I spent most of the day yesterday on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Not literally.  I was reading Jane Ziegelman’s new book, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.  I wanted to know what they ate in the days before Crisco, Cool Whip, corn syrup, and Cocoa Puffs. 

Besides the foods we commonly eat today, New Yorkers in the 1800’s ate buffalo, bear, venison, moose, mutton, otter, swan, grouse, and dozens of other species, both domestic and wild.  Organ meats included sweetbreads, hearts, livers, and kidneys.  Fish dealers offered eel, 15 types of bass, 6 types of flounder, and 17 types of perch.  Produce included purslane (I’m sure there is some growing in your backyard), salsify (a root vegetable), borage, burdock, beach plum, black currants, mulberries, nanny berries, black gumberries, and whortleberries.  Note the extraordinary variety in comparison to today’s offerings.

Breakfast often consisted of mutton chops, fish steaks, and porridge.  Oysters, whether raw or cooked, were abundant and extremely popular at all meals.  Herring was prepared in a myriad of ways, such as with sour cream and mayonnaise, pickled, fried in butter, smoked, rolled, stuffed with pickles, or as “chopped herring” salad.  I know this salad well because I used to help my Grandma Rosie make it. 

Grandma Rosie was born July 31, 1910, the fourth child in her family, and the first to be born in America.  Yesterday would have been her 100^th birthday.  Here’s her recipe:  Soak 12 pickled herrings overnight, drain, remove the skin and bones, and chop fine.  Add 2 cups cooked potatoes, 1 cup apples, and 2 hard-boiled eggs, all chopped.  Mince 2 medium onions, and add to salad.  Add 1 tablespoon each of oil and white vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste.  The book also called for 1 cup of beets and some capers, but I never saw Grandma Rosie put capers or beets in her “chopped herring.” 

Signature dishes on New York’s Lower East Side included hash, soups, and pies.  Pie was so popular that immigrants called Americans “pie-eaters.”  Mince pie, oyster pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chicken pie, and “sweetbreads in pastry” were among the choices.  Leftover beef, mutton, pork and fish was frequently made into “hash,” and boardinghouse dwellers were called “hash-eaters.”  Soups were made from bones, root vegetables, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and dried beans.  I learned an old Yiddish proverb:  “Poor people cook with a lot of water.”  In contrast, the American government chose from among pork and beans, beef hash, corned beef with cabbage and potatoes, pot roast, boiled mutton, and mince pie to feed to newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island. 

Smoked salmon is now considered a delicacy, but a century ago it was a food of necessity.  Without refrigeration, food was kept fresh and edible with four agents: heat, smoke, salt and acid.  Meats, fish and fowl were smoked, salted, or pickled.  Fruits and vegetables were pickled, jarred, or dried.  Corned beef, so named because of the large “corns” of salt used in its preparation, also belongs to the large family of preserved meats and fish. 

Here’s a recipe for turning cucumbers into dill pickles.  It’s very similar to the recipe Grandma Rosie gave me.  Pack 30 kirby cucumbers of approximately the same size into 1 large or 2 small jars, alternating the layers of cucumber with layers of dill (20 sprigs total).  Boil ½ cup kosher salt in 2 quarts water, and turn off the heat.  Add 2 tablespoons white vinegar, 4 cloves garlic, 1 dried red pepper, ¼ teaspoon mustard seed, 2 coin-sized slices of fresh horseradish, and 1 teaspoon of mixed pickling spice to the boiled liquid and pour over the cucumbers.  If necessary, add more salt water to completely immerse them.  Cover and keep in a cool place for a week.  If you like the cucumbers green, try one after 5 days. 

New York was famous for a squishy and gummy white bread called the “New York split loaf.”  In contrast, German immigrants made less expensive whole-grain rye and pumpernickel breads with dense, chewy textures and a sour, mildly nutty flavor.  These latter ones were the breads my family bought to slather with real or vegetarian chopped liver, depending on who was coming to visit.  Here’s Grandma Rosie’s recipe for vegetarian chopped liver:  Saute 3 chopped, medium onions in 3 tablespoons of oil until soft and golden.  Mash the contents of 1 large can of drained sweet peas, and add to the onions.  Add 1 ½ cups chopped walnuts and 2 chopped, hard-boiled eggs.  Chop by hand to desired consistency.  Season with salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.

