The Gefilteria

The entire community is welcome to join Congregation Shaara Tfille and The Jewish Community Center of Saratoga Springs as they host The Gefilteria on Sunday, June 24 at 7:00pm in their building located on 84 Weibel Avenue in Saratoga Springs. Co-founder Liz Alpern will present a lively and interactive demonstration as she prepares several dishes that highlight the seasonal, lighter side of Jewish cooking while discussing the history and origins of some of our favorite Old World flavors. Tastings will be provided! Pronounced like a taqueria but with gefilte fish instead of tacos, The Gefilteria - is a new kind of food venture launched in 2012 with a mission of reimagining Eastern European Jewish cuisine by adapting classic dishes to the tastes of a new generation. Liz and her Co-founder Jeffrey Yoskowitz are people with the chutzpah to believe that Jewish foods can be beautiful and delicious. They want to inspire others to reimagine and rediscover this incredible cuisine in their home kitchens. Liz has an MBA from Baruch College and is a faculty member in the Culinary Entrepreneurship Program at the International Culinary Center in NYC. She was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for food & wine and was named one of the Forward 50 Influentials for 2016. Liz travels the globe as a cook, educator and entrepreneur, and together with Mr. Yoskowitz, authored the narrative cookbook, The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods, which will be sold at the event. The Gefilteria is part of the 2018 Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival and is sponsored and supported for marketing and promotion by a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Northeast NY. The cost is $8 per person and includes tastings of the items being prepared. Please RSVP by June 19 to 518-584-2370 or saratogajcc@albany.twcbc.com. BACKGROUND: IT STARTED WITH A MANIFESTO Jewish delis were closing. Their grandparents were getting too old to cook. Ashkenazi cuisine was perceived as a thing of the past, if perceived as a cuisine at all. They were friends in their 20s and they heard the call. It felt like something big was at stake. They came together with a fresh approach – to create a culinary laboratory where Ashkenazi stories and culinary wisdom from the Old World could be explored and brought into the New. So, they wrote a manifesto and launched The Gefilteria. THEN THEY BEGAN COOKING GEFILTE FISH Gefilte fish packaged inside a glass jar on the supermarket shelf was the symbol of all that had gone wrong with Ashkenazi Cuisine. The dish had been held sacred by generations of Ashkenazi Jews and NO ONE should grow up thinking gefilte fish only comes in a jar. They spent a year cooking and reading up on the state of American fisheries. The Gefilteria started producing and selling a gourmet gefilte fish on a commercial scale, ensuring that no one would ever have to eat the jarred stuff again. The flavor was fresh. The look was beautiful. The fish was high quality and thoughtfully sourced. It tasted fantastic. “THEY NEED NOT ACCEPT THE EXTINCTION OF THIS TRADITION, OR OF THE ROBUST, COLORFUL, FRESH FLAVORS OF ASHKENAZI CUISINE. THEY KNOW THAT GEFILTE—LIKE BORSCHT AND KVASS AND SO MANY OLD WORLD FOODS—IS EXCELLENT WHEN DONE RIGHT. IT COMES DOWN TO THE BASICS OF QUALITY, FRESHNESS, CARE AND CREATIVITY.” NEXT UP, THE WHOLE DAMN CUISINE They took their approach to gefilte fish and applied to all of eastern European Jewish foods. Drawing inspiration from their ancestors, old cookbooks, family letters and Yiddish literature, as well as their peers in the culinary world, they began cooking classic Jewish foods from their childhoods (think kugel, chicken soup, blintzes, pastrami, pickles, etc.) and less common dishes too (like fermented tonics, fruit soups, roasted goose, etc.). They took them to the streets of New York, to outdoor markets and food festivals, as well as art galleries and loft spaces. Pretty soon they found themselves front and center in the Jewish food renaissance taking place across the country. They were cooking dinners, and pop-up restaurants and collaborating with other pros, bringing these foods to new audiences and presenting them in new contexts. AND NOW A COOKBOOK The excitement was infectious beyond their wildest dreams. Pretty soon their manifesto grew into an entire book, The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods, containing recipes and stories that anyone, anywhere can bring home. Their mission continues: to keep the fires burning, and the ovens hot, for generations of Ashkenazi cooks to come.