Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  The most significant hilula is on the eighteenth of Iyar, coinciding with the minor festival of Lag b'Omer. Held for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (died c. 170 CE), one of the most prominent sages of the Mishnah and purportedly the primary author of the Zohar. He left instructions not to commemorate Yom Sh'met (day of his death) with sadness, but Yom Simchato (day of his happiness). In Israel, since the mid-nineteenth century, large groups numbering in the thousands, including Mizrachim, Sephardim, and Ashkenazim have gathered at Rabbi Shimon's gravesite in Meron in the Galilee, lighting bonfires and torches, dancing, singing, and roasting meat. On Lag b'Omer, three other major but smaller hilulot are held in Israel for Rabbi Meir Ba'al haNess in Tiberias, for Rabbi Simeon the Just in Jerusalem, and for Elijah the Prophet near his cave outside Haifa.

  (See also Seudat Havra'ah)

  Yakhna

  Yakhna is a meat stew usually with vegetables.

  Origin: Persia

  Other names: khorak, yakhni; Turkey and Greece: yahni.

  In the Middle East, meat is rarely cooked in large pieces; instead, it is cut into small chunks and frequently simmered in stews, such as the simple Persian peasant yakhna. It is named after the covered earthenware crock in which it was originally cooked; the name of this vessel came from a Farsi word meaning "store of food." Yahkna, akin to the Persian khoresh, is the eastern equivalent of the Maghrebi tagine. A yakhni-polow is a Persian pilau made in a stew; the broth makes the rice brown and flavorful, qualities that are favored in India and Afghanistan. For more than a millennium, these tasty stews served as the regular fare of Persian Jews.

  Arabs and Turks spread similar forms of yakhna westward to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Libya as well as eastward to Uzbekistan and northern India, where they became standard fare. Turkish Jews commonly add green beans or fava beans. Yemenite batata yakhni is a stew of chicken, potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbage.

  In many Middle Eastern homes, a crock of stew hung near the hearth—a single batch along with plenty of bread could feed a family for several days or longer. The meat used for a yakhna is usually tough, requiring a long, slow simmer. Originally, cooks added the meat to the stew without browning it, but many cooks today prefer to brown it first and also sauté the onions for added levels of flavor. Lamb, specifically from young fat-tailed sheep, is the predominant meat in Persian cooking. The meat serves as a flavoring agent for various vegetables and legumes; poorer families make do with less meat and more vegetables. Turnip was once the primary ingredient, but more recent arrivals to the area, including eggplant, green beans, and okra, are now preferred. When unexpected guests appeared, a little water and some more vegetables were added.

  Besides meat, the other necessity in these stews is onion and plenty of it. Garlic is generally ignored by Persians, but included by their neighbors. The arrival of the South American tomato led to its use in the stew; in a version called yakhnat al-banadura, tomatoes frequently replace all of the water, and the meat is simmered in a thick tomato sauce. Whereas olive oil is used near the Mediterranean, in central Asia sheep's tail fat or sesame oil is more common. Typical of Persian cuisine, this dish includes fewer spices and more fresh herbs than stews of other Middle Eastern countries. Yakhna is usually served with rice or noodles.

  (See also Chelow/Polow and Guvetch/Ghiveci)

  Persian Lamb Stew (Yakhna Barhe)

  6 to 8 servings

  [MEAT]

  ¼ cup vegetable oil

  3 pounds boneless lamb shoulder, cut into ½-inch cubes

  4 medium yellow onions, sliced

  4 cups (2 pounds) peeled, seeded, and chopped tomatoes

  ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley

  About 1 teaspoon table salt or 2 teaspoons kosher salt

  About ½ teaspoon ground black pepper

  1½ pounds stemmed okra (do not cut the pods), green beans, lima beans, peeled and cubed carrots, or peeled and cubed turnips, or 4 cups cooked chickpeas (optional)

  1. In a large pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the lamb and onions and sauté until the meat is browned on all sides and the onions are softened, about 10 minutes. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the tomatoes, cilantro, salt, pepper, and, if using, okra. Cover and simmer over low heat, adding a little water if necessary, until the meat is tender and the sauce is thick, about 1 hour, or longer if using more mature meat.

