Entries tagged with 'Jewish'
Page 1 of 2
[Photograph: Robyn Lee] I'm going to 'fess up here. I don't fast the way you're supposed to on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance that begins on Sunday night. Not that I don't have plenty to repent for—it's just that I've decided to repent while eating. But even though I don't fast I still look forward to a traditional (or even untraditional) Break Fast meal. On Monday night we were invited to break the fast with some good friends of ours who live in our apartment building. They'll have a fantastic platter of smoked fish, bagels, and cream cheese, which is the traditional break fast meal in my experience. But to kick it up a notch, Jewish-style, we're...
Continue reading »
[Photograph: Arthur Schwartz] I don't know how, why, or when Jews started making brisket for holiday meals, but it's one ritualized aspect of the Jewish culinary tradition I wholeheartedly embrace. My friend Arthur Schwartz has written many, many wonderful cookbooks, including Jewish Home Cooking. Arthur set out in a wonderfully obsessive way to come up with the definitive, most seriously delicious potted brisket recipe. He experimented with cooking first cut and whole briskets, using liquid and not using liquid, and here's what he eventually came up with. Over on his website Food Maven, he shares all of the great and gory brisket experiment details. And what better way to top off a belly full of beef than with two...
Continue reading »
Apples and honey for a sweet new year. [Flickr: ForestForTrees] When we wanted to find some seriously delicious recipes for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, I immediately reached out to Joan Nathan, the queen (not named Esther) of Jewish cooking in this country. My wife and I have repeatedly cooked for both of our families from three of Joan's cookbooks: Jewish Cooking in America, Jewish Holiday Cookbook, and The New American Cooking. The finished dishes never fail to elicit oohs and ahhs, even from my brothers, who are certainly among the world's toughest lay food critics. Pay particular attention to Jim Cohen's Sephardic Brisket It will convince you that dried apricots and prunes are perfect complements to beef...
Continue reading »
What do you do on Christmas if you're Jewish? Chinese food and a movie. Brandon Walker sings about this perennial pairing, after the jump....
Continue reading »
"Though I grew up with Dunkin' Donuts as my weekend snack, these days I’m more likely to hanker for a bagel." Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of goyem, I will fear no lack of bagels, for thou foodie gods art with me. I figure if I repeat this mantra enough, it’ll eventually stick, but the truth is I’m pretty down on the lack of good Jewish eats in Chicago. Though we have a sizable metro population, only about 30 percent of the total Jewish population lives in the city proper. There wasn’t always a local diaspora. In the mid 1800s, a significant number of immigrant Jews lived in the central loop, Pilsen, and the famed...
Continue reading »
©iStockphoto.com/Vika The Jewish calendar is a funny thing. A lunisolar creation, it doesn't quite match up with the Gregorian one our calendar is based on. That's why every year you hear people asking: when is Rosh Hashana this year? When is Chanukkah? This year Rosh Hashana starts on September 29, but even without knowing the date I could tell when the holiday is near. In my neighborhood, which is an eclectic mix of hipsters and Hasidic Jews (think Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with better weather), a good indicator that the High Holidays are coming are the sukkah shacks that pop up on Beverly Boulevard. Celebrating harvest, according to the Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking by Phyllis Glazer, was the original purpose...
Continue reading »
L'Chaim! Stock Up Now! Photograph courtesy of mhaithaca While bread gets cracker-ified during Passover, chosen bottles of soda get stripped of their high-fructose corn syrup and are sweetened instead with the real deal. No need to hunt for imported Mexican colas or hitch a ride south of the border for the cane sugar cola that tastes so great. That's right: Passover Coke is here! (Or Passover Pepsi, if you're on that side of the Cola War.) Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi make a real-sugar version around this time of year, and you can find it by looking for yellow caps on Coke bottles or white caps on Pepsi. But to be sure you really have a sweet, sweet sugariffic cola in...
Continue reading »
This is a true story: when I was about five years old, I asked my mother how Moses and his friends had time to stop in the middle of the desert to dip their matzo in chocolate. Turns out I wasn't the only curious kid. This Passover season marks the 20th anniversary of Chuck Siegel's (the Charles of Charles Chocolates) matzo-dipping party. But the whole scene got started with apples—not dipped in honey, but in caramel. Chuck, then owner of Attivo Confections, was vacuum-sealing his candied Granny Smith apples with heavy-duty equipment. "The guy we bought the bags and the machines from was Jewish, and still is Jewish," Siegel said. "And he said, 'my daughter really wants to make...
Continue reading »
If there are two cuisines Arthur "The Food Maven" Schwartz knows best, they're Jewish and Italian. He's already done an Italian book, so he tackles the likes of latkes, kreplach, knishes, and kugel in Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking. If you're not lucky enough to have grown up with a bubbe fussing over you and cooking you some of the most amazing comfort food ever, then this book can help you approximate the experience yourself. Win 'Jewish Home Cooking' We'll be excerpting a recipe a day this week as part of our ongoing Cook the Book feature. The first of those will be up shortly, but for now it's time to let you in on how you can enter to...
Continue reading »
Photograph from drewleavy on Flickr We have no shortage of delicious bagels here in New York City. (Is there a better bagel city in the world?) We also have no shortage of fat laden, drool inducing corned beef. (Is there a better corned beef city in the world?) Yet, explain to me how London is the city that has combined the two into what looks like a pretty outstanding sandwich. It's called a hot salt beef bagel, and it leaves me wondering, "How on earth did we got scooped on this?"...
Continue reading »
