On with Kara Swisher - Can Food Save The World? with Joan Nathan

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Joan Nathan, the “doyenne of Jewish-American food” and a pillar of the DC dinner party scene, joins us to talk about her memoir, “My Life in Recipes.” Nathan has written a dozen cookbooks, but this is her most personal, drawing on family recipes from the old country that go back centuries. She and Kara discuss everything from Golda Meir’s terrible matzo balls, to the limits of gastro-diplomacy, the so-called “Hummus Wars,” and the war in Gaza.  Please note that while this discussion touches on chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen and its work in Gaza, the episode was recorded before the Israeli airstrikes that killed seven of the organization’s aid workers.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. We're continuing on the theme of food and politics this week with my guest today, author Joan Nathan. Joan has been an icon in the culinary world for decades, specifically as an expert of Jewish cooking. Over the years, she's written about food for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Gourmet, and others. She had her own cooking show on PBS, and she's the author of a dozen cookbooks, including her latest, My Life in Recipes, Food, Family, and Memories. Joan's known for her expertise in the kitchen, but she's also been involved in politics in the

U.S. and Israel for most of her life, both in her own right and through her late husband, Alan Gerson. Through the years, she's used food as a way to connect people, cultures, and religions, but so-called gastro-diplomacy is being put to the test at this moment with the Israel-Hamas war. I've known her for just a short time, and in that time, I've had several delicious meals at her house, full disclosure. I ate everything. But something we didn't talk about was the limits of breaking bread to get to peace and whether we can learn from people who do it to bridge other divides. Our question this week comes from Laura Blumenfeld, also a longtime friend and colleague. She's now a Mideast analyst at Johns Hopkins and a former senior policy advisor on the State Department's Israel-Palestine negotiating team. We'll have all that and more after a quick break. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, Joan. Welcome. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Yes, I'm so excited to talk to you. This is Food Week at On with Kara Swisher. And you've been writing about food and culinary traditions for decades. Your latest book, My Life in Recipes, is also a memoir.

And you start with your parents and grandparents, their stories and recipes from Germany, Hungary, Poland. I think everyone can relate to that. My grandparents are from Italy, and my grandmother had a range of Italian recipes that have been unfortunately lost to time. My brother and my cousin do recreate some of them, but I'm just thinking right now at Easter, her little fat hands would be making all kinds of pastries and pizza gain and things like that. pizza gain and things like that. But let's talk about that, the idea of stories connecting food to stories. And it's very important in Judaism, like the Seder, for example, Passover is this month. Let's talk a little bit about food and stories and family. Well, it occurred to me when I was working on my memoir that nobody is just where we are. In other words, nobody is just at their birth. Their birth, it's much earlier because of the holidays. Like I'm one of the lucky ones. My father came here in 1929 and his aunt,

his sister came in 36 or 37 and she had a whole lift, which was like a huge carton of all the recipe books for my grandparents, my grandmothers, my great grandmothers, and a doll kitchen that my grandmother learned to cook in, and my aunts learned to cook in, just all kinds of things in this lift that she was able to bring over to the United States. And I grew up with this. And I realized that I was not just a food writer. I was a depositor of other things. So I decided to go back to Germany, because I have a lot of relatives who are Catholic now, because there's a lot of intermarriage in my family. And we visited different places, and I learned about recipes and how recipes go back and how my recipes went back. I'll give you one example.

My Aunt Liesl grew up with a potato. It's called a berges, which is a challah. But it's since the 19th century. It's been made with potatoes. And I had her come to my house, and she hadn't made it in 40 years. And all of a sudden, her hands came alive. She twisted the bread the way they did in the German fashion. I thought, oh my God, this goes back.

I wanted, in my memoir, to go back to my parents and my grandparents. Right. So, Ketanevutza Stories, as I said, is very important in Judaism. You write about how the Seder has been adapted by different communities in the Jewish diaspora because of their lived experiences. Can you talk about this? Can you give me some examples? Talk a little bit about the Seder being adapted over time. Okay, well, first of all, in the book of Exodus, it says there are only three things you should have at the Seder.

