Three years ago, the first kosher Subway restaurant opened in Cleveland -- and even company pitchman Jared Fogle showed-up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Since then, Subway has gone on a kosher franchise binge, opening nine restaurants (11 by the end of the year) in markets like Miami, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, N.Y. Now at least four of those franchises -- Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cleveland and Rockville, Md. -- are trying to convince local religious academies to bring the six-inch sub into school cafeterias.
So far it's been slow going. In Los Angeles, kosher Subway co-owner Jonathan Sedaghat is in negotiations with three area private schools to serve Subway sandwiches on a weekly basis for as many as 300 students. Most of his school business so far has come from Yeshivas ordering heroes for special occasions like field trips, sports events and orientations. The menu consists of turkey, roast beef, salami or bologna low-fat subs (290 calories, 30 calories from fat) with sliced apples and potato chips. The franchise charges between $5 and $7 a lunchbox, depending on the order.
There was an air of excitement, a feeling of pride and a hunger for innovation at the first day of Kosher Fest 2009, held Tuesday at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, N.J. The event showcased not only the biggest and best kosher products from around the world, but also the newest kosher products on the market.
Aside from the typical kosher fare of smoked meats and breads, there were kosher wines, liquors and something called Organic Batter Blaster -- which, to us, conjured thoughts of a culinary video game. Alas, it's but a pressurized batter -- packaged in what looks like a whipped-cream can -- for waffles and pancakes that is both organic and kosher.
We also glimpsed an enormous shopping cart filled with kosher food and yes, kosher energy-type drinks. One such beverage, Brain Toniq, is billed as a healthy, kosher alternative to Red Bull and won Best New Beverage in the competition phase of Kosher Fest, held two weeks ago.
The world's "first non-caffeinated think-drink specifically used to improve cognitive function and increase brain power" (or so promises Brain Toniq Director of Sales Mark Loebach) is just one of many examples of the innovation and expansion of kosher food products into the mainstream prominently displayed at Kosher Fest.
'Love and Knishes: An Irrepressible Guide to Jewish Cooking'
Recipes by Sara Kasdan
Illustrations by Louis Slobodkin The Vanguard Press, 1956 Buy it at Amazon
Dedicated "To the Wonderful Women Who Never Cooked from a Book," Sara Kasdan's Love and Knishes (1956) is both a very traditional Jewish cookbook (with recipes for knaidlech and kugel) and a fascinating, funny historical document of mid-century attitudes about cooking, ethnicity, and health. Kasdan wrote her book at a time when, as she writes witheringly in a chapter titled You Can Be Normal, Too, Why Not? "Nowadays, everything is psychology...everybody has complexes." Interspersed with her recipes for tzimmes and kasha varnitchkes is a caustic sense of humor that makes the tome compulsively readable. Kasdan's audience is a generation of women whose instincts and traditions were about to get run off the road by everything from Julia Child and processed foods to cookbooks purporting to teach them what they already knew.
Takeaway Tips: Look for the double entendres: Kasdan's one-page chapter about salads is called "Papa Called it Grass." She suffers none of the pretensions or guilt of modern cookbook writer, and the book is a festival of schmaltz, sour cream and refined carbohydrates. A helpful glossary defines foods like lox ("A partner to bagels") and kreplach ("Chinese definition: Won Ton; Italian definition: ravioli.") And all of the chapters come with lengthy anecdotes about everything from picky husbands to Rosh Hashana strudel.
Despite the economic downturn, the kosher food market is soaring, reports the LA Times. And it's not because the Jewish community is growing, but because non-Jews increasingly view kosher food as a higher-quality product, marketers say. Sales of certified kosher foods have risen 64 percent in the past five years, earning a total of $12.5 billion in 2008. Some 28 percent of new food and dairy products launched in the U.S. last year were certified kosher. Kosher foods must confirm to Jewish laws dictating methods of slaughter and prohibitions against mixing certain foods, like meat and milk, and must be approved by a rabbi. Thus kosher food factories may have more stringent manufacturing regulations than non-kosher factories. "Kosher food has gained the reputation of being more carefully produced and thoroughly inspected than non-kosher food," says Marcia Mogelonsky, an analyst at the market research firm Mintel, which tracks food trends. The kosher meat industry, though, has not been without its share of scandal - Agriprocessors Inc., the country's larget kosher meatpacking company, was exposed last year for having illegal and unsanitary conditions in its Iowa facility.
Do you look for the kosher label when you buy food?
