When cookbook author Joan Nathan decided to write a memoir that included family recipes, she was prepared to delve far back through her 80 years of life. Luckily, she’s saved every scrap of paper.
She had most of the letters she’d written to her mother during college, as well as those written to her, along with autographs (including one from Marilyn Monroe), her early diaries, and every article she’d ever written as a food writer and cookbook author.
“I have these boxes full of everything,” said Nathan, speaking from her home in Washington, DC.
“My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories” (Knopf) is a hybrid cookbook-memoir, the 13th cookbook for the James Beard-winning writer and a deep dive into her life, from her early years with her German-born father and American mother through her travels and discoveries of food and adventure, her time spent in Israel, life with her husband Allan Gerson and their children, and her career as a food writer.
It tells the stories of “a family of eaters,” along with their recipes.
And so there are classic but new Joan Nathan-style options, like salmon with preserved lemon and za’atar, her version of the perfect apple cake, her mother’s beef stew, the creamed spinach of her youth, and an updated version of her German father’s favorite potato salad.
The cover of Joan Nathan’s latest cookbook, ‘My Life in Recipes; Food, Family, and Memories’ launched in 2024 (Courtesy)
“Memoirs often have just one recipe,” said Nathan, “but when you think about your ancestors, you can’t start a cookbook with yourself. You are a product of so many things.”
At this time of year, one might flip straight to the 21st chapter, “My Holiday is Passover,” as Nathan shares a favorite haroset recipe made with dates, prunes, raisins, tamarind and peanuts; a clever take on gefilte fish with a halibut terrine (see below); and one of her most beloved desserts, pecan lemon torte with lemon curd filling.
She describes hosting Seders as “the hardest but most rewarding thing I do all year,” and shares her favorite recipe for matzo brei, along with homemade matzah.
This very personal book came after her husband Allan’s death in 2019, followed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Food writer Joan Nathan and Allan Gerson, a week before their wedding in the fall of 1974 (Courtesy of Nathan family collection)
“I needed to think about what was relevant to the reader,” said Nathan, who cut 30,000 words from the final manuscript.
Israel plays a major role in Nathan’s life and in the book, as her first visit in 1969 directed both her career and the kinds of foods she ended up cooking and serving. She notes that she’s never kept a kosher home, but doesn’t serve shellfish or pork.
She came to Israel for the first time in 1969 and found a job as the foreign press attache for longtime Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. Nathan shares some delightful details, such as Kollek’s power naps in elevators, his love of food that exposed her to Jerusalem delicacies and, how Kollek spent Friday nights reading Time magazine at home.
The work with Kollek led Nathan to discover Middle Eastern foods, such as eggplant and kubbeh, Palestinian chicken, and risotto made with ancient freekeh, which helped crystallize her first cookbook, “The Flavor of Jerusalem.”
Joan Nathan (far right) worked for renowned Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in the early 1970s (Courtesy of Nathan family collection)
Nathan’s very Jewishness, along with her strong connections and ties to Israel, made the timing of this new book more complicated.
“I love Israel, and I’m so saddened,” said Nathan, referring to the devastating October 7 Hamas attack in which 1,200 people in Israel were killed and 253 taken hostage, along with the suffering and desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza.
She talked about attending a dinner party hosted by a friend before October 7, at which she enjoyed meeting a local Palestinian family.
“We really got along great, and then it was October 7 and we haven’t wanted to get together,” she said, reflecting on how shared meals can break the ice but that doesn’t seem possible right now.
The memoir touches on Holocaust history too. Nathan’s husband Allan’s parents fled Poland and were deported to Siberia before working their way to Uzbekistan, where Allan was born before they emigrated to the US.
Nathan’s German-born father and his immediate family escaped the Holocaust, but were unable to get his extended family out, including his aunt and cousin.
Nathan connects all those stories and pieces of personal history with her recipes, like the German potato salad that she discovered on a roots trip with her brothers in the 1990s, and a stew reminiscent of her mother’s that she ate at the German ambassador’s residence in Washington.
“It’s sort of an organic book,” said Nathan.
Beloved food author Joan Nathan (fourth from left) with her husband, Allan Gerson, who died in 2019, and the rest of their family (Courtesy of Nathan family collection)
What’s clear is how Nathan has always been able to learn, reflect and pivot to new adventures. This Passover, for example, she’ll be in California with most of her children and grandchildren, having a Seder at Los Angeles restaurant Kasha with a menu based on recipes from her book.
One of the dishes will be Nathan’s halibut gefilte terrine, a fresh, elegant take on gefilte fish that she often serves during Passover.
Halibut Gefilte Terrine with Fresh Herbs — Excerpted from “My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories”
Preparing the gefilte fish in a mold or a springform pan omits fussing with the bones and skin to make a fish stock that you need when making patties, which creates more work and odors in the kitchen, wrote Nathan in the book. She added that while gefilte fish is usually made from a freshwater fish, as found in Eastern European lakes, saltwater fish is just as flavorful, and easier to find.
Food writer Joan Nathan’s Halibut Gefilte Terrine from her latest book, ‘My Life in Recipes’, 2024 (Courtesy Gabriela Herman)
Serves about 12
Cooking spray
2 large sweet onions, like Bermuda (about 2 pounds/ 907 grams)
2 large carrots, peeled
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 pounds (1⅓ kg) halibut, cod, or grouper fillets
4 large eggs
6 tablespoons matzo meal
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
2 teaspoons freshly ground white pepper
2 tablespoons sugar
½ cup chopped fresh dill, tarragon, and/or chervil
¼ cup chopped fresh Italian parsley, plus more for garnish
Horseradish sauce, for serving
1. Preheat the oven to 325°, and grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with cooking spray.
2. Dice the onions, and shred the carrots on a box grater. Sauté them in the oil over medium-high heat until the onions are golden and soft. Set them aside to cool.
3. If you can have someone at the fish market grind the fish, all the better. Otherwise, you can pulse it in a food processor fitted with a steel blade, making sure you remove the membranes that may attach themselves to the blade—or use the grinding attachment of a stand mixer.
4. Put the cooled onions and carrots into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, along with the ground fish and the eggs, matzo meal, salt, white pepper, sugar, ½ cup (118 ml) water, and herbs. Mix at medium-low speed for about 10 minutes, or until everything is well blended and smooth.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared Bundt pan, and smooth out the top. Set the filled Bundt within a larger pan with 2 inches of warm water up the sides of the Bundt. Bake for about an hour, or until the center is solid and a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean.
6. Cool for about 15 minutes, blot away any water on top, and run a knife around the edges of the pan. Swiftly invert the gefilte fish onto a flat serving plate.
7. Refrigerate it for several hours or overnight. Slice it as you would a torte, garnish the slices with parsley, and serve with horseradish sauce, either red or white. Leftovers keep for about 5 days.
Note from Nathan:
“I like to make my own horseradish sauce—the sine qua non for gefilte fish. I grate enough peeled raw red beetroot into grated white horseradish and add a little vinegar, salt, and sugar until it turns a pleasant pinkish red. If you are doing this in your kitchen, make sure to wear goggles to avoid the fumes from the horseradish!”
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Food writer Joan Nathan’s life and recipes combine in new hybrid cookbook-memoir - The Times of Israel
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