annie’s Honey-Candied Wings

Kugel Fries

Bina’s Spinach Boureka Rolls

Apricot-Glazed Salami Tart with Arugula Salad

Broccoli-Cheddar Knishes

Fried Pickle Platter

Latke Tartines

Savory

Sweet

Pizza Bagel

Matzo Pizza

5. We Both Love Soup

Jake’s Lentil Stew

Baharat-Roasted Squash Soup

Creamy Cauliflower-Potato-Leek Soup

Harissa Tomato Bisque with Challah Grilled Cheese

Miso Mushroom Barley Soup

Broccoli Split Pea Soup with Chicken Sausage

Borscht with Flanken & Sauerkraut

Chicken Stock

Jewish Penicillin

The Mix-Ins

Jake’s Fluffy Balls

Gondi (Persian Chicken & Chickpea Dumplings)

Kreplach

6. I Just Want a Big Salad

Iceberg Slice Salad with Grilled Chicken

Beet & Turnip Caprese

Quinoa Chopped Salad

Health Salad

High Holiday Apple & Endive Salad

Kale-Tahini Caesar

Everything Bagel Panzanella

Cobb-ish Salad with Smoked Salmon

7. I’ll Have What She’s Having

Pickled Celery Tuna Salad

Hillel Chicken Salad

Sabich Egg Salad

Turk-ish Leek Burgers

White Bean & Quinoa Veggie Burgers

Schnitzel Challah Sandwiches with Celery Root Remoulade

8. I Only Have Time for a Quickie

Spring Kasha: Pistachio Pesto Kasha Varnishkes with Asparagus and Peas

Summer Kasha: Charred Cherry Tomato Kasha Varnishkes

Fall Kasha: Cauliflower-Caper Kasha Varnishkes

Winter Kasha: Dilly Cabbage Kasha Varnishkes

Ma’acaroni in a Pot

Honey-Mustard Broiled Salmon with Roasted Potatoes, Broccoli & Fennel

Pomegranate-Glazed Lamb Meatballs with Herby Israeli Couscous

Chicken Tagine Pot Pie

Ghormeh Sabzi Paneer

Steak Frites with Garlic Whip

Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Green Beans & One-Pot Mashed Potatoes

Kitchri (Iraqi Jewish Lentil Rice) with Garlicky Yogurt

Soupless Chicken Soup

9. There Will Be Leftovers

Jew-mami Braised Brisket

Cholent Bourguignon

Hamis e Potata with Grenpis (Iraqi Curried Chicken & Potato Stew with Peas)

Pineapple-Mustard Corned Beef with Roasted Cabbage

Date-Roasted Vegetable Tahchin

T’beet (Iraqi Baked Chicken & Rice)

Bina’s Burghul B’Seniyeh

Baked Eggplant Parm with Vodka Sauce

Big A** Vegetable Lasagna

10. Who Doesn’t Serve Cake After a Meal?

Any-Fruit Poppy Streusel Coffeecake

Preserved Lemon & Olive Oil Loaf Cake

Date-Walnut Banana Bread

Chocolate-Marzipan Marbled Snacking Cake

Apples & Honey Snacking Cake

Tzimmes Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Flourless Chocolate-Sumac Cake

Nanny’s Apple Cake

Caramelized Honey Bundt Cake

Manischewitz Fruit Cake

11. Look to the Cookie

Havdalah Snickerdoodles

Passover Chocolate Chip Cookies #K4PCCC

Charoset Rugelach

Angostura-Lime Coconut Macaroons

Super Fudgy Date Brownies

Hint-of-Rose Mandel Bread

You-Can-Go-Your-Own-Way Frangipane Hamantaschen

Hanukkah Marble-Glazed Shortbread Cookies

Crispy Persian Rice Treats

Honey-Nut Baklawa

Matzo Crunch

Holidays of Our Lives

Universal Conversion Chart

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

Also by Jake Cohen

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

Nice to see you again! Or maybe we’re meeting for the first time. Before we chat all things noshes, I wanted to write a little preface to catch up and let you know why I chose to write this book, which I love so deeply.