As Grandma Rosie said often, “Hearty appetite!”

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:

• Preserved Lemons from Joan Nathan
• The Food Conference

Other posts of interest, especially to Brooklynites like me might include:

• Kombucha the Brooklyn Way
• The Bees and the Bees
• Women in Cheese in NYC

Enjoy! and thanks, Avi, for sharing.

My family are not big jam eaters. We’ve got assorted jars of various home-made kumquat and quince jams that friends have given us over the past year or so in the back of the fridge. Still, when the fruit on our little old apple tree is showing the first blush of red – before it turns mealy and gets attacked by bugs – I can’t resist cooking up a batch of apple butter and handing it out. Just the smell of simmering apples and spices sends me back to my early childhood in Minnesota and the giant apple tree in our backyard that had seven different varieties grafted on to it. My Mom would spend hours each fall stirring big pots of applesauce and apple butter to put up for the winter.

Apple butter is one of the easiest jams to make, because the apple skins contain pectin, the thickening agent in almost all jams and jellies. But there’s no exact recipe. Here’s the technique, more or less:

Core enough apples to fill a large pot around halfway, chop them finely (in the food processor is fine) and throw them in the pot. Add sugar: Most recipes call for equal weights of fruit and sugar, but I prefer less. Even to the unripe apples from my tree, which are fairly tart, I added around ¾ their weight in sugar. At least some of the sugar should be dark brown sugar.

Add some water (to cover the bottom of the pot, especially if the apples aren’t overly juicy) and spices. Whole spices are best, but ground ones will do. If you have a large tea ball or one of those cheesecloth bouquet garni bags, you can put the spices in this. If not, you can do what I do, and carefully pick them out at the end. I threw in a few sticks of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cardamom, star anise and fresh ginger. The cinnamon and cloves are standard, the rest is optional, according to your taste. If the apples are quite sweet, you can add some lemon juice.

Bring to a boil and lower to a brisk simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, at least an hour or so, until the apple butter is smooth, thick and brown. If you’re using quite firm or thick-skinned apples, as mine were, you can either strain or puree it near the end, and cook it down a bit more.

Scoop into sterilized jars and seal well.   

Until a friend recently told me about his foraging experience last week somewhere in a Bronx “forest,” I had never before heard of ramps. Ramps, also known as wild leeks, are a springtime treat on the East Coast. Ramps cannot be cultivated; they need to be foraged. That’s why they’re so expensive, so valued among New York City gourmands. My foraging friend harvested so many that he bartered a portion of his harvest for a meal at a nice restaurant, which featured the foraged treats.

Two days after hearing this story I began selling ramps at the farm stand in Brooklyn where I work. I talked them up all day long to those who hadn’t heard of them (before I even tasted them), but lots of folks were actually waiting all year long for them and ran up to the stand, usually exclaiming, “finally, you have them.”

One of the perks of operating a farm stand is that at the end of the day you get to take some extra stuff home. I got two bunches of ramps after that first day. I ran home to cook them up, and with a few friends made a salmon, ramp and chard dish. It was delicious. Sweet, with a bit of a garlic flavor, ramps are not overwhelming, but they are just generally pleasant to eat. They really enhance a meal.

I again worked the farm stand and this time at the day’s end there were too many ramps that wouldn’t survive another day of selling, so the farmer told me to take them home.There were literally a hundred bunches. I took home as many as I could fit in my backpack and raced home to pickle them. My bowls and pots were hardly large enough to contain them.

I had very little time to sort through recipes (I wanted to pickle them fresh), so I used the second one I found online then ran to the Park Slope Food Coop to get the necessary ingredients that I don’t have lying around the house (specifically the excessive amounts of apple cider vinegar and the celery seed).

I used this recipe from seasonalchef.com (check it out here):

2 quarts ramps, cleaned and peeled, green leaf removed
½ cup kosher salt
2 cup sugar
½ teaspoon whole celery seed
¼ teaspoon whole cloves
½ teaspoon whole mustard seed
1 quart apple cider vinegar

1. Cover ramps with cold water and add ¼ cup salt. Let ramps sit in salt water over night.

2. Drain off water and rinse. Combine vinegar, spices, remaining ¼ cup of salt and sugar in a non-reactive container such as a stainless steel pot. Bring to a boil, add ramps, bring back to the boil, and reduce heat and simmer for about 5 minutes.