  Yeast

  Yeast is a microscopic single-celled plant responsible for turning fruit juice into wine, barley into beer, and wheat flour into leavened bread through a chemical reaction called fermentation. In wine and beer, alcohol is the desired by-product of yeast fermentation, and the carbon dioxide is allowed to bubble off. In bread, it is the carbon dioxide, along with a little assistance from the steam generated during baking from the liquid in the dough, that causes the dough to rise (leaven); the alcohol burns off in the course of baking.

  Many home bakers lacked the time, patience, and expertise for making and maintaining starter doughs (seor in Hebrew) and, particularly in the ale-brewing areas of northern Europe, began using the foam from the top of ale vats to leaven breads. The English took to calling the ale froth by various names, most now archaic: yest from the Old English gyst (foam/boil); barm from the German barme (substance causing boiling); and godesgood, since its mysterious and unpredictable properties came "from the grace of God." Barm is called brewer's yeast in contemporary English.

  Among the disadvantages of barm are its unavailability except while brewing and the risk of passing any undesirable or even dangerous species of yeast and bacteria from the fermentation vat to the dough. Barm also varied from batch to batch and, therefore, the quality and flavor of bread made with barm was always unpredictable. Nevertheless, many Europeans preferred barm bread to one made from a starter dough, as it was lighter (when it worked) and lacked the starter's pronounced sourdough flavor.

  Barm was used in a liquid form. Then in the late eighteenth century, Dutch distillers discovered how to separate the yeast in the foam that rose to the surface of fermenting ale from most of the water and press it into cakes that could stay fresh for up to a few weeks. Soon distillers began to manufacture yeast for bakers by feeding a small culture of a yeast strain in a liquid medium until it reached the proper stage of development; this product is called "cream yeast" and it is still sold to large-scale manufacturers. The process of producing fresh yeast was further refined in Vienna, Austria, and the product was called "German yeast" in England. Many of the central European distillers and bakers were Jews and, as a result, central European Jews began making and using fresh yeast for leavening their breads. As the nineteenth century progressed, the term yeast supplanted the other English synonyms, although no one yet understood the chemical process of fermentation.

  In 1868, Charles Fleischmann, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, distressed by the poor quality of American bread, introduced compressed yeast to America. Ads, like this one from 1890, helped to bring yeast to the American mainstream.

  In 1836, French physician Charles Cagniard de la Tour became the first person to actually report that yeast was an accumulation of numerous minuscule plants and to demonstrate that the cells were necessary for fermentation. De la Tour and the few other scientists who agreed with him were met with scorn by the scientific establishment, which believed that fermentation was caused by a chemical process. In 1857, Louis Pasteur proved the cell theory.

  Charles Louis Fleischmann, a Jewish native of Budapest, Hungary, who was descended from a line of distillers, managed a distillery in Vienna that also produced yeast. In 1865, he traveled to New York to attend the wedding of a sister. While in the United States, he met and married his wife, Henrietta, and decided to remain. Fleischmann was distressed by the poor quality of American bread. Further complicating matters, at this time there was a shift in tastes—Americans began to prefer lighter, German-style lagers over English-style ales, resulting in a drastic shortage of barm. Consequ
ently, many American bakers used fermented potato peelings for leavening their breads. In 1867, Fleischmann briefly visited Austria and then returned to America with a vial of a desirable strain of live yeast.

  In 1868, Charles and his brother Maximilian relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, and garnered the interest of a local distiller, James Gaff, who went into business with the two brothers. In 1870, Fleischmann built his first yeast-manufacturing plant outside of Cincinnati (the factory also distilled the first American gin). In large copper vats, he concocted a mixture of rye, corn, and barley malt in which to feed his imported yeast (later molasses replaced the grain for feeding the yeast). Charles was granted a patent in 1872 for the first commercially produced and standardized yeast, which was in the form of compressed fresh yeast cakes.