It’s been a wild couple of years. When I released Jew-ish in March 2021, I had grandiose fantasies of how it was all going to play out. And with a lot of work and a lot more luck, everything went better than I could have ever dreamed. But as I made my way through the tour of interviews and press, two questions kept popping up that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Question One: What’s next?

Well, obviously this book is the answer. But this question bothered me a bit. We have a tendency when reaching any milestone to turn our attention to the next one, diminishing prior accomplishments by focusing on what’s next, what’s bigger and better.

You lose fifteen pounds, but you won’t celebrate until you lose another five. You get a promotion and a raise, but you’ll really feel you’ve made it when you get the next one. You cook a gorgeous feast, but you’re dwelling on that one dish that didn’t come out like you planned.

In my case, I wrote a bestselling cookbook, and for a while, I needed to figure out how to do it again as quickly as possible to prove my worth.

But honestly, fuck that.

When we focus too much on what’s next, we lose our sense of gratitude and ignore one of my favorite Hebrew words of all time: dayenu. Most Jews, even secular ones, know it from the Passover song, and can even belt out a few lines of the jingle. Often though, when I ask people if they know what it means, they’re clueless.

It translates to it would have been enough. The song goes through every single miracle of the Exodus, exclaiming that if only one such miracle had happened, it would have been enough. The irony of the song is, perhaps, that without all these miracles happening together, it actually would not have been enough to free us from the shackles of slavery in Egypt. Yet still, we focus on constant and wholehearted gratitude for every blessing we receive. It’s a powerful way to think and I try to bring that perspective to most aspects of my life, career, and relationships.

To truly feel gratitude for accomplishing the feats I’d always dreamed of, I had to learn to stop immediately moving the goalpost forward. I began shifting my focus elsewhere, to studying Torah, reading about Stoicism, volunteering at my neighborhood food pantry, and cooking for friends and family with no motive beyond that of spreading love through food. (FYI, these are all things I’d highly recommend putting some time toward!)

In these moments when I need to feel grounded, I turn to the kitchen to recharge, feeding my soul while I try to tap into joy and inspiration. I dove into my family’s old recipe box, and adapted recipes that survived the Holocaust and their journey from Europe to Cuba and finally to New York City. My mother-in-law, Robina, whom you may remember as the queen of tahdig from both my last book and my TikTok, would sit down with me when we’d visit, and recount newly unlocked memories of dishes from her upbringing in Iran and Israel. Alex, my husband and forever muse, would constantly throw ideas or concepts my way, listing ingredients and flavor profiles he thought I should experiment with. He’d then serve as my favorite taste tester, of course. In these spaces of playful discovery, so many of the recipes in this book were born. I hope all of them bring the same amount of love into your kitchen as they have for me.

Question Two: When are you going to branch out from just Jewish food?

I began telling interviewers who asked me this question to imagine how it would sound posing it toward a cookbook author representing any other minority group. (I hope in your head, you’re cringing as much as I am.) Society has this blind spot for Jewish food—and really, Jews in general, but that’s for another rant—in which it’s acceptable to devalue our rich and diverse cuisine, which has traveled throughout the Diaspora to America against all odds. Since Jewish assimilation was so successful, naturally my goal should be to move on from kugel and kasha and start cooking mainstream American food, whatever that means.

But the thing is, when I started writing about Jewish food and culture, I felt more like myself than ever before. Every memory I have surrounding food from my childhood is linked to a Jewish holiday or culinary tradition, building my relationship to cooking on a foundation of shared moments and opportunities to use a meal as a vessel for deeper connection and community. As I’ve explored my connection to Judaism and Jewish food, I’ve been able to see how much of my life and the decisions I make are influenced by the Jewish values I was raised on. So, anything I touch will be a little Jewish—Jew-ish, if you will—because my Jewishness has shaped my entire perspective on food and hospitality and their power to nurture every relationship in my life. I could spend my entire career focusing just on Jewish food and its evolution, like so many of my culinary idols have, and still just scratch the surface of our recipes and traditions and the ways in which they’ve nourished our vastly diverse communities. I’m not saying I plan to do that, but that’s my decision to make.