3. Cool mixture completely and transfer to a glass container. Keep refrigerated. Pickled ramps are wonderful on sandwiches, or served with pork barbeque.

Next year I’ll be more prepared and will experiment with a recipe of my own. The final product, which is very pungent and flavorful, now sits in my fridge, waiting to dress my sandwiches once I’m back from ten days in California.

Eating
In the USA, one can generally only find really good apples in farmers’ markets or by going to pick your own. I’ve often found American supermarket apples taste disappointingly woolly. They’re often too large, too sweet and don’t have the right texture (at least for my taste).

Smaller, crisper and more flavourful than most American varieties one can find in the supermarkets, really good apples in England are available even in the big supermarket chains such as Sainsburys or Tesco. These varieties have a range of amusing names, and most a highly seasonal: Waitrose even sell a variety called “Winter Wonder“. Egremont Russet apples are especially good: unprepossessing because of their brown colour, slightly furry on the outside skin, and sometimes speckled or yellowish green, they’re delightful.

But my favourite are Cox’s Orange Pippins: small, often misshapen, orange striped with red and leaf-green patches, they are in season from October to December. The variety dates back to about 1825 and its modern descendent was saved from extinction in the 1920s. The cox season starts around Rosh haShanah, a festival with which I’ll always associate English apples, and the crunch of leaves underfoot (though if it rains in London in autumn, as it might do, the leafy crunch is more easily available in the USA!).

Picking
My online research into apples led me to a fantastic website: where to pick, what to pick, a directory of varieties and the history of apples too: Take a look at Orange Pippin: it’s an unparalleled resource, well designed, easy to navigate and practically useful too for pointing you to places to pick your own in several countries.

Drinking
One last note: there are two fabulous English apple juices that are worth going out of your way to drink if you ever visit England, and worth buying for a special occasion if you live there. They’re really the apple equivalent of a fantastic vintage wine: worth savouring slowly, perhaps with a small-farm produced raw-milk English cheese such as those sold by Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Copella is well worth getting. They sell plain apple juice, but also apple juice mixed with other juices like pear, raspberry, blackcurrant, elderflower and even mango. The plain is my favourite, but the apple & raspberry has a bright scarlet colour that is quite arresting. Copella should be refrigerated as soon as you get it home from the supermarket, drunk soon after opening, served cold.

Duskin is perhaps the king of apple juices. Unfortunately, Duskin farm doesn’t have a website, but they make single variety apple juices where each bottle contains the juices of only one type of apple. A website where one can buy their juices notes:

Duskin Farm is a small family farm in a fold of the North Downs near Canterbury, Kent. Andrew and Jenny Helbling started making apple juice over twenty five years ago, and despite growing production significantly over the years, have struggled to keep pace with demand ever since.

What is their secret? Why do the juices, which are sold by each variety, taste so good? It is well known that the temperate East Kent climate favours the slow ripening of apples of all varieties. And crucially, the Duskin production process aims to preserve their carefully nurtured flavour. The labour intensive, low temperature pasteurisation process aims to retain the delicate compounds that contain a wealth of aromas and flavours. 

The juices provide an intriguing alternative to alcohol. Indeed the joys of the different varieties often inspire wine-like descriptions such as, a delightful rose with an amusing presence. With no added sugars or preservatives except a dash of Vitamin C, Duskin Apple Juice is as natural as can be.

One final amusing note about the meaning of the term cider. Apple cider in Britain means alcoholic, fermented apple juice, generally available in cans. Apple cider in the USA denotes a non-alcoholic, sweet, often dusty-coloured juice, generally sold in plastic bottles and served to children. I always find the contrast amusing: what would an American child think if they were served the English variety when they asked for cider?

PS. Here are some ideas for things to cook with those apples, and further reading about apples on The Jew and The Carrot:

Marking the end of Pesach with pizza and beer has become such a part of the holiday for me, that it almost has religious importance at this point. Of course it doesn’t really, but just as so many Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas, one could argue that keeping such rituals still are an important part of our Jewish identity.

