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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Tradition, shmadition, I hate poppy seed hamantaschen. I find this old-world filling to be gritty and saccharine and really just a vile affront to the taste buds. So when a friend suggested bringing a can of the corn syrup-laden stuff to my recent hamantaschen-making party, I kindly (but firmly) let her know that my home is mohn-free.
I don’t think she missed it too much. My kitchen table was strewn with interesting pots of jam (cherry-apricot from the farmers’ market, and blueberry canned last summer by the Adamah fellows), a container of raw honey, another of Nutella, and even a jar of peanut butter brought by a friend who insisted it could be great (it was).
But the highlight of the evening, without a doubt, centered around our experiments with savory hamantaschen - pockets of dough filled with an earthy mixture of sauteed mushrooms, browned onions, and a garlic and basil-infused jack cheese by the Sugar River Cheese Co. As we bit in to the warm, herb-flecked treats, it felt like something of a Jewish food revolution. Poppy seeds, watch your back.
Photos and recipe below the jump…
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Thanks to Chef Gil Marks for this wealth of resources and recipes that will brighten up your Shalach Manot basket. Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food - Keep your eye out for more of his Purim ideas and recipes!
Sophisticated Shalach Manot - Recipes
The Megillah declared “… they should make them days of feasting and gladness, of sending portions (mi’sholach manot) one to another and gifts to the poor.” The obligation of shalachmones entails sending gifts of at least two ready-to-eat foods to at least two people. The most common Purim foods are sweets, a symbolic way to wish for a “good lot” or, in other words, a sweet future. It is for good reason that Moslems refer to Purim as Id-al-Sukkar (The Sugar Holiday).
Shalachmones has become a bit commercial lately, many baskets containing the same assortment of bags of snack foods, chemically-laden cakes and cookies, and candy bars. While store-bought foods certainly fulfill the letter of the law, they lack something in the spirit. Homemade goodies show special care and thought and they generally taste better. Granted, many people are simply too busy to prepare their own shalachmones, and they should not feel guilty. If you have the time and desire, prepare any or all of the following impressive treats:
Hamantaschen, Pecan Tassies, Individual Baklava, Leaf Cookies, Fortune Cookies, Flower Spritzes, Almonds Horns, Lemon Halos, Spice Sandwiches, Sarah Bernhardts, Chocolate Bells
Recipes below the jump and Purchase Gil’s cookbook, Olive Trees and Honey here.
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As much as I love hosting Shabbat dinners, by Friday night, I am completely exhausted. I often pull together a quick meal, hoping that I have chicken soup and a homemade challah leftover in the freezer from a previous week. This upsets me, because I’d love to have the time to cook all day on Friday in preparation for Shabbat, but with my demanding job, it doesn’t happen all that often right now.
However, by Sunday, I am rearing to go, ready to make a great meal from scratch. I recently decided to have a dinner party, and to make everything, from bread to homemade ice cream. It was not difficult to invite friends to this meal. Luckily, living in Chicago, I have a large kitchen (probably the size of many NY studios), so it’s not a problem for me to cook all day and make a huge mess.
Mushroom Soup recipe below the jump.
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“If an idolator gives a banquet for his son and invites all the Jews in his town, then, even though they eat of their own and drink of their own and their own attendant waits on them, Scripture regards them as if they had eaten of the sacrifices to dead idols…” - Talmud Bavli, Avodah Zarah 8:1
All this recent talk on the blog about choice and continuity in Judaism got me thinking about the Talmudic text quoted above. (Before I front like I’m too cool for school, I readily admit that Hazon’s staff just read this text* during a staff meeting, which is why it’s at the front of my consciousness.)
In my eyes, this - along with a few similarly prohibitive verses - sits as one of the more distressing texts in Jewish tradition because it implies that Jews should not eat with “non-Jews” (in the non-Jew’s home), even if the food they’re eating in that home is otherwise kosher. Why? Because eating symbolizes so much more than filling our bellies - it’s social, it connects us to other people, and it could, as they say, lead to mixed dancing…
More thoughts and a cholent recipe below the jump.
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Tonight, a few friends are coming over for a pizza-making party - it seemed like an apporpriate activity for a random mid-winter night. Meanwhile, last night was Purim katan (the mini-Purim celebration that occurs a month before regular Purim - and only on leap years when the month of Adar rolls around twice).
