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These tremendous regional differences might lead us to believe that Eastern European Jewish cooking is just the regular cuisine of Poland or Russia or that Moroccan Jewish food is no different from Moroccan Muslim food. But this is not the case. Jewish patterns of food preparation were often distinct from those of their non-Jewish neighbors. These differences resulted not only from the restrictions of the Jewish dietary laws, but were also caused by the different migration patterns and cultural contacts of Jewish and non-Jewish populations. Even when the Jews adopted recipes from their neighbors, they modified them to confor to the laws of Kashruth or associated them with a Jewish holiday or ritual. In so doing, they "Judaized" the borrowed dish and made it an integral part of Jewish culture. Once the function of the particular food was a Jewish one, the fact that it was similar to a dish eaten by non-Jewish neighbors was considered relatively unimportant.
Recipies
Sabbath Stews Schalet could be made from various ingredients including potatoes
or noodles, but there were many other varieties as well, such as weckschalet,
a kind of bread pudding made from stale bread or rolls, matzo schalet,
and apple schalet.
More similar to Eastern European cholent in function than schalet was the German
Jewish gesetzte Supp'. This thick soup, which cooked overnight,
could take many different forms, including white bean soup, pea soup,
barley soup, and rice soup. The most distinctively German Jewish form
was Gmenkernsuppe, made from a special kind of green-kerneled
wheat called Gruenkern or Dinkel. The kernels of grain
could either be ground or served whole.
The same principle that governed cholent also applied to its equivalents
made by non-Ashkenazic Jews in various parts of Southeastern Europe, Asia,
and North Africa. What follows are a few regional versions of the Sabbath
noonday main dish. In the Sephardic, North Africa and Mizrachi communities
there were three main forms: schina, tefina and hameen.
Example Recipies
Traditional Jewish cuisine, like other aspects of Jewish culture has some basic structures that are similar among all Jews, but also a variety of local eating traditions that make them unrecognizable to each other. The basic structures shared by all Jews were the limitations imposed by the kosher laws, the restrictions on cooking on the Sabbath, and the need to celebrate the holidays with the choicest foods. The specific recipes for a holiday dish in a particular area depended on climate, the availability of staples, and local non-Jewish traditions, as well as local Jewish religious customs. Each group of Jews, being cut off from direct contact with others, naturally assumed that all Jews ate the same "Jewish food" as they did. But this was not at all the case; with very few exceptions, such as wine and challah for kiddush and matzo for Passover, the foods of one region were completely foreign in other areas. The gefilte fish, cholent, and kugel of Eastern European Jewry bear little resemblance to the couscous, the meatballs and peas, and the tajine popular among Jews in North Africa. The tastes and smells of one type of Jewish cuisine often seem strange, and sometimes unappetizing, to Jews from a different part of the world.
There are a number of variations on the cholent recipe. Some, especially those of Hungarian Jews, omit the potatoes; others include barley or vary the kinds of beans used. All traditional recipes include the requirement to cook the dish overnight over a low flame. In Bohemia-Moravia, sholet was a dish of goose, rice, and peas. In southern Germany and neighboring parts of Western Europe, the recipe for schalet was quite different from that of the meat stew described above. Despite the fact that the term schalet resembles cholent and comes from the same root, schalet took the form of a casserole resembling a pie or pudding and was quite unlike a meat stew.
Gruenkernsuppe (Germany)
Hameen (Morocco)
Hamin de Kaastanya (Rhodes)