And this is way, way back. When it was not a Seder, it was a spring festival. It was before Judaism. So it was a lamb roasted before dawn. Josephus wrote about on the hillsides of Jerusalem, every family was roasting a lamb. It couldn't be less than a year old. Unleavened bread, matzah, and bitter herbs, maror, which is really a form of chicory or arugula, the first greens growing in the desert. for the Greeks, they learned to make haroset, which was basically a dipping sauce with apples and nuts, or else rolled the Sephardic way, rolled with dates, and sometimes rolled in cinnamon. So I always think of haroset as the diaspora of the Jews. There's so many different haroset depending on where Jews live, because Judaism was something that started, of course, in ancient Israel. But the dietary laws were something that was part of Judaism more than recipes. And so as Jews

move places, they learn new recipes. And that's how haroset, which is this fruit and nut paste, came to be at Passover. You're known as a Jewish food writer, but the title doesn't really encompass the work you've done. You've been a historian, I'd say a sociologist, a documentarian, a culinary ambassador. You launched food festivals and hosted television shows. You've been a cook and a chef. How do you see yourself? What do you think your role is? Because, you know, the most famous thing is this famous Jewish food writer. Well, I guess I'm curious.

And I don't know. I think I'm a little bit of an anthropologist. But I am a food writer, for sure. But I'm a gatherer of recipes, a gatherer of people, a gatherer of life. I think that's what I would say that I am. So you got the idea for your first cookbook, The Flavor of Jerusalem, when you were working as a foreign press attaché for the mayor of Jerusalem in the early 1970s. Talk about that book and how it connects to your time there. Why did that come out of it? Well, Teddy Collick was an extraordinary human being. And he loved people and he loved, he had a knack for making jokes at a time in the city of Jerusalem where there were

30 different kinds of people and they all didn't like each other. And he could crack a joke and break the ice. And if the same way, he would go to people's homes from every tradition, and he'd break the ice by sitting at the table. And that's what I really learned from him. So I decided I wanted to, as a lark, write a cookbook on the people and food of Jerusalem. I wrote it with somebody else, something I would recommend for your first book, just push you forward. And, you know, I sat down with Jews, Christians, Muslims, people that were proud of their food. And I learned so much. And then I brought a lot of journalists there with me

because the only story they really wanted was the story about the impending war, the last war. And this was something they didn't realize that people were living in Jerusalem. I would have a 4th of July party on my rooftop and Arabs would come, you know, everybody would come. Even the KGB man came. You wrote about the situation that food was used in diplomatic negotiations for a community to get a road they were asking for. You wrote, the meal showed me how food can break down barriers and bring people together. That's a trope in a lot of ways and also true, you know, at the same time. Yeah, I think that it's like you like my food, you like me.

And so Teddy Collick would take me to all these different traditions, and I saw how it happened. And, you know, especially in a city like Jerusalem that's fraught with so many, so much anger, so many people not liking each other. Sure. Food broke down all, in the marketplace, food broke down the barriers. Although, not always. One of the recipes you featured was for matzo balls as made by Israel's first female prime minister, Golda Meir. You said they were very hard and inflexible, like her foreign policy. Can you explain that? There are different kinds of matzo balls, I'm aware, the lighter ones,

you write about it in the book. Yeah, right. And I happen to like the half heavy, which sort of al dente. Matzo ball is a great example, Cara, because matzo balls, you know, started probably as the kuba, like the Kurdish, which is where Jewish food really started in Iraq before Jews came to the promised land. But anyway, matzo balls, then they came to Europe and everybody has a form of matzo ball. I mean, you know, the knudel or whatever. The German matzo ball has ginger and nutmeg. And I put in my matzo ball, fresh ginger and nutmeg. And they're really delicious. But I still use the schmaltz, the chicken fat, rather than olive oil or any kind of oil. But what was wrong with Golda Meir's matzo balls? What was her problem? I guess she didn't, she put probably too much matzo meal in there.

