I recently heard an interview with Native artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun during which he made a comment about the nature of food. He asked “When a Haida is eating a hotdog When does the hotdog become Haida (referring to the first nations band)? When it’s in his hand? When it’s in his mouth? or after he’s had a bowel movement.” Yuxweluptun was using this image as a metaphor for many cultural dilemmas. I ended up stuck on the Koan-like statement for a while trying to grapple with what about the metaphor hit me. I think it stems from the possibility of thinking about it from a literal perspective and then approach food and culture differently. When does what we eat become who we are, if it even ever does.
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Recently, a friend asked me if I was a foodie, a question which caught me thinking quite a while for an accurate response. “Well, I used to be” was the only thing I could think of. Reflecting back on that answer, I found myself questioning what and how I eat and how that differs from what one many think of when they think of a foodie.

Typically your average culinary fan tends to place a high value on taste and other palate-based pleasures. Different tastes and cuisines are prized and much is made of importance of the finest ingredients. Star chefs, award-winning cookbooks, and the finest tools become things to live for. But, I like food. I like to eat good food. What makes me feel that I am different that this? I pondered this and came to the conclusion that perspective was key.
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Actually, it’s in the pinenuts. Yessir! I’ve made challah with pinenuts twice now, and enjoyed it both times, and so I’m ready to declare a public launch. I was vaguely inspired by a pinenut torte I had once at a fancy Italian restaurant, but mostly I just love pinenuts, and also love mixing Things That Are Sweet with Things That Are Not, for character-deepening effect. In challah, it adds this buttery nutty soft crunch that is terribly pleasant.

I have done two variations: Read more »

Despite the crazy weather which the North East is experiencing today, I am having a number of friends over for shabbos this week and was up late cooking last night. I made an array of different dishes, in addition to my friends offering to make a few dishes as well and helping me out in the process. I remembered that my friend’s mother had a good blend whole wheat/white flour challah recipe, so I decided to make it as well. It’s been some time since I’ve made it last, so I felt I was up for the challenge. Read more »

I am staying in my community for Shabbos and since I am eating at friends for the meals, I offered my hosts to make something. I made the following two dishes last night – feel free to try them yourself and I’d greatly encourage feedback!

The Ultimate Chocolate Cake from The Kosher Palette

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This is the Shabbos meal I will prepare on Friday:

• Canapes of white bean spread with carmelized spring onions with a minty Meyer lemon spritzer
• Passed hors d’oeuvres: Fresh spring rolls and Smoked salmon with lemon-scented goat cheese and dill
• Creamy celery root and parsnip soup
• Salad of frisee, blood oranges, oro blanco (a fancy type of grapefruit), avocado and fennel in citrus vinaigrette
• Vegetable terrine of greens, millet and sweet potatoes, with pea shoots and crisp shiitake mushrooms on a bed of mushroom masala sauce
• Rose geranium sorbet
• Port-poached pear parfait (say that one five times fast)

And I will make this Shabbos meal for almost 40 people. Really, I will. I’m not kidding.
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I’ve been waiting out the winter on Oahu, where eating local is whole new kind of different.

Hawaii is a mutt culture — a mix of Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and military, which is to say, everyone else in the American melting pot. For most people here, local food, or the kind of food your great grandmother might recognize, means everything under the tropical sun.

If local includes anything on either side of the Pacific, does it stand for anything at all?

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As I was commuting to work this cold, wintry New York morning, I was reminded of a warm and yummy Shabbos dish that has been in my family for years. I am referring to fricassee. There are many variations of this dish, and I don’t even know where my grandmother got this particular recipe since it seems to be very unique compared to the ones I just found online. My mother and my aunt have both replicated and slightly altered the recipe and have thus continued the family tradition of making it as an appetizer for Friday night Shabbos dinner.

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This afternoon, a couple friends and I are making Shabbat dinner together. On the menu: roasted root vegetables (from the Union Square Greenmarket), sauteed kale with garlic, mushroom seitan bordelaise, homemade whole wheat challah, wine (combination of kosher, organic, and neither).

I’m pretty psyched about that menu, and about the group of people I’m sharing the evening with. But that’s not the purpose of this post… Read more »

Among my Chanukah presents last year from my husband’s family was an almost pocket-sized book called “Chef’s Secrets: Insider Techniques from Today’s Culinary Masters.” When I randomly opened a page, to see what kind of tips it offered, I found this gem from Chef J. Bryce Whittlesly (a New England name if I’ve ever heard one…) and read it out loud:  “How to peel a tomato with a blowtorch.”

