My boyfriend is really into good podcasts and came home the other night insisting that I watch this.  And he was right, Dan Barber gives a charming and very insightful talk about sustainable fishing.  Check it out:

Many Jews would consider a bagel naked without the lox

Disclaimer: I am neither Orthodox nor do I keep kosher. And when I read things like this week’s Jewish Week article, I realize just another reason why.

Granted this is in the haredi community, which continues to move further and further toward a parody of itself. A group of rabbis has determined that Shabbat elevators, which are in use throughout Israel and New York, are no longer kosher. And now lox may be suspect.

As someone who cares deeply about where my meat comes from, how it was treated when it was alive, as well as how it was killed, I am continally struck by how except for a handful of exceptions (run by people we all know) kosher meat does not fit into this at all. People who care about both have so few options available.

Cross-posted to heebnvegan

This week The Jewish Star reported that some haredi rabbis in Israel (as well as some of their American counterparts) have deemed various types of fish treif because they possess a parasitic worm called anisakis. The article quoted a bulletin from “Chevra Mehadrun, the Kashrus Advocacy of Rockland,” as advising that “wild salmon, hake, flounder, sol[e], halibut, sea bass, red perch, scrod, pollock, cod and butter fish are no longer considered kosher.” It must be noted that many mainstream Orthodox authorities, including the Orthodox Union, do not take this position.

Although this new classification does not yet have a huge following, one must imagine that lox and various other common foods would cease to be staples in kosher cuisine. If a large number of kosher consumers adhered to the new standard, fish consumption among kosher-keeping Jews would likely decrease substantially. At this time, there is no reason to suspect that this will be the case. Considering that fish feel pain and suffer in much the same way that other vertebrate animals do, though, one can still hope that more and more people see that fish are friends, not food!

What is Jewish food? Avoiding shellfish and pork and never eating meat with dairy? Hummus? Kreplach? Whatever your Bubbe used to make?

What makes a cuisine Jewish?  Other East Asian cultures have vegetarian diets, which by default wouldn’t be mixing meat with dairy.  Hummus is wildly popular throughout the Middle East. And are kreplach so very different than Italian tortellini?

So what is Jewish food?  It’s like what is asking what your comfort food is.  Probably whatever your family makes.  If you have an Eastern European background, brisket, matzoh ball soup and knishes may be the norm.  A Sephardic background may involve more Mediterranean dishes.

But can this identification with food change?  When I was in college, my comfort food was Macaroni and Cheese out of a box.  As an adult, my go-to comfort dish is sautéed mushrooms and kale.  So yes, I’m a believer that people can change.  So can what we think of as Jewish cuisine change?

Thanks so much to Jay Weinstein, for his great guest post.  Jay is a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, is a New York based food writer, editor, culinary instructor, and cookbook author. His food articles and recipes have been featured in The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, Time Out New York, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Ethical Gourmet, focuses on ecologically sustainable fine foods. He teaches culinary arts at The Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City.

Straight out of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) in 1988, I went to work for Jasper White, the Boston chef who would become my mentor. I still remember how he told me that Atlantic salmon were commercially extinct. We were beginning to use a new salmon raised in a Canadian aquaculture operation that was a cross-breed of farmed Norwegian salmon, and wild Atlantic salmon. “Better half wild than not wild at all,” he quipped.

Since that time, the New England rivers that provided genetic stock for that ‘80s hybrid have suffered the excesses of the salmon farming industry, and the American public has been exposed to the pollution, pesticides, artificial colorants, and epidemics that salmon aquaculture has brought to our shores. We’ve lamented the megaton hauls of wild “feeder” fish dumped into the insatiable maw of the big salmon business, which built salmon into the most consumed fish in America.

While most consumers seem content to keep on buying factory-farmed salmon because it’s cheap, reliably fresh, and inoffensively mild in taste, some eco-savvy Americans who are concerned about the decline of ocean fish, river biodiversity, and humane treatment of animals rail against fish farming as an environmental disaster. Mention farmed fish to them, and they’ll say that wild is the only choice for fish-eaters with a conscience. Fish farming, after all, has done such damage. But there’s a problem with their argument too.

Cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS).

Imagine waking up one morning to find your crops—the food that keeps you alive—completely submerged in water and entirely destroyed. This is exactly what happened along the Sinú River in northern Colombia, a region that has supported a diverse community of indigenous people for generations. The Zenu and Embera people who live by the Sinú banks depend on the river for fish, irrigation and drinking water. But in 2000, the Urrá Dam, built by a consortium of Colombian, Swedish and Russian companies, submerged over 7,400 hectares of land, crops, homes and sacred sites. The dam displaced 2,800 people and continues to threaten the lives of 70,000 by altering vital food supplies. Areas of severe periodic flooding and drought caused by its flow have stymied traditional farming practices. Compounding this reality is the construction of a new dam—many times the size—by the Colombian government, presenting a constant looming threat over this beleaguered rural community.