Too often, food content focuses so much on pandering to the opinions of others—to be loved, to sell books, to get likes—to the point that authors and creators find themselves silencing their unique perspective in favor of what they think will be most marketable. And I get it! Capitalism! We all must play the game to some degree! But here’s the thing: I’ve always found when people strive to be loved by everyone, their work tends to inspire no one. So, my hope with this book is that some of you adore it and passionately cook every recipe (tagging me in all the stories and TikToks of your creations, of course), while some of you flip through it at your local bookstore and decide it’s not for you. Hopefully not in an I hate Jews kind of way, but in an I hate Jake kind of way. I truly don’t mind! Everything I create is saturated with my authentic self, offering a window into the imperfect, gay, tradition-honoring, tradition-breaking, wildly insecure, family-oriented, 420-loving, dirty joke–obsessed, community-centered, Larry David–esque, and proudly Jewish Jake. I get that I’m not for everyone, and that’s ok!

I always described my first book as my and my husband’s love story, as we blended families and ventured to uncover our own narrative as a young Jewish couple. This book is a story of self-love. It traces my journey toward a deeper understanding of and passion for my Jewish identity, an identity I hope will infuse my everyday actions and life. It’s too easy to think about your Jewish culture and heritage only on special occasions: its presence is felt during the High Holidays or when you go to temple or when you visit your bubbe. This was all too true on my last book tour. If you saw me on TV or read about my book in a magazine, it was probably in the context of Passover, Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur, or Hanukkah—the only three times of year you will ever see Jewish food featured in mainstream media.

If being Jewish is such a huge part of who I am, why shouldn’t I create space for it on any night of the week, at any time of year?

The power to uplift other cultures through the recognition and reverence of their food traditions is immense. Look at your personal cookbook collection and notice how it spans far beyond the cuisine of your individual heritage. Think about the conversations you have debating what you’re going to cook or order for dinner. How often is the answer to that question Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican. And how frequently, or infrequently, does Jewish food fit into that picture?

Although Jewish guilt is very powerful (just ask my mother), with everything I do in my life and work, I strive to focus on Jewish joy. This book is meant to capture the joy I’ve felt these past two years, cooking for those who mean the most to me. My only hope is that by bringing Jewish food into some part of your daily routine, I can share that joy with you—whether you’re Jewish, Jew-ish, or not Jewish at all.

Shall we get noshing?

Nosh It

NOSH

/näSH/

noun: food; a snack or small item of food.

plural: noshes

If you want a nosh, I have some rugelach on the counter. You know what, I’ll pack you up the rest to take home, too.

verb: to eat food enthusiastically or greedily; to eat between meals. third-person singular: noshes; past tense: noshed; past participle: noshed; gerund or present participle: noshing

Here, bubuleh, I made you a tuna sandwich to nosh on while I get closer to death without any grandchildren.

"Are you hungry? is always one of the first questions any Jewish mother or grandmother will ask you, posed in a tone both equally loving, worrisome, and aggressive. No matter if you are ravenous, disgustingly full, or anywhere in between, the only acceptable response for any Ashkenazi Jew is, of course, I could nosh."

While this Yiddish gem of a word may literally translate to simply a snack or nibble, the concept of noshing has come to mean much more than that. Not to get too philosophical, but I feel passionately that noshing is more about the person providing the noshes than the one who gets to nosh on them. It’s about setting an intention to make sure those you love are nourished. To say you’re full isn’t just turning down food, it’s turning away an act of love.

Noshing is a lifestyle, one where you are taking the step to elevate your kitchen into the epicenter of hospitality in your life, filling it with ready-to-eat food or ingredients stocked to whip something up. For me, this mentality has always been the core of what turns a house into a home, creating a space to build lasting memories and connections. My blueprint for this was my grandmother’s house. Every time we visited Grandma Annie, she would prepare a feast as if it was a holiday, while also having at least two freezers and a pantry full of noshes to cover any craving we had, from liverwurst sandwiches to fresh crepes dusted with sugar. I look back on those moments with such adoration for the way we were cared for. Those memories are a blessing that still bubble up feelings of intense gratitude, feelings that have shaped my desire to cook for others into my own love language, paying it forward to my family and friends.

