According to the latest KosherToday newsletter, Duncan Hines cake mixes will be going back to a pareve formulation. The Manischewitz mixes were a decent alternative, but I probably won’t be using them if Duncan Hines is available.
Grilling season is in full force — who wants to get the stove and oven going when the weather’s already broiling? Unfortunately, though, in many parts of country (Boston included), it’s tough to find quality glatt kosher sausages. We’ve been tantalized by the elusive Neshama Gourmet, and, though widely available, Meal Mart’s frozen sausages are little more than dressed-up hot dogs.
Enter KosherHeaven.com, which was created recently by a group of enterprising Brandeis alumni who share a penchant for meat. For a chunk of change, they’ll satisfy your cravings for both sausages and South African biltong (spiced beef jerky), all USDA-approved and certified glatt kosher by the Atlanta Kashrut Commission.
The biltong is available in two flavors, regular and spicy, and in two forms, chunks and easier-to-chew slices. The three-ounce packages last six months without refrigeration, making them a perfect fleishig travel snack. Shipping is free on orders of three or more biltong packs.
Sausages come in five varieties, four beef (regular, mild, garlic, chili) and one chicken. We had the pleasure of sampling the regular beef and chicken sausages, simply grilled and served alongside sauteed peppers and onions. The chicken sausages were astoundingly delicious; they stayed moist despite being entirely white meat and nearly fat free, and had a pleasant, delicate flavor. The beef sausages were also tasty, but their slightly chewy texture turned me off a bit. All their sausages come raw, making them very versitile for cooking applications.
Sausage shipping costs, like with any other perishable product, are a tough pill to swallow. Eight trays (13.36 lb.) of sausage — their best value option — cost $131.92, plus an additional $37 shipping to Boston, making the effective price about $12.70/lb. But a quick comparison paints a prettier picture: homemade turkey sausages from nearby butcher Gordon & Alperin run $12.99/lb. For the quality and convenience, they’re priced quite competitively — so stock up and get grilling!
This just in, these Absolut Vodkas now have Orthodox Union certification:
ABSOLUT PEPPAR
ABSOLUT APEACH
ABSOLUT KURANT
ABSOLUT RASPBERRI
ABSOLUT RUBY RED
Since unflavored vodkas are inherently kosher, plain Absolut’s new heksher can be ignored.
Have you ever been tempted to buy Ezekiel 4:9 Bread just because of its name? I haven’t.
When God tells Ezekiel to make bread from wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, He’s describing the type of food that the Jews would be forced to eat in exile. Normal bread would have been made from wheat flour alone, as it is today. This bread, in contrast, is made from all kinds of garbage. It’s supposed to taste like crap. Ezekiel even cooks it over crap (though in those days, that was considered normal). The bread is actually supposed to be cooked over human crap, but the prophet manages to wriggle out of that one and upgrade to bovine crap.
At any rate, it isn’t supposed to be good.
The producers of Ezekiel 4:9 bread explain why we should be expected to eat this stuff:
We discovered when these six grains and legumes are sprouted and combined, an amazing thing happens. A complete protein is created that closely parallels the protein found in milk and eggs.
Of course, they could have created the same whole protein from any combination of grains and legumes. But never mind; they decided to follow God’s recipe, and the result is, in fact, quite nutritious, with a full 4 grams of protein per slice in addition to three grams of dietary fiber. So when a friend left town and gave me her leftover Ezekiel 4:9 bread, I was willing to try it.
Truth be told, it doesn’t taste like crap. It tastes pretty much like bread. There’s a mild sourdough-like flavor in the background and a hint of sprouts that I think I might even develop a taste for over time. Or not. But I’ll certainly finish the package.
This experience has led me to reconsider Ezekiel’s so-called ordeal. He got to lie around for a year and a half and eat reasonably decent, high-protein bread that he didn’t have to cook over human dung after all. Compared to marrying a cheating prostitute (Hosea) or walking around wearing yoke-bars (Jeremiah), that really doesn’t seem so bad.
Cross-posted to Apikorsus.
Note: The bread is Kof-K parve.
I like to say that I’m a Caesar salad purist, and by that I mean that I subscribe to Julia Child’s account of Caesar Cardini’s famous 1924 innovation of tossing romaine lettuce leaves with little more than olive oil, coddled eggs, garlicky croutons, and grated Parmesan cheese. I strongly encourage all Caesar fans to read From Julia Child’s Kitchen (pages 431-434) to get the true story of the salad’s origins and the authentic recipe.