Hot-smoked salmon bathed

in new onions, farmers’ eggs

cry for bliss, o pan.

Whenever I return to New York for a visit, I make a pilgrimage to Barney Greengrass for lox, eggs and onions (with a toasted everything bagel and a small borscht, baby). Walter, my famed fishmonger at Pure Fish at the Pike Place Market, sweetly gave me a birthday package of hot-smoked salmon this week. As soon as I got it home, I knew what I was going to do with it.

I had new red onions in the fridge from my Hazon CSA box and unbelievably orange and delicious eggs from the Crown-S-Ranch from which I’m sure I’ll never recover. Oh, to be an egg snob! Lordy, Lordy.

Photo by Paul Lowry

Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought flowers were for vases – not plates.

Oh, sure, I read the articles showing a cheerful chef tossing a nasturtium blossom on a pile of lettuce. Surely a tasteless bid for attention, I sniffed.

A recent web search for organic pest riddance has given me a new taste for ripe nasturtium blossoms, leaves and seed pods.

Gardeners have long loved nasturtiums as companion plants to keep insects off of collards, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, fruit trees and radishes. Nasturtiums themselves are as edible as the vegetables and fruits they protect.

The flavors are not dramatic. Blossoms, tossed whole or torn into salads, taste like mild radishes. Sautéed nasturtium leaves processed into a cold vichyssoise are peppery. Bined or pickled seedpods make a poor gourmet’s capers.

Here is one of my favorite recipes: nasturtium butter.  The petals give the butter a wonderful gold color.  This is excellent on freshly steamed vegetables or fish.

It’s pretty easy to eat local food in New York City.  Scattered throughout the five boroughs are farmers markets and CSAs are plentiful.  Since I moved to Brooklyn I’ve joined the Park Slope Co-op that displays a map of its farms and suppliers on its website.  There are also plenty of restaurants that feature local and season foods on its menu (I recently went to Nick and Toni’s Café, which I highly recommend)

And for those desiring to gather and produce their own local fare, we have illicit urban agrarian societies in New York that go foraging or keep bees.  But as it turns out, not all local foods are created equally.

I really love it when my boyfriend gets excited about a meal.  He stops, breathes in. “Oh,” he says quietly, “oh, wow” a little louder.  That usually makes me pause.  “Oh this is amazing,” his eyes go wide and a smile begins to play across his face, “I can’t believe how good this is.”  Sometimes he reaches across the table to include me in the moment, sometimes he revels in his experience alone.

We had one of those moments last night.  Earlier in the day, I had been bored at work so I checked out Facebook and noticed an invitation to several restaurants with a focus on sustainable food that were donating a portion of their proceeds that night to the Brooklyn Food Conference.  Since I was planning on being in the neighborhood of one of these restaurants, I decided to check it out – boyfriend in tow.

Thanks so much to Deb Arnold for this terrific guest post.  Deb is a serious foodie living in Seattle, much to her own disbelief. She has previously lived and cooked in New York, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Deb is a business communications consultant serving global clients, a sometimes writer, an avid traveler, and an unrepentant choir geek. She is also a proud partner at the award-winning Kavana Jewish Cooperative, one of the best things about living in Seattle.

Frankly, I was a little nervous.

I’d come to rely on Walter. He was my supplier, my guy, my dealer, you might even say. Whatever Walter says is fresh, I buy. Whatever Walter puts in my packages for Pesach, I take. Whatever special price he offers, I smile.

One can develop a very deep relationship with one’s fishmonger (way) out here in the Pacific Northwest. Especially if you’re me.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s being a regular, especially if there’s food involved. I even became a regular once at a lunch counter in the Boqueria market in Barcelona (ask Sharon). Two years later, the guy still remembered what I like to drink while I’m waiting for a seat (cava, if you must know).

So when I called to place my gefilte fish order and was told Walter was out for two days, my heart sank. He was the only (half) Jew in the place. Despite reassurances that anyone there could do the job (“we all have knives, lady”) and the shocking news that this was not exactly a novelty item (“we can add you to our list of gefilte fish orders”), I stood firm. I would wait until Walter got back on Tuesday morning and pick up my fish then. “Now I want you to write on my order,” I instructed in my best New York wise guy , “if it’s not Walter, it’s not Passover!” I said I’d be in at 9am.

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.

Red meat in moderation is okay, but you probably shouldn’t chow down on steak every day. That’s what conventional dietary wisdom says. Now, a National Cancer Institute study suggests, the distinction between moderation and daily intake has become a matter of life and death.

In the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 545,653 people ages 50 to 71 were asked about their eating habits and then tracked over the next 10 years. During that time, a little over 70,000 died.

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.