‘MY FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS INCLUDES SCHMALTZ’
Toronto chef Anthony Rose shares recipes for your Hanukkah table
For Toronto-based chef Anthony Rose, delicatessen classics comprise the consummate Hanukkah feast: “With latkes on the side, for sure, and lots of pastrami and steamed hot dogs.”
This year, the Jewish holiday runs from the evening of Sunday, Dec. 2 until the evening of Monday, Dec. 10.
“My festival of lights includes schmaltz,” Rose writes of his latkes in his debut cookbook, The Last Schmaltz (Appetite by Random House, 2018).
The Yiddish word means rendered chicken fat (as well as extreme sentimentality), which is the key to his latkes’ perfectly crisp exterior. Topped with either his mom’s applesauce or smoked salmon and caviar, Rose’s schmaltz latkes make for a tasty and traditional Ashkenazi addition to a holiday spread.
In The Last Schmaltz, Rose’s genre-spanning, fun and full-flavoured food is front and centre.
Chapters are almost exclusively dedicated to each of the six restaurants he co-owns, including Israeli-Ashkenazi eatery Fat Pasha, Rose and Sons Deli and smoked and cured fish shop Schmaltz Appetizing. From the “glorified stoner food” served at the original Rose and Sons diner — all-day breakfast, brownie surprise, and a root beer and bourbon cocktail — to Fat Pasha’s challah, salatim (a variety of spreads and salads) and whole roasted cauliflower, Rose’s recipes are playful and eclectic.
Adding to the party vibes are essays by food and travel writer Chris Johns, each sparked by bashes they threw at the restaurants.
The cookbook’s title, surely a contender for best of the year (if not decade), is a nod to The Band’s documentary The Last Waltz (1978). “Music is an important part of the book and an important part of Anthony’s restaurants,” says Johns. “It just felt right.”
Besides being a reference to one of the greatest concert films of all time, the title is fitting in a culinary sense as well. At Schmaltz Appetizing he sells schmaltz herring, which is fatty herring.
“And at Fat Pasha we drizzle the schmaltz at the table. It’s stellar,” says Rose. “There’s schmaltz in the cookbook; the cookbook is over the top. The restaurants are over the top, and kind of kitschy and weird. Schmaltzy is a great definition.”