All coming this week–
• Kosherfest 2007 in pictures
• Our review of Clubhouse Cafe, Manhattan’s newest kosher destination
• Canned tuna comparisons
• Barbecue brisket in a Brinkmann electric smoker

Stay tuned.

Just a quick announcement about a new site I’ve added to the “Kosher Blog Network”: The Online Kosher Directory hosted at ShopKosher.net. It’s my first stab at a categorized, searchable directory of online retailers which carry kosher products. Each site in the directory can be commented upon by visitors, to share shopping experiences or ask questions.

As an added bonus, I’ve included a “Books” section, with several kosher titles, as well as some other all-purpose culinary tomes that I’d recommend.

There’s a submission form on the homepage to suggest new retail sites to add — please use it!

As a new free service on the Kosher Blog, I’d like to announce Kosearch.org. It features two highly-tailored custom search engines (powered by Google Coop) that only draw from websites that actual Kosher Bloggers have personally added.

The first search is just for informational resources — essays, shiurim, rabbinic Q&As, certifiers’ websites.
The second search is just for online kosher products and services — fully kosher retail sites, or portions of retail sites with kosher products.

We already have a few hundred sites identified, but I realize that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Use the comments (or the Contact Us link on the left) to submit websites (full sites or particular URLs) that you’d like to see included.

(Kosearch site also available at search.kosherblog.net)

Kosher Community Surveys is providing the Kosher Blog and its readers the following exclusive sneak-peek at some of the results of this year’s Massachusetts survey:

• Best Kosher Butcher/Store - Second Place: The Butcherie
• Best Kosher Bakery - Second Place: Shaw’s Supermarket (multiple locations)
• Best Kosher Restaurant - Second Place: Milk Street Cafe (Post Office Square location)

The full, final survey report is coming soon, and will be promptly posted to the Kosher Blog. If you are interested in receiving a copy of it directly as soon as it is complete, e-mail your request to Neil Rosenbaum at koshersurvey@gmail.com.

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.

In advance of next week’s Super Bowl, I’ve revised my chili recipe to reflect two years of cooking it. A great way to feed a crowd, either during the Super Bowl or for Shabbos lunch. Try it with vegan cornbread, or forget the chili and make kosher jambalaya with Neshama Gourmet andouille sausages.

For the last several weeks, when I haven’t been cooking or posting to the blog, I’ve quietly been working on a new layout for the site, and tonight, it’s finally ready. I not only wanted to give the site a more refined look, but also provide standards-compliant HTML and a better cross-browser experience.

This redesign also includes the migration of the site from the “b2evolution” blogging engine to WordPress, which, so far, has been much easier to configure and extend.

If you encounter any strange behavior, I would greatly appreciate a short comment to this post explaining what happened, so that I might fix any lingering problems. Thanks!

I really wanted to avoid taking any visible measures against spam comments, preferring to work behind the scenes to weed out the scum of the Internet, but the recent spate of nonsensical spam has changed my perspective. Now, with every comment, the Kosher Blog kindly asks you to enter a six digit confirmation code, displayed in the comment form, to make sure you’re, you know, a human. I’m told this strategy is already circumventable by the evil spambots, but we’ll see how it goes.

In the process of fixing a layout bug present in Internet Explorer, I seem to have created a similar one Mozilla Firefox. Not until after the category and archive listings can links within the blog postings be clicked. I apologize for the annoyance, and rest assured I’m working on a fix, which may involve migration to WordPress from b2evolution.

UPDATE: I’ve implemented a fix and tested it on Firefox, IE 6, and Safari with good results all around. Please use the “contact us” link to let me know if you experience any problems.

What with moving house and all, I’ve been away from the computer for a couple weeks, and I apologize for the lessened activity on the blog. Of course, a special thanks is in order to sweinberger for his delicious look at smoked BBQ brisket last week.

Now that our kitchen and computer are set up once again, stay tuned for plenty of new postings. I’ll recap my search for perfect borekas, share some great recipes we enjoyed while being fed by friends during our move, report on a mysterious symbol you might see on cheeses in your local kosher market, take a look at how the Container Store can impact your kitchen (and your wallet), and reflect on a week of dining out in Boston while our home was inundated with boxes.

Plus, I’ll be adding a new category to the blog, “FAQ.” We receive many questions through the site, and we do our best to answer them thoroughly. Now, in addition to answering them by e-mail, we’ll post them publicly for all to benefit.

As my wife, mother, and mother-in-law are all members of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, I’m no stranger to the monthly Hadassah Magazine, which is full of engaging interviews, exotic travel locales, and reviews of the latest in Jewish culture and media. I was completely caught be surprise, though, when, while noshing a light seudat shlishit this evening, I spotted a delightful little blurb about the Kosher Blog in the June/July issue’s “Brief Reviews” section (page 49).

It was fitting that reviewer Leah Finkelshteyn mentioned our “Tastes Like Treyf” section, as the following page features a witty tale of Adeena Sussman’s foray into the realm of vegetarian bacon. She offers a simple and delicious recipe for Pasta Carbonara — the rich spaghetti dish named for the carbonari (coal vendors) known to make it — and suggests using a tempeh-based “bacon” product from Lightlife called “Smoky Strips.” She describes them as “denser, meatier” with a “deeper smoky flavor” than the soy alternatives. I’ll be sure to try it when I sample the recipe, which I’ve included below.