  Initially, Americans largely ignored Fleischmann's innovation, but central European immigrants accustomed to fresh yeast purchased it. In 1876, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the brothers introduced their innovation to the American public through a "Vienna Model Bakery" exhibit, demonstrating how the dough was made and the bread and Viennese pastries were baked, and even serving samples. Fleischmann's yeast quickly became a nationwide success, revolutionizing American baking. He soon had fourteen scattered factories to provide his highly perishable product. The advent of refrigerated railroad cars in the 1880s meant that Fleischmann's yeast could be shipped far and wide. By the 1920s, the company had nine hundred distribution centers throughout much of the United States and Fleischmann's yeast was being sold at most groceries.

  In 1883, Fleischmann's began the selective breeding of pure yeast cultures, which in the 1930s led to the introduction of active dry yeast, a dehydrated strain that becomes reactivated when combined with moisture. The longer shelf life and handiness of the newcomer quickly made it the type used in most American homes and recipes.

  Toward the end of the twentieth century, a new dry yeast variety was developed, made with a gentler drying process from a more potent strain of yeast, leaving almost all the cells alive; this product is known as rapid-rising or instant yeast. It is more porous and granular than the active dry type and, since there are no dead cells encasing the living ones, is not dissolved in liquid first but mixed directly into the flour. Today, Fleischmann's remains the world's leading producer of yeast.

  (See also Beer, Bread, Chametz, Seor (Starter Dough), and Wine)

  Yogurt

  Before the dawn of recorded history, people learned to extend the life of highly perishable dairy products by allowing them to ferment with certain beneficial acid-producing bacteria in leather bags and gourds. The biblical Job referred to fermented milk in his lament: "Have You not poured me out like [fermented] milk, and curdled me like cheese?" Today, the most well-known and widespread type of cultured dairy product is yogurt. This was not the case at all just a mere half century ago.

  The word yogurt or yoghurt, derived from the Turkish yogun (dense/thick), was first recorded in eleventh-century Turkish texts, but is believed to date to the eighth century. Meanwhile, yogurt was known as laban in standard Arabic, zabadi in Yemen and Egypt (in Egypt, laban means "milk"), kiselo mlyako in Bulgaria, oxygala or yaourti in Greece, mast in Farsi, matsoni in Georgia, and dahi in India.

  Yogurt is made by mixing warm milk (90°F to 110°F) with a specific starter culture and allowing it to sit in a warm place without being disturbed until it firms in ten to twelve hours. Fresh yogurt contains billions of live cells per milliliter that prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and thereby keep the milk safe for several days without refrigeration. The microbial conversion of the milk-sugar lactose into lactic acid produces the characteristic "sourness" or "tanginess" of these products and also inhibits the growth of bacteria that can cause food poisoning. The growth of lactic acid in yogurt reduces the pH of the milk, resulting in its coagulation and creamy texture.

  The direct ancestor of today's yogurt was probably created by accident when two equal amounts of benign bacteria—Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, now the standard bacterial culture—came in contact with and coagulated a batch of milk. This may have happened six thousand years ago among the nomads of central Asia, who learned how to replicate the process. The Arabs have a legend that an angel taught Abraham how to make laban. Until very recently, yogurt was a homemade product, prepared with naturally occurring beneficial bacteria saved from the previous batch.

  It was the Ottoman Turks who most eagerly embraced yogurt, putting it to many culinary uses and spreading it throughout their domain. While yogurt has long been a staple from the Balkans to India, it was until recently practically unknown to most of Europe. Yogurt was such a rare item in France that it made history when a Turkish Jewish doctor sent by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent used it to cure King Francis I (1494—1547) of France of his severe intestinal trouble. Centuries later, it was another Sephardic doctor who popularized yogurt, both the item and its Turkish name, in modern Europe and America.

  Isaac Karasu (1874—1939), a Sephardic physician from Salonika, left home in 1912 due to the Balkan Wars and relocated his family to Barcelona, Spain. Changing the spelling of his name to Carasso, he opened a medical practice in his new home, and noticed that many of his patients suffered from digestive problems. Importing cultures from Bulgaria, Carasso set about producing yogurt and selling it, at first as medicine. In 1919, Carasso started a yogurt business in Spain, becoming the first industrial manufacturer of this cultured product. He named his company Danone, using the nickname of his young son Daniel, and produced only plain yogurt. Among his innovations was packaging the yogurt in individual glass containers.

