About

Join me as I dash/salt/mix/cook my way through Claudia Roden’s definitive Jewish cookbook ‘The Book of Jewish Food- An odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day.’

It’s so good I described it to my friends as a “bool.” This was, I assure you, in no way a typo, but a nod to the fact that a cookbook can be so good it makes you drool- a bool.

Simon Schama is more articulate in his praise. He says Claudia’s ‘no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is, rather, a memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet.’

I’m absolutely sure I won’t be any of those things, although over the summer I did make some mean madeleines. But this journey into Jewish cooking is not just foodie but also personal, as I continue my path to converting to Judaism. My friend Adam S said to me that one of the main things to understand when you think about converting is the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardi food. Thanks to Claudia this part of the process has just become easier.

Along the journey I’ll be diverting from Claudia’s book, and stopping off at some of my friends’ favourite recipes. I hope that in time (soon soon) when we can lawfully prop up each other’s kitchen counters, I’ll be cooking alongside them.

Why ‘Nom Nom Yom’? The first two need no introduction, the third is ‘day’ in Hebrew. When I had a Julie Powell-esque yen to cook a recipe a day this perhaps made more sense, but how could I resist nomnomyom.com? So whilst I’ll be making a recipe every week and not every day, the yom is here to stay.

Thank you so much for reading even this far, and as my family say when we’re presented with a plate of food “eyes down, loooook in.” (it’s a Northern thing, expect more where that came from).