What follows is the culmination of years of refinement, a recipe for mushroom cholent that has earned a cherished place in my culinary repertoire. This d...
Dear readers, I want to share a personal journey with you, one that has deeply impacted both my life and my relationship with this blog. Over the past fe...
Chopped liver, also known as pâté de foie in French when finely purréed or — generally, when more coarsely chopped, as gehakte leber in Yiddish — is a beloved t...
Tante Jolesch (aunt Jolesch, pronounced “Yollesh”) was admired for her Krautfleckerln, which is Viennese German for fried cabbage and noodles. In Yiddish, we’r...
Spoiler: I will disclose here, to the English-reading world, the holy recipe of the famed Hasidic vegan challah (the Jewish Sabbath and holiday bread) from the ...
This is an authentic, Old-Vienna recipe for the triangular cookies of the Jewish holiday Purim. Purim is something like a Jewish Mardi Gras. I’m presenting Vien...
I confess to a long-standing affection for the matzoball, perhaps for its ease in swallowing whole. The small round form, always fashioned by hand, passed over ...
This nutty and crumbly cake, which is a tart, sweet, and world-famous showstopper, is one of the oldest around. It remains one of the best-known Viennese pastri...
1934 in Vienna 73,6% of the wine trade was in Jewish hands. Today, Austrian wines are the best-kept secret of the wine world [...] The innovative and quality-dr...
My favorite cake tin is, doubtless, the celebrated so-called “bundt,” or “Gugelhupf” in Vienna (pronounced “google hoopf”). The Gugelhupf bundt cake is, among o...
Famed New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton once wrote that gefilte fish, Yiddish for "stuffed fish"—nowadays served as poached or fried oblong fish patties—...
Kaiserschmarrn is the epitome of Vienneseness—and there's nothing like this thick fluffy scrambled crêpe whispering golden imperial Vienna in your ears! From...
If I use the term "garlic people," does this sound anti-Semitic? In Gil Marks' Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the author notes that “historically, the addition...
In his youth, Sigmund Freud enjoyed many traditional Jewish foods, including challah, gefilte fish, and above all, cholent (tshoolnt in Southeastern Yiddish), t...
“FÄCHERTORTE,” says the white-aproned waitress at Vienna's Demel Konditorei (German for pastry shop) from behind the magnificent display case of one of the worl...
First off, you may be wondering why I am talking about steak tartare on a Jewish-Viennese cultural food blog: Is it some rite of passage, an infamous entry gate...
Challah assuredly is one of the most iconic of all Jewish foods. Challah is as much a ritual and tradition than it is a recipe. It has a whole array of things a...
THE recent rise in popularity of artichokes in Vienna is neither a recent fad nor a modern-day infatuation with Italy’s decadent cuisine and easy Mediterranean ...
What does a blog about Jewish Viennese food have to do with vampires and an imaginary Transylvanian shtetl? First of all, there are obvious parallels in vampire...
A love-hate relationship with Vienna is not only characteristic for Wittgenstein's nephew but also for the way Sigmund Freud connected with the city's food and ...
Even though the name of Vienna's world-famous beef stew is a corruption of the Hungarian word for cowboy, gulyás, the recipe itself does not stem from neighbori...
Eating high-calorie delicacies like tiramisu calls for some exercise. My daily walk through Vienna follows one of Sigmund Freud's favorite routes, around the Ri...
This potentially dreary Viennese dish of boiled beef, called tafelspitz, is made here with high-grade cuts of meat, which are simmered for hours to an almost un...
Jews the world over (but famously in New York and Chicago) love cheesecake and all its local variations. Those delicacies include the ricotta-based archetype, p...
There's hardly any food you would more expect to find on a website dedicated to Freudian recipes – after wiener and sausages, of course – than asparagus. I call...
Matzo brei, in essence, is nothing but Yiddish for matzo, the unleavened bread, aka the Jewish cracker eaten during Passover, fried with eggs. Those not familia...
As readers asked me about good books, not only cookbooks, to read about Vienna, I finally came up with a list of major references about the city, Jewish cooking...
A golden Wiener schnitzel, pronounced sh-nitt-sell, the Vienna cutlet, can be a crisp, light, and tender, heavenly treat served in one of the world's best resta...
A grapefruit's two halves are meant to be shared with your beloved(s). They are like Yoko Ono's Grapefruit dream, which becomes reality once two dream together....
Eight days of intensive testing have yielded this authoritative latke story and recipe. Potato pancakes and hash browns are eaten all over the world. Going by t...
In recent years champagne-creme-filled and gold-leaf-topped donuts and sufganiyot have been en vogue. Try these wonderfully homey jelly doughnuts for a change. ...
Join me for this ridiculously easy Viennese version of the wildly famous no-knead bread. Indeed, Vienna is not immune to the bread hype of the last decade. The ...
This is THE breakfast classic of Viennese coffeehouses. And yes, most Viennese I've asked admitted to childishly associating this pair of eggs with the male ana...
Nothing bland about this poached fruit! Cherished and cultivated for its intense floral fragrance since the time of the Akkadians, the quince has a smell so won...
The repressed always makes its return – even in Vienna. In March 2015, Ruth Beckermann could albeit only temporarily, correct Austria's "memorial to the eternal...
In German, Vienna is Wien, and wine is Wein. Coincidence? Perhaps not. More important, Wein/wine sounds like whine, which surely is the Viennese's favorite past...
It's funny to make a post about wine, as a rather moderate drinker. But when I do have a glass, I try to get the best. Interestingly, there is wine unique to th...
The average Central European backyard chicken was eaten only once either a family member or the chicken got sick. They're best left to lay eggs, according to Si...
What an incredibly beautiful place, especially in autumn: The vineyards of the legendary Vienna Woods, the Wienerwald! Just look at these pictures I took on thi...
Have you ever tried to follow a recipe that specifically calls for kosher salt? And then you realized you can't find it in any store? Unfortunately, kosher salt...
Are all strudels wieners? The strudel is a classic Viennese delicacy. In Germany, it's called Wiener Strudel, or "Viennese strudel". But "wiener" and "strudel" ...
A political dessert - "Blue fruit on a brown base": In autumn, when plums are in season, it is traditional to have plum tart for the high holidays, Rosh Hashana...
