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November 4, 2009
Even before The Gorbals first opened for dinner on Aug. 28, chef Ilan Hall’s bacon-wrapped matzah balls served with horseradish mayonnaise had already earned his new downtown restaurant its share of notoriety in the food press.
As seen in The Jewish Week.
“The hot pastrami sandwich served at Langer’s Delicatessen in downtown Los Angeles is the finest hot pastrami sandwich in the world,” David Sax writes in “Save the Deli.”
Rob Eshman interviews David Sax, author of the book, "Save the Deli."
Brace yourselves, New York, because what I am about to write is definitely going to piss a lot of you off, but it needs to be said: Los Angeles has become America’s premier deli city.
When the staff at Hummus Place hauled the oven into the kitchen of the Israeli-owned chain's flagship branch and switched it on, no one was quite sure it would work.
Sukkot, one of the happiest of all Jewish festivals, is a home-centered holiday that actually takes place outside of the home. The festival’s main symbol is the decorated sukkah, a temporary outdoor booth or hut, where Jewish law requires Jews sleep and eat all their meals for eight days. Families often invite friends and neighbors into their sukkah to share a festive snack or join the family for a meal during the week.
What does the chef of Oxnard’s Tierra Sur cook for Rosh Hashanah? Since his kosher restaurant — located at Herzog Wine Cellars — is closed during the holiday, Todd Aarons has the opportunity to create a family meal at home.
Around Rosh Hashanah, when the weather is often still hot, many of us prefer our menu to be a bit lighter and easier than the traditional holiday fare. To make it lighter, I like to include plenty of produce, serve chicken as a main course and bake a cake with oil, not margarine. To simplify preparation and serving, I choose dishes that can be prepared in advance and reheated.
Among the many Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah is probably second only to Passover as a time when Jews most embrace the cliché “you are what you eat.” The emphasis on the symbolism of specific foods on this holiday is well-known: honey represents our hopes for a sweet year ahead, a round challah for a perfect year, a fish head represents the rosh, or head, of the year, and a pomegranate celebrates the new harvest. I’ve recently begun thinking about extending this concept to the design of the whole Rosh Hashanah menu.
The movie “Julie and Julia” brought back great memories of how I met Julia Child in 1978 and how it resulted in adapting her bouillabaisse recipe for a kosher kitchen.
Chicago and Cleveland have the best corned beef. Detroit is tops for rye bread. The best smoked meat is in Montreal, and for pastrami, you can’t touch New York and L.A.
Coming up with lunch ideas can be more challenging today than in years past. Some schools may elect to forbid peanut butter on campus if a student has a peanut allergy, which removes the old standby of peanut butter and jelly. And almond, cashew or other nut butters don’t always appeal to tiny palates as a substitute.
One day, almost three years after the birth of my youngest child, I looked in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I had been carrying around “baby weight” through four births, at least that’s what I kept telling myself. It seemed, though, that I was suddenly able to see clearly that this wasn’t baby weight at all. I was fat, plain and simple.
When the Israelites rushed out of Egypt, Pharaoh’s men on their heels, they hurriedly bundled their belongings, food included, to carry as much as they could on their backs and donkeys. Seeking to nourish themselves throughout their desert journey to the Promised Land, they rolled together unleavened bread crumbs, eggs and oil to create a round, nutritious finger food. They heated these in water jugs, along with chicken bone scraps, to preserve them and give them flavor. And that’s how matzah ball soup was born.
Prior to becoming a food writer and restaurant reviewer for The Jerusalem Post, I always thought of kosher food as limited and bland. But Israel demands competitive kosher cuisine — hotels generally adhere to kashrut laws; corporate lunch meetings must often accommodate observant clientele alongside secular counterparts who’d prefer a Tel Aviv bistro serving sautéed shrimp. This is true even though, at the same time, at the heart of Israeli culture are Jews who, no matter how much they like to think of themselves as the new Hebrews, still fondly recall their grandmother’s traditional kosher Jewish specialties.
Let me just start by admitting that I probably didn’t really need to put the knife directly on my burner. But it was the first time in a very long time I was kashering anything, and I had conflicting guidance from my rabbi and my mother, and I thought I needed to drop a hot metal object into my hot water urn to make it kosher for Pesach (I was totally wrong. Do not try it at home.).
Day 1: Prep time 30 minutes. Resting time 4-12 hours. Day 2: Prep time one hour. Cooking time approximately four hours. Resting time up to two hours.
My friend called from New York the other day. He wanted to get my recipe for smoked barbecue brisket so that he could make it for Passover.
“I’m really tired of bad brisket,” he said wearily.
1 cup pitted, chopped dates, 1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1/4 cup olive oil, 3 onions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons safflower or olive oil, 2 onions, thinly sliced
3 eggs, separated, About 1/2 cup water or chicken stock, 1 to 1 1/2 cups matzah meal
2 pounds chicken necks and gizzards, tied in cheesecloth, 4 large onions, diced
2 eggs, 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 1/2 pistachio nuts, coarsely ground
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