Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Brandeis (2014), 300 pages
Description
When Laura Silver's favorite knish shop went out of business, the native New Yorker sank into mourning, but then she sprang into action. She embarked on a round-the-world quest for the origins and modern-day manifestations of the knish. The iconic potato pie leads the author from Mrs. Stahl's bakery in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, to an Italian pasta maker in New Jersey--and on to a hunt across three continents for the pastry that shaped her identity. Starting in New York, she tracks down heirs to several knish dynasties and discovers that her own family has roots in a Polish town named Knyszyn. With good humor and a hunger for history, Silver mines knish lore for stories of entrepreneurship, survival, and major deliciousness. Along the way, she meets Minnesota seniors who make knishes for weekly fundraisers, foodies determined to revive the legacy of Mrs. Stahl, and even the legendary knish maker's granddaughters, who share their joie de vivre--and their family recipe. Knish connections to Eleanor Roosevelt and rap music? Die-hard investigator Silver unearths those and other intriguing anecdotes involving the starchy snack once so common along Manhattan's long-lost Knish Alley. In a series of funny, moving, and touching episodes, Silver takes us on a knish-eye tour of worlds past and present, thus laying the foundation for a global knish renaissance.… (more)
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User reviews
LibraryThing member LeesyLou
You may know food. You may know Jewish food. But if you want to fully understand the knish as intimately as possible, this is the book for you. Now you may feel there is such thing as too much information on a single item of food, and you might be right. But if you can't be obsessive about Jewish
Laura Silver manages in one small volume to give you the complete history of every major knish producer and vendor of twentieth century New York City. She also researched the history of the knish itself, which turned out harder than expected; and talked to avid knish eaters of every type.
If you need a little more inside New York food history knowledge, and love filled dough, you've found your book.
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food, why bother being obsessive, anyhow?Laura Silver manages in one small volume to give you the complete history of every major knish producer and vendor of twentieth century New York City. She also researched the history of the knish itself, which turned out harder than expected; and talked to avid knish eaters of every type.
If you need a little more inside New York food history knowledge, and love filled dough, you've found your book.
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LibraryThing member simchaboston
Uneven and frustrating, at least for me. Call me an old fogey, but I like straightforward storytelling, not a lot of narrative folderol, so I kept getting distracted and annoyed by Silver's overabundance of metaphors and other fancy language that doesn't make sense (such as knishes looking at the
It's a shame, really. Silver sounds like a traditionalist when it comes to the knish, and I have no doubt she would be horrified at the thought of someone taking her beloved Jewish potato pie and going all haute cuisine on the dish with liquid nitrogen, seaweed foam or complicated and unnecessary sauces just to show what s/he can do. Yet that's what she's done here. With luck, any future food-related books from Silver will get back to basics. In the meantime, this one's heading to the donation pile.
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people about to eat them). The balance of history versus memoir also seems out of whack, as a good part of her story focused on her personal quest, and the amount of actual information presented doesn't seem to justify her travel budget to Paris and parts of Poland. (She also kvetches too much for my taste, and it's not fun having to spend time with a narrator who comes off as entitled and self-absorbed.) It's a shame, really. Silver sounds like a traditionalist when it comes to the knish, and I have no doubt she would be horrified at the thought of someone taking her beloved Jewish potato pie and going all haute cuisine on the dish with liquid nitrogen, seaweed foam or complicated and unnecessary sauces just to show what s/he can do. Yet that's what she's done here. With luck, any future food-related books from Silver will get back to basics. In the meantime, this one's heading to the donation pile.
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LibraryThing member thornton37814
Laura Silver has researched and written a small book on the knish, a Jewish dish featuring the potato. She looks at the dish's popularity among United States Jews and then attempts to trace its history. From there she ventures into the knish as featured in popular culture. She then looks at
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competitions featuring the knish and at how they are made. The only recipe given is the author's favorite from Mrs. Stahl. I think the book will find an audience among true fans of American Jewish culture and cuisine. The book bogs down a bit too much for the casual reader with only a casual interest in the topic. The presentation of information did not always flow smoothly as the author used a wide range of writing styles, some more effectively than others. The author has done a good amount of research and is to be commended for this aspect of the book. As someone who enjoys genealogical research and writing, I wish the author would have chosen to write her genealogical recaps in a more fluid style than the one she selected. This book was received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program with the expectation that a review be written. Show Less
LibraryThing member MsCaves
Wonderful book and a quick read. The author has brought back memories of living in New York in the early fifties and always looking for the best Knish in town. Living here in the south in the early sixties I was always looking for a good deli that would have Knishes as I remembered them from my
The subject is well researched and provides historical background on the Knish and uses humor to make this an enjoyable read. This will truly be enjoyed by anyone growing up in Brooklyn and the Bronx and remember all of those characters you met when you went into a deli. Well done Ms. Silver!
