The massive egg recall has made many of us stop and think about how many eggs we use and, for some, questioning our use of them at all. According to the New York Times, “A Hen’s Space to Roost” Sunday August 15; 97 per cent of all eggs consumed in the USA are from hens raised in battery cages, six birds to a cage allowing 67 square inches for each hen for her entire life.

This for an animal who enjoys seeking out a nesting place, hunting for food of various sizes, shapes, taste and textures, walking proudly with her chicks and engaging in a social life. Here, she cannot sit on her eggs or even stretch her wings. The Humane Society of the United States has stated, “Confining birds in cages means increased salmonella infection in the birds, their eggs and the consumers of caged eggs,”.

Many people think that if they buy hens from “cage-free hens”, these inhumane and dangerous conditions do not exist. Two per cent of hens live crowded together in large indoor spaces with 120 square inches per bird. The same hideous ammonia smell of a caged facility exists.Only one per cent are free range and they only need to have “access to the outside air”. This may mean a door leading to a cement yard with a large dog chained to the fence. The hens do not care for that. Only a very tiny amount of producers raise hens who truly live out of doors and have anything resembling a natural life. Even if these eggs are used at home, people consume eggs from caged hens in baked goods, processed foods and restaurant dishes. If you eat eggs you are not observing the commandment called “Bal Tashlit” which means we are not to destroy needlessly.

Here is a recipe for a vegan banana cake, it is not only delicious, but you can lick the bowl without fear of salmonella. Puts the fun back into baking with children. I have recipes for scones, cookies, biscuits and other cakes. All egg-free and all delicious.

Banana Cake

I cup whole wheat pastry flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon non-aluminum baking powder

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

I teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ginger and ¼ teaspoon each nutmeg and cloves

½ cup organic sugar

¼ cup grapeseed oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 small bananas

¼ cup soy or ricemilk with 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar added

½ half cup raisins or walnuts (or both) – optional

First add the vinegar to the soy or rice milk (makes it like buttermilk, for a tender crumb)

Mix the baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt into the flour stir well, add nuts and/or raisins, if using, stir to coat.

Add the oil and sugar to the soymilk mixture, add the sugar and vanilla and stir well

Mash the bananas (overripe bananas can be frozen and used for baking)

Add the wet ingredients and the bananas to the flour mixture, mix well with a fork but do not over mix as this makes cakes dry.

Lightly oil a 9×9 or 9 inch round pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Use convection setting if you have it. This recipe can be easily doubled.

To frost, mix some Earth Balance margarine with powdered sugar and some sherry or lemon juice and a bit of vanilla, should be soft enough to spread but not runny. Spread it on in bits, leaving some of the cake showing.

 I spent most of the day yesterday on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Not literally.  I was reading Jane Ziegelman’s new book, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.  I wanted to know what they ate in the days before Crisco, Cool Whip, corn syrup, and Cocoa Puffs. 

Besides the foods we commonly eat today, New Yorkers in the 1800’s ate buffalo, bear, venison, moose, mutton, otter, swan, grouse, and dozens of other species, both domestic and wild.  Organ meats included sweetbreads, hearts, livers, and kidneys.  Fish dealers offered eel, 15 types of bass, 6 types of flounder, and 17 types of perch.  Produce included purslane (I’m sure there is some growing in your backyard), salsify (a root vegetable), borage, burdock, beach plum, black currants, mulberries, nanny berries, black gumberries, and whortleberries.  Note the extraordinary variety in comparison to today’s offerings.

Breakfast often consisted of mutton chops, fish steaks, and porridge.  Oysters, whether raw or cooked, were abundant and extremely popular at all meals.  Herring was prepared in a myriad of ways, such as with sour cream and mayonnaise, pickled, fried in butter, smoked, rolled, stuffed with pickles, or as “chopped herring” salad.  I know this salad well because I used to help my Grandma Rosie make it. 

Grandma Rosie was born July 31, 1910, the fourth child in her family, and the first to be born in America.  Yesterday would have been her 100^th birthday.  Here’s her recipe:  Soak 12 pickled herrings overnight, drain, remove the skin and bones, and chop fine.  Add 2 cups cooked potatoes, 1 cup apples, and 2 hard-boiled eggs, all chopped.  Mince 2 medium onions, and add to salad.  Add 1 tablespoon each of oil and white vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste.  The book also called for 1 cup of beets and some capers, but I never saw Grandma Rosie put capers or beets in her “chopped herring.” 

