RH recipes

September 12, 2010 - 8:56 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life 

So it’s true that we’re post-Rosh Hashana, which is the major moment for eating honey cake — the Jewish equivalent to Christmas fruitcakes that no one wants to eat — and quinces as your new fruit, but I tried two new recipes this past chag (holiday), that I feel compelled to share with our Israelity audience.

The first is by way of the Ha’aretz Rosh Hashana magazine, but originally from Al Hashulchan, the local version of Epicurious. And not to worry about the call for ground lavender flowers and fresh lavender flowers; I didn’t have either and the cakes were still great. Although it does make me want to do something with my verdant lavender bush outside. I also baked some in my silicon individual cake tins, and the rest of the dough in an 8×8 pan.

Individual honey cakes with ginger and figs
Ingredients (for 8 individual 10 cm. cakes)

125 grams soft butter (make sure it’s soft)
120 grams brown sugar
255 grams honey
2 large eggs
1 container whipping cream (250 ml)
2 tspn ginger, grated
260 grams self-raising flour
125 grams dried figs, chopped thin
60 grams crystallized ginger, chopped thin
1 tspn cinnamon
1/4 tspn baharat spice (Google this, but it’s a combo of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, more or less)
1/2 tspn ground lavender flowers
1 tspn baking soda

Frosting
Half an egg white
2-3 drops lemon juice
150 grams confectioner’s sugar
Lavender flowers for decoration

Preparation
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the tins or pan.
Using the dough hook of a mixer, (can probably use a regular mixer beater as well), beat the butter, honey, brown sugar and eggs until creamy. Add the sweet cream and fresh ginger until smooth and airy.
Mix the flour, chopped figs and crystallized ginger and spices. Fold in the dry ingredients to the butter mixture until you have a uniform texture.
Pour into the baking pan(s).
Bake 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry with moist crumbs. Cool.

Frosting
Beat the egg white with the lemon. Add confectioner’s sugar while beating , until thick.
Coat the cake(s) with the frosting, decorating with lavender flowers.

The second recipe came by way of Ofer Vardi, a writer and food blogger who wrote about his Hungarian grandmother’s recipes in Goulash for the Golesh, a Hebrew play on words which means Goulash for the Surfer….One of his Rosh Hashana memories is of his grandmother’s quince compote, listed here and which I also made for the holiday. Very worth the effort.

Wishing you a happy and tasty food-filled year.

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Rosh Hashana table talk

September 11, 2010 - 7:49 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Food, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Politics 

The Rosh Hashana/Shabbat three-day marathon has come and gone, with the only casualty being a slightly expanded waist line.

We Israelis are somewhat spoiled, with the rest of the holidays on the Jewish calendar lasting only 25 hours – so a two-day Rosh Hashana folding over into a Shabbat was indeed a long haul.

But between visits to our synagogue, delicacy-laden meals with friends, hanging out at home with family and a good book (Yehuda Avner’s The Prime Ministers – shout out to Sheryl Abbey), and a couple trips to the local sports field for a batting and catching session with my son on one day and the resumption of the local touch rugby Shabbat neighborhood game on the other day, the holiday move along at a fast enough clip.

At a first afternoon lunch at good friends near our Jerusalem shul, we were surrounded by an interesting group – our two families, another good friend with his lady friend, two high school graduates from the US who are in Israel for nine months on a Nativ program, and two other American college students – one here studying at a Conservative yeshiva and the other just having finished her first visit to Israel via a birthright program and extending the stay by visiting her friend for a few days.

The topic of conversation touched on a myriad of topics, ranging from what is the Israel equivalent of Walmart (the answer is – there is none) to the length of the Rosh Hashana musaf service (the consensus – too long) what are the prospects of the peace talks launched in Washington bearing any fruit (the answer is – almost none).

However the debate than enused did elicit a hearty give and take which enabled our American visitors to witness that vigorous democracy at practice in Israel, included raised voices and good natured jabbing. But most of all, it showed that Israelis care very deeply about what’s happening in their country, and what better time than at the Rosh Hashana table to express it?

I’m sure it was a scene repeated in various forms in hundreds of thousands of home over the last three days and is probably the originator of the phrase ‘two Jews and three opinions.’ Here’s a toast to all of us potential prime ministers on this launch of this new year.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Shana Tova postcards

September 5, 2010 - 10:55 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

This year, the Israel Postal Company has launched a campaign urging people to send New Year greetings by mail. “Bring back the excitement,” exhorts the leaflet stuffed in our mailbox (inserted by hand and not by mail, I should note). “Facebook, MMS, SMS – they’re not personal. It’s no longer exciting. Now more than ever in the digital age, let’s return to the hand-written postal greeting card. For personal attention and creative expression.”

The brochure comes with a postcard attached and instructions: “Detach this greeting card, write a moving greeting, stick on a stamp and send to your loved ones.” I found the last two steps particularly amusing. Apparently people no longer know how to do this.

The Postal Company has also designed a set of five postcards inspired by the era of good old fashioned snail mail. (Classic examples from previous Israelity postings can be viewed here and here). They’re available for purchase at post offices and agencies in Israel or online through their Hebrew and English-language websites. Each one contains a different New Year’s greeting. For example: May You Be Inscribed and Sealed for A Good New Year:

A Year of Flourishing and Prosperity:

A Good and Sweet New Year!

