One of the strategies I use to make it through the eight long, flat, matzah-days of Passover is to fantasize about the challah I’m going to start baking as soon as the holiday is over.

I’ve made challah often enough in the past that even when I don’t bake for a while, I still have a strong sense-memory of what to do. But the week after Pesach—my first time back to baking challah in six months!—there was definitely an extra tingle in my fingertips when I plunged my hands into the warm, thick dough. I had to take a few extra breaths of the nutty-malty smell right at that moment when I add the sponge to the rest of the ingredients…It’s the smell of the anti-Pesach, the aroma of pure chametz, the yeast busy doing its magic, raising the roofs of a hundred (a thousand?) tiny bubbles in a bit of flour and water, sitting under the hot lights on my kitchen counter.

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Thanks to our guest poster of the week, Chana Rubin, RD for this article and recipe. Chana is a registered dietitian who lives in Israel with her family. She’s the author of the new book Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating (Gefen Publishing House Ltd, Jerusalem, 2007). Check out Chana’s first post - and keep your eyes open for a chance to win a copy of her book!

We recently had a major heat wave here in Israel - the kind of day when you don’t even want to step into the kitchen, let alone turn on the stove. A fresh green salad was definitely in order for dinner, but what could we have with it that wouldn’t take hours in the kitchen?

From the refrigerator, a small container of leftover cooked beet greens gave me the answer: PANCAKES! Mention pancakes and most of us think of breakfast, but vegetable pancakes are especially popular in Sephardic cuisine – spinach and feta cheese pancakes and leek patties are good examples. Vegetable pancakes can be a good way to get children to eat vegetables, especially if you serve them as “finger food”.

My recipe started with about half a cup of chopped beet greens previously cooked with onion and garlic. I added an egg and about 1/3 cup of flour, salt, pepper and a dash of cinnamon. Try spinach, chard, broccoli or grated zucchini. Add an egg or two and a binder – whole wheat pastry flour works well. Fresh herbs are a wonderful addition.

Here’s a recipe to get you started - what it is your favorite savory pancake?

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Thanks to Chana Rubin, RD for this guest post. Chana is a registered dietitian who lives in Israel with her family. She’s the author of the new book Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating (Gefen Publishing House Ltd, Jerusalem, 2007). Chana will be guest posting throughout the week - and keep your eyes open for a chance to win a copy of her book!

I have lived in many different Jewish communities in the U.S. and in Israel and have seen the same patterns in most of them. Obesity and the sedentary lifestyle of our communities mimic that of the community at large, with added issues of kashrut, culture, Shabbat and holidays.

Preventative nutrition and nutrition education have always been my interest. It seems to me that it is easier and more cost effective to prevent illness before it happens rather than treat it after the fact. And there are many diseases – Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, to name a few, that are certainly preventable.

Many books address general nutrition, but none of them address the Jewish community in particular. Food for the Soul – Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating does just that. The nutrition information is universal, but tailored to our specific needs and our own food culture.

More and a recipe for Surprise Cupcakes after the jump

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If America is the proverbial “melting pot,” then Israel is a close second - at least when it comes to Jewish food and Mediterranean cuisines. In her book The Foods of Israel Today (Knopf), culinary goddess, Joan Nathan, explores the multiple culinary landscapes - European, Russian, Moroccan, Syrian, Italian and American to name a few - that converge and overlap across Israel’s homes, restaurants, and cafes.

Today, in celebration of Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), we’re raffling off a copy of The Foods of Israel Today so you can bring all the tastes of Israel into your home. To enter the raffle, tell us your favorite Israeli food experience - either an inspiring or interesting meal you ate in Israel, or delicious Israeli food you ate somewhere else… (deadline to enter: Sunday, May 11). Update: Congratulations Debra!

More and a recipe below the jump.

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Thanks to Alyssa Finn for this guest post. Alyssa is getting her Masters degree in Clinical Nutrition at NYU and is a Hazon volunteer on the New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride Exec.

Yesterday, I came home after a long bike ride in the New York sunshine. On my plate for the evening was a pile of reading in preparation for my chemistry exam the next day. I stared at the pile of books and papers. I looked longingly at my kitchen, the primary source of my procrastination.

