Bagel Revolution

I’m sitting quietly in my kitchen this morning, smiling at the recent memory of a sink full of dirty dishes, and the floor strewed with toys, content in the fact that my Chanukah party has come and gone. Was it a riveting success? Only the guests can tell you that; but I know that even though I was coming down with the flu, I had a blast.

It was noisy. Over thirty kids spanning the very small age gap of 14 to three months will make any gathering loud. Everyone felt very at home. That’s what happens when the room is filled with blood relatives. And yet that had its benefits too. At some point, about two hours into the evening, I sat down and could not get up again, contenting myself by schmoozing with whomever I found sitting next to me; at which point, one of my cousins took over the tea and coffee making operations (I figured that it was OK for a hostess to delegate that responsibility). The two things I didn’t delegate, the things I needed to control were the bagels and latkes. Oh, and the strawberry cream cake (winter is strawberry season in Israel). Oh yeah, and the menorah shaped sugar cookies. Oh, and the tomato soup and barley soup, oh, and the setting of the buffet… OK, I’ll admit it, I’m a control freak, though I did let my cousins bring salads.

I like tasting as I go, so unless I’m standing next to you in the kitchen while you cook, and you let me control how you season your food, I’d rather eat your food in your house and my food in mine. To the point that if you were to bring anything over, I would spend the rest of the night – regardless if the dish was Michelin-starred or not – telling everyone within hollering distance that “so-and-so dish” was not mine. Gosh, I’m coming off as a crazy person. Well, who wouldn’t be?! I just hosted forty five of my closest family members and made four dozen home made bagels from scratch. Crazy lady, I know, and frankly I’m looking for a cuckoos’ nest to fly over.

Back to them bagels. You may be asking yourself: who in their right mind makes their own bagels? As I have already proven, I’m decidedly not in my right mind but the bagel making decision was founded solidly in reality. Let me walk you through the logic.

To buy a dozen bagels in Israel cost 50 shekels for a dozen (about US$13 depending on the day). Though it is more expensive to buy a dozen bagels in the States, we live in Israel and every shekel counts and unless you have been living under a very comfortable rock, you must know that world economy has gone - for want of a better term - kaput! So, if were talking about buying four dozen bagels, well that’s 200 shekels, while buying a bag of bread flour costs about 7 shekels (I rounded my expenses up to 8 shekels, considering I would need to add some yeast, sugar and salt to create the basic recipe).

What I haven’t told you though is about how most Israeli bagels taste. They don’t in any way resemble the bagels of my childhood. They lack that glossy, slightly tough outer shell. The crust is usually thin and at times, God forbid,… crusty; and don’t get me started on the “middles”. The dough is so light, there is no chew left in them. Don’t they realize that the bagel was created to keep my foremothers warm in the shtetl during cold winter mornings? For the lox, on the other hand, you will need to thank your local Scandinavian. The chew was exercise for warming the mouth for a long day of kibitzing. The Israeli bagel, I have my suspicion, is in fact a roll with a hole. Horror of horrors! It just occurred to me, I don’t think they boil their bagels before they bake them.

Though admittedly there is one exception. Holy Bagel, with branches all over Jerusalem, make a fantastic bagel and if you ask them to "shmear" something on the inside, they won’t look at you in puzzlement. But if you can’t get to town and were hoping to save some money, the only way to go is to make your own. Not too crazy, right?

So, about two weeks ago, I started practicing. I figured I make pretty good challah, so what’s wrong with tackling another Jewish bread? I would not let the boiling stage intimidate me. Armed with my trusty KitchenAid at my side, the ten minutes of kneading were done mechanically, the dough raised like a bear out of hibernation, and the boiling went off with out a hitch. My only problem: as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get my bagels to stay in those cute, closed circles. But that would not put me off, because from the start, the bagels tasted amazing. They were doughy, glossy heaven.

I just kept on trying to figure out the rolling. I experimented with batch after batch we were having bagels for breakfast lunch and dinner, until my husband was “bagel-ed out” and sat me down to watch a YouTube clip on how to roll a bagel.



