Photo by Ivan Soto

I don’t typically cook a lot of meat.  During my dinner parties I’ll sometimes have one meat dish, while everything else will be vegetarian friendly.  Dating a vegetarian has also sharply curtailed my meat consumption.  So in the menu planning for my “traditional” Passover Seder my co-host insisted on brisket.  I agreed, but only if it was conscientious meat (the fish I put into my gefilte fish were all on the “good” fish list).  To him this meant kosher, to me this meant sustainable so we started searching for kosher sustainable brisket.

This was a bit more challenging than we expected.  I had heard about Kol Foods the organization that provides kosher sustainable meat.  The problem we faced was that we only wanted one brisket and they sell their product in much larger quantities.  Of course we thought about asking around to see if we couldn’t find someone who might want to share a box, but because it was rather last minute (the meat order deadline was that day) it didn’t seem likely.  So a little Internet searching later we came across some organic kosher brisket that could be delivered in most parts of Manhattan.  That seemed like the logical compromise so we ended up with two three-pound chunks of meat, a coupon for our next order and a complimentary oven mitt.

Every year, I host a seder that can only be described as unorthodox in every sense of the term.  The guests are usually folks who might not otherwise observe the holiday, and I’m happy to gather them into my home to pray, eat, sing, and think about what freedom means and what we ought to do to make more of it in the world.

I’m so happy to gather them that in the days leading up to seder, I start freaking out about what we’re running short of because I’ve invited so many guests.  Thus comes the last minute run for cutlery, dishes, glassware . . . every year it’s something different. The panic, however, remains the same.

The task seems simple enough: compose a vegetarian Passover seder. At the risk of sounding dismissive, going the Sephardic route is relatively easy. When you have a wide variety of grains and beans at your disposal, how hard can it be to compose a healthy and (more importantly) tasty holiday meal? But putting together an Ashkenazi vegetarian seder is a test of one’s mettle. The exercise brings to mind the work of writers like George Perec, who wrote La disparition, an entire novel without the letter e. The constraint may seem arbitrary and tyrannical, but there it is, work with it.

[And we’ll leave aside question of vegan seders to the pros, way too complicated. See Cecily Marbach Oberstein’s post for some tips.]

Okay, so we all know there are these lists of the do’s and don’ts over Passover.  But like so much in Judaism, there are multiple rules that can be completely contradictory to one another – just ask someone of Sephardic background what counts as chametz then ask someone with an Ashekanazi upbringing.

This matters a great deal to me this year because a friend and I are planning to host a Seder together and he says he wants a “traditional” meal.  I’m excited about cooking a full Passover Seder, except I don’t really know what “traditional” means. (an orange on the seder plate?)  I didn’t grow up Jewish and so often I hear that you are expected to follow your family customs at Passover – especially in determining what counts as kitniot. But my family is Christian and they typically eat ham (and among other things, butter shaped like a lamb) for Easter – so that is not going to be a very helpful guideline for me now.

I promise I will have more recipes from my CSA in the next few days (here’s a hint: collard greens) but today I want to take a break from the veggies to share something really outstanding!  Last weekend my boyfriend and I had one of his old friends over for a bit of a feast, here is the menu: Maui ribs (for the boys – I’m a vegetarian), fork-mashed potatoes, kale, braised fennel… and of course dessert.

My boyfriend and I had been to a french restaurant the night prior and shared chocolate mousse for dessert.  It was good but a bit heavy and dense for my taste.  The next day I started thinking about what to make for dessert and lacked inspiration so I asked him what he wanted me to make.  He clearly didn’t get his filling of mousse the night before and asked me to make more!  I had never made mousse before so I set out to find a good recipe.  I looked through many cookbooks but ended up looking to the chef who is a master of all things comfort food – Tyler Florence, though I did adapt his recipe slightly.  Tyler’s recipes never steer you wrong.  In fact, if you’re ever looking for some outstanding mac and cheese his is fantastic.

