x-posted from My Jewish Learning

Like many Jewish travelers, I have a tendency to seek out the Jewish connections in any city I visit. Stumbling across a generations-old deli, say, or a stone building etched with a Star of David from its former life as a synagogue, helps me feel at home when I am abroad. For Jews spending time in Rome, no trip is complete without a trek to the Roman Ghetto and a taste of Carciofi alla Giudia, literally “Jewish Style Artichokes.”

Known for their delicate chrysanthemum shape and crispy, salt-kissed taste, fried artichokes are a popular dish in restaurants across Italy’s largest city. Their history however, stems back to 16th century, when Roman Jews were confined to an overcrowded, impoverished ghetto. Deep fried artichokes might seem like a delicacy now, but according to Matthew Goodman who authored, Jewish Food: The World at Table, “food [in the ghetto] was scarce [and] frying was the cheapest and easiest option of food preparations.”

More and recipe, below the jump…

Legend would have it, two years ago the ADAMAH, Jewish Environmental Fellowship at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, had an overabundance of cucumbers.  One of the Fellows, Zelig Golden (also the co-chair of this conference) was unhappy with simply composting the unused vegetables and began making pickles from the extra veggies.  Pickling is really about preserving – extending the harvest and gaining additional nutritional value of eating fermented food (lactobacillus is good for you).  Today ADAMAH Fellows sell their preserved products such as kimchi, sauerkraut and of course their pickles in local grocery stores and at the local CSA.  (More about ADAMAH here)

Slush. Snow. Wind. Cold. It’s been that kind of weekend around here in Brooklyn and – so I’ve heard – in pretty much the rest of the country. Aside from a brief foray outside en route to the gym, and two neighborhood Chanukah parties this evening (including one in my building, to which I didn’t even have to put on a coat!), I spent the entire day in the living room, staring at the gray day out my window and at my gray computer screen while I worked on some writing deadlines. Pretty dreary.

The only thing Yosh and I had stacked in our favor on a day like today was breakfast: cardamom scented oatmeal and organic coffee made in our new pot which, glory of glories, has a timer on it (hello, brewed coffee on Shabbat!). It turns out a warm, hearty, and very affordable, breakfast can really warm up an otherwise gloomy day. It also makes you want to take a nap, which doesn’t help much with the deadlines, but what can you do?

What do you eat on cold, gray winter days?

Recipe below the jump…

This past weekend, I saw my first snowfall of the year. The plump flakes reminded me of the short, crisp days to come, of walks where a bright red berry or a still-green blade of grass will surprise me.  As winter days wink by, flanked by longer and longer intervals of darkness, I’ll be more and more on the lookout for sparks of color and light.

The snowfall also got me looking forward to Hanukah, and thinking about finding a few mirrors to multiply the candle flames. Because if a set of singing sparks is lovely, why not bolster the chorus with two or three more?

I’ll also be looking for sparks for the table as the farmer’s market offerings in my area lean toward turnips and potatoes. I recently experimented my way to a salad that I think will offer a nice, bright compliment to beloved, oil-soaked latkes, roasted root vegetables, and other wintery dishes. It brings together several winter sparks. The base is the vibrant green of kale, which splashes its emerald leaves across the cold fields of the Mid-atlantic this time of year, which is studded with orange sections and glistening pomegranate seeds—imported sparks from warmer climes. (Of course, if you live in California or Florida, this scenario is a little different!)

Recipe after the jump…

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Delicious on almost anything – pasta, roasted vegetables, chicken, bread, drizzled in soups ….

Yield: 1 ½ cups

Ingredients:
4 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves, washed ( about 1 large bunch or 2 small bunches)
1-3 cloves garlic
¼ – ½ cup toasted pumpkinseeds
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:
1. In a blender, food processor, or medium bowl with an immersion blender, combine basil, 1 clove garlic, ¼ cup pumpkin seeds, and olive oil – blending until mixture has reached a slightly chunky paste-like consistency.

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…

Thanksgiving can be a tough time for a vegetarian.  Sure there are a million delicious side acts to choose from, but the star of the show – that juicy, golden-brown turkey, straight out of Norman Rockwell’s fantasy – is strictly off limits.  But that’s no reason for meat eaters to have all of the fun.

I’m absolutely terrified at the thought of consuming a Tofurkey, and think its a bit of a cop-out to try to replicate and entire turkey for one’s vegetarian Thanksgiving table.  I’m also a bit scared to think that someone out there dreamed up the bacon-wrapped Turbaconducken. (It’s probably delicious – but come on people!)  Instead, here’s a delicious recipe for apricot-glazed tempeh & onions that will keep any vegetarian happy at the Thanksgiving table.

Below the jump: The recipe and a bonus Thanksgiving surprise! Keep your eyes peeled next week for more Thanksgiving recipes.

