April 18, 2013 | 12:00 pm

Oy Veh, a Vegan Salad [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

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If you live in LA and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit www.mealandaspiel.com

April 11, 2013 | 12:00 pm

Mini “Once You Go Black” Flour-less Chocolate Cakes [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

While I am away travelling I want to make sure you all eat!

Here's a great recipe, and it's non-dairy, gluten-free, low sugar and pareve.

“Once You Go Black,” you will never go back to any other chocolate dessert.  They are all about the chocolate, not the sugar, and use healthy fats,  so you can satiate your cravings without the guilt. You know you are going to eat dessert anyway, so why not make it in the best way possible.

Plus they are so so easy to make.

Ingredients:

Use 8, 5 ounce ramekins

serves 8

recipe can easily be doubled

• 1 block 70% chocolate 7 oz., Valrhona or Cordillera are my favs

• 1/8 good cacao powder, not dutch cocoa

• 1/6 cup sugar (eyeball half of ⅓ cup)

• 4 eggs

• 1/2 cup hot strong coffee or weakened espresso (good decaf ok)

• 1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil

• ½ can unsweetened coconut milk (not lite)

• 4 drops coconut extract (optional)

• powdered sugar for topping

• Non Dairy Coconut Bliss Ice Cream for serving

1. Preheat oven to 350 and “grease” each tart dish with virgin coconut oil

2. Chop the chocolate into 1 inch pieces

3. Place the chocolate, the cacao powder and sugar in Cuisinart and pulse into well chopped

4. Add HOT coffee and pulse until well melted

5. Add eggs, coconut milk, coconut oil and coconut extract and pulse until well mixed

6. Pour mixture evenly into the 4 tart dishes

7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

8. Let cool a little bit and serve warm with vanilla ice-cream or Coconut Bliss

If you live in LA and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit www.mealandaspiel.com

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April 8, 2013 | 9:00 am

Prepared or Neurotic?

Posted by Elana Horwich

Going to India and Thailand means possibilities of all kinds of disease. I need to be prepared.

Is it that I am a highly allergic, food sensitive, obsessively compulsive healthy eater or is it that I have travelled a lot and know what I need? Two years ago I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and last year I trekked through the lower Himalayas of Nepal. As for supplements, my nutritionist/holistic health guru Sally Kravich has given me so much good counsel to keep myself healthy on these trips that on this one I already know what to bring. As for food, aside from the fact that I could become deathly ill from it, I am relieved that the cuisines in India and Thailand have little dairy, little sugar, minimal white flour,  lots of rice, beans and vegetables...a clean diet that my body likes.

Here's my list of what I'm bringing. You decide. Prepared or neurotic?

Snacks:

I get SO hungry on planes! I eat the whole time I'm not knocked out by the Ambien.

• Summertime Green Juice (from The Main Squeeze): Gotta get one in before I'm left for a month without. Direct vitamins and oxygenating greens, a healthy boost to protect me from germs on plane. 
• Mary's Gone Crackers: My faves. Gluten-free, wheat-free, lots of seeds. to be eaten with:
• Sunflower Seed Butter (I like Sunbutter): Protein and fills my belly. Plus I hate breakfast foods, so this way I can avoid them. My allergic self prefers seed butters to nut butters.
• Alkaline Water (PH of 9 or 10, this one is Tru Alka): Disease of all kinds likes acidic environments. So at the very least I feel I should drink one bottle on the plane to make up for the month since the last time I drank some.

Supplements/Medicines: 

• Odor-less Garlic Pills from Kyolic- One a day keeps the mosquitos away. They love me, or used to. I'll show them who stinks!
• Primal Defense Probiotics from Garden of Life- probiotics that don't need refridgeration. Keeps the balance of intestinal flora...creates a foundation for a healthy belly and strong immune system. In theory I take them every day, even at home, but when travelling in the 3rd world, not taking them is not an option.
• Grapefruit Seed Extract from Nutribiotic- anti-microbial. Kills the little parasites, yeast, bacteria, before they grow. Reminder to self: Take everyday.
• Cordyceps (I like Host Defense): A mushroom that boosts the immune system. Great preventative of colds, flues, etc.
• Digestive Enzymes: My mother told me I have a Jewish stomach and I get it from my father. God forbid I eat too much, I take these.
• Azithromycin- in case a get some serious diarrhea. Only if its really serious the doctor and pharmacist told me. Like if I might die.
• Malarone (shown in photo at top with long generic name)- anti-malaria. Take two days before possible exposure and for a week after. I'm betting on there not being malaria where I go in Thailand. Telling you that so you'll vote "Not Neurotic- Prepared!"

