Under olive trees and against a background of entwined grapevines, kosher cookbook author Jamie Geller and MasterChef Israel winner Tom Franz cooked up a storm last week in the City of David Foundation's shady stone courtyard. The two were filming an episode based on cooking the biblical seven species for Geller's online culinary series, The Joy of Israel. About 50 fans watched in fascination as the aproned Franz concocted Moroccan bread, a complex take on Waldorf salad, and pancakes topped with a white chocolate ganache. Geller, clad in elegant black and a long-tressed wig, tasted the dishes and elicited cheers and whoops from the audience. Recounting how she started her career as cookbook author, Geller recalls that she and her husband “were set up by a shadchan [matchmaker]. So we got married, then he came home and asked, 'What's for dinner?' I said, 'I don't know, you tell me!' I was trained to be the woman Jewish president of the United States, not a balabusta [housewife]. I was supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, anything, but not in the kitchen. He wanted to eat; I also wanted to make him something. So I started cooking. There were a lot of challenges the first year, lots of trial and error. But I learned, and eventually surprised even him. When I went on maternity leave from HBO [where she'd been a program producer], he said, 'Why don't you write a cookbook?' I thought that was a good idea, so I sat there typing away, and that's how I wrote my first cookbook.” Her cookbooks emphasize easy cooking and are studded with casual New-York phrases like “Ya gotta understand….” They appeal to new cooks and to women who want only minimal involvement with cooking technique. Indeed, her first cookbook is titled Quick & Kosher Recipes from the Bride Who Knew Nothing, followed by Quick & Kosher: Meals in Minutes. Her fans in the English-speaking kosher world regard her as a recipe magician, and follow the unfolding of her welldocumented life with a sort of celebrity adoration. Geller makes no bones about her lack of culinary training. “I'd love to take a formal course and learn knife skills,” she says frankly. “What I want to show my readers is, if I can do it, anyone can do it. At demonstrations I always say, everything I'm doing, I'm learning along with you.” Franz's culinary skill and Geller's smooth showmanship created an atmosphere of good humor and fun cooking, easily passing over a couple of hitches like a pancake iron that overheated and began to smoke, or the difficulty they had identifying the white mulberries in a fruit bowl. Geller seemed not to know what they were, and Franz didn't know the name in English (he speaks fluent Hebrew, though). A troupe of schoolchildren touring the City of David facility recognized Franz from TV – easy enough, as the final episode of MasterChef last year was the highest-rated reality TV episode in Israel to date. The film crew started to shoo the excited kids away, but the audience burst into laughter and cheers as the kids waved and shouted to Franz. Franz's personal story is worth noting. Born and brought up in Germany, he left a successful law practice to convert to Judaism and make his home in Israel. “My story started 25 years ago, when I met a delegation of Israeli exchange students in Germany,” he recounts in his German-accented English. “I was 16, meeting Israeli kids my age for the first time. I was so attracted to their joy of life, their mentality. Six months later, I came to Israel to see where my friends live. It was like a homecoming, although very different to where I came from. The light, the smells, the architecture, the people – everything different, and I liked everything. “I kept up my Israeli friendships, through letters, and visited again. At home, I went on and studied law and practiced the profession. But when I came to believe [in a religious faith], I knew that I didn't need to look for a religion. It was going to be Judaism. From the moment I believed in the Creator, I knew. I didn't try different churches or look anywhere else. I bought books, studied Orthodox sites on the Internet,” since there aren't any conversion programs in Germany. “I had this longing – I had to live in Israel, become Jewish,” he says. “It was this feeling inside that I had to follow. So I left everything behind – country, profession, family, friends. Although it was lonely at first, I felt happier than ever in my life.” Franz's rangy, North-European looks contrast strikingly with his wife Dana's olive-skinned Sephardic beauty. It was Dana who signed him up for an audition at the MasterChef competition, and she seems to act as his manager today. They have an infant son and keep an entirely Orthodox home. Asked what his parents think of his conversion, he replies, “Imagine you're traveling around India. After a few years, you go back to your parents and tell them, this is it, I'm going to India to stay and I'm going to become a Buddhist. That's how my parents felt. But they accept my decision now, they think I did the right thing. It helps that I became famous.” Franz's cookbook about the cuisine of Israel, So Shmeckt Israel, is a best-seller in Germany. His absorption experience, he recalls, “was hard at first. I was an outsider for a long time. I didn't go to school here, didn't go to the army or have family here, didn't study in university or work in a big company here. In other words, I didn't have a social network, and it's a very hard country to live in when you're on your own. I now have my wife and son, of course, but when I became a MasterChef, it was suddenly like I'd gone to school and the army with everybody. People make me feel like a brother, everywhere I go.” Franz's German precision in cooking amused the MasterChef Israel judges, but they also appreciated his passion. At the City of David demonstration, he insisted that his Moroccan Frena bread contain “830 ml. of water – exactly!” Later, though, he confesses that good cooking is also a matter of intuition and being able to imagine how different flavors might combine. “I like to put a little sweetness, like silan date honey, into savory foods. I also like to add a little salt to my sweets. One brings out the flavors of the other,” he says. His Frena bread, salmon-topped Waldorf salad in a yogurt/mayonnaise/ orange-juice dressing, and pancakes topped with a decadent whipped white chocolate ganache will appear on Geller's Joy of Kosher website around Rosh Hashana time. Franz's cooking has veered away from the German foods of his childhood, such as stuffed cabbage, to the Mediterranean flavors of the eggplant, grilled sirloin and bell pepper condiment that won him the title of master chef. “Of course I'd like to open a restaurant eventually,” he says. “But right now I'm catering events, giving workshops and demonstrations, traveling and writing. I'm doing my best to make a kiddush Hashem [bring honor to God] by showcasing Israel and Israeli food.”
Neither cookbook author Jamie Geller nor Tom Franz is a trained chef, but they both certainly enjoy what they do.(photo credit: DAVID VAAKNIN)