Signature dishes on New York’s Lower East Side included hash, soups, and pies.  Pie was so popular that immigrants called Americans “pie-eaters.”  Mince pie, oyster pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chicken pie, and “sweetbreads in pastry” were among the choices.  Leftover beef, mutton, pork and fish was frequently made into “hash,” and boardinghouse dwellers were called “hash-eaters.”  Soups were made from bones, root vegetables, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and dried beans.  I learned an old Yiddish proverb:  “Poor people cook with a lot of water.”  In contrast, the American government chose from among pork and beans, beef hash, corned beef with cabbage and potatoes, pot roast, boiled mutton, and mince pie to feed to newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island. 

Smoked salmon is now considered a delicacy, but a century ago it was a food of necessity.  Without refrigeration, food was kept fresh and edible with four agents: heat, smoke, salt and acid.  Meats, fish and fowl were smoked, salted, or pickled.  Fruits and vegetables were pickled, jarred, or dried.  Corned beef, so named because of the large “corns” of salt used in its preparation, also belongs to the large family of preserved meats and fish. 

Here’s a recipe for turning cucumbers into dill pickles.  It’s very similar to the recipe Grandma Rosie gave me.  Pack 30 kirby cucumbers of approximately the same size into 1 large or 2 small jars, alternating the layers of cucumber with layers of dill (20 sprigs total).  Boil ½ cup kosher salt in 2 quarts water, and turn off the heat.  Add 2 tablespoons white vinegar, 4 cloves garlic, 1 dried red pepper, ¼ teaspoon mustard seed, 2 coin-sized slices of fresh horseradish, and 1 teaspoon of mixed pickling spice to the boiled liquid and pour over the cucumbers.  If necessary, add more salt water to completely immerse them.  Cover and keep in a cool place for a week.  If you like the cucumbers green, try one after 5 days. 

New York was famous for a squishy and gummy white bread called the “New York split loaf.”  In contrast, German immigrants made less expensive whole-grain rye and pumpernickel breads with dense, chewy textures and a sour, mildly nutty flavor.  These latter ones were the breads my family bought to slather with real or vegetarian chopped liver, depending on who was coming to visit.  Here’s Grandma Rosie’s recipe for vegetarian chopped liver:  Saute 3 chopped, medium onions in 3 tablespoons of oil until soft and golden.  Mash the contents of 1 large can of drained sweet peas, and add to the onions.  Add 1 ½ cups chopped walnuts and 2 chopped, hard-boiled eggs.  Chop by hand to desired consistency.  Season with salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.

As Grandma Rosie said often, “Hearty appetite!”

Most of the time I feel like we’re really making progress.  Patients are looking younger, losing inches, feeling better and decreasing their medications.  Still, not a day goes by that Angie, Barb, Chuck, Doris, Elijah, Fritz, or Gayle doesn’t tell me proudly that they have switched to “wheat bread.”  I thought I covered that, I say to myself.  I thought we discussed the fact that practically all bread is made from wheat.  That buying “wheat bread” is the same as buying “bread.”  That the word “wheat” means nothing in terms of good nutrition unless it is prefaced by the word “whole,” as in “whole wheat.”  That someone is trying to confuse you, and they are succeeding.  That’s when I feel as if I’m climbing a mountain with a Wonder Bread truck tethered to my backpack.

If nothing is working, no matter how hard you try, it’s time to reexamine the fundamentals.  So let’s go back to the beginning, and take a careful look at the words that are being used to sell bread. The goal here is to understand what you are choosing to eat.

When I enter a Subway, the sandwich maker asks me, “White or wheat?”  What are my choices again?  White bread or wheat bread?  But white bread is made from wheat.  And wheat bread is made from wheat.  Both white bread (always) and wheat bread (usually) are made from the starchy core, or endosperm, of a wheat kernel.  So what’s the difference?  Near as I can figure, the major difference is the color.

I checked out the nutrition information for the white and wheat breads.  They both contain 200 calories, but white bread has less fat (0.5 versus 2.5 g), less carbohydrate (38 versus 40 g), less fiber (1 versus 3 g), and less protein (7 versus 8 g).  So how can they both have 200 calories?  Something isn’t adding up.  The only thing that white bread has more of is sodium, at 470 versus 360 mg.

