Pod Insights The Sporkful The Rice Cooker That Changed Jake Cohen’s Life (Reheat) About this episode Jake Cohen didn’t care much about Jewish food when he went to culinary school and worked in high end restaurants. But when he met his future husband, Jake was introduced to the Middle Eastern Jewish recipes of his in-laws, like tahdig and kubbeh. Soon, he was mining his own family’s Eastern European Jewish recipes, and putting his spin on matzo ball soup and kasha varnishkes.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Pashman? My whole extended family and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past spring. And I gotta say, I came away feeling like, number one, this is a great family destination. Number two, this is a great place to come all year round. The mini golf alone is probably worth, it's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh local seafood to craft burgers and craft beers to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frill seafood shacks
0:43 Dan Pashman? to chef-driven dining, Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach, there's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long. Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com. You put a lot of love into the things you send during the holidays. It's baked with love, carefully packed with love, or shipped with love right from home. Because what you're sending isn't just what's inside the box, it's the time, thought, and care you put into it. And this holiday season, the United States Postal Service is delivering your love to more addresses in America than anyone else. So, send it with love. Send it with USPS. The United States Postal Service. Learn more at USPS.com/holiday.
1:30 Dan Pashman? Hey, everyone. Dan here with another reheat for you. This one's gonna be with my friend Jake Cohen. Now, Jake and I spoke back in 2021, a few months after the release of his debut cookbook, Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch. Of course, he followed that one up with his second cookbook, I Could Nosh, which I also love. But now, exciting news. Jake has a brand-new TV show that walks you through simple dishes for entertaining. It's called Jake Makes It Easy. It's on A and E, and it's not specifically Jewish. This is just all kinds of cuisine. You know, Jake is a real nut for making small changes or adding small tweaks to something that are so creative and that make a huge difference, but that are still super simple. Of course, he's also super fun to hang out with. And when you watch Jake Makes It Easy on A and E, you'll feel like you're hanging out with So check out that show. Now, this conversation we had, Jake and I talked about all the differences
2:14 Dan Pashman? between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish foods, why learning his in-laws recipes was so important to him, and how he went from a culinary student to a TikTok sensation. It's a great chat. And remember, if there's an episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer, all you gotta do is drop me a line. Send me an email or voice memo to hello at sporkful.com. Include your first name, location, and tell us which episode you'd like us to reheat and why. And maybe your episode will be featured soon. All right, enjoy.
2:41 Dan Pashman? You have a recipe in your cookbook for a homemade Chex Mix cooked with schmaltz.
2:46 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:47 Dan Pashman? Which, for folks who don't know, is rendered chicken fat, very common cooking fat in Jewish cooking.
2:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:51 Dan Pashman? Looks incredible. I'm a big fan of Chex Mix.
2:55 Speaker 01 Big fan.
2:57 Dan Pashman? But you pick out the pretzels.
3:00 Speaker 01 So, so there's a saying for every, like, three Jews, you have seven opinions. I have a lot of opinions that comes to my snacks and.
3:07 Dan Pashman? I respect that. This is a safe space.
3:08 Speaker 01 Chex Mix is top tier snack. The only thing is, the pretzels are so chalky. They're not good. Don't like them. So at the end, I would have a bag of just the pretzels that I would give to someone.
3:19 Dan Pashman? All right.
3:20 Speaker 01 Whoever wants some.
3:21 Dan Pashman? Here are the hand-me-down pretzels that I personally pick through with my grubby fingers.
3:25 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly, exactly. So when I was developing this recipe, what I found is that the gluten-free pretzels are perfect. They're super crunchy. They're just like.
3:35 Dan Pashman? They're very, they're almost brittle.
3:37 Speaker 01 They're brittle. They shatter, which I love. So I call that out in the book that that's what you should use.
3:42 Dan Pashman? The pretzels in Chex Mix, or any snack mix, to me, they're kind of like the connective tissue. They're like a good worker bee of the equation.
