Joan Nathan: Preserving the Taste of Home

"If you preserve the food, you preserve who your family is." This poignant quote by Joan Nathan, an award winning author of eleven cookbooks including her latest King Solomon's Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from  Around the World, truly captures the essence of why recipes matter. It was an honor to meet Joan Nathan at Les Dames d'Escoffier conference in Washington, D.C. and discuss the importance of preserving foodways. Not until Nathan was married did she fully appreciate the influence Jewish foodways had on her family.Her mother-in-law was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who remembered all the food and recipes from this country in such a beautiful way.  "It made me realize that I wanted to preserve them," Nathan explains. After meeting a Yiddish folklore professor who also wanted to share his recipes and stories, Nathan embarked on her own ethnic foodways journey to discover  and preserve beloved Jewish recipes. Joan Nathan shares her firsthand  experience of the power of how food brings people to the table and breaks down barriers.  While working for Teddy Kollek, the former mayor of Jerusalem, they visited an Arab village for a meeting, and everyone connected over Joan's favorite chicken dish called  Musakhan (Palestinian Sumac chicken with sautéed onions). Whole Foods is teaming with Joan Nathan to offer prepared dishes and recipes for customers during the Jewish High Holidays.  The five recipes all featured in her latest cookbook Solomon's Table: Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking form Around the World include: Cod with Tomatoes, Plumbs, Apples, Onions and Pine Nuts; Slightly Sweet and Sour Cabbage; Seven Sacred Species Salad with Wheat Berries, Barley, Olives, Figs, Dates, Grapes and Pomegranate; Sweet and Crunchy Noodle Kugel; and Tahina Cookies.