Salves and stuff:

• Good-smelling aromatherapeutic hand sanitizer. Obviously.
• Pure Remedy Original Salve: This stuff cures all my kitchen burns and any other skin infectious type of thing. I don't know what I might need it for, but its a good thing to have.
• Colloidal Silver Nose Spray: Natural way to cure an impending sinus infection. I have a Jewish nose (on the inside and outside). I get that from my mother. 
• Lavender Essential Oil: Don't leave home without it. It will disinfect anything. I'll add it to tea if I get a cold or flu. I'll put it in my lotion if I get a sunburn. I use it in my mouth if I get a sore in there...from what I don't know, but its works. I can use a little to make an dirty t-shirt smell fresh - (c'mon I'll be sweating non-stop and don't know if I'll always have laundry).

Bon Voyage to Me. Wanna know what I'm doing there?  Here's my farewell video:

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April 4, 2013 | 12:00 pm

The Cleanest Cocktail [VIDEO]

Posted by Elana Horwich

To read more health benefits of common ingredients, what I call Vigor Triggers, click here.

To take cooking classes with Elana in Los Angeles, please visit www.MealandaSpiel.com

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April 3, 2013 | 12:00 pm

THE BEST BRISKET EVER. with potatoes. [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

I don’t compliment myself too easily. In fact I have a complex about not being good enough. I am terrified that everything I do will suck and bring embarrassment to my family and the entire Jewish people at large. A neurotic Jew- that is so cliche, which only makes me feel more pathetic. I have been to therapy, I have seen healers, done yoga, tried alcoholism and acupuncture. If it wasn’t for a small dose of zoloft I wouldn’t even have the guts be writing this. But let me be clear: I don’t need the zoloft to tell you that I know how to make a friggin’ brisket.

My brisket is made with Jewish heart and Italian flavors. I cook it much in the same way a Northern Italian might braise a different cut of beef (in wine, tomatoes, and aromatics: meaning rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, etc.) to create a dish that tastes like Tuscany but feels like Shabbat.

While I am aware that there is such a thing as BBQ Texan Brisket, I do not acknowledge that as brisket. Until the state of Texas chooses to recognize reproductive rights, gay marriage and the replacement of oil with renewable energy, I will not recognize their brisket. Until then, no stars for the lone star.

Please let it be known that even though I keep throwing out the Jewish card on this one, my brisket is not only meant for the chosen people. Anyone who eats it feels chosen. You can line a hundred Jews up to tell me that my brisket is amazing but it won’t carry the weight of one Italian who gives me the same compliment.  Of course, they call it spezzatino...my Italian friends still remember and still talk about my spezzatino.  (FYI, spezzatino is usually made with cubed beef from a different cut.)

One day a few years ago, I made a brisket to combat a wave of depression that was trying to creep its way in, quite a lot of food and time when no one but misery is coming over to eat. If you bake it, they will come. Just as I was taking it out of the oven,  in walked a group of my Italian friends (they called about 2 minutes beforehand to notify-  very typical) in order to pick up something they needed. When they smelled and saw an 8 pound spezzatino in my kitchen they almost went through the roof. They called other friends, had them bring wine and before I knew it a dinner party was well on its way with a meal that no one has ever forgotten. And as for that wave of depression, postponed.

Brisket is actually incredibly easy to make and pretty hard to mess up. You can add a little too much of this or a little too little of that but as long as you have a few basics (which I will of course share with you) all the flavors will meld perfectly with time in the oven to bring you a delicious, juicy brisket. The problem with many briskets, however, is that they are either too sweet, too dry and/or too fatty. Sweet briskets can be tasty but I don’t want dessert for dinner and I don’t want my main course to further contribute to my hangover. (Note: It’s the sugars that makes you feel icky in the morning and quite frankly I would rather have wine and dessert than beef that topples over the glycemic index.) Furthermore, briskets don’t need to be dry in order not to be fatty. The trick to making a juicy, tender brisket is four-fold:

1. Make sure you have enough liquid in the pot. (wine, broth, etc)

2. Make sure you have a good pot. An important factor in making an amazing, fool-proof brisket is to cook it in the right pot. I use a Le Creuset enameled cast-iron dutch oven (buy here). Everything I make in that thing turns out delicious. When my sister got married, she asked me what to register for and I told her to get as many Le Creusets as she could. She’s a novice but an enthusiastic cook. Her husband called me to thank me for turning Danielle into a chef. It wasn’t me. It’s the pot. There are other top brands and none are inexpensive, but they will last you a lifetime and really make all the difference in your cooking.