I have received this book from LibraryThing early reviewers.
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childhood. But as the author has stated and realized - it is not only the Knish that people remember fondly - but the total aspect of your surroundings in the fifties in NY that make memories. And although I am not Jewish it was one of my favorite foods after school. It was and still is a good comfort food.The subject is well researched and provides historical background on the Knish and uses humor to make this an enjoyable read. This will truly be enjoyed by anyone growing up in Brooklyn and the Bronx and remember all of those characters you met when you went into a deli. Well done Ms. Silver!
I have received this book from LibraryThing early reviewers.
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LibraryThing member difreda
I don't know from knishes...... This book is not just about knishes - read carefully and be attentive. This is not a "beginning middle end" "knishtory". Knish is about our past, about memories that are fading, about putting flesh on a fragment of memory, faces on shadows and meaning in our souls.
Knish is about a time, a space, the humanity of place, of hopes, and about keeping the memories. America, Poland, Russia,dancing,singing, Seders, Eleanor Roosevelt, weddings, cocktail parties.... It is a story - an unfinished one - And there is a knish recipe in this "cook book".
I don't know from knishes - but I know a good read. Silver delivers this in abundance.
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Laura Silver skillfully takes on a journey - a trip to what is behind the fading memories of the voices of our parents, grandparents and all the faceless men and women who came before. This is a story about bakeries making Pasties for Copper Miners on the Michigan Upper Peninsula, now gone and mines desolate. The Amish "Sticky Bun" shop under the Frankford "El" stop in Philly, the Polish butcher making his sausages.. about things that were and are no more. No they're not in this book - they are our own "Mrs Stahl's Knishes. As you devour this literary delight you too will your favorite memory. Silver seduces us into these memories and we too add to the list of shadows.Knish is about a time, a space, the humanity of place, of hopes, and about keeping the memories. America, Poland, Russia,dancing,singing, Seders, Eleanor Roosevelt, weddings, cocktail parties.... It is a story - an unfinished one - And there is a knish recipe in this "cook book".
I don't know from knishes - but I know a good read. Silver delivers this in abundance.
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LibraryThing member jaidit
Knish
Full disclosure: I have never eaten a knish.
"Does it mention Mrs. Stahl's'?" was my mother-in-law's first question when I told my her that I had read Laura Silver's *Knish.* Yes, it's a major topic of the book. "What about Yonah Schimmel?" That too. As with Ms. Silver, knishes evoke memories
I certainly understand the nostalgia that can connect to certain foods. There are foods that bring me back to my childhood, it's just that the knish isn't one of theme. Thanks to Laura Silver, I can understand my mother-in-law's reaction.
As a huge coincidence, this book arrived at my door while I was off in New York City. My steps took me on several occasions within an easy walk to Schimmel's. Had I read this book before this trip to New York, I undoubtably would have made it a stop on my travels. Next time.
In *Knish,* Silver gives the not only her personal history with knishes, but puts them into the larger context of the immigrant experience of New York City. Mrs. Stahl's was a Brighton Beach establishment, but Yonah Schimmel's was an establishment on the Lower East Side (somewhat ironically, on my most recent trip to New York, I was in the Lower East Side several times, getting a couple blocks from Yonah Schimmel's, though it wouldn't have meant anything to me then). And she goes further.
Silver takes us not only back in time, but far away from New York, since the knish, she notes, "like those who consumed it, was of European extraction." She did not make it to Chişinău, the site of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, and she notes:
>"Pogrom," I have learned, is not necessarily part of the common parlance. The first time I discovered someone for whom the term was new, we were equally taken aback: she by the long trail of anti-Semitism that preceded the Holocaust, and I by the fact that she hadn't heard of it.
I had a similar experience recently. I had Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, and noticed that there was only the slightest reference to gay victims of the Holocaust. When I discussed this with an Israeli, she was shocked to find that when the camps were liberated, some gay men were sent to civil prisons on the rationale that homosexuality was against the law in Germany. One of the shocking parts of mankind's own inhumanity is how easily it is forgotten.
But I'm supposed to be talking about *Knish* here, although I think it's a mark of a good book (let me cut to the chase and say that *Knish* is very good book) that it makes you think of all sorts of things in a new context. Silver is able to to juggle everything from the Holocaust to the suburban diaspora of assimilated American Jews. And it is that assimilation that seems to be dooming the knish.
Near the end of the book, Silver tells that a businessman has bought the rights to the Mrs. Stahl's name and has created a Mrs. Stahl's knishes Facebook page. It's sad and somewhat telling that the page hasn't been updated since December 2012.
I promise that the next time I am in New York City (and the trip is already planned) I will take myself to a place that makes and serves knishes. Maybe I can make a small contribution to ensuring that the knish will persist.
