The Book Reader: ‘Knish’

Bari Weiss of the Wall Street Journal checks out Laura Silver’s “Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food" in NY1’s The Book Reader.

Last weekend, at an inn in southern Vermont, I had the best knish I've ever had in my life. This was shocking for two reasons.

One: though I will eat every and any hot carbohydrate put in front of me, I don't really care for knishes. I find the savory pastries heavy, greasy and dry and would rather opt for one of the knish's cousins - like the empanada or the samosa. 

Two: Vermont is a state most of us rightly associate with granola and Ben and Jerry's. Not Eastern European potato pies.

And yet, there I was, at the stately Wilburton Inn in Manchester, slicing into a petite, piping hot pillow of dough filled with local kale and turnip that had been baked that morning by a third-generation Brooklynite named Laura Silver, who also happens to be the author of "Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food."

Ms. Silver is an unabashed knish geek. And if you are at all curious about this food, look no further than her book, which is surely the pastry's definitive biography.

“Knishes were my family's religion,” Ms. Silver writes. “For knishes we went on pilgrimages. For knishes, we traversed Long Island, top to bottom, from northern Queens to southern Brooklyn. For knishes, we drove Northern Boulevard to the Grand Central, past LaGuardia to the BQE, through to the Prospect Expressway, which deposited us on Ocean Parkway amid old trees and religious Jews, a straight shot to Mrs. Stahl's.”

In 2005, when the beloved Mrs. Stahl's in Brighton Beach closed up only and became a Subway, Ms. Silver was heartbroken - and then sprang into action, traveling to Paris, Tel Aviv, Warsaw, San Francisco and more to tell the story of the ethnic food that had once dominated Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Most amazingly, she uncovers family roots in a Polish town called Knyszyn.

This book has it a bit of it all—from Eleanor Roosevelt and knishes to the history of competitive knish eating, the knish in literature, recipes, and yes, a list of spots to get a good knish.