If we consider Julia Child and her editor Judith Jones to be pioneers, then we must certainly put Providence native Joan Nathan in the same category, a groundbreaking author who has beautifully connected food and culture throughout her career.
Her 1994 book, “Jewish Cooking in America,” was about cooks as well as food, and it won both the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook and the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Cookbook of the Year, the biggest awards for a book on food.
Eleven years later, Nathan published The New American Cooking. She spent five years crisscrossing the country, exploring both old and new aspects of American cooking. Focusing on regional stories, international ingredients used by immigrants, and artisan producers, she delivered a complete picture of American food. The book also won a James Beard Award and an IACP Award.
In 2011, she discovered not only regional French dishes with Jewish roots, but also Jewish culinary traditions that had been hidden since World War II. The resulting book, “Quiche, Kugel, Couscous: Exploring Jewish Cuisine in France,” revealed how many Jews living in France kept secret the lives, trials and tragedies they experienced during the Holocaust.
She revealed all of our humanity through her food stories, and now at age 81, she has written a wonderful memoir, “My Life in Recipes,” in which she has a lot to teach us.
Want to take a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
This memoir recounts her professional experiences, which are incredible by any standards. Her career began in 1969, when she spent three years as foreign press secretary for Jerusalem’s then-mayor, Teddy Kollek. She writes about how food broke down barriers during tense negotiations in Arab villages. She records in minute detail; one time, she remembers less clearly, showing Barbra Streisand around the city.
I hadn’t spoken to her in years, but when we spoke on the phone recently it felt like no time had passed. She is so genuine, insightful, warm, observant and brings joy to every conversation.
Nathan has worked as a journalist and written articles for top publications, she has traveled extensively, always observing cultures through their food.
She was an insider because she lived in Washington, D.C., where she was married for 45 years to the late Alan Gershon and raised three children. Think of any gathering of politicians of any party: she was there.
But what interests us in Rhode Island is the local connection documented in her memoir: Joan moved with her family from Larchmont, a suburb of New York City, to Providence when she was 13, and her memories are similar to those of many Rhode Islanders.
She said her family loved going to Twit’s, the Balzano family restaurant in Bristol, where spaghetti was served by the pound and eating there was fun: “It was our favorite restaurant.”
“My father loved restaurants,” she says. It was a time when going out was not a big thing, but it was a time when families could relax together,” she says.
She told me about her father taking her shopping in Federal Hill, where the food was exotic to her. The stores sold fresh mozzarella, homemade clam sauce, linguine, and cookies. Sausages hung from beams and olives were sold from barrels.
A few years later, in 1984, Nathan returned to Federal Hill to write and research “The American Folk Cookbook.”
One chapter focuses on the DeGiulio family, who at the time owned Joe’s Acorn Market in Providence. Joan recalled how people would come from all over the state to shop at Joe’s Acorn Market. Their family had been butchers in Italy for 700 years, and they brought that to Providence.
She attended La Vigilia dinner, the traditional Festival of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, but thought the meal was six courses. Mrs. DeJulio showed Joan the menu. When the book was published, the family was featured on the Today Show.
Joan always returned to Rhode Island, never far from her mother, Pearl. She was a volunteer at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum for 70 years; the museum’s Café Pearl is named after her. She passed away in 2017 at age 103.
Joan’s talents also extended to broadcasting: her “Joan Nathan and American Jewish Cooking” was a highly acclaimed PBS television series that ran for two seasons and also resulted in a cookbook of the same name.
Joan filmed an episode at Diane Scola’s home in Barrington in early 2001. Journal food editor Donna Lee wrote an article about the show and included recipes from the show.
Also on set were her mother, Pearl, and her close friend, the late Dorothy Licht, former first lady of Rhode Island, who was famous for her cheese blintzes, which she served to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he visited her husband, Frank Licht, who served as governor from 1969 to 1973.
Joan is good at looking back, but she also lives in the present, and she’ll be returning to Providence to appear at Temple Beth El in Providence and be interviewed by David Cicilline on Tuesday, June 18. Tickets can be purchased here, as well as her memoir, “My Life in Recipes” (Knopf Books, $45).
