Originally published at My Jewish Learning.

Over the last decade, seders for Tu Bishvat have spiked in popularity. This growth is largely due to the contemporary Jewish community’s interest in “greening” ritual and holidays. Every year, the number of organizations turning to Tu Bishvat to inject some sustainability-awareness into their annual programming grows, as does the collection of environmentally-inspired haggadot for Tu Bishvat available online. (Like this one from My Jewish Learning, this one from Hillel, and this one from Hazon.)

The downside is that some people shy away from celebrating the holiday precisely because it feels too “hippie” or eco-spiritual. But while the Tu Bishvat seder, which was originally developed as a mystical celebration by kabbalists in 16th century Safed, provides a helpful structure for celebrating Tu Bishvat, there are no official rules for the holiday. The lack of halakhic requirements means that seders can be tailored to meet their hosts’ personalities–even if they happen to prefer fine china over bicompostable dishware.

(Originally published in The Forward)

Last November, I koshered my kitchen for the first time. I did so with the full understanding that my decision came with certain compromises, like giving up my favorite cheeses and my delicious but uncertified collection of vinegars. While a bit heartbreaking, these were sacrifices I was willing to make as I welcomed in my new lifestyle. If only I had known that I might have to give up salad, too.

Leafy salad greens, along with berries, asparagus and a variety of other produce, have come under serious scrutiny in the kosher world over the past decade. There’s nothing treyf about these particular fruits and vegetables, except that they have a tendency to attract insects, which are halachically forbidden. Once they are removed from a spinach leaf or the inside of a raspberry, the produce is theoretically fit to eat. But kosher agencies like the Orthodox Union and KOF-K argue that certain bugs (for example, aphids, thrips and mites) are too small to spot easily, but large and common enough to be compromising.

Calling all New Yorkers!  A quick reminder that tomorrow (Sunday 12/13 – 2pm) is Culture in the Cucina – a unique and fun foodie event celebrating Jewish Italian food.  Hope to see you there!

CULTURE IN THE CUCINA
How Rome’s Jews are Cooking up the Past and Future

While Jews have lived in Italy since the 2nd century BCE and are credited with popularizing staple ingredients like eggplant, fennel and pumpkin, the notion of an “Italian Jewish cuisine” is difficult to define. Still, a handful of traditional dishes – like Carciofi alla Guidia (deep fried artichokes) and Pizza Ebraica (a fruit cake-like dessert) – have managed to endure over time.

This is a tale of two cities, each with a venerable Jewish culinary legacy that claims boasting rights to the world’s best bagel. Until now, these parallel universes have existed at a safe distance. But Mile End – a new Quebecois-style restaurant opening next month in Brooklyn - will bring the long-standing New York/Montreal bagel standoff to a head. In preparation, I consulted the experts about which “roll with a hole” steals their hearts, and their stomachs.

Read what they said below – and for more on Mile End, check out my article in Edible Brooklyn.

Calling all New Yorkers!  If you’re around on Sunday, December 13th at 2pm, join me at this fun Jewish food event!

CULTURE IN THE CUCINA
How Rome’s Jews are Cooking up the Past and Future

While Jews have lived in Italy since the 2nd century BCE and are credited with popularizing staple ingredients like eggplant, fennel and pumpkin, the notion of an “Italian Jewish cuisine” is difficult to define. Still, a handful of traditional dishes – like Carciofi alla Guidia (deep fried artichokes) and Pizza Ebraica (a fruit cake-like dessert) – have managed to endure over time.

Food writer, Leah Koenig, will discuss how certain traditional recipes have attained iconic status in Italy’s oldest and largest Jewish center, Rome. She will also explore how today’s urban Jews relate to their culinary heritage. New York’s Jews have their bagels, knish and egg creams. What dishes do Italians turn to when they need a nosh, and how do these foods connect them to their past and their future?  *Bonus! Italian Jewish Chanukah recipes and tips on where to find Jewish Italian food in NYC.

EVENT DETAILS and more photos of Rome’s delicious food culture below the jump…

With the tragic closing of the iconic publication, Gourmet, the already struggling world of food journalism got a bit grimmer.  Fortunately, a few quality food magazines are still up and running – like Saveur, a magazine dedicated not only to delivering delicious recipes, but sharing the food traditions, people and stories behind them.

Well, The Jew & The Carrot must be on an upswing too because recently, Saveur added us as a “Site we Love” on their website!  In other words, Saveur’s editors are handpicking the “best of the food web” to share with their readers – and we got the golden ticket.  Or, rather, the red stamp of approval.  Well Saveur, consider us flattered – and consider yourself invited over for tea any day.