3. Cook the meat with the fat still on it and with the fat side up so that the fat will insulate the beef and keep in the juices. Once the brisket is done, take it out of its juices, let it cool,  and scrape off the fat before slicing it and returning it to its sauce.

4. Time.  Brisket is a slow-cooked, braised meat. As long as the liquid is plentiful, the longer it cooks the better. (Note: The brisket cut of meat  is historically poor man’s food; it cost less than tender cuts of meat like filet mignon, however if cooked long enough will be just as tender.) It needs lots and lots of time at a low temperature to break down the tension in the meat so that it will fall apart with no knife needed. I have even set my oven to 200°F, stuck the thing in at night and woke up in the morning to brisket breakfast. Time is so of essence that you will find your brisket to be even better the next day. (Always make it ahead of time for company and reheat.)

Ingredients: for 8-10 hungry people plus leftovers

• 1 6-8 pound brisket, kosher and/or antibiotic, hormone free

• 2 onions, coarsely chopped

• 2-3 stalks celery with leaves, coarsely chopped

• 2-3 carrots, coarsely chopped

• 2-3 cloves peeled garlic, whole

• 2 bay leaves

• 2-3 branches of rosemary

• 2-3 stems of fresh thyme (if you have)

• 5-6 fresh basil leaves (if you have)

• 1/2 bottle wine (an oaked chardonnay or medium bodied red like chianti or whatever leftover wine you have in the kitchen)

• 1 28 oz. can San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes

• Homemade or store bought chicken broth (if needed for more liquid, or just more wine- you want brisket to be just about covered with liquid)

• salt- about 2 very generous teaspoons

• extra virgin olive oil

• 5 or 6 russet potatoes, quartered

The day or two before:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.

2. Heat a dutch oven over a medium flame. When hot add olive oil.

3. Put the brisket in on one side to brown a few minutes and then turn to brown on the other side. (One side will have a lot of fat and you are trying to brown the fat-less parts if any.)

4. Remove brisket and set aside.  

5. If there is too much melted fat for your taste, remove a little before continuing.

6. Put in onions and cook until translucent.

7. Put the brisket back in fat side up.

8. Top with the carrots, celery, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, thyme, and basil.

9. The next step can get messy but its fun. If you prefer, use a knife or a neater system. Take out the tomatoes, one by one,  and crush using your hand. Watch out for spurting juice. Pour in all juices from can.

10. Add wine (and broth if you feel necessary to mostly cover meat.)

11. Sprinkle generously with salt.

12. Cover well and stick in oven for 4-5 hours or longer at an even lower temperature.

13. Go take a walk and a nap.

14. When your brisket cuts itself with a fork, it is done.

15. Take out of oven and let sit to cool a bit.

16. Take brisket out of juices and let cool completely. When cool, refrigerate it covered.

17. In the meantime put the potatoes in the juice of the brisket in dutch oven and put on stove, covered, over medium flame, until potatoes are soft and cooked.

18. Refrigerate until ready to use.

19. Save all brisket juices.

Next Day:

20. Once cold, use a knife to slice off all the fat from the brisket. Then slice the brisket against the grain into ¼ inch slices. Place “in order” in a casserole dish fit for the oven. Add potatoes if there is room or put potatoes in separate casserole dish.

21. If you think the brisket juices should be thicker, boil them down a bit on the stove. Then when cool, you can cover the meat and potatoes with the sauce.

22. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Day of:

23. When you are ready to serve, you can heat up the brisket in one of two ways.

    1. Place potatoes and meat in casserole dishes and cover VERY well in heavy duty aluminum foil or double wrapped in regular foil, and bake on 350 for almost an hour until brisket and potatoes are well heated through. Place on serving platter, top with remaining juice and serve.

    2. Keep everything in the dutch oven you baked it in and heat on stove on medium low or in the oven at 350 for one hour.

If you live in LA and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit www.mealandaspiel.com.

