"Kosher Kettle is a 'must add' to your cookbooks collection. It is extensive in its scope and range, tantalizing in
its wide variety of new and traditional taste sensations and welcoming in its format and easy to follow recipes. Congratulations to Five Star Publications and Sybil Kaplan for this outstanding contribution to the world of Jewish cooking."

-- Kay. K. Pomerantz, author of Come for Cholent, Come for Cholent Again, Come for Everything... but Cholent

That really sparked my interest because it had been about seven years since I had last helped compile and edit a cookbook. I jotted a quick letter off to the publisher in Chandler, Arizona, telling her I could supply her with whatever was lacking in her cookbook from my immense recipe files.

It didn't take long for Linda Radke to pick up the phone and call me. We clicked immediately. The more we talked, the more we realized we were absolutely on the same wavelength as far as cookbooks were concerned. Before long I was offering to go through my files and see what I could contribute.

My next letter yielded a list of 157 possibilities from people who had given me recipes over the years and who were from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds. By fall we had a deal, and I was going to actually compile and edit the cookbook. I was off and typing! Linda was busy soliciting recipes from around the world also, and it became great fun to talk on the phone and share experiences.

With each new idea, we saw again how closely we thought alike in the planning of the cookbook.

By December we had set our deadlines. January has been a difficult time, getting all the last-minute recipes in and getting the cookbook out of my hands and into the mail to Arizona. One tends to get a mother bird-baby bird attachment to the manuscript, and the more I looked at it, the more details I would think of to perfect.

It has really been a delightful fax/phone/letter experience for me to get to know Linda and to try to fulfill her dream with this project. When she asked me how I felt about three percent of the proceeds being donated to MAZON, the Jewish answer to hunger project, I was even more touched by the kind of person Linda must be.

Please note, the recipes have only been tested by the contributors, although the publisher, Linda Radke, and I have tested some in our own kitchens at random.

I hope readers will enjoy meeting the people who contributed the recipes for this book and will "read" the cookbook. Linda knew some of the people and was related to others; I knew some as my friends, relatives and acquaintances.

I want to thank Linda for having faith in me to let me try to fulfill her ideas with this Kosher Kettle.

I want to thank my friend, Marilyn, in Jerusalem, for helping me "track down" a number of my contributors in Israel.

I want to thank my daughters, Shara and Elissa, for listening to all my adventures as I gathered the recipes and readied the cookbook and to say how pleased I am that they, too, love cooking.

I want to thank my husband, Barry, for supporting my enthusiasm for this project by receiving the faxes in his office and transmitting messages to me, for listening to the stories and hearing about recipes, and for tasting some of the recipes as I was inspired to try new ones.

We hope everyone will be as excited to use this kosher international cookbook as we are to produce it.

Sybil Ruth Kaplan