How do we embrace our inner bubbe? Well, in my very best Kim Kardashian voice, Get your fucking ass up and cook. It seems like nobody wants to cook these days. I get that we all have work and responsibilities and all these excuses for why we can’t carve out space in our schedules for cooking. But if you have the time to scroll through the Instagram stories of people you don’t even like for forty-five minutes every day, you can shift some of that energy toward something that will bring joy to your life and those around you. Treat it like meditation or working out, where it’s more about the discipline than your skill level. Everyone is going to start somewhere, and I just want to help you carve out time for cooking so you can unleash that fierce confidence in the kitchen, even if that doesn’t happen overnight.

Just scrap any expectations for yourself. You don’t need a big table or fancy pans or even a fully stocked pantry. You just have to do you. Put some headspace toward what that means. How do you like to eat? Do you prefer fast and simple recipes to knock out at a moment’s notice? Do you prefer taking time for project recipes that yield leftovers to stretch the week? Is your ideal setup a hearty meal or an array of snacks? What’s the ideal number of people you can cook for while keeping your cool? What are the flavors and ingredients that bring you the most comfort? These are mainly rhetorical questions because nobody is a monolith. Your mood, schedule, and cravings probably all shift daily in tangent with your answers. But the more you ask them to yourself, the more you see the patterns in cooking and entertaining that bring you joy. And that’s the missing ingredient.

When you’re able to tap into that joy, that’s when those around you will begin to taste the love in whatever you make. And that’s what I’m here for. Recipes that work are the bare minimum for my job. I want to help you have fun in the kitchen. I want to help you become the host you want to be. I want to help you find peace and contentment in the kitchen even when juggling a full menu of dishes. I want to help you feel confident in taking my recipes and making them your own. I want to help you find the same excitement I have found by infusing Jew-ish food into my life every day. And we can do it, trust me.

10 Commandments of Kitchen Life

But before we even decide on what we’re in the mood for, I’ve broken down my ten kitchen commandments that keep me sane.

1. Be equipped.

You don’t need a million-piece set of pots and pans or every random kitchen gadget to be a better cook. If anything, I find having too much clutter in your kitchen brings more stress than help. I frequent the same items every time since it all boils down to what cooking technique I’m trying to accomplish. A lid for every pot, ya know? I always try to have my entire menu accomplished between four burners and the oven, so less is more when it comes to pots and pans. You don’t have to have everything here, but here’s how I stock my kitchen, for reference.

The pots and pans I’m reaching for the most:

7-ish-quart dutch oven: My most-used pan! I use it for almost anything, such as sautés, braises, soups, stews, anything fried, etc.

10- to 12-inch nonstick pan: Frying eggs, cooking fish, flipping pancakes, or making food that tends to stick happens in this pan. I just try to use only wood or silicone utensils to prevent any chance of scratching.

10- to 12-inch cast-iron pan: Cast iron is always my move for any high-heat cooking, from searing steak and chicken to shallow-frying foods like latkes. Doubles as a great vessel for skillet cookies and cobblers!

8-quart stock pot: You need one for making chicken soup, of course, and for any pasta party or vegetable-blanching session.

2-quart saucepan: This is for all the accoutrements, like sauces, toasting/candying nuts, cooking grains, and browning butter.

Two rimmed half sheet pans (13 × 18 inches): You know what to do on a sheet pan, lol.

Two rimmed quarter sheet pans (9 × 13 inches): If you don’t need a full half pan, use a quarter sheet pan to save space. When I preroast veggies, etc., I’ll consolidate them on quarter sheet pans for reheating.

Glass 9 × 13-inch baking dish: You need one for baking everything from cakes to lasagna. Glass is my go-to because you can see the bottom when making tahchin, but I have metal (my favorite for cakes) and ceramic (my favorite for any dish getting served on the table) 9 × 13s as well.

Metal 9-inch square baking pan: Snacking cakes and brownies make up so much of my diet that I bring my pan wherever I travel for baking!

I pull these out once in a while, but I’m so glad I have them:

12-inch high-sided skillet: A big-boy pan for bigger projects. Typically I’m using it for pastas (both one-pan and for finishing cooked pasta with sauce) or large-batch shallow-frying jobs like schnitzel.

4-quart nonstick pot: This is my tahdig pot! Yes, I mainly use it for this one function, but it also works so well as a secondary pasta pot or for