It’s hard not to feel hungry after spending time with Joan Nathan, whose name has been synonymous with Jewish cuisine since her first cookbook was published in 1975. Nearly a half-century later, Nathan hasn’t slowed down on the publishing front. Her first memoir (but twelfth cookbook), My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories (Knopf), was published earlier this year. It is a book rich in traditions, recipes, and stories, including those from her long life as a journalist, mother, wife, and cook.
Martha’s Vineyard Magazine recently chatted with Nathan about her new book, what she would serve at a Friday night dinner party at her Chilmark home, and what’s next for her if this cookbook really is, in fact, her final one. An edited transcript follows.
Martha’s Vineyard Magazine: You’ve had a long, accolade-filled career as a cookbook author, food writer, and TV host. You’ve been called a pioneer in Jewish culture, the first superstar Jewish food writer, and the matriarch of Jewish cooking. How do you define yourself?
Joan Nathan: I think of myself as a sort of anthropological cookbook author or a food story seeker.
MVM: I like the term anthropological cookbook author – it’s fitting since you’ve published twelve cookbooks since 1975! People continue to buy and read them, even in an age when recipes are often just a click away on the internet. What sort of changes have you seen in the ways people share recipes over the years?
JN: When I published my first cookbook, there was no internet. There was no computer. I had to type that first cookbook, and whenever there was a mistake you had to retype the whole page – you couldn’t use White-Out when you were sending in a manuscript, which is a big difference from now, right? I think people used sisterhood cookbooks from churches and synagogues, recipes from their families, and regular cookbooks. Cookbooks were really just beginning at that time.
There was more home cooking then; there wasn’t as much going out. Now, as you say, a recipe is a click of the finger away…it’s true. Everyone is using the [online version of] The New York Times Cooking and it’s a huge, huge success. I use it myself a lot.
There’s TikTok and all these cooking videos from every culture. That’s the really positive thing for me – if I want to learn to cook something from Sri Lanka, there’s a Sri Lankan person who will do a Sri Lankan recipe that I can find online. Sometimes it might be in a different language, but it’s available. I like in-person interviews and watching a person cook.
MVM: What has stayed the same?
JN: Good recipes. You want a good recipe. You know, when I go into a restaurant, I need to find out more...about the chef and why he’s doing these recipes and what his background is and does his background evince the food.... It’s very discouraging to me that now everything is becoming less and less personal. Even on the Island, I went to [a restaurant] and you do the checkout right there yourself.... It’s so impersonal.
MVM: Your newest cookbook, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories, is a bit of a departure for you because it is part memoir, part cookbook. What made you decide to write it in this format?
JN: Well, it was my editor. She wanted it to be a hybrid. She felt that food was so much a part of my life. A lot of memoirs have a recipe at the end of a chapter, and she thought my recipes should be involved in the story. She had never done a book like this. It has gotten amazing reviews, so I think it’s a success.
MVM: You wrote a lot of it in Chilmark during the pandemic, where you and your late husband, Allan Gerson, summered for nearly fifty years. Can you talk about the role Martha’s Vineyard played in this book and in your life in general?
JN: Well, it’s actually...he and I have been coming since 1977…over forty-five years. We were married already and I was pregnant the first time we came. Martha’s Vineyard, to me, is like the magical island of summertime. And I just love it.
MVM: What do you love about it?
JN: I love my house, I love my garden, and I love eating from the garden. I love playing tennis every morning in Chilmark. I love swimming in the ocean. I love Ice House Pond [in West Tisbury]; it’s my happy place, as I like to call it. I’m always so busy because I want to do everything; I want to cook from the garden and do my sports.
MVM: And write! This book features updates of some of your much-loved older recipes, such as rugelach and matzo ball soup. You also include plenty of new recipes, such as Moroccan chicken with almonds and your version of the perfect black and white cookie. You’ve said this will be your final cookbook. How did you select these final one hundred recipes?
JN: I keep saying that it’s my final one. I think it is. You know, we’ll see if it really is (laughs). I picked [some] recipes that had been published in other books that I thought sort of defined me, and then I did updated versions of them. Except for the brisket recipe: it’s the Jewish Cooking in America (Knopf, 1994) one. My editor insisted on that.