Armed with a good recipe and YouTube, I was ready for Operation Bagel 2008. The bagels stayed in rings and though they looked homemade (I’m guessing I need an industrial strength mixer), they came out great, and not one was left over. How great is that? Even one of my aunts, who doesn’t know exactly how to turn on her oven, wanted the recipe. Bagel revolution, we are on!

Homemade Bagels

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. Please don’t be frightened by the length of this recipe, I just love giving detailed directions. The control freak in me can’t resist the opportunity to tell someone else what to do.

1 kg strong white bread flour
1 package instant dry yeast (anything between 7 and 11 grams will do the trick)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon oil
500 ml warm water

For boiling:
Large pot of boiling water
2 tablespoons sugar

For Sprinkling:
Sea salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, garlic granules…. to your heart’s content.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment place the flour, yeast salt and sugar. Mix so that all the ingredients are incorporated.

Measure water in a measuring jug add the oil and pour slowly into the flour mixture.

Now, on the lowest speed, allow the mixture to knead. After about two minutes, look into the bowl. If you see flakes of dry flour at the bottom of the bowl, then add a couple of drops of water and wait about ten seconds to see if they come together with the rest of the dough. If they don’t, then add a few drops more water and wait again. If on the other had the dough is too moist (a good indication of this is if the dough isn’t adhering itself to the dough hook), sprinkle in some more flour again do this slowly, waiting between each addition.

Once you get a good consistency, with all the dough spinning ever so slowly onto the dough hook (I’m sorry to be graphic but this kind of looks like someone pole-dancing very, very slowly), look at your clock and let it pole-dance for the next ten minutes.

Take the dough out of the mixer and knead a couple of times, just to get rid of any air bubbles.

With cooking spray, grease the inside of a large bowl. Place the dough inside and spray the top of the dough (you can do this in the mixer bowl if you like). Place the bowl in a large clean garbage bag, tie a knot and let it rest in a draft-free place for an hour until it almost doubles in size.

Before you start rolling dough, pre heat the oven to 240 Celsius/ 460 Fahrenheit, and put a large pot of water and two tablespoons sugar to boil.

About thirty seconds of aggression coming up…

Punch down the dough, and I mean really punch. Divide into twelve equal parts (the control freaks among us would take out our kitchen scales at this point) and weigh each piece. You should get twelve pieces each weighing about four ounces.

With both palms, roll the individual dough piece into one long rope that will wrap around your hand with some overlap. That said, wrap the rope around your hand with both ends overlapping in your palm and squeeze the pieces together.

With the dough still wrapped around your hand, roll it on the surface again to get one continuous ring.


Place the dough rings on a lightly greased baking tray, cover and let rise until puffy – about twenty minutes.

Now place two or three bagels (depending on the size of your pot) into the boiling water, boiling them for about thirty seconds on either side. Then use a spatula remove the boiled bagels and put them back on the baking tray. While the bagels are still wet, this is the time to sprinkle with seasonings if you like.

(As a side note: when your bagels come out of their boiling bath with a bad case of cellulitis, don’t worry. This seems to sort itself out in the oven (if only it were so easy for me).

Pop your tray of boiled bagels in the oven, and about fifteen minutes later you will have glossy, doughy, yummy bagels. Hurray!

Oh don’t let them sit too long on the tray while cooling. They will sweat and regain their prior bout of cellulite. You really wouldn't want your bagel to suffer from a soggy bottom.

Feeling Hungary...?

I've started writing for the Metro Section of the Jerusalem Post. This weekend supplement is circulated throughout the Central Region of Israel.

I visited a great Hungarian cafe in Tel Aviv, and you can read about it here.

Foodraising...

The secret to really good cookies, I mean the really good kind - the kind that has you polishing off a plate single-handedly - is butter.

That’s it.

To the kosher baker, the ones who never use butter, in order to keep their baking utensils parve, I’m sorry to be the barer of bad news, but it is the truth. Only the simplest of ingredients mixed together will give you the best cookies. Use lower grade fat, like margarine or vegetable shortening, and even though your cookies will look like the real thing, they won’t taste it. If your flour is stale, or your flavoring dull, so too, your cookies. When using such a short list of ingredients, it is paramount that you use the cleanest, purest and best. That is the only way the magic really happens.

