In the Kitchen with the Grande Dame of Jewish Cooking

The cover of “My Life in Recipes” features a photo of a large, homemade-looking challah—braided but slightly misshapen, and splitting at the seams—on a well-worn wooden cutting board, and Nathan’s fingers, poised to tear off the end of the loaf. “My kids said, ‘Mom, this isn’t a beautiful challah!’ ” she told me one Thursday morning a few weeks ago, in her kitchen in D.C. Nathan, who is eighty-one, with sturdy, angular features and a coif of dark curls, was more concerned with her hands. “So old!” she said. But her editor had reassured her, insisting, “Those are weathered hands, that have made a lot of challah.” That morning, Nathan had prepared the dough for still more, a dome with a tacky surface now rising in a large bowl. Working carefully, she made two loaves, one a traditional six-strand plait, and the other in the style of pull-apart monkey bread, with round balls nestled together in a cake pan.