🥔 Order Up! A Conversation with Micah Siva, Modern Jewish Chef, Cookbook Author, and Mom of One (Plus a Dog)
How a vegetarian dietitian and chef is rewriting Jewish food for modern families
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You Don’t Have to Be Vegetarian to Eat a Vegetarian Meal with Micah Siva
Micah Siva didn’t set out to write a Jewish vegetarian cookbook, Nosh: Plant-forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine [Bookshop, Amazon]. For years after she stopped eating meat at 12, she did what a lot of young people do when their food choices put them slightly outside the family norm — she ate the sides, said she was fine, and showed up anyway. It worked. Until it didn’t.
The shift happened in 2018, in a kitchen in London, the day her grandmother died. Micah couldn’t get home for the burial. Her mom told her to do something that would have brought her grandmother joy. So she made kreplach — the little soup dumplings the two of them had folded together for years. And somewhere in that process, hands in dough, grief in her chest, she realized she’d been present at her family’s table but never fully part of it. She wanted to change that. Not just for herself, but for anyone navigating the space between who they are and what they eat.
Micah is a registered dietitian, chef, cookbook author, recipe developer, and mom to a two-year-old son in the Chicago area. Her work lives at the intersection of Jewish food, vegetarian cooking, and the real-life chaos of feeding a family. She’s funny and honest about all of it — the picky toddler who refuses pasta in every form, the triaging-the-fridge approach to weeknight dinners, the three-cookies-before-bed nights that just happen sometimes.
In this conversation, Micah talks about: Growing up in a food-centered Jewish family where holidays were really just excuses to eat together; Feeding a picky toddler as a dietitian and chef (spoiler: expertise doesn’t make it easier); Her approach to modernizing traditional Jewish recipes by replicating the feeling, not the exact dish
What comes through most clearly is that Micah’s food isn’t about performance or preservation for its own sake. It’s about making sure there’s room at the table — for people who eat differently, for traditions that need to bend to survive, and for the imperfect, real-life meals that hold families together. You can also follow Micah on Substack and on Instagram.
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A Conversation with Micah Siva, Modern Jewish Cookbook Author
Introduce Yourself: I’m Micah Siva. I’m a registered dietitian, chef, cookbook author, recipe developer, and food photographer. I have a two-year-old son, a five-year-old dog, and a husband!
I work with brands and magazines, teach cooking classes across the U.S., and create recipes and food content from my home outside Chicago. Like many parents who work in food, my professional and family lives overlap constantly. Cooking, teaching, photographing food, and feeding my family all exist in the same rhythm of everyday life.
When you think back to your childhood, what stands out most about how your family gathered around food?
I don’t know if I have memories that don’t involve food. I grew up in a big Jewish family where most gatherings centered around meals. We were fairly secular but celebrated the major holidays, and those celebrations were always about being together.
Most meals happened at my mom’s or my grandmother’s house, and planning them started months in advance. There were always conversations about what we would cook and what could be made ahead. My dad used to tease my mom for how much she loved planning those meals. I teased her too, until I realized I had become exactly the same person!
Our house had an open-door policy. If I invited a friend to dinner at six, they were welcome at the table at 6:01. There was always plenty of food. Eating dinner together wasn’t optional in our house. I had to be home for it. Many of my friends grew up eating on the go, but in my house dinner meant sitting down together, every night.
What led you to focus your work on Jewish vegetarian food?
When I stopped eating meat it surprised my family. I grew up in Calgary, Alberta — very much cattle country — and vegetarian options were limited. At family gatherings many dishes revolved around meat, so I often just ate the sides.
The turning point came in 2018 when my husband and I were living in the UK. My grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away suddenly. Because of the timing and Jewish burial customs, I couldn’t make it home for the funeral. When my mom told me about her death, I asked how I was supposed to mourn from so far away. She told me to do something my grandmother and I loved doing together.
So I made kreplach. As I folded the dumplings, I realized I felt disconnected from part of my identity. I was present at family meals, but I wasn’t eating the same foods. That was the moment I decided to write a vegetarian Jewish cookbook.
Later, seeing a rise in antisemitism after we moved to the U.S. reinforced my desire to celebrate Jewish culture through food. Food can be a joyful way to share identity.
When you modernize traditional Jewish recipes, how do you keep their history and meaning intact?
The first step is understanding the history of the dish. Many Jewish foods developed because of circumstance — ingredients weren’t available, communities were moving, or families were cooking with limited resources.
Once I understand that context, I look at multiple versions of the recipe to find the common elements. What flavors are always there? What textures define it? My goal isn’t to replicate the dish exactly. It’s to recreate the experience of eating it.
Sometimes that means using ingredients our grandparents didn’t have access to. I’m always clear that my recipes are modern interpretations. And I try to make them achievable. If a recipe feels too intimidating to cook at home, I haven’t done my job.
Are there dishes from your childhood that you find yourself recreating now for your own family?