Paulie’s family likes to eat, but they are hardly food-obsessed like I am. They all found this hilarious. Actually, so did I. While I had not yet decided to go to culinary school then, I was already a foodie and cook. I had been dropping tomatoes in hot water for a minute or two to peel them my whole cooking life. Crème Brulee wasn’t among my favorite desserts, so a culinary blowtorch was hardly something I needed.

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About 25 people stood around a large rectangular table, and each shared a memory about challah. One person had never measured a cup of flour. Another had joined a challah-baking fertility circle and was now pregnant. I was teaching challah baking at LimmudNY for the second year, and the emotions surrounding the simple act of baking challah ran deep.

I bake challah every Friday, with very rare exceptions. One year, early in my Jewish observance, I forgot it was Pesach and baked challah as usual. That wouldn’t happen anymore, but baking challah has become an integral part of our family’s shabbat rituals. Perhaps it was the Wonder Bread consistency of store-bought challah that made me a challah baker. Perhaps it was a bit of the convert’s zeal. In the small town where I grew up, challah was not a part of my consciousness. I think I first learned about it from a menu describing challah french toast, and I wondered how to pronounce the “ch.”

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Continuing on my previous post about “Olive Tree and Honey”, author Gil Marks raises the question: If there isn’t an original Jewish food, then what makes food Jewish? He answered it with essentially one word: tradition. Despite our dispersion over all four corners of the earth, we have still somewhat maintained our unity through, especially, food!

The example in question here is the development of kosher cuisine around Jewish Law. This can be seen easily through the creation of a popular Shabbat dish called cholent. According to Jewish law, one cannot cook on Shabbat. However, it is customary to serve a hot dish for Shabbat lunch. Thus this stew-like dish that cooks over a low flame put up before Shabbat was invented in many different Jewish communities.

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New York City is a curious place to be Jewish. It’s an undisputed homeland that attracts Jews from all over the country and world. But it can also be disorienting and alienating to search for a fitting niche within the many sub-communities: Chassidic, modern-orthodox, conservadox, eco-Jew, reform, conservative, renwal, reconstructionst…. The sheer density of Jewish population in New York creates situations that other Jewish urban populations don’t have to deal with on the same scale. It turns out that pluralism manifested in real life is not always easy.

One prime example of the pluralism-challenge centers around food and eating. One friend might be vegetarian but not strictly kosher. Another friend is strictly kosher and refuses to eat in the friend’s home because they serve non-kosher cheese. Or perhaps the vegetarian friend dislikes going to the meat-heavy kosher restaurants their friend prefers. Perhaps this sounds trivial, but I would argue that where friends cannot share a meal, it is all the more challenging for them to share anything else.

I recently discovered a blog - Two Heads of Lettuce - that attempts to bring all Jews to one table. The blog itself is simply a dynamic guide to creating delicious and inclusive vegetarian potlucks (for Shabbat or otherwise) - but they add a Jewish twist to the mix: The Two Table System. Dishes brought by guests are separated onto two tables:

Table 1 includes vegetarian dishes that do not necessarily use all certified-kosher ingredients and are not necessarily cooked in a kosher kitchen

Table 2 includes vegetarian dishes that are both completely certified-kosher AND were prepared in a kosher kitchen.

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Someone made a comment at the Food Conference that ‘ethnic foods’ were unhealthy; take your pick between Italian (heavy sauces), Indian (full of butter), Chinese (high fat & sugar content), and nobody’s national dish is particularly good for you. Nigel countered this with an important distinction: what we think of as “typical” cuisine from other countries is often, in that country, reserved for special occasions, whereas we eat it any (and sometimes every) night of the week. Couple that with the fact that when we eat out we’re likely to eat more than we are hungry for, and still have dessert–and yes, eating special occasion food all the time IS bad for you. It’s the equivalent of having a Thanksgiving-type meal four or five nights a week.I hadn’t really thought about this before. Our culture assigns different kinds of foods and meals to different kinds of occasions, and more and more, the category of ’simple sustenance’ is giving way. Food plays a lot of different roles in our lives, and its importance for feasts, festivals, gatherings, important occasions cannot be understated. But in terms of what we need to stay healthy, our bodies require much less than society would like to feed it. We risk numbing ourselves by excess (not to mention getting fat, encouraging overproduction of our farmland, and increasing the disparity between this country and most of the rest of the world).

I do it all the time — I ‘treat’ myself. If I’m feeling sad, or stressed, or I woke up late, or even if I just happen to be biking past the bakery that gives a 50% discount on all its pastries if you arrive by bicycle (how do you turn that down!?)–I buy something yummy to get me through the day. But when I stop to tally up the week– the ‘treat’ hot chocolate, muffin, pastry, carrot cake… I’ve eaten something like that nearly every day.

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