This may be a stretch, but charity work is the same. If you come into it with anything less than the purest of intentions, the project may look the part but give it a nudge, a prod, and it will fall apart. On the other hand, a charity based on the best of intentions, with clear thinking leaders and attainable objectives has all it takes in order to succeed. All that is needed is a great “baker” at its helm.

Table to Table is just such an organization. Our friend, Joseph Gitler, having been inspired by the American organization Second Harvest (now called Feeding America), knew that the idea was ripe for Israel. So, five years ago, he put his food were his mouth is, and started Israel’s most successful food rescue charity, today rescuing food from catering halls, corporate functions, manufacturers and growers and feeding over 10,000 families a week.

The world economy, in my mind, looks like a dollar sign with a sad face plummeting to the depths of a deep ravine, the type where you can’t see the bottom. And just as the dollar sign, wiping it proverbial brow finds a tiny little ledge on which to perch itself, it looses its footing and keeps tumbling downwards, shock and surprise etched in its now super-extended eyebrows. The downwards spiral and the use of inferior ingredients has never been more apparent than in this week’s news of the scandal surrounding Bernie Madoff. The number of charities affected by the latest of dishonesties is going to test our philanthropic activities in the months to come.

What I can tell you is what I tell my friends who want to know about baking with butter. I know that as Kashrut-observant Jews, we can not eat the butter cookies after a meat meal but, for the good cookies, isn’t worth waiting a few hours? So, too, with charity. Perhaps we can’t give everyone to the extent we were giving before, but let’s keep on giving even if it isn’t with cash alone. Volunteering of you time and energy is charity within itself. Either way, baking and charity will make you feel better about that poor ever-dwindling dollar sign, spiraling out of control.

Tea, anyone?

Shabbat afternoon is when we have friends over for tea. In our world, everyone entertains on Shabbat. Friday night dinners and Shabbat lunches are really the only ways to socialize, since going out for drinks on a causal Wednesday would be looked upon with suspicion. But Shabbat meals are all about having other folks over, and taking your time, sans distraction. No phones, no TV, no electronics and no cooking to get in the way. In fact, if you don’t entertain on a particular Shabbat, one finds an array of excuses to cover oneself. Most common is, “We are having a quiet one”. Less so, “Little Molly has the chickenpox”. But none is more acceptable than, “I’m cooked out!” which is understandable, since most of what we serve at these weekly lunches and dinners are akin to what people in the real world would serve for Thanksgiving or Christmas for a modest group of 18. More often than not, I’ll take a week off from the big Shabbat meal and just have people over for tea.

Tea is great. It’s the English answer to feeling uncomfortable. As my mother-in-law says, “It gives one something to do with one’s hands like pouring and stirring”, so acceptable when one has nothing to say. Though I always have something to say, I like knowing that I have the security of a cup, and that sipping is not only acceptable, but required.

Our usual spread at Shabbat tea is, well, tea and scones. Since the prohibition of cooking on Shabbat is, shall we say, prohibitive, I whip up the scones before Shabbat. As soon as they have cooled, I pop them in the freezer and only take them out an hour before tea, at which point I place them on the hot plate. If my timing is good, by the time we come to eat them, they are hot. If I overshoot, they are hot with very crusty bottoms. Regardless, we eat away.

Next to the scones there is always butter, a variety of jams and marmalade, plus whipped cream. I know this should say “clotted cream”, but no such beast exists in Israel, and making it myself is also out of the question, since even full-fat cream in this country doesn’t contain enough fat to get to clotted heaven…(in Hebrew, you would say “Lo Kurrah Kloom” literally, “nothing happened”, which will explain away anything from a multi-vehicle road accident on the Ayalon Freeway to a fight with the supermarket cashier). We sit, sip and eat, piling our scones high with fatty sweet goodies, while our numerous children run around picking biscuits and yogurts off the table.

This week, we entertained our friends Daniel & Rachelle and David & Gina. These couples have that great mix of “Australian-guy-meets-sensible-English-girl” chemistry going on, and no-one needs the whole tea-and-scones concept explained to them. The conversation, the food and Rachelle’s gift of extremely good, extremely dark chocolate all went over a treat, but my personal highlight of the afternoon was David’s great-grandmother’s Chocolate Apricot Cake. There is so much to tell you about this cake, but you’ll just have to be patient until we meet again in the blogosphere.

