Everyone has a favorite Jewish food. Mine is pizza. Of course, famous Jewish people eat, too, and we wondered what their preferences might be. So we asked:
Ed Asner: “My favorite kosher food was the latkes my mother, who was not a good cook, made for Pesach (Passover),” he says. “Granted, she made them at other times, but at Pesach the supply was unlimited.” He describes them as larger than a coaster, very greasy, thin and fairly browned on both sides.
“Once you started eating them you couldn’t stop. In those days before calories and cholesterol, there were even contests as to who would eat more,” he says. His “hulking” brother Ben would compete against his “hulking” cousin Ben. “As a child, I was staggered by the intake. “As an adult, I’ve never tasted latkes comparable to Mom’s.”
Judy Sheindlin, judge with an attitude on “Judge Judy”: Her first memory of a favorite kosher food was the potato knishes sold at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.
Bill Goldberg, former NFL player with the Atlanta Falcons and pro wrestler: “It was my grandmother’s matzo and eggs every Saturday and Sunday morning.” It is still his favorite food, although “I can’t make it nearly as well as she could.
“I use the egg whites now; I don’t like all the cholesterol. Ten egg whites and two yolks, with a couple pieces of matzo and I’m on my way to a bountiful breakfast. I’m so active, I eat just about anything to keep the weight on me.”
Edward I. Koch, former New York mayor: The meat patties and veal cutlets his mother prepared when he was a child.
“My mother specialized in buying cheap cuts of meat, which we referred to as third cuts, and turning them into delicious-tasting, first-cut meats,” he says. His mother couldn’t afford veal chops during the Depression, so she bought shoulder veal, pounded them into first-cut shapes, and deep-fried them in chicken fat.
“Today, we are no longer constitutionally able to digest such foods, but they were delicious, and I remember them as though it was yesterday,” Koch says.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the 2000 vice presidential candidate and Connecticut senator: “My mother’s soups are my favorite and most memorable kosher foods. Soup was a regular feature on our kitchen table, from the classic Friday night chicken soup to the robust, tangy black bean soup, which warmed us up during the winter. I also have fond memories of coming home from school each day for lunch to a sandwich and a bowl of hearty tomato soup or hot mushroom soup that my mother would have waiting for me.”
