The Jew and the carrot

From the Forverts’ food blog:

Knishes and Empanadas in Buenos Aires

By Alyssa Bauer

When I arrived to Buenos Aires, I was impressed by a bustling city at the intersection of Latin America, Europe and the United States. One can find beautiful French architecture housing Peruvian-owned fruit and vegetable stands and a dialect that more closely resembles Italian than the Spanish of South America. As a vegetarian in a city that boasts the best beef in the world, I found myself scouring the local cuisine for something I could figuratively and literally sink my teeth into. Empanadas proved to satisfy my desire for street food. The main vegetarian options offered Swiss chard, cheese and onion, Roquefort cheese, and corn withsalsa blanca.

Yet as I explored Buenos Aires’ Jewish neighborhoods, I found comforting culinary similarities with home including hummus, gefilte fish and knishes. Amongst its cultural intersections, the city is home to the largest Jewish community in South America. Similar to New York, Buenos Aires welcomed a large Jewish immigrant population starting in the mid-nineteenth century. An array of traditional recipes accompanied the wave of immigration, which introduced such foods as knishes to the Buenos Aires gastronomical spectrum.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/152921/knishes-and-empanadas-in-buenos-aires/#ixzz1pCXa46TA

Purim in Paradise: A Brazilian Hamantaschen Story

By Ben Rubin

Living in a small Brazilian village an hour’s drive from the northeastern city of Recife, it’s easy to forget the rhythms of the outside world. We had barely finished cleaning up from the revelry of Carnival, when an email arrived to remind me of the onset of Purim and that the costume wearing, drinking in the streets, and sweet treats, were yet to be over. Purim, at the back end of Carnival, seemed a perfect fit for my adopted Brazilian community. And just like that I was making hamantashen, the signature, three-cornered holiday cookie.

Now, it’s true that Recife was the first Jewish community in the New World, where Sephardic Jews found refuge when the area was a Dutch colony between 1630 and 1654. But if Jews ever stepped foot in my little shtetl, Paudalho, 22 miles inland, their presence is lost to the mists of history. Today — more than 350 years after the Recife Jews fled the conquering Portuguese for another Dutch colonial backwater, New Amsterdam — the Jewish population of Paudalho stands at exactly one. I am also the only American and the singular graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/152976/purim-in-paradise-a-brazilian-hamantaschen-story/#ixzz1pCXuL120

Related articles

• Evita’s Buenos Aires (nytimes.com)
• Marc Anthony And His New Lady Out In Buenos Aires! (perezhilton.com)
• Empanadas on the rise in the Bay Area (sfgate.com)