3:53 Speaker 01 Are pretzels in, in party mix as well?
3:55 Dan Pashman? I think, I think often, yes.
3:57 Speaker 01 You know what would be exceptional is if they took out the pretzels and replaced it with Chex.
4:11 Dan Pashman? This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. The person delivering these hot takes on Chek's Mix is Jake Cohen. He's the author of the cookbook, Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch. Jake is a self-proclaimed nice Jewish boy. And if you're one of his 400,000 Instagram followers, or 1 million TikTok followers, you've seen him baking challah, or black and white cookies, or drizzling sriracha on a spinning piece of avocado toast. That last one isn't at all Jewish, but it was recently shared by one Britney Spears. What I really like about Jake's cookbook is that it's expanded my idea of what Jewish food is.
4:54 Dan Pashman? Most American Jews are Ashkenazi, meaning of Central or Eastern European descent. And that includes me. Growing up, Ashkenazi food was all I knew of Jewish food: bagels and lox, brisket, potato kines. Yeah, I knew there were Jews in other parts of the world, but I didn't know anything about their food cultures. Jake really expands the idea of what Jewish food in America is, and what it can be. It's like my grandmother's cooking, but also a lot more. Jake didn't set out to make Jewish food such a big part of his work. In fact, when he was growing up-
5:27 Speaker 01 We were high holiday Jews, so Passover every year, fast for Yom Kippur and breakfast, Rosh Hashanah. But we didn't go to shul on Fridays. We didn't keep a kosher home. We didn't do Shabbat. It was just very much all of the, all of the cultural elements.
5:44 Dan Pashman? Shul is the Yiddish word for synagogue, so that means Jake and his family didn't go to temple much. They didn't keep kosher. They didn't observe Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. In other words, when Jake was growing up in New York City, and then the Long Island suburbs, Jewish identity was not a big part of his life. The thing that was big? Food.
6:02 Speaker 01 I was in high school, probably like the real peak of New Age Food Network. And I would come home from school every day and watch Succession, Ina, and Giada, and Rachel Ray. And I was mesmerized. The whole concept behind it, I thought, was, it was everything I ever wanted.
6:21 Dan Pashman? What was it about it?
6:22 Speaker 01 The exchange of food for-
6:28 Speaker 01 For love, for family, for bonding, for connection. It was the effort that you put in, the investment in cooking paid back tenfold in the joy that you bring to others around you.
6:42 Dan Pashman? So while Jake's high school classmates were out probably doing shots of tequila behind the 7-Eleven, he was hosting dinner parties for his friends. Jake fell in love with cooking, and more importantly, entertaining. So when he graduated high school, he went straight to the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. After completing the three-year program, he snagged a job at Danielle, the famous high-end New York City restaurant.
7:05 Speaker 01 It's ingrained in you to like go work at the best. Like that was the whole thing. It's like you have to end up in a three Michelin star restaurant. It was so intense. It was just very much exactly what you expect in that kind of caricature of a fine dining restaurant. That was the life. But it pushed me. It made me a better cook. It made me more aware of a sense of urgency and best prepared me for then going to the hot restaurant, which was ABC Kitchen.
7:37 Dan Pashman? But you pretty quickly decide that restaurants, that world is not for you. Why not?
7:41 Speaker 01 I just never saw myself owning one or running one. You're creating an experience for the guests, but you're not necessarily like with them. And that was, I fell in love with food with this kind of personal relationship to your cooking for someone. It was very clear, and I think given the fact that I've always had this obsession with media, I've always had this obsession with pop culture. I was, people always ask like, what's, what are your interests outside of food? I don't have any. It is food and pop culture. That's it. That's it. I mean, getting high. I would say those three things. Yeah. It's like, and I'm typically eating when I'm high, and I'm typically consuming pop culture also.