So, I like to say that I’m a purist. In practice, I hold true to the salad’s ingredients — olive oil, lemon, eggs, imported Parmesan, freshly cracked pepper, and worcestershire sauce — but prepare the dressing separately.
What is unfortunately beyond the pale for even a reformer like me is the Three Cheese Caesar Dressing from Beyond Classics (OK-Dairy certification).
The three cheeses are encouraging — Parmesan, Romano, and Caciotta — but ultimately the dressing is a flop. For a whopping $4.79, you get what amounts to 12-ounces of grainy lemon sauce. The original’s dash of worcestershire is misinterpreted in this dressing as — gasp! — “anchovies” and instead of eggs and olive oil they use sour cream and canola oil.
Thankfully, making the dressing from scratch is a cinch.
MILD CAESAR DRESSING
Pareve
• 1 egg, coddled*
• 1/2 cup pure olive oil
• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 tsp. worcestershire sauce
• 5 grinds black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
Crack coddled egg into a large bowl, and beat briefly with a whisk. Combine the olive oils. Then, while whisking expeditiously, slowly drizzle the oil into the egg. The mixture will get creamy and thick. (If you like washing small appliances, feel free to drizzle in your oil while the eggs are whizzing away in a food processor.)
Whisk in lemon juice, worcestershire, pepper, and salt. Makes approximately 1 cup dressing.
If serving in a dairy setting, toss torn romaine lettuce leaves with enough dressing to coat, then toss with garlic croutons and ample freshly-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Alternatively, combine lettuce, croutons, dressing, and slices of grilled chicken breast for a great fleishig salad.
*To coddle an egg, bring a pan of water to a gentle boil and simmer your egg (in-shell) for exactly one minute. This brings up the temperature of the egg enough to theoretically kill harmful pathogens.
We were fortunate to receive some time ago several samples of OK-certified Asian Star-brand mock crab products from Zaloom Marketing. Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to try them in a few different applications, and were quite pleased with their quality and versatility.
Their flake-style “crab” made both an excellent hot dip and a tasty seafood salad. (Tasters of the non-kosher persuasion weren’t fooled, but they enjoyed nonetheless.) For sushi, the filament-style sticks made nicely-balanced California rolls every time, and each stick is individually wrapped for convenience.
If you’re running out today to buy a frozen cheesecake for Shavuot, consider Trader Joe’s (KVH, I think) — it’s the best I’ve had. If you don’t have access to a Trader Joe’s, you might want to try Sara Lee (Circle-K, I think). It’s surprisingly good, and the slices are separated with pieces of paper, so you don’t even have to cut it.
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.
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.
NOTE: Since this review, GrandmasChickenSoup.com has dropped their kosher options. Their remaining products are not kosher.
After a rough day at the office last week, and feeling subtle symptoms of an oncoming cold, imagine my delight to find waiting for me at my doorstop half a gallon of authentic kosher chicken soup and a golden challah!
It wasn’t from a kindly clairvoyant neighbor; it was the handiwork of “Grandma’s tried and true classic, combined with today’s dot-com technology”: Woburn, MA-based GrandmasChickenSoup.com. And at the risk of offending my mother — who’s coming over Sunday to help me make, among other things, chicken soup — it was actually very good. The broth was very clear and had just a touch of sweetness, the vegetables and pasta were an ideal consistency (firm, not mushy), the matzo balls were tasty (not leaden like the canned Manischewitz ones), and there were nice chunks of white-meat chicken.
Of course, it didn’t suprise me at all that this high-quality product was prepared for GrandmasChickenSoup by none other than Catering By Andrew of Brookline, MA, and that the delectable challah came from Cheryl Ann’s Bakery (also of Brookline).
So, here’s a personal voucher for the quality of GrandmasChickenSoup.com. The price, though, is something of a different story: half a gallon of soup (4-6 servings) and the requisite thermal packaging will run you $36.50, plus 2nd-day or overnight shipping charges (unavoidable due to perishability), which range from $10 overnight around New England to $54 overnight to the Southwest and Pacific. Their gift boxes do, however, make for innovative business gifts, at times when spending in that range may be justified.
Or, look at it another way: how else can you ship delicious kosher soup nationwide, to ailing friends, family, and business associates? Get your orders in before the holidays, through their website or 1-87-SEND-SOUP (1-877-363-7687).