Maybe she was too tough, and they weren't cooked enough. They just were really awful. So it made a perfect metaphor. So the book was rejected by more than a dozen publishers because you were highlighting the fact that Jerusalem was a mosaic of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which if you go there any day watching people crossing, I remember I used to sit at a cafe and watch the Jews going one place, the Christians, the Muslims at different services. I remember thinking how fascinating it was. But why the controversy of making that point out, which is dead obvious when you're sitting there? Right. Well, I've noticed more than anything else in Jerusalem, more than any other city, that people have their trail they walk.

You know, they have their route every day. And everybody has a determined route, either religious or work-wise, in the city of Jerusalem. And they might cross, but they don't connect. And so it makes it a fascinating city, and it also makes it a difficult city. But why was the book rejected? Oh, I'll tell you why it was rejected. It was rejected because it wasn't kosher. These were American publishers. They thought it was Jerusalem, and we didn't want to make it kosher because we felt that there were Jews, Christians,

and Muslims in Jerusalem, and we should show everybody. And actually, one of the recipes in The Flavor of Jerusalem was a shrimp sukiyaki. Oh. Even I know that's a problem. Go ahead. And for some reason, the marketing people at Little Brown marketed it to all the Hadassah groups around the country. So that wasn't very popular.

But sold 25,000 copies, which in those days was good. Now, you were visiting Israel later when Syria attacked the Golan Heights in 1973, which is the Yom Kippur War. You were doing production work. Your husband was working on a PhD about the legal aspects of military occupation of the West Bank. Talk about that time and how it shaped your understanding of the region and how you were looking at it. Well, I was working with Charles Guggenheim, the filmmaker, on a film on Jerusalem on the different, just what we were talking about, different people that lived in Jerusalem. And before the war broke out, Alan and I went to the West Bank and we visited the mayor of Nablus. He talked about him for his book on the military

occupation. And at one point, I got bored. It was like almost two o'clock and they were still talking. So I said to him, is it true that the best kanafi in the Middle East is right here in Nablus? And he said, the best is in my house. So he quickly went out and ordered knobbed kanafi from the street and had it. Explain what that is. Kanafi is a delicious sheep cheese confection with an extruded dough like little strands like spaghetti. And they're put together on this big platter and baked. And very often they have like an orange color. And it's absolutely delicious.

It's a traditional thing, and it's from Nablus. So, you know, as soon as we sat down and we ate, we had a different story from this man. His politics changed completely. a different story from this man. His politics changed completely. And I realized that there's one thing that you have when you're in an office, another thing at home.

And if you like somebody's food, they're going to be a lot easier with you. So it just changed the whole course of our conversation. So another recipe in your first cookbook was hummus. It's ubiquitous now, but at the time was a novelty in the U.S. You call it one of your comfort foods. You even served it at your wedding. Talk about hummus and its importance for the region because it's an important dish and, by the way, delicious. I had it all over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but it's also a controversial one.

Do you think there's any validity to the claim that Israeli food is, quote, stolen from Arab food? Well, I think that that's a great question. I think that hummus is something of the region. that about 7,000 years ago, they found chickpeas in Jordan and other places. Everybody made hummus, and it's going to be the protein of the future, and it was a protein of the past. Jews made it. Arabs made it. I think that what happened was that a lot of people in the 70s, no, the 60s, late 60s, after the Peace Corps was started, people got credit cards and they traveled to Europe and traveled to the Middle East. It tasted good, right? So they brought it back with them. And a lot of Israeli cab drivers that couldn't make a living in Israel came to the United States and started selling their hummus. And it just gradually became something that people really liked.