What is white bread?  It’s bread made from wheat kernels that have had their bran fiber coat and oil-rich germ stripped out.  What is wheat bread?  Same.  So why are some wheat breads tan instead of white?  Usually because they have had caramel coloring added.  What else can we learn about “wheat bread?”  Well, manufacturers use a variety of descriptive words to make bread seem better for you, including “enriched,” “unbleached,” and sometimes even “organic.”  ”Enriched” was the name given to flour to which vitamins and minerals were added, after it became apparent that stripping grains caused anemia, beri-beri, and other nutritional deficiencies in the people who consumed them.

The only time bread is really made from whole grains is when the first ingredient is WHOLE wheat or WHOLE grain flour.  The very FIRST ingredient.  Not the second.  Why is it important for you to know this?  Because there is virtually no place in a nutritious diet for refined (i.e., enriched, stripped) flour.  Yes, it’s that serious.  The standard American diet (SAD), based as it is upon refined flour, is one of the major contributors to the diabetes and obesity epidemics.

Now, just for the record, I will restate that folks should eat very little (if any) grain at breakfast.  I’m not saying that we should never eat refined wheat products.  I’m not really the “never” type.  Like Julia Child, I prefer moderation.  I think people can handle a little bit of refined flour now and then.  But not at breakfast, except on very, very rare occasions like your birthday, or your niece’s wedding brunch.  It just doesn’t make any sense to waste large amounts of insulin at the very time of day it works worst.

Remember that some people need to be more strict about their intake of grains (like “wheat bread”) than others.  Who?  Those people who are 1) inactive, 2) more than 30 lbs. overweight, 3) pre-diabetic, or 4) diabetic.  This short list includes around 85% of Americans.  That means no toast, bagels, muffins, waffles, pancakes, cereal, biscuits, bread, grits, leftover mac & cheese, at all.  Even if they are made from whole grains.  Why?  Because grains are absorbed very rapidly, which raises your blood sugar quickly, which means that you need to release a huge load of insulin to catch the sugar.  And insulin works worst when we wake up in the morning.  We can’t afford to waste our insulin like that.  So don’t eat foods made from flour (which, as you have learned, is almost always wheat flour) for breakfast.  The remaining 15% of us can have a little bit, sometimes.  Not every day, unless we are very active.

As for “wheat bread,” don’t let anyone fool you.  Call it by its more correct name –  bread — and switch to whole-grain bread.  Avoid it for breakfast always, and don’t eat it every day in any case.  Send me your questions if you’re still confused.

See those blue ribbons? My challah (and my husband’s bagels) won those at the county fair last year. Both recipes always turn out reliably scrumptious, which should be enough for any baker, but there is something undeniably, down-home country-satisfying about serving your family and friends “blue-ribbon” baked goods.

Folks looking for Jewish food and culture might not head for the county fair; as Jewish pig farmers, pole benders and log-rolling lumberjacks are rarities in most parts, yet the lure of competition, fancy ribbons and yearlong bragging rights might make you wish to consider participating. That’s right, I suggest you get your apron on and whip, bake, pickle or jar up your Jewish delicacies and head to your county fair. Trust me, your homemade kosher dills will taste even better adorned with a Best of Show ribbon. All you need is a copy of your local fair’s open-class entry form to start planning your submissions.

Make great challah? Babka? Rugelach? Matzah? Bagels? How about hamantaschen? Home economics class B baked goods can be your proving ground. County fair food preservation judges have had plenty of pickles cross their palates, why don’t you see if they can gauge what makes a good gefilte fish?

Fascinated by fermentation? Budding oenologists and zymogurists can bottle up and enter their best kosher wine, beer, or hard cider. If you’re more of a drinker and designer than distiller, see if your county fair has a category for labels. Either way, bring some Jewish flavor to your county fair and bring home some blue ribbons! But don’t forget your cowboy boots; there is nothing to win with open-toed shoes in the livestock halls.

“This is the bread of affliction”, my father would drone every Passover as he opened the familiar blue square box. “Matzah is tasteless and dry, not meant to be enjoyed. Eating it should remind you of the sufferings of our people.”  As he went on and on and on with his yearly lecture on the harshness of slavery and unleavened bread I sat there slathering on salted butter, devouring sheet after sheet of crispy goodness. Although bland and stomach binding, this so-called ‘bread of affliction’ was a welcome change to the squishy, faintly chemical smelling Wonder loaves my mother bought the rest of the year. Despite the family mandate that matzah eating required a certain degree of complaining to make it religiously significant, my appreciation for the magical combination of flour, water, and fire was born.