MVM: Is that the only recipe from another book that didn’t change?
JN: Yes. A lot of recipes have evolved. Since I’ve searched out good recipes for my whole life, I so often cook from my own books. I just use recipes that I love or that define my life and that are important to me.
I’m thinking of this one recipe, muhammara, which is peppers and nuts and a dip. It’s so good…. It was in another book, but I made it a little different in this one. I figured if they were recipes I like to make often, then hopefully my readers will like to make them too. I did try to include recipes that depicted me.
MVM: This November you are releasing A Sweet Year: Jewish Celebrations and Festive Recipes for Kids and Their Families (Knopf), an updated version of your 1987 cookbook The Children’s Jewish Holiday Kitchen (Schocken Books), which you wrote when your three kids were small. What does it mean to you to update the cookbook now with your two grandchildren in mind?
JN: First of all, it was so much fun, and we photographed that one right here on the Vineyard. It really needed updating. I did food that I like to make with the kids, or the best of my earlier cookbook. But then I also did things like, when I was in Israel last, I was with a group of people and I made cheese, and I thought, “Oh, that would be so much fun to do with my grandchildren.” So we did it together. I tried to do basic things like making butter or making cheese or pomegranate punch, where you roll pomegranates so that all the arils pop. That one they really love. It was really fun to do.
MVM: Do your children and grandchildren ever cook for you?
JN: They all make challah and they all can cook. My children are in their thirties and forties, and they all cook and they have Friday night dinner. But, you know, their lives are really busy, and I find cooking relaxing.
MVM: You’ve said, “If you don’t know your own history, then you might not really even know yourself.” How would you suggest that people get to know themselves through food?
JN: Find out more about your own background and find out what recipes in your family are worth saving. For example, my mother’s zwetschgenkuchen – it’s a tart with a muerbeteig, like a butter crust; it’s really delicious. I think I’m going to make that next weekend. I have a lot of peaches here and I told someone who gave me a lot of his peaches that I’ll make one for him. It’s easy and it’s delicious, but there’s a story with it: my mother made it because my father loved it when he grew up in Germany. He found the recipe in the settlement cookbook and, you know, it connects me to my past.
Talking to a parent, just talking to someone and just asking, “Hey, where does this recipe come from?” It doesn’t define you, but it connects you to your past and to who your family is and to different generations.
And it’s fine to try everything new, but it’s also good to go back to your past; that’s what I think. I like trying new recipes all the time, but there are some points where I feel grounded using recipes that came down to me from a generation before.
MVM: If My Life in Recipes really is the final cookbook, what’s next for you?
JN: Oh! Enjoying life (laughs)! You know I still write for [The New York Times] and for other people if they ask me. I have an article for Saveur that I wrote during the book tour. You know, I love learning. I know the West Tisbury Library has a class on the Brontës, I want to take that! I would love to just read.
MVM: As a final question, we have to ask: if you were to host a dinner party on the Vineyard, where would it be, who would you invite, and what would you serve?
JN: Oh, I think I would invite Vineyard people (laughs)! I would probably like to host it at my house, so it would be small.
MVM: What would you serve?
JN: Well, it would be on a Friday night. And I would make a challah and it would be filled with herbs that are in my garden. I would most likely serve this dinner in the summertime and I would have as a first course a few different salads or an herb-infused dip…. Actually, I would have three hors d’oeuvres. I would have the challah as a first course, and a sorrel soup with sorrel from the garden, and a dip. I would want three hors d’oeuvres because I like odd numbers. Maybe a hummus or a baba ganoush; it depends on what is available.
I would serve either a striped bass or some other local fish with the preserved lemon that I always make and za’atar with other herbs...and a tomato from my garden chopped up and all baked together.
I would serve some sort of grain, like farro. I like serving plain corn because it’s just so good, especially when it’s in season on the Vineyard. And a fruit tart for dessert – again, depending on what is ripe. If my raspberries are ripe, I would have a raspberry tart or maybe rhubarb. I love rhubarb. Or peaches. Last year [our tree produced] ten; this year I have 300....
[I’d] invite people that don’t know each other. I’ve never been a person that’s just in one group of people.... I like having different people over and meeting different people and getting different ideas and having good conversations. I feel that every one of us is so lucky to live on this Island.