All of this and more do I wish for Israelity’s readers: a year of happiness, prosperity and above all, good health. Shana Tova!

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Poland and getting away from technology

September 3, 2010 - 1:39 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: health, Israeliness, Technology 

A student on a class trip to Poland

I wrote in an earlier post about how human beings aren’t built to truly multitask – an action we increasingly rely on to parse all the data coming at us from the web or our mobile devices. New research is trying to figure out not only what happens psychologically when we try to do two things at once, but whether our brain neurology is being re-mapped by our incessant use of technology.

You don’t have to go much further than our teenage daughter Merav, who just came back from a school trip to Poland this week, to gain critical insight. Merav voluntarily disconnected herself from the Internet for a week. Did this make a difference to her experience? I’ll get back to that in a moment.

First, I want to look at research being done by New York Times technology journalist Matt Richtel who participated earlier this year in a similar journey to the technology wasteland – a backpacking trip undertaken by a group of scientists where gadgets were banned and their itinerary took them far out of the range of cell phones.

Would these highly connected researchers act – no, think – differently in such a situation, he asks?

The scientists were split, according to Richtel in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air program, with some feeling that “the constant stream of data was making it increasingly difficult to focus and concentrate” and others saying “the benefits of having constant access to information far outweighed any consequences.”

But all of the scientists noticed that they began to feel more relaxed and more engaged in the world. They slept a little better; waited a bit longer before answering a question. “You don’t feel in (such) a rush to do anything, your sense of urgency fades,” Richtel says.

But only after three days – that was the amount of time for the disconnect effect to kick in. This might explain why we feel more relaxed after a three-day weekend as opposed to a “normal” two-day break from work.

Why is this the case? A laboratory study had rats learning new tasks. When the rats were given time away from the task to process it, the action moved into memory and real long-term learning took place. Without that down time, the rats were more prone to forget what they’d just done.

We can extrapolate that, Richtel says, to our contemporary lives, where we rarely give ourselves a break. If we’re waiting in line for cheese at the SuperSol supermarket and there are three people ahead, what do we do? We pull out our smart phone and check email, browse the Internet or play a game. Even people without smart phones may listen to music on an iPod (I know I’m guilty of that).

What we need to do, Richtel claims, is simply “be,” to not fill every moment with something electronic, to let the learning consolidate in our brains. To have “down time.”

Which brings me back to Merav. Our daughter’s experience in Poland, visiting lost Jewish communities and crying at the concentration camps, was intense – “difficult but meaningful” is how she described it upon her return home. Was her level of engagement different than her peers, many of whom were texting away at the dinner table?

While the research suggests yes, it would be presumptuous for me to make such a claim. But it’s undeniable that our use of technology profoundly affects us. I, for one, am looking forward to the Jewish holidays this year – Rosh Hashana and Shabbat coincide in such a way that those who observe the High Holy Days according to a more strict interpretation of Jewish law will have a full three days of enforced technology deprivation.

I wonder how I’ll feel on the other side?

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Pomegranate economics

October 14, 2009 - 9:00 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, Food, General, Holidays 

pomegranateAs we say goodbye to the ‘chagim’ period, the month-long span of Jewish holidays, a piece of news about pomegranates, a major fruit in the Rosh Hashana new fruit ritual. The pomegranate has also become a major component of the health food trade, given its antioxidants that lower blood pressure and reduce risk factors for heart disease. As a result, Israeli farmers have doubled the size of their pomegranate orchards over the past five years to 20,000 dunam from the previous 10,000 dunam, or 2,500 acres. Them’s a lot of pomegranate seeds. As a result, an oversupply of the red-seeded fruit has led to a 30% drop in prices over the last few weeks, and at the height of pomegranate season, according to a recent item in Ha’aretz.

That’s great for the Israeli consumer, who’s now buying pomegranates at the supermarket for NIS 10 a kilogram, down from NIS 14 at this time last year. So if you’re so inclined, and live in this pomegranate-heavy region, here’re are some recipes from Haim Cohen and Eli Landau, the current recipe-testers and writers for the Ha’aretz weekend magazine. They also offer the same advice as my sister for getting the seeds out of the pomegranate: Fill about half of a good-sized bowl with water; cut the pomegranate in half and place the cut side down in the water. Then just peel off the seeds in the water, which will prevent you, the peeler, from getting sprayed with ruby red pomegranate juice. It’s a a great ‘patent‘, as we say in these parts.

As for the recipes, this is the one I’m thinking about trying this week:

Pomegranate risotto

A slightly sour and wonderful-tasting dish.

half kg. rice for risotto

1.5 liters hot vegetable stock

1.5 cups pomegranate juice

seeds from 1 pomegranate

1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped

100 gm. butter

olive oil

4-5 tbsp. grated Parmesan

salt and pepper

In a heavy, medium-sized pot, melt 50 gr. butter with 2 tbsp. olive oil. Add the onion; saute over medium heat until it becomes transparent. Add the rice and saute for another minute or two, while stirring. Add half a cup pomegranate juice and cook until it evaporates almost completely. Add one ladle full of vegetable stock. Add salt and pepper; stir until the liquids are absorbed. Gradually add one ladle full at a time, while stirring. After about 15 minutes of cooking, when the rice is still hard, add the pomegranate seeds and continue to cook until the rice softens. The risotto should be well cooked, not al dente.

Turn off the flame and add 50 gr. butter; stir until it melts. Add the Parmesan, mix well and serve.

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