Is This Artichoke Kosher? Rome Defends a Classic Jewish Dish.
LADISPOLI, Italy — As women wearing artichoke body paint caressed artichoke sculptures shaped like an owl, a snowman and a cobra at this seaside town’s 68th annual Festival of the Artichoke, Ada Di Porto stood inside a tent, banging a peeled artichoke bud against a white plastic plate.
“Look at this plate! Do you see anything? Any worms?” Ms. Di Porto, a retired teacher at a Roman-Jewish school, asked as she gave a lesson about the preparation, cleanliness and kosherness of the carciofo alla giudia, or Jewish-style artichoke, a dish that for centuries has been the symbol, specialty and cash crop of the 2,000-year-old Jewish community in Rome, about 30 miles southeast.
“If you want,” she volunteered, “I will pound another 3,000 of them.”
Ms. Di Porto can be forgiven for getting worked up. On April 4, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s chief rabbinate had put the kibosh on the Roman delicacy after a packaged version was found to contain worms and other parasites — creatures considered trayf, or nonkosher. The fear was that because the artichoke is fried whole, it cannot be opened and properly cleaned, and so pests can penetrate the petals and infest its tender heart.
“It can’t be kosher,” the head of imports for Israel’s rabbinate, Yitzhak Arazi, told Haaretz. “It’s not our politics, this is Jewish religious law.”
The dictate, coming as it did during Passover, was a bitter herb to swallow for Rome’s Jews. The dish — basically a peeled artichoke, fried in oil and then refried in more oil — dates back to the 16th century, and a stroll down the restaurant row of Rome’s Jewish ghetto shows that it is still very much a main attraction. . .
Not all cities have stood strong. A Milan branch of the kosher restaurant chain Ba’Ghetto heeded the orders from Israel and pulled the artichoke. (“Their rabbi is more rigid,” a waiter at the branch in Rome’s ghetto said with a shrug.) But in the face of a stiff-necked Israeli rabbinate, the city’s Jews reasserted what they say is a basic principle of kosher law: that Jewish communities around the world can decide for themselves whether their fruits and vegetables are cleaned in a way that keeps them kosher.
“There is no pope,” Mr. Pavoncello said.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/dining/jewish-artichokes-rome-kosher.html?
= new reply since forum marked as read
