Photos by Phil Mansfield

Every once in a while I feel sorry for myself because my kids won’t eat my lovingly prepared meals; for comfort, I seek out one of my fellow mom’s, specifically those with teen-agers. Invariably they look at me with a withering ‘well let me get you the violins and a stiff drink fast, your poor thing’ stare, reminding me that I am a mere amateur at kitchen rejection. When I hear their tales of trying to feed their teens, my load somehow seems lighter, more manageable. Snarky, picky, and sometimes downright nasty, it is no easy task to manage teens at the table.

Enter Rozanne Gold and her new book, Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs. I sat down with the author and discovered that the book’s appeal to teens is as organic as its recipes. Gold recently adopted a teen-ager and for the past few years they have been coming together as a family, in and out of the kitchen. Her daughter was one of five teen chefs engaged to prepare and test each recipe. Their collective industry and obvious enjoyment is evidenced throughout the book with hands-on pictures depicting their efforts.

“Something a little quirky is that everyone, everyone is talking about childhood obesity and overeating and diabetes and getting back to the table – no one wrote a book. Someone forgot to write the book.” She correctly assessed that the literature includes many books about cooking, kids, and healthy eating, but few if any that feature well known chefs who have cross referenced their work with a nutritionist in order to serve the teen audience. This gap as well as her family changes prompted her to write the book and have nutritionist Helen Kimmel review and validate the recipes. Coupled with her teen chefs’ participation and stamp of approval, the book has a tremendous sense of leading-edge authenticity.

“I like being the first to do things”, says Gold. A food pioneer, she graduated  from Tufts and and did graduate work at NYU. With no formal culinary training, Gold beg, borrowed, and stole experience, and at 23 became the Executive Chef at Mayor Koch’s Gracie Mansion. “I catered the first seder ever at Gracie Mansion. It was a great experience. The Mayor told me to put Perrier (instead of seltzer) in the matzo balls which I had never done before. I did a traditional seder for his family. Holiday favorites included anything with garlic, as well as brisket with vermouth, onions, and a bay leaf.” Many books and restaurants later, she has become a well known force in the food world.  Just this week, she broke boundaries by having her book referenced in the New York Times Health blog, as well as featured in the Science section for its unique approach.

Gold does admire others in the industry attempting to improve school and home meals for children, including Bill Telepan, Ann Cooper , and Lynn Fredericks. But for this book, she felt she had to pave a new path.  “Setting criteria for what eating fresh food means was a process. Working with the nutritionist, we definitely decided not to go the route of calories or counting, but to come up with some broader way of expressing healthy food. The original title was Ketchup Ain’t A Vegetable.”, laughed Gold.  “I’m not doctrinaire about this at all. There is so much discussion about good food and bad food. My solution, my definition is eat fresh food. Which is also a way of saying no processed food or very little processed food. That became my benchmark. The basis of every recipe is that a vegetable or a fruit has to be the star of the dish. You will find this in every recipe. That is my bottom line. The fact that there is very little meat in there is cognizant of the fact that kids are serious about wanting to be vegetarians; 80 – 90% of the book is suitable for vegetarians.”

Gold is very interested in sourcing.  As a restauranteur (The Rainbow Room) as well as a home cook, she is very aware of the power of purchasing. “I am interested in local but fresh is more important. We had the best peach we ever had in our life 2 years ago in March from Costco. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how it got there, but it was extraordinary. I’m not sure that is a bad thing. I understand the eco-system of farmers and sustainability and fresh, and we need to be very supportive of that. But I shop in a variety of places. I shop at Key Foods sometimes out of necessity. We have a wonderful farmer’s market here on Saturdays, and we’re always there buying wonderful things. And I am always in the city on Wednesday at the Union Square market.”

“It’s really exciting to be there at the farmer’s markets; if you are interested in trends and what’s happening, that is where the trends are happening today. That is so different than 20 years ago when trends happened from fancy chefs and from kitchens. Today, trends are happening by what you see at the farmer’s markets and that’s fabulous. Just to see the micro-greens…what the farmers are doing now, that’s where most of the creativity is coming from. I remember just a few months ago I walked by one of the stands at the farmers market and there were 10 different colors of radishes. 6 different colors of carrots. It was just breathtaking. Chef’s are very inspired by it.”

