I have a history of ending each installment of The Cultural Culinarian on an extremely sappy note. My first go−around, I wrote about the importance of food to my everyday life. Last semester, I discussed things you learn about food in college that can be transferred to the real world.
This semester will be no different; I am bringing the sap. Except this time it will be actual sap in the form of maple syrup, and I will spare you the emotional food−related life lessons.
Hanukkah starts this Friday at sundown — latkes before NQR anyone? — but sadly I will probably be holed up in the library for most of it. I decided to peruse some food sites for quick Hanukkah recipes that I can make in between study sessions, since latkes are too time−intensive for finals.
Apparently everybody forgot it was Hanukkah this week.
Every food−related Web site on the planet posted inventive recipes for Thanksgiving for weeks leading up to T−Day. Everyone from the Food Network to The New York Times already had recipes for fun and festive Christmas food featured prominently on their sites. Food and Wine has an article about a Hanukkah party with "Top Chef" judge Gail Simmons that features her versions of latkes and brisket, but there is nary a new and inventive recipe to be found. In fact, if you Google "Hanukkah," the majority of the top 20 hits all have words like "tradition" or "familiar" in them. (There are also a ton of articles about President Obama's announcement that he will cut the guest list for the annual White House Hanukkah party due to financial considerations, with a lot of Jewish newspapers dubbing it the "Hanukkah snub." Oy vey!)
Believe me, I understand the reluctance to shake things up for the Jewish holidays; my family eats the same meals each year from Passover to Rosh Hashanah. Foods associated with a lot of Jewish celebrations represent the story of the holiday, so there are limited variations in the menu. With Hanukkah, for example, you eat fried foods to represent the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days when the Maccabees purified the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Latkes are the traditional Ashkenazi (a blanket term for Eastern European Jews) fried treat for Hanukkah. Fun fact: "Latke" is actually the Yiddish word for potato pancake while "levivot" is the Hebrew version. Israelis eat "sufganiyot" for the holiday, which are fried, jelly−filled donuts.
So I eventually gave up on my search for new Hanukkah recipes and instead decided to see if there are other fried foods that are traditional for the holiday. Fried food also happens to go perfectly with my stress level right now, so I put down my textbooks and Googled around a bit.
It seems that a lot of Jews have adapted fried foods that are traditional to their geographic area to their Hanukkah celebrations. Beignets are common among Jews in the New Orleans area and Italian Jews eat fried artichokes. Jews in Hawaii eat malasadas, a fried yeast dough pastry that has Portuguese origins but is popular in the islands.
My favorite fried Hanukkah foods, however, are two that I discovered that are coated in maple syrup, an ingredient I crave when it gets cold outside (so it took me a while to get to the sap, sorry). Greek Jews eat loukoumades, fried dough that is usually soaked in sugar syrup, honey or maple syrup. Sephardic Jews have a similar tradition with bimuelos, except that with these fried dough balls the honey or maple syrup is put in the batter itself.
I'm pretty much thinking that holidays plus fried desserts plus my favorite winter−time sweetener equals a great way study break during finals. Oy vey and abruch!
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Caryn Horowitz is a senior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.