8:20 Dan Pashman? Right. You're just doing it all at once. Bring it on.
8:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:24 Dan Pashman? Jake left the restaurant world and got a job at the food magazine Savour. That was also grueling.
8:30 Speaker 01 It was very much like I was seen but not heard, like very much like ingrained to not speak up, not say anything during tastings. You had to be silent, let the editors give their opinions and just shut up and take notes. The whole idea of like, I'm in Devil's Island, probably she's running around the city and all this stuff, that was me with groceries. I got a hernia from the like, physical like labor that I was pushed to do.
8:55 Dan Pashman? Eventually Jake wrote a couple of small pieces for the magazine and seeing his name in print kept him going, but he was more interested in seeing his name and face online. So he left Savour, which is kind of an old school print magazine, for the digital first food outlet, Tasting Table. If Savour is Prada, Tasting Table is Uniqlo. And this was right when a certain type of super quick cooking video was taking off on social media.
9:18 Speaker 01 I was in digital at the beginning of like the, the hands and pans phenomenon and-
9:25 Dan Pashman? Hands and pans? That, that's like an industry term for like those overhead shots-
9:29 Speaker 01 The tasty videos.
9:30 Dan Pashman? Right, those like super quick cut like-
9:32 Speaker 01 Hands and pans, that's all you see.
9:34 Dan Pashman? Right, I got it, got it, okay. Jake provided the hands for a bunch of those videos, but you'd never know it because you don't see his face. So Jake had gone from being in a restaurant behind the kitchen door to a media outlet behind the camera. He still felt cut off from the people he was cooking for. But in his personal life, Jake was connecting. In 2015, he met his future husband, Alex Shapiro. Alex and Jake are both Jewish, but as I said, Jake is Ashkenazi Jewish, so his roots are in Central and Eastern Europe. Jake's great grandmother fled Germany during the Holocaust, first settling in Cuba, then in the US. Alex's family is Mizrahi, meaning Jews from the Middle East. Generations of Alex's family lived in Iraq.
10:16 Dan Pashman? Then in the 50s, Jews were forced to leave, so the family went to Iran. But with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, it became unsafe for many Jews to live there. So Alex's family fled again, this time to the US.
10:30 Dan Pashman? Now, even though Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews are all Jewish, they have very different cultures. They speak different languages, have different customs around holidays, and of course, the food cultures are very different, influenced by the countries they lived in. At first, Jake wasn't sure how he'd fit in with this new culture, being Ashkenazi and being gay.
10:50 Speaker 01 I think in any conservative culture, there is unfortunately, a lot of misogyny. And I think it was much easier, given the fact that we are men. And even though we are a gay couple, I think it's a huge population of lesbian cousins. And I feel that I was welcomed in faster.
11:10 Dan Pashman? So a few months after you start dating Alex, you get a gift from his mother.
11:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:14 Dan Pashman? Tell me about the gift.
11:16 Speaker 01 Um, it's right behind you. It's a copy of Food of Life by Najmi Batmanglij, who is the most iconic Persian cookbook author ever. She sent me that and a Persian rice cooker. Pretty much, it's just like, uh, these are like, tuh, tuh.
11:31 Dan Pashman? You're gonna need these.
11:33 Speaker 01 Every, every in-law gets this. It was so funny, because that was something for so many Ashkenazi readers who have married into a Persian family. They all say, like, that's so funny. I got the same thing from my mother-in-law.
11:53 Dan Pashman? I guess you could read, you could read that gesture as sort of like, uh, because you were, you were still dating at this time. You and Alex were not engaged. So this is, on one hand, seems like it bodes well.
12:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:03 Dan Pashman? Like, like, there's a level, this, it seems like a symbol of a certain amount of acceptance, like you're being welcomed into the family. Because, but there's also sort of like, uh, there's some things you're gonna need to learn.
12:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it is. And most of them put it away in the cupboard and they never, it's like, oh, thank you. And they, they never look at it again. But that, that wasn't an option for me.
