It’s that time again. With Purim around the corner, many people have been thinking about Hamentashen. I had some friends over last night to make tasty triangular treats. Our savory ‘tashen were inspired by this blog and Leah Koenig (see the archived post here) though mine were rosemary dough with sweet-potato goat cheese filling. My brother made home-made poppyseed filling like I did last year (see that archived post here).
Our friend Nancy Wolfson-Moche also sent along this link to her blog for her “pouch pastry recipe.” Thanks, Nancy, for sharing this photo of your delish hamentashen.
Avi Rubel is the North American Director of Masa Israel Journey, the umbrella organization for immersion programs in Israel for young adults (18-30). When not sending people to Israel, Avi can be found making cheese, bread, kombucha or fermenting or pickling all kinds of goodies in his Brooklyn apartment and recording his adventures on his food blog, Make Cheese Not War. In the weeks after the Hazon Food Conference, he shared some of his thoughts about his experience with Hazon in California.
Click below to read his posts:
I am lucky enough to live in Eugene, Oregon. I’ve got it pretty good here – great weather, great outdoors, great Jewish community, great abundance of local organic food. But Chinese food? Not so much here in Eugene.
As a Bay Area transplant, I crave Chinese food. I often feel like I literally NEED it. After months searching for something that would quench my Chinese food tastebuds – and realizing that to keep my version of kosher (which is eco-kosher: less about what is and what is not treyf and more about eating only meat that is ideally organic and pasture-raised – and if not, is absolutely free-range, never given hormones or antibiotics, and was humanely slaughtered) – I came to the conclusion that I’d have to make it myself. For both taste and my personal kashrut reasons. Which is some kind of a life lesson right there, I’m sure.
I stumbled upon a recipe for Cashew Chicken from the inimitable Martha Stewart and decided to give it a whirl – and my own flair. And to tell the truth, it is delicious and happily graces our Friday night Shabbat table pretty often.
My boyfriend is Brazilian. To look at him you’d probably think he was Middle Eastern, with his dark complexion. He speaks with an American accent that is very South Florida, but none-the-less he was born in Brazil.
Last week for no particular reason I wanted to surprise him with a Brazilian inspired meal. However, most Brazilian cuisine involves meat or fish – two things my boyfriend is loath to eat. (We do occasionally eat humanly raised grass-fed local sustainable meat, but he finds seafood appalling.) Feijoada, considered the national dish of Brazil consists of black beans slow cooked with various parts of the pig. Since my boyfriend loves meatless rice and beans, so I decided to get creative.
On the Internet I researched various feijoada recipes, which mostly relied on lots of salt and pork and very little other flavoring unless you count the beef bits. But how could I keep things kosher and compete with recipes that look like a butcher shop in a pot? There were a lot of vegetarian black bean recipes online, but this needed to be more than just rice and beans, I needed to make this complex and interesting to call it feijoada. So I explored the Internet for some more tastes of Brazil.
I’m fascinated when tradition gets tested by modern science and comes out standing. I’d cheered when acupuncture was shown to be effective for chronic pain. Now, I’ve learned that America’s Test Kitchen, which publishes Cook’s Illustrated, has subjected challah to its test kitchen experimentation. The results: pretty much what you’d learned from your mother and grandmother (or would, if you had one).
The best tasting challah is not too sweet, not too dense, not too fluffy and not from the commercial bakeries. Their results, from the Holiday Baking 2009 issue, included:
People love to cook for intimate gatherings, but they also have a fascination with mass-producing food. I, for one, am guilty of an obsession with the Food Network show Unwrapped and immediately join the line for any tour of a cheese-, chocolate-, or bourbon-making operation. I’ll also tune into any show that gives chefs a ridiculously short amount of time to cook for an outrageous number of people—preferably with some kind of added challenge, like making dinner for a cruise ship filled half with gluten-sensitive diners and half with people who subsist entirely on whole wheat bread… while the boat heads directly for a storm on the high seas.
Originally published at My Jewish Learning.
Over the last decade, seders for Tu Bishvat have spiked in popularity. This growth is largely due to the contemporary Jewish community’s interest in “greening” ritual and holidays. Every year, the number of organizations turning to Tu Bishvat to inject some sustainability-awareness into their annual programming grows, as does the collection of environmentally-inspired haggadot for Tu Bishvat available online. (Like this one from My Jewish Learning, this one from Hillel, and this one from Hazon.)
