When my niece Ella phoned and asked for my mother’s recipe for farfel, I took a deep breath and came up blank. Farfel often accompanied Mom’s roast chicken on Friday night. Drizzled with the jus (a.k.a. schmaltz) from the crispy, garlicy, bird, it was the ultimate comfort food. I mumbled something about being sure that there were fried onions involved (fried onions were the starting point for a lot of…
Most of the United States is being assailed with extreme winter weather this week as Arctic air blasts south from Canada (you’re welcome), snow tracks up the Northeast coast and a potentially crippling winter storm takes aim at the South. A cold weather emergency has been activated in Washington, DC, which forced President Donald Trump’s inauguration to be held indoors for the first time since the presidential inauguration of Ronald…
Last Thursday night I settled into my favorite position on the couch for my pre-Shabbat catch-up phone call with my daughter-in-law: feet up and two throw cushions tucked under my head. Two of her boys, my grandsons Aaron and Shimon, aged eleven and nine respectively, often contribute a special dish to the Shabbat meals. They bring the same steady, methodical application to their cooking and baking as they do to…
I gazed in wonder around the crowded auditorium at the Leah Posluns Theatre. A sell-out crowd had gathered to hear Adeena Sussman, noted recipe developer and cookbook author, speak about her newest cookbook, Shabbat. But it was an evening about so much more than food. Every single person in the room was carrying a very heavy load. Our grief over the 1,400 hundred Israelis murdered by Hamas and the unknown…
On a tour of the vegetable garden in the backyard, my grandchildren peered in wonder through the thick canopy of leaves that camouflaged sunny, yellow, summer squash. Eyes rounded, they turned to me and asked if I was growing bananas. Their confusion was understandable. The ripening, golden, summer squash looked remarkably like their favorite tropical fruit. This year we have been blessed with a steady supply of homegrown squash, jewel-toned…
When I left work last Tuesday afternoon, the parking lot was shrouded in a mysterious haze and the spring air smelled like a sizzling barbecue. I turned on the car radio and realized that the cloudy smog that blanketed the neighborhood was smoke, caused by unprecedented early summer wildfires in eastern Canada. As winds pushed the smoke-filled air south, billowing down the east coast of the United States from New…
My fridge and freezer are still neatly organized and clutter free since my pre-Passover purge and cleaning. However, the temptation to save small containers of perfectly edible odds and ends still lingers and repurposing or upcycling food really sparks joy in me. This baked rice kugel uses leftover cooked rice that was just waiting for an opportunity to shine again. Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarborough, the authors of the culinary…
My father’s retirement plans included cooking his way through Irma Rombauer’s classic cookbook, the Joy of Cooking. However, his culinary journey became waylaid and began and ended with cabbage borscht. With every iteration of this hearty soup, my father would wait expectantly as we sampled a spoonful. In spite of our reassurances that his soupe du jour met Cordon Bleu standards, he continued to perfect his art, pot after pot…
Until very recently, miso was an ingredient that I avoided. Miso paste, similar in texture to peanut butter, is typically a cultured mixture of soybeans, a grain (like rice or barley), salt, and koji (a mold). Really? Recently I began to notice that miso, with its deep umami flavor, was being embraced by chefs everywhere and was popping up in dishes as diverse as salmon filets, corn-on-the-cob, and even as…
With a quiet tap on the front door, my son sails into the house on Friday afternoons, sometimes with a grandchild or two in tow, and we settle around the kitchen table to catch up on the events of the week and share a piece of fresh, hot potato kugel. It’s a no-frills event; disposable plates and cutlery are used to serve up portions of kugel that are crispy on…