Holiday Fare

Beverly is my mother. My mother was a good cook, but didn’t have much patience for the process nor passion for the result, so there are very few recipes that I have that are distinctly hers. This recipe is one of the rare few, and my grandmother evidently kept a copy in her recipe box. The relish was always on the table for Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving, although I myself have not made it lately. It’s a nice alternative to the widely-available weird squiggly canned cranberry sauce, but I will admit that I have a strange affection for the canned stuff, too.

This is an oldie but goodie... a very simple bar cookie recipe that also happens to be pareve and chocolate-free. I have a few friends who are sensitive to chocolate, and I've given a number of them this recipe. It brings back some warm childhood memories for me. The batter pretty much just covers the bottom of the pans - the baking soda makes it rise a bit when in the oven. Even so, the bars aren't all that thick. I get 25 bars out of a pan, so they're more like nibbles

My grandmother served this dish every Pesach and Rosh Hashanah as one of many courses before the main meal. This dish had been served for many decades before I arrived on the scene, so that is a very old envelope! In those days, kosher chickens were bought from kosher butchers instead of big chain stores like Trader Joe's. (Chain stores did not carry kosher meat, so if you did not live in an area with a large Jewish population, you bought a stand-alone freezer and had your meat shipped in 3 - 4 X's a year from the nearest metro area with a kosher butcher.) When you bought a chicken, be it whole or cut up, it always came with its necks, pupiks (gizzards) and occasionally even feeseleh (feet). My grandmother would collect up the small parts from the shabbos chickens and freeze them separately, amassing quite a bit of material to be cooked up twice a year on the two holidays. Now I think you would have to order these parts expressly from a kosher butcher, and no, I have no idea as to what quantities, much to my sadness. She would serve this over a bed of white rice in delicate fine china high sided handled soup bowls. Individual servings would be around 1/3 of a cup over the rice. Wing bones were removed, but not neck bones. The bowls were served on saucers, and you sucked the meat from the neck bones and placed the little bones on the saucer. Despite its humble roots, this dish was very popular - even the kids would ask for seconds. This recipe is scant on both quantities and directions. I recall her talking about proportions in this - e.g. 2 necks to so many pupiks and feet. In part this is because the quantity of pupiks and necks was indeterminate due to how they were acquired. The meatballs were very small, no more than 3/4 of an inch, perhaps smaller, and they were seasoned although how is not mentioned on this envelope. I think for this recipe I will merely transcribe, rather than try to fill in.

For my formative years we had this recipe every Rosh Hashana and Thanksgiving. I'd looked through my grandmother's recipe boxes a few times in search of it, but didn't find it until now, 10 years after her passing. I'm so happy that I found it that I am using it to inaugurate a new section of my site called "The Grandma Zone" which will consist of recipes I have of hers, or those I find in her recipe boxes, many of whom she attributes to various friends who have now also passed on. This recipe has been retrieved from my grandmother's recipe boxes and the original paper (images below) was heavily spattered with food and almost illegible. I have rephrased it without changing any ingredients or techniques into a more traditional recipe format.

I really can't help you on the number of carrots, sorry. It is a lot, though. They cook down quite a bit. Also, she doesn't mention it, but she cut the beef into chunks, perhaps an inch and a half to 2 inches on a side.

We often ate a very heavy meal on erev Yom Kippur. I guess the idea was that indigestion is preferable to hunger? Grandma had several brisket recipes she used, this being one of them. I didn’t realize it came from one of her closest friends, Ethel Hellman, until I was picking through the recipe boxes. Its spattered and illegible state is testament to the fact that it was clearly one of my grandmother’s favorite versions of brisket.

This is such an emotional dish for my husband. He was very close with his grandmother, a lovely lovely woman, and she made these for him often because she knew how much he loved them. The recipe is imbued with the love in their relationship.

As a North American, turkey winds up being the main course for a lot of holiday events. And every time, I’m forced to reconcile the fact that it’s hard to get birds that are small with the fact that nobody seems to like leftover turkey. This cassoulet is my solution to the problem, and the majority of it can be made in advance, just waiting to receive the roughly 3 lbs of extra bird meat. It seems like a lot of work, but take a look at the number of servings... if you freeze them in smaller portions you have the protein part of truly delicious dinners set for many days, it's a lot less work/meal than it appears at the outset. I have structured it as a 2.5 step process, but, you can do it all together on the same day if you wish, it just takes a long time. The recipe uses a wide 8 quart stockpot, a skillet, a casserole dish, and an instapot specifically to get the beans done quickly, but you could cook the beans in advance conventionally (soak and just let to simmer most of the day or use a crock pot) or even (dare I say it) used canned beans, although the latter generally are a bit mushy. I am assuming you've basted your turkey with a bottle of wine, and that you don't thicken the basting juice with flour or cornstarch. This recipe makes an enormous amount, about 1.75 gallons. It is meant to be portioned out and frozen, as it freezes and reheats very well.