Scones

For now, I give you “make-now-and-freeze-to-serve-later” scones. Seriously, this is so indulgent and fun at the same time, it makes tea perhaps more enjoyable than a Shabbat lunch.

2 cups flour (250g)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cream of tartar
5 tbsp cold butter (70g) cut into small pieces
2/3 cup whole milk (150ml)

Pre heat oven to 425F (220C)
In a large bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Using your fingers, rub butter into dry ingredients. Once the flour feels like wet sand, add the milk and mix with a spoon until just combined.
Using your hands, knead until dough holds together, and pat the dough down until it is less than an inch thick.
Using a round cookie cutter or a glass, cut out round scones. You will get about six to eight scones, then re-roll the dough to get another two scones.
Place on a lightly greased tray and bake for about 12-15 minutes.

The Big Cheese

Another article of mine appeared in the In Jerusalem supplement of The Jerusalem Post on Friday, which you can read by clicking here.

Cooking Class

I don’t know if it has something to do with the economic downturn that more people are home cooking and registering for cooking classes. Or perhaps the fact that for a few hours on Sunday night, my op-ed was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post website. No matter the reason my confidence is up, and with my confidence soaring, I offered to teach two good friends how to make pastry from scratch. Previously I had spent ages contemplating the pros or cons of teaching anyone anything.

Pros:

1. My pastry-making skills are relatively good. During my first pregnancy I had a thing for apple pie. Not only did I make one twice a week for nearly ten months, but I also ate them (my son was well overdue).
2. My kitchen – though nobody’s dream – is user friendly. I can get a nice number of tushes bouncing around, each in its own little station, without anyone invading anyone else’s personal space.
3. I wasn’t charging my friends, so even if my lesson was, as the Israelis say, “on the faces” (say this with Adam Sandler’s pseudo-Israeli accent from – ‘You Don’t Mess With The Zohan’ and it sounds more intimidating), all I really would be wasting would be about an hour and a half of their time, and a whole lot of flour. With my tail between my legs, I could go back to my semi-agoraphobic life.

Cons:

1. My friends, after being bored out of their wits, may never talk to me again. A great loss since both are friendly and funny.
2. My pastry-making skills may be mine alone, and translating them to someone else may be impossible, like the thought of teaching someone to drive. I know how to drive fairly well but, for the life of me, I don’t think I could teach someone else to do so.
3. I may be great at it, and my friends will love it, and encourage me to teach others, and here comes the con – I will need to open myself up to criticism from less friendly people. Agoraphobia is sounding better and better by the minute.

But Joy of Joys; on Monday morning, I woke up, threw my Pro/Con list in the recycling bin and called my friends. By Tuesday, my kitchen was covered in a fine mist of flour.

The lesson went astonishingly well. We learned how to make lemon curd, flaky pastry and rugelach. A strange syllabus, I assure you, but it all made sense.

Both Michelle and Debralee wanted to learn how to make pastry, and their biggest problem was rolling it out. Michelle wanted a suggestion for using fresh-from-the-market strawberries, and thus my syllabus developed.

Pastry for pastry’s sake, rugelach for rolling experience and lemon curd for filling the blind baked pastry and topping it off with fresh berries.

The class was fun, and informative, and my friends can now roll pastry with the best of them.

Perhaps next week I can teach an unsuspecting friend how to drive.

Strawberry Heaven

I wish I could zip up my new boots, tie a scarf around my neck, get cosy with a loved one and a cup of steaming hot cocoa, and daydream while watching logs burn slowly in a fire place. But just the thought of it makes me sweat.

I can feel the slow, uncomfortable trickle of sweat down the centre of my back. I live in Israel, and winters here are unpredictable. We wait from October through most of December with baited breath for the winter to start. Those who pray in the morning, pray for rain, in the hopes of hydrating our parched land, but so far no luck. We are now firmly into December and the forecast for today is a balmy 69 F. Last week, one of our friends went to the beach.

