Talk:Knish

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[edit] Chopped liver

The standard knishes at Corky and Lenny's in Cleveland are made of chopped-up liver. Is this unusual? (They also have potato and corned-beef knishes.) Mwalcoff 23:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

As a standard, that's pretty unusual. I don't think there's any doubt that mashed potato knishes are the standard; go to any supermarket freezer and you'll probably only find that variety. Kasha knishes are common in bakeries that make them. And then you start moving into Yiddish (i.e., your chopped liver knishes) and American fillings (i.e., Mrs. Stahl's in Brighton Beach, NY makes not only a legendary potato knish, but also many varieties including spinach, broccoli and cheese).

--Happylobster 21:24, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brooklyn Slang for Knish

As someone who grew up in Brooklyn, when some guys were going out to get some "Knish" they didn't always mean these potato "dumplings." Is this usage common enough to be included? 69.228.240.57 06:24, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mustard?

You eat knishes with mustard? No, you eat knishes with gravy, if anything. At least that's the way we do it in Cleveland -- Mwalcoff 00:13, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to try that sometime! But the classic way to eat a New York City knish is with mustard. Usually the brown Gulden type. Ketchup is okay, too.--Magmagirl 14:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other Variarions?

User 24.193.195.201 has stated that sauerkraut, onions, kasha (buckwheat groats) or cheese are traditional fillings. Growing up in NYC, I have never seen these varieties, only the potatos or ground-meat. Has anybody else seen these other fillings? Dyl 01:23, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I've seen kasha and spinach, other than potato, but that's about it. Sauerkraut sounds like it'd be good though!--Magmagirl 18:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

How in the HELL can a Hot Pocket be counted as a knish?!

Growing up in Brooklyn, there were two MAIN kinds of knish: stuffed with potato, or stuffed with kasha. I LOVE kasha knishes. I can still get them here in Providence, Rhode Island. I've never seen a meat knish in my life. And there's a reason for that: knishes were usually either pareve (that is eatable with meat or with milk) or they were milchike (only eatable with dairy.) No kosher establishment could conscientiously include meat knishes with those. As a child, we would go to Coney Island (I grew up in the fifties and sixties) where there were boardwalk concessions that sold many varieties of knish. Potato and kasha were still the most popular, but in those days, a sweet variety called "cherry-cheese" was also very much the thing. Concessions like this could also be found in Long Beach, Far Rockaway and Jones Beach. At Rockaway, where we spent the summers, my father would go to the stand and come back with boxes filled with many varieties of knishes for all of us on the beach. As a kid, all I wanted was potato. Many of them were reminiscent of cheese blintzes. Thanks for making me remember. A beautiful memory. NaySay 15:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Street vendors

Are there places outside NYC where you can buy knishes on the street? Cleveland and Toronto have large Jewish populations, but there's no such thing as a knish vendor there. I doubt you'd find one in LA, either. -- Mwalcoff 01:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

There are many, many knish vendors all over NYC. Knishes are NY food these days, not just Jewish food. What I wish I could see again before I die are the little private vendors that made their own knishes. There were always a few in front of the original Fortunoff's in East New York, Brooklyn. I was a very small child. Those were the real, old-world, greasy round knishes, with rolled edges. The commercial kind sold by vendors today are all the same. When there was variety, you really tasted some remarkable and individual knishes. NaySay 15:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Origins?

The article places home of the knishes in Eastern Europe. I've travelled widely in eastern Europe and never encountered anything vaguely similar to the New York knish. I suppose that knishes might have been consumed exclusively by eastern european Jews and thus left no mark on the host culture. But that hardly seem likely, as everywhere I've ever been, ethnic food tends to be quickly integrated in the host culture independently of the status or level of integration of the ethnic group - a point perhaps worthy sociological study. Returning to the question of origins, I suppose that the name knish sounds a bit like German Knödel. Yet the Knödel is homogeneous and in all variations lacks a bread crust. I was hoping to come across a knish expert who could enlighten my on the question of origins.. --Philopedia (talk) 16:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The knish is part of the large blin family, first cousin to the blintz. Why does that seem odd? NaySay (talk) 19:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I know blini as a kind of crepe. Never in a thousand years would it occur to me to think of blini as a precursor to a knish. This explanation also makes no account for where the knish first evolved (from blini). Could the knish, in fact, be a native New Yorker? And where did the name come from?
Thanks for taking an interest! --Philopedia (talk) 19:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Blinis aren't actually like crepes, because they have no eggs. They are more like slightly risen thin flour tortillas. In the case of knishes, there is no leavening added to the blin, which is rolled out strudel-thin. The dough is then wrapped around a hunk of filling and either fried or baked. Actually, except for the fact that strudel is pulled rather than rolled, a strudel is a good analogy, and may also be from the blin family originally. As for being native to New York, no they're not. I remember all the elderly "old-country" street vendors from my childhood who didn't even speak English. I don't know where the word knish came from, but it may be one of those Yiddish transliterations of Russian which pepper the Yiddish language or some version of knoedel. I just don't know. NaySay 72.221.71.74 (talk) 20:36, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Close relatives

The article proposes various ethnic foods as related to the knish. Personally, I don't find this convincing, and I suspect that anyone who has consumed an empanada (Argentinian, Colombian or Bolivian varieties - all of which are usually served with a sauce of some kind) would agree with me. True, the candidate relatives all represent warm, hand sized, bread wrapped, tasty tidbit. But then, practically every ethnic group has bread: The surprising thing is that there are group who don't come up with some dish of the sort. In the absence of a geneological analysis, my proposal is to delete the reference to related products..

--Philopedia (talk) 16:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I came onto this discussion page to see how the knish-o-centric-ness of the phrase "Many cultures have variations" was addressed. As far as I know, EVERY culture in the world has a meat-stuffed-in-dough dish, and to call those "variations" of a knish is laughable. An eggroll is not a knish, nor is a calzone. Both are far older than the knish historically. We just need to rewrite that whole paragraph to identify that a knish is a trivially minor and regional variation of a universal dish, not the other way around. And, for that matter, being from a highly Jewish part of San Francisco and having never seen a knish at a deli, it should be rephrased that it is not "found in urban areas with highly jewish populations" to "found in some Jewish parts of New York." End of day, I've had far more piroshkis and bagel dogs than knishes. --Mrcolj (talk) 19:20, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I originally put in that paragraph as I thought some people wouldn't be familiar with the food item, so some examples from other cultures might help as a reference. I never phrased the paragraph to denote that those other foods are variations of knishes. I think I just listed Samosas and the Jamaican meat patty as those have similar pastry-like coverings. Other editors added a whole bunch of other foods which I don't feel at that similar at all. For example, the shell of a Calzone (bready) is pretty different from that of a knish. The fact that one commentator thinks knishes are bread-covered and another commentator "never seen a knish at a deli" makes my point about people not being familiar with this food item. Dyl (talk) 07:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)