Reprinted from Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen by Leah Koenig. Copyright © 2023 by Leah Koenig. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2023 by Kristin Teig
This story is brought to you by SAVEUR Cookbook Club, our passionate community of food-loving readers from around the globe celebrating our favorite authors and recipes. Join us as we cook through a new book every month, and share your food pics and vids on social media with the hashtags #SAVEURCookbookClub and #EatTheWorld.
When I asked Leah Koenig to take me on a virtual walk down the Via del Portico d’Ottavia, a single city block in Rome, I could tell even via our choppy video connection that her eyes lit up with delight. Koenig has spent the last three-plus years of her career steeped in the intricacies of Roman Jewish cuisine, and in the course of her research, she’s come to understand this street not only in its bustling present-day activities, but also in its past struggles. The street once functioned as the demarcating line around the Jewish Ghetto, in which the Jewish community of Rome was forced to live by papal decree from 1555 to 1849. “During that period it resembled the worst of conditions,” Koenig said, “Super-cramped and super-dark. The structures were built slip-shod, with no room to expand horizontally, so there was no sunlight.” Yet Koenig notes that despite the hardships of daily life in the