Though I moan, there are two things you should know about Israeli winters. The first is that when it does eventually rain, it pours. Everyone’s house springs a leak, and no amount of protective clothing will keep you dry. And second, because it is so mild, while the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is busy pulling apples and potatoes out of their hampers, from early December until well past March Israeli fruit stands are laden with citrus fruit and strawberries.

Every citrus fruit you can imagine is just waiting to be squeezed, sipped, slurped and eaten. Unfortunately, the citrus pales in comparison to the amazing strawberries. The red jewels call out to you from every supermarket shelf. On a Friday, you don’t even need to go to the markets to get them, you can pick your own. On the coastal side of Israel in the Sharon region, children and adults alike are welcome to pick fruit from the fields, and if you know that you want the experience of picking without having to devise a way to use up your personal 20 pounds of berries, volunteer to pick fruit for Table to Table (more on them next week).

As incongruous as it may sound, strawberries around here are a winter fruit. But like strawberries the world over, they need the same care and attention. This means only buying or picking bright red plump fruit, with the green doily (stem) attached. The smaller the berry, the more flavorful. I find that as the Israeli season progresses, they tend to morph into “gigant-o-berries” that sometimes suffer from a watery character. Only wash them immediately before serving, and cut off the green parts after washing. To reduce water absorption, store in a single layer on a paper-towel-lined tray in the fridge.

One of the great benefits of having strawberries in the winter is the boost of vitamin C just as your nose starts running. Furthermore, making strawberry jam in December (even if its 69 F out) is nowhere near as sweaty as making strawberry jam in June, when all you really want to do is play outdoors.

The easiest and quickest way to serve strawberries and yet look like a gourmet, is to macerate them (to soften something by soaking it in liquid, or become soft by soaking in liquid). My Italian friend Itzik uses red wine, other friends just use a sprinkling of sugar. You can try rose water, sherry, lemon juice or orange flower water.

Strawberries have a spongy texture, at first soaking up the new flavors, and then creating a unique strawberry juice, flavored with your chosen addition. The liquid and the berries themselves are amazing served over ice cream, sponge cakes, shortcake, pound cake, cream… the varieties are endless. To me, though, nothing is better than the combination of strawberries with vanilla and balsamic vinegar.

Start with 450 grams (1lb) of strawberries. Rinse, trim and then cut in half or quarters, depending on size. Sprinkle between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of sugar over them (this really depends on the sweetness of your berries). Add one tablespoon of really good balsamic vinegar, and one teaspoon vanilla paste if you want to splurge, or vanilla extract to be more frugal (I tend to use half a teaspoon of each). Gently toss the strawberries in the liquid to coat, let the fruit sit on the counter for half an hour to an hour before serving, giving it the laziest of tosses every fifteen minutes or so.

For a truly indulgent treat, make an Eton Mess using these berries. I like using home made vanilla meringue and unsweetened whipped cream.

Spice & Spirit

by Ilana Epstein

(printed in The Jerusalem Post, "In Jerusalem" section, p.26, Friday 5 December 2008)

I collect cookbooks the way other people collect coins, shot glasses, or miniature tea spoons. The cookbook collection started a few weeks before our wedding and today, I know it intimately. I know in which book to find which recipe, which book has the best pictures, and even which one lays flat when opened, making it easier to read while cooking.

I can also tell you which book is my favorite, which was my first purchase, and which I use most often. My ‘Spice and Sprit; the Complete Kosher Jewish Cookbook’ by the ladies of the Lubavitch community, probably known better by its semi-official title, ‘The Purple Book’, holds pride of place in my collection. Not only was it my first cookbook, but it is also esteemed because its older, yellow version was my mother’s first cookbook. The yellow cookbook kept my mother’s already kosher kitchen “heimische” no matter where in the world we were living.

The book has accompanied me on a veritable cooking odyssey, from spicy cheese lasagne to summer fruit soup. At other times, it has led me through the details of rolling knish dough and kneading challah. I have traveled to China with lemon chicken and South America with empanadas. I once inquired of my mother if the Lubavitch women had collected their recipes from all the different Chabad houses around the globe. My mom said she wouldn’t have been surprised, though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine which national cuisine had spawned ‘beer-batter-covered deep fried meatballs’. The Purple cookbook is a highly recommended addition to any cook’s reference library, from novice to Michelin-starred chef.

