Rabbi Rebecca Joseph is a conservative rabbi, a cultural anthropologist, and a Tuv Ha’Aretz member! Her blog, The Parve Baker is filled with delicious recipes and (equally delicious) words of Torah. This is her second installment of “Unboxed” - posts that demystify summer’s most seasonal produce.  See her first post on rhubarb.

There is something very special about the first pick-up of the Tuv HaAretz CSA season. Having invested in a farmer’s harvest-to-come in the cold dark of winter and then waited patiently through the spring, the initial sight of tables piled high with the first produce of the season is a delight in the midst of the densely built environment. No wonder our ancestors were enjoined to bring offerings of first fruits to the Temple in gratitude for the blessing of the earth’s bounty!

At Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City last week, new and returning Tuv HaAretz members gathered shares of vegetables, fruit, flowers, and eggs from Eve and Chris Kaplan-Walbrecht’s Garden of Eve farm. Early summer greens prevailed. Red lettuce, mesclun, and arugula went into bags and boxes of all shapes and sizes along with elegant asparagus spears, bunches of red radishes, and a single stalk of rhubarb each. Then there were the leeks. Sturdy and humble in appearance, these gangly onion and garlic cousins fit awkwardly among the leafy beauties.

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This Shavuot I baked, with the assistance of my son Max, a siete cieli (“Seven Heavens”) challah. It’s become a regular tradition in our family, along with cutting roizelekh (”roses”) from origami paper, to bake this Mt. Sinai-shaped round challah adorned with various symbols of Torah and revelation - the 2 tablets of the covenant, a ladder, a fish, a bird, and a hamsa.

Max made the fish that you can see in the picture. There’s an excellent, illustrated description of how to construct the “seven heavens” challah in the cookbook by Rabbi Robert Sternberg, The Sephardic Kitchen, though I don’t use his recipe for challah. Rather, I use my favorite whole wheat challah recipe from Marcy Goldman’s Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking. By the way, this is a fantastic cookbook. I have yet to bake a recipe from it that I haven’t liked. The whole wheat challah recipe follows below the break. I have also adapted this Shavuot hallah to celebrate the end of the term with my Wheaton College First Year Seminar “Rituals of Dinner” students, adding other, more contemporary dough symbols, i.e., a mortarboard hat and diploma. Read more »

Every kid remembers a time when their parents urged them to “Eat your vegetables.” But what about “Eat your ice cream or you’re not leaving the table?”

Vegetable ice cream. I know it’s a radical concept, but I proved recently to my dinner guests that this unexpected combination of fresh spring peas and sweet cream actually tastes amazing together. I am a huge fan of green pea soup, puree, anything to do with peas. As a child, I would sneak a handful of frozen peas while my mom was making dinner, and I still love popping them in my mouth whenever I’m cooking with them. If you are lucky enough to have fresh peas, then by all means, use them, but frozen peas will definitely do the job here.

As usual, I turned to my trusty ice cream cookbook, David Liebovitz’s Perfect Scoop, for inspiration (remember the indulgent rice gelato I tried during Purim?). From there, I let my improvisation run wild. This ice cream screams spring, and with a fresh burst of mint, you will be sure to impress your friends and family. They may even demand second helpings of their veggies!

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As some of you might remember, I am one of the “blintz experts” competing in next Tuesday’s BLINTZKRIEG: Music and Blintzes. Competition is fierce for the battle of the blintz portion of the evening, let me tell you. (My worthy competitors are the wonderful Sandy Stollar of The Kosher Tomato Personal Chef Service, and the equally wonderful Linda Lantos, also a chef and culinary education instructor with the Children’s Aid Society.)  So, I need your help.

I want to make a blintz that really wows the crowd - sweet cheese is fine, but I want something that will take people’s blintz expectations to the next level. So far I’ve concocted two ideas for fillings - one a sweet mascarpone cheese mixed with strawberries and orange zest. The other goes the savory route, mixing garlicky pesto with silken tofu.

The problem is, as of 10:00pm next Tuesday - I’m going to be swirling blintz for a LOT of hungry people - people who will vote whether or not my blintzes taste better than the rest. I just don’t think I can deal with toggling back and forth between two fillings, nor do I want eaters to come away feeling like my blintz palette is muddled by competing flavors.

So, friends - I need you to vote. Tell me, which blintz filling would most excite your taste buds - sweet strawberry, or savory pesto? I’m in your hands.

To help you decide, check out the photos of the two choices below. And if you’re around NYC next Tuesday night, come check out the blintzes and the music at Blintzkrieg.

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Thanks to Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster for this guest post.  Rabbi Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights North America.

Growing up, Shavuot for me meant lasagna - a delicious, cheesy creation that my mother would make for the one Jewish holiday on which we did not eat meat. (Actually, I was an adult before I realized that non-kosher lasagna was made with meat). I loved the lasagna, and Shavuot wasn’t bad either. Special food, staying up late the first night with my friends- Shavuot was a hit, and I didn’t think about it more than that.

One synagogue I went to hosted a “bikkurim (first fruits) procession:” they had people bring in baskets of produce and leave them on the bimah. I’d never seen a community mark Shavuot through any way but through a Tikkun Leyl Shavuot (staying up all night to study) and by eating blintzes, and I didn’t really know what to make of it. It seemed a little pagan.