That being said, she also recognizes the challenges of urban life and trying to grow your own food.  “I do have a window box. It is hard to run a kitchen and run your garden. If a home cook has land to grow a garden, that is wonderful. I always grew up in and around the city, so it was never practical. I remember once when I was in college I was at my boyfriend’s house and I looked out the window and said, ‘Look, someone threw an eggplant out the window.’ Little did I know it was growing in his mother’s garden! I knew nothing about farming or sustainability – it was not the language at the time. I think it is exciting that it is now.”

The majority of recipes in this book are vegetarian, but there are few vegan offerings.  I asked Gold for her perspective on the movement. “I believe in culinary history and gastronomy.  My religion is much more in classic cuisine and less about anything doctrinaire. I believe in doing everything and eating everything and trying everything. In balance. Vegans would have to work really hard to have a well-balanced, nutritious, healthy diet. And that’s OK because they believe in something else like not eating animals of any kind – that is a different belief system.”

The book reads nicely with lush photography. It includes interesting and fun recipes such as sweet carrot jam, ginger scallion brown rice with scallions, fish tacos, and mac and cheese with cauliflower and red pepper sauce. And of course olive oil chocolate chip cookies, below for you and your teens’ enjoyment.  Who knows, you might end a meal with a smile, or at least a nod.

Want to win a copy of Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs.? Leave a comment below about cooking for/with teens. Last date to post comments is 12/21/09. The winners will be notified on 12/22/09.

Courtesy of Rozanne Gold. All rights reserved.

Olive Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 24

2 cups self-rising flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 extra large eggs
½ cup olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon pure almond extract
6 ounces miniature chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Put the flour and sugar in the bowl an electric mixer. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, olive oil, and vanilla and almond extracts. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and mix until a smooth dough forms. The mixture will be slightly crumbly and a little oily.
3. Knead several times on the counter. Form into 24 balls and then shape into small ovals that are 1 ½ inches long and ¾ inch wide. Roll the tops in miniature chocolate chips. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or use a Silpat pad. Place the cookies 1inch apart. Bake for 25 minutes or until firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan. Remove with a spatula.

If you are looking for a Chanukah gift for a foodie (say… yourself!), or some new recipes for any of the Jewish holidays, then there’s a new book out that will be of help. Aviva Allen, author of the 2007 The Organic Kosher Cookbook, has just released a Holiday Edition. Ms. Allen provided me with a free copy for this interview and review.

Ms. Allen is a nutritionist in Toronto, CA, with a private practice. She also teaches private cooking lessons and Smart Food shopping. Smart Food shopping lessons introduces the client to new foods and how to prepare them, how to read labels, healthy substitutions, and more.

Ms. Allen’s interest in healthy cooking, eating, and education were originally piqued when she participated in the ADAMAH farming fellowship. She then went on to attend the Natural Gourment Institute in New York, followed by an internship back at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, cooking healthy, vegetarian food.

Ms. Allen wrote her first cookbook, because she felt that Jewish food was mostly “a lot of brown food” and utilized “a lot of margarine and Crisco to make the food pareve.” She explains that “there are a lot of so-called healthy kosher cookbooks out there but they have a lot of [those unhealthy ingredients].”

Ms. Allen’s new cookbook is broken down by holiday and what traditional foods are eaten at each one. She supplies recipes for healthier versions of these dishes. It is an ideal book for anyone who wants to keep kosher and also eat organic.

She explains, “There are so many different food sensitivities, preferences, and restrictions. A lot of the time you are making food for someone coming over and it’s helpful to look in the book and know what to make for them.” The book has symbols indicating for each recipe if it is vegetarian, gluten-free, passover-friendly, and if simple substitutions can be made to accommodate any of the above restrictions. There is also an index indicating all of the vegan recipes.

The cookbook includes organic, kosher chicken and fish recipes, but no beef. At this time, there is no kosher, organic beef available in Canada, where Ms. Allen is based.