But what about this idea, the claim? Yeah, all right. So let me just tell you. It's stolen or is it just? It's not stolen. I honestly believe that everybody has hummus and it's not a stolen food. I just think that they were better marketers early on. Because don't forget, Sahadi had hummus early on, but he wasn't marketing it outside the Arab community. Let's talk about that idea of food diplomacy because it's being put to the test right now with the Israel-Humas war.

Last fall, 900 chefs, farmers, and other food business signed a pledge pushing for a ceasefire and to end U.S. support of Israel. There's been calls to boycott Israeli businesses and restaurants. Palestinian food businesses have been flooded with bad reviews. I'm sure you know a lot of these food writers and chefs. Do you have any thoughts about the fighting over food and pulling it into this crisis? Well, I mean, I think that food—I'm not getting into that one personally, I'm not getting into that one personally, but I do think that there have been a lot of friendships that have been destroyed over this with Israeli or Jewish food writers

that were friendly with Arab food writers. And that really breaks my heart because I see people avoiding each other. On the other hand, I don't think that has anything to do with what's going on. It just breaks my heart. I mean, all of it. I think that this shouldn't be played at the table. It's played in the land. And I think it's awful. My heart goes out to everybody. But I don't get into politics and food. It just doesn't make sense to me. celebrity chef who runs the World Central Kitchen, who's been working with the UAE and Cyprus to deliver food to Gaza. What are your thoughts on his current activism, both sending food and calling for a ceasefire? I think he's amazing. I mean, we all want a ceasefire, for sure. I would call for that too. I'm so glad. I support him 100%. I think he's a great man. And we've talked about it. And it's a hard place to be in

right now. And he's doing what he can to change it. And I love the fact that he started out giving food to Israel as well. But now, of course, what's happening in Gaza is so, it's awful. I mean, we all want to cease fire. And, you know, I'm not a fan at all of Bibi Netanyahu or his government. So, you know, my heart is broken. And bringing in the food, how he's delivering it. Is that something could bring food people together or not? Or do you just feel like, because he's sort of showing by example, presumably. I think it absolutely can. I can't tell you how many Israeli chefs and other chefs have wanted to,

and American Jewish chefs that have wanted to help him with this. So I don't think anyone would be upset at all with Jose, what he's doing. I mean, he's just an extraordinary human being. I don't know anybody who's exactly like Jose. Not at all. No, he goes everywhere and tries to bring people together. Every week now we get a question from an outside expert. This week, it touches on the idea of community built around food. I think you'll recognize his voice. It's an unusual question, so I'd like you to hear it and tell me what you think. Hi, I'm Laura Blumenfeld, Middle East analyst at Johns Hopkins, former senior policy advisor on the State Department's Israeli-Palestinian negotiating team,

and crucially, former neighbor of Joan Nathan. So, I'm not great at recipes. In fact, after our third child was born, I ordered kosher takeout food for Passover. Then my husband, without checking, invited neighbor Joan, one of America's top cookbook connoisseurs, to our frozen matzo ball soup, Seder. The defrosted soup was rancid, and we tried to spin the Seder as a twist on the bitterness of slavery, because Joan, as you once wrote, Jewish holidays are defined by food. So, here's my big question. Recently, the Israeli government announced there will be an annual Memorial Day, a national sad holiday, to commemorate the tragedy of the Hamas attack on October 7th. What foods do we serve? What recipes make sense? On Purim, there's hamantaschen. So do we serve hamastaschen? Or would we serve chilled soup because revenge is a dish best served cold? Or maybe no food. Is it a fast day? How will Jews mark and memorialize through

food the tragedy of October 7th, 10, 50, or even 500 years from now? Wow. What a fascinating question. Yeah. You know what? My first thought I had was mujedra, which is in my, actually, it's in my life and recipes. Originally, it was a bulgur, lentils, and onions, very fried onions, delicious dish that was used by Arabs and Jews. It was the first dish that Arabs made after the rain.

