Joan Nathan: the branding of a cooking empire

joan Nathan's plate is full. She writes award-winning cookbooks, hosts a television series featuring chef celebrities and dines with Washington's A-list, many of whom are long-time friends. Compared often to domestic diva Martha Stewart, Nathan says, it's not that she wouldn¹¹t like to have some of her success.

"She's really good but you know she's got to be working all the time," she says. "I remember what my friend Jeanne Kirkpatrick said on a flight to Indiana for a speech. People on the plane were saying she should run for President. "‘I just didn't want to do it enough,' she told me. You really have to have that hunger."

More motherly mensch than diva, Nathan's work centers on her family. Taking center stage in her urban Washington home is a working kitchen designed for testing thousands of recipes for her books. Conceived 12 years ago with Nathan's lifestyle in mind, it's a place where her three small children could gather while she worked in the kitchen or wrote articles in her loft-study above, always within earshot of her kids.

Nathan's kitchen forms an intersection between her roles as mother, wife and journalist. In front of the 10-foot-long island are three canvas chairs where Daniela, Merissa and David, now 21, 18 and 14, did homework, read and ate breakfast. A small window was installed nearby so that a scenic park would be visible.

At 12-by-30 feet, it's a true working kitchen streamlined for professional use. Everything is hidden behind white laminate surfaces: approximately 16 cabinets and 47 drawers. Beside the super-sized Traulson refrigerator-freezer with 2-foot deep shelving are Whirlpool double ovens large enough to accommodate a 25-pound turkey. The six-burner Dakor cooktop is set into the center island. By design a truly a modern kitchen, it made a statement about gender bias.

"My son was only 5 when we designed it. The drawers are low enough so that he could set the table," she says revealing her secret ambition to teach her only son utility in the kitchen.

Part of her home, the kitchen is a serious work space though not of warehouse proportion suited for a large staff of hired hands. And for Joan Nathan, "it's a good thing."

Like Martha Stewart, Nathan is not one to stand still. At 56, Nathan has traveled around the world. Part culinary archeologist, part anthropologist, she's been digging up the roots of Jewish cooking in America and dishing out the stories in her books.

As a teenager, she lived for a brief time in Italy and France and learned fluent French. Visiting other cultures and mastering foreign languages was something her father, Ernest Nathan, a German businessman, instilled in his only daughter. In Joan he would cultivate a culinary ambassador, who made the connection between culture and food at an early age.

"I was looking back on my diary when I was in high school and lived in Italy and France. I talked about the food a lot. After college, when I worked for the Madagascar embassy, I volunteered teaching English as a foreign language. The last day of school I asked everybody to bring food from their country and explain it. Even in my public administration work, the food was important. Culture is food."

Israeli press attaché
Joan graduated from the University of Michigan with a master's in French literature and later obtained a master's in public administration from Harvard. With a strong desire to live in Jerusalem and her skills in foreign languages, particularly French, Nathan moved there and took a job as foreign press attaché for Mayor Teddy Kollek.

Her role was to take the foreign press around Jerusalem. It wasn't her mediocre Hebrew that landed her the job, though. As Kollek says, "Joan was the best and most intelligent candidate we interviewed."

Working in and out of Arab tents with her boss, she observed food's power as a great equalizer, she says.

"Teddy knew all about good food," says Nathan. "I learned from watching him that if you show interest in someone's food, you show interest in them. Rather than holding meetings in his office, Kollek would stroll around the city, stopping in little restaurants to chat and nosh on some stuffed vegetables or falafel.

"What he really liked to do was to visit his constituents in their own kitchens. It was not unusual for him to stop in the Armenian Church to talk with the archbishop and sample some yalanchi – grape leaves stuffed with rice and pine nuts – on Tuesday and on Wednesday visit the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem for a good debate over ma'amoul, date-filled cookies. Wherever he went, the marriage of food and politics opened doors."

The three-year experience in Jerusalem stirred a fascination that later developed into a fully-baked business concept. Her culinary evolution progressed and a first book, The Flavor of Jerusalem, was conceived, with co-author Judy Stacey Goldman.

Before returning to the United States, Joan met her future husband, Allan Gerson, at the Western Wall. Gerson was born in Uzbekistan and came to the U.S. from a displaced persons camp. They married in ‘74 and moved to Cambridge, Mass., where he finished his doctorate in law while teaching at the New England School of Law. Joan wrote for The Boston Globe and pursued her doctorate at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Also in ‘74, The Flavor of Jerusalem was published by Little Brown. But it wasn't easy to get it published. She sent it to 16 publishers without success. Eventually she did succeed, she says, because her book was different – it was about people not just recipes.

oral traditions
Nathan's other journalistic credits include articles about ethnic foods and traditions for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate, The New York Times, Food Arts, and Gourmet, among others.

"The real satisfaction is that I'm recording the oral traditions of the Jews. I feel the urgency to get these stories on paper, especially the good ones, before it's too late."

After The Flavor of Jerusalem was published, she wrote The Jewish Holiday Kitchen. Now 20 years old, the book was inspired by Joan's curiosity about the rituals of Judaism, particularly around the holidays.

"I think one reason people let me enter their homes is because by recording these stories, they become immortal," like Ada Baum Lipsitz whose recipes appear throughout The Jewish Holiday Kitchen.