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March 21, 2013 | 12:23 pm

Chick-Sa Soup and Matzo Balls [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

The Matzo Ball

Put a little schmaltz in your balls.

Those unschooled in Yiddish might suspect that I am suggesting you add a little fire to your life, a spring in your step, a little chutzpah to your decisions. Yes, that too. However, schmaltz is the yiddish word for chicken fat and we are talking matzo balls.

For the past months I have been raving about my delicious matzo ball soup in advertisements for my cooking classes. I named it Chick-sa Soup (Chicken Soup Easy Enough for Shiksas*). The title did offend some, but since I came up with the catchy wording with my dear friend Caitlin, a self-defined shiksa of unparalleled order (a blond-haired, blue-eyed Texan who, much to the dismay of her parents, married a man with the last name of Cohen), I decided to ignore the upset.

Jews own the domain of chicken soup, just like the Italians own the domain of pasta and Mexicans own the domain of the tortilla. If a Baptist automotive group held a class called “Emergency Tire Change So You Don’t Get Killed On a Lone Highway Easy Enough for a JAP,” I promise you, I would happily sign up!

But the truth is, I had never even made a matzo ball in my life. The closest I had ever come to making a matzo ball was watching Angie, our family’s housekeeper, make a batch according to package instructions. Who am I to profess expertise on the subject? Who am I to claim that my matzo balls are soooo easy that even a non-Jewish woman could make them? With what chutzpah do I permit such presumption!? Good lord, I’m walking around like I got schmaltz in my balls.

Having to deliver an easy and extraordinarily delicious recipe to my students that held up to my lofty proclamations presented me with the ultimate challenge. And ultimately, that is the game I love to play most in my job.

I have now explored the far and wide frontiers of the matzo ball. I have read countless recipes and endless explanations. The juries all point to the same factor: Put a little schmaltz in your balls.

I choose duck fat as it is a more indulgent choice. (For those hypochondriacs who are already in the hospital for heart failure, I would have you know that the French, who have an overwhelmingly better state of heart health than we do,  consider duck fat to be part of a heart healthy diet as it contains a unique type of saturated fat that is actually considered to be beneficial. That said, those who are following the new American movement to fry foods in duck fat, no promises kiddos.)

These matzo balls are incredibly flavorful and quite easy to make....Easy enough for Jewish women, who nowadays are in fact some of the worst cooks I know!

*Note: I would encourage you to read Bon Appetit’s Matzo Ball 101 which highlights Associate Food Editor and Matzo-Ball-Master Selma Brown Morrow’s best tips for perfect balls. I thank her as much of my recipe below is owed to her expertise, gained from years of feeding her family.

If you live in LA and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit www.mealandaspiel.com

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March 19, 2013 | 9:00 am

Rosemary Almond Cake with Olive Oil and Orange Zest [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

For years I had a recurring nightmare that I find myself in the Sienese countryside where Chianti grapes display themselves in Bacchanalian rows, inviting an aimless wanderer, me, in to taste a bite of their intoxicating deep purple fruit.

With a bunch of grapes ripped off the vine, emblazoning my hands with their royal juice, I feared the eyes of the landowners who were keeping a vigilant lookout for pesty crows and hungry trespassing Americans. I skulked behind the vineyard leaves, lest they catch me purple-handed.

In the fantasy the sunlight always came in from a 4 o’clock direction, which my therapist claimed, because the rays of light hit the “grapes” from an angle and not from a direct overhead noontime light, that this scenario must represent repressed Freudian urges that I have not yet dealt with and hence I was imagining myself in Italy.

Trapped time and time again in this nostalgic fantasy of perfect Renaissance landscape, crisp autumn colors, a late afternoon breeze carrying lavender and rosemary scents on its wings, and a bunch of freshly picked Chianti grapes in my hand,  my anxiety was predictable and it always the same:

What would be the perfect cake for this situation? ! ?

Finally, with this recipe, I can put the Xanex aside.

(And so can you. This cake might put the pharmaceutical companies out of business. It’s that comforting.)