I've spent years developing my challah recipe. Success with bread recipes are highly dependent on elevation, ambient temperature and humidity. (Quality of ingredients matters too.) For your reference, I live at sea level with generally cool temperatures and high humidity. You may need to adjust your rising time, amount of liquid, use of gluten, etc. to suit your locale. If you are short on time, you can reduce the kneading time and omit the first rise, but this will affect the crumb and it may not rise as high. Regarding gluten - I find it gives me a much better rise, but you can certainly make challah without it.

I promise this is easy. You will look like such a badass to your friends when you serve them this. In fact, the hardest part is making sure you have a 9-10" pan you can take from the stovetop to the oven. I use a skillet that is all metal including the handle, but a braiser, a low-sided cast iron pan, or a loop handled skillet would be a bit more convenient. (I'm sure you'd be less likely to burn yourself because the skillet's long handle is hot and sticks out!) I have a particular take on pears: nothing beats them in pastry (or in fall cocktails) even though I don't particularly like to eat them raw. Pears have such a delicate and interesting flavor profile, and baking addresses the gritty (and unpleasant, to me) texture very well. They're very seasonal, so I like to take advantage of them when they're available. If you want to make this pareve, Pepperidge Farms makes a pareve puff pastry dough, and you can use fake butter to make the caramel. Yes, I know fake butter will never be as good as the real thing, and yes, I know that it doesn't "set" right. But it works well enough, if you're stuck doing that. Of course I recommend the milchig version if you have the choice - it's unquestionably better. But the pareve version is still delicious. The downside to this recipe is the downside to all recipes that have liquid mixed with puff pastry - it does not hold up well to being made far in advance. That said, it is fast to make, and does not take much time to set up. In planning a dinner, you can make this last, put it in the oven to bake while you are eating, and don't forget to set a timer to flip it out of the pan 10 minutes after you take it out.

As I mention in the milchig farro recipe, this is a grain that nutritionists recommend. Like bulgur and the wheat used to make bread flour, farro is a species in the genus Triticum. They're siblings, as it were. The farro recipe I make most often is unabashedly milchig, as it calls for smoked cheese. But sometimes you want to make this to go with a fleishig meal. I have adapted the recipe to be pareve, getting the smoke and umami flavors from other sources. The dishes are not the same, but they can play similar roles on the plate.

I've marked this as great for Rosh Hashanah and Erev Yom Kippur, because as anyone who has been foolish enough to grow their own zucchini knows, by this time of year you're hip deep in zucchini and desperate for ways in which to cook them. I personally dislike sautéd zucchini as the texture is invariably mushy. These spears are very flavorful and you can really knock out a large zucchini excess at a holiday dinner!

A truly classic version. Also makes a truly obscene quantity, so consider scaling this down if you're not cooking for an event or an army.

I make my chicken soup in a 12 quart pot. That's huge. Most people have an 8 quart soup pot, maybe a 10. So, you will likely need to scale it back. I also do this almost entirely by feel - I know I've got the right amounts in by looking. I'll try to guestimate as well as possible amounts, but as a benchmark, know that the soup pot is pretty full of ingredients (with lots of airspace, of course) by the time it's time to add the water. This was transcribed from phone calls with my grandmother when I had just graduated college, so there is no scrap of paper to photograph. I just have it written in my own hand, from long ago, somewhere. I've made it so many times that I don't need to look... I'm putting this here for everyone else's reference.

We often ate a very heavy meal on erev Yom Kippur. I guess the idea was that indigestion is preferable to hunger? Grandma had several brisket recipes she used, this being one of them. I didn’t realize it came from one of her closest friends, Ethel Hellman, until I was picking through the recipe boxes. Its spattered and illegible state is testament to the fact that it was clearly one of my grandmother’s favorite versions of brisket.

As I mention in the milchig farro recipe, this is a grain that nutritionists recommend. Like bulgur and the wheat used to make bread flour, farro is a species in the genus Triticum. They're siblings, as it were. The farro recipe I make most often is unabashedly milchig, as it calls for smoked cheese. But sometimes you want to make this to go with a fleishig meal. I have adapted the recipe to be pareve, getting the smoke and umami flavors from other sources. The dishes are not the same, but they can play similar roles on the plate.

I've marked this as great for Rosh Hashanah and Erev Yom Kippur, because as anyone who has been foolish enough to grow their own zucchini knows, by this time of year you're hip deep in zucchini and desperate for ways in which to cook them. I personally dislike sautéd zucchini as the texture is invariably mushy. These spears are very flavorful and you can really knock out a large zucchini excess at a holiday dinner!