My early childhood was spent in Caracas. The Chabad House in Caracas was like a second home to me. It was a fun-filled place to go on a Sunday morning. My mother would teach arts and crafts in the back room, my brothers would run in and out of rooms teasing each other and anyone else who came past them. While the younger kids were busy making cardboard marionettes or yarn pompoms, the older ones played educational games or learned torah with the Chabad emissaries. On one memorable rainy Sunday, a young Chabad emissary taught us South American kids how to play his new American game, ‘Twister’. I can still remember us as young kids, hopelessly tangled, with the young Chabadnik laughing along with us.

The summers in Caracas were spent traveling back and forth on the school bus to Chabad Camp. At camp, my brothers were three-star generals and I was a cadet. These were our ranks in the Tzivos Hashem or “G-d’s Army” (please don’t think for a second that there were any militant over- or undertones to any of this). Our ranks were determined by how many good deeds we had done. On one memorable outing, my brothers made up a song concerning me, and to this day - thirty years later - anyone on the bus that day can remember the Ilana song; word for word. Let me just say that Ilana and banana rhyme perfectly in any language. I believe that for creating that song alone, they should have been stripped of their stars.

A few years later my parents took the show on the road again; this time to Hong Kong, where the Chabad emissaries made every Jew who came to town – whether transient or permanent – feel welcome. In this outpost, so far from the communities in which most of us grew up, the welcome was a wonderful surprise. Lubavitch in the Far East (“LIFE”) made Judaism as accessible to the traveler or resident as chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant. Yet again, the tremendous energy that the Chabad emissaries bring to their jobs has never failed to impress me.

The loss of any life is to be mourned, yet G-d is kind to us. He lets us feel only the closest of deaths with heartbreak, with complete sadness. But a death within the Chabad community, a community that for years has seen their charter as offering Judaism in every corner of the globe, affects us all. Orthodox or secular, traveler or resident, the Chabad representatives who venture out into the world are not missionaries. They are emissaries.

View from Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, India (5"x 7")

(by kind permission of Nira Spitz)

A missionary is a persuader. His job is to convince you that his way is correct, and that what you have been doing until now is incorrect. An emissary is an ambassador, his job is to represent his boss; be it a country, an organization or a religion. With diplomacy, he offers another point of view. Chabad’s job is to teach that Judaism is not only possible wherever you may find yourself, it is desirable.

I can’t comment on global terrorism, or the age old question of why good people suffer. I don’t know how the Lubavitch community will deal with the tremendous loss their family, their community has suffered in the last week. For my part I’ll bake. It’s the only way I know how to deal with any crisis. Whether stressed or sad, I have one surefire coping mechanism. The more I “potchker” with my food, the more time I spend on a particular recipe, the closer I feel to G-d as if by creating puff pastry from scratch, I can hold on, even for a millisecond, to some ever-fleeting godliness. This week, you can be sure that I will be using my Chabad cookbook for inspiration. Perhaps the baking will help me find the strength to cross the chasm of despair into faith. When we lose something, we each find a way to make it better in our own minds.

This coming week, find a way to commune with G-d. Light Shabbat candles, do good deeds, put on tefillin. That is what the people in Chabad recommend. For my part, I will bake.

Mmmmmmmgood!!!!

Eating kosher is a study in living vicariously. You stand on the side lines while your fellow humans travel wherever they want, never having to think about how difficult it may be to source kosher food in say…Barcelona. At other times, especially outside of Israel, it means hitting three different shops for a simple dinner.

Years ago, I attended the BBC Good Food Show in London’s Earl’s Court. As I walked up and down the aisles, packed with the most delectable fancy food I could ever imagine, it never even occurred to me to ask for samples, I knew my limitations – if only such self sacrifice extended to my dieting. The pink champagne truffles were meant for someone else, and the mini fish pies had other destinations. None of them would be coming home with me.

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself, that I walked straight through the Kosher wine stand, without noticing the outstretched arms beckoning me to taste their wares in tiny plastic cups. In retrospect that was a good thing. Sampling wine, on an empty stomach, and then attempting to make it back home on the Tube, would have proven an adventure worth writing about.