Here is a recipe for Ms. Allen’s Spicy Potato Latkes, just in time for Chanukah preparations:

Spicy Potato Latkes (vegetarian)

Yield: 10-15 latkes

5 cups SHREDDED YUKON GOLD POTATO (2 lbs. potatoes)

3 Tbsp. GRATED ONION (1 small onion)

1 Tbsp. MINCED JALAPENO PEPPER (seeds removed)

3 EGGS

2 tsp. SEA SALT

2 tsp. CHILI POWDER

1/2 cup WHOLE WHEAT OR WHOLE SPELT FLOUR */**

EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL FOR FRYING

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Place shredded potatoes in a towel, a little at a time, and ring out the liquid.

3. Place into a large bowl and mix together with all other ingredients (except the oil).

4. Heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a frying pan at a medium-high heat. Place a heaping tablespoon of mixture into your hands and flatten to form a disc while squeezing out excess liquid.

5. Fry latkes until golden brown onto both sides, adding more oil as necessary. Place latkes on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 10-15 minutes.

6. Serve with Avocado Sour Cream. (If you want to know this recipe, you’ll need to check out the cook book! –Laura).

Notes

* Substitute 1/4 cup brown rice flour for gluten-free version.

** Substitute an equal amount of whole wheat matzah meal for Passover-friendly version.

Enjoy!

Book image and recipe reprinted with permission of the author.

I love to host the holidays. Nothing gives me more pleasure than planning, marketing, preparing, and entertaining for these special times, and I have established a tradition of going a little over the top for the occasion.

I also loved the books Julie and Julia as well as My Life in France. Both inspired me to swipe my mom’s old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and happily start practicing. That was 2 or 3 years ago, and my appetite was rewet when I heard the film was coming out this summer. It inspired me to begin planning Le Marais, or an all Julia Child tribute to Rosh Hashanah.

In many ways the planning was consistent with other themes in my life. For example, we live in a very small place, so much so that for every item we bring in, another needs to move out. It’s a real house of cards and sometimes frustrates me to no end. But there is a wonderful economy that comes from living like this. We are bound by our limitations, and so when we go furniture shopping, we have to look high and low for something sized within reach. I can’t just purchase that cute little serving dish that caught my eye because there is no where to put it and I am not ready to sacrifice what I already have. It seems that having fewer options leads to better choices, as well as less wasted time spent searching. The entire Le Marais exercise echoed this bit of wisdom.

So now that you know I like to be challenged by boundaries, here were my self imposed rules:

1. We don’t keep kosher Per Se, but we do try to keep a Jewish home. I do not mix milk with meat, nor do I cook seafood or pork in my home.
2. The main dish would be meat and needed to have apples listed in the ingredients.
3. There had to be enough food for at least 6 – 8 people, with room for an additional 2 if necessary.
4. There had to be a kid friendly option on the table.
5. At least one baked desert was required, because I am a masochist mental case.
6. All food had to be based on Julia Child’s recipes.

Now, all of those rules are daunting to even the most fearless cook, but by far the most challenging was number one. JC is all about dairy. To wit, I usually make challah bread once a week using a stand by recipe that has worked for years. Like most challah recipes, it has only parve (not dairy, not meat) ingredients like eggs, oil, and flour. Julia Child has a lovely challah recipe from in Baking with Julia, but it calls for unsalted butter, more unsalted butter, whole milk, and cream. ‘Can’t she just call it a brioche and a ^&$&% day’, I muttered under my breath as I tried to reconcile with my rules. I reread the recipe, and while I could not use it verbatim, I was able to glean from her Method and improve the challah, especially by double egg washing the loaves while baking. And so I learned how to make a better bread, as well as manage the rules of the game.

After the bread planning, I decided to start by searching for a main dish recipe that met my requirements, knowing I would pair everything else accordingly. Rule 1 eliminated more than 90% of the recipes in Mastering The Art of French Cooking (MtAoFC) volumes I and II. Rule 2 left me with a single wonderful option from MtAoFC vol I (p 275), Caneton Roti a l’Alsacienne or Roast Duck with sausage and apple stuffing. I had made the master recipe before with great success, but the apple and sausage stuffing were just over the top. I used a chicken and apple sausage that beautifully complimented the apples, sage, cognac, and port. Two ducks took under two hours, made a wonderful main dish, and my house smell like heaven on earth.

