Nouvelle Jewish Cuisine

Can traditional dishes and ingredients be turned into haute cuisine?Yes,.and it's happening with the richly historical Jewish cuisine.Foods that great grandparents brought from Eastern Europe are now being reconstructed into artesenal dishes .They may be all fancied up but their core remains the same : homey ingredients being made into earthy, flavorful main meals and desserts. It was explored in today's New York Times Dining section.Dining regular ,Julia Moskin, wrote about this as she also visited some famous New York Jewish delis.Many young cooks are embracing schmaltz and liver ,turning them into hipsters must haves.Gefilte fish restaurants along with bagel shops ,are becoming on trend again. Yet these are not your great granddad's white fish and bagels.The fish is being made into chowder while the bagel makers are employing traditional baking methods to produce artesenal products.The results are delicious foods that embrace past centuries of Jewish cuisines.Smoked whitefish ,a staple in many homes ,is now being paired with creme fraiche and capers in a salad.Trout is also added to it ,to giving the variation of a chill. Salade Nicoise more oomph.Bagels are being and rolled and boiled before baking, giving us a crunchier, much more flavorful bagel.Onion ones have chopped onions as well as scallions put into the dough as opposed to having them sprinkled on the roll's surface. This renewed interest in Kosher cuisine is actually saving some dishes such as babka and borscht from extinction first.Babka, a sweet chocolate laced bread , is being reconfigured into bread pudding.A new generation is starting to appreciate it's, rich cocoa flavor and density.All beef hot-dogs and pastrami are also getting a revival as well.With this, comes a renewed interest in famed family owned eateries.The very well known Russ And Daughters is popular again .The restaurant is now owned by the fourth generation of the family.Where Joel Russ first had his pushcart of smoked herring, his great grandkids, John Russ Tepper and Niki Russ Federmanare running the deli he built there in 1904. Homemade soda, a hallmark of any Jewish restaurant, is remade into a ginger soda with hints of lemon and lime.Matzoh is roasted with butter and salt for a crackly yet creamy treat.Jewish bakeries are also cropping up again and with them comes sinful butter cookies and strudel,yeast raised coffee cakes and sour breads.Pumpernickel bread is being baked in the traditional method , first wrapped in a thin layer of dough before hitting the oven. The cuisine of the Eastern European Jews has always been a rich and flavorful one. Thanks to some clever modern twists it's also trendy too. Foods once long forgotten or simply ignored are finding their way back to tables. they represent both the past and future of Kosher cooking and baking.