Where I grew up in the Midwest during the 1970’s there were only two kinds of matzah available. Manishewitz and Streit’s. Both perfectly square and almost identical in taste, matzah was matzah; or so I thought. It was not until decades later at a community Seder that I discovered that matzah could be round, organic or made from non-white flour.

 Gourmet Matzah? Forget the family mandate, my quest for the ultimate “bread of affliction’ was ignited. After sampling every brand and flavor of matzah I could find, it hit me. My ancestors did not eat matzah found on supermarket shelves.

They made it.

 By hand.

And you can too.

My matzah recipe.. Affliction never tasted so good. 

Ingredients:

2 cups non-self rising flour

1-cup water (rain water is a nice touch if available)

Kosher salt (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven, with a baking stone or cooking sheet inside, to 475 degrees Fahrenheit.

Turn off your cell phone.

In order to avoid fermentation, thus rendering it un-kosher for Passover, the matzah can take no longer than 18 minutes to make from the time the water is added. In order to meet this time constraint it is good to have a kitchen helper and to make the matzah in individual batches.

Mix water and flour.

 Knead until mixture forms non-sticky dough, adding more flour if necessary.

Roll into thin sheets using either a rolling pin or a pasta machine set to 4.

Cut sheets of rolled dough into rectangles or squares with a pasta cutter or straight edged knife.

Prick the surface of the dough evenly with a fork.

 Salt if desired.

Slide the pricked sheets of dough onto baking stone and bake for four minutes or until matzah is slightly browned.

Remove from oven and cool on a baking rack.

I’m fascinated when tradition gets tested by modern science and comes out standing.  I’d cheered when acupuncture was shown to be effective for chronic pain.  Now, I’ve learned that America’s Test Kitchen, which publishes Cook’s Illustrated, has subjected challah to its test kitchen experimentation.  The results: pretty much what you’d learned from your mother and grandmother (or would, if you had one).

The best tasting challah is not too sweet, not too dense, not too fluffy and not from the commercial bakeries.  Their results, from the Holiday Baking 2009 issue, included:

3-3-1/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 c sugar

2-1/4 tsp instant yeast

1-1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs plus 1 large egg yolk

4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted  *

1/2 c plus 1 tbsp warm water

1 large egg white (for wash)

1 tsp poppy or sesame seed (optional)

* For the kosher bakers: they also tested oil and found that it did not add much flavor.  But, you already knew that.

This yields one large loaf, which is not enough for the average Jewish household in which Shabbat is observed and one would need two whole loaves for each meal.

Methods for braiding the challah were also tested and they preferred the trompe l’oeil method (which I’d discovered on my own but has abandoned) of topping a large three-braid loaf with a smaller three-braid one.

Reviewed by Hannah, who usually makes a pareve, vegan, German-style challah for Shabbat

I’m sure that like me, many of you cannot get Hanukah cooking and baking out of your minds!  I will be making potato leek latkes, homemade apple sauce and some chewy ginger cookies tonight.  As you can tell, I’m in full holiday mode!  Anyway, if you are looking for a break from the holiday food maddness I have a great recipe for you!

My birthday was about a month and a half ago.  As much as I enjoy eating out I really wanted to cook my birthday dinner at home with my boyfriend this year.  We decided our main course would be homemade pizza – something neither of us had ever made.  I had heard it was very easy to make but having never made any type of yeast-based bread, I was a bit nervous!

I looked into a few recipes and ended up using one based on a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers.  I will say that this recipe didn’t make quite enough dough for me.  I think next time I will try this recipe.  The most fun thing about making your own pizza is that you can put anything you want on it (and it can be as healthy or unhealthy as you’d like)!  We were especially proud of our pizzas since the vast majority of the ingredients were local and organic.  I hope you enjoy making your own pizza.  Feel free to leave comments with your favorite topping combination!

Dough:

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast

3 1/2 cups flour (we used whole wheat but you can also do a combination)

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

If you have a mixer with a bowl you can make the dough easily with it.  If you don’t, have no fear!  I don’t have one and mine turned out great.  I also don’t have a pizza stone.  Definitely use one if you have it but a cookie sheet works just fine.

In the large bowl add the warm water.  Sprinkle on the yeast and let sit for 5 minutes until the yeast is dissolved. Stir to dissolve completely if needed at the end of 5 minutes.

