DeGustibus Cooking School at Macy’s in NYC is having a series of 3 kosher cooking classses, starting next week.

Clearly Kosher
Series of 3 $240 or $85 per class if available

All food will be strictly Kosher

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006 1:00 to 3:30PM
BILL SPITZ, the new executive chef of Levana demonstrates an early spring menu that emphasizes contemporary American dishes with some global influences.

TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2006 1:00 to 3:30PM
ALEXANDRE PETARD, the executive chef of the recently opened La Carne Grill, formerly of the Box Tree, prepares some of his irresistible delicacies.

TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2006 1:00 to 3:30PM
JOSÉ MIREILLES, owner, executive chef of the venerable Kosher bistro, Le Marais, demonstrates his spin on comfort food featuring appetizers, main courses, and knock out sides.

Contact DeGustibus for more info & registration.

With all this talk of soup, I actually took a look at a can of Manischewitz Clear Chicken Broth the last time I loaded up my shopping carriage with them. The main ingredients: chicken fat and MSG. (Same with their “chicken soup” and with Rokeach’s products.) Sure, they’re convenient, but I’m not so enthused about using them anymore.

Does everyone just stockpile their own homemade chicken, beef, and fish stocks or are there any honest-to-goodness, “natural” broths on the market, really made out of the protein in their name? Business opportunity?

Our record-breaking snowfall is already melting, but the weather is still cold enough for soup. Here’s a favorite in our family - Levana Kirschenbaum’s Cream of White Winter Vegetable Soup. Dried chestnuts make an interesting flavor addition. If you can’t find them, leave them out. This recipe is a starter recipe - once you get the hang of it you can mix and match vegetables. Last time I made it, I used rutabaga. Squash or Broccoli are naturals for a creamed soup, but you’ll have to change the name of the recipe . You can use chicken broth if you want, or make it dairy & use real cream or milk at the end. It’s a very hearty soup - enjoy!

1/4 cup olive oil
3 leeks, white parts only, thinly sliced
1 medium onion, diced
2 baking potatoes, peeled & cubed
3 small turnips, peeled & cubed
3 parsnips, peeled & sliced into 2″ chunks
1 cup dried chestnuts
1 whole celery root, peeled & cubed
2 cups soy milk
pinch of nutmeg
salt & pepper to taste
chives to granish

Heat the oil in a heavy pot and saute the onions & leeks until translucent. Try not to brown them. Add all of the vegetables and 2 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, and cook covered for 1 hour. Carefully blend the soup with a hand blender. Add the soymilk and seasonings and heat through. Do not allow the soup to boil after the addition of the soymilk. Garnish with chopped chives.

Some of you may recall my earlier post about the Logia Bible Bar - the nutritional bar that includes all of the Sheva Minim. This Tu B’Shvat I felt compelled to purchase the bars and try them (having confirmed their COR hechsher). I purchased a box of 18 bars (after all, I have kids who need school snacks) for $34 + S&H.

The list of ingredients confirmed that all 7 kinds were in there - if you incorrectly translate D’vash as honey, when the proper translation is dates. Crisped brown-rice seems to be the most prevalent ingredient. Truth be told, these aren’t half bad. I could easily identify the flavors of figs & raisins - I’m not sure what wheat and barley flakes taste like. They are pretty big bars - the standard Quaker granola bar is 1 ounce; these are a whopping 2.1 ounces. At a little over $2 a bar, I’m not going to be buying these regularly - but they make a nice treat for Tu B’Shvat. All of the bars by Logia have a COR hechsher, so if you want to eat something called Abrahams’ Bossom or Elijah’s Fire, be my guest.

NOTE: the shipment contained a christian-themed lapel pin, which I promptly threw out. If you order more than $100 worth of products, they’ll send you a King James Bible.

A wine and cheese tasting has been planned at the Young Israel of Brookline in honor of Tu B’Shevat. Here’s the official announcement:

Spring is coming! Sample fruits of the earth and fruits of the vine as you celebrate Tu B’Shevat at a Wine and Cheese Tasting

This Sunday, February 12, 2006
6:00 - 8:00 P.M.
Young Israel of Brookline

To reserve your glass by February 10:
Email wine@frumgeek.com or call 617-738-6131
$5 YIB member / $7 non-member

Without reservation:
$10 YIB member / $12 non-member

UPDATE: Event’s been postponed due to snow. I’ll repost when it’s been formally rescheduled.

Jaime writes:

I am looking for parve margarine that does not have partially-hydrogenated oils, but it’s really been a problem. Do you have any suggestions of brands or alternatives other than using olive oil?

This is an important question because most margarines are dairy, and the most prominent pareve brands (Fleischmann’s unsalted and light sticks, Mother’s) use hydrogenated oils (trans fats).

For spreadable pareve margarines that are free of trans-fats, I recommend Smart Balance Light (Brandeis butter, as we call it), Earth Balance, or Fleischmann’s Light — all in “tub” form. We make a tasty spread by mixing one of these with finely chopped chives and garlic — great on challah.

For pareve stick margarine that’s free of trans-fats, I recommend either Earth Balance Buttery Sticks (salted) or Earth Balance Shortening (unsalted). They both work great when baking.

After two years of surveying the kosher cheese scene, it takes quite a bit to get me excited about a new product. When I spied an authentic-looking French bleu in KosherItalia.com’s cheese line up a few weeks ago, however, I seized the opportunity to try it. Two days later, the 1 lb. wheel arrived at my door.