12:26 Dan Pashman? Jake immediately put that Persian rice cooker to use, started learning to make the Persian and Iraqi Jewish dishes that his then-boyfriend Alex had grown up with. Only the women in Alex's family cooked, so Jake asked all of them to share what they knew. While they were unsure of what to make of Jake at first.
12:41 Speaker 01 The hesitations were pretty much just...
12:46 Speaker 01 Immediately ended when I showed an interest in cooking with these with these women. I just think that it's so uncommon to show any interest in someone's culture. Because even like they would, I would ask like, oh, I want to learn, I want a recipe for this. Who's going to want to make that? But you make it all the time. Yeah, I make it because we eat that.
13:13 Speaker 01 But it that kind of mentality.
13:15 Dan Pashman? One classic Persian dish was Jake's top priority.
13:18 Speaker 01 I started making tadiq. That was the first thing that I wanted to master, that and gourmeh sabzi, which is this Persian stew of chopped herbs and dried lime and kidney beans. And that's Alex's favorite from growing up. And I, tadiq was a process.
13:34 Dan Pashman? I'm sure a lot of folks are familiar with it, but for the folks who aren't.
13:36 Speaker 01 Crispy Persian rice. Traditionally, it's just rice that's then the bottom of the pot gets nice and crispy. And it's all like rice and oil, salt is all you need.
13:43 Dan Pashman? But it's good. So, but the key is that you put some kind of cooking fat in the bottom of the pot. And so which browns and crisps the rice that is in the bottom of the pot. And then you turn it upside down onto a plate. So you have this like golden brown crispy shell.
13:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
13:58 Dan Pashman? But it's difficult. It's my understanding that maybe at least at first, like getting it just right, getting the getting, getting it to hold together when it comes out of the pot and not break into chunks.
14:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:07 Dan Pashman? I mean, it might still taste good, but getting it to look beautiful on the plate. That is not easy.
14:11 Speaker 01 So my mother and father taught me a trick, which I put in the book, which is kind of the foolproof method, isn't it? Oh, the crust itself like picks up the rice underneath it. So it's just, it's heaven. It's so good. It's so, so good. And every time you make it, it's like, it's like a tableside flambé.
14:30 Dan Pashman? Jake's mother in law's trick involves adding yogurt to the bottom of the pan, which he says is controversial because some people will say that means it's no longer tadiq. We're not going to wade into that debate today. Anyway, Jake didn't stop with tadiq. He kept asking Alex's family for recipes.
14:46 Dan Pashman? Is there a difference between Persian and Iraqi Jewish food and Persian and Iraqi food more broadly?
14:55 Speaker 01 So, yes and no. So in Iraq, Jews were the players that handled the spice trade with India. So Iraqi Jewish cuisine is this incredibly gorgeous blend of Indian ingredients and techniques with Middle Eastern flavors and traditions. So I think of the most iconic thing to come out of Iraq is Aamba, which is this pickled mango sauce. Iraqi Jews had dishes that they have created, and they also had dishes that were just part of the cuisines of their neighbors in the region that they used for specific Jewish rituals.
15:37 Dan Pashman? All over the world, but especially around the Middle East, because so many groups have come and gone and traveled through that place over the centuries. I think it's kind of crazy for any one group to claim full credit for anything. All these things have been intermixed and intermingled and adapted and evolved and...
15:55 Speaker 01 The thing is, a lot of people, a lot of times, the conversation is focused on what did the Jews actually do? What do they actually own? And that's not it, because most Jewish books are not claiming ownership. All they're doing are telling stories of Jews and how they celebrate our rituals. And it involves food, because there's always food involved. So I think the storytelling, this preserving, it's not gatekeeping. It's not saying that it's like, oh, this is Jewish, step away. Though I will say, like, I get angry when people do challah and they're like, breaded brioche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like, bapka, it's like, twisted, twisted bread, twisty bread.