People would have sacks of bulgur in different sizes in there, and this was the largest size. And they'd have lentils, which is protein, and lots and lots of onions. It's a delicious dish, but for Jews, it's a morning dish. And it's one of the region, and everybody loves it. And lots of people, myself sometimes included, will use rice instead of bulgur. And it's, you know, so that it seems to me that's what I would use. I wouldn't use a happy dish. Why? Well, to memorialize, you know, a tragedy.

Why would you have something happy when there's a tragedy? But it tastes good that, you know, the onion, the saute, and it's humble. It's a humble dish. That's what I would use. That's a great answer. I want to switch gears a bit. You've been called the matriarch of Jewish cuisine, but I would also call you a food ethnographer. You started out writing columns about ethnic food in Boston. That's a dated term now. How did that change your perception of food and community? Well, I remember going to an Albanian woman's house. I originally wanted to write about ethnicity.

I didn't want to write about ethnicity in food. But anyway, I went to this woman's house, and she was an elderly woman making something called patitsa, a different kind of patitsa than the one that's in my book, but it was with cheese, and it was delicious. And I thought then a few things. I thought, this is a woman that has never been written about. I'm going to bring her food to the public, letting people know about the other. But I also thought, if we don't get these recipes soon, they're going to be gone because these women are going to die and men are going to die out and they won't be around. And So that's really what I thought about.

Now, many of the stories in the book have a similar plot. You're in a new place, not just in the U.S. You want to try some dish you've heard about. So you find someone, maybe a professional chef, maybe a home cook, maybe someone's grandma, and get them to invite you to dinner. You go to their kitchen and they basically reveal the family secrets. How do you get people to let you in like that? Did you ever have to convince someone to share their recipe or did someone refuse? Oh, yeah. Well, I'll tell you one. Yes. I mean,

lots of, well, first of all, there's Jewish geography that helps me tremendously and not just Jewish. You know, if I hear, you know, living in Washington, people are from everywhere. You learn, people learn what you're doing and they want to help you. But once I was in Paris and I had the outline for my French cookbook that I was going to write. And for some reason, I was fixated on getting a Jewish taxi driver to invite me to his home for fish couscous for Shabbat dinner. So I was with two of my friends in a cab and we were going. Michelle Richard, the chef, had told me about a Jewish Moroccan restaurant, kosher restaurant. So the guy was driving us there. He said, why are you going to this restaurant?

And we said, well, we want to go there. And he said, you know, it's kosher. And we said, yes. And he said, well, I'm Jewish. And he said, I'm Tunisian. And I said, does your wife make Tunisian fish couscous? And he said, yes. And I said, oh, can I come for dinner for Friday night? So he said yes, but then his wife said, what are you inviting some stranger and wouldn't let me come?

But that's the only time that I've been refused. Have you never gotten the fish couscous? I got the fish couscous from somebody else, and it's in the book. Never got that family. Well, that's a big ask of a taxi driver. Do you ever have to convince someone to share the recipe? Do people want to keep it quiet? My grandmother would not give out her recipe for tomato sauce. It turned out it was a lamb shank she had in there. What else did she have? She had a bunch of stuff. Pork butt, that was one of her secrets and stuff like that. But she hated giving them up.

Oh, well, that's been a theme throughout my life. When my first book came out, my aunt, whose recipes I got, my Aunt Liesl, lots of her recipes, she gave me a silver little cup that I still, it was a salt shaker that I still have. And she said, thank you for making me immortal. And that's really what you have to let people think, that they're going to be in a book so that they're going to be someplace. People do not want to give you recipes. And there are many reasons. One is, especially elderly people, they're afraid if you take their recipe that you won't come to their house anymore.

