Cookbook Review: Modern Jewish Cooking

May 15, 20171 Comment

Hey, everyone!

I’m back, and I have another cookbook review for you! If you haven’t read my last cookbook review and didn’t already know, I really enjoy getting cookbooks from the library and try to make a few things from each. Since I already do that, I decided I’d review the cookbooks on my blog–no big deal, I just have to remember to get a picture of my food before I dig in.

This cookbook is one I’ve been interested in since before last Christmas, which you might think is kind of ironic, because it’s called Modern Jewish Cooking by Leah Koenig. Yes, I requested a Jewish cookbook for a Christian holiday. I’ve encountered Koenig’s recipes before on Tablet, which is a Jewish online magazine (here’s a recent piece she’s written there), but I’m not 100% sure how I first heard about this cookbook. But I know I love Jewish food, and I know I love cooking, and the reviews for this one are pretty good on Amazon, so.

Before getting this cookbook and trying some recipes, my experience of Jewish cooking was generally limited to the Ashkenazi tradition–or Eastern European Jewish cooking. This is not a bad thing; I love matzo balls in my chicken soup, latkes are a winter staple for me, and knishes–well–those are just the ultimate comfort food. But as Koenig points out, Jews are a wandering tribe and have found themselves in just about every corner of the globe (except Antarctica). I’ve never had any Sephardi or Mizrahi cuisine, and this book has it all.

Some of the ingredients in this cookbook were harder to find; rosewater just isn’t something I see at Kroger, nor have I ever seen labneh there, nor za’atar. An Amazon search and reviews told me that Amazon’s prices on these items were “ridiculous” (not to mention, I’d have to pay for shipping!–no, thank you!). Luckily, Metro Detroit is a very diverse area with a large Middle Eastern population, and my best friend Toni lives less than a mile from a Middle Eastern supermarket and all of these items were much cheaper there than on Amazon.

Speaking of Toni, the first recipe was one I made with her, which was the Sauteed Green Beans with Labneh and Sliced Almonds. The tangy labneh and the crunchy almonds really complemented the green beans. I also took an opportunity to try a new vegetable with the recipe for Pan-Roasted Turnips; it wasn’t bad–is anything ever bad if you cook it with a chunk of butter?–but turnips are not my new favorite vegetable.

The following week, Toni and I made Chicken Schnitzel and Caraway Cabbage Strudel. I was at once wary and curious about both of these recipes, since I generally hate the result when I cook chicken in a pan on the stove–it’s always so dry and no marinade changes that. Second, my experience of strudel is that it’s a sweet food, so the thought of savory cabbage and caraway seeds (which I’ve only ever seen in rye bread) in phyllo was either going to be amazing or terrible. Luckily, it was amazing, and the schnitzel was good too. I had to dredge the chicken in flour and eggs and panko, then fried it in oil on the stove. It wasn’t dry at all!

I also took the chance to make Koenig’s Classic Challah recipe. My last attempt to make challah didn’t end perfectly–the loaves were too dense due to too much flour in the recipe. This time, I think the loaves turned out much better; definitely not dense! Since two loaves came out of it, and there’s no way I’d be able to eat that much bread (although I’ve tried), I gave the second loaf to Toni for her and her husband to enjoy. They said it went great with soup.

And since I just mentioned soup, Toni and I also took the opportunity to make a soup recipe in the cookbook as well. I’ve never used the word “aromatic” to describe food before, but that’s just what Koenig’s Tomato-Chickpea Soup with Spinach was. We garnished the soup with a scoop of labneh. And it was delicious. The leftovers were even better than the original result, too. I was so happy the three days I had leftover soup in my lunch box.

I made Sweet Hamantaschen, the triangle-shaped cookies eaten at Purim (yes, Passover has ended and Purim is not here yet). They were okay; I think I did something wrong. The dough was wayyy too sticky and kneading was a nightmare. Then I think I added too much flour. They weren’t awful, but I didn’t do it right, I think. The chocolate-peanut butter ganache I made for the filling was tasty!

Since the recipes in this cookbook are kosher, I would have liked to see more discussion of the principles of “kosher” means, and what is considered pareve (neutral, and therefore can be served with dairy or meat). But overall, it was a great cookbook to have for a few weeks, and I was very sad to return it to the library. In the end, I might end up buying this cookbook!

ON “BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD READ”

July 7, 2015August 21, 20162 Comments

Last week, I went to Barnes and Noble with my mother. If I was 14, this wouldn’t have been a particularly notable event; when I was younger, my mom and I went to the bookstore all the time together, but that was before Borders went out of business and my mom never really liked Barnes and Noble.