This review also appears on my blog, impofthediverse.blogspot.com
Full disclosure: I have never eaten a knish.
"Does it mention Mrs. Stahl's'?" was my mother-in-law's first question when I told my her that I had read Laura Silver's *Knish.* Yes, it's a major topic of the book. "What about Yonah Schimmel?" That too. As with Ms. Silver, knishes evoke memories
Show More
for my mother-in-law.I certainly understand the nostalgia that can connect to certain foods. There are foods that bring me back to my childhood, it's just that the knish isn't one of theme. Thanks to Laura Silver, I can understand my mother-in-law's reaction.
As a huge coincidence, this book arrived at my door while I was off in New York City. My steps took me on several occasions within an easy walk to Schimmel's. Had I read this book before this trip to New York, I undoubtably would have made it a stop on my travels. Next time.
In *Knish,* Silver gives the not only her personal history with knishes, but puts them into the larger context of the immigrant experience of New York City. Mrs. Stahl's was a Brighton Beach establishment, but Yonah Schimmel's was an establishment on the Lower East Side (somewhat ironically, on my most recent trip to New York, I was in the Lower East Side several times, getting a couple blocks from Yonah Schimmel's, though it wouldn't have meant anything to me then). And she goes further.
Silver takes us not only back in time, but far away from New York, since the knish, she notes, "like those who consumed it, was of European extraction." She did not make it to Chişinău, the site of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, and she notes:
>"Pogrom," I have learned, is not necessarily part of the common parlance. The first time I discovered someone for whom the term was new, we were equally taken aback: she by the long trail of anti-Semitism that preceded the Holocaust, and I by the fact that she hadn't heard of it.
I had a similar experience recently. I had Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, and noticed that there was only the slightest reference to gay victims of the Holocaust. When I discussed this with an Israeli, she was shocked to find that when the camps were liberated, some gay men were sent to civil prisons on the rationale that homosexuality was against the law in Germany. One of the shocking parts of mankind's own inhumanity is how easily it is forgotten.
But I'm supposed to be talking about *Knish* here, although I think it's a mark of a good book (let me cut to the chase and say that *Knish* is very good book) that it makes you think of all sorts of things in a new context. Silver is able to to juggle everything from the Holocaust to the suburban diaspora of assimilated American Jews. And it is that assimilation that seems to be dooming the knish.
Near the end of the book, Silver tells that a businessman has bought the rights to the Mrs. Stahl's name and has created a Mrs. Stahl's knishes Facebook page. It's sad and somewhat telling that the page hasn't been updated since December 2012.
I promise that the next time I am in New York City (and the trip is already planned) I will take myself to a place that makes and serves knishes. Maybe I can make a small contribution to ensuring that the knish will persist.
This review also appears on my blog, impofthediverse.blogspot.com
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LibraryThing member cemming
Silver's writing evokes a longing for knishes so bone deep, it's catching.
In Knish, Laura Silver traipses this country and many more, sleuthing the history of the knish. Many European countries have a pastry that cousins the knish, a Jewish recipe that involves pulled dough wrapped around savory
In Knish, Laura Silver traipses this country and many more, sleuthing the history of the knish. Many European countries have a pastry that cousins the knish, a Jewish recipe that involves pulled dough wrapped around savory
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(originally) or sweet (updated to appeal to the masses) fillings. Silver includes interviews with bakers and eaters, photos, and facts with details so thorough and enticing they'll make your mouth water. In fact, the baker in me was disappointed to find the paltry recipe at the book's end, almost an afterthought. Show Less
LibraryThing member fiberdzns
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
I don't think I quite knew what I was getting in to when I received this book. Author, Laura Silver, lost her favorite knish shop. This leads to a 281 page fully footnoted book on knishes. As we Minnesotans say, UFF DA! I guess
Recommended for knish fans. The book is probably too much knish for the average reader.
I don't think I quite knew what I was getting in to when I received this book. Author, Laura Silver, lost her favorite knish shop. This leads to a 281 page fully footnoted book on knishes. As we Minnesotans say, UFF DA! I guess
Show More
I expected a few more recipes of different knish variations. I certainly wasn't expecting globe trotting around the world to find the origin of the knish. While the book was well written, I was suffering from information overload. Recommended for knish fans. The book is probably too much knish for the average reader.
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LibraryThing member lilithcat
This would have been a good New Yorker article, but it's been ridiculously padded to book-length.
LibraryThing member Juleswf
It wasn't what I thought, but I plowed through. I was hoping for more recipes, but not even one. Just really the author's search for knishes and their history. If you really really love knishes, this is the book for you. Otherwise, pick up a good Jewish cookbook.
ISBN
1611683122 / 9781611683127