Like many other people who knew her, I just had to call Joan Nathan to be sure she hadn’t missed the Sex and the City episode that included Charlotte using Joan’s Jewish Cooking in America to prepare her first Sabbath dinner.

You see, Joan is well-known for her award-winning cookbooks about Jewish cooking. In fact, Jewish Cooking in America won both the James Beard Award for the best American cookbook and the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award in 1994. She’s still writing and testing, currently busy working on her eleventh book “King Solomon’s Table” that will be published Spring, 2016.

Joan’s won many accolades for her work, including her PBS series “Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan” being nominated for the James Beard Award for Best National Television Food Show, being inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who in American Food and Beverage and being the guest curator of the 2005 Smithsonian Folk Life Festival’s Food Culture USA, a program based on the research for her The New American Cooking.

I caught up with her vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard to respond to our Guest Foodie questions.
– bonnie

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Which food product or gadget would you never give up? I could never do without my food processor for a lot of reasons. First of all, I feel I was one of the first people to use one! I started using it to grate potatoes for latkes, but then I realized I could use it for pie crust, for pesto, my hummus…I started using it in 1974, about two years after it hit the market in the United States, and it was when I was doing the 9th Avenue Food Festival. I thought it was so fabulous and started using it from then on – and I’ve loved it ever since.

What do you like to serve when you entertain? Depends on what I’m testing! I’m always testing recipes, so I’m always serving new things. And if it doesn’t work, then I blame it on the recipe. That said, I always love Mediterranean food and Middle Eastern food. And there is almost always a little preserved lemon in the food that I make.

Describe your “last meal?” I definitely would have white truffles over pasta. Probably smoked salmon, blini, and crème fraîche. (These would be very caloric, but who cares?) And a lemon tart – a very tart lemon tart.

What food is your secret guilty pleasure? I do like chocolate M&Ms at the movies, and I love to eat crème de marrons. ..sometimes straight out of the jar.

What is your go-to neighborhood restaurant? There are two of them. Ever since Palena closed, I like going to La Piquette, a French bistro in Washington, D.C. The chef used to be at the French Embassy. I think he’s one of the great under-discovered chefs in America. His food is just so classic but updated French. It’s wonderful. The other is Buck’s Fishing and Camping in Washington, D.C. – I like the ambience and the food is very good. It feels like I’m going to a friend’s house.

What is one food product most people don’t know about, but should? Real cinnamon. Most people eat the more robust, spicy cinnamon that is actually cassia, rather than the more gentle, subtle real cinnamon from Ceylon. I use Ceylon cinnamon in desserts.

Describe your worst kitchen disaster and how (if possible) you saved it: – Once I was making a flourless chocolate cake and it dropped and fell apart. I thought that I’d never be able to put it together again, so I quickly turned it into a trifle. (Which I’ve done on numerous other occasions with other cake disasters).

Who was your most influential mentor? My mother, who is still alive at 101. She has a sense of style, she is tough and critical, and she always expected the best of me.

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