PHOTO: Sonya Sanford's babka recipe will be published for the first time in her debut cookbook "Braids: Recipes From My Pacific Northwest Jewish Kitchen." (Courtesy Sonya Sanford)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review 
After 15 years of culinary work, including opening and running Beetroot Market and Deli here in Portland, Sonya Sanford is fulfilling a childhood dream with the upcoming release of “Braids: Recipes from my Pacific Northwest Jewish kitchen.” 
“I started collecting cookbooks at a very young age,” Sanford said. “It has been a lifelong dream to write and publish a cookbook.”
The plan started taking shape in late 2020, when the pandemic had closed Beetroot for good and Sanford was looking for a way to share the food she loved and build a sense of Jewish community without the physical space of a restaurant. 
“I created the deli wanting to create Jewish community, wanting to share recipes that were part of my life and part of my family that made people feel comfortable, comforted and connected to each other,” she said.
Sanford describes the book as something of a “greatest hits” collection of her favorite recipes. Her challah recipe, a decade in the making, along with the babka and matzo ball soup that were served at Beetroot are all included, marking the first occasion they’ve been published in any form. While Sanford’s work is rooted in the staples of Jewish deli foods, she’s brought in the culinary hallmarks of the Pacific Northwest to interpret old classics in a new way. Savory wild mushroom blintzes and marionberry rugelach are just a couple examples.
“One of the things in the Northwest is there’s this genuine interest in freshness, seasonality, a kind of lightness that doesn’t always exist in Ashkenazi. Jewish food,” she said. “So things are made with seasonal ingredients; when you eat them, you feel nourished and light and you know don’t have to take a nap.”
Sanford’s book is self-published – a step she took to help this work feel authentically hers. She’s looking forward to making more books and is open to conventional publishing channels for those work, but because this book was the product of a transitory time in Sanford’s life following the closing of Beetroot – a “schmita period,” she called it, using the Hebrew word for the year of every seven in which land was allowed to lie fallow in Temple times.
“I had to let everything go, I had to kind of stop everything and see what could emerge, doing it on my own terms, in my real voice,” Sanford said. “Authentically, it just felt like the natural way to go for this project.”
Connection was a motivating factor in the opening of Beetroot, and Sanford has already seen some of the ways recipes connect people. Sanford recalled a woman in Italy whom she knew exclusively through Instagram, where the woman sometimes shares pictures of food she made with Sanford’s recipes. She messaged last week, checking in after the events of Simchat Torah
“She spent all weekend in her kitchen filling her freezer and how many of the recipes were ones that I had shared with her and how much comfort that brought her,” Sanford recalled. “And I think that’s the reason we do this, to be able to connect through shared food across the ocean and feel like you know each other, like there’s a bond there.”
“In Judaism. I think, you know, we’re scattered all over the world,” Sanford continued. “So much of our history has been displacement and lost family members and all of that. This thing ties us together. These recipes are more than just food. They’re stories.”
“Braids” will be available for pre-order at sonyasanford.com and should ship in time for Hanukkah.