Linda Morel
Shavuot with a French accent
Joan Nathan says she’s always had a particular fascination for French Jews and their food.
For Nathan, author of “Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France” (Knopf, 2010), the love affair with French cuisine started as a teenager when she made her first trip to France in the 1950s.
The prolific cookbook author says the simple pleasure of sampling a slightly melted bar of chocolate sandwiched into a crackly baguette transformed her life.
Irresistible Passover pastries: Who knew it was possible?
With all the restrictions, are decent desserts even possible during Passover?
“My particular talent is working around restriction,” says Paula Shoyer, author of “The Kosher Baker: Over 160 Dairy-free Recipes from Traditional to Trendy” (Brandeis University Press, 2010).
Her cookbook contains a chapter on Passover baking, as well as many sensational recipes sans flour or yeast — Passover taboos. Flourless Chocolate Cake, Marble Chocolate Matzoh, and Mocha Matzoh Napolean are some of the book’s gems.
Shoyer, whose magical touch is without peer in the Passover dessert genre, calls them “my gift to the Jewish people.”
Purim menu with the luck of the Irish
Every time there’s a Jewish leap year, as is the case in 2011, Purim falls during the same week as St. Patrick’s Day. While St. Patrick’s Day is always on March 17, Purim this year begins at sundown just two days later, on March 19.
Far from the Emerald Isle, the Purim story is set in ancient Persia and bubbles with intrigue. Mordecai, a distinguished member of the Jewish community who suspected foul play within the king’s palace, maneuvered his niece Esther into the position of queen.
Schmaltzy history
A nostalgic look at fats for frying latkes
Fat may be a dirty word now, but we can chart the history of American Jews through the fats they’ve used to fry their Chanukah latkes. Early immigrants relied on goose fat, which was replaced by chicken fat, which was eclipsed by Crisco, which was replaced by olive and canola oils.
Latkes over time have been fried in all of these, says Jane Ziegelman, author of “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.” That five-story brick structure, is the home of the New York Tenement Museum.
The book is a pushcart of information about what immigrants ate during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Two of the families Ziegelman profiled were Jewish.
At Thanksgiving, a cornucopia of Jewish sides
The best thing about Thanksgiving is that it invites Americans of all religions and ethnic backgrounds. On the same autumn Thursday, most American families eat turkey and a cornucopia of side dishes.
No country has been more welcoming to the Jews than the United States. Thanksgiving is a metaphor for the opportunities this country offers Jewish people.
While turkey is the centerpiece of the harvest table, I’ve seen people of various ethnic groups put their own spin on the side dishes they serve. I grew up with an Italian friend whose mother always made two lasagnas — for either side of the turkey. An Indian woman who used to baby-sit for my daughter prepared vegetable curry every year. The family of a Cuban friend offered up black beans and rice.
Just desserts in the sukkah
While most people equate Sukkot with autumn vegetables, I picture the holiday as a tea party. Among Jews who build sukkahs, the evening meal is the most popular time to gather inside these modern-day harvest huts.
Because temperatures often dip at night, I much prefer spending afternoon hours inside a sukkah with a favorite book. As sunlight dapples its pages, I enjoy nibbling cookies and sipping a cup of tea.
Days of awe
Before the Yom Kippur fast, cholent offers comfort
At a surprise 40th birthday party for a friend, her mother stood at their stove stirring a huge cauldron of simmering stew.
The chicken, flanken, potatoes, carrots, dried peas and barley in the pot emitted an aroma that made the offerings prepared by the caterer brought in by my friend’s husband pale in comparison.
“This is Lynda’s favorite food,” her mother said, dipping a ladle into the depth of the pot and asking me to take a taste.
I wasn’t expecting to swoon.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Cholent, a Sabbath stew,” she said. “But in our family, we eat it all the time.”
Exploring Jewish ancestry through food for Rosh HaShanah
Teiglach came along with Tina Wasserman when she moved to Dallas in the 1980s.
Wasserman, a cooking teacher and the food columnist for Reform Judaism magazine, didn’t literally transport clumps of the sticky pastries whose dough is wrapped around nuts and simmered in honey syrup. But among her most cherished possessions, she packed her recipe for the traditional Rosh HaShanah sweet hailing from Lithuania.
“No one had seen it down here,” said Wasserman, the author of “Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora (URJ Press, 2010), until she served the dessert to her new friends.
Dairy recipes for Shavuot
Recently my 3-year-old granddaughter played with a music box she had received from her parents at Chanukah.
“What is Chanukah?” I asked her.
“It’s the candle holiday,” she said.
At such an early age, she was impressed by the drama of this powerful symbol. Yet she’s not old enough to realize that Jewish holidays are rife with symbols that spark the imagination and sometimes memories of favorite foods.
If Purim is the hamantaschen holiday, Passover the matzoh holiday, then Shavuot could be considered the dairy holiday.
It’s Purim: Let the revelry begin
Purim is a busy holiday. It starts with an evening reading of the Megillah of Esther, followed the next morning by the second reading of a story that rivals the pace of a best-selling novel. The plot features a brave and beautiful heroine, a despotic king, a clever uncle, and a villain who is destroyed by his own evil plans.
After the morning reading, many people visit family and friends to distribute “mishloach manot,” packages filled with two baked goods and a drink. They also give “matanot l’evyonim,” donations to the needy.
Finally comes the highlight of any Jewish holiday — a delicious meal. But unlike most Jewish celebrations, where dining occurs at night, the Seudat Purim is a feast served midday, often lingering until evening.
