{"id":760792,"date":"2026-09-05T11:54:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T11:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760792\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T11:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T11:54:44","slug":"tradition-meet-the-women-preserving-the-recipes-every-jewish-cook-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760792\/","title":{"rendered":"Tradition! Meet the women preserving the recipes every Jewish cook needs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With this goal in mind, A Year of Jewish Cooking is packed full of the (mostly) Ashkenazi classics Jewish cooks turn to again and again, from challah and cholent, to brisket and bagels, kugel and kreplach. A Year of Jewish Cooking is, they explain, \u201cpart best of\u201d. Alongside completely new recipes developed especially for the book, it also contains classic MMCC recipes<\/a> \u2013 tweaked and perfected \u2013 which have \u201cresonated\u201d with them over the years. \u201cWe can\u2019t say they\u2019re the best recipes from all our amazing recipes,\u201d Goldberg says, \u201cbut they are the ones that the three of us have been cooking over and over, and that really have found a place in our own homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

With an astonishing 450-odd recipes in their archives, this process was far from easy. \u201cIt was sort of like picking your favourite child,\u201d Goldberg says. \u201cWe had all become so attached to so many different recipes, and at some point we had to let some of them go.\u201d Later, explaining their process, Eskin tells me: \u201cIf you really wanted a recipe, you had to fight for it. You had to make it over and over again, and take it and show the others how good it was. And if that\u2019s how you felt about it, then you would do that. Otherwise, you\u2019d let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MMCC'sMMCC’s roasted apple cake \u2013 which took a year to develop (Photo: Alan Benson)[Missing Credit] <\/p>\n

Of the new recipes, the one they\u2019re proudest of is their roasted apple cake<\/a>, which came from Goldberg and Eskin\u2019s desire to create \u201cthe best apple cake we\u2019d ever had\u201d. The process took about a year of back and forth, with Goldberg explaining \u201cwe researched, we cooked, researched, cooked, and I would make a cake and drop it over to Natanya, and she would do the same, and over the months we\u2019d get excited \u2013 this is it! \u2013 and she\u2019d go \u2018na\u2019 or the other way around.\u201d Eventually, they landed on a recipe they both loved. \u201cThe joy of joys is when you find that\u2019s the one; it\u2019s just unbelievable,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The sharing of old traditions, and making of new ones, really sits at the heart of this book and the MMCC project overall, and is something both women can talk about from experience. \u201cMy family never had egg and onion on our table, it was always just egg salad made with mayonnaise,\u201d Eskin tells me. \u201cBut since Lisa introduced egg and onion way, way back, one of our very first recipes 20 years ago, it\u2019s now entrenched and is truly a family tradition,\u201d she says. Without missing a beat, Goldberg jumps in adding: \u201cThe same… the avocado dip that Natanya shared, it was never part of my Shabbat, and now I don\u2019t have a Shabbat without it. We\u2019ve sort of done a little swap, it\u2019s quite beautiful, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChocolateChocolate ‘challah and butter’ pudding from A Year of Jewish Cooking (Photo: Alan Benson)[Missing Credit] <\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons why A Year of Jewish Cooking has so much to offer not just the younger generation of Jews, but more seasoned cooks too. As a fan of a British-style baked dessert, the chocolate \u201cchallah and butter\u201d pudding immediately caught my eye, as did the conversely light and refreshing-sounding parev passionfruit semifreddo. Likewise, the peri-peri chicken livers, Turkish spiced snapper and glazed Roman lamb shoulder all offered something new and intriguing, and are dishes I could imagine working into my repertoire or regular recipes.<\/p>\n

Aside from buying the book and making new traditions of your own, Goldberg and Eskin\u2019s \u201cdream\u201d is that Jews around the world will join the MMCC community and take up the mantle. \u201cWe want people to take inspiration from what we\u2019ve done and do it for themselves \u2013 look into their own family recipes, write them down, video people making them, and make sure they\u2019re preserved forever,\u201d Goldberg says. \u201cEven the three of us, we\u2019ve all got stories of people we haven\u2019t taken the time to do this with, and now they\u2019ve gone and the recipes have gone with them, and we can never get them back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SalmonSalmon crumble recipe from A Year of Jewish Cooking (Photo: Alan Benson)[Missing Credit] <\/p>\n

As for the future of MMCC, despite saying in the introduction to A Year of Jewish Cooking that they needed to write \u201cjust one more book\u201d, when I ask if this is definitely their final bow, Goldberg admits: \u201cI\u2019ve got a folder on Google Drive called MMCC six, and when we had recipes we really loved that didn\u2019t fit in this book, I\u2019d joke with the girl: OK, that\u2019s going in the six folder! So maybe. Who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n

As she says this, I can\u2019t help thinking back to earlier in our conversation when she told me: \u201cWe really felt that, particularly the younger generation, they need Monday Morning Cooking Club. I mean, I need the recipes, so if I need them, the next generation really needs them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a betting woman, but I\u2019d wager the MMCC story is far from over.<\/p>\n

\u200b<\/p>\n

A Year of Jewish Cooking: Recipes we can\u2019t live without\u00a0<\/a>by Monday Morning Cooking Club is on sale now, Simon & Schuster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With this goal in mind, A Year of Jewish Cooking is packed full of the (mostly) Ashkenazi classics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[251207,102,60727,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-ashkenazi-food","tag-health","tag-jewish-food","tag-nutrition","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}