Jewish Food Traditions
Food writer Victoria Prever on the dishes of her heritage
The Sabbath
The Sabbath meal always starts with challah, the Jewish egg-enriched bread. The Sabbath comes in at nightfall, so it starts on Friday night and goes on to Saturday night. You light candles just before dusk, make a blessing on some wine and a blessing on some challah. And it’s a special bread because it’s a celebration. It’s like a holiday every Friday, that’s how it’s meant to be, that’s why you’ve got your wine and your bread.
Chicken soup
You might follow with chicken soup with kneidlach. Kneidlach are matzo balls, which are like dumplings. This all originated as peasant food from the Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi are Jews who lived in eastern Europe, other
Jews are from further south, southern Europe and Africa – they’re called Sephardi. So this chicken soup and matzo balls is very Ashkenazi, and the Ashkenazi Jews took that to the UK and to the United States when they emigrated.
Lokshen
Dessert would be non-dairy. If you’re observant, the rules of kosher are that you don’t mix meat and dairy, so you wouldn’t have those in the same meal. So there’s an awful lot of non-dairy desserts that people turn to, to not miss out on the pudding, and to have it at the end of their meat-based meal. So in a very traditional meal it might be something called lokshen pudding. Lokshen is the Yiddish word for noodles. It’s very stodgy, not like a rice pudding because it’s not milky but that kind of idea. Like a baked, noodly, eggy, custard dessert.