"jewish cooking" news and stories

By now, most Jewish people are deep into their Seder dinners, as the first night of Passover began at Sundown today. However, I'm not Jewish so I don't get to enjoy the ceremonial storytelling and delicious Seder feast tonight.

Much of the story of Passover is about suffering, so I feel sort of sacrilegous in thinking that haroset is delicious. Haroset has its place on the Seder plate, representing the mortar that the Israelis used for building when they were kept as slaves in Egypt. Haroset can be made in many different ways, but the most basic recipe is made from apples, nuts, and sweet wine.

Our siblings over at the Life Sciences blogs have posted some resources for those of us who will be preparing foods that are kosher for Passover and work for the special dietary needs of diabetics. The Passover holiday restricts unleavened breads as well as grains like wheat, oats, rye and barley, but for diabetics, it's important to find recipes for foods that will help maintain a stable blood sugar level.

One source is the website for the Jewish Diabetes Organization, www.jewishdiabetes.org. The site offers a guide in PDF format with recipes. Cinnamon Hearts, at www.cinnamonhearts.com, is a recipe goldmine for Jewish diabetics, with not only Passover recipes and a menu for a Seder dinner, but many foods for diabetics in general.

With Passover starting in a couple of days, many households are preparing for the eight day "Festival on Matzos" that is completely free of leavened breads, crackers, cakes, cookies.

However, many rabbis of some of the most orthodox associations and Jewish food historians say that the holiday has become overly complicated. Jews avoid grain altogether for fear that even without yeast, leavening may have occurred. Jewish people today have been overly cautious and have misunderstood the term for "leavening," simply excluding any ingredient, not just natural yeast, that causes dough to rise.

But the leavening that is mentioned in the Torah as "chametz," according to one author, is natural yeast, which causes leavening by fermentation, and does not refer to baking powder or baking soda.

Now, I'm not a strictly observant Jew. I didn't have to suffer with leaden cakes made of nut flours and matzoh meal for eight days every year, but I still have to wonder that "allowing" this and that and lifting restrictions takes away from one of the points of the holiday, which is to appreciate the suffering of ancestors.

On the other hand, perhaps there has just been too much focus on the rules themselves rather than on what they mean. 

Source

Given that Saveur's website is "stylishly useless," it's almost unfair to post all the wonderful things that are in the April 2006 issue of the magazine I just received. Consider it simply an express-view for you as you ponder whether to pick it up in the check-out line. (And I'll do my best over the next few weeks to post any adventures I have with the recipes).

• A look at the changing fare on college campuses, which are ditching the dining halls and favoring the carts and trucks that serve fast, cheap, and authentic ethnic food like falafel and veggie pakoras at UVM and kimchee and bulgogi accessible to a number of schools in Philadelphia. Of course, I know all about the In-N-Out truck on the UCLA and USC campuses once a year.
• Cookbooks under review are Jewish: The Jewish Kitchen by Clarissa Hyman and Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South by Marcie Cohen Ferris.
• In the cellar, the wine of the month is madiran, a "dark, spicy, tannic expression of the French southwest."
• In a different kind of cellar, Campbeltown is Scotland's "other" whisky region.
• San Francisco chef James Schenk (of Nuevo Latino restaurant Destino) makes alfajores, South American butter cookies filled with dulce de leche.
• Stop all the debate. The original recipe for Buffalo wings from the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York!
• The feature of the magazine is Tuscan trattorias, with recipes for: arista di maiale (roasted herb-stuffed porkloin), fagioli sgranati (white beans with sage), piselli freschi (fresh peas with Prosciutto), pappa al pomodoro (bread and tomato soup), insalata di trippa (cold tripe salad - I doubt I'll be trying this one, but who knows?), pappardelle all'anatra (broad noodles with duck sauce), and fritto misto di coniglio e verdure (fried rabbit and vegetables - imagine serving that to your kids on Easter!).
• We love hummus, and who knew Saveur could dedicate six whole pages to the simple chickpea puree?
• Le Veau d'Or in Manhattan is "a real French restaurant: the music is terrible but the food is great."
• And finally, a look at the endagered Danish tradition of the smorrebrod (different from Swedish smorgasbord).

So Hanukkah ended yesterday. So I'm a little late with the latkes. So sue me. (Actually, since celebration always starts the night before, the last night of Hanukkah was actually the evening of January 1st.)

I fried the latkes on time, I just didn't post anything about them right away. Nicole already pointed us to another blog with some beautiful latkes, so I won't go into all the delicious details today about grating vs. shredding potatoes, keeping or tossing the onion juice from grating,and whether one should use matzo meal or flour or nothing at all. I will say that I made the accompanying applesauce.