16:38 Speaker 01 But that being said, it's like, there, something like bapka, like, there are very similar things in different cultures, so there's no owning it.
16:46 Dan Pashman? Jake immersed himself in Alex's family's Mizrahi Jewish food traditions, which were totally foreign to him before. Then Jake started collecting his own family's recipes, too. When he was still at Savour, he wrote about his great-grandmother's apple cake.
17:00 Speaker 01 It was this pressin crust and my great-grandmother would do it, make it for Rosh Hashanah. And since she started making it in Havana and they would use apples, or because Rosh Hashanah typically falls around the time for like Italian plums, she would use plums. The main thing I add to all these recipes is salt, because no one uses any salt. It was the first actual thing I wrote about that surrounded Jewish food. That was like, this is it. I have to do more of this.
17:31 Dan Pashman? Coming up, Jake figures out how to combine his budding interest in Jewish family recipes with his professional training and turn it all into the career in food he always wanted. Plus, I'll watch him shoot a video for his social feeds about how to make his classic chocolate chip cookies. Stick around.
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20:40 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of times, people want to ask me, like, "Oh, what are you cooking? What restaurants are you going to?" They ask Emma and Andres and the whole Sporkful team the same questions. Well, it turns out, we provide a listener service to you that includes that information. It's our newsletter. We don't send it out all the time. We're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you useful information. Recipes, restaurant information, links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're watching, and guess what else? You'll be automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell you about, like, special sales happening on this Folini website, buy discounts on pasta and stuff. So, there are a lot of benefits, and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign up today.
21:23 Dan Pashman? Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks. Back now to my conversation with Jake Cohen, author of Jew-ish. And just a quick note that there's a little bit of profanity coming up. As we said, Jake connected deeply with his husband's family and his own through the Jewish family recipes that have been passed down through the generations. But he was still trying to figure out his career. He got a job at The Feed Feed, a digital food media outlet. And remember, the trend a few years ago was hands and pans. Jake was craving more of a connection with the people he was cooking for.
21:56 Speaker 01 I was a big pusher in terms of like, personality-driven, same thing like the Bonap era of personalities. People want to know who's cooking, what the recipes are from. Same thing with New York Times. Like, people want the face.
22:09 Dan Pashman? And a storytelling element.
22:11 Speaker 01 A storytelling element, but I think it's actually, it's less about the story about the recipe, it's more about the story of the person.
22:17 Dan Pashman? Right.
22:18 Speaker 01 People want to make it because X person is telling you to do it. And there's a little anecdote about their life because you don't know a lot about what happens outside of the kitchen from them. And these little tidbits are what kind of connect you to them in a way that makes it deeper.
22:32 Dan Pashman? Meanwhile, Jake was also developing his own social media following. He grew his Instagram audience to 100,000 before the start of the pandemic. But things really took off when he joined TikTok, where he now has a million followers. Instagram reels helped him get to 400,000 followers there. And in those videos, you'll see hands and pans, but you also see Jake's face. Like in this video of him making peach upside down cake.
22:55 Speaker 01 If you're anything like me, you are losing your shit right now for peach season. So let's celebrate with my go-to upside down cake. It's one of my favorite summer desserts. Slice your peaches into wedges, throw them in the bottom of a 90.
23:04 Dan Pashman? He'll flash a goofy smile as he dumps flour or butter into the mixing bowl. His captions always include silly puns. And at the end, he eats with gusto.
23:14 Speaker 01 Cut yourself a big slice once it cools completely. And then, please, use a plate. I don't know what the hell I was thinking shoving this into my mouth.
23:20 Dan Pashman? The videos have Jake's personality all over them. And people love them. So I couldn't go over to his apartment without getting a little peek behind the curtain. Jake mixed up some chocolate chip cookies when I came over. For the gram, as they say. Or for the talk? I don't know, whatever.