(Originally published on Mother Nature Network)

During my two-year stint as a vegan in college, I often joked that while 90 percent of dining hall food was off-limits, at least I could always find a drink. (Clearly, I had never heard of the bacon martini.) But on a recent vacation to America’s wine capitol, Napa Valley, I stumbled upon an unappetizing fact: All along, I just might have been drinking fish guts.*

“It comes from the bladder of a sturgeon,” said Peter Hoffmann. We were standing in a newly built shed in his fig tree-adorned backyard, sampling wines from his organic and biodynamic label, Aum Cellars — straight from the barrel. Needless to say, I felt pretty cool about that. In between swirls and sips, Hoffmann explained fining — the process of introducing a tiny amount of protein into wine to attract any loose particles (tiny bits of grape skin or stems, naturally occurring yeasts, etc.) and help them settle to the bottom of the barrel. Fining, he said, helps to smooth out a wine, ultimately giving it a silkier, more consistent mouth feel. “It’s the equivalent of driving a Mercedes instead of a pickup truck,” Hoffmann said.

(Story excerpted from Tablet Magazine)

On the occasional Friday afternoon, a makeshift farmers market appears inside the popular soup shop Marakiya in Jerusalem’s city center. Israelis peruse the goods: dried figs, almonds, creamy labaneh, bottles of grape honey, and briny stuffed olives. It’s a familiar scene in a country known for its fresh produce and sumptuous food markets. But this souk aims to produce more than a good meal.

Behind one of the tables, Yahav Zohar, a 29-year-old tour guide and translator, chats with a customer about a bottle of organic olive oil. While his deep tan and scruffy beard might suggest otherwise, Zohar is not a farmer. Rather, he is something of an altruistic middleman—traveling once a week to the West Bank in search of growers and small-scale food producers whose products he buys and resells at a small markup. “The other day, I bought 500 eggs from a farmer at a shekel apiece,” he said. “In some cases, our purchases end up being a big share of a family’s income.”

(reprinted from The Forward)

The other night I had eggs for dinner. Two of them fried over easy, slipped onto a slice of toast and plopped next to some sautéed zucchini with garlic. My total cooking time clocked in somewhere around 12 minutes — about as much energy as I had on a muggy summer evening after a day spent prostrating myself in front of a laptop. There was nothing gourmet about what I ate, except perhaps the pinch of za’atar that I sprinkled over the eggs en route to the table. But according to a recent New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan (author of “In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), my dinner practically qualified for a James Beard award, the food world’s most prestigious prize.

Why? Because, as unfussy as my meal was, I cooked it. From scratch.

Back in 2006, Kim Severson wrote an article for the New York Times Dining section about the emergence of cooking shows on satellite radio (think the Food Network but with aural porn replacing the gratuitous visuals). Never a bunch to miss out on the party, the sustainable food community quickly followed suit. Over the last few years, radio programs spouting the gospel of “good food” have spread like sourdough bubbles across the airwaves and Internet. Here are some of the shows worth tuning in to – and this one “goes to 11!”

CHECK OUT THE FULL LIST AT the MOTHER NATURE NETWORK and then share your favorite shows below.

(Originally published on My Jewish Learning)

I grew up eating my mother’s American tabbouleh–starchy, lemon-doused bulgur salad. This was the 1980s, when many American Jews were incorporating “Israeli-style” foods into their culinary repertoire. But while my mom’s tabbouleh was delicious, I later discovered that it hardly resembled the authentic version, which features a higher ratio of painstakingly chopped fresh parsley and tomatoes to grains of bulgur.

Tabbouleh, which comes from the Arabic word tabil (”to spice”), is not actually an Israeli or Jewish dish, per se.

(Originally published at My Jewish Learning)

Russians had been drinking tea for fewer than 175 years when Klonimos Wolf Wissotzky founded the Wissotzky Tea Company in 1849 at the age of 25. His timing could not have been better. According to The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss, it was not until 1689 that a “measurable exchange of goods and materials, including Chinese tea, began to flow between China and Russia.”

Prior to that Russians drank sbiten–a concoction of herbs and honey steeped in hot water. But by the late 19th century, tea was “hot” in Russia and Wissotzky–a young Russian Jew living in Moscow–quickly emerged as one of the country’s most prosperous tea distributors. Wissotzky’s was even named the exclusive tea supplier for the Emperor’s Court.

Originally published on My Jewish Learning

Blintzes are most often described in relation to other foods. They are “like pancakes” but thinner, “like Russian blini” except without the yeast, or “like crepes,” just folded a little differently. Still, blintzes are a delicacy all their own. Originally from the Ukraine, fillings like cheese, potato, and kasha were folded inside the blintz wrappers (or bletlach, “leaves” in Yiddish) and fried until golden brown. In The World of Jewish Cooking, Rabbi Gil Marks writes that, “As with other filled foods, blintzes provided a great way of transforming leftovers into a special dish or stretching scarce resources.”

Welcome to Part II of the “Worm Diaries: Chronicles of an Apartment-dwelling Vermicomposter.”  In the last episode, I wondered whether putting bread in my worm bin rendered it as chametz for Passover.  (Click here for the answer.)