Fania Lewando’s Yiddish cookery book, published before the war, has been translated for a new audience, writes Victoria Prever for the Jewish Chronicle.
Imagine a restaurant offering cabbage kreplekh (kreplach), Polish-influenced cheese piroshky (soft doughy parcels oozing with gooey cheese) and potato cutlets stuffed with mushrooms.
Eight decades ago, in the 1930s, a restaurant serving such delicacies was a popular haunt in Vilna, Lithuania. The city was at the time known as Lithuania’s Jerusalem – an eastern European epicentre of Jewish culture and learning. The restaurant was run by Fania Lewando and was a place where the local great and good put the world to rights. The guestbook, which survived the Holocaust, includes comments from celebrities of time, including artist Marc Chagall and Yiddish poet and playwright, Itzik Manger. Click here for the full story.
The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook by Fania Lewando, translated by Eve Jochnotwitz, Shocken
