Gorgeous, light gefilte

Josh Glancy’s article (Our heimishe fare is shamed by the cool New York food scene, 17 September) certainly makes people sit up and listen but is off target when he aims at the restaurants of north London and in his comparison with New York.

The problem is deeper. It isn’t just that we have little or no vision in the restaurant trade — it is that we have begun to believe the propaganda and have stopped believing in our own past. When Yotam Ottolenghi says of gefilte fish: “Sweet, grey and smeared with gelatinous gunk, gefilte fish is perceived as a typical remnant of the old Ashkenazi world that was best left behind in Europe”, we believe him. JW3 call their event Gefiltefest, but then have pizza and Salade Niçoise in their restaurant.

We are not New York — there are 2 million Jews there and Jewish cuisine has been part of the culture for 100 years. Many of us do not live in north London, either. However, it is in our remit as Brits to celebrate the best of heimishe cooking, chopped or boiled fish balls light as a feather, golden chicken soup with kneidlach, chopped liver in chunks (not in a smooth pâté paste), delicious eingermacht with almonds, and so on.

I don’t recognise what Josh describes as “sloppy grey unidentifiable poisson” at all, unless he means the American gunk that you buy in jars. Memories are fading, but it is not too late. Led by New Yorkers such as Jeffrey Yoscowitz, and Liz Alpern, and with the online course that YIVO runs called “A Seat at the Table”, people can begin to rediscover the cuisine of our ancestors and improve on it with better cooking equipment and access to ingredients than our forebears ever had.

So Josh, wherever you live, be it Edgware, Manchester or Leeds, you too can make your own parsley infused gefilte with wasabi. No need to find a restaurant. The answer is at home.

Tony Zendle

Surbiton