While my family seder didn’t vary much from it has years past, my breaking of Pesach did. While the usual tradition has been to go out a neighborhood pizza joint, this year we did things differently. Having been gone for a week, we had lots of CSA veggies in the house I was wanting to use up. We also had sourdough starter, still alive from the Hazon Food Conference (yes, we are the push-the-chametz-to-the-back-of-the-fridge type of Jews, not the get-the-chametz-out-of-the-house kind. Not to mention that my husband, who has lovingly tended to that starter like it’s a living thing since the conference, was not about to see it be tossed away).

Using our starter, we used this pizza crust recipe. I sauteed up some green garlic and dandelion greens from our CSA box. Sliced mushrooms and caramelized onions were added too, (onion from the farmer’s market, mushrooms from the store). Fontina and fresh mozzarella also came from the store (while we have made our own in the past, we didn’t have time this time.) Our salad was also largely from our CSA box, the lettuce and carrots came from our box, a beet from the farmer’s market, and avocado from the store. Even some of our flour came from Eatwell Farm, the farm we get our box from. While they don’t include it as part of our box due to some members’ allergies, one can buy it from them at a farmer’s market or other means. We used a mixture of the farm’s whole-wheat and white bread flour from the store.

We rounded out the meal not with Sam Adams or Anchor Steam or any known brand of beer; we each had a glass of East Bay Lovin’, the home brew my husband Paulie makes every so often with his friend Michael.

So while we still broke Pesach with pizza and beer, we did so with our own unique twist, and it tasted that much better.

A side note: while dandelion greens on their own can be quite bitter, they make a fabulous pizza topping with very mild cheese like those we used.

The moisture had gotten into everything. They recognized the aroma of slowly fermenting wheat and barley and they did not want the old to contaminate the new. Judith’s mother even took the little wad of dough she always removed after kneading to put in a cool covered pot to help the next batch rise and added that also to the pile to take out and burn. They were so careful that after sweeping the stone floor with the palm fronds they took feathers and swept out the corners.

Judith thought about how the Chametz puffed up the bread she liked so much, yet considered how a similar spoilage often puffed her up with pride. She always felt cleansed as she warmed her hands with the heat of the burning Chametz. Both because it reminded her of the escape from slavery to freedom, the beauty of purity and simplicity and because she knew it would only take a week for her mother to create a new starter, Judith didn’t mind eating the Matzah her mother would make with the brand new dough.

At Pesach we drink a lot of wine. Why is it called the symbol of our joy?

In an arid environment, wine can be seen a method of preservation. If you do not live or work near a well or a spring or some other source of fresh water you need to have something else to drink during the day.

• Milk does not last without refrigeration; actually we can think of cheese as a form of dried milk (that is a form of preserving milk).
• Crushing olives obtains oil, which while highly useful, does not quench thirst.
• Squashing pomegranates produces a very tart juice, but it doesn’t last long at room temperature.
• Squeezing dates creates a very sweet paste our ancestors called “dvash“.
• And figs don’t produce much in the manner of a drinkable juice either.

The Grape

But, that other fruit mentioned among the seven species, the grape, undergoes an amazing transformation when it is crushed, squashed and squeezed. With just the right amount of exposure to oxygen it becomes a drink that, like a good person, becomes more distinguished as it ages.

And so we Jews treat this juice with respect, initiating special moments of our lives and our experiences as a people by praising G!d for our ability to grow harvest and transform the grape into such a wondrous beverage.

One year I even made some of my own.

We express this awe in the words of the Kiddush. While the Kiddush differs slightly depending on the specific occasion, clearly the most frequently recited version is that sung on Shabbat. At that time we bring to mind the beginnings of creation and our role in it as well as our liberation from slavery in Egypt. Many of us know the melody composed by Lewis Lewandowski in the 19th century., but Jewish, liturgical, musical creativity has continued.

Mack the Knife sings Kiddush?

The 59th Yahrtzeit of Kurt Weill is soon upon us. Weill, the son of a Chazzan, died April 3, 1950 which corresponds to the second day of Pesach, or this year Friday April 10. Among the many wonderful works by Kurt Weill (who is best known for “Mack the Knife”) is a Kiddush.

[I paraphrase from the Jewish Heritage Online Magazine]:

Kiddush was commissioned in 1946 by the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York (at the time, Weill may have been living at 231 E. 62nd St.), where it was first performed by tenor solo, chorus, and organ, during a Friday night service by Cantor David Putterman. Weill dedicated the score to his father Albert, who survived the Second World War and became a citizen of the State of Israel.