Mix in the olive oil, flour, salt and sugar until combined.  Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Place ball of dough in a bowl that has been coated lightly with olive oil. Turn the dough around in the bowl so that it gets coated with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Let sit in a warm place (75-85°F) until it doubles in size, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you don’t have a warm spot in the house you can heat the oven to 150 degrees, and then turn off the oven. Place the bowl of dough in this warmed oven to rise.

Preparing the Pizzas:

Preaheat the oven to 450°F for at least 30 mins.

Remove the plastic cover from the dough and punch the dough down so it deflates a bit. Divide the dough in half. Form two round balls of dough. Place each in its own bowl, cover with plastic and let sit for 10 minutes.

Prepare whatever toppings you’d like.  Here are the toppings for the pizzas in my picture at the beginning of the post:

Pizza on the right:  Pesto, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes (they were still in season at this point), balsamic caramelized onions, parsley

Pizza on the left: Tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, balsamic caramelized onions and mushrooms.

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.

TEAM NEW YORK
“Smoked salmon tastes good with everything, but a real, old-fashioned New York bagel is lox’s ideal match. Our bagels are water hand-rolled and boiled before they’re baked so they’re crispy on the surface and chewy inside – the definition of a perfect bagel.
- Herman Vargas, Manager 29 years at Russ & Daughters in NYC

—

“…no city, perhaps in the history of the world, is so closely identified with a breadstuff as New York is with the bagel. Whether eaten plain or with a “schmear” of cream cheese, with whitefish salad or a slice of Nova, with sesame seeds or salt, toasted or untoasted, by Jew, gentile, Muslim, Buddhist or agnostic, the bagel has, for more than a century, helped define breakfast in New York.”
- Ed Levine writing in The New York Times Dec 31, 2003

TEAM MONTREAL
“New York may have many gastronomic wonders, but in the bagel department, it’s challenged. New Yorkers who consider those giant, fluffy hockey pucks manna from heaven haven’t tried a warm, thinly-rolled, sesame-crusted (and not merely dusted), sweet Montreal bagel.”
- Lara Rabinovitch, editor of CuiZine: The Journal of Canadian Food Cultures

—

“The “everything bagel” seems to me the quintessence of New York bagel hubris – about as tasteful as Wonder Bread. Not so the delicate and subtly sweet Montreal bagel, which comes in only two varieties: sesame and poppy seeds (the taste derives from the dough; no need for fancy toppings). As my Zayde once explained to me, the Montreal bagel is better because it’s made with more love, sweetness and patience than New Yorkers have to spare.”
- Professor Alan Nadler, Harvard University

THE TIE-BREAKER

“I happen to be a New York snob and generally assume everything is better here, but that’s not what I’ve found with the bagel. The New York bagel of my childhood was wonderful – sweet and chewy – but it’s rare to find one like that anymore. Montreal captures the taste of the bagels I remember.”
- Sharon Lebewohl, co-owner of 2nd Avenue Deli

Bagel photo credit: Epicurean Life

Have an old bread machine hanging around? Want the taste of challah without the effort? I’ve made this delicious egg bread from a recipe in this cookbook. It’s delicious for sandwiches, french toast, regular toast, and dunked into soup.

This past summer I bought my bread machine for $25 at the local Goodwill. It came with the booklet, and looked like it had only been used a handful of times. After a trip to the library for bread machine cookbooks, and a visit to the supermarkets for baking staples, I was ready to try it out. I made rye bread and whole wheat, white and oatmeal walnut. It’s so easy, and the aroma of bread baking is incredible. While I may be behind the times to jump on the bread machine bandwagon (I recall these contraptions being popular back in the 90′s), I do love my convenience appliances. Make sure to follow the instructions for your bread machine in order for the bread to turn out correctly. 

Bread Machine Egg Bread

1 lb loaf                        Ingredients                      1  1/2 lb loaf

1                                            egg                                        1 + 1 yolk

1/2 cup                              milk                                        3/4 cup

1 tbsp                                  butter                                    1  1/2 tbsp

2 tbsp                                  sugar                                      3 tbsp

1 tsp                                     salt                                      1  1/2 tsp

2 cups                                 bread flour                         3 cups

1  1/2 tsp                            yeast                                   2  1/4 tsp

Put ingredients in bread pan in order suggested by your bread machine instructions. Set for white bread, medium crust. Press Start.