On Tuesday, I attended the Finals for the 2007 Simply Manischewitz Cookoff, here in NY. Thousands of entries were whittled down to 6 contestants from across the country:

• Evan Levy from Danville,CA, Southwestern Potato Kugel
• Joy Devor from Far Rockaway, NY, Fantastic Flounder Rolls
• Joe Carver from Philadelphia, PA, Falafel Pizza
• Julie Hession from Las Vegas, NV, Beef Tenderloin with Marsala Mushroom Sauce
• Greg Fontenot from The Woodlands, TX, Chicken in Balsamic Cherry Sauce
• Tracy Rapp from Memphis, TN, Southern Smothered Burgers

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article discussing Israeli wine (kudos to the IsRealli blog for the link), but focusing on Domaine du Castel’s owner/founder, Eli-Gilbert Ben Zaken. The article gives a good quick history of the changes in the Israeli wine market due to the changes in the Israeli economy and travel habits of Israelis.

For those who have not yet tasted their wines, Domaine du Castel is doing great work that has been recognized globally. Robert Parker recently did a survey of Israeli wines (both kosher and non-) and the wines did very well, with many scores in the 80s and 90s. (articles: Israel21c; HaKerem 1, 2). Of course, the value of objective numeric scores for wine is highly debatable and Robert Parker has been at the head of that controversy since he started publishing Wine Advocate. The point, though, is that Israeli wines are increasingly on the world wine map and that can only be a good thing for quality.

I will hopefully have the time soon to write up my notes from the recent Galil Mountain Winery tasting that I attended as part of the Kosher Wine Society. They remain some of my favorite Israeli wines.

I look forward to the upcoming Pesach wine articles and events and will post what I can.

A few Top Chef related news items made it into my inbox this week. (If you don’t already know, Top Chef is a reality-show on the Bravo network, where chefs compete for the title of ‘Top Chef’. It’s great fun, in my opinion.)

First, came the article about Ilan Hall (winner of the 2nd season), facing off against the executive chef of the University of Michigan Hillel, Emil Bloch, in a “Dorm Room Challenge“. After a little searching, and I found that this wasn’t Ilan’s first time cooking for a Hillel event. In April 2007, he was at the Fiedler Hillel Center at Northwestern University, cooking for the students. To be honest, I didn’t like him very much as a contestant, but I think that doing these sort of events is a really nice gesture.

Next, the New York Times is reporting that Hung Huynh, the winner of the Top Chef title in the 3rd season, will be doing a one month stint as the executive chef at restaurant Solo in NY, starting March 2nd. You may recall the KosherBlog review of Solo, after KosherFest 2006. I’m making my reservation now….

It’s depressing to only see 3 new posts in the last 2 months. This is an inevitable consequence of our writers having families and full-time jobs. But, you’ve been loyal readers, as the ongoing threads of comments attest. Thanks for that. I wanted to take a second to give you all a heads-up on some upcoming events, and hopefully upcoming posts:

• On February 27th, I’ll be attending (and reporting on) the Manischewitz Simply Kosher Cookoff finals in NYC.
• The deadline for the OU Kosher Essay Contest is March 7th
• The leap-month gives us some extra time to prepare, but Purim is coming! (March 21st) I hope to get at least a few Purim-food posts up.
• Save the date! The 20th Annual ASBEE/Kroger BBQ Competition will be on Sunday, September 7th. Can we get a KosherBlog delegation?

That’s all I have for now. To keep things lively, here’s a question: Hamentashen are the definitive Purim food (IMHO). What foods do you consider integral to the holiday? And I specified “foods” - not “refreshments”. And no “but it’s made from grains” objections.