Food - Jewish Specialties - Nunt to Whitefish

A nunt is a pastry originating from Jewish cuisine and vaguely resembling nougat. The pastry is predominantly served at the Jewish celebration of Purim, where self-made sweets are customarily given to neighbours and friends.

Nunt is traditionally made from dark forest honey, which is cooked along with sugar and then mixed with coarsely-cut walnuts. The result is placed on a smooth, wet board or an oiled marble plate, left to cool, and then cut into small rhombic-shaped pieces.

Variants of nunt exist where poppy seed is added along with the walnuts, or the honey is enriched with ginger or sesame.

Pastrami is a popular deli meat made from beef. The uncooked meat is pickled in a brine solution, similarly to corned beef, then smoked and typically encrusted with peppercorns. Pastrami is commonly eaten sliced as part of a sandwich.

As with corned beef, pastrami was created as a method for preserving meat from spoilage in an age before modern refrigeration methods. This technique is now unnecessary, but its unique flavor still attracts many aficionados worldwide.

The etymology is from Romanian Pastramă, probably from the verb "a păstra" (to preserve, to keep), being brought to the English language via Yiddish. The English ending "-mi" was influenced by salami. Another theory asserts that it is a variant of Turkish pastirma, or basturma, which is a middle eastern smoked meat, usually made of camel or cow meat.

Schmaltz is rendered animal fat used for food. Schmaltz may be used for frying or spread on bread. It is substituted where ever butter would be used when cooking meat dishes. It is usually made from rendered chicken fat, and also kosher.

The word Sladko refers to a number of special jams that belong to Balkan cooking as well as to Jewish cooking. Traditionally, these jams are served on a small glass plate together with a teaspoon and a glass of water. Sladko is different from the European type of jam, because when preparing Sladko, the sugar is first boiled to make a kind of syrup, and the fruit is only added later on.

In the preparation of Sladko, many ingredients are used that are not common in traditional European jam. For example, in Eastern Jewish cooking, there are variants where radish is boiled in honey. Sladko can also be made from carrots or beetroots.

A Smoked meat is a Montreal (Quebec) dish. It can be served on the plate or as a Smoked meat sandwich. In French, it is called sandwich à la viande fumée or simply un smoked meat.

It is the Montreal style of corned beef, although there is a significant difference between the two. It is similar in style and flavor to pastrami, but the spices used are slightly different. It contains an Eastern European influence, as a large number of Jews from Eastern Europe settled in Montreal. This also applies to the Montreal style bagel.

Many people from far and wide make pilgrimages to Montreal's four most famous smoked meat establishments (Schwartz's, Ben's, Dunn's, and the Main Deli), to take briskets away for a year's worth of eating. Several restauranteurs have offered to buy franchises and to rebuild Schwartz's, nail for nail in cities across North America. The owners have always refused. However, you can buy smoked meat from Schwartz's and have it delivered mail-order.

A sufganiya is a donut, usually stuffed with custard or jelly, traditionally eaten during Channukah in accordance with the custom to eat fried foods to commemorate the oil associated with the holiday.

Tzimmes or tsimmes is a traditional Jewish casserole. It is a sweet dish, a combination of fruit, meat, and vegetables cooked slowly over very low heat, flavored with honey and sometimes cinnamon. There are endless varieties on the theme.

Whitefish (also written white fish) is a fisheries term referring to several species of oceanic deep water fish particularly cod (Gadus morhua), whiting (Merluccius bilinearis), and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), but also hake (Urophycis), pollock (Pollachius), or others. Whitefish is sometimes eaten straight but often used reconstituted for fishsticks, gefilte fish, lutefisk, surimi (imitation crabmeat), etc.

It is most widely known as the fish in fish and chips.

Back to Specialties