recipes | Jenn Hall

Edible Jersey: Modern Jewish Baking with Shannon Sarna

November 22, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Jewish baked goods have brought families together around the table for centuries. In food writer and editor Shannon Sarna’s childhood home, that tradition came with Italian accents. Yiddish quips and rugelach mixed with her mother’s Christmas cookies. The December holidays overlapped. Dad, a musician, was an early Food Network adopter, cooking dinners for his kids on weeknights. Mom was in musical theater, whipping up meatballs on weekends. Mom also was an avid home baker, working steadily through a beloved 1975 […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: baking, interviews, recipes

Edible Jersey: Drinking slow with The Farm and The Fisherman’s Danny Childs

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

The story of a cocktail, and of the ingredients that create its internal harmony, is one of nature and agriculture. Distillation and fermentation stop ingredients in time, the elements of season and place suspended. The spirit captures what the earth provides so that it might be used to heal, to entertain or to console. Those who respect that history tap into a power that enables them to tell new stories about their own time and region. It’s no surprise, then, that […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: interviews, recipes

Paste Food: The Casserole Stands Eternal

June 12, 2017 by jennhallwrites

This has been a challenging, no good, difficult 2017. Sure, sure, there has been positivity along the way. (Its persistence is shocking, isn’t it?) Yet there have been plenty of just-plain-tough days, too. And when things are low, when they come just shy of bottoming out, there is a dish I return to for solace: The Casserole. Spoken aloud, the words are an incantation. They bring my best friends into the kitchen when I’m pushing against the empty, a lifeboat […]

Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: essays, recipes

Spoonful: When We Gather – Savoring Armenia in L.A. (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

March 13, 2017 by jennhallwrites

WINNER OF A 2018 ASSOCIATION OF FOOD JOURNALISTS AWARD: BEST FOOD COLUMN Ani Mahserejian likes to tell a tale about her squash soup, a classic Armenian wedding dish from Marash, where her maternal grandparents were raised. “One day,” Ani begins, “there was a wedding, and they made this soup. Everyone ate it, not realizing that they’d left nothing for the groom. Angered when he saw that none was left, he said: ‘Whoever ate the soup, let him go sleep with […]

Categories: food & drink, when we gather • Tags: recipes, when we gather

Spoonful: When We Gather – Greek Feast with the Kafkalas Family (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

January 18, 2017 by jennhallwrites

WINNER OF A 2018 ASSOCIATION OF FOOD JOURNALISTS AWARD: BEST FOOD COLUMN In certain families, during particular meals, one senses the presence of ancestral spirits. It’s an echo rendered in texture and spice, in dialogue and flavor. Traditional recipes are a form of communion between past and present. When Nick and Carol Kafkalas gather with their two sons for dinner in their white-tiled New Jersey home – a nightly ritual even now that Anthony and Nick Jr. are in their twenties – there […]

Categories: food & drink, when we gather • Tags: recipes, when we gather

Spoonful: When We Gather – Dinner with Abi and Mahesh (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

WINNER OF A 2018 ASSOCIATION OF FOOD JOURNALISTS AWARD: BEST FOOD COLUMN When dinner is nearly ready, Abigail Boehm beckons her granddaughter Tavia to the dining room. The precocious eight-year-old girl climbs atop the table crafted by Abi’s father from antique floorboards. White candlesticks go into candelabras adorned with intricate patterns. Then together, grandmother and child light the wicks. Read more… Published December 7, 2016

Categories: food & drink, when we gather • Tags: recipes, when we gather

Remedy Quarterly: Dad’s Culinary Playground

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

Issue 21: Work + Play : Remedy Quarterly We hear the sound of Dad’s cooking first. Forks and knives tremble in a metallic clamor, grabbed in fistfuls from their segmented homes. Pots and pans scream as they’re pulled from cabinets, as they’re Tetris-ed out from precarious piles. Forks and knives tremble in a metallic clamor, grabbed in fistfuls from their segmented homes. Pots and pans scream as they’re pulled from cabinets, as they’re tetrised out from precarious piles. Water gurgles […]

Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: baking, essays, recipes

Jenn Hall

2019 Best American Food Writing Notable.

Tag: recipes

Edible Jersey: Modern Jewish Baking with Shannon Sarna

Edible Jersey: Drinking slow with The Farm and The Fisherman’s Danny Childs

Paste Food: The Casserole Stands Eternal

Spoonful: When We Gather – Savoring Armenia in L.A. (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

Spoonful: When We Gather – Greek Feast with the Kafkalas Family (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

Spoonful: When We Gather – Dinner with Abi and Mahesh (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

Remedy Quarterly: Dad’s Culinary Playground