The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today's Kitchen

Beautifully translated for a new generation of devotees of delicious and healthy eating: a groundbreaking mouthwatering vegetarian cookbook originally published in Yiddish in preWorld War II Vilna and miraculously rediscovered more than half a century later. In 1938 Fania Lewando the proprietor of a popular vegetarian restaurant in Vilna Lithuania published a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook unlike any that had come before. Its 400 recipes ranged from traditional Jewish dishes (kugel blintzes fruit compote borscht) to vegetarian versions of Jewish holiday staples (cholent kishke schnitzel) to appetizers soups main courses and desserts that introduced vegetables and fruits that had not traditionally been part of the repertoire of the Jewish homemaker (Chickpea Cutlets Jerusalem Artichoke Soup; Leek Frittata; Apple Charlotte with Whole Wheat Breadcrumbs). Also included were impassioned essays by Lewando and by a physician about the benefits of vegetarianism. Accompanying the recipes were lush full-color drawings of vegetables and fruit that had originally appeared on bilingual (Yiddish and English) seed packets. Lewandos cookbook was sold throughout Europe. Lewando and her husband died during World War II and it was assumed that all but a few family-owned and archival copies of her cookbook vanished along with most of European Jewry. But in 1995 a couple attending an antiquarian book fair in England came upon a copy of Lewandos cookbook. Recognizing its historical value they purchased it and donated it to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City the premier repository for books and artifacts relating to prewar European Jewry. Enchanted by the books contents and by its backstory YIVO commissioned a translation of the book that will make Lewandos charming delicious and practical recipes available to an audience beyond the wildest dreams of the visionary woman who created them. With a foreword by Joan Nathan. Full-color illustrations throughout. Translated from the Yiddish by Eve Jochnowitz.