L ifestyle /C ulture
Rack of Lamb Dinner
F O OD
KERI WHITE | JE COLUMNIST
the menu suggestions below.

The key is to not overwhelm
the lamb; it is rich and flavorful
and, as a result, you don’t want
to “gild the lily.”
A whole rack for two people
may seem like a large portion,
but the chops are quite small
and there is a good bit of bone
and fat on each rack. You could
certainly stretch this to three
servings with ample sides and
some appetizers or a starter
course, especially if your guests
are not huge eaters.

RACK OF LAMB is a relatively
simple thing to prepare —
marinate it, or not, and roast
it at a high temperature for a
short time.

It is delicious, decadent and
makes a beautiful presenta-
tion, so it is an ideal meal for
a holiday or special occasion.

We made this for New Year’s
Eve. It was a special meal, a
bit of a splurge, but as it was
dinner à deux, we justified the
extravagance. I served “smashed” potatoes RACK OF LAMB
with the lamb, and an arugu- Serves 2 generously
la-avocado salad dressed with a
balsamic vinaigrette, but there
1 rack of lamb (8 chops)
are any number of sides and
combos that would comple-
Marinade: ment this meal nicely — see
2 cloves garlic
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20 JANUARY 28, 2021
2 tablespoons Dijon
mustard 1 teaspoon wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
Generous pinch of salt
Generous grinding black
pepper ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
Puree all the marinade
ingredients in a blender until
smooth. Using a sharp knife,
make hash marks in the fat
side of the lamb. Do not
permeate the meat; just score
the fat. Pour the marinade over
the lamb in a zipper bag or
sealable container and allow it
to marinate for several hours.

Before roasting, bring the lamb
to room temperature.

Heat your oven to 450 F.

Place the lamb in a baking
dish, rounded side facing up,
and pour the marinade over it.

Roast the lamb for 25 minutes
to an internal temperature of
125 degrees for medium-rare
meat. (Beyond medium lamb
will be tough and gamey, so
it’s best to stop there.) Allow
the lamb to rest for 10 minutes
under the foil, and then carve it
into chops and serve.

To round out the menu,
consider any of the following
side dishes — feel free to mix
and match to your taste and
the contents of your pantry:
Roasted root vegetables
Steamed green beans with
lemon zest
Rice pilaf
Sautéed Swiss chard (or
other leafy green)
Mashed potatoes
Baby kale salad with citrus
vinaigrette Garlic bread
Roasted cabbage
Steamed peas and carrots
Couscous, quinoa, barley,
groats or farro with lemon
zest and chopped fresh
herbs Shaved Brussels sprout salad
Mashed sweet potatoes
Chopped Israeli salad
JEWISH EXPONENT
Photos by Keri White
Lemon and chili flake-roasted
broccoli Spaghetti squash
Oven-roasted tomatoes
For dessert, we had some
dark chocolate bark laced with
dried cherries and salted pista-
chios, again sticking with the
“less is more” theme. Any type
of dark chocolate treat delivers
a nice endnote to the lamb —
it packs a lot of flavor, is not
overly sweet and a little goes a
long way.

Consider chocolate-covered
pretzels, jellies or just plain
chocolate bars. If that is not
to your taste, look to citrusy
flavors such as a lemon chiffon,
a sponge cake infused with
orange or lemon syrup, or even
candied orange or grapefruit.

Another dessert option:
fruit sorbets. The refreshing
palate cleanse of a raspberry or
mango sorbet is an ideal finish
to the rich meal.

Fresh fruit is always an
option, but it can sometimes
be a bit of a challenge to find
top-notch fruit in the dead of
winter. If so, a poached pear or
a baked apple would do nicely
here. Poaching the fruit in
cinnamon and sugar-infused
wine or baking it with nutmeg
and maple syrup or honey can
mask less-than-ideal textures
as apple and pear seasons wane
and the fruit is not fresh quite
off the tree.

Finally, a simple wafer
or spiced cookies, either
homemade or bought, is
another sound choice to cap
this meal. The key is to avoid
heavy desserts that compete
with the lamb, which is the star
of the show. l
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L ifestyle /C ulture
Linguist Asks: Do You Speak Jewish?
NG !
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SI and find commonalities, which
is how historical linguists deter-
mine what family a language
belongs to,” Maiben said.