"She was amazing," writes Joan, in the book. "She said she was born making challah, beginning at the age of 10, preparing the dough every Friday before going to school. While she was in class her father would punch down the dough and store it in a cool place until she returned. She continued making challah for years, combating insomnia and arthritis, all the way up to the age of 84. On the week she died she made challah and gave it to the doctor in the hospital.

"She told me that baking actually helped her arthritis. I remember going to see her and watching her knead the dough with fingers in pain from arthritis, they would spring back to life. ... With her story, we have kept her alive for her children."

A subsequent book written in ‘94, Jewish Cooking in America, received the James Beard and Julia Child award for cookbook of the year. Here, too, Nathan is both hunter and gatherer, sharing anecdotal recipes handed down from Jewish immigrants.

The book became the inspiration for, and companion to, the public television series, Jewish Cooking in America. The premier season aired in the top 10 markets nationwide. More than 80 percent of all stations aired or are airing the series.

Based on the book, the series uses food to explore Jewish culture and history in the U.S. Crisscrossing the country, Nathan visits the kitchens of celebrities, chefs and other great Jewish cooks. The most colorful guest, Joan recalls, is 94-year-old Dora Solganik.

"She's our gefilte fish lady," says Joan. "I met Dora in Cleveland. She's from Kiev and a real gefilte fish guru who always made her own fish and never used a food processor. We weren't sure how it would work, but she really wanted to do TV. She wouldn't trust us, so she flew to D.C. with her gefilte fish. ‘I've been waiting 93 years to become a star,' she said in her heavy Yiddish accent, rolling up her sleeves. We launched her career," says Joan affectionately. "After our show she was picked up to do ‘Regis and Kathie Lee,' not once but twice!"

In addition to television, Nathan tours and lectures about the subject of food and culture, but mostly to women.

"Unfortunately, men rarely show up when I give speeches," Nathan says. "I don't think they take what I do seriously. It's funny but when I speak, I never talk about recipes. I talk about food as a manifestation of culture, and I use food to talk about culture and history. Then the women come up to me at the end and say, ‘My husband would have loved this."'

But Joan's husband takes her seriously. She makes the marriage of Jewish history and culinary arts appealing on a physical and intellectual level, he says. She links families, "taking my mother's recipes and connecting her to her grandchildren. I think it's terrific."

According to Barbara Fairchild, executive editor of Bon Appetit magazine, "there is nobody as prolific as Joan in this niche of Jewish cookbooks. She makes the whole concept of Jewish cooking accessible to the average home-cook and the preparation not at all daunting."

tv talk
Joan spices her text with recipes of seasoned American Jewish chefs like Anne Rosenzweig. Jewish Cooking in America contains Rosenzweig's Mollases Roast Quail with Savoy Cabbage and Kasha. In the tale of the quail, Nathan talks about Glatt Game Gourmet, a company conceived by an Israeli ex-kibbutznik whose mission was to blend old biblical game with today¹¹s low-fat sensibility. Rosenzweig is the chef and owner of The Lobster Club Restaurant in New York and appears as a guest on her series.

Other stories found in JCA inform and entertain by giving readers the scoop on companies like Häagen-Dazs kosher ice cream, the love affair between Jews and Chinese food, Wolfgang Puck's Jewish pizza made just for Joan, designer potato latkes across America and Texas brisket served to Lyndon Johnson. One need not be Jewish to devour her books. Not that it hurts.

carving a niche
Tastes are changing, says Bon Appetit's Fairchild, and that works in Nathan's favor.

"The home-cooking revival has benefited from this trend because supermarkets are leading the way, stocking the ingredients from Thai to regional Italian."

Vital Vayness, a brand-name consulting and licensing agent in Ridgefield, Conn., is working with Nathan to expand her franchising to consumer products beyond television and books.

"What we're looking to do is create a Joan Nathan line," Vayness says. "We want consumers to see the products in the stores, and when they read the promotional materials, to get the sense of warmth that she feels making the foods." This includes frozen foods, baked goods and gefilte fish.

Martha lite
When she entertains at home, the guest list resembles a small state dinner. For Nathan and Gerson entertaining is a way of life if not a way to experiment with recipes.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer, a frequent dinner guest, met Nathan when she worked for Kollek in Jerusalem. He was the correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. Blitzer says that her passion for the subject of Jewish cooking is contagious.

"She's a very dynamic person who was in the right place at the right time and did something about it," he says. "It doesn't hurt that she's always been a great talker and a great writer. Joan's always experimenting with new recipes and I'm happy to be one of her guinea pigs."

Already thinking about her next big project, Nathan says it will be the last really big thing she'll do, divulging that it will be a book and television show together – that's after her newest book on the foods of modern Israel is released in spring 2001.

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Mrs. Feinberg's Vegetable Kugel

This Cincinnati Vegetable Kugel came from the late
Rosa Feinberg.

1 cup grated raw apple
1 cup grated raw sweet potato
1 cup grated raw carrot
1 cup matzah meal
1/2 cup pareve margarine, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup sugar (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 10-inch casserole or muffins tins.
2. Mix all ingredients together well.
3. Pour into the baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 45 minutes. If using muffin tins, bake 30 minutes.
4. Raise oven to 350 degrees. Remove cover and bake an additional 15 minutes. Slice and eat hot as a vegetable with meat.

A food processor makes this recipe effortless. Yes, baking soda, a pure product and not a leavening agent, can be used at Passover.

Serves 6-8 and makes 24 muffins.

From The Jewish Holiday Kitchen.

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