Once I had nailed down the main event, I tackled the next challenge…stuffed cabbage. Now stuffed cabbage is a Rosh Hashanah tradition that goes back to my grand-mother Esther Steinberg-Levy, who handed me her recipe when I was in high school and went to her grave trying to help me get it right. She made it sweet and sour with apples and lemons, and it is a family favorite. Julia Child has an eight page recipe for Chou Farci in MtAoFC vol II (p 379), complete with sausage and ham for the stuffing and several methods. The gist of the primary approach is to dismember an entire cabbage, reconstruct it in a pan with layers of stuffing, and present it ‘whole’ for family and friends. Unfortunately, this requires the dish to be served as soon as it is cooked, eliminating the convenience of cooking the cabbage in advance. I get crazy right an hour or two before the guests arrive; the last thing I needed is some last minute cabbage debacle to unhinge me completely. Therefore I stuck to Nana’s recipe, but used Julia’s alternative method. First of all, I am always getting a savoy cabbage from now on..what a difference. Never again will I boil a whole head of domestic cabbage and burn my first three layers of skin while peeling it. Also, her wrapping technique which is beautifully illustrated, made for a much tighter roll. Maybe next year I will try the mold.

To satisfy rule four, there was apple and honey on the table, as well as her Risotto/Pilaf/Pilau recipe (MtAoFC vol I, p 532). Substituting oil for butter did not detract from the wonderful taste, and to boot I molded it into a rice ring per her suggestion. To serve, I placed the stuffing from the duck on the center and garnished with parsley – fabulous, and my daughter ate it with gusto.

Petites Oignons Aigre-Doux/Sweet and Sour Onions Braised with Raisins from MtAoFC vol II (p 410) paired beautifully with the duck and met my unspoken rule of making little pearl onions that my husband loves so much. The flavor of the vegetable is enhanced by dry mustard, white wine vinegar, tomato, thyme, and bay leaf. And I knocked out rule 5 with a gem from MtAoFC vol I (p 671), Gateau a l’Orange/Orange Sponge Cake. A very simple dessert that has NO DAIRY whatsoever – no substitutions required. I topped it with JC’s apricot glaze, and then rounded it out with almond bits on the side. I could have put it in a box and sold it at Carlo’s Bakery for twenty bucks.

It was a wonderful dinner, with great food and company. Everyone, including me, was impressed with the fare. At one point though, one of my guests remarked about how time consuming it was to cook JC’s recipes, how complicated they were. Hilda is my sister in law’s grand-mother, a shrewd woman with a terrific sense of humor. We love having her in the family, and she always brings something to the table. When she heard about the menu she told us a story about her JC experience.

“I remember it took all day to make those recipes.” she told us in her thick Germanic accent, “When it was done, it was delicious. And I thought ‘Never again’! ”

This is one of the few times where Hilda and I will disagree; while it was time consuming, I cooked 5 recipes in a single day and everything came out wonderfully. This is in part attributable to my wonderful husband, a quiet hero who who took charge of cleaning and watching the kids while I focussed on the food. But help aside, I was able to do a lot in a limited period of time, and for that I thank the author. I love the simplicity of Julia Child, especially compared to her more contemporary peers. There are no excessive ingredients or mysterious techniques; everything is laid out in a way so that the cook feels confident, like Julia is rooting for you. I understand why Julie Powell was so taken by her, and how the entire world loved her so very much. My guests should expect more events like this, and I suspect that they will happily come back for more. Next time I will wear my pearls.

Note:  This piece was originally posted on my blog at cheznoonie.blogspot.com

Q: What do you do when you have so many home grown zucchini your friends won’t answer the door when you try to share your harvest?

A: Find a car with an open window.

The triumph and the tragedy of the summer growing season is the sheer fecundity of gardens and farms. How to partake of fruits and vegetables at their peak without relying on the same old recipes?

Lois M. Burrows and Laura G. Myers offer a mouth-watering solution with their book, Too Many Tomatoes . . . Squash, Beans, and other Good Things; a Cookbook for When Your Garden Explodes.

Originally published in 1976 and reissued in 1991, this book would be completely at home on shelf beside Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.  The recipes focus on more than 20 vegetables that are typically abundant in late summer gardens. The ingredients are generally few and simple, leaving the glory of the vegetables to shine.