23:36 Speaker 01 In hindsight, given like, how immensely Jewish, I could have done something a little more Jewish. But to me, I just think cooking for others is Jewish at its core.
23:46 Dan Pashman? All right, so we're rolling.
23:47 Speaker 01 We're rolling.
23:48 Dan Pashman? Dropping the butter in. Jake's pretty casual about these videos. He's got a ring light, a little phone holder. But other than that, it's just a guy and his kitchen.
23:56 Speaker 01 And this is the Anti-Food Network. There are no like little prep bowls with all the ingredients measured out. Like, none of that bullshit.
24:04 Dan Pashman? All right, so we got the brown sugar now?
24:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. Two three quarters cup of brown sugar. More brown sugar than white sugar because we want it chewy.
24:11 Dan Pashman? So why not just use all brown sugar?
24:13 Speaker 01 Because you need, uh, you need the white sugar, A for the spreading, B for the crispiness, like the crispy edges.
24:19 Dan Pashman? Oh, white sugar is crispy edges and brown sugar is chewiness?
24:22 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
24:23 Dan Pashman? I had no idea. In about 10 minutes, Jake whips up this batch of cookies, shooting a video of each step. He switches up camera angles for different steps so viewers don't get bored. He'll use an app on his phone to edit it down to about 45 seconds. And so, like, to be someone like who you are today, to have a successful cookbook and a big Instagram following and to do well on social media, like, how much of that requires real culinary expertise? And how much is more about knowing how to connect with people?
24:53 Speaker 01 I think you don't need the expertise to do it. However, the expertise is what keeps people. There are people that have more followers than me that create food content that people just watch. I never wanted that. I don't need millions and millions of followers. What I need are people to see what I'm doing and be inspired to cook. That is my definition of success.
25:27 Speaker 01 And we're done. That's that part.
25:37 Dan Pashman? As Jake's social media profile started taking off, his connection to his Jewish identity also deepened. He and Alex got married, and even though neither of them grew up religious, they wanted to incorporate Judaism into their lives more. They quickly realized going to religious services wasn't for them. Instead, they got into Shabbat dinner. That's the Friday night meal that starts the Jewish Sabbath.
25:58 Speaker 01 I found this organization called One Table, and I'm now on their board of directors. I just, like, ran real hard on it. And I pretty much just, like, fell in love with the mission, which was to get... People in their twenties and thirties to create a sustainable Shabbat practice that worked for them. And to me, I was like, oh, my God, Judaism, food, hospitality, it's this intersection that worked so perfectly. And because Alex didn't have this background and I only had this kind of rote memory on the prayers of this is what you say, because this is what we do. And instead, it allowed us to explore this ritual as outsiders to understand the why.
26:38 Dan Pashman? Jake has also continued collecting family recipes.
26:41 Speaker 01 Now I've created this, this positive feedback loop where every time I see my mother in law, shit, we'll just be at random points. But you know, I just remember when I was living in Turkey with my first husband, his mother used to make this Turkish Jewish dish called bleh. And, and, and I just take out my notes app and do it. I just same thing with my grandmother. I, I saw her for the first time after the pandemic. I took her to a surf club in Miami and we had this incredible dinner and just talking about how she makes this one like Passover cake and the towns that her, her, her father grew up in and all these things. And, and everyone knows now that whenever they get these little tidbits of, of history, especially connected to Judaism, that
27:26 Speaker 01 while it's fresh, they call me, they text me and I write it down. And when I looked at my, my husband's family and I saw that neither him or any of his cousins knew how to make kubah. It's like a semolina dough, sometimes it's rice stuffed with meat. An Iraqi Jewish one that's pretty classic is with sweet and sour beet broth. His oldest aunts still make it. And because of that, the technique, the recipes hadn't been passed down and they're getting older. And what happens one day when, when we lose them and all of a sudden that recipe's gone forever. And I could not have it. And I followed these women with measuring cups and a scale. And it was so important for me, for his family. And it's the same thing in my family. I have so many recipes that are
28:11 Speaker 01 scribbled on, on note cards from my great grandmother that are incorporated in this book that will be incorporated in future things. And I, and I think that's That's, it means the world to me.
