Recipes by Joan Nathan

(updated January 28, 2025))

My Life in Recipes is new cookbook from the James Beard Award–winning, beloved author that uses recipes to look back at her life, her family history, and her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the world.

Joan is appearing with book signings across the U.S.

Joan will be speaking on Thursday, January 30, 2025, 6-8pm at Clio’s in Oakland, CA about My Life in Recipes: Food, Family and Memories and A Sweet Year: Jewish Celebrations and Festive Recipes for Kids and Their Families: A Cookbook, and how making food with friends and family is now more than ever a delight and a requisite.   Tickets and more info here.

Check more appearances by Joan here.

Before hummus was available in every grocery store, before shakshuka was a dish on every brunch menu, Joan Nathan taught home cooks how and why they should make these now-adored staples. Here, in her most personal book yet, the authority on global Jewish cuisine uses recipes to look back at her own family’s history—their arrival in America from Germany, Slovakia, and Poland—and at her childhood in postwar New York and Rhode Island; her years in Paris, New York, Israel, and Washington, D.C.; and her travels around the globe. Joan shares her story—of marriage, motherhood, and a career as a food writer; of a life well-lived and centered around meals and the discovery of recipes and their stories—and she punctuates it with all the foods she has come to love.

With more than 100 recipes, from roast chicken to rugelach, from matzo-ball soup to challah and brisket, here are updated versions of her favorites. But here too are new favorites: Salmon Baked with Preserved Lemon and Za’atar; Mahammar (a Syrian pepper, pomegranate, and walnut dip); Moroccan Chicken with Almonds, Chestnuts, Cinnamon, and Couscous; and Joan’s version of the perfect Black and White Cookies. This is a treasury of recipes and stories—and an invitation to a seat at Joan’s table.

EatDrinkFilms is pleased to offer two recipes from the book.

CASHEW TAPENADE

Makes about 1 cup

My favorite appetizer from Allan’s birthday party was the cashew tapenade with garlic, honey, thyme, and olive oil. No matter where I serve it, people love the unexpected combination of flavors. This dip will always remind me of Allan and our last family trip together.

1 cup (150 grams) raw, unsalted cashews

4 or 5 sprigs of fresh thyme (to taste)

1 large clove garlic

11⁄2 tablespoons honey

1⁄4 cup (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil

1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Put the cashews into a skillet set over medium-high heat and dry-roast them, watching and stirring, until they are light brown and fragrant, about 5 minutes.
2. Remove the stems from the thyme sprigs and put the leaves in a food processor with a steel blade, along with the garlic, honey, olive oil, a third of the cashews, the salt, and pepper to taste. Pulse until the garlic is pulverized and the olive oil absorbed. Add the remaining cashews, and pulse until the mixture is slightly chunky. Adjust seasoning, and serve, topped with a sprig or two of thyme, as a dip with crackers.

Note You can substitute almonds, hazelnuts, or pecans for the cashews, and oregano for the thyme.

“There is no greater authority on Jewish cooking than Joan Nathan.” —Michael Solomonov, James Beard award-winning chef and author of Zahav.

Sweet and Sour Salmon with Lemon, Ginger, and Brown Sugar

I found this recipe for sweet-and-sour carp, one of the dishes my father recalled relishing in Augsburg, in one of the handwritten, well-worn books of favorite recipes that my grandmother Lina Bernheim Nathan passed on to her daughters. Most Friday nights, when the family would gather at Great-Grandmother Rose’s apartment, she would start the meal with a carp dish, especially for Rosh Hashanah. She would use carp or black cod (also called sable); she always used the head and bones to make stock, because they add thickness and flavor to the sauce. And she served it with either a sweet-and-sour or a parsley sauce.

Today I use a large salmon fillet, cutting it raw into individual portions to poach in a fish stock flavored with spices, brown sugar, lemon, gingersnaps (added to give a sweet gingery flavor and dark color, and to thicken the sauce slightly), and then some crystallized ginger to spike the dish even more. It is easy to make, a real crowd- pleaser, and, in a modern way, reminds me oh so much of my childhood.

 

 

Makes 12 small slices for an appetizer or 6 servings as a main course

 

One 3-pound (1⅓-kg) salmon fillet, skinned and cut into 6 or 12 portions

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

About 6 cups (1.4 liters) fish or vegetable stock

3 lemons, 2 thinly sliced and seeded, the other juiced

2 medium onions, sliced into thin rings

1 bay leaf

½ cup (80 grams) raisins

½ teaspoon whole cloves

⅓ cup (71 grams) light- or dark-brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground ginger

6 gingersnaps

2 tablespoons diced crystallized ginger

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

 

1. Season the salmon with salt and pepper to taste in a large heavy-bottomed skillet or Dutch oven large enough to hold the fish in one layer. Add the stock, plus water if needed to barely cover the fish, arrange the lemon and onion slices on top, then drop in the bay leaf, raisins, and cloves. Simmer over medium heat, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, or until the fish is almost cooked through.
2. Add the brown sugar, ground ginger, gingersnaps, and crystallized ginger, and continue cooking for about 5 minutes, taking care not to overcook. You’ll know the fish is cooked if it is firm to the touch; sometimes I pierce a fork into the center to make sure. Once the fish is cool, remove the bay leaf, then transfer the fish to a serving plate. Scatter the onion and lemon slices on top. Boil the liquid over medium-high heat until it has reduced by half, then pour it over the fish.
3. Taste, and drizzle with the juice from the third lemon. Refrigerate until serving, then serve at room temperature, sprinkled with dill.

(Recipes from My Life in Recipes by Joan Nathan. Copyright © 2024 by Joan Nathan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.)

“Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan” is a PBS series you can watch here.

Read  “In the Kitchen with the Grande Dame of Jewish Cooking” by Hannah Goldfield in The New Yorker (April 8, 2024- also published in the print edition of the April 15, 2024, issue, with the headline “Balabusta.”)

Visit Joan’s Website for news, upcoming events, and more recipes.

Follow Joan on Instragram where she posts short videos with memories and stories.

You can order her books from your favorite independent bookstore, her website, or the other usual sites. Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco is a great place to buy it and other food books.

Listen to a recent interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered.’

Joan Nathan has written twelve cookbooks filled with delicious food and marvelous stories including Jewish Cooking in America and The New American Cooking, both of which won James Beard Awards and IACP Awards.  She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Tablet Magazine and has appeared as a guest on numerous radio and television programs including the Today show, Good Morning, America, The Martha Stewart Show and National Public Radio. An inductee to the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who in American Food and Beverage, she also received the Silver Spoon Award from Food Arts magazine.

In 2015, Les Dames d’Escoffier awarded Nathan the prestigious Grande Dame, an award recognizing professional achievments in the food industry.  Previous recipients include Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Alice Waters.  In 2019, The Museum of Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot honored Nathan with a Pomegranate Award, recognizing her as a visionary authority on Jewish cuisine.

Joan Nathan was born in Providence, Rhode Island.  She graduated from the University of Michigan with a master’s degree in French literature and earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard University. For three years she lived in Israel where she worked for Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem. In 1974, working for Mayor Abraham Beame in New York, she co-founded the Ninth Avenue Food Festival. The mother of three grown children with her late husband, attorney Allan Gerson, Nathan lives in Washington, D.C. and Martha’s Vineyard.