Then I remembered: horseradish!

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Is it just me, or is kosher cooking having itself a little bit of a renaissance? Over the last year, a slew of cookbooks have been published (like this one, this one, and this one!) that bring kosher cooking out of the Crisco era and into modern times. Ronnie Fein’s new book Hip Kosher is no exception. The book’s manifesto? Kosher cooking should be innovative, delicious, and accessible to all home chefs. And Fein is willing to prove it with creative, easy-to-prepare recipes like pea soup with mint and bulghur salad with feta and dill sauce.

Fein, who is the founder of the Ronnie Fein School of Creative Cooking in Stamford, CT spoke to The Jew & The Carrot about what hip kosher really means, Jewish food’s chameleon tendencies, and the many virtues of an ear of corn.

Read her interview below and, while you’re at it, WIN a copy of Hip Kosher! Answer the following question and be entered in a drawing to win: If you were a vegetable, what you’d be and why? (I promise this will make more sense when you read the interview.)

And congrats to Judi for being the randomly-selected winner in our last raffle for Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking.

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This past weekend, our synagogue hosted a “Pesach University”: A community-wide day of Passover workshops, on everything from the anthropological roots of the seder, to how to “green” your Pesach.

But the true highlight of the event was a live Passover cooking demonstration by none other than Ellie Krieger - an adjunct professor in the New York University Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, and star of the Food Network’s hit show, Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger. (She also happens to be the sister of one of our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA’s core group members, and a genuinely warm and funny person to boot.)

In honor of the occasion, Ellie chose to focus on two themes of the seder: dipping, and the tension between bitter and sweet in the story, and the food that accompanies it. Ellie made two delicious recipes, adapted from her new cookbook The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life, which she has graciously allowed me to share, after the jump: Read more »

Arthur Schwartz likes to say: “If a kosher Martian landed in New York City today and observed what Jews were actually eating, he would think pizza and sushi were the most Jewish foods on earth.” I like to think that a copy of Schwartz’s new cookbook, Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, would screw that misguided Martian’s head on straight.

Also called The Food Maven, Schwartz is known for being the man the New York Times Magazine dubbed “a walking Google of food knowledge.” His expertise extends far beyond Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine - still, Jewish Home Cooking is a true homecoming for this Brooklyn native.

Far beyond a collection of Yiddish recipes - Jewish Home Cooking offers a vivid snapshot of a particular era of Jewish life - the slender seltzer bottles delivered to your doorstep, butchers who knew your name and order, frothy egg creams with Fox’s U-Bet syrup, and slow-simmered tzimmes - that has all but vanished from today’s New York. With recipes that honor tradition (but aren’t stifled by it), and historical photographs and anecdotes of New York’s long-gone Jewish culinary hot spots, Schwartz breathes new life into Jewish cuisine with humor and love - but without the sloppy side dish of kitsch that usually (and annoyingly) comes along with Yiddish retrospectives.

Win a FREE copy of Jewish Home Cooking! Tell us your favorite Passover dish or food tradition and be entered into a drawing to win. Only one comment per person will be entered into the drawing - comment before Thursday, April 17.

Below the jump, Schwartz’s Passover Apple Cake.

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First, a word from our sponsor: We interrupt Alix Wall’s posts about Vietnam (at least one more is still coming) to write about a more immediate concern: What is Alix going to cook for Passover?

My husband and I are hosting our family for Pesach. Maybe that isn’t a big deal for some of you, but for me, it is. I only had the seder at my house one other time, and I was so busy that I pretty much let all my family members do all the cooking. Not this year.

I am taking it very seriously this year; maybe because this is the first year that we are hosting, instead of just me. And maybe because I’m thinking of my mom now, and how flawlessly she could pull off a seder. Passover can be a difficult time of year for me; she died only a month after it. She was already very ill at her last seder, in 2002, but she managed to do a great deal of the cooking anyhow.

My uncle has let it be known that his expectations are high, now that I’m a professional chef. I don’t care about that so much. What’s dominating my thoughts these days is the memory of the pecan matzoh balls. Read more »

Sorry for the last minute notice, RSVP at the Facebook page. 