But throughout my childhood, it was the Campbell’s soup ads more than anything else that had me wishing I might wake up one morning to find that I was adopted and my birth parents didn’t keep a kosher kitchen.

I wanted the soup that “eats like a meal”. I wanted to say my soup was “mmmmmmgood!” Mind you, for as long as I can remember, even when we were living in the Tropics, every dinner of my childhood was accompanied by soup. It didn’t matter that it would never be that super-American, smooth beautiful tomato soup that you could dip your crackers into (no crackers ever appeared on my childhood table, it was always pumpernickel or rye bread).

(For a great homemade cracker recipe, go here.)

Knowing my limitations, I still enjoy life. No, I’ll never know the pleasures of walking and tasting through a food show (unless the whole “adopted” thing comes up trumps), so I satisfy myself with The Kosher Food Show. All kidding aside, Kosherfest is food heaven, kosher or not.

When Campbell’s vegetarian vegetable soup went kosher, I was there. It didn’t really matter that kosher canned soup has been around for years, I wanted the Campbell’s. As I opened the can, I realized how pathetic a canned soup could be. This was dinner for ONE; that ONE eats alone on a TV tray while mindlessly dribbling alphabet noodles down ONE’S solitary, slightly quivering chin.



Give me my Mom’s pot of soup any day of the week. It always came with brothers, parents, a table and proper chairs. Yet regardless of my revelation, I still wanted Campbell’s tomato soup. It just looked so clean, so “shall-we-say” American, and then I got what I was after. On the Cooks Illustrated website a month ago, there was a video for tomato soup – and my only thought was “Could this be it? Could this be the soup I spent my childhood dreaming about?” Well, as far I could judge from looks alone, having never tasted it, I’m guessing that my ‘Campbell’s Kosher, not-out-of-a-can Tomato Soup probably surpassed the real thing.

Score one for kosher!


Campbell’s Kosher "Not-Out-Of-A-Can" Tomato Soup
(Adapted from Cooks Illustrated recipe)

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped (about one cup)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
2 x 28-ounce cans (800g) whole peeled tomatoes in juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4 slices good bread, crust removed, torn into small pieces
2 cups parev chicken broth, hot
2 tablespoons brandy
Salt to taste
Loads of freshly ground pepper

In a large soup pot, heat oil, add the onions and sauté over medium heat until the onions are very soft and starting to colour.
Cooks Note: Do not, under any circumstances, skip this step. A lot of sweetness comes from the sautéed onions, and if you jump the gun and add the tomatoes too soon, the acid in the tomatoes will stop the onions from cooking, and then you get pieces of crunchy semi-raw (or is it semi-cooked) onions in your soup.
On that note, once the onions are fully soft, add the garlic, and stir for about thirty seconds until you can smell the garlicky goodness.
Add the bay leaf, and the tomatoes plus their juices. Using a potato masher, break up the tomatoes.
Now stir in the brown sugar and bread.
Allow soup to simmer until the bread starts to break down, about five minutes.
To get smooth soup, remove the bay leaf and blend the soup in batches.
Return blended soup to pot and start adding the chicken broth and stirring until you get the consistency you are after. The two full cups of broth will give you a thinner version.
Once you reach desired consistency, add the brandy, adjust the seasoning to taste (did I mention that loads of pepper is so good right here) and bring soup to a boil.
Simmer for two minutes.

Now you are ready to star in your very own Campbell’s ad.

Ruffling my feathers...

As I write this, I am sipping tea from my favorite domestic diva mug, listening to some seriously mellow music, relishing that clean house smell. This is not to say that I’m a diva, a music aficionado, or fastidiously clean. It’s just that I have an appreciation for some of the simple pleasures in life.

I’m also not naïve. I know how hard we work as a family to afford ourselves these simple pleasures. Nor am I obtuse enough to think that these pleasures are guaranteed. A lovely mug, a great CD, and a clean house are indications of the fact that things in our life resemble some sort of equilibrium.

