Jewish celebrity chef Jake Cohen is a busy guy. Jake has written two cookbooks “Jew-ish” (2021) and “I Could Nosh” (2023), and is currently working on a third cookbook set to come out in 2025. He bakes and sells delicious Jewish treats like challah and chocolate rainbow rugelach on Goldbelly. Plus, he serves up mouth-watering content to his 2.5 million followers on Instagram and TikTok.
And now Jake’s list of accomplishments is just getting longer. His first-ever cooking show “Jake Makes It Easy” will debut on Oct. 28!
@jakecohen IM A CABLE GIRL NOW!!!!! Catch my first cooking show Jake Makes it Easy, premeiring Monday 10/28 at 10pm ET on @Home Made Nation 🥹🥹🥹
In “Jake Makes It Easy,” which will air on the Home.Made.Nation block of programming on A&E and FYI, Jake guides the viewer in making simply delicious cuisine. “My goal is to create delicious, reliable recipes that are going to make you an entertaining superstar,” the self-proclaimed king of dinner parties explains in the introduction of the first episode. He adds, cooly, “Let’s make this easy.”
But not only does Jake make the cooking easy, he makes it oh-so-Jewish, beautifully infusing “Jake Makes It Easy” with his own Ashkenazi sensibilities and the Mizrahi sensibility of his husband Alex’s family. “Hello, gorgeous,” Jake begins each episode, an homage to the Funny Girl herself, Barbra Streisand. Jake wears his Jewishness proudly, both metaphorically and physically in his silver Star of David. In the first two episodes alone, Jake prepares an Iraqi salmon dish with a caramelized onion and tomato sauce, his own fudgey date brownie recipe, a large spinach and feta-filled boureka and some baklava.
When making the brownies, Jake explains how a trip to Israel and biting into a rich, lush date at the shuk (0r spice market) inspired the dessert. Meanwhile, in making the salmon, he gives a mini-history lesson in explaining the spice and flavor profile of Iraqi Jewish cuisine. And throughout, Jake credits Alex’s mother Robina and Alex’s aunt in teaching him their Iraqi Jewish recipes and cooking techniques like with the salmon, boureka and baklava. “One of the things I’m most passionate about is preserving family recipes. And I do a lot of work with that with my own family,” Jake shares in the second episode. “But the thing I’ve loved the most is really getting to know my husband’s family and adapting their recipes and preserving their recipes for generations to come, to really have this taste of a cuisine that’s made by these amazing women who have written nothing down.”
According to the press release, other recipes Jake will make on the show are balsamic and soy brisket, challah monkey bread, baked gnocchi and soup-less chicken soup. Yum!
In an interview with social media creator Kate Mackz, Jake recently explained that having a cooking show and teaching others how to cook was a childhood dream of his. Luckily for us viewers, the fruition of Jake’s childhood dream is so thoughtful and beautiful in its Jewish representation — and, of course, just plain delicious.