I first heard this version of the Kiddush sung by my dear friend Cantor Richard Botton at Central Synagogue in Manhattan in the late 1970s and was deeply moved by its expressiveness. Cantor Botton later recorded the composition on Rockport Records [CD RR 5009] From Generation to Generation and I listen to it frequently.

When my wife, R. Deborah R. Prinz celebrated her retirement from the pulpit rabbinate at Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, CA (in 2007), I purchased the sheet music so that I could learn and sing the Kiddush (with a piano accompaniment) at the Erev Shabbat service honoring her. I continue to sing it often (a cappella with family accompaniment) at home on Erev Shabbat.

A recording is available on the Web, for those not familiar, sung by Cantor Garfein and choir (for some odd reason I can’t get it to play on my Mac now, and, if I remember correctly I did not find this a particularly moving rendition, though it ends with the sweetness it calls for).

Sheet music is available.

Recently R. David Posner (Temple Emanu-El, NYC) spoke about Weill’s Kiddush on the radio show “Mad About Music” WNYC, (February 1, 2009). Here’s an excerpt from their conversation:

POSNER:
I do remember when I was younger, ten, eleven years old, I must have stopped by the time I was eleven years old, listening to Elvis Presley recordings, the Everly Brothers, I remember. I thought they were very good country singers. So I chose the Kurt Weill “Kiddush” because this is a jazz version of the “Kiddush”, which is the sanctification of God with the instrument of wine, praising God for being the creator of the fruit of the vine, and also thanking God for the Sabbath, on which this particular “Kiddush” is always recited, 52 weeks a year. Temple Emanu-El started to use this version of the “Kiddush” among maybe eight or ten that our Cantor does. And at first the congregation was somewhat uneasy, but after a half a dozen listenings, they were totally convinced and totally sold on a jazz version of the Kiddush, normally that they’ve always heard in chordal harmonies, very straight, and now with a fluidity that is so appealing and so mystical in its own way.

Wine, like freedom can lead to a powerful headiness

At the beginning of the Kiddush we praise G!d who enables us in our wonderful capacity for growing, harvesting and processing the fruit of the vine.

As I write in my own Haggadah:

Tonight we recline. Our reclining is not a sign of laziness, but of freedom, a respite as we await instructions on how to proceed. No one forces us to eat on the run, at our desks, or out in the fields at our work. We can enjoy a meal that includes conversation and song, a meal that focuses our attention on the burgeoning year as it blossoms around us and encourages renewed growth within us. Our meal also intensifies our awareness of the efforts for freedom still pursued by ourselves and others.

After drinking three of our four cups of wine, we also know that we have come most of the way from the degradation of slavery to the dignity of freedom. But freedom, like wine, can lead to a powerful headiness. Liberation itself is not the goal.

We have the strength to act according to our own decisions. Yet we understand that not every decision we make is the correct one, merely because it is ours. Though we can act out of strength, we have also learned that not by might, nor by power, but by the awesome divine attributes of justice and mercy will we all achieve wholeness.

Wine [Creation/Liberation]… and Song

And so, this year at Seder as we drink our last cup of wine, and on Shabbat when we make Kiddush, I hope we pause to become more aware of our strengths and abilities, consider different melodies that can carry our words, and rejoice in the creation and our liberation.

On Monday I was in attendance at the 3rd  annual Royal Wines gala event, “The Kosher Food & Wine Experience”. This year’s event was in the NY Metropolitan Pavilion, located on 125 West 18th Street between 6th and 7th Ave in Manhattan.

The event attracts people from all walks of life and all branches of Judaism are represented. The cost of entry is $100.00, but many industry people get complimentary tickets, including me. There were kosher wines from all over the world. I was especially struck by the quality of the wines from Spain.

Mr. Daniel Rogov, Israel’s renowned wine critic was on hand to sign books and have warm and inviting conversations. Mr. Rogov was signing his 2009 edition of Rogov’s Guide to Israeli Wines. The quantity of food at the event was worth mentioning. As a caterer I am always walking the line between showing abundance (that people like to see) and making only enough (being responsible). The left over food from this event could have fed hundreds more people. I hope the New York City Food Bank brought a truck in afterward. They didn’t run short on anything.