Yes and no. I grew up in the 90s, so some of the foods I remember aren’t things I would necessarily eat now. I also stopped eating meat when I was twelve, which changed how I approach many traditional dishes.
But the memories are still there. When we visited my grandparents, my grandmother always had hot chicken schnitzel ready the moment we walked in. Now I make a version with tofu. During the holidays my grandmother and I made kreplach together — little dumplings for soup. My son is still too young to really help, but he’ll poke the dough or roll it with me, which feels like the start of passing that tradition along.
Sometimes it’s less about recreating the exact dish and more about recreating the structure of the meal. My mom always served dinner with a protein, a starch, a cooked vegetable, and a raw vegetable. I do the exact same thing now. And one thing that definitely carried over from my childhood is that dessert is non-negotiable.
Many parents feel overwhelmed trying to make balanced meals every night. How do you think about building a simple family dinner in real life?
When I have time, I try to build a meal the way my own mom did with a protein, starch, cooked veg, raw veg. But Monday through Thursday, I'm really focused on at least three things: a protein, a veg, and a starch.
I usually start with the protein. Even as a vegetarian, that’s the anchor of dinner. For us it might be tofu, beans, tempeh, eggs, or something made with chickpea flour.
Then I look at what needs to be used in the fridge. I call it triaging the fridge. Whatever vegetables are starting to wilt usually become a salad or get roasted on a sheet pan. We all buy vegetables with good intentions, and sometimes they slowly decline in the crisper drawer. Roasting them with spices is often the easiest way to save them.
A lot of parents feel tension between wanting meals to be healthy and wanting their kids to actually eat them. How do you approach that balance with your son?
People assume the son of a recipe developer must be the easiest eater in the world. He’s not! He’s actually very picky. For example, he refuses pasta. I’ve tried everything — homemade pasta, macaroni and cheese, ravioli. He won’t touch it.
So when I make his plate, I always include at least one thing I know he likes. For him that’s usually meatballs. He eats meat even though I don’t, and so I make them in batches and freeze them for him. I also offer a cooked vegetable and a raw vegetable. For starches he’s particular, but he likes certain kinds of rice and sweet potatoes.
Freezing small portions helps a lot. I use trays that freeze two-ounce servings so I can quickly add something familiar to his plate. My goal is that he sits at the table with us. If he eats the salad, great. If he eats a cookie, that’s okay too. Tomorrow is another meal.
Did becoming a mother change how you think about nutrition or recipe development?
It changed almost everything. Before kids, everything looks neat and logical on paper. But once you’re feeding a real child, you realize how unpredictable eating can be. Having a background in dietetics actually helps me relax more. I know that if my son doesn’t eat much today, he’ll probably make up for it tomorrow or the next day.
I’m also very aware of the language we use around food. Even young kids absorb those messages, so I’m careful about how I talk about food and eating around him.
Motherhood also changed how I write recipes. My first cookbook was written before I was pregnant; I found out I was pregnant the week I submitted my cookbook manuscript. Now I’m much more aware of time. I recommend shortcuts and halfway-homemade solutions. Before my son was born I thought I had very little free time. Now I realize how much time I actually had!
For families who want to pass down culture and traditions through food, what matters most?
Traditions have to adapt if they’re going to survive. If a dish becomes something you dread making, you won’t keep making it. I often say the best way to make a traditional dish is simply the way that gets it on the table. If that means buying pre-made crepes for blintzes, that’s the right way.
Some years you might make homemade latkes. Other years you might buy them frozen. What matters is that you’re eating together and sharing the story behind the dish.
What do you hope your son absorbs about food and identity just by growing up in your kitchen?
I hope he learns to love food and understands the value of feeding people. More than anything, I want him to know how to feed himself and feel confident in the kitchen.
When I was growing up, I was often the only Jewish kid in my class. I would bring Jewish foods to share with friends as a way to help people understand where I came from. Food can be a powerful bridge between cultures.
And someday, when I visit his house, I hope he tells me to sit down while he makes dinner.
Who’s Buckwheat?
During the later days of COVID, my sister was pregnant with the first niece or nephew in my family. She’s in an interfaith marriage — and my husband and I are her kid’s only Jewish aunt and uncle. I really wanted to embrace that role, but I was also aware that my brother-in-law didn’t grow up with a lot of these foods or traditions. We were looking for a book that was Jewish culturally, talked about food, and was for little kids. We didn’t find anything that checked those boxes.
So as a passion project, we started putting together a little counting book that follows our dog Buckwheat: 1, 2, 3, Nosh with Me. It turned into an actual book, which was amazing. It’s been a nice way to share these concepts with my son, but also with families where maybe it’s an interfaith couple, or just people who want to learn about another culture through things they might already know — bagels, latkes, sufganiyot, challah. Sharing the cultural foods without anything necessarily religious felt important to me.
What’s one cooking skill every home cook should work on?
Knife skills. Anyone who feels comfortable cutting is going to be a much more confident cook, because that’s usually the first step of any recipe.