You'll stay away from their house. That's number one that I've noticed. Number two, there are familial secrets. I remember we had this Moroccan kid living with us for a while, and he told me that in his town, none of the women would trade even with their sister-in-laws because, again, they had such pride in their food. And even my own Aunt Liesel, she made like a lemon cake called Gesundheitskuchen. And my mother always wanted the recipe, and she left something out every time my mother came over. She would ask for it.

But to me, she gave me the recipe because she knew she was going to be— That means health cake, right? Yeah, exactly. It's fascinating how people don't want to give you recipes. And you just— Oh, yeah. My grandmother had one. She wouldn't tell me the amounts.

She would say, oh, a handful or something. Oh, the other thing is, if you're watching them cook, you've got to bring your measuring cups and your spoons with you because they don't measure. And don't go out of the room. You don't leave the room. Yeah, I did it. When my grandmother was dying, she was in a wheelchair, and I made her show me her hand, and then we measured it out. She was irritated by me a great deal. Yeah, she was in a wheelchair and I made her show me her hand and then we measured it out. She was irritated by me a great deal. Really? Yeah, she was a character. A delicious, an amazing cook, utterly self-taught. We'll be back in a minute. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates

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they're different and how American cuisine has changed. And then I'd love you to give your thoughts on digital impact of things like that, because now everything's online. But first, talk about the changes between those two. My American Folklife Cookbook, I tried getting traditional foods and people that were making traditional foods all over the country. I went to a woman in West Virginia who still cooked on a wood-burning stove. And in fact, she had matzo meal on top of the stove because she had worked for a Jewish person in Baltimore, which was pretty interesting. And then just so many different people. I went to the last live-in logging camp, taking my daughter Marissa, who I was nursing, with me because they said, we're going to close this. And I wanted to see

how they made breakfasts, big pancakes and things like that. So it was what was happening. And then when I did the New American Cooking, what I was interested in is how American food had changed over the last 40 years. And it had changed tremendously. I mean, there were, you know, there were very few people like those early people that I interviewed. And, you know, as I was saying before, MasterCards and travel, cheap travel, changed the way that Americans looked at food. Oh, and the immigration law changed so that, you know, people like Calvin Trillin were thrilled with this change because it was no longer Central and Eastern European people coming over.

It was people coming from Asia, from South America. And so that with them, of course, you course, you have a restaurant, a small restaurant, you can feed your family and you can feed others and you can make some money. And I remember Jose used to say to me that he learned so much during this time, because he was a young chef then, Jose Andres, and he was in my book. He'd go on vacations with his chefs to learn because still in those countries, there would be the kind of women that I was writing about in the 80s. And so he would learn from them what he would put in his restaurants. So has digital changed it? Has the ubiquitousness of recipes?

Explain that. Oh, my God. In every way. And, you know, and I think AI is going to change it even more. First of all, it's, you know, between TikTok and Instagram, more people spend time, more chefs spend time on what they're doing on these movements than almost anything. So that they're making their food for Instagram, for the outside. digitalization is good, yeah, because it has, let's say I want to learn how to make your grandmother's, what I call pizza rustica, I can see it online. You know, somebody I can learn about, and Jonathan Gold used to go to all these websites. He'd never been to places like Israel, to many of the places in China. Jonathan Gold was the reviewer for the LA Times,

who's the only food writer who's gotten a Pulitzer, by the way. But he would constantly look at what they were doing before he'd go to a restaurant. So that's the good thing. The bad thing is I think it's homogenized a lot that's going on, that people are, they're not looking at each other. They're looking at whatever they can see online. They're not asking their grandmothers. They're not, you know, they're not doing what you did. And I think what you did is really important. Yeah, although there are grandmothers online. I watch Nona. Right. I watch Nona making pasta. Right.

Yeah, they're there. The Nonas are there. But not your mother. Well, there's one that looks disturbingly like my grandmother, disturbingly. And she does the same thing, little fat hands. There you go. A little rolling with a plate. There you go.

