cultures over time. For example, Balkan Jewish cuisine contains both Ashkenazi/European and Sephardic-Turkish influences, as this part of Europe (up to the borders of present-day Austria and Poland) was for a time part of the Ottoman Empire. Since the rise of Ashkenazi Jewish migration to 19th-century Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel, increased contact between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews has led to a rising importance of Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine amongst Jews of all ethnicities. Ashkenazi While Ashkenazi cuisine as it is known today is largely based within the context of American-Jewish and Ashkenazi-Israeli food, much of the culinary tradition of Ashkenazi Jews springs from Central and Eastern Europe, and a good part of that from China. Jordan Paper writes:- For many Americans, Baltic and Eastern European food is the epitome of Jewish cuisine, although any ordinary restaurant in Poland, the Ukraine, or northwestern Russia, aside from offering pork and mixing meat and dairy, would by that criterion be Jewish. Some of these foods have become part of festival rituals, such as latkes (potato pancakes) during Hanukkah. But unless the Maccabees were in Peru nearly two thousand years before the Spanish arrived, latkes are a relatively recent northeastern European addition to the festivities. The influence of modern Israel on contemporary North American Jewish consciousness has meant that the typical foods of the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores are now also considered Jewish. By that logic, the cuisine of central China should be understood as Jewish also... Actually many so-called Ashkenazi Jewish dishes – such as knishes (Chinese: baozi), kreplach (hundun), blintzes (chunjuian), piroshki (zhengjaio), and many noodle preparations-are northern Chinese. They were brought to Poland and the Ukraine in the thirteenth century by the invading Mongol army, which had chefs, as well as military technicians, from northern China.' After having been expelled from Western Europe in the Middle Ages, Jews were forced to live in poverty and thus were limited in terms of ingredients. Dishes were made with fewer components; they were not heavily spiced and ingredients that were more flavorful had to be used sparingly. This is often why some dishes in Ashkenazic cuisine are known for being blander than dishes in Sephardic or Mizrahi cuisine. The cuisine is based largely on ingredients that were affordable for the historically poor Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Europe, often composed of ingredients that were readily available in Europe