Archive for March, 2007
Peter Berley’s Seder: seasonal and traditional
With a week to go, you’re finalizing the seder menu. There are the standbys, tried and true family favorites, but there is also the need to shake things up, to try something new and different — because it’s spring, because seasonality and local ingredients matter more than ever, and because the earth is finally turning toward the sun and it is a time for growth.
Peter Berley, jcarrot’s James Beard Award-winning chef-blogger and author of the forthcoming The Flexitarian Table, plans an elegant holiday dinner in which symbolic seder items such as bitter greens, horseradish and lamb shank are cleverly worked into the meal itself.
Peter Berley’s Passover Menu
Salad of Bitter Greens with Lemon-Mustard Vinaigrette
Poached Salmon with Horseradish and Crème Fraiche
Wine Braised Lamb Shanks with Orange and Figs
Roasted Asparagus with Garlic
Braised Carrots with Olives and Mint
Bittersweet Chocolate Cake
3 Comments »Have a healthy, sustainable Passover!
The beginning of Passover is just one week away. While you’re searching your house for chametz, and polishing your silverware for the seder, check out Hazon’s list of:
Healthy, Sustainable Passover Ideas
You’ll find tips to green your chametz search, add a creative, sustainable twist to your seder, and serve a seder meal that is delicious, healthy, and good for the earth.
We’ve also compiled ideas for Getting Rid of Chametz - both the crumbs behind the blender, and the superfluities of life.
And if you’re looking for a good, organic Kosher for Passover wine, check out The Jew and the Carrot’s Kosher organic wine list.
This year, may your Passover be filled with warmth, family, and the renewed blessing of spring.
Season Extension, The Festival of Spring, and Leviticus
This past Monday I spent the morning planting tomatoes in warm fertile soil inside a heated greenhouse. It was cold outside and there was over a foot of snow on the ground, but I was wearing a t-shirt and sweating as I squatted down and planted 11 plants in each bed (at precise staggered 2 foot intervals). The previous Sunday I was wearing a t-shirt outdoors and planting root crops (carrots and beets interplanted with radishes to mark the rows) in the raised and plastic covered garden beds in the garden at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. This is the first year that I’ve ever had the privilege to be planting in soil so early in the season.
Calling all Junior high and High school students…
*OU KOSHER FOOD WEEK*
*EAT KOSHER.* THE MOST HEAVENLY DIET ON EARTH.
*April 29-May 5, 2007*
A project of OU Kosher - the world’s most recognized and trusted kosher symbol.
For more information, contact Rabbi Eliyahu Safran at safrane@ou.org.
Look for recipes, information on how to keep kosher, kosher information hotline, talks, lectures, shiurim on kashrut, and loads of programs on www.oukosher.org.
*Announcing an Essay Contest **For Grades 4-12*
Prizes! $50 gift certificates to Eichlers.com.
Time Out for vegetables
This week’s Time Out New York features an article about the growth Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) in New York City. Quoting Paula Lukats, CSA in NYC program Manager at Just Food, “[the number of CSAs] in 2007 will spike to some 50 in the five boroughs, up from 41 in 2006.”
Hazon has also witnessed the growing trend in our Jewish CSA program, Tuv Ha’Aretz. In the last year, Tuv Ha’Aretz grew from five to 10 synagogue and JCC communities across the country and in Israel.
When I first started my job as Hazon’s Tuv Ha’Aretz coordinator 2 1/2 years ago, I constantly needed to explain what CSA. It is such a pleasure to see that the idea has caught on and is increasingly familiar across the US - so much so that it was runner up as The New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year! (It lost out to Carbon Neutral!)
Read an excerpt of the Time Out article here.
Shabbos at The New Yorker
Simon Rich’s “A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table” from this week’s New Yorker:
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let’s talk about which kid I like the best.
