Hanukkah’s New Tastes, Still Rooted in Tradition

NOAH BERNAMOFF was eating a smoked meat sandwich as he talked latkes at the Mile End Deli in Brooklyn. More specifically, he argued for the pancake’s status as the iconic food of Hanukkah.

Sure, there are doughnuts if you’re from Israel, and maybe fried chicken in Italy. But in general, Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors settled in middle or northern Europe, gravitate toward the potato.

“For Hanukkah, that’s what people do,” said Mr. Bernamoff, who owns Mile End and its satellite sandwich shop in Manhattan with his wife, Rae. “It’s a given.”

His mother made them every year, slathered with homemade applesauce (never sour cream). I top mine with smoked salmon, frying up batches upon batches of the lovely, crisp-edged pancakes that are just greasy enough.

But every year I wonder: Is there something different I can make that still says Hanukkah?

Two new excellent cookbooks can help answer that question: “The Mile End Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter, 2012), which the Bernamoffs co-wrote, and “Jerusalem” (Ten Speed, 2012), by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.