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Jayne Cohen, author of the stunningly gorgeous new cookbook Jewish Holiday Cooking (witness above) is officially a new poster-woman for The Jew & The Carrot. A talented and creative chef and food writer, Cohen loves traditional Jewish dishes as much as she loves improvising with them, and has a weakness for the farmers’ market to boot. Welcome home, Jayne! She spoke with The Jew & The Carrot about her passion for fresh vegetables, the benefits of occasionally going pot-luck, “foodie poets,” and why real Jewish foods deserve real butter.

Below the jump: The full interview, Jayne’s recipe for blintzes, and a chance to win a copy of Jewish Holiday Cooking.

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Gastronomically speaking, trying to follow Passover is a tough gig. The seder meals are all flashy and filled with symbolic food meaning - how can another holiday compete? But each year, a month and change after the first bite of matzoh ball soup, Shavuot must try.

Here to help, The Jew & The Carrot offers a Healthy Sustainable Shavuot Menu - one that highlights the fresh flavors of the spring season and the dairy-inspired fare traditionally eaten for the holiday. With recipes for English pea risotto, wild salmon in brown butter, and lemony ricotta cheesecake, Shavuot might just have a fighting chance of culinary bragging rights this year.What do you like to make for Shavuot?

Last Friday, Yosh and I attended a sushi-making Shabbat dinner. Wine was blessed and followed by small cups warm sake. Then, after we’d washed and blessed the challah, my friends and I rolled up our sleeves, rolled out the bamboo mats, and rolled up some amazing (if not technically perfect) sushi. Did it feel like a traditional Friday night dinner? Not entirely - but what better way to greet the Sabbath queen than with a plate of freshly made sushi and soy sauce?

Find out how to make your own sushi here. But first, check out the tasty photos (taken by the talented Rik) from our dinner, below the jump!

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Shavuot is one of my favorite culinary holidays. It’s one of the few holidays where dairy dishes do not get pushed aside by meat (though I certainly have nothing against meat!) and get to be the star of the show. It’s also the celebration of Bikkurim (first fruits), which commemorates the bringing of the Seven Species of Israel (barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates) to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Strawberries are not technically one of the seven species, but they are definitely among the “first fruits” of the spring season here in America. In the recipe below, I’ve paired sweet roasted strawberries with medallions of fried goat cheese and a honey lavender vinaigrette. What could taste more like springtime than that?

Recipe below the jump. Read more »

The Jew & The Carrot “old-timers” might remember a post from this time last year about a blintz making party I went to for Shavuot at my friend Avi’s apartment. Well, Avi is at it again, though instead of making blintzes at his house, he’s putting together an all night blintz and music extravaganza on June 10 in NYC…

BLINTZKRIEG: Music & Blintzes

Find out all the info below the jump. And if you know of (or are planning) any other fun, foodie Shavuot activities, please share! Read more »

Rabbi Rebecca Joseph is a conservative rabbi, a cultural anthropologist, and a Tuv Ha’Aretz member! Her blog, The Parve Baker is filled with delicious recipes and (equally delicious) words of Torah. Over the summer, she will spearhead The Jew & The Carrot’s “Unboxed” segment - periodic posts that aim to demystify summer’s most seasonal produce.

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my cousin who lives year-round in a largely rural, but fast-developing part of Bucks County in southeastern Pennsylvania. Beth is a great cook and friendly with several local farmers. We stopped by Jim and Kathy Lyons’ Blue Moon Acres for organic micro-greens and spent a morning in the lavender fields at Carousel Farm with another organic grower, Niko Christou. At None Such Farm Market, which sells produce grown across the road and on other nearby farms, we acquired asparagus and rhubarb, the true harbingers of harvests-to-come in the Northeast.

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I can’t think of a better indication that spring has arrived than the fresh rhubarb ginger crisp currently sitting on my window sill (okay - it’s actually on top of my microwave, but go with me.) The inspiration to make this crisp for Shabbat dinner tonight came to me as I was hurrying through the Union Square farmers’ market towards the subway. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of absurdly neon pink that nearly caused me whiplash as I turned to get a better look. Rhubarb had arrived!

The second inspiration was the copy of Peter Berley’s cookbook Fresh Food Fast, which a co-worker gave me as an engagement present. Flipping through the book, which is divided into winter, spring, summer, and fall recipes, I found a recipe for a rhubarb crisp. It almost seemed a crime not to make it.

More and a recipe for ginger rhubarb crisp below the jump…

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A kosher chef walks into a kitchen…

It might sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but this summer, the stigma around “inferior” kosher cuisine might officially be put to bed. The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn is teaming up with Kingsborough Community College to offer the first professional kosher cooking program in the US (following the Jerusalem Culinary Institute) and the first accredited kosher cooking program in the world.

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If you’re a foodie, then (in addition to your collection of stinky cheese and expensive vinegar) it is crucial to have foodie friends - people you can completely “geek out” about food with. For example, my fiance may nod appreciatively when I gush on and on about the beautiful radishes I bought at the farmers market - but my foodie friends gush right back - and give me recipes.

Another benefit of having foodie friends is the amazing food field trips they invite you to - like the tortellini-making party I attended last Sunday. A friend of mine has a cousin (Carla) who grew up going to Italy every summer where she learned how to cook from her Italian family. Eager to share her passion for Italian food with others, Carla invited a group of us into her gorgeous kitchen for a cooking lesson.

Listening to Carla talk about the many Mediterranean summers she passed in her aunt’s kitchen made me a little wistful for my Jewish bubbe and my great-grandmother from Lithuania, neither of whom I never was fortunate enough to meet. But there was no time to be wallow that Sunday - there was too much pasta to make!

Photos and a recipe below the jump.

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