A festive and crowd-pleasing appetizer for Rosh Hashanah or your Yom Kippur breakfast: an apples and honey themed cheese board! And in keeping with the Jewish tradition of not mixing meat and dairy, this cheese board is completely vegetarian. Thanks to Cabot Creamery Co-operative for sponsoring this High Holiday recipe. Rosh Hashanah begins ...
New York-Style Black and White Cookies at Home
If you can't get to the bakery, make your favorite bakery treats at home, like these authentic, New York-style black-and-white cookies. These are strange times, my friends. Many, if not most, of us are sheltering at home and engaging in social distancing as the world grapples with this horrible pandemic. Like so many of you, I am essentially ...
Lemon Poppyseed Hamantaschen
A sophisticated, delicate take on traditional Purim hamantaschen: lemon poppyseed! Next week brings the Jewish festival of Purim, a carnival holiday where people are encouraged to dress in costume and make merry. Purim commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from an evil government minister, named Haman, who plotted to destroy the ...
Traditional Beef-Filled Kreplach for the High Holidays
Just in time for the High Holidays, a tried-and-true recipe for kreplach, the delicious meat-filled Jewish soup dumpling. I have written before about my love for kreplach - Jewish cuisine's triangular, meat-filled soup dumpling. A Jewish wonton, if you will. In those earlier posts, I proffered a recipe for kreplach filled with chicken - as ...
Blintzes for Mother’s Day
What does Mom want for Mother's Day brunch? I'm pretty sure it's cheese blintzes: paper-thin crêpes filled with lightly sweetened ricotta cheese and topped with a strawberry-rhubarb compote. Mother's Day is this Sunday, May 14, and everyone wants to surprise Mom with a special breakfast. In my mind, no breakfast is more special than cheese ...
Matzo Chocolate Bark
Matzo chocolate bark is a special Passover treat. Imagine matzo drenched in toffee and chocolate and topped with dried fruits, nuts and pumpkin seeds. My family looks forward to this all year! This is not exactly breaking news but if you cover something, anything, in enough toffee and chocolate, it will taste good. Hence, matzo chocolate ...
Braised Brisket for Passover
Tender, melt-in-your-mouth brisket is the perfect main course for your Passover seder. Best of all? You can prepare it in advance! Have you planned the menu for your Passover seder? My family will only let me vary the menu so much. They want all their traditional favorites: Matzo ball soup; my mother-in-law's sweet charoset and, of ...
Tackling Tough Cooking Odors (like Latkes) with the Venta Airwasher
This post is sponsored by Venta Airwasher. As always, all opinions expressed herein are entirely my own. The first night of Hanukkah is almost here and this year, for the first time in my life, I am confident that my house won't smell like the fried potato pancakes, or latkes, that we eat on Hanukkah for days afterwards. Why? Because I have ...
Chocolate Raspberry Rugelach
Has holiday baking season officially begun? I declare that it has. If, like me, you are planning to give edible gifts this holiday season, you have to start sooner rather than later or else your kitchen will become a round-the-clock production facility. There are countless kinds of Christmas cookies from Swedish gingersnaps to German lekuchen to ...
Rosh Hashanah Recipes: Kreplach
If you think the matzo ball is the ultimate Jewish soup dumpling, let me quickly disabuse you of that notion. As much as I love a fluffy matzo ball, my heart truly belongs to kreplach, the meat-filled pasta triangle known affectionately as Jewish tortellini and served during the High Holidays. Never heard of kreplach? You are not alone. While ...