Ick: the environmental immersion memoir
There’s a spectacularly successful genre in publishing, the pilgrimage/immersion first person. My favorites, “I was a miserable 20-something and cooked my way through Julia Child” (Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell), and “I was a miserable divorcee and traveled the world.” (Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert) Variations include, reading the encyclopedia or living biblically, and the forthcoming “Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Man Alive” by this gorgeous genius.
I love a good quest. I have cooked entirely round meals. In every category of clothing - shirt, shoes, socks, etc. - I own at least one item that is crossing-guard orange. I think these narratives amount to a healthy kind of OCD. They can give shape to our lives.
In the past week, the NYTimes has treated us to two previews of the next addition to the library: my year of living locally and conscientiously. Sub-headlined “The Year Without Toilet Paper,” the book will soon be known as “No Impact,” from venerable publisher FSG.
Bleccch.
What Alice does, the foodies follow
In an article that is launching an occasional series in the San Francisco Chronicle’s dining section about food consciousness, it was reported yesterday that Alice Waters is jumping on the anti-bottled water bandwagon. Some of our fine dining establishments, it seems, have found alternative ways to offer sparkling water that does not have to be flown here from Italy. Of course we have many local brands, like Calistoga, but the article reports that California brands tend to be more carbonated than their European sisters.
Lesser of two evils remains evil
SWEET NEWS: Zvi Spitzer yesterday shows the sugar-formula Coke at Central Market in Williamsburg.
March 19, 2007 — Why is this Coke different from all other Cokes?
It’s kosher for Passover.
And even non-Jews are thirsty for the limited batch of Coca-Cola because of a very special ingredient - it’s made with pure sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.
Food Czar Lacks Experience
So the NYC Food Policy “Czar,” Benjamin Thomases, has no background in food policy. Well, if he did, maybe his learning curve wouldn’t be so “steep,” as he confided to the NY Sun– he wouldn’t be so surprised at how hard it is to explain to people that his job has little to do with trans-fats and would understand better how interdisciplinary food policy must be. Kudos to him for trying to unite the departments and agencies that deal with food in the city; the same issues are present at every level of food policy- federally, much of the disconnect between nutrition science and agricultural subsidies seems to result from the disjointed Senate Committee and Federal agency structure.
Eating Las Vegas
Many, many years ago, my father and mother took their first ever trip to Las Vegas. They were returning to their room after breakfast, and a waiter was in the elevator, with a room service cart…and on the tray with their food was a bottle of Scotch.
My mom, never one to keep things to herself, exclaimed “Scotch for breakfast?”
Without missing a beat, the waiter looked up, and said, “Lady…first time in Vegas?”
Not an oxymoron
A friend recently told me about Earth Kosher, a kosher certifying agency that promotes kosher products that are also earth-friendly. The product list is nowhere near complete, but growing all the time. Check them out here.
FYI, they’re currently hiring for two positions: Rabbinic Representative and Product Scout.
Where to green out
Where should you go when you want to eat a healthy, local, sustainable, socially responsible meal in a restaurant?
The Green Restaurant Association certifies restaurants according to a strict set of environmental guidelines.
The Chefs Collaborative is a national network promoting local, artisinal, sustainable and socially responsible cusine amongst food professionals.
Prizes for the first kosher restaurant to make either list.
[Ed note: the prize is already awarded! Come May, some 200 Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Co. shops, all kosher certified, will have met the standards for GRA certification.]
Another Grudge: Corn Makes Us Fat
To add to Ben’s great post on the evils of corn, last week researchers at the University of Barcelona, led by Dr. Juan Carlos Laguna, reported results of a mechanism linking HCFS (high fructose corn syrup) to obesity. HCFS has been accused of playing a significant role in the obesity epidemic, but there are a variety of theories as to why. The research in rats showed that:
Liquid fructose changes the metabolism of fat in the liver by impacting a specific nuclear receptor called PPAR-alpha, leading to a reduction in the liver’s ability to degrade the sweetener.
