Asif Journal: A Culinary Digest #1

Asif means harvest in Hebrew. Asif: Culinary Institute of Israel is an ambitious undertaking in Tel Aviv that celebrates Jewish culinary heritage while encouraging food-related entrepreneurship and innovation. The organization operates a test kitchen, a cafe, an event and exhibition space, a rooftop farm, and a library in furtherance of these aims. Now it has launched this intriguing journal.

This is the first of what promises to be an annual periodical, limited to a run of just 1000 copies. It captures the range of Asif’s ambitions, offering recipes, analyses of culinary transformations among immigrant communities, an exploration of the differences between compounds which are smelled and those which are tasted, and speculation on the sustainability of lab-grown meat and the way that kosher laws may apply to it. Claudia Roden appears to discuss an Italian Jewish cookbook and its significance.

Throughout the journal QR codes link to recorded lectures and additional recipes.

Kitchen Arts & Letters is delighted to be offering this inaugural issue. The store’s late founder Nach Waxman was actively and passionately involved in sourcing many of the books for the organization’s library, and we are confident that he would be greatly pleased to know that they have begun their own publishing program.

Paperback. Color photographs throughout.

Cover photo: Armando Rafael.