28:22 Dan Pashman? Preserving these traditions and evolving them for the future has now become the focus of Jake's career. The book he refers to is his first cookbook, Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch. Mensch is a Yiddish word that roughly means a person of integrity, but the key parts of the title to focus on are the "ish" in Jew-ish and the word reinvented. The book includes Jake's family's Ashkenazi Jewish recipes like apple cake and matzoh ball soup. There's Alex's family's Persian and Iraqi Jewish recipes like tadig and kubah. Some are done the old fashioned way, some have Jake's own twists. Then there's also just stuff he likes, that schmaltzy Chex Mix, of course, lamb chops with crushed grapes and sage, an everything bagel galette, even a ham sandwich. The
29:07 Dan Pashman? book is authentic to Jake. You write in the intro to your book, you talk about feeling very connected to gay pride, then say, quote, "I had never quite felt the same sense of pride in being Jewish, but I had never felt shame about it either. I felt, as I think most young Jews in America do, indifferent." Now, how many people feel that way, we could, other people can debate. But I get the underlying thing that you're saying, which is that there is this, whether it's indifference or just sort of a distance.
29:37 Speaker 01 It is a distance.
29:38 Dan Pashman? Why do you think so many feel that way?
29:41 Speaker 01 Growing up in New York, I grew up in a, in a community in which queerness was not as taboo, and there is this idea that, that pride is a responsibility to show others that living a fully authentic life is not only possible, but something that should be celebrated. And when I think about Judaism in America, so much of it is tied to trauma and hiding and this idea of, of do what you need to in order to fit in and survive. We're the first that really get to look at Jewish identity and how we want to own it, celebrate
30:20 Speaker 01 it, and modernize it. We live in 2021. We get to do it up. For example, Tasha varnish goes. I think of that dish, which is this old school Ashkenazi dish of, of bow tie pasta with buckwheat groats. And I think of it as like this sad deli side in a cup. And I thought, like, why don't we turn it into like a weeknight pasta? That's like fun. And I add like lemon zest and tons of chopped dill and, and. Fancy mushrooms. That is celebrating and moving Jewish food forward through the lens of Jewish joy and not trauma. I am hoping to inspire you to cook more for your loved ones. And like, that's great.
31:01 Speaker 01 I don't know if non-Jews know about the thing that we typically talk about, good for the Jews, bad for the Jews.
31:07 Dan Pashman? Right, right.
31:08 Speaker 01 Person, place, thing, event, idea.
31:10 Dan Pashman? Right.
31:10 Speaker 01 It's either good for the Jews as a whole, or it's not good for the Jews as a whole. Ben Shapiro, bad for the Jews. Jake Cohen, good for the Jews.
31:24 Dan Pashman? So as we hang out here today, Jake, the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are coming up.
31:30 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:30 Dan Pashman? Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, when we're supposed to fast and atone for all of our sins of the previous year.
31:39 Dan Pashman? One of the most classic dishes at Rosh Hashanah is Jewish brisket.
31:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:43 Dan Pashman? First off, quick question. Is Jewish brisket the same cut of meat as Texas brisket?
31:48 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:49 Dan Pashman? That's what I thought.
31:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:51 Dan Pashman? It's just cooked differently. One is smoked and one is braised.
31:53 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:53 Dan Pashman? Look, I mean, I'm happy to eat some Jewish brisket.
31:56 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
31:57 Dan Pashman? My mom makes great brisket. My mother-in-law makes great brisket. It's not my favorite, though. It's not like a thing.
32:03 Speaker 01 It's my favorite.
32:04 Dan Pashman? Really?
32:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, it's a goyish take. I'm gonna have to shoot you down on that one. A good one, again, a great brisket, beyond. Brisket, for me, I talk about, I think the exact line in the book is like, Gentiles have family crests, Jews have brisket recipes. And I'm not a purist. I think I can, it depends on my mood, depends on my vibe.
32:27 Dan Pashman? Okay.
32:28 Speaker 01 So I did in the book, is I do a French onion brisket. You caramelize a ton of onions. And then you deglaze the brisket with calvados.
32:36 Dan Pashman? Right.
32:36 Speaker 01 And then you braise it in beef broth. So it really is like a French onion brisket broth. But because of the brisket, it does get a lot thicker, which is good.
32:44 Dan Pashman? Maybe I'll make that. My wife is a big fan of French onion soup. Clearly Jake and I could discuss brisket all day, but Jake's gotta get that money shot at the inside of the chocolate chip cookies he's been baking.
32:53 Speaker 01 Cookies are ready.
32:54 Dan Pashman? After all, what is a TikTok video without the payoff? He takes the cookies out of the oven and uses a little food styling trick. So you're like taking a little cylinder and you're rolling the cookies around?
33:06 Speaker 01 You just use a bowl or a cookie cutter and it just helps make them a little more picture perfect round.
33:11 Dan Pashman? So Jake's taking a round cookie cutter, bigger than the cookie itself. He puts it down over the cookie and swirls it around to kind of spin the cookie around inside the cookie cutter, which smoothes the edges and makes it a more perfect circle. While they're still hot.
33:25 Speaker 01 Well, yes, you have to do it while they're hot.
33:28 Dan Pashman? Oh, he's now, he's recording video. He's holding the cookie up.
33:32 Speaker 01 Step one thing that way.
33:33 Dan Pashman? Oh, sorry, I'm blocking the light. I'm in his light. Okay, he's, oh, he's doing the opening the cookie shot, showing the center of the ooey gooey chocolate chip cookie.
33:42 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
33:42 Dan Pashman? Now it's my turn to get the audio equivalent of the money shot. Oh, my God.
33:48 Dan Pashman? You nailed all the textures.
33:51 Speaker 01 Hmm. It's, it's the simple things. That's what people, people love comfort. They love the things that are tied to nostalgia. Especially when like we're meeting for the first time. We're having a relatively intimate experience recording this podcast. I mean, we've talked about, about, about a lot of things. I don't need to like go all frou frou and get out the tweezers and make you some kind of like chiffon cake with micro basil.
34:19 Dan Pashman? Chocolate chip cookies.
34:30 Dan Pashman? That's Jake Cohen. His book is Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch. Jake posted the TikTok and Instagram reel of him making the chocolate chip cookies. So go check that out on social media. He is at Jake Cohen. This show is produced by me along with senior producer.
34:46 Speaker 03 Emma Morgenstern.
34:47 Dan Pashman? And producer.
34:47 Speaker 04 Andres O'Hara.
34:49 Dan Pashman? Our editor is.
34:50 Speaker 03 Tracy Samuelson.
34:51 Dan Pashman? The show is mixed by.
34:52 Speaker 05 Jared O'Connell.
34:53 Dan Pashman? Music help from Black Label Music. This Porchfield is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
35:02 Speaker 02 And I'm Orion from New York. Reminder to, to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
35:32 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by
35:34 Speaker 03 Gianna Palmer.
35:35 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer
35:38 Speaker 03 Emma Morgenstern.
35:40 Dan Pashman? And senior producer
35:40 Speaker 04 Andres O'Hara.
35:42 Dan Pashman? Our engineer is
35:42 Speaker 05 Jared O'Connell.
35:43 Dan Pashman? The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful.
36:18 Speaker 06 From the original Free Second Opinion studio, here's Hugh Joints.
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Next How Judith Jones Changed Cookbooks Forever Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated