Every Canadian Jew has heard of Second Helpings, Please! – or so I thought, until recently at a Shabbat lunch where another Canadian Jew told me she had never heard of it, which was super weird.
First printed in 1968, Second Helpings is the singular most important piece of Canadian Jewish literature – a compilation of very homey recipes that run the gamut of ashkenazi classics (potato-liver knishes, tsimmes with brisket), contemporary vintage favourites (jello cream pie, mock shrimp cocktail) to playful forays into other cultures (chicken soo guy, zucchini italiano). My copy from the 1980s includes a low fat section and a microwave section.
I rely on Second Helpings both for classic, trustworthy Jewish recipes but also for convenient weeknight meals. With ground beef, ketchup, and a can of ginger ale, sweet and sour meatballs are mere minutes from your dining table. Many of the dishes are conveniently very sweet thanks to the ancient custom of adding jam, sugar, or soda to otherwise well-rounded recipes. It’s a collection that appeals to your sense of familiarity, the food you grew up eating before your mom discovered Activia yogurt and gluten intolerance.
Beyond that, my usual fare is heavily inspired by Alison Roman, whose recipes are often vegetable centric, brightly acidic, salty, and interesting. Her anchovy pasta is a reliable crowd-pleaser and a fun introduction to an ingredient a lot of people might not be familiar with. She has a fabulous roast carrot recipe with tahini and citrus that I constantly come back to. The recipes are perfect for the New York Times recipe/Bon Appetit chattering classes and sure to please a kosher crowd with a less adventurous palate.
In my pursuit to carve out a culinary niche that was a little more interesting, I thought I would take the Julie/Julia approach and try something French. But French recipes, when adjusted to conform to the laws of kashrus, lose a lot of their flair. Subbing margarine for butter or beef fry for lardons technically do the job, but the final result is a dish that lacks the exciting nuance made possible only by milk fat and pork.
My favourite French cookbook is À Table, an English-language French cookbook by Rebekah Peppler that is basically the NYT/Bon Appetit-era response to Julia Child. The recipes are distilled and accessible, but few recipes can be fully made kosher without losing a bit of lustre. And while this is not a caveat, most of the recipes are laborious. I can’t easily turn to most of these recipes on weeknights.
So in an effort to find a balance between French cuisine, easy recipes, and kosher food, I turned to veganism for inspiration. After all, with so many amazing dairy alternatives on the market, adapting finicky meat recipes to be kosher has never been easier. It’s amazing what nutritional yeast, tahini, coconut fat, oat milk, and actually good margarine can do for a meat dish – adding a creaminess not typical of fleishig meals that are so often very oily. Mayonnaise is not a universal substitute for butter and cream!
Now I must tell you how disappointed I was when I ordered À la Française, a French vegan cookbook by Sébastien Kardinal. “Vegan gastronomy is more than a passion – it’s an art of living,” he writes. He has a chapter on replacing meats. He has a chapter for replacing dairy. What I forgot, when considering vegan inspiration, is that they also eschew eggs. The result is nearly 200 pages of recipes with 1-for-1, very literal swaps in classic French recipes. His croque monsieur (basically a ham sandwich baked in cheese) calls for vegan ham and vegan cheese, prepared exactly as one would if it were normal. The bourguignon calls for two kinds of protein – seitan and smoked tofu – simmered in wine. Pot-au-feu? Seitan and tofu simmered with vegetables. If you were to follow the recipes step by step, everything would taste like soy. These are thoughtless, low-effort creations.
I wondered if French people had a cookbook similar to Second Helpings. My moments of research brought me to 200 recettes de cuisine Française casher by Muriel Lapidus Attia. I saw that the publisher also has collections for Japanese, Armenian and Korean food, which made me think that this was possibly written by AI. However, Muriel Lapidus Attia seems to be a real person – a doctor, nutritionist, and author of fiction. “Nevertheless,” she writes in the introduction, “of all my specialties and jobs, it’s the one not taught by any faculty in which I’m the most successful: A mother. A real Jewish mother.”
The book starts off strong with a basic overview of the laws of kashrus, similar to Second Helpings. Lapidus makes recommendations for specific cheese and meat products for authenticity, references the specific selection of liqueurs used in her cooking, and then includes nearly three pages on weight loss (she recommends a lot of nonfat yogurt). “After three kilometres of running, nobody, not even your scale, will admonish you for eating a piece of cake!”
And the recipes themselves are exactly what I was looking for. Which is to say I was quite surprised how underwhelmed I was. I think I was secretly hoping for a kosher hack to Julia Childing myself. She suggests two kinds of croques-monsieurs – one is effectively an ordinary grilled cheese, and the other is made with smoked salmon.
To kick off the Sophisticated Salad chapter, we have the “invitation to travel'' salad. It contains corn, grapefruit, pineapple, oak leaves (I’ve never heard of this), tomato, kiwi, and fennel. Lapidus remarks, “This colourful salad will surprise your friends with the contrast between the sweetness of the pineapple, the acidity of the grapefruit, and the bitterness of the oak leaves.”
Um. Okay! Followed by some classic, reliable inserts, like gougères and various crêpes, we arrive at “avocado mousse,” in which egg whites are beaten to stiff beaks before being incorporated with an avocado, egg yolk and lemon mixture (serve fresh). Then quiches, tartes, steaks, boeuf en daube, and cassoulet! Mostly very reliable recipes. Chapters for poultry, beef, lamb, and fish. Then a chapter titled “Some fun veggies,” which includes “fried avocado.”
One avocado per person. Cut the avocado in two and remove the pit. Cut the flesh into strips and sauté in two tablespoons of oil. Serve hot, like an ordinary vegetable.
Lastly, for passover, she suggests three cakes with matzo meal (regular, rolled, and chocolate, all garnished with shredded coconut) and passover pizza, made with a matzo meal dough and garnished with tomato, onion, olive, and mushrooms, which actually sounds kind of good. She cautions the reader, however, to “be careful! Matzo meal is far harder to digest than regular flour. Don’t serve too much.”
If we focus on the similarities between Second Helpings and 200 Recettes, one of the most glaring would be the diet advice. And while Second Helpings leans heavily into Ashkenazi favourites, 200 Recettes goes full throttle France, with very few typically Jewish (whether Ashkenazi, Moroccan, or Israeli) inclusions.
But I wonder if anyone has ever served the fried avocado. It doesn’t seem very French to me. It actually sounds quite horrible. Still, the book feels authentic enough, as a kosher cookbook, as a French cookbook, and as a collection of recipes compiled by a woman who loves nonfat yogurt. Would I recommend it to the casual cook? Ummmmmmmmmm not really. I’ll stick with Second Helpings.