Thanks so much for your interest in Fania Lewando's Vegeatrian Cookbook.
For the last twenty years I have looked forward to the chance to share Lewando's remarkable work with the English-speaking world. This week Schocken has published My translation of Fania Lewando's beautiful cookbook, which might possibly begin to acquaint the reading audience with her work.
Unfortunately the book has a number of errors, some of them quite egregious.
As a service to the public and to protect the innocent from faulty and dangerous recipes, I have created this page, to be updated as needed..
Errors and Omissions
The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook by Fania Lewando
Translated from the Yiddish and annotated by Eve Jochnowitz
Foreword by Joan Nathan
Schocken Books New York
1.
The recipes seem to indicate that the baking
oven temperature is close to 325 Fahrenheit (170 Celcius, Mark 3).
2.
Centrifuge butter is butter made from cream
separated by centrifuge rather than hand-churning. Centrifuge butter is not clarified butter and
the recipes will not work with clarified butter.
3.
Parsley root is available at farmers’ markets,
ethnic markets, and health food stores.
If you cannot find parsley root, you may use parsley. Parsnip is not a suitable substitute.
4.
Bitter almonds are actually not almonds at all,
but apricot kernels (sometimes called apricot seeds by marketers). They are
safe, legal, and delicious. All marzipans, all almond pastes, and all
almond extracts are in fact made with apricot kernels, not almonds. You
can find them in some ethnic grocery stores and health food stores, and you can
order them online. Supermarket almond
extracts will all too frequently impart a vulgar flavor that is perfumey,
excessively extracty, and fake-tasting, even when they are
"all-natural".
5.
None of the recipes in the section on marinated
foods may be processed in a boiling water bath.
6.
Gzhankes and grzanki are the
Yiddish and Polish words for coutons, or toast.