We’re proud to announce this week’s super special event: on Wednesday, 4/9 EATING LIBERALLY welcomes SCOTT STRINGER, the Manhattan Borough President, to discuss “Go Green East Harlem,” a grassroots guide to wholesome home cooking.

To improve public health in East Harlem, Stringer’s office has created a cookbook with recipes contributed by community groups & local restaurants that offer ideas for affordable, accessible, healthy eats.

This FREE event hosted by Eating Liberally will feature snacks, Q&A, guest speakers & a live–and lively–cooking demonstration featuring the Borough President himself.

Lynn Fredericks from Family Cook Productions.
& Author of Cooking Time Is Family Time
will join the conversation.

EATING LIBERALLY with SCOTT STRINGER
& “Go Green East Harlem”
Wed, April 9th - 6-8pm
The Tank @ C:U - 279 Church St
www.eatingliberally.org

I’ve only had my copy of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family for a few weeks, and already the book is stained and a bit worn. I think that’s a good sign.

As the title might suggest, this book is a family affair. Author Judy Bart Kancigor beautifully describes how the book came into existence, stemming from a desire to pass on her family’s food traditions. As a result, almost every recipe has a story, which can be a bit overwhelming at times, but ultimately brings the recipes to life. It’s not just a cookbook; you feel invited in, as though you’re taking part in the Rabinowitz family tradition by making this food. And the pictures are great – a time-capsule of American Jewish life opened to reveal many embarrassing hairstyles and equally embarrassing bar mitzvah pictures.

More and recipes for banana bread and sesame crusted chicken below the jump.

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“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” - Anthony Bourdain, “Kitchen Confidential,” p. 70

Tell us how you really feel, Anthony!

Of course, vegetarians and vegan chefs were not about to take this crude, carnivorous cri de coeur lying down, and thus was born Hezbollah Tofu, a blog where vegan chefs are systematically veganizing chef Bourdain’s most celebrated recipes. They plan on selling the resulting compilation, and donating the proceeds to vegan causes (farm sanctuaries, public education, etc) in Bordain’s name. Take that, Anthony!

This topic brings up a whole host of questions for me, as a Jew and as a self-professed foodie who also strives to eat sustainably (although not regularly animal-product free):

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I never fancied myself a desert person - for most of my life, I’ve chosen the extra bowl of pasta over the ice cream. But after receiving an ice cream maker as a gift, I felt compelled to buy David Lebovitz’ beautiful book on ice creams, sorbets, granitas, and other sugary treats, Perfect Scoop. Owning this book might just turn me over to the sweet side.

Lebovitz’ recipe for Rice Gelato especially caught my eye. It’s rich and creamy but has a substantive texture lacking from most ice creams - think rice pudding or risotto. And while it’s not exactly healthy, it is a perfectly decadent treat for celebrating Purim.

Recipe below the jump

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In this week’s Jerusalem Post, Dr. Richard Schwartz writes:

“Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, was a vegetarian while she lived in the palace of King Achashverosh. She was thus able to avoid violating the kosher dietary laws while keeping her Jewish identity secret.”

Well, sort of. As a vegetarian and a woman, I find Dr. Schwartz’s line of logic tempting. Hooray! Queen Esther, the sassy savior of the Jewish people, loved tofu! But he has the midrash backwards.

There are actually conflicting opinions about what Esther chose to eat and refuse in the palace (one commentator suggests that she was actually served pork!). But the midrash that stuck is that she ate beans and legumes. If this was the case, then Queen Esther avoided meat so as to not violate the kosher laws in her non-Jewish surroundings. Her intention would not have been to eschew all flesh, as Dr. Schwartz suggests, just the non-kosher kind.

Even if she wasn’t a card-carrying PETA member, Queen Esther’s diaspora diet gives us a glimpse into the strength of her character. She maintained her sense of self, even within a palace that was undoubtedly filled with temptations. The lesson to take away is not that all Jews should be vegetarians (though many could benefit from eating less meat!), but that defending one’s core values is the deepest form of heroism.

In honor of Queen Esther, here’s a recipe for Persian Stuffed Peppers by Chef Gil Marks, author of a mind-bogglingly comprehensive book of vegetarian Jewish recipes, Olive Trees and Honey.

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