But what makes a language
other than Hebrew Jewish?
Maiben said Judaic languages
have several traits in common.

Most have a non-Jewish
base language that provides
grammatical structure while
also incorporating Hebrew or
Aramaic vocabulary. There are
usually influences from other
Jewish languages, a Hebrew or
Aramaic writing system, and
distinct vowel pronunciations.

Jewish languages consist not
only of grammar and vocabulary
but of discourse style. The practice
of overlapping speech, or multiple
people speaking at once, is a habit
that may seem familiar to anyone
who has sat around a Jewish
family dinner table, regardless
of nationality or language. This
discourse style is distinct from
interrupting, because it consists
of actively building on ideas
rather than going off on different
tangents. Maiben attributed
this practice to the discussion
and debate styles of ancient
Torah study, as well as chanting
patterns in synagogue prayer.

Jewish languages flour-
ished in the Diaspora, from
Judeo-Malayalam in India to
Judeo-Arabic in the Middle East.

Many words from non-Jewish
base languages made their way
into their Jewish variants and
later into English. In the Persian
Empire, where Jews spoke
variations of Persian like Judeo-
Shirazi and Judeo-Golpaygani,
the Old Persian word for garden,
pardis, became the base of the
Hebrew word for orchard and
the English word paradise.

spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
EN OP
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Courtesy of the
British Library
vocabulary, or use Yiddish and
Hebrew grammar structures
while speaking English, like
saying “make a party” rather
than “have a party.”
“Even people who are not in
the Orthodox community and
not in the camp world, but just
within the Jewish community as
a whole, use a ton of Hebrew and
Yiddish words in their vocabu-
laries,” she said. l
S EL
OD M
IF SOMEONE ASKED you
to name a Jewish language,
Hebrew, Yiddish or Ladino
would likely be the first few
that came to mind. But what
about Ge’ez, Judeo-Greek or
Judeo-Golpaygani? These are just some of the
Judaic languages used by global
Jewish populations throughout
history, according to Dina
Maiben. The assistant director
of Gratz Advance and Hebrew
programs at Gratz College
discussed the evolution of these
languages for Gratz’s Jan. 19
continuing education webinar
“Do You Speak Jewish?”
During her talk, Maiben
refuted a common claim about
Hebrew. “There are people that will
tell you that Hebrew was a dead
language, that it died sometime
around the first or second
century of the Common Era. But
I don’t believe that at all, because
the definition of a dead language
is a language that doesn’t create
new words. And yet, in every
single period of its existence,
Hebrew was generating new
terminology,” she said.

This was because Jews were
scattered throughout the world,
and the only language they shared
was Hebrew. For much of the
Middle Ages, scholars wrote to
each other in Hebrew because it
was a common tongue they could
be sure other Jewish communities
would have access to.

Maiben explained that
Hebrew itself did not exist in a
vacuum and was created from
other languages that came before
it. Scholars call its main linguistic
ancestor Proto-Semitic, which is
the parent language of all Semitic
languages, including Hebrew,
Babylonian, Assyrian and Arabic.

“We don’t have anything
written in Proto-Semitic. We
have no idea what the language
was like, except we can sift
through all of its descendants
Medieval Judeo-
Persian manuscript
languages. Around the same
time, Judeo-German, or Yiddish,
grew into two distinct variants,
Eastern European Galicianer
and Western European Litvak.

Semitic and Hebrew words
comprise up to 25% of the lexicon.

Maiben argued that there is
also a version of Judeo-English
evolving primarily in Orthodox
communities and Jewish summer
camps in the United States today.

Speakers will often use English
grammar structures interspersed
with Yiddish and Hebrew
LE A
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
In central Asia and parts
of China, Jews spoke another
Persian dialect, Judeo-Hamedani.

In Africa, Ethiopian Jews wrote
in the ancient Semitic language
Ge’ez. In Europe, Romaniote
Jews spoke Judeo-Greek from the
rise of the Byzantine Empire to
the 1940s, when the Holocaust
drove its speakers to the brink
of extinction.

Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino,
developed in the medieval era
with additional influences from
Arabic, Latin and Romance
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