Review: Arthur Schwartz on Rome‘s Jewish cooking

Carciofi alla Giudea, Pizza Ebraica, and Concia, a zucchini conserve that all Romans eat, prepared according to a method of preserving fish that was spread all over the world by the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish travelers. Jews in the Roman Ghetto were not allowed to buy white-fleshed fish, except salt cod. Photographs by Kristen Teig from Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen

Jews have been in what is now called Italy since 134 BCE. That’s the supposed date when Judah Maccabee, the soldier-leader of the Jews in Judea, sent trade emissaries to Rome (and, it seems, to Sicily), after fighting off the Greek-Assyrians who defiled the temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees rededicated the temple, but there was only one day’s worth of the necessary sacred oil for the eternal lamp. A miracle occurred. The oil lasted a week, the time it took to get more. Hence Jews celebrate Chanukah, the “festival of lights,” giving the Maccabees their most memorable moment in history.

More famously, Jews arrived in Rome again, about 200 years later, in 70 BCE, when Roman armies under the Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the second temple. This time, Jewish captives were brought to Rome as slaves, as depicted in a bas relief on the Arch of Titus in the ancient Roman Forum. Clearly, it’s a slave procession carrying off the seven-arm menorah from the temple.

Jews have alternately thrived and been shunned in Rome. In 1555, Pope Paul IV corralled them and locked them into a squalid, often flooded area beside the Tiber River, the Ghetto.

These early Italian Jews and their ancestors are today referred to as Italkim, a Hebrew word, and they boast that they are the oldest Jewish community in Europe. They account for only a portion of Rome’s Jewish population, though. That includes Sephardim from the Iberian diaspora, Ashkenazim from the Eastern European diaspora, and Libyan Jews who immigrated to Rome in the mid-twentieth century. Altogether, about sixteen thousand Jews live in Rome, about half the number of Jews in Italy. A few may still live in the Ghetto area, but the Ghetto, being in the historic center, is expensive. Middle-class observant communities are in the Piazza Bologna and Monterverde Vecchio neighborhoods.

Reading, not just cooking from Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen, it feels like Leah Koenig has visited all those Roman kitchens and cooks, whispering in our ears or teaching us fascinating history, photographer Kristen Teig by her side, capturing not only the recipes of Roman Jews, as they are put on the table, but the people, their stories and the city itself. Teig’s pictures remind us that there is always something beautiful or interesting around every Roman corner. 

Koenig, who has written six other Jewish cookbooks and many articles for both Jewish and secular media, knows well that history and identity live in the traditions of the kitchen—that foodways often last longer than language. For example, in Rome, Italians long ago gave up Latin (of course) but not battered and deep-fried salt cod, and every vegetable grown on the countryside. Even non-Jewish Romans will tell you that the tradition of deep-fried food, a hallmark of Roman cuisine, comes from the Jews, who, when they lived in cramped quarters in the Ghetto, were forced to cook outside, using minimum fuel: deep frying.

The most famous of all Roman Jewish dishes is, in fact, Jewish-style artichokes, Carciofi alla Giudea, which are artichokes, the buds of a thistle, opened to look like the flowers they would eventually become. Then they are twice fried, which makes the hearts creamy and the petals as crisp as chips. Koenig warns they are difficult to make at home, but offers good instruction. Carciofi alla Giudea are not only the most famous Jewish food of Rome, but these days a gastronomic tourist attraction. During the local artichoke season, from late winter into early spring, they are piled into pyramids and towers in front of the restaurants lining the Via del Portico d’Ottavia, the main street and Roman arch of the Ghetto, from which the book gets its title. 

Always with an eye to tradition and history, Koenig sometimes apologetically confesses to tweaking some recipes to make them more appealing to contemporary American taste, making them a tad punchier with extra lemon zest, for instance. And no one will complain that Koenig’s frying batter is admittedly lighter than the usual Roman heavy blanket.

One recipe I was thrilled to see Koenig interpret is the so-called Pizza Ebraica sold at the Pasticceria (bakery) Boccione on the main street of the Ghetto. It’s another gastronomic tourist attraction, and there is often a long line out the door to buy a slice of the typically overbaked, dry, even charred and hard, fruit cake—not a pizza at all, but more like a bar cookie holding dried and glazed fruit.  To eat it, you have to have excellent dental health or a cup of something hot to dunk it in. Koenig’s meticulous recipe, on the other hand, produces an addictive treat accessible to the chewing challenged.

Some recipes are clearly from southern Italy, probably brought north by Sephardi Jews fleeing the Inquisition of the Kingdom of Naples in the mid-1500s. Koenig’s almond-chocolate cake (flourless) is the same as the famous Torta Caprese of Naples. Concia, a zucchini conserve that all Romans eat, is called scapece in Naples, the word derived from escabeche, meaning a food (often small, dark fish) that is fried then pickled. The method was spread all over the world by the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish, and became a hallmark of the poor man’s kitchen, la cucina povera. Jews in Ghetto times were not allowed to buy white-fleshed fish, except salt cod.

The early twentieth-century, architecturally eclectic Great Synagogue of Rome is at the edge of the Ghetto, its stately, columned façade facing the Tiber, its back to the Via del Portico d’Ottavia, which has become the Ghetto tourist street, lined with restaurants kosher or not but serving Jewish food. The synagogue’s squared dome was meant to be proud and prominent on the Roman skyline, as it still is. With Portico, the food of the Roman Jews may get its due attention, too.

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Arthur Schwartz was the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for eighteen years. He’s the author of a number of cookbooks, including Naples at Table and The Southern Italian Table. He’s the host of The Food Maven on Robin Hood Radio.

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Benno Rothenberg, Roman Ghetto (1958). Meitar Collection, National Library of Israel, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, Israel State Archives, Wikimedia Commons