The recipes draw from diverse cultures such as Greek, Italian, Mexican, Spanish and Midwestern American. They range from long-standing favorites such as herbed snap bean salad, coleslaws and corn fritters to the exotic and unexpected such as tomato  cake and broccoli guacamole. From canapés to soup to sauces to main dishes, this cookbook has it covered.

Here’s the recipe for fresh tomato cake.  It’s spicy and lightly sweet.

1 cup dark brown sugar

½ cup shortening

2 eggs

½ cup chopped nuts

½ cup chopped dates

½ cup raisins

2 cups peeled, cubed tomatoes

3 cups sifted flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

8 ounces cream cheese

½ cups confectioner’s sugar

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pinch of salt

Cream the sugar and shortening.  Add eggs, nuts, dates, raisings and tomatoes.  Sift dry ingredients into the tomato mixture.  Pour into a greased and floured 9” x 13”pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Serves 8.

Remember back in the day when you told someone you ate mostly vegetables and organic food and they told you they only ate food that tasted good? You’d ask them what wasn’t good about the organic food they’d tasted, and usually they’d describe some sort of hard, seedy, lumpy thing. They’d use the word “brick”.  They’d mime chewing like a mouth on novacain. I’m sorry to tell you, but they’d probably been eating bread at my house.

Here’s what happened: I decided maybe seven years ago that I was going to learn how to make bread, except I didn’t really understand why you would spend all that time shoving it around on a table and punching it  if you didn’t have to. Luckily, there was the Cuban bread recipe in a copy of the New York Times cookbook. That no-knead, no-nonsense bread was an excellent gateway drug, but it was also kind of flat; and when you make it with whole wheat or spelt, it ends up looking sort of like a large, good-smelling cow pie.

It turned out that if I wanted to use whole grains, I needed to knead, so I found a good recipe, added all the ingredients together, and shoved it around on the table and punched it. This, as any veterans will know, did not lead to stellar results. My sourdough starter gave me a bread that looked and tasted like a huge pickle, and my potato bread was somewhat too baked. I was starting to think I’d never get it right. This was fine with me, I’d eat sour, hard bread forever, but alas, not everyone in my life is so inclined. Several months ago my girlfriend began to put “one loaf crusty bread” on the shopping list in a rather prominent position and I knew I was running out of time.

Then, last week, a friend of mine lent me her copy of the Tassajara Bread Book. She considers it the bible of breadmaking (although actually, the bible is kind of the bible of breadmaking). Sure enough, at the end of my day of breadbaking, having beat, folded and kneaded in between grading papers and reading for class, I pulled two loaves out of the oven and both of them are high, broad, brown and crispy on the outside and chewy and fluffy on the inside. What happened? Ed Espe Brown taught me to mix, to knead, and to use two packs of yeast.

Apparently, Brown’s is a household name for everyone either 1) over forty and into natural foods, or 2) from the west coast. Being that I’m neither though, I figured some of us could use a bit of background information. Brown is one of our kind, in that he approaches food and cooking through a religious/spritual lens, his being Zen Buddhism.  He’s the author of numerous cookbooks, and was for years the chef at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco. The Bread Book doesn’t read like a koan though– it’s as straight-forward as a cookbook gets. It’s even illustrated, so if you’ve despaired of ever raising a good loaf, don’t. Give Brown’s technique a try and see how high those babies climb.

At the moment, there’s a movie about Brown out on DVD. You can see the trailer below. Happy baking in the new year!

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.

According to Pollan’s article, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” the average American today spends very little time preparing food — just shy of half an hour a day. When we do find ourselves in the kitchen, he says, chances are it is to heat up a can of soup or microwave a few frozen burritos rather than to assemble a dish from raw ingredients. The country’s collective shift toward convenience foods and processed snacks comes with some unfortunate consequences. Pollan writes:

A 2003 study by a group of Harvard economists… found that the rise of food preparation outside of the home could explain most of the increase in obesity in America…. As the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed: Since 1977, we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake.