In my capacity as a personal finance writer, I often get a chance to write about Bernie Madoff. As a food writer, however, I haven't been able to do much with him. This is particularly ironic, as one of my cousins worked as a personal chef for the Madoffs. Unfortunately, she didn't have any crazy or disturbing stories to tell.
Recently, however, the ever-elusive Madoff/food connection finally emerged. Ruth Madoff, the scammer's wife, managed to weasel her way onto the cover of a cookbook. The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher, a 1996 tome that offered Kosher haute cuisine recipes to the masses, appears to have been "executive edited" by Madoff and her friend Idee Schoenheimer. However, according to the "editor," Karen MacNeil, neither Madoff nor Schoenheimer actually did any work for the book. MacNeil, a food and wine expert, claims that the book was something of a vanity project for Madoff, who "was interested in having her name on something that would allow for some sort of fun."
The moral of the story? The family that cheats together eats together!
As of now, it's Pomegranate located in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. The 20,000 square feet of shopping space includes aisles full kosher gourmet foods. An article from New York magazine calls Pomegranate a "kosher gourmet megastore." The supermarket seems to be a cross between Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.
Unlike other specialty markets, Pomegranate caters to the thousands of Orthodox Jewish families living in New York City. The store has three kitchens: dairy, meat, and parve (fish, vegetables, fruit and grains). Each has its own on-duty full-time rabbi. Customers can choose from a rich selection of freshly baked challah and homemade cheeses to aged prime beef-rib steaks to an olive bar and sushi bar. The gourmet food market is an obvious business trend. Is the kosher version of Whole Foods the new trend?
I live in Brooklyn, not far from Pomegranate, and I see several smaller gourmet kosher markets on Kings Highway. The prices are not cheap. So, I do not think that Pomegranate will have a hard time competing with existing stores. You can now visit the supermarket that's located on Coney Island Avenue at the corner of Avenue L.
I have definitely noticed a trend lately with food-based humor t-shirts. Last year, my boyfriend bought me a shirt with a pig, rabbit, and cow that says, "Don't eat us. We are cute animals." Recently, I found out about this kosher ham t-shirt.
This campy shirt was featured in Us Weekly and in Heeb Magazine. If you want one, you can purchase it online.
Even though I don't know very much about Kosher law, I do know that one who keeps Kosher can only eat certain animal proteins. Now you can add giraffe to that list.
Recently at the Safari Park, Israel's largest zoo, vets took some milk from a female giraffe and sent it to some Rabbis to see if it was Kosher. Turns out it is. The Rabbis said that the milk formed curds correctly, and since giraffes "belong to the family of grazing animals that have cloven hooves and chew the cud" they should be considered Kosher.
What I don't get is why, if the vets were treating the female for something, did they send its milk to Rabbis for Kosher consideration? That point wasn't really addressed in the Telegraph Online article. Oh well, I guess there's now one more option for those who keep Kosher!
Pork is the most widely consumed meat in the world, in spite of the fact that its consumption is heavily restricted by religions like Islam and Judaism. Pork and pork fat are favorite ingredients of chefs and food processing companies because it can provide a good flavor and succulent texture to other products, usually meats, and has a high smoking point, which makes it a good choice for frying.One food processing company has developed a halal pork fat from "restructured vegetable fat" that should mimic the properties of real pork fat without pork. Called ADROGEL GR, the substitute fat is lower in fat than pork and primarily consists of vegetable oil and water, bound together into a white substance with the consistency of pork back fat. ADROGEL GR can be used in sausages, sauces and other places where food manufacturers regularly use pork fat, even in nonpork products.
Today, the board of health in New York is going to vote on whether or not the city will ban trans fats from restaurants. If the ban passes, eateries will have until July 2008 to eliminate all but 0.5g of trans fats per serving from their food. Restaurateurs are anxious, many worried that the quality of their food - by which they mean the taste - will suffer if the ban is accepted. While we wait to hear the ruling, what are some common sources of trans fats in our food? Forbes has named their five worst offenders in terms of the amount of trans fats they contain. They picked prepared and prepackaged foods; stick margarine; and chips and crackers fried in partially hydrogenated oils. Many breakfast foods, from donuts to pancakes, contain trans fats because they are either fried in type of partially hydrogenated oil or are claiming to be lower in cholesterol, since maybe breakfasters worry about the potential health risks of adding butter to their eggs. The most surprising item on the list is the fact that they name kosher baked goods as being at a high risk. The reason is that they are more likely to use partially hydrogenated shortening in place of dairy ingredients, like butter.