In Israel, strangers and friends alike seem to know everything about you. Something about the way one stands, holds their head, their very demeanor, gives away where they come from, what their political and religious standing is and even who they will vote will for in the next election. All before you’ve even had a chance to open your mouth.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I found myself in the middle of a surreal scene in the supermarket, where many assumptions were made about who I am, and how much was in my non-existent trust fund. I was standing in line on a busy Thursday morning. The woman in front of me, and the two ladies behind me, hailed from different parts of the world to me. The ladies behind me were having a discussion about the price of chicken, how you needed to spend NIS 100 in order to qualify for the “chicken discount”. They had no intention of spending NIS 100, but wouldn’t it be convenient if they could find some unsuspecting soul (sucker?) who was spending NIS 100 and yet was not buying chickens, of whom they could request said discount. Invariably, the ladies glanced into my cart, filled with yogurts, fruits and vegetables, which must have appeared like a flaming sign saying “Use Me!”

On most occasions, I’m happy and willing to help a friend or stranger – I’ll find a stranger to vouch for me. However, on this day my antenna was up. Something about the two ladies put me on my guard. The over-processed hair and super-decorated nails were not the deciding factor. It was the dishonesty of the tone. Inevitably, I was asked by the ladies if I would cooperate. I nodded my consent, concerned that if they heard my accent, something unexpected may occur.

And it did.

While I was busy with the ladies behind me, I wasn’t aware of the scene unfolding in front of me. The lady ahead of me walked straight up to me, my personal space utterly violated, and said “You’ll pay my bill, right?”. This was not so much a question as a statement of fact. Understandably, I was surprised. I said, “No, I’m sorry, not today…” my accent out on display. One would think that the flat out refusal would have been enough, but no. I was told that since I was a lady who would be giving charity this holiday season, I should cut out the middle man and go straight to the source. I can’t even begin to fathom the number of assumptions in that sentence. No witty reply came to me, though the music from the Twilight Zone did feature. Again, I said, “No I’m sorry.” The reply came back: “Because of you, my child will not have nappies tonight, and I see that yours will.” I casually told her that by returning the six-pack of Cola, the two boxes of chocolate and the seven bags of Doritos, all things my children would not be having that evening, she would have enough money to buy the nappies. Now the weeping started, the ladies behind me got involved, and asked what the big deal was. A lady of my accented birthplace could pay the bill for the entire supermarket. Honestly; does my accent automatically and biologically link me to Warren Buffet? If so, can some one send me his details?

I refused to move either from my spot, or my premise that I wouldn’t pay for the other lady’s groceries. Now the chicken ladies’ bill came out to NIS 130. She kindly offered that I could pay thirty and she would pay the remaining hundred. This was the last straw. I paid my bill, left the supermarket, went to load the car, and realized that my cool storming off was for naught, as I had forgotten my keys by the cashier. Had it been anything else; glasses, water bottle, a kidney, I would have left it, but how could I explain to my husband that I had donated the car to the greater good? Back to the scene I went, tail between my legs, looking for my keys, when all three ladies asked me for a ride home.

Every time we look up, we think that as people, as individuals, we have exceeded our capacity to meet challenges; that we can not handle all the stumbling blocks and burdens that are placed before us. I know that we are blessed because, as we look up, we realize that our capacity is limitless, that our hope will cover all burdens with its comforting blanket and thus we will move forward. As we enter a winter of financial uncertainty, let us cling to our capacity to hope, and our empathy for those around as.

Corn Chowder:
Two of my favorite budget friendly tips are soup, and cooking with seasonal products. Not only is the recipe below extraordinarily yummy, it is also budget friendly and fast.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
3 large onions finely diced
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon coarse ground pepper
A healthy dash of turmeric
3 cups parev chicken stock
3 cups water
4 medium diced potatoes, unpeeled
5 cups corn kernels (strip about six cobs or use frozen)
Cheddar cheeses grated, to serve

In a large stock pot, heat oil and butter over medium heat until butter is melted.
Add the onions, salt, pepper and turmeric and cook until very soft, stirring often.
While the onions cook, prepare the rest of the vegetables.
When the onions are soft but not colored, about 10 minutes, add the stock and water. Now add the potatoes, bring the whole mess to a boil, allow to simmer uncovered for fifteen minutes or until the potatoes are cooked through.
Add the corn kernels to the soup; bring soup back to the boil and serve topped with grated cheddar. Yumm!