You can only eat fried green tomatoes so many times before that best of unripened delicacies starts to wear on the nerves and the stomach lining. Here, courtesy of urban gardener and farmer’s market maven Zoe Plaugher, is a sticky, brown, vinegary, sweet, spicy and tart chutney that will put those last premature tomatoes to excellent use. The result is reminiscent of a more complex tamarind chutney and it goes great with latkes, roast meats or couscous.
Green Tomato Chutney

Approx 3lbs of green tomatoes ~ 5-6 cups, cored and chopped
2/3 c water
2 c sliced shallots
½ c minced ginger
1 c dried cherries (tart or extra tart are best, but use sweet if that’s what you have)
2 c cider vinegar (more if needed)
1 c honey (may be adjusted depending on sweetness of cherries)
1-2 jalepenos, cherry bombs or any other medium-hot pepper.  Adjust up or down to your liking.

Yom Kippur stirs my strongest Jewish food memory – it’s strange, but true. Since I was in the single digits I can remember walking to Ne’ila services with my mother and father, carrying a bag filled with two essential components of our holiday inside. One was a three-pound sack of apples, the then ubiquitous McIntosh variety. The other was six or so tiny butter sandwiches on my mother’s anise bread.

The bread was a high, oblong loaf shining from egg glaze and redolent of liquorice, which I despised as a child. On our walk, I would watch the plastic sack of break-fast food thumping against my father’s trousered leg, a reminder that holy space of Yom Kippur was about to close over us and leave us to our good intentions and the rest of the year. I couldn’t understand why they liked it so much, that sweet, seeded bread. (Now, of course, I know better.)

Thanks to Aaron Kagan for this guest post. Aaron maintains the blog Tea and Food.

While a Yom Kippur recipe might seem like an oxymoron, there are many food traditions surrounding the meals immediately preceding and following the 25 hours in which most Jews refrain from food. Jews in Iraq, for example, frequently break the fast with a nourishing yet easily digestible glass of rice milk.

I was surprised to find this beverage in such a traditional context, having until now chiefly associated it with vegans and the lactose intolerant. But it turns out that rice milk is popular in many parts of the world besides those places where you can order a dairy free smoothie for the cost of a meal. Take the Thai kokkoh or Mexican horchata, for instance. Cut the sugar and skip the cinnamon of the latter and you’ve got something that closely resembles both the stuff in the rectangular carton at Whole Foods and the drink made by Iraqi Jews to close the most holy day of the year.

Tonight I made myself a very simple, and surprisingly wonderful dinner: roasted potatoes with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, chives and parsley in a lemon olive-oil vinaigrette. It was so simple, so fast – and the contrast of the warm, creamy potatoes with the crisp cucumber and acidic tomatoes was perfect for a summer evening. I finished off my meal with a few slices of locally grown (and very tasty) watermelon.

The meal was a reminder to me about the beauty of eating fresh, local produce. And while I know it’s not the most well-balanced meal, I was eating alone while I cleaned out my apartment before moving from Chicago to the East Coast.

I had one of the worst days of my life today (definitely top ten, possibly top five) but things didn’t get really bad until I was midway through throwing together a ratatouille. I think it’s a testament to my recipe that basically forgetting the dish on a stove on high heat for a good twenty minutes while I panicked to the point of tears and probably aged a decade did not ruin the dish. In fact, though I was still a complete emotional wreck later in the afternoon, I was an emotional wreck with really good ratatouille for lunch. And if you’re going to be a bawling bundle of stress, you might as well be full of yummy CSA veggies.

I started making the ratatouille because I didn’t want any of our veggies to go to waste, but as far as I’m concerned the best thing about the dish is that it’s really filling, and makes an amazing alternative main course for vegetarians when everyone else is eating meat. I used to do the catering at the University of Iowa Hillel, and many a Shabbat there was chicken for meat eaters, ratatouille for the vegetarians, and nary a complaint. For anyone who worries about what to make for a vegetarian Shabbat meal, this recipe is for you.

Recipe after the break!

I am a little embarrassed to admit that The Jew & The Carrot went the entire summer last year without sharing a recipe for gazpacho. Of course gazpacho – a cold soup which has its roots in Southern Spain – does not obviously belong in the “Jewish food” category. Still, as Tamar rightly pointed out, when summer rolls around, the last thing you want is a pot of cholent steaming up the kitchen. Or at least, as someone who lives sans air conditioning, I don’t want no stinking pot of cholent.

In these moments of mid-summer heat, Gazpacho boldly comes to the rescue, offering a flavor-packed soup without the shvitzing. It also begs you to head to the farmers’ market (or your backyard) and buy the ripest heirloom tomatoes (like the ones I found above) and crispest bell peppers and cucumbers possible.

Shame on us for neglecting to share the wonders of summer gazpacho with you last year – we hope you accept the recipe below along with our deepest and most sincere apologies.

When I have people over for Shabbat dinner during the winter I always make some kind of kugel as a side dish. But in the summer, nobody wants a warm kugel, so I have to come up with a nice rotation of cold salads that don’t bore me to death.

This one I got from my ex’s mom. She didn’t like that I was dating her son, but she really didn’t like that I had never cooked with black eyed peas, so she taught me this recipe, and it pleases guests long after I split with her little boy.

Recipe after the jump.