My first reaction to the article was one of satisfied smugness. I figured that Jews must be an exception to this trend. As a people, we are practically hardwired to crave a good homemade meal. The dinner table plays a sacred part of Sabbath observance (as the symbolic representation of the sacrificial altar), and food is an integral aspect of nearly every holiday celebration. It is almost as if Jewish tradition specifically developed reinforcements to remind us that, as Pollan writes, “cooking is a defining” — and by extension, important — “human activity.”

And yet, in that same moment of personal and communal congratulations, I realized that the Jewish community has found ways to subvert its own food ideals. For every nourishing, wholesome Sabbath meal I have prepared or attended, there are many others that rely on greasy, store-bought kugels and chicken cutlets with packaged seasoning, followed by a tub of a synthetic ice cream substitute. Meanwhile, the rise in kosher-certified convenience products — from frozen blintzes to fish sticks — now ensures that Jews’ weekday “cooking” can mirror that of the rest of society. Ultimately, it seems that despite the special reverence we hold for bubbe’s cooking, the Jewish diet is not immune to the faux-food slump. “We have it in us — we know how to enjoy food,” Chana Rubin, who is a registered dietitian and the author of “Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating” (Geffen, 2008), told me. “Something just gets lost in translation.”

Pollan points to familiar culprits to explain Americans’ stove avoidance: busy schedules, food marketers’ ongoing attempts to seduce our consumption impulses and, most important, a simple lack of comfort and skill in the kitchen. Ironically, he says, the televised food shows on which Americans have become increasingly hooked (think Bravo’s “Top Chef,” or “Chopped” and “Iron Chef” on the Food Network) do more to intimidate and obfuscate than to encourage or instruct. How much can one really learn, he asks, from watching a “blur of flashing knives, frantic pantry raids and more sheer fire than you would ever want to see in your own kitchen?” Even the “dump-and-stir” shows, which are geared toward home cooking (for example, Rachael Ray’s “30 Minute Meals,” and Sandra Lee’s “Semi-Homemade”) “stress quick results, shortcuts and superconvenience” over true technique or the creative satisfaction that comes with pulling a successful dish from the oven.

It is on this last point that I depart from Pollan’s critique. The Food Network may not arouse culinary greatness from the average couch potato, but it has undoubtedly inspired many of its viewers to take that first, crucial step toward the stovetop. This same logic applies to Susie Fishbein of the wildly popular “Kosher by Design” cookbook series. I used to dismiss Fishbein’s recipes for relying so heavily on prepackaged ingredients (for example, frozen challah roll dough as the base for chocolate babka). Yet her books also include many simple, fresh-ingredient dishes that have motivated kosher cooks to think beyond the kugel pan. And if the ultimate goal is as Pollan writes, to “rebuild a culture of everyday cooking,” then it should not matter whether a recipe has three steps or 20, or whether it results in a soufflé or just plain old eggs.

Still, it has become clear that Americans (both Jewish and otherwise) need a serious dose of culinary literacy — an “Our Bodies, Ourselves”-style reintroduction to the kitchen and its many beautiful parts. Because while schedules will always be too busy, we make time for the things that we love. So start with the Sabbath or with a random weeknight. Sign up for a cooking class, dig out (or go purchase) a copy of “Joy of Cooking” or offer to play sous chef for a friend and learn through osmosis. And if you maintain an obsession with the Food Network, go ahead and enjoy it. Just make sure to turn off “Chopped” from time to time and get chopping.

photo credit: Digest This

So you’ve just opened your CSA box to an unfamiliar sight—a strange-looking bulb with long leaves sprouting every which way. After asking Google, your hippie aunt, two of your neighbors and a guy in line with you at Trader Joe’s, you finally figure out that the mystery plant is called kohlrabi. Great… now what do you do with the giant bag of it in your fridge?

For the solution to this and other similar dilemmas, turn to Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, a witty and practical collection of recipes organized by vegetable and season. Since the book comes straight from a CSA-supported farm, it’s geared perfectly towards the needs of eager (but sometimes bewildered) shareholders. The recipes, which range from sweet to savory, include such creative items as Rosemary Lemonade, Baked-Beet-and-Carrot Burgers, and Sweet Zucchini Crumble. To add a little spice, they’re interspersed with essays, tips, quotes from CSA shareholders, and some funny tidbits. Apparently, for example, “Alice B. Toklas described kohlrabi’s taste as ‘having the pungency of a highborn radish born to a lowbrow cucumber.’”