Ok, back to the mousse… it turned out to be quite simple and absolutely delicious.  My boyfriend and his friend agreed that it was restaurant-quality!  The best part is that if you have extra and cover it tightly with plastic wrap it will last in the fridge for a few days.  Since you can make this ahead of time it would be perfect for a dairy Shabbat lunch for those of you who don’t cook on Shabbat.  As a side note, the reason you want to keep it covered is that it will take on flavors of other things in the fridge – same reason you always want butter covered.  Now for the recipe…

Last year, we brought you savory hamentashen – the three-cornered cookie that eschews the sugar in the dough in favor of dried herbs and a delicious, mushroom and onion filling.  This year, I offer two new innovations in hamantashen making – both results of a little hamantashen-baking party my husband and I hosted at our place today.

Behold #1: The Minitashen.  It’s bite-sized, which seriously ups its cuteness factor, packed with flavor (Nutella in this case), and it is the perfect solution to excess dough.  

See below the jump for more….

One of the central themes of Purim is the acknowledgment that the order the we treasure in our lives is as precarious a blessing as any we can imagine. The entire holiday features numerous inversions of that order – from the myriad role revearsals in the Book of Esther to the costumes and hidden identities that feature in the story and in our celebrations. These role reversals and moments of revelatory chaos remind us that the universe is not completely under our control – a message even more crucial in our day when we have attempted to subdue the very forces of nature to fulfill our every whim.

Here, then, is a fun and unique way to embrace the topsy-turvy world of Purim through our tastebuds!

Tu Bish’vat is here, along with the delightful hunt in the market for new fruits, some exotic, some uneaten since Rosh Hashanah, and the chance to sit around the table and have a seder that is truly free-form and creative, without any rules about what we are supposed to do or say.

One element of the seder is this exuberance of fruit, all of its colors, smells, and textures. There’s even a special blessing to say for the sweet smell of fruit! Tu Bish’vat is not generally a “locavore’s” holiday, especially here in Western Massachussetts, where only a few of the fruits we can buy are local. (Back in Berkeley it was quite different, not only because you can get so many fruits grown locally in mid-winter, but also because you can go to the Berkeley Bowl and experience the most diverse, exuberant and orgasmic produce section that most human beings will every see.)

There is, however, an order to the seder (seder after all means “order”), something to structure this exuberance, moving from the hard shelled fruits (mostly nuts) to the ones with pits to the ones whose seeds and peels can be swallowed and eaten. This brings up some interesting botanical and culinary questions.

The Hazon food conference was my first trip out to California, and boy did I fall in love. After a few days hiking in Big Sur, where sheer cliffs dropped down hundreds of feet to the blue ocean, foam rising rhythmically around small mountains of eroded rock, stretching as far as we could see, I drove North to San Francisco to visit friends. These particular friends had made the move from New York a year before, and they accepted me and my travel buddy on their futon with only a few days notice. At the very least, I owed them breakfast, and in honor of my new surroundings, I tried a new dish.

Our baked eggs that day were made from what was available at the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market. Baked eggs make a very easy, and pretty impressive main course for brunch. They’re versatile as far as seasonality, since eggs, cheese and cream are year-round commodities, and the casserole on the bottom of the dish can change depending on the veggies currently in season. In December in San Francisco, our eggs included mustard greens, spring onions, shitake mushrooms and canned tomatoes preserved with garlic and a few leaves of basil. When I returned to New York in early January, I made my next batch with potatoes sauteed with garlic, onions, lots of ginger, kale, more preserved tomatoes and a few flax seeds sprinkled in for good measure.

I’ve been thinking a lot about manna lately.  For a fun project called G-dcast!, I’ve been studying the parsha in which we first read about manna – that mysterious substance that is like coriander seed but also is supposed to taste differently for everyone, based on your age (honey for small children, bread for youths, and oil for the elderly, according to Wikipedia).

But here’s my favorite thing about the manna: It might be pretty common knowledge that you’re not supposed to take more manna than you can eat in one day – except on shabbat – but have we really thought that through?  If you do take extras on any regular day of the week, and there are leftovers, it gets rancid and maggoty overnight.  But on Shabbat, there won’t be any manna, so you are supposed to take manna for two days on Friday morning and it won’t go bad overnight.  So, that makes sense, moving on.  But stop – think about it.

And then read more below the fold!

