The New York Times’ Minimalist Chef, Mark Bittman, wants you to eat less meat. Or, rather, he wants to help you eat less meat:

“Let’s suppose you’ve decided to eat less meat, or are considering it. And let’s ignore your reasons for doing so. They may be economic, ethical, altruistic, nutritional or even irrational. The arguments for eating less meat are myriad and well-publicized, but at the moment they’re irrelevant, because what I want to address here is (almost) purely pragmatic: How do you do it?”

In theory, Jewish tradition is way ahead of the “eat less meat” curve - traditionally enjoying meat dishes for Shabbat and holidays only. In a post last year, for example, The OU’s head mashgiach, Seth Mandel said, “You have to understand, the Torah did not envision us to eat as much meat as we do. Rambam in the Mishneh Torah says that Jews should eat meat at most two times a week.” As Mandel’s quote suggests, what happens in practice is vastly different than the Rambam’s ideal - as highlighted in a Shavuot lunch I went to this week where the hosts served meat-filled soup, two platters of brisket, fried sole, and beef-stuffed cabbage leaves. The idea of Shavuot as the “dairy holiday” flew out the window at that meal!

Can Bittman - whose suggestions include “Forget the protein thing” and “buy more vegetables and learn how to cook them” get us closer to the meat in moderation ideal? Find out here.

If you’re a foodie, then (in addition to your collection of stinky cheese and expensive vinegar) it is crucial to have foodie friends - people you can completely “geek out” about food with. For example, my fiance may nod appreciatively when I gush on and on about the beautiful radishes I bought at the farmers market - but my foodie friends gush right back - and give me recipes.

Another benefit of having foodie friends is the amazing food field trips they invite you to - like the tortellini-making party I attended last Sunday. A friend of mine has a cousin (Carla) who grew up going to Italy every summer where she learned how to cook from her Italian family. Eager to share her passion for Italian food with others, Carla invited a group of us into her gorgeous kitchen for a cooking lesson.

Listening to Carla talk about the many Mediterranean summers she passed in her aunt’s kitchen made me a little wistful for my Jewish bubbe and my great-grandmother from Lithuania, neither of whom I never was fortunate enough to meet. But there was no time to be wallow that Sunday - there was too much pasta to make!

Photos and a recipe below the jump.

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It’s been a while since my husband and I returned from our month-long trip to Vietnam - the one that significantly changed my outlook on traveling to new countries as a non-meat eater! As promised, here is a photo journal of our food adventures.

I also included one of my favorite recipes from the trip - Steamed Lemongrass Fish. Enjoy!

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Welcome back to the land of bread! I had a realization on Sunday night, around 6:30 (i.e. T-minus 2 hours to carb consumption, when I was locked in a state of restless self-pity) that Passover would be a perfect time to try a cleanse. After the original spirit and kavannah (intention) of the seder wore off, you could at least still congratulate yourself for detoxing. Perhaps - but I digress.

Two days after Passover, however, is definitely a great time to wipe off the final matzah crumbs and get your finger back on the pulse of what else that’s going on in the world of food. Check out these tasty ideas from around the blogosphere. B’tai Avon!

Sacred Foods. Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal published a compendium of resources to help Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders educate about sustainable food and eating and make responsible food purchasing decisions in their congregations. The resource guide was created as part of Aleph’s Sacred Foods project. Find them here.

Carbon Side Dish. The New York Times reported this weekend on the strange-but-true phenomenon that it is not only possible but actually cost-effective to catch a fish in Norway, ship it to China to be processed into filets, and then shipped back to Norway for sale. oof - somehow, I’m not feeling all that hungry. Read it here.

Still Veggie After All These Years. Lilith Magazine talked with vegetarian guru, Mollie Katzen about the 30th anniversary of The New Moosewood Cookbook. (Unfortunately, the full story isn’t online, but you can purchase a copy the mag here.)

Drink Your (Raw) Milk. Harpers jumped on the raw milk bandwagon with a fabulous article on unpasturized dairy, its naysayers, and the converts who claim straight from the udder is the only way to go. Check it out here.