Wishing you had a copy on hand for dinner tonight? You’re in luck – we’re giving away a free copy of Farmer John’s Cookbook to one randomly chosen lucky commenter! Just tell everyone the most inventive dish you’ve made with your CSA produce by Friday, July 24 in order to be entered to win.

Photo of kohlrabi from thebittenword.com on Flickr

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.

It originated in the Levant, the historic Middle Eastern region that encapsulated a large swath of land east of the Mediterranean Sea, including modern-day Israel along with Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and southern Turkey, among other countries. Like hummus and falafel, tabbouleh is tied to the broader region as opposed to one particular nationality or culture. Still, it has become an integral part of modern Israeli cuisine, most often served for summer lunches or as part of a salad course.

While bulgur is not traditionally tabbouleh’s star ingredient, it is, perhaps, the dish’s most defining component. An immediate relative of cracked wheat, bulgur is made from wheat berries that have been ground, partially cooked, and dried, making it a quick-cooking and relatively inexpensive base or addition to countless recipes (like these).

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Archaeological finds in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean suggest that people have been processing wheat into bulgur for millennia”–and the obsession continues today. The same article revealed that in the present day, Turks, who historically helped spread the grain’s popularity across the region, consume “about a half-pound of bulgur a week per capita.”

Bulgur adds texture and substance to the otherwise all-vegetable tabbouleh, cutting the acidic lemon juice and tomatoes with its hearty, nutty flavor. In Israel, the dish is often served with pita bread, which aids in wiping up any excess juice, but there are other options, too.  According to cookbook author, Poopa Dweck, who authored, Aroma’s of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews, in old Aleppo, tabbouleh was served with romaine lettuce leaves.

Tabbouleh can apparently also make people dance–but you’ll just have to try it and see.

Tabbouleh
Serves 8.

3/4-1 cup fine bulgur soaked in hot water for 10-15 minutes, drained
5-6 Tablespoons good quality olive oil (do not skimp on quality–you will taste the difference)
juice of 3-4 medium lemons
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 pint grape tomatoes, chopped
5 scallions, chopped
1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
one large handful fresh mint, chopped, plus extra for garnish

Combine the bulgur, olive oil, lemon, cumin, and salt in a bowl and let stand for 20-30 minutes while chopping vegetables. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Serve sprinkled with more fresh mint.

photo credit: Leah Koenig

A few years ago I came across a book called In Memory’s Kitchen, edited by Cara De Silva. The book collects recipes and food memories written by women imprisoned at the Czechoslovakian concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Though they were starving and undernourished, a group gathered to write a book of recipes and food memories to pass down to another generation. The recipes they included were for rich national foods of Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria, like fried noodles topped with raisins, cinnamon and vanilla cream, and traditional caramels from Baden Baden.

Food was constantly a topic of discussion, though there was little to go around, and certainly none of the luxurious ingredients a person would need to make many of the cakes and treats included in the book. Discussing and sometimes arguing about the best recipes and methods of preparation for various delicacies was comforting to the women who were starving, and they called this “mouth cooking.”

The book is mind-boggling, not only because of its history, but also because it reminded me of the unbelievable conveniences of modern day cooking. One recipe called for whipping egg whites for half an hour until they get light and fluffy. In my life, I have only ever whipped egg whites with a pair of electric beaters, and the process takes a few minutes. As I skimmed over these recipes I thought a lot about how lucky I am, not just to live in a time where I can be free as a Jew, but also because there is so much decadence in my life, from the amount of food in my cupboards, to the appliances stacked in my closet.

Most of the recipes in “In Memory’s Kitchen” aren’t suitable for use today because they use measurements and ingredients that are difficult to decipher, and often have incomplete directions. But reading it you’re likely to crave classic European dishes like Billige Echte Judische Bobe, Jewish Coffee Cake, and Gefulllte Eier, German Stuffed Eggs. Go ahead, make a cake, using real cream. Enjoy every morsel.

(Cross-posted on Mixed Multitudes)