PASTA CARBONARA
Adeena Sussman, Hadassah Magazine
4 to 6 servings

* 12 oz. linguine
* 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
* 9 strips vegetarian bacon
* 1/2 cup heavy cream
* 4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
* 1 cup (4 oz.) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
* Kosher salt
* Freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring pot of liberally salted water to a boil. Cook linguine until al dente, 8 to 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add “bacon” and cook until crispy and browned. Remove from skillet to drain on paper towels; crumble when cool. In a bowl, whisk cream, egg yolks, and cheese to combine.
3. Draine linguine, reserving about a cup of water; do not rinse pasta. Return to pot and add cream mixture. Cook, stirring, over low heat until sauce coats pasta nicely. If sauce is too thick, add some reserved pasta water. Add crumbled “bacon,” salt, and pepper.

Kudos to the Orthodox Union for embracing RSS, the prominent news syndicating format, as a means for broadcasting their Kashrut Alerts. An informal survey of other major certifiers’ sites shows that the OU’s the only one to have taken this step so far.

Beneath the links list to the right (just under archives) you’ll find the five latest alerts from their feed. (Should other organizations offer such feeds — wink, wink — I’ll include them as well.)

I’ve updated the layout quite a bit to maximize the use of horizontal space, and bring more sidebar content “above the fold.” It’s been tested on a Windows XP machine with both Firefox 1.0.3 and IE 6. Comments welcome.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed of a buggy view in Internet Explorer (observed on a WinXP Pro box with IE 6). When viewing a posting in detail, the left side of the content spills off the side of the browser window. Though I will work to fix the issue, this problem does not exist in Firefox, so consider switching!

UPDATE: A report of problems in the Safari browser; title bar doesn’t fill entire width of display. Testing fixes.

Sorry for the downtime the site experienced today. Our server was having some troubles around midday, but all has been well since 1:20PM EST. Thankfully, we’ll be moving to a more robust server soon, so expect better reliability.

Tonight, I’m introducing a new gizmo to accompany KBLog’s food product reviews and add an element of objective legitimacy to our otherwise fanciful whims and opinions.

Without further ado, the Kosher Blog Product Scoresheet:

Each category is graded on a 4-point scale.

Taste: This one’s the most obvious, how does it taste?
Presentation: Is the product visually appealing? Is the packaging stylish? Does the product look like the picture on the box?
Value: How well does the product justify its price?
K-Factor™: This one sums up the product’s originality, whether it fills a unique void in the market, and any unusual prestige not awarded by the previous categories.

I’m planning to build an online directory of establishments which are either certified kosher or offer an especially large number of kosher products. At first, it will be solely a New England-centric resource. I’d like it to be as comprehensive as possible, both in terms of the number of establishments and in terms of informational detail. Below, I’ve written up a quick outline of potential data items to include in each profile. Each listing will also allow for visitor comments and ratings. I’d appreciate any comments as to other info we should capture.

ESTABLISHMENTS
This will include stores, markets, restaurants, hotels, and caterers.
• Establishment Name
• Description
• Address with link to map
• Phone Number(s)
• Fax Number
• Web URL
• E-mail address
• Manager/Owner name
• Hours
• Cuisine Type(s) (if restaurant)
• Products/Services Offered
• Atmosphere (i.e. Casual, Upscale, etc.)
• Kashrut Supervision By (see below)
• Supervision Attributes: Particular aspects of supervision at this facility (like presence of a mashgiach temidi, etc.) that might not be universal to all facilities overseen by a kashrut organization. Please suggest some attributes to record.
• Photos
• Payment Methods
• Parking
• Price information
• Comments/Ratings (see below)

SUPERVISION
• Organization Name
• Address
• Phone Number(s)
• Fax Number
• Web URL
• E-mail Address
• Rabbinic Administrator Name
• Denomination
• Kashrut Attributes: particular aspects of supervision that might distinguish one organization from another. Please suggest.

COMMENT / RATING
• Author Name
• Comment Text
• Food/Product Quality Rating (1-5)
• Service Rating (1-5)
• Ambiance Rating (1-5)
• Would Recommend?

In honor of my birthday, and the upcoming anniversary of the Kosher Blog’s first post, we’ll have some great content this week:

• 2 restaurant reviews
• New cheeses
• More Adventures in Beef
• …and a Boston-area kosher rumor

Stay tuned.

Recently, I committed myself to revamping the site with Firefox/Mozilla-compatibility in mind. I have also mentioned new hosting for the site. The two will be delivered together, in one swell foop, as I attempt to migrate the site from NucelusCMS to b2evolution. It’s been a time-consuming operation, which is why my blogging has been so sporadic lately.

I’ve also been hard at work extending the Kosher Blog Online Store. In fact, it’s been extended to such a degree, that it’s dislocated itself from the Kosher Blog juggernaut, developed its own gravitational field, and has assumed its own orbit out there on the Internet. You heard it here first — that little store is now Koshirts.com, chock full of kosher-themed clothing, mugs, buttons, stickers, and more. Use coupon code “CPFALLGEAR” when you check out, and get $4 off your order of $40 or more.

One other thing… I plan to enhance the “new” Kosher Blog a bit with the server/software switch. The site will be an amalgmation of three blogs: the “main” one, identical to the blog in its current state; a “discussion” blog that will (hopefully) be open for anyone to post to with thoughts, questions, etc.; and a “recipe file” blog specifically for cataloging Kosher Blog’s favorite recipes. Other enhancement ideas are most welcome.

So, KBlog’s server (”Jehuda”) lost Internet connectivity for much of the day… sorry about that. I’m considering moving the blog (and my other sites) to TextDrive.com — their $25/mo. plan looks like it would serve my needs in perpetuity, plus a coworker recommends them. And there was much rejoicing.

Seems like “bot a blog” didn’t work at all, so there’s a new Subscription sign-up box in the right-hand bar, powered by Bloglet. If you sign up, you’ll receive a daily e-mail whenever there’s new content.