Why does shabbat food have to be traditional ashkenazi food?

amother

Honey

Mon, May 13 2024, 5:50 am

Comptroller wrote:

Maybe it's not peasant food, but it WAS poor people's food.

Gefillte fish: fill expensive carp with cheap white fish (back on those markets)
Chulent: mix little bits of expensive meat with lots of cheap beans and potatoes.

I'm not by any means saying it cannot be good, but the origin is definitely not in great luxury.

Gefilta fish ain't cheap anymore. And cholent is very expensive being that most people put lots of expensive meat in there.

Comptroller

Mon, May 13 2024, 5:54 am

amother Honey wrote:

Gefilta fish ain't cheap anymore. And cholent is very expensive being that most people put lots of expensive meat in there.

Guess what? That's why I'd rather have salmon than gefilte fish, because in my view expensive gefillte fish defy the purpose. Same for expensive meat in chulent. Not a good idea.

imaima

Mon, May 13 2024, 5:56 am

amother Royalblue wrote:

Well thats the sign of a good cook someone who can take cheap food and make it taste good. Anyone can cook an expensive steak not much needs to be done to it, take a cheap piece of meat and turn it into something delicious thats talent.

Well there is no contradiction. Noone said that peasants can’t be good cooks.
Are you against peasants ?

ShishKabob

Mon, May 13 2024, 5:57 am

The only problem I have is the word peasant food.
To me, It's sort of a condescending word to use.
Other than that, you do you, you are supposed to enjoy the food on Shabbos.
Otoh, there is so much meaning and substance behind everything that we do and eat on Shabbos. It is not something to dismiss lightly and especially if you have that mesorah as well.

imaima

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:01 am

ShishKabob wrote:

Why deny a fact of life? Jewish ashkenazi good has its origin in peasant food.
The traditional recipes are poor people food.
Yes they didn’t have money for fish or meat but saved it for shabbos and stretched it by making gefilte and cholent.
For them these ingredients were a highlight.
For us, eating sushi or other exotic foods during the week but making a peasant stew for shabbos misses the point of shabbos as the most important day of the week.

amother

Cornsilk

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:02 am

Comptroller wrote:

There are two advantages to serving the same meals every shabbos:

1) You don't have to think of a new menu every week and your family can't tell you it's wrong to stay with the same.

2) You could, like the Japanese often do, perfect your shabbos menu thanks to weekly repetition over the years. Perfect the challoh, perfect the chulent, perfect the kigel, perfect the kishke, perfect the gefilte fish.

What I do, personally, is continuity with variation.

My go-to main course for Friday evening is chicken in clay pot with rice. But the rest goes according to season: pumpkin and red cabbage, apples, oranges, honey, with a rather sweet taste in winter, in summer: mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes with a dominantly salty taste.
Salads, soups, desserts also go mostly according to season, but with some constants...

You make good points. Most balabustas I know have worked on perfecting each of the Shabbos dishes, so it's to their families liking.
But where do the Japanese come into this discussion? Scratching Head

ShishKabob

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:04 am

imaima wrote:

You may be right technically, however, when the op said it, I felt there was a condescending tone there. I may be wrong.
However, nowadays, it's not peasant food by far. Definitely not cheap. Smile

amother

Cornsilk

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:05 am

imaima wrote:

I don't know about you, but I don't see sushi as exotic. I buy a roll of sushi when I am in the grocery and am in the mood for a quick snack.
The only people who think of cholent as "peasant food" are people who did not grow up with it. The rest of us see it as yummy Shabbos food, the main attraction of the meal. So eating cholent is not missing any point about it being the most important day. It's all in what you make of it.

Comptroller

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:34 am

amother Cornsilk wrote:

In Japan, repeating the same over and over again until you reach perfection is a thing, in all realms of life, from the tea ceremony to making sweats out of red beans, but also in producing ink or knives, you name it.

keym

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:52 am

My issue is with calling it peasant food.
Because the reality is that most traditional food is peasant food, just peasant food from that region.
Traditional Indian food, African food, various Asian foods, central and South American. They tend to make traditional dishes of various foods or produce that are locally grown and cheap.
Hence various versions of rice or beans or lentils dishes
They also tend to be more stew and soup like dishes so the meal can be stretched.
So much of the cultural cuisine that OP says she likes- whether it's Thai or Indian or Moroccan or Japanese, all tend to incorporate cheap local (for that area) products making it peasant food for that area.

Just for some reason serving cholent and potato kugel- Russian peasant food is shameful. But serving chapati and curries- cheap Indian "peasant food" or sushi - made with cheap Japanese"peasant food" is wonderful.
If that's your taste, great. Celebrate Shabbos and Yom Tov with what's tasty to you.

But don't put down my food as peasant food. Most traditional cuisine is peasant food

amother

Honey

Mon, May 13 2024, 6:59 am

keym wrote:

Exactly!
The nerve!

amother

Pearl

Mon, May 13 2024, 7:26 am

imaima wrote:

Why deny a fact of life? Jewish ashkenazi good has its origin in peasant food.

What is your source for the idea that Jews were peasants in Europe? Everyone assumes that everyone was poor back in Europe. Not so. There have always been poor Jews and there have always been wealthy Jews. Read Gluckel of Hameln. She was quite wealthy.

The chassidim in Hungary before the war were mostly not poor, and since Hungary was attacked last in WW2, it had more war survivors than other countries. Accordingly, a large portion of today's chassidim are of Hungarian descent. Yet all the so-called peasant foods are on their traditional Shabbos menu.

ETA: Actually, cholent is a perfect example. All the families in a shtetl would put their pot of cholent into a communal oven before Shabbos. That oven was so large that it would keep all the cholent pots hot. Because some families were wealthy and could afford to put of lot of expensive meat in their cholent, while other families were poor and could only afford beans, it became tradition to cover the cholent with a kind of dough. That dough would hide the contents of the pot to protect he diginity of the poor. It also absorbed a lot of flavors from the cholent, so people enjoyed eating it as well. CONCLUSION: Wealthy Jews ate cholent, and poor Jews ate cholent. It's not mediocre peasant food, it's a tradition.

amother

Honey

Mon, May 13 2024, 7:29 am

amother Pearl wrote:

Exactly. My ancestors were from Hungary. Hungarians were considered wealthy and upperclass.

amother

Pearl

Mon, May 13 2024, 7:32 am

amother Honey wrote:

Exactly. My ancestors were from Hungary. Hungarians were considered wealthy and upperclass.

100%. Hungarians famously had beautiful homes and fine furniture. Hungarian Jews were well off. The fact that their traditional Shabbos fare included the foods mentioned here as "mediocre peasant food" underscores the insult.