Sticker Shock. Grist offers a clear, concise analysis of the complicated issue of rising food costs. Read about it here.

This past weekend, our synagogue hosted a “Pesach University”: A community-wide day of Passover workshops, on everything from the anthropological roots of the seder, to how to “green” your Pesach.

But the true highlight of the event was a live Passover cooking demonstration by none other than Ellie Krieger - an adjunct professor in the New York University Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, and star of the Food Network’s hit show, Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger. (She also happens to be the sister of one of our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA’s core group members, and a genuinely warm and funny person to boot.)

In honor of the occasion, Ellie chose to focus on two themes of the seder: dipping, and the tension between bitter and sweet in the story, and the food that accompanies it. Ellie made two delicious recipes, adapted from her new cookbook The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life, which she has graciously allowed me to share, after the jump: Read more »

Despite the shock value of my photos from a few days ago, Vietnam is a fascinating place to visit for the food obsessed. And while markets have always been one of my favorite places to wander through in developing countries, this was my first big trip abroad since I started thinking differently about food.

As I wrote previously, I wouldn’t recommend that people who keep kosher go there. It simply would be too hard to avoid the treyf. The default meat there is pork, and shrimp comes in a close second. It’s ironic too that one of the most common fish dishes, fish in a clay pot - a white fish coated in a delicious concoction of caramelized sugar, fish sauce, shallots, garlic, ginger and chiles, is made with catfish - once again, not kosher.
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Are Passover snacks the new bees? Chametz-free noshes seem to be disappearing everywhere without a trace. First, TamTams disappear from the shelves, and now, the NYTimes reports about a historic New York social club that recently lost its source for the perfect macaroon.

It seems that the bakery which supplied the Century club with macaroons for over half a century has gone out of business, and this article describes the remarkable search by its members for a suitable replacement. I have to say, even as someone who disdainfully associates macaroons with those awful, sticky, cloying, calorie-laden chunks that come in the vacuum-sealed can, I can’t help but admire the passion and discernment by which Century Club members are conducting their search. Here’s how they lovingly describe the perfect macaroon:

“They had just the right amount of texture. They weren’t too crispy. They weren’t too gooey. You know, they didn’t flake or break. They kind of pulled apart. I would say they sort of had a nice elasticity. They displayed a particular combination of crustiness and tensile strength.”

Mmmm…tensile strength. Good luck with that. So much for Macaroons. The cheese(cake) half of this post is after the jump… Read more »

I admit it - I live in a bubble. A tiny, insulated bubble within which everyone cares about eating ethically, and while some people eat meat and some don’t, just about everyone can agree about the merits of garlic-sauteed kale. Inside my cozy world, I forget that a whole other world exists out there - but this week, my trip over to Midtown Lunch reminded me.

Midtown Lunch - an entertaining (and eminently useful!) blog that seeks out the dining gems within the culinary wasteland that is Midtown Manhattan - profiles a different Midtown employee each week. It asks them questions like, “favorite/least favorite foods,” and “if you could work anywhere in New York (just because of lunch) where would it be and why?” This past week I was profiled. I was pleased to have the opportunity to give shout outs to Hazon and The Jew & The Carrot and excited to share my dietary habits with a bunch of related strangers.

Turns out, Midtown is not the most veggie or kosher friendly place on earth. Here’s a smattering of the comments my vegetarian and kosher focused profile received:

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“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” - Anthony Bourdain, “Kitchen Confidential,” p. 70

Tell us how you really feel, Anthony!

Of course, vegetarians and vegan chefs were not about to take this crude, carnivorous cri de coeur lying down, and thus was born Hezbollah Tofu, a blog where vegan chefs are systematically veganizing chef Bourdain’s most celebrated recipes. They plan on selling the resulting compilation, and donating the proceeds to vegan causes (farm sanctuaries, public education, etc) in Bordain’s name. Take that, Anthony!

This topic brings up a whole host of questions for me, as a Jew and as a self-professed foodie who also strives to eat sustainably (although not regularly animal-product free):

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Our good friend Chris P. Carrot (a.k.a. Michael Croland of Heeb n’ Vegan) had a fabulous Purim, shaking his grogger.  Did anyone else celebrate in a food-themed costume?