Many people in conversations mentioned concerns over sustainability (one lecturer used the word 4 times in a half hour presentation on Wines of Israel). Interestingly, it was not a priority of the show organizer or caterer. We can be confident that at least people are thinking about it. The problem is that people think positively about sustainability and the politically correctness of eating local, in season foods, but continue to get their water shipped from England or Fiji and eat things like hearts of palm or “millionaire’s salad”.

Some people don’t realize that in order to harvest the “heart” of a palm you must kill the entire tree and this practice wiped out the population of palm trees in Brazil. Brazil is the former lead exporter of hearts of palm.

The event overall was a great success for Royal Wines and a wonderful & educational night out. My choice for the best wine of the show was one from Elvi Wines called Adar.

This fantastic tasting wine uses local grapes indigenous to the region. Many, if not most of the wine at this show was made with imported grapes. There are many complex issues in terms of sustainability when using non indigenous grapes that struggle to grow well, and importing grapes from other regions to make up for it.

My tasting notes on Adar from Elvi Wines:

The Nose reminds me of the same kind of earthiness as an unripened goat cheese. The color is a deep ruby-red, and the legs promise a mouthful of full bodied complexity. The taste is strikingly pure with an airy sweetness like that of a ripe black mission fig. The wine has a refreshing mineral snap very similar to the high altitude Israeli wines. What is most alluring is the purity of fruit and the earthiness that carries through the finish. This is a great wine.

I tasted a multitude of great wines, I even located some great Mevushal wines that I can use in catering. The Food was catered by Michael Schick whose website remains under construction.

The advertising for the event said, “Enjoy new wines from around the world in a venue offering 80% more space, an improved layout, and exciting new cuisine.”

I felt let down by this advertisement. What you see in this picture is chicken schnitzel, basmati rice, parve tortellini with plain tomato sauce, boneless chicken thighs in gravy, brisket in the same gravy and franks in blankets; not my idea of new or exciting (even when sprinkled with sesame seeds). You can also see in the bottom right that they offered both condiments; mustard and ketchup. The hot food, though neither new nor exciting, was edible and my friends liked it. I ate the sushi.

The sushi was excellent quality, but also not new or exciting, unless you have never seen sushi before. For fish they had yellow fin tuna, salmon and surimi (imitation crab). All the required accompaniments were there; avocado, cucumber, wasabi and pickled ginger.

There was also a cold salad station with boiled potatoes, roasted peppers, grilled tomatoes, red cabbage slaw, millionaire’s salad, Cesar salad, grilled white asparagus, steamed beets braised leeks and crackers. With very little garnish and low marks in regards to variety of colors and textures. Local and/or sustainably grown food would have been much more exciting. White asparagus is most certainly either from China or Peru.

Truthfully I have never seen boiled red potatoes shingled on a plate with no dressing or other vegetables so that was new.  The desserts looked like every Brooklyn bakery window, but I had used all of my available storage, after all that wine & sushi, I wasn’t hungry.  Events like this demonstrate that the interest in kosher food and wine is growing. Jay Buchsbaum of Royal Wine Corp. said,

“You know kosher food is booming, not only has it changed for the kosher consumer but now people who aren’t kosher are going for kosher products. People who aren’t kosher buy quite a but of our products because it is precieved to be healthier, cleaner and so a lot of our items now are sold across the isle to the non kosher consumer. People pay a premium on products sometimes because it has a higher certicication. The truth is that people prefer it so I think in the next ten to twenty years there is going to be an even more growing market for kosher products in general.”

This picture is Jay Buchsbaum with me

The 2007 event had over two hundred people and was catered by Jeffrey Nathan from Abigail’s. According to all reports it was great, but I was not there. The 2008 event featured New York’s finest kosher restaurants and with seven hundred attendees they ran out of food, (running out of food is not good for a New Yorker who paid $100.00 to get in!) With as many as one thousand people coming this year, Michael Schick made sure of one thing. There would be no running out in 2009!

It’s been a crazy few weeks for milk in the US. Earlier this month, dairy prices officially tanked, collapsing over $5 between last February and this one. It’s the worst drop in prices since the Great Depression, when the government asked dairy farmers to pour off millions of gallons of milk. The drastic losses have prompted 35 senators to send  a letter to Vilsack and the new administration asking the government to support the dairy industry.

