Two Great Recipes for Yom Tov!

Broiled Eggplant with Veggies and Meat Sauce

Since I have no rhyme or reason (Ask Eden Pearlstein aka EPHRYME– he’s the Rhyme department, and my son in-law) for why this recipe is only for Rosh Hashanah let’s create a new minhag and make it for Pesach too. 

WARNING! This recipe is a “potchke” lots of steps but worth the effort. (Maybe that’s why I make it only once a year for family because to feed this to the Ohr Chadash hordes would keep me in the kitchen for an unexaggerated millennium).

Brush thick rounds of eggplant with olive oil sprinkle with kosher salt and granulated garlic then broil until browned. Prepare thin rounds of potatoes and zucchini while you make the sauce by browning ground meat, I often use turkey or veal, with finely chopped onions and parsley. I add one can of crushed tomatoes and some dry red wine, salt and pepper, and a dash of…  SPOILER WARNING! – SECRET INGREDIENT ABOUT TO BE REVEALED -cinnamon. I start layering with onion rings on the bottom of the olive oiled baking pan then potatoes, then meat sauce then zucchini then more sauce and top it all with the broiled eggplant. 

Over the top I pour some white sauce made by gently sautéing potato starch in olive oil and adding chicken broth stirring constantly until you have a creamy consistency breaking up the lumps as you stir. Bake in 350 degree oven till bubbly and the top starts to brown about an hour.

 Apricot Chicken

This is a much easier and faster recipe. This is my general and preferred style of cooking except for the very few “potchke” recipes I allow through the radar. This one is good for an erev yom tov like the one we’re going to have tomorrow when we plan to galavant off to Jerusalem to enjoy FREE DAY at the Israel Museum and the Botanic Gardens.  Chani (my daughter) and Eden (her D.L.H.) did this with us last year!

Plop some chicken pieces in a baking pan slosh some sauvignon blanc or other white wine over ‘em, shmear on some apricot jam, scatter some dried apricots all around,sprinkle on some salt pepper granulated garlic and paprika and you’ve got easy street! 

Go jump in the shower while it’s baking at 375 degrees till brown and fragrant, about an hour and a half, and you even have time to do your nails and get all gussied up for a really good relaxed Yom Tov.

Happy Tasty and Kosher Pesach Everyone!  

Rebbetzin Rachel's Recipes - Winter Time!

My Russian Grandma Ida knew about cold weather. So when the winds howled off Lake Michigan she cooked up this warming ultimate comfort food. You start any Jewish food with sautéed onions, and now we scientifically know why. A recent study of nursing home residents showed statistically that appetite increased when the aroma of fried onions wafted through the air before dinner time!  While those marvelously pungent onions are gently browning in 2 Tablespoons olive oil throw in 3 cloves of chopped garlic, 3 nice slices of fresh ginger, 3 sliced carrots, 5 stalks chopped celery, 1 medium head of chopped green cabbage ¼ head purple cabbage, 2 diced beets ½ a diced green bell pepper. Continue to sauté until everything is cheerfully sizzling then add a large can of crushed tomatoes and fill the pot with water just to cover the veggies. Add to the simmering pot 3 Tablespoons each of brown sugar and apple cider vinegar, then sprinkle in some salt, pepper & cayenne to taste. The cayenne and ginger will warm you down to your toes and chase away any audacious diseases who would dare to enter your spheres. As we Jewish (grand) mothers say in Yiddish, “Ess mine kindt” – “eat up my children.”

To your health and warmth, with LOL Lots of Love 

Rebbetzin Rachel's Recipes for a Sweet New Year!

The theme of Rosh Hashana cooking is Sweetness – like sweet noodle kugel with fruit cocktail and raisins, sweet tsimmes with prunes and butternut squash along with the sweet potatoes, and of course the sweetest honey cake. How about some unexpected dips for the sweet round challah? 

Here’s a recipe with a surprisingly sweet twist substituting honey instead of the usual garlic! 

SWEET TECHINA:

½ cup sesame paste (techina)

½ cup water & blend till smooth and creamy adding more techina to thicken or water to thin the mixture

Add the juice of one lemon

1 Tablespoon honey

A pinch of salt

A pinch of ground cumin

You can spread some SWEET TECHINA or get really adventurous and go south of the border for some...

SWEET GUACOMOLE:

Mash 2 ripe avocados add a pinch of salt, the juice of one lemon and of course Honey to taste!

A bride and groom dip in honey instead of salt for their entire first year of marriage! 

We start dipping our sweet challah with raisins into honey on the first night of Rosh Hashana, and continue through Simchat Torah, each time symbolically wishing each other and all of Israel a very Sweet New Year filled with love and gratitude.

Shana Tova!

Rachel Trugman’s Hot Weather Cooling Soups – Beet Borscht an “Old Country” Recipe

I absolutely (bli neder) refuse to make cholent in the summer starting the day after Pesach. It’s just too hot to endure the hot plate going round the clock and the inevitable melt-down that implodes after the first bite of the heavy meat. Instead I’ve developed a list of chilled out soups to wake up the sluggish palate that only wants to eat watermelon all summer long. Starting with the first Yom Tov of Pesach lunch, mostly because I absolutely must have some butter on my matzo and partly because after eating an elaborate multi-coursed fleishig meal on Seder night I definitely need something lighter, I’ll serve my Russian Grandma Ida’s recipe for milchig beet borscht. Her family was one of the few Jewish residents of Petrograd aka St Petersburg, aka Leningrad. Her father gained that privilege by working as a gilder in the palace of the czar.  She escaped the Bolshevik Revolution by working her way across Europe with her brother in 1916 designing fancy feathered and beaded hats for the milliner trade. This recipe is authentically presented exactly how she served it to us growing up on Chicago’s South Side and to the many yeshiva students who my namesake Great Grandmother Ruchel would invite after standing out on the street corner on Friday night looking for guests back in the “old country.” Does that sound familiar?