With the plate. I hadn't remembered the plate in years because that's what my grandmother used to cut ravioli up or do pasta with a round plate. But you're talking about losing the family secrets and stories by the homogenization of it, in other words, online. Well, I feel as if some, you know, because our best friend is our cell phone. I mean, there's just no question about it. phone. I mean, there's just no question about it. Very often, I see people that are not there, there, you know, they're with their phone. And I just think that we have to look at what's ours. And I don't think that a lot of people are doing that.

Yeah, although it's interesting how popular food is on these things. Like people are doing more of it rather than reading a book. Absolutely. They're doing so much. There's a hunger for food all over the world from all of us, don't you think? Yeah, I think information. Yeah, information about understanding things. Let me ask you another question, though. It's been 20 years since the New American Cookbook came out. Things have changed even more. There's a debate about the difference between culture appreciation and appropriation in the food world. It does rage online. There was some people questioned about Diana Kennedy, for example, who was considered a leading authority on Mexican food, despite being a white British woman. You visit her in the 90s and wrote a column for the Times about it.

Can you talk a little bit about this? Because now that it's so ubiquitous, people are being also very careful at the same time. Absolutely, they're being careful. I'll tell you, Diana, I mean, there is talk about expropriation for her, but she was the real deal. I mean, she would go on donkeys, on horses, all over Mexico trying to find real food. And people resented the fact that she was English. But I can tell you that sometimes outsiders can look in and see things differently from those who live there.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. I think that she was the first one that was there. So is there a line between appreciation and appropriation? That's what you're talking about. Appreciation and discovery. I think there is. Do you know what it is?

Because you have an easier time. You're Jewish and you're writing about Jewish food. You aren't from Israel, though, right? But where is the line from your perspective? You grew up with lots of Libyan recipes, ingredients that grew in Libya. Are you expropriating it because you're making these recipes? I think you're expropriating it if you're going to call them just like Israeli recipes. If they're Libyan-Israeli recipes, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Does that make sense? But I think when it gets, let's go, when you're going to go back to hummus, the only thing that might be an Israeli hummus is just chickpeas. But hummus itself is all over the Middle East.

And it's because that's what was growing in the Middle East. It was not, and it's been there way before there were Jews, there were Christians, there were Muslims in the Middle East. That's what I think. Yeah. So the world will come together via hummus. But also, I think people thinking that it's just Israeli, they're crazy. I know that hummus is every place. They're crazy. So maybe that's what it is.

It's just what it's called. And it's in the popular, you know, popularly they say that. Absolutely. So in our last episode, we spoke with food essayist Geraldine DeRoyter, who has written a lot about the intersectionality of feminism in the food world. One of the things she's called out and so have others is the lack of diversity among the recipients of awards like Michelin or James Beard. As someone who's documented culinary diversity in our country, what do you think? Well, I think the James Beard awards are problematic, okay? I think that they're trying right now, but I think they're overstepping it, but maybe you have to do that. You know, I've been to restaurants that they've, to repair.

Good. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how you can do awards. We're a huge country. And I've been a judge for the James Beard Awards in the past. And I thought it was just like a popularity thing. If you'd get these ballots, and how can I know all the different restaurants around the country? I can't. It's impossible. So I don't see how you can do them. I just don't pay any attention to them anymore,

if you want to know. Yeah, me too. I feel the same way. But one of the things we asked her about was a chef or a restaurant's reputation for how they treat their employees should play a role in their getting stars. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I do. I think that that's an important thing. But then occasionally, you know, I've heard stories about what they're saying about chefs, and I'm not sure they're all – there are two sides to everything, as you know. But I do think that decency is something really important, just decency. So speaking of that and food, you and your late husband, Alan, were fixtures in D.C., both among political operatives as well as media personalities.

late husband, Alan, were fixtures in D.C., both among political operatives as well as media personalities. The dinner I had at your house included Wolf Blitzer and the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Howland. It was quite something. You hosted many Sabbath dinners and seders through the years and also huge parties, like a potluck with 140 guests from across the political divide. It feels like a bygone era of bipartisanship, but maybe that's just a perception. Were these dinners political? What was your reason for doing this? And did things ever get dicey then, or is it more difficult now? Well, first of all, I think it's more difficult now, don't you?