  In 1929, Daniel Carasso, having studied in France, expanded the company to Paris, eventually taking over the business from his father. Fleeing Europe during World War II, Daniel, along with a family friend from Spain, Joseph Metzger, a Swiss-born Jewish businessman, arrived in the United States in 1942. Together they opened an American branch of the company, spelling the name Dannon, in the Bronx, New York. At the onset, distribution was small— about 648 half-pint jars a day, sold primarily to Greeks and Turks. Soon disposable waxed cups replaced the returnable glass jars. In 1947, Dannon became the first manufacturer to introduce a variety that included strawberry preserves on the bottom of the yogurt. This innovation proved so successful that Dannon soon added blueberry, raspberry, and lemon flavors. In 1951, Carasso returned to France to reclaim his confiscated yogurt plant and eight years later sold his interest in American Dannon to the Beatrice Corporation. Previously, his French operations had been a modest success, but yogurt caught on in France in the 1950s. Danone expanded to 150 countries, including Turkey, turning Groupe Danone into a multinational business and the world's leading producer of cultured dairy products.

  Joe Metzger's son, Juan, born in Barcelona, became president of Dannon in 1959 and subsequently spurred the company's unprecedented growth in the United States. Sparked by the success of Dannon's television commercials beginning in 1976 showing centenarians from Soviet Georgia eating yogurt, and further hyped by health writers, dieters, and hippies, yogurt rapidly emerged as a true pop phenomenon. Many contend that Dannon's marketing campaign was the most successful food product campaign of the twentieth century, as it transformed an item practically unknown to most Americans before the 1960s into an integral part of the American diet and culture. Until the 1970s, yogurt was practically unknown in Israel. In 1971, Strauss—one of Israel's largest dairies—partnered with Danone, to produce a line of yogurt. By 2002, yogurt sales in Israel surpassed those of the previous dominant cultured milk product, Leben, and continue to expand every year.

  Yogurt is ubiquitous at Middle Eastern dairy meals—plain or mixed into chopped vegetables as a salad; as a sauce for cooked vegetables, rice, and lentils; and as a dessert drizzled with jam or honey. In the Levant, yogurt is also strained to produce a cheeselike product known as labaneh. Ayran is a drink from the Near East and the Balkans consisting of yogurt mixed with water; it is
akin to the Indian lassi.

  (See also Borani, Iab, Kashk/Kutach, Labaneh, Leben, and Tarator)

  Yom Ha'stzmaut

  On the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyar (May 14, 1948), Israel declared its independence, ending more than two thousand years of foreign domination. On the anniversary of that historic occasion, Jews celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day). The day immediately before is observed as Yom Ha'zikkaron (Israeli Memorial Day), the fourth of Iyar, a time to memorialize the soldiers who died defending Israel. At sunset sirens blast throughout the country, signaling the end of solemnity and the commencement of Yom Ha'atzmaut. The streets fill with people—laughing, conversing, and singing. The following day is celebrated with parades, fireworks, picnics, and an international Bible quiz. In Israel, many kibbutzim serve traditional Sabbath and holiday fare. In America, it is customary to serve foods associated with Israel—pita, falafel, hummus, Israeli salad, and baba ghanouj—many of which are perfect for picnics. The décor follows the color of the Israeli flag—blue and white.

  Yom Kippur

  Tradition relates that on the tenth day of the month of Tishri (which falls in September or October), Moses returned from Mount Sinai with the second set of tablets of the Ten Commandments and informed the people that they had been forgiven for the incident with the golden calf. Ever since, that day has been Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This twenty-five-hour fast, the culmination of the ten-day period that begins with Rosh Hashanah, is the most profoundly moving day on the Jewish calendar.

  Around the ninth century, a ritual developed, perhaps in central Asia, called kapparot ("atonements," kappores in Yiddish), which spread among eastern Ashkenazim in the following centuries. On the day before Yom Kippur, people symbolically transfer their sins to any kosher animal not offered in the Temple by swinging (shlugen) it three times above their head. A chicken (kappores-hindel) in particular was deemed appropriate because the Hebrew word for rooster, gever, also means "man." Afterward, the chicken was ritually slaughtered and served as dinner for the family or given to the poor. At the time, Sephardic authorities strongly disparaged this ritual; Rabbi Joseph Caro called it a foolish custom based on paganism.