Upon unwrapping, an unpleasant odor was immediately apparent (wet dog?) as was its inconsistently moldy exterior (some patches of white fuzz). Undeterred, I wiped the wheel off, cut it in half, and then excised a wedge — nice blue streaks of mold inside, surrounded by ivory. I carved off the questionable exterior, brought the wedge to room temperature, and tasted.

Creamy texture, with slight granularity, and moderately spreadable. Bold, tangy flavor with some stale/bitter notes. On pizza, it melded well with the other flavors but still made its presence known.

By comparison, Kirkeby Danablu is sharper, but far less musty, and has far fewer offensive odors. Miller’s Blue is much milder, but more enjoyable to eat in an appreciable quantity. As a table cheese, though, the Makabi is certainly the most interesting.

In closing, I have to say I’m a bit concerned about the quality of this cheese both because of the rind’s odor and the fact that the larger interior mold “bubbles” were themselves covered with a thin layer of white mold. Perhaps the wheels were stored at too high a humidity and spoiled a bit? Or perhaps my love of cheese only goes so far?

As it’s now clear the pernicious spammers have followed us even as we’ve migrated to WordPress, I’ve implemented behind-the-scenes comment spam control. If all goes well, we’ll never see comment spam again and legitimate comments will always get through — with no “captcha” images or JavaScript back-flips.

Please use the contact-us link should you experience any strange behavior whilst adding your comments.

I’ve been using the Alligator vegetable dicer for a few months now, since my mother and I both bought one at Williams-Sonoma. We had the chance to try it in the store, which convinced us to buy it, but I really wanted to give it some work before coming to any firm conclusions.

The premise is simple. Open the device, place an appropriately-sized vegetable chunk (usually a half or quarter of an onion) on the plastic base, and very firmly press the Alligator closed, causing the metal grid to forcefully extrude your vegetable into a perfect 1/4-inch dice.

By and large, the Alligator delivers as expected. Onions are a snap — I never use a knife to chop them anymore, but I’m careful to hold my hand over the onion as it emerges so the pieces don’t fly all over the kitchen. Fresh peppers work reasonably well, but some extra force is needed to get through the tough skin. I’ve also had success with slices of potato, slices of carrot, chunks of celery, and seeded cucumbers.

Clean-up is pretty easy; on occasion, onion gets stuck in the metal grid and requires scrubbing.

While I highly recommend the Alligator, improvements are possible. It could be heavier overall, employing a metal frame, rather than plastic, and the cutting grid could be sharper. A collection bin over the grid would also be a nice touch. I’d also enjoy one with a larger size for a 1/2-inch dice.

Hot soup can make a great lunch in the winter, but I often find that I don’t get it together to make myself soup when I want it. This year, I decided to try some of the prepackaged creamy vegetable soups from Imagine (all OU parve).

First, I tried the Organic Creamy Broccoli Soup and Creamy Portobello Mushroom Soup. These are among the lowest in calories, but both were disappointing. I found them lacking in flavor, with an unpleasant soy aftertaste.

This did not deter me from trying the others, however. The Organic Creamy Butternut Squash Soup was quite a bit better, although if you’ve ever had soup made from fresh roasted butternut squash, there’s no comparison. The Organic Creamy Sweet Corn Soup was also tasty, with mellow notes of leek in the background, but I found it a bit too sweet and reminiscent of canned creamed corn. Also, it lacks texture, which I would have liked in a corn soup.

My favorite varieties were (surprisingly) Organic Creamy Tomato Soup and Organic Creamy Potato Leek Soup. It’s possible that I enjoyed the tomato soup as much as I did because the only other tomato soups I’ve tasted came from cans. Imagine’s version has the same creamy texture as canned tomato soup, but it is slightly less sweet and has a much more complex, “natural” flavor. The Creamy Potato Leek Soup is also very nice. Its silky texture comes from the potatoes themselves, not added soy milk, and the leeks add a wonderful flavor.

I haven’t had a chance to try the Organic Sweet Potato Soup or Organic Creamy Tomato Basil Soup, since they aren’t (yet?) carried by any conveniently located stores.

All in all, these soups are just what you might expect: not as good as homemade, but infinitely better than canned. They are also considerably more expensive than either. For the convenience they offer, I’d say that the better varieties are worth the occasional splurge. But, it’s up to you.

For those of you who don’t read the New York Times Dining & Wine section regularly, here is article on Central Asian restaurants in Queens that appeared last week. The reporter describes kosher Bukharian restaurants in glowing terms:

A spirit of abundance pervades Bukharian restaurants. Kebabs of pure lamb fat, crisp and smoky, perfume every dining room. Platters of plov are enormous. And warm chewy bread called lepeshka, like a huge bialy, keeps coming until you say stop. A few doors down at Fortuna restaurant, the owner, Isak Babayev, mourns the barberries, the sweet yellow carrots, the pomegranates and the fresh walnuts of his native Uzbekistan. “Everything was organic, although we didn’t know that word,” he said in Russian. “There were the most wonderful red- and yellow-fleshed melons, and green grapes as long and thin as a woman’s fingers.”

A list of the best Central Asian restuarants in New York includes three kosher establishments. There is also a recipe for shurpa lagman, an elaborate lamb and vegetable stew served over noodles.