In this week’s Jerusalem Post, Dr. Richard Schwartz writes:

“Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, was a vegetarian while she lived in the palace of King Achashverosh. She was thus able to avoid violating the kosher dietary laws while keeping her Jewish identity secret.”

Well, sort of. As a vegetarian and a woman, I find Dr. Schwartz’s line of logic tempting. Hooray! Queen Esther, the sassy savior of the Jewish people, loved tofu! But he has the midrash backwards.

There are actually conflicting opinions about what Esther chose to eat and refuse in the palace (one commentator suggests that she was actually served pork!). But the midrash that stuck is that she ate beans and legumes. If this was the case, then Queen Esther avoided meat so as to not violate the kosher laws in her non-Jewish surroundings. Her intention would not have been to eschew all flesh, as Dr. Schwartz suggests, just the non-kosher kind.

Even if she wasn’t a card-carrying PETA member, Queen Esther’s diaspora diet gives us a glimpse into the strength of her character. She maintained her sense of self, even within a palace that was undoubtedly filled with temptations. The lesson to take away is not that all Jews should be vegetarians (though many could benefit from eating less meat!), but that defending one’s core values is the deepest form of heroism.

In honor of Queen Esther, here’s a recipe for Persian Stuffed Peppers by Chef Gil Marks, author of a mind-bogglingly comprehensive book of vegetarian Jewish recipes, Olive Trees and Honey.

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Almost three weeks into our trip to Vietnam, and I’ve lost count how many times we’ve uttered the following statement: “That was the best meal we’ve had in Vietnam.”  Undoubtedly, things have greatly improved since my last post - basically since we reached the central part of the country. Vegetarian restaurants are plentiful in Hue (well, maybe plentiful is an understatement, but we found and ate in two, both of which charged local prices and were excellent), and in Hoi An, where we are now, every menu we look at as numerous veggie options.

One of the highlights of our stay in Hoi An was an all-day cooking course, but I will wait until we’re home to write about it, so I can post corresponding photos.

So which meal was truly the best? It’s hard to remember them all. We continually go over them in our heads, comparing this salad and this entree and this whatever else. I will truly miss Vietnamese cuisine when we go home, even though good restaurants are not far from our home, but still, it’s just not the same.

My only regret is that we can’t make it to Ho Chi Minh City for Purim tomorrow night. There is a Chabad House there, and it would have been fun to celebrate there, but we couldn’t change our schedule around. So chag sameach. We will try to find something resembling Hamentaschen, but I don’t think a pork bun would suffice.

We’ve now been in Vietnam for well over a week. And while I continue to be, well, pretty much disgusted by the way animals are treated (today we saw a common site here; two live pigs tied to the sides of a motorbike — photos will have to wait until I’m home), I am also partially awed by the Vietnamese willingness to see food as it really is before they eat it.

As I mentioned before, it is nearly impossible to keep kosher here, or for me to remain a vegetarian. I was doing a pretty good job of it so far, but this morning, when served noodles for breakfast with bits of pork in it, our guide reminded our host that I don’t eat meat. We were staying at Ba Be Lakes in a “home stay,” with a family that is incredibly poor, and makes extra money by taking in tourists. Food is plentiful, though, here, even with the poor. Anyhow, after the reminder, he promptly made me my own noodles — in a bowl of chicken broth.

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Dog. Cat. Porcupine. Deer.

The ‘Lonely Planet’ Guidebook describes the Vietnamese people as “fiercly omnivorous,” and I couldn’t think of a more apt description. We are not uploading photos so I can’t illustrate this post properly but today we took numerous photos of a skinned pig’s head, pig’s feet, live goats tied to a back of a motorbike, same with live chickens in a mesh cage, pigs tied in tortuous ways, the list goes on.

Greetings from Vietnam, the most unkosher place on the planet (kosher-keepers, never, ever come here, unless you plan on packing a month’s supply of canned tuna). Read more »