I Made A Roman Jewish Feast (feat. Leah Koenig’s Portico)

Who doesn’t love Italian food, especially Roman cuisine with the cacio e pepe, carbonara pasta, and tender, flavourful artichokes?

Seriously. Show me who doesn’t love this stuff and I’ll do to them what the Roman emperor probably did with anyone who disagreed with them. Can’t imagine it was pleasant.

But did you know that within Roman cuisine, there’s another world of food two thousand years in the making with flavors from Spain and North Africa? I’m of course talking about the ancient Roman Jewish community with roots in the city that stretch back to the days of Caesar. (The ruler, not the salad dressing.)

So join me as I prepare a Roman Jewish feast by selecting three dishes from Leah Koenig’s Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen.

📖 CHAPTERS
00:00 – Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen
01:42 – Pope-approved Pizza Ebraica
02:48 – Why Leah wrote Portico
03:51 – The Roman Jewish Feast

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Who doesn’t love Italian food,  especially Roman cuisine with   the cacio e pepe, carbonara pasta,  and tender, flavourful artichokes. Seriously. Show me who doesn’t love this  stuff and I’ll do to them what the Roman   emperor probably did with anyone who disagreed  with them. Can’t imagine it was pleasant.

But did you know that within Roman cuisine,   there’s another world of food two thousand  years in the making with flavours from Spain   and North Africa? I’m of course talking about  the ancient Roman Jewish community with roots   in the city that stretch back to the days of  caesar. (The ruler, not the salad dressing.)

So join me as I prepare a Roman Jewish  feast by selecting three dishes from   Leah Koenig’s Portico: Cooking and  Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen. In honor of Rome’s melting pot of Jewish  communities, I’m making three dishes from Portico  

With roots in each one. Sephardic Sautéed Spinach  with Pine Nuts and Raisins, Libyan Vegetable Stew   for Couscous, and the Roman Ghetto’s very own  Pizza Ebraica, a cookie with dried fruit and nuts. I start with the sautéed spinach––and it’s at this  point that I realize I accidentally bought some  

Spinach mixed with lettuce. Oops! But hey, Melanie  didn’t notice and it’s still mostly spinach. The dish comes together quickly, toasting the pine  nuts, sautéing the onions, wilting the spinach,   and finishing with some raisins, and lemon  zest –– Leah’s own little addition for a  

Touch of brightness, a flavour and a sentiment  we could all use a little more of these days. Then it’s onwards to the vegetable stew!  I can definitely see adding this to my   weekday repertoire. All ya gotta  do is roughly chop up some veggies,  

Throw them in a pot with chickpeas, add  some veggie stock, and let the stew stew. And hey! While it stews, that’s the perfect  time to start whipping together that pizza   ebraica. I was especially drawn to making  this after chatting about it with Leah  

For the Yiddishland podcast. She mentioned  that Pope Benedict was a frequent customer   of Pasticceria il Boccione, a 200-year-old  kosher pastry shop that makes pizza ebraica. I guess he had some issues with heart disease  or whatever and like needed to go on a  

Cholesterol-free diet according to his doctors.  But he had a sweet tooth and so somebody tipped   him off about the Roman Jewish ghetto this bakery  which doesn’t use butter at all because they’re   you know they wanted things to be pareve so they  could be eaten with after meat meals and so he  

Tried their pizza ebraica and someone probably  brought him some and he loved it so much that he   kind of named it his official favorite dessert  in Rome and there’s actually if you go to the   bakery there is a letter from the pope like to  the bakery that hanging on the wall that still  

Says like you make the best dessert in Rome or  something like that. So yeah, it’s pope-approved. Perhaps the only time in history when  pope-approved was actually good for the Jews. My pizza ebraica are starting to  look nice and browned on the edges,  

So it’s time to set the table for this  Roman Jewish feast. But while I do,   here’s Leah talking about why  she sought out to write Portico. I mean I’ve been writing about Jewish food for 17  years at this point and my last book The Jewish  

Cookbook was this like 425 recipe giant behemoth  that was trying to encapsulate all of Jewish   food which is obviously impossible you know.  When I finished that book and I was thinking   about what I wanted to do next my husband and  I honeymooned in Rome back in 2009. We went on  

Like a tour and I wanted to write about you  know the food of the Roman Jews and while   we were there I just absolutely fell in love  with the community. I knew Ashkenazi cuisine,   I knew sephardi cuisine a little bit  already. I mean I was early in my career  

And I knew Middle Eastern Jewish cuisine  but this was something totally different,   totally its own thing, incredibly delicious.  When I was thinking what community do I want   to focus on for this book after the Jewish  cookbook I was like I want to do Rome because  

It’s the community that has meant so much  to me and I want to give something back. And on that lovely sentiment, it’s  time to give something back to my   stomach starting with the sauteed  spinach with pine nuts and raisins

Obviously very spinachy. I was a little worried  I wouldn’t like the sogginess or at least it   looks a little soggy, but it’s definitely  offset by the little toasted pine nuts. And that contrasts nicely with the raisins, at  least the sweetness of the raisins. Now we go  

Over to the main. That one I actually do have  bookmarked and this is a vegetable stew for   couscous. I feel like I’m reading a bedtime story.  And I wanted to make this because it’s apparently,   according to Leah, and I believe her,  it’s everyday home cooking for Rome’s  

Libyan Jewish community and it’s  a nice looking vegetarian dish,   something that seemed like it’d be pretty easy  to whip together on a weekday night which is   what I’m doing. Just chop up the vegetables, put  it in, stew it for a while. So a little bit of  

Time for the stewing but pretty simple to put  together. Let’s have a bite. Yeah this tastes   very North African to me. Reminds me of like a  tagine from Morocco or something and I probably   put a little extra cinnamon there because I likes  my cinnamon and I’m definitely happy with that.

Now, last but not least. This one I was very  curious about. It’s called pizza ebraica. Interesting. I like that it’s crunchy. It’s not  sweet, which I like. Not a big sweet tooth guy. I   like this. I will admit I was a little skeptical  at first you know mixing of the nuts and the  

Candied cherries and all these things. It just  seemed like an interesting combination. But yeah   I mean I’m glad I made them and I will eat them  all. All right we did it! That was my Roman Jewish   feast. If you enjoyed that you can check out my  conversation with Leah on the Yiddishland podcast  

Available wherever you get your podcast as they  say on basically every podcast and yeah go ahead   and like subscribe and leave a comment letting  me know which cookbook I ought to cover next.