In somewhat more unconventional milk news, the first pharmaceutical goats were approved by the FDA (big surprise there) as was the drug that they produce in their milk. The goats produce ATryn,  a drug approved to prevent blood clots.  ATryn is a human protein, and the gene for its production is implanted in the goat embryo, while the protein itself is extracted from the milk.

The demand for ATryn is relatively small, which is why it can be produced in this way. Imagine how many goat we’d need for GMO-produced prozac, for instance. It’s not the only game in town, however, according to the New York Times other companies are working on similar drugs using the same “technology”. For example,  a company in the Netherlands called Pharming (isn’t that cute?) is developing a protein-based drug in rabbit milk to treat hereditary angioedema. Also according to the Times, “PharmAthene, is developing a treatment for nerve gas poisoning in the milk of transgenic goats.”

The goats were approved “under guidelines the agency adopted only last month to regulate the use of transgenic animals in the nation’s drug and food supply” according to the NYTimes.

Lest those guidelines make you feel secure, the FDA admitted at the end of January that meat and milk from cloned animals might have already entered the food supply. After the FDA declared such foods safe in December, the U.S.D.A. asked corporations to voluntarily ban the use of cloned animals (but not their offspring) in their products. Companies participating in the ban include Smithfield Foods, General Mills, Campbell Soup, Nestle, California Pizza Kitchen, Supervalu, Kraft Foods and Tyson Foods. Now I don’t know about you, when I see those names listed, I think honesty, transparency, and customer-responsibility.

In more uplifting milk politics, Ron Paul, former presidential candidate and current congressman, has introduced HR 778, a bill that would allow interstate traffic of unpasteurized dairy products and milk packaged for human consumption. It’s a huge step, since at the moment, while it’s not illegal to drink raw milk anywhere, it’s illegal to buy it in some states. This bill wouldn’t make raw milk legal in all states, but it would let a consumer in New York, say, where raw milk is illegal, purchase the stuff from Connecticut, where raw milk sale is legal with a license, without being a criminal. Check out the link above to see how you can monitor this exciting piece of legislation.

In the meantime, I seem to have gotten some raw milk from somewhere, and being that I am the only raw milk drinker in my household, and that my eyes are bigger than my stomach (only figuratively, with eyes like mine, your stomach gets big pretty quickly). I was left with almost half a gallon of milk when it went bad after four days (the downside of raw). After a thorough fridge inspection, I discovered an almost full carton of Hawthorn Valley Farm yogurt that had been sitting in my fridge since October (I’m twenty-five and I still don’t clean my fridge, what can I say). Combined with some other nearly empty, slightly putrid dairy products gleaned from my search, I had about two quarts of off material. So I made cheese. It’s probably old hat for most of our readers, but just in case anyone is wondering, it took a minute amount of my time and attention, and it turned out fantastic. This is how I did it (and what I did with the whey afterwards).

Following the simple recipe for farmer cheese from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, I brought my milk products slowly to a boil, with the heat about as low as it could be without the burner going out. I stirred it very frequently, and when it reached a boil, I poured in about a quarter-cup of mixed saurkraut juice (the pink, acidic liquid left from fermenting red and white cabbage together) and white vinegar while stirring. Then I turned the heat off and let the liquid sit for about forty-five minutes.

After 45 minutes, curds had developed, and I placed a colander lined with cheese cloth over a bowl and strained the curds through it.  I added herbs (but no salt, since the kraut juice is incredibly salty) and then tied the cheese cloth in a ball and hung it from the hood over my stove with a couple of fridge magnets (I was kind of proud of that, since there aren’t any hooks or nails or handles in my kitchen). I squeezed some of the whey out, until the cheese was spreading consistency, and then scooped the whole mess into a one-cup mason jar.

I was left with a little over a quart of whey. It smelled and looked wonderful and I went digging around on the internet for different ways to use it. That night I ended up freezing half to make soup later on, using a cup of it in biscuits and keeping the rest in my fridge for pancakes on the weekend. There’s a lot more you can do with it, particularly if you subscribe to Sally Fallon’s fermentation methods. Here’s one recipe for garlic pickled with whey, and people even make infant formula with it.