So, this year marked my first Thanksgiving as a newly wed in New York.  After all the amazing simcha of engagement parties, auf rufs (we had two), the wedding, and sheva brachot celebrations over the last month, a very small {quiet} Thanksgiving dinner with our downstairs neighbors seemed like a good way to detox.  Maybe there’d be a little Boggle, maybe a little football watching, and perhaps some crafting and good beer drinking.  But fuss?  That was definitely not on the menu.

My husband, Yosh, was psyched to make his first turkey – a Wise Organic Pastures (kosher, organic, free-range) 14 pounder stuffed with sage and oranges.  I was in charge of sweet potatoes, biscuits, a citrus, avocado, and raddish salad, and seasonal dessert of some kind.  Simple enough except, as a milchigtarian, I am used to having butter, milk, and cream as my building blocks.

I turned to my cookbooks looking for parve inspiration, and was delighted to find this amazing recipe for vegan caramel apple spice cupcakes in the pinnacle of all vegan cookbooks (thus far), Veganomicon.  Moist (very moist!), incredibly sweet, and studded with chunks of caramelized apple, they were the perfect end to a relaxing Brooklyn Thanksgiving.  I doubt that author, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, intended for the recipes in her vegan treasure trove to accompany kosher meat meals, but I was certainly thankful to find them.

Check out the recipe below the jump…

I’ve posted on this already in a couple other forums, but this is of special relevance to readers of JCarrot:Birthright’s post-trip program, Birthright NEXT, is not only reimbursing trip alumni $25 per head to hold a Shabbat dinner, but now they’re offering alumni organizers $20 Amazon.com gift certificates for each Shabbat dinner they recruit. Including up to $1,000, the email boasts.

What? Since when was Shabbat a pyramid scheme? When was multi-level marketing a way to excite people about cooking a meal with friends? Must we harness self-interest in consumerism in order to get kids to be Jewish? Have we fallen to a new level of desperation? There is something deeply smelly about this tactic. Once again, the organized Jewish community has decided to answer the droopy quality of Jewish life offerings with a marketing campaign and financial largess.

I started dating someone recently.  A nice guy, very intelligent, kind, with a penchant for baked goods and peanut butter with chocolate.  Our first official date was dinner.  Since he agreed to sushi I thought he liked it, but at the restaurant he demonstrated some discomfort with the menu, only ordered a very generic maki roll and when we were done was quick to suggest a bakery around the corner with exceptional black and white cookies.   Okay, I’ll say it, I’m a foodie – one of those people who obsessively loves good food.  I’m adventurous – not only in what I eat, but what I cook.  I love fresh foods and only consume processed boxed foods when absolutely necessary.   And I love trying new things.  As a foodie, I like to share my food, I think eating should be an experience as much as it is a function necessary for life.

Yet despite his apparent disinterest in food, I agreed to a second date with Ari and he agreed to an Ethiopian restaurant.  During dinner he took a few sips of the honey wine scooped up a little doro wett with the injera and made delightful conversation.  So I was utterly torn.  Do I continue this budding relationship?  Here was a great guy in a lot of ways, but without any interest in one of my greatest passions – food.  So there were a few more dates.  But, seeing the contents of his refrigerator for the first time again almost had me running out the door.  Slices of processed turkey, mustard, moldy strawberries and milk way past its expiration date it.  In his cupboard he had packets of some sort of “meals”-in-a-bag (just add water!) double-stuffed Oreos and powdered drink mix.

A few years ago I decided to convert to Judaism.  Of course you might be curious about the why, but that is a much longer story that will take a long time to tell. For now, I will say that I’ve been learning a lot about the Jewish community through food. And as someone who took this journey without a partner (I didn’t choose Judaism for an impending marriage) I was quick to realize that becoming part of a community was quite a challenge.

That was where the food came in. I like to think of myself as an amateur chef with credentials like having once lived in France and currently belonging to a CSA, but truth be told is that I really like to cook – an apparently good trait to have within the Jewish community. And since I don’t have the immediate familial connection for the big Jewish foodie holidays like Pesach and Shabbat, I found myself assembling my own Jewish family around a table to share in good food and Jewish learning.