The mother-daughter duo of Bonnie Stern, right, and Anna Rupert brought this year\u2019s L\u2019dor V\u2019dor lecture series to a flavourful conclusion last month. <\/i>(photo from Bonnie Stern)<\/i><\/p>\n
The mother-daughter cooking duo of Bonnie Stern and Anna Rupert brought the 2023-24 L\u2019dor V\u2019dor <\/i>(From Generation to Generation) lecture series, hosted by Victoria\u2019s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple, to a flavourful conclusion last month.<\/p>\n
Emceed by former CBC television personality Anne Petrie, the hour-long presentation, Don\u2019t Worry Just Cook: A Delicious Dialogue on Intergenerational Jewish Cuisine, shared their family\u2019s culinary path, from Stern\u2019s start as a chef to Rupert\u2019s early childhood kitchen experiences as a 3-year-old making pies with her brother, through to the present.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted my kids to feel comfortable in the kitchen and to want to be there, to help out or do whatever they wanted to do,\u201d said Stern in a talk that explored the deeply tied relationship of Jewish food to culture and family.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom would give us jobs in the kitchen when we were little,\u201d said Rupert. \u201cThere was always a job for us if we wanted to participate, such as painting cookies, filling cookies or grating potatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Stern\u2019s view, cooking is a life skill \u2013 a person isn\u2019t obligated to pursue a career in the culinary arts, but it is important for a person to know about food and to be able to cook. She added that her kids were fussy eaters, so the idea was, if they participated in the kitchen, they would eat what they made.<\/p>\n
\u201cFood without a story is just calories,\u201d said Stern. And there were plenty of gastronomic tidbits to be told, often relating to the evolution of how variations on cooking are incorporated into family recipes.<\/p>\n
For example, Stern\u2019s mother had a technique for browning brisket at the end of the cooking process, rather than the beginning. And, at the current family dining table, as recognition of dietary intolerances became more widespread, there is a greater need to know how to prepare such items as gluten-free bread for a meal. Another way in which their family dinners have evolved is the move towards a contemporary buffet \u2013 guests are invited to move around and interact, creating even greater connections and more interaction than meals shared together in other ways.<\/p>\n
More broadly, Stern explained how cuisine within a family alters when people move to another place. \u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible to reproduce something the same way it was somewhere else. You don\u2019t have the same equipment, the same ingredients or the same recipe. In the end, things change a little bit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The topic of the diversity of Jewish cuisine arose. Both Stern and Rupert accentuated the myriad different dishes Jews have served up that go well beyond traditional Ashkenazi notions of matzah ball soup, blintzes and apple cake. Nowhere is that more true, they say, than in Israel, where cuisines from Jews around the world have converged in a land that has produced many talented and inventive chefs unafraid to take risks.<\/p>\n
Some of the variations on traditional Jewish themes (mentioned in the talk and also found in their cookbook) were to do with Hanukkah dishes, specifically latkes served with guacamole and Middle Eastern sweet potato latkes, which may include hot sauce, cilantro and cumin.<\/p>\n
Stern has studied and taught cooking around the world, written 12 cookbooks, hosted three nationally broadcast food shows and is a frequent television and radio guest around the country. She is also the founder of the eponymous Bonnie Stern School of Cooking in Toronto. Rupert, in her professional life, is a speech pathologist and researcher.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Together, Stern and Rupert wrote Don\u2019t Worry, Just Cook: Delicious Timeless Recipes for Comfort and Connection<\/i>. With a foreword by Israeli-born chef Yotam Ottolenghi, the book goes beyond simply writing down recipes, to telling stories, giving lessons and sharing tips to improve readers\u2019 skills and experiences in the kitchen. Rupert said she used to dream that the two would have a cooking show together. The publication of the book, in its own way, brought that desire to fruition.<\/p>\n Rupert credits the success of the book to her mother, whose vast amount of expertise as a cooking teacher allows her to anticipate questions a reader might have when following a recipe and offer productive advice and workarounds for potential hazards.<\/p>\n \u201cFood has a unique way of connecting us to our roots and bringing generations together. We are excited to share our passion for Jewish cuisine and the joy it brings to families,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n \u201cFood and cooking are ways to find comfort, and definitely ways to connect with other people,\u201d added Rupert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sam Margolis<\/b> has written for the <\/i>Globe and Mail, the <\/i>National Post, UPI and MSNBC.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The mother-daughter duo of Bonnie Stern, right, and Anna Rupert brought this year\u2019s L\u2019dor V\u2019dor lecture series to a flavourful conclusion last month. (photo from Bonnie Stern) The mother-daughter cooking duo of Bonnie Stern and Anna Rupert brought the 2023-24 L\u2019dor V\u2019dor (From Generation to Generation) lecture series, hosted by Victoria\u2019s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23220,3797,23219,3584,9270],"class_list":["post-44284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-anna-rupert","tag-baking","tag-bonnie-stern","tag-cooking","tag-kolot-mayim"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}