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 

Rachel Trugman’s Hot Weather Cooling Soups - Cucumber Soup aka Turkish Yogurt Soup – A Mediterranean Delight

It's almost Tisha B'Av, but we still have two hot summer days until then. Two hot summer days during which we can't eat meat! Well here's a solution for a tasty and cooling afternoon snack or light dinner. 

It’s funny, when I call this Mediterranean delight by the Turkish Yogurt Soup name, nobody would try it, but when I call it cucumber soup, suddenly we have brave culinary adventurers at the table, it’s all in the packaging – sigh…

Blend till smooth: 3 large cucs scrubbed but not peeled with 1 large zucchini, 1 container 3% plain yogurt, 1 clove garlic ¼ C lemon juice 1T salt, a handful each of fresh dill and spearmint leaves and enough water to make the machine go. Chill till really chilled. Serve with a generous dollop of sour cream and for fancy sake garnish with sculpted sliced cucumbers (they look like flowers if you scrape the tines of a fork deeply & vertically over the cuc before you slice it) and a sprig of mint or dill on top of the sour cream for contrast – it’s pretty and oh so refreshing.

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?