Something about the convergence of these two events must have released the crazy bug in me - because, as I was scanning cookbooks for a good dough recipe and shopping for ingredients (a combination of wilted broccoli rabe, toasted pine nuts, roasted garlic, red sauce, mozzarella and parmesan), a BRILLIANT IDEA hit me: pizzatashen! Pizza dough, pizza ingredients, hamentashen shape - there really couldn’t be a more obvious culinary partnership.
I recognize that hamentashen - those little jam-filled, tri-cornered pastries, fall pretty squarely in the sweet category - cherry, poppyseed, ginger marmalade if you’re feeling bold. Until the possibility of pizzatashen crossed my mind, I’d don’t think I’d ever used “savory” and “hamentashen” in the same sentence. But once the initial kitsch factor wears off, this new cousin of the calzone seems long overdue. If you’re feeling a little freaked out about the whole idea, check out this photo of another pizza-inspired pastry.
And if you have other recipes/traditions for savory hamentashen - please share! Check out the recipe for herbed pizza dough below the jump.
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I made a recipe for a client today that was so delicious, I feel compelled to share. I wish I had brought my camera on the job today, to take a picture, but alas, I didn’t. And while I found a photo of these very veggie burgers on another blog, it says it’s copyrighted, so I won’t use it here.
Now before you think: “she’s getting all excited about veggie burgers?” and move on to “Serious Eats,” or “Amateur Gourmet,” or whomever, hold on. (You can check out those great sites afterwards.) These veggie burgers are something else. They have beets. They have carrots. They have sunflower seeds and cheddar cheese(!) They are some of the best damn veggie burgers I’ve ever had.
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I’ve been working on a few bread projects lately: sourdough starter, and the no-knead focaccia-style bread recipe from the NY Times last year. Today, I completed a successful merger and the result? Only half a loaf left, after my parents & I were through with it at dinner.
The no-knead recipe goes something like this: wet dough + long time to rise = big air bubbles. Home-bakers tend to be more familiar with the opposite kind of bread, that is, a very elastic, kneadable dough, that rises for 2-3 hours, and gives a dense, fine-crumb loaf. You could come home from work at 4 and still have challah for shabbos at 8 kind of thing. But the air bubbles intrigued me — who doesn’t love french bread! and so I’ve been experimenting.
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(x-posted at Lilith)
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately. In comparison to the stereotypical “I use my oven as an extra shoe closet” New Yorker, I’ve always cooked a lot for this city. But since I started freelance writing two days a week last summer, and especially since the New Year when I renewed my commitment to preparing my own meals, I’ve found myself spending much more time in the kitchen.
I’ve also discovered that there’s lots of time to think when one cooks - even if NPR is playing in the background. As I’ve tinkered with various types of cookies and tried out new recipes from my favorite Chanukah present, Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
(thanks Mom!), I’ve started to wonder, “what makes food feel Jewish?”
Yes, there are the old standbys - Chicken soup with matzah balls, fresh challah, pastrami on rye. And then there are the mysterious, and often severely unappetizing foods that you find in the “kosher food” section at the supermarket - gefilte fish, pickles, Manischewitz, and Tam Tam crackers. Honestly, I can only imagine what folks who aren’t familiar with Jewish eating must think when they see a supermarket shelf of glass jars filled with gelatinous objects suspended in a bunch of different colored murky liquids.
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I am not a professionally trained chef, but I love food. I love reading about it, cooking it, feeding myself, feeding others, talking about it, buying it, and growing it (presuming it’s not 6 degrees below zero in Chicago).
One of my favorite cookbooks is Mark Bittman’s amazingly practical: How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, which features straightforward techniques and an encyclopedic listing of all different types of food. I’ve found that Bittman’s philosophy holds true to the way I like to cook; quick and satisfying - like his Noodles with Peanut Sauce.
This recipe works as well for a quick meal as it does for entertaining large groups. I’ve found that the vegetarians at my Shabbat lunch table appreciate a hearty pile of saucy noodles just for them, especially when I add spicy baked tofu for an extra boost of protein. And as long as I have all of the ingredients at home (most of which I like keeping around in my kitchen anyway), it takes only a few minutes to whip up. The best part is, many of the items can be substituted or modified. Don’t have tofu? What about seitan or tempeh? Or chicken? Don’t have noodles? Try rice? Served hot or cold, this dish is virtually impossible to mess up - even for novice cooks. B’tai Avon!
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