I mean, people just, it's horrible. This all started because I had to write about food, you know, and I had recipes to test. And a lot of people test recipes and throw out the food. But I, because Alan liked political discussions. By the way, the secretary of the interior can really cook a pie. Can she cook? It was the best pie I ever had. Can she cook?

Best pie I've ever had. Anyhow, go ahead. It just was fun for us. It just stirred. Apple. It was an apple pie for those who don't know. Apple pie with raspberries in it. Raspberry.

It was so good. Oh, my God. Anyway. But talk about how you do, you did that in order to bring people together, but what makes it impossible now? Because you really have to know their politics before, because people just don't want to hear the other, you know? Yeah. But, yeah, I think so.

It's just real. Can I ask you, what dinner would you like to have, and what would you pick two people that are disparate and what would you serve them besides humble pie i first of all i'd bring deb howell on because she's she always wants to bring something whether it's soup or dessert yeah um let's see besides her who would you bring together if you could solve a problem solve a problem uh except that i don't really like him very much. I would probably bring together Bibi Netanyahu and, I mean, if I could, and I don't know, maybe Biden, but neither of them would ever. I mean, Bibi has been at my... What would you serve? I'd probably serve salmon with za'atar, Middle Eastern, and preserved lemon on top as a main course for my new book. What else would I serve?

No, I'd definitely bring Deb because she likes to learn. So she would make her apple pie unless I made, oh, gosh. I have to think of something I really like to make. I mean, I wouldn't want to have the two of them, but I would love them to discuss. I think Biden would be more easier to talk to than Bibi Netanyahu. Nothing you could do to calm them down? No food? Maybe if I brought Golda's chicken soup

with very hard matzo balls. And say, see how bad this is? Wouldn't you like a lighter matzo ball? So solving problems through lighter matzo balls. All right, I have a last question. Two last questions, actually. What is your favorite recipe in this book from your perspective? And then what's the last new ditch you've discovered and have loved?

I mean, there's so many that I love in that book. But right now, I think I like that chicken soup with matzo balls. It's a chicken stew. chicken soup with matzo balls. It's a chicken stew. And what's really good about it is there's this peas that we don't really eat that much anymore. And it's a sign of spring. It's easy. It's a really good one pot meal for a family. And I have leftovers that i'm going to have for lunch in my refrigerator oh excellent and my my new actually my new favorite recipe is a it's not even in my book but it's similar to what deb did but it's a um an apple raspberry rhubarb crostata that's at a restaurant that I'm trying to get the right recipe. They've given me one recipe, but it's not the recipe. So I'm waiting for rhubarb to come into season so

that I can watch them make it. It's at a tiny restaurant called Etta. And why do you like it? It's sweet, and I love rhubarb. And it's pretty savory, too. It's just delicious. Well, I cannot wait to have it with you, Joan. Come with me to Etta. We'll all go together. Okay. I'd rather have you cook it.

Sweet and sour. All right, I'll cook it. I like it. I like it. I'd rather have you cook it than anyone else. Your table is much more interesting than a restaurant, although I like restaurants. Anyway, Joan Nathan, Her Life in Recipes. It's a wonderful book. It's a beautiful book, actually. It's a beautiful story of her family, too. And I really appreciate it. It reminded me of my own family over the years.

Anyway, Joan, thank you so much. Thank you, Carol. On with Carol Swisher is produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez-Cruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get Joe Nathan's Chicken Matzo Ball Soup. If not, you get Golda Meir's version. Very heavy. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. You can

subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back on Monday with more. We'll be back on Monday with more. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things. And it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

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