Join us for the second installation of our Jewish Cookbook Club series on May 18. This month, we’ll be exploring Chef Jennifer Abadi’s A Fistful of Lentils.
A Fistful of Lentils is a cookbook about Jennifer’s family’s stories, history, and cooking from Aleppo, Syria. In the 1970s, Jennifer’s mother Annette and her Aunt Essie first decided to collect her great-grandmother Esther’s recipes. Thirty years later, Jennifer picked up from where they left off, assembling and recording the delicious Syrian dishes that she grew up with and was afraid would be lost over time.
The family stories shared while cooking became as essential as the food itself, culminating in A Fistful of Lentils: a cookbook-memoire that holds a remarkable family history while sharing the aromas of their kitchen with its allspice, tamarind, lemon, cumin, mint, and rose water.
How it works:
Sign up to join fellow curious home cooks and cookbook nerds for The Neighborhood’s Jewish Cookbook Social Club series!
Each month between April and June, the club will focus on one incredible Jewish cookbook to cook and learn from in our own home kitchens. Then, we will come together in Gertie’s magical Brooklyn backyard to nosh and celebrate.
You’ll bring a dish from the cookbook to share with the group, and get a chance to taste the delicious creations of your fellow book club participants. You’ll also get to schmooze with each other and the author, and enjoy a conversation between the author and event host, Leah Koenig (who happens to be an award-winning Jewish cookbook author herself.)