Ingredients:

• one 9” spring form cake pan, well oiled with extra virgin olive oil

• 8 eggs

• a pinch of salt

• ½ cup raw honey- less if not using raw

• 4 cups almond meal (buy here), or finely ground blanched almonds

• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil

• ½ cup 2% Greek yogurt

• the zest of two (blood) oranges, chopped

• 1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF

2. Beat eggs with a pinch of salt for 3 minutes

3. Add honey to eggs and beat for another three minutes

4. Fold in almond meal

5. Fold in olive oil, yogurt,  orange zest and rosemary

6. Pour into pan and bake for 30-33 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean

7. Let rest on a rack and then carefully remove from cake pan, using a knife to peel away bottom.

8. Eat warm or save by covering with foil...will stay moist for several days.

Passover cooking classes are this week! If you live in LA and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit www.mealandaspiel.com

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March 18, 2013 | 9:01 am

Moscato Spice Charoset [Recipe]

Posted by Elana Horwich

Charoset (pronouned cHa-roset, with an almost silent “c” like cHa-nnuka) is the delicious chopped fruit, nut and wine mixture on the Passover seder table that symbolizes the mortar between the bricks that the Jews laid while slaves in Egypt 3,000 years ago. Why the mortar we eat is sweet is not totally clear. Perhaps because we are no longer slaves? In any case, that is not what I intend to spiel about. I am sure there is a decent answer in any Passover haggadah, but quite frankly I am too lazy to get up and look at one.

MY question is: why would we Jews, a People who have overcome so much pain and strife, millennia of refugee status, genocide and horrible PR, a People who have risen to great success in financial, intellectual and creative realms, still continue to choose the cheapest of the cheap sweet wines, Manischewitz, to make charoset on one of the most important holidays of the year!?

Sure, every nice bar mitzvah kid loves a good taste of Manischewitz and I am no exception, but have we not grown up as a People? Has our collective culinary palate remained at adolescent status? Do we think we are still in the Great Depression, a time when we added sugar and a little vinegar to grape juice and called it wine?

I can hear a tirade of yentas lashing back, “it’s because Manischewitz is kosher, that’s why we use it for charoset. “ But if you are reading this, there is a 99% percent chance that you don’t even keep kosher. And if you do, there are many delicious, high quality kosher wines to celebrate our exodus from slavery.

My personal anthropological theory is that we have been using Manischewitz in our Passover charoset for so many years and generations that, as a People, we never thought to question it. Well People, QUESTION IT!

Here is a recipe that is Italian in inspiration. Chilled Moscato is one of my favorite dessert wines and the thought of drinking it with fruit and nuts transports me to the rolling vineyards of Piedmont where Moscato grapes are grown. I actually did quite an extensive research into traditional Italian Jewish charoset recipes from various regions and found that many Italian recipes call for the use of chestnuts, which, other than seeming difficult to use, remind me of Christmas. Many Italian recipes also call for the cooking of the charoset, which mine here does. But don’t worry, it cooks only long enough to meld the flavors together. You will still have a crunchy charoset and it won’t look like applesauce.

Ingredients:

To learn the health benefits of the ingredients, what I call Vigor Triggers, please click on them.

• 2 granny smith apples
• 1 pear
• 7 dried figs (or 7 pitted prunes or a handful of raisins)
• 1 ½ cup shelled walnuts
• 8 pitted dates
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 orange, the juice and the zest
• 1 bottle of good Moscato (yes it will be a bit bubbly) There are many options for Kosher Moscato. Click here for a list.

1. Cut apples and pears into equal size large chunks.
2. “Pulse” in food processor until finely chopped, being careful not to overdo it so they don’t become mushy. Put in a large bowl. (If you don’t have a food processor, this recipe can be a reminder of the times when we were slaves in Egypt. The good news is, hand chopped food tasted better.)
3. In your food processor now “pulse” the figs, prunes or raisins until they are finely chopped and add them to the apples.
4. Pulse the walnuts until they are finely chopped and add them to the fruit.
5. Zest the orange using a microplane grater (buy here), a zester or the small holes of a regular grater. Add to mixture.
6. Juice the orange into the food processor, along with the dates, cinnamon and cup of the moscato. Pulse until fully pureed.
7. Add to the fruit and nut mixture. Stir.
8. Add another cup of moscato to mixture and stir.
9. Put mixture into a cooking pot over medium heat until it reaches a boil. Then turn heat to low and let simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
10. Put back into bowl and let cool. Cover and put in fridge until ready for use.
11. Right before serving, add another “glug” of moscato to the charoset for a little freshen up and there you go! Dayenu.

If you live in Los Angeles and would like to take classes with Elana, please visit: www.mealandaspiel.com

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