Kosher food is a new trend in stadium food. Over the past couple of years, exclusively kosher stands have been sprouting up at more sports venues, offering food that even very strict Jewish people, those who follow the dietary laws of kashrut, can eat. The glatt kosher hot dogs and other meat products are held to a different standard from ordinary ones and, of course, do not involve pork products. They are proving popular in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, despite that fact that the stands are not typically open on the two busiest times of the sporting week: Friday nights and Saturdays. One other risk of selling the kosher food is that it is typically more expensive than the nonkosher offerings at stadiums and since stadium food is not inexpensive to begin with, this can mean that consumers might be paying as much as 25% more for kosher products. That being said, the slow and steady success of such vendors indicates that there is a market for kosher products in these settings, from both those who keep kosher and those who, like some fans, "like the taste better [and] assume the quality is better."
The other day I tried a bottle of a great new soda. At least it was new to me. Turns out it's been around for a couple of years. I came across Zota Green Tea Soda, in of all places, a kosher deli. Usually, when I eat deli I drink Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, but I'm always game for something new. They had only one flavor, root beer.
While it didn't have the world's most pronounced root beer flavor, it was quite good and incredibly refreshing. Like most better sodas, Zota has no high-fructose corn syrup. Rather it uses evaporated cane juice as a sweetener. It packed a nice little caffeine kick and I'm sure also carried all the health benefits of green tea. I can't wait to try some of the other flavors, which include ginger, cola, lime and orange.
After looking at the company's web site I understand why Zota was in the deli's beverage case. Not only is it organic, it's also certified kosher.
A few months ago I read a short piece on kosher wines. I had been keeping my eye on them over the years because most people think of them as those overly sweet concord grape wines that tasted more like candy than wine. I'm not Jewish, but have quite a few friends that are, and I live in an area with a high population of those who try and stay kosher. Now kosher wine is hitting the big time. A few months ago I became friends with one of the distributors of kosher wines and spirits in my area and we've been planning on getting together soon so I can sample them. Well, yesterday I was at KosherFest, a kosher food and beverage trade show, and was amazed at how many high quality kosher wines are out there. In the next few weeks and months I will be reviewing wines of all types, but with the holidays coming I wanted to give a heads-up on a few good kosher ones to try.
Honey is a symbol of the sweet year ahead during the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, but it isn't an ingredient that gets as much respect as it deserves, largely because people tend to stick to the generic grocery store honeys. Now, it's not that there is anything wrong with a generic honey, but they do lack the nuances that many more specific varieties have to offer. These honeys often come from just one type of plant or one small area of land and, rather than just tasting sweet, they offer notes of berries, flowers, citrus and spices that can take a dessert - or even a piece of toast - to a new level. Epicurious picked out some of their favorites, which include:
Black Sage Honey, mild with notes of apple and vanilla
Star Thistle Honey, intensely floral
Rosemary and Lavender Honey, very mildly herbal
Javanese Island Honey Rambutan Blossom, strong taste of sandalwood and patchouli
Forest Honey, dark and molasses-like
More can be found with the Honey Locator. You'll also be able to find some more exotic honeys by visiting a smaller, specialty grocer or perhaps just by taking a closer look at the labels at the supermarket. If you see more than one you like, you can always host your own honey tasting.
Despite the economic downturn, the kosher food market is soaring
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This Sunday's New York Times magazine is entirely dedicated to food. Here's the rundown:
Pork is the most widely consumed meat in the world, in spite of the fact that its consumption is heavily 
Today, the board of health in New York is 
Kosher food is a new 
The other day I tried a bottle of a great new soda. At least it was new to me. Turns out it's been around for a couple of years. I came across 
A few months ago I read a short piece on kosher wines. I had been keeping my eye on them over the years because most people think of them as those overly sweet concord grape wines that tasted more like candy than wine. I'm not Jewish, but have quite a few friends that are, and I live in an area with a high population of those who try and stay kosher. Now kosher wine is hitting the big time. A few months ago I became friends with one of the distributors of kosher wines and spirits in my area and we've been planning on getting together soon so I can sample them. Well, yesterday I was at KosherFest, a kosher food and beverage trade show, and was amazed at how many high quality kosher wines are out there. In the next few weeks and months I will be reviewing wines of all types, but with the holidays coming I wanted to give a heads-up on a 
Honey is a symbol of the sweet year ahead during the Jewish New Year, 
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