For the first time in a long time, I was at a bookstore with my mother. One of mom’s coworkers is retiring and Mom, knowing that her coworker quite likes wine but doesn’t necessarily know what beverages pair the best with what foods, thought that if there was a book that kind of explained how that went, it would be a good retirement gift. We did end up finding it, and it was a lot bigger than we had imagined it would have been. It was thorough, apparently.

As a lover of books, I started frequenting Barnes and Noble after Borders went out of business. As a lover of bookstores, I like to look at displays to see what they’re promoting and how they’re promoting certain books. It’s summer, so of course they’re going to have a table that is all books for the junior high and high school summer reading lists. I marvel that apparently my 11th grade English teacher is still assigning Richard Wright’s Native Son as summer reading (it is a book I probably would have liked better had we read it as a class), and that the teacher at my old school’s crosstown rival still assigns The Poisonwood Bible. Other displays (ones that aren’t school-related) promote books that I find questionable, but I can live with the existence and bestselling status of 50 Shades, because I’m glad people read, and I’m glad that they talk about books, my opinions of those books aside.

However, I am forever iffy about the table with the sign that says “Books Everyone Should Read.”

Truthfully, I like the idea of a world where everybody reads. Even better is the idea of a world where everybody likes to read. But those lists of books that everybody should read? I tend to disagree with any statement that says everybody should read a specific book.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant may well be my favorite book ever, and while I recommend it to a lot of people, I understand that it’s not going to be a book that will appeal to everyone (menstruation! childbirth! Biblical figures!). It’s great when I do find someone who has enjoyed it because then I can talk about this amazing book that I am lucky enough to have found and read and loved.

But the phrase “everybody should read this book” is flawed. It implies that there is something to be gained, often a level of personal growth, from reading certain books. A life lesson.

And not everybody is going to pick up on those hidden messages. Not everybody will learn something from those books.

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In my 12th grade English class, somebody applied “everybody needs to read this” to the book Nineteen Minutes (notable to me because it was the only book by Jodi Picoult that I liked). But even within the book, there is a character who survives a school shooting, and despite having friends who died in the event and even having been shot himself, he doesn’t get that he was targeted by the shooter for having bullied him. He doesn’t change his outlook or behaviors.

It’s also notable that one of my classmates didn’t think the main character’s boyfriend is “so bad.” This was worrisome, even to my teacher, because it’s obvious that the guy is bad news. He has abusive tendencies and refuses to wear a condom when they have sex, and also, right around the time we first encounter him in the book, he’s telling his girlfriend that she’s fat and food-shaming her for eating French fries (I think it was French fries, anyway–12th grade was a while ago).

Not everybody is going to get it. And that’s why, when acting like there is something to be gained by reading a specific book and that everybody should read it, you could be doing more harm than good. Not to mention that the implication that books are for learning from explains why a lot of people don’t pick up books outside of school.

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Confession time: I never understood the appeal of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I didn’t learn anything from reading it. I knew by the time I had read it that racism was bad, and that you should always do the right thing, even if the people around you aren’t. Reading the book didn’t reinforce that message, and ultimately, I didn’t enjoy reading it, even though it’s a standard text in classrooms across the country. Almost everybody has read it, and yet I am sure that there are many people out there who also didn’t enjoy it.

And that’s just talking about texts that are in the American literary canon. There are myriad works that are important in other places that I have neglected to mention here. And to some degree I am happy that they aren’t “books that every American should read” because many Americans aren’t going to understand issues in other countries as they apply to those countries. They might understand an issue as it applies to America, but the context of one’s reading of a text is going to affect the lens through which that text is read. And the culture of that reader is also going to affect the lens.

So, yes, I like the idea of a world where everybody reads, but I’m okay with living in a world where not everybody reads the same books.

Do you think that everybody should read certain books? Why or why not?

READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY

March 2, 2015August 21, 20161 Comment

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In high school I had this t-shirt (which really isn’t surprising, I had lots of t-shirts, because I’m a total t-shirt-and-jeans person) that had the Cat in the Hat on it and for the life of me, I can’t remember what the damn thing said, but it said something about reading. We wore them for our school’s reading week, which coincided with the first week of March. Because of Read Across America Day.

I really wish I had a picture of the damn thing.

Like just about every other nerd on the planet, I enjoy a good read. I don’t care if I’m reading an article about urban farming in BUST magazine, a book about a girl in a boat in Michigan, or Samurai Champloo fanfiction on my phone (Fuugen 4eva), I tend to enjoy whatever I read, so long as I am reading for the hell of it. (Maybe one day I will tell you the story about how I was an English major and hated everything and everybody, because I couldn’t read just for the hell of it)

It is Read Across America Day, so I do plan on taking a couple minutes–just a few!–to read something. Before I focus on getting new books, I need to focus on finishing the few I have started. Likely, I will be reading Burial Rites because that’s what I’ve been carrying in my purse for the last week.