Learn about Jewish Italian food as you cook along with chef, author Benedetta Jasmine Guetta Dec. 5

Jewish people have lived in Italy for thousands of years, but their contributions to Italian cuisine aren’t well known.

Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, author of “Cooking Alla Giudia: A Celebration of the Jewish Food of Italy,” is changing that. She will be sharing stories and cooking virtually on Dec. 5 as part of the annual Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival sponsored by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and the Simon Family JCC in Virginia Beach.

Guetta was born in Milan and raised by an Italian mother and a Libyan father. Milan has the second largest Jewish community in Italy — Rome is the first.

A staple of Italian cooking is orecchiette, a pasta shaped like small ears. While some say it comes from Puglia (or Apulia), the region in southern Italy, Guetta’s research indicates that it was brought to Italy by Jewish merchants who traveled there from the south of France. The pasta is similar to hamentachen, a Jewish pastry shaped like ears that’s eaten for the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Jews also brought eggplant to Italy. Italians were skeptical of it and described it in their recipe books as food suitable only for Jews or dogs, Guetta explained. Jewish people taught Italians how to eat and cook with the purple-skinned vegetable, and it inspired the dish eggplant parmigiana and other creations.

While Guetta is now on a mission to spread knowledge about Jewish Italian cuisine, her writings didn’t start off that way.

She pursued her passion for cooking when she left home, and started writing about Middle Eastern foods on a blog she started in 2009.

“That’s what I enjoyed and that’s what my readers liked,” Guetta said during a phone interview.

Her audience wanted to learn more about her Jewish culture. They started asking questions such as ”What does it mean to be Jewish?” and “What are your holidays?”

“There was a lot of curiosity in Italy towards Jewish culture in general,” she said, “and I sort of found myself answering.”

This made her take an interest in Jewish Italian culture and cuisine. She focused on food as a career and started writing this new cookbook.

She traveled around the world to meet grandmothers and aunts to capture their recipes. Guetta felt anxious about the recipes disappearing and the stories being lost.

“Younger generations tend to leave home and move abroad. They aren’t interested in carrying on the food traditions,” she said.

She spent 10 years researching and documenting the food and traditions of Italian Jews.

Her blog, Labna, is now a Jewish and kosher cooking blog specializing in Italian and Jewish cuisine. She has co-authored two cookbooks in Italian, and she owns Cafe Lovi in Santa Monica, California, where she lives.

“Cooking Alla Giudia” is her first cookbook in English. It features 140 kosher recipes — from the 400 she wanted to include — and represents every region in Italy. She includes vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options.

The book also is a history of Jewish Italian cuisine, and Guetta highlights some recipes that were created out of necessity and oppression. Take, for instance, the zuppa di pesce, fish soup. It was made from discarded fish heads and tails by Jews who were poor and forced to live in ghettos in 1555. Today in Italy, zuppa di pesce is considered a delicacy.

Rekaya Gibson, 757-295-8809, rekaya.gibson@virginiamedia.com; on Twitter @gibsonrekaya

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A recipe from the author: Caponata alla giudia

Here is Benedetta Jasmine Guetta’s caponata alla giudia recipe to add to your collection. It’s from her book “Cooking alla Giudia.”

“Caponata is somewhere between a cooked salad and a vegetarian stew that vaguely resembles ratatouille. It’s one of the most ancient preparations of Sicilian cuisine, and it likely has Jewish origins, indicated by the presence of eggplant in the dish. As you slowly cook the eggplant with tomatoes, celery, olives, capers, and herbs, it all turns into a savory, briny mix, one that tastes even better the next day.”

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

3 eggplants

kosher salt

1 1/2 onions

2 celery ribs

5 cherry tomatoes

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves, smashed

1 cup chopped ripe tomatoes or canned diced tomatoes, with their liquid

2 tablespoons mixed black and green olives, pitted

1 tablespoon capers

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

Sunflower or peanut oil for deep-frying

Freshly ground black pepper

5 basil leaves

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Cut the eggplants into 3/4-inch cubes. Transfer them to a colander, salt generously, weigh them down with a plate and let drain for 30 minutes in the kitchen sink.

2. Cut the half onion into very thin slices. Cut the whole onion into chunks roughly the same size as the eggplant cubes. Cut the celery into chunks and cut the cherry tomatoes in half.

3. Pour the olive oil into a large nonstick skillet set over medium heat, add the sliced onion and garlic, and cook for about 3 minutes, until the garlic is slightly browned. Add the celery, tomatoes (both cherry and chopped), olives, capers and the chopped onion to the skillet and cook for 10 minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the vinegar and sugar and cook for another 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

4. Remove the plate covering the eggplant and squeeze the eggplant in the colander to remove any remaining liquid.

5. Pour 1 inch of sunflower or peanut oil into a large saucepan and warm over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You can test the oil by dropping a small piece of food, such as a slice of apple, into it: If it sizzles nicely but doesn’t bubble up too wildly, the oil is ready.

6. Add only as many eggplant cubes to the pan as will fit in a single layer without crowding. Fry until golden, turning often. Remove the eggplant with a slotted spoon and spread out to drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Cook the remaining eggplant cubes in the same manner, adding more oil if needed.

7. Once the fried eggplant has drained, add it to the skillet of vegetables. Season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste, adding a bit of water if the vegetables look dry, and cook the caponata over medium heat, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes.

8. Stir in the basil leaves, remove from the heat and let the caponata cool to room temperature before serving.

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If you go

Where: Online

When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5

Details: Free, but registration is required, tinyurl.com/cookingbjguetta