Even if your bubbe lives far away, you can still have a taste of the Old World. This priceless video by the team at the Forverts shows you how to make borscht with matzo balls. It’s perfect for this time of year. Check out the video below and share your borscht memories with us in the comments.
Bubbes around the world share pictures of themselves cooking in their kitchens. So cute, we almost want to pinch someone’s cheeks. [The Kitchn]
Give the old matzo ball soup a rest and try carrot soup with tahini and crisped chickpeas. [Smitten Kitchen]
Things are getting real! Here are 20 unspoken truths about the food world. [First We Feast]
Can’t wait for the Downton Abbey Season 3 premier on Sunday? Neither can we. Here’s a menu to celebrate the occasion. [Food52]
Virtuous meals to start the new year with (and to help keep those resolutions). [Serious Eats]
Whether the thought of cooking another kugel drives you insane or you’re just too far away to go home for the holidays, these restaurants have your back in the tastiest of ways. While some chefs have opted to go the more traditional route by doing their best to recreate one of grandma’s meals, others use the holiday as an opportunity to strut their stuff and put their own gourmet twists on old favorites. If you’re having trouble deciding where to eat, look out for our “Critic’s Picks”
Artisanal Formagerie and Bistro Critic’s Pick!
Gouda matzo balls anyone? For an entire week, Artisanal Formagerie and Bistro will offer a French-influenced cheese-centric holiday menu that can be ordered à la carte, as a prix fixe, or to take home. Entrees include a seven-hour brisket with carrot kugel and cold poached salmon served with latkes and horseradish sour cream. Desserts like challah pain perdu and an apple tarte with cheddar cheese crust are sure to ring in a sweet and cheesy new year.
Details: September 16-23. 3-course prix fixe $47 pp, 4-course prix fixe with cheese flight $58 pp. 2 Park Avenue. (212) 725-8585.
In our new series, Chosen Chefs, we will profile up-and-coming Jewish chefs making waves from Los Angeles to New York. And in case you can’t get there, we’ll include a recipe from each of the chefs that you can make at home. These are members of the tribe who you’ll want to keep on your radar. If we were the betting type, we might see some James Beard Awards in their future.
These days, chefs are revered, and they garner so much press attention that they’re often described as the new rock stars. In Barry Koslow’s case, the comparison is even more fitting. Koslow, executive chef of Arlington, Va.’s sophisticated American Tallula restaurant and adjoining gastropub, EatBar, was a guitarist in a rock band before turning his attention to food.
Theodore Bikel’s 1998 album “A Taste of Passover” gets a little peculiar on the ninth track. Rather than music, it features Yiddishist Chasia Segal teaching a live audience how to prepare kneydlakh, or matzo balls. After combining matzo meal, eggs, salt and chicken broth, she announces, “And now I have a problem!” In an ideal world the next ingredient would be schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat, but Segal observes that “We’re not supposed to have any more schmaltz” and uses vegetable oil instead.
How did this come to be? In 1978 the USDA began telling Americans to consume less saturated fat. By the ’90s the conventional wisdom was that animal-derived fats, which tend to me more saturated, were dangerous, and plant-derived fats were somewhat less so. Hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine, originally introduced as cheap substitutes for butter and animal fats like lard, came to be preferred not only for their price but for the damage they would supposedly spare consumers’ arteries. (Kashrut-observant Jews were among the first to jump on the bandwagon. Crisco targeted the Jewish market with community-specific ads as early as 1913.) Butter became an immoral condiment, and conscientious eaters began to cut the fat off their steaks and peel away the skin from chicken breasts.
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