The downside is that some people shy away from celebrating the holiday precisely because it feels too “hippie” or eco-spiritual. But while the Tu Bishvat seder, which was originally developed as a mystical celebration by kabbalists in 16th century Safed, provides a helpful structure for celebrating Tu Bishvat, there are no official rules for the holiday. The lack of halakhic requirements means that seders can be tailored to meet their hosts’ personalities–even if they happen to prefer fine china over bicompostable dishware.
I’m sure that like me, many of you cannot get Hanukah cooking and baking out of your minds! I will be making potato leek latkes, homemade apple sauce and some chewy ginger cookies tonight. As you can tell, I’m in full holiday mode! Anyway, if you are looking for a break from the holiday food maddness I have a great recipe for you!
My birthday was about a month and a half ago. As much as I enjoy eating out I really wanted to cook my birthday dinner at home with my boyfriend this year. We decided our main course would be homemade pizza – something neither of us had ever made. I had heard it was very easy to make but having never made any type of yeast-based bread, I was a bit nervous!
I looked into a few recipes and ended up using one based on a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers. I will say that this recipe didn’t make quite enough dough for me. I think next time I will try this recipe. The most fun thing about making your own pizza is that you can put anything you want on it (and it can be as healthy or unhealthy as you’d like)! We were especially proud of our pizzas since the vast majority of the ingredients were local and organic. I hope you enjoy making your own pizza. Feel free to leave comments with your favorite topping combination!
It’s latke season, which also means it’s time to buy applesauce, dig out the applesauce you made in the fall, or make some from scratch now. This simple recipe fills up the house with a delicious aroma of cinnamon, and can easily be frozen in plastic or glass freezer containers to enjoy throughout the winter. Add a bit to your buttery sweet potato latkes, parsnip carrot latkes, or spicy potato latkes; or have some plain as a snack – it’s delicious with granola or walnuts mixed it!
Here’s a colorful seasonal alternative to traditional potato latkes:
Take your favorite latke recipe and substitute an equal amount of shredded parsnips and carrots for the potatoes (if you want them to be even more colorful, you can also add shredded zucchini, if you don’t mind that zucchini isn’t seasonal this time of year for most of us). The result is a lighter, more flavorful latke, and the parsnips and carrots make for a sweeter, more complex flavor than traditional potato latkes. Not to mention you can pretend you’re eating healthier because you’re eating veggie latkes instead of all those carbs (just forget about the whole fried in oil part). Chag sameach!
If you are looking for a Chanukah gift for a foodie (say… yourself!), or some new recipes for any of the Jewish holidays, then there’s a new book out that will be of help. Aviva Allen, author of the 2007 The Organic Kosher Cookbook, has just released a Holiday Edition. Ms. Allen provided me with a free copy for this interview and review.
Have an old bread machine hanging around? Want the taste of challah without the effort? I’ve made this delicious egg bread from a recipe in this cookbook. It’s delicious for sandwiches, french toast, regular toast, and dunked into soup.
The wind was blowing, leaves were falling, and all I could think was “Man, I have got to get me some french onion soup.” This time of year always makes me crave comfort, and for me french onion soup is comfort incarnate. I love the sweetness of the onions, the smooth melted cheese, and the delicious beef broth that warms me from head to toe instantly, even on the chilliest afternoons.
It has always been a staple recipe in our house, but this year is different. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have just ended, and a new year is upon the Jewish community. I was not raised kosher. I never intended to live that way. But as I have gotten older and wiser, I find myself wanting to adopt a more kosher lifestyle, and have been taking small steps to bring myself in line. This year, one of my New Year resolutions is to take bigger steps. I will buy kosher meat whenever I can find it. Neither pork nor seafood can enter my oven. I will not cook milk with meat. And I will do all of this consistently and with conscious diligence.
But that onion soup beckoned….
The Delicious Pie, Sans First Slice
On Sunday night as my mother and I stood outside and began the slow, sad process of dismantling our Sukkah, I started to think about autumn and more specifically, why it ranks as my favorite time of the year. The end of the fall holidays always hit me hard, perhaps even harder than the thought of returning to my daily routine. And yet there I was, shivering in my pajamas and thanking Hashem Almighty that it was fall in New York.
Considering my deep loathing of the snow and my firm belief that the winter should be spent hibernating (with only rare breaks for hot chocolate and cookies), I’m always surprised by my love of its seasonal predecessor. But then I remember that the fall is the start of a brand new year for us Jews. Everything is open before us, and we haven’t had much chance to mess up yet. My favorite flavors come into the Farmers’ Markets: apples, butternut squash, fresh figs, and best of all, pumpkins. And for me, the fall comes with a wonderful combination of those two notions.
Since the next day was Columbus Day (or as I like to call it, the most arbitrary day off of the year), my mother, two of my