This is designed for dressing up an autumnal treat - perfect dessert for a milchig Sukkot meal. Serve over a butter pecan or coffee ice cream.

I promise this is easy. You will look like such a badass to your friends when you serve them this. In fact, the hardest part is making sure you have a 9-10" pan you can take from the stovetop to the oven. I use a skillet that is all metal including the handle, but a braiser, a low-sided cast iron pan, or a loop handled skillet would be a bit more convenient. (I'm sure you'd be less likely to burn yourself because the skillet's long handle is hot and sticks out!) I have a particular take on pears: nothing beats them in pastry (or in fall cocktails) even though I don't particularly like to eat them raw. Pears have such a delicate and interesting flavor profile, and baking addresses the gritty (and unpleasant, to me) texture very well. They're very seasonal, so I like to take advantage of them when they're available. If you want to make this pareve, Pepperidge Farms makes a pareve puff pastry dough, and you can use fake butter to make the caramel. Yes, I know fake butter will never be as good as the real thing, and yes, I know that it doesn't "set" right. But it works well enough, if you're stuck doing that. Of course I recommend the milchig version if you have the choice - it's unquestionably better. But the pareve version is still delicious. The downside to this recipe is the downside to all recipes that have liquid mixed with puff pastry - it does not hold up well to being made far in advance. That said, it is fast to make, and does not take much time to set up. In planning a dinner, you can make this last, put it in the oven to bake while you are eating, and don't forget to set a timer to flip it out of the pan 10 minutes after you take it out.

As I mention in the milchig farro recipe, this is a grain that nutritionists recommend. Like bulgur and the wheat used to make bread flour, farro is a species in the genus Triticum. They're siblings, as it were. The farro recipe I make most often is unabashedly milchig, as it calls for smoked cheese. But sometimes you want to make this to go with a fleishig meal. I have adapted the recipe to be pareve, getting the smoke and umami flavors from other sources. The dishes are not the same, but they can play similar roles on the plate.

Chocolate & Nut Hamantaschen Filling (Dairy)

Hamentaschen (Dairy)

Here's my mother's world famous recipe! It's got a cookie type rather than a pastry type dough.

Note from Jewish Cuisine Host: This recipe comes from a book published in 1958. We were unable to find out if the book is still under copyright. The recipe is so interesting that we decided to publish it in the archive anyway, but if it is still under copyright we sincerely apologize to the authors and publishers in advance. Copyright holders - if you wish to see this recipe removed from the archive, please email me and I will remove it promptly. The Heart of the Settlement Cook Book, 1958. This recipe assumes you have a challah dough recipe of your own that you have ready. If you need a challah recipe, there are a few in this archive to choose from.

Recipe 1

My grandmother always served baked apples for dessert after Shabbas dinner. It's an extremely simple and healthy recipe that can be served hot or cold. We make one apple per person, but you can always make more to refridgerate them for Saturday! She never put any seasoning on the apples since they're quite yummy without any additions, but obviously things like cinnamon-sugar would go well over these. You can use any sort of apple - my grandmother always used red delicious since those were always the nicest apples in our area of the country.

A truly classic version. Also makes a truly obscene quantity, so consider scaling this down if you're not cooking for an event or an army.

I make my chicken soup in a 12 quart pot. That's huge. Most people have an 8 quart soup pot, maybe a 10. So, you will likely need to scale it back. I also do this almost entirely by feel - I know I've got the right amounts in by looking. I'll try to guestimate as well as possible amounts, but as a benchmark, know that the soup pot is pretty full of ingredients (with lots of airspace, of course) by the time it's time to add the water. This was transcribed from phone calls with my grandmother when I had just graduated college, so there is no scrap of paper to photograph. I just have it written in my own hand, from long ago, somewhere. I've made it so many times that I don't need to look... I'm putting this here for everyone else's reference.

Unlike the herring dish, the chopped liver really does benefit from hand chopping. It's not meant to be a puree, and hand chopping provides the correct texture. Use a mezza luna in a wooden bowl, ideally.

This is an easy recipe, and it doesn't require much in the way of ingredients or equipment. However, there is a critical step at the end where you must take care not to curdle the eggs by adding them too quickly to hot liquid... you'll see what I mean. This is a thin lemony soup that is most frequently served chilled with a splash of milk to thicken it, although it can be served warm. This is one of the Grandma Zone recipes that I learned directly from my grandmother many years ago.

I remember her making these on occasion, especially in the latter half of Pesach. They were simple but tasty. The instructions are a bit vague.

Hey, sometimes we don't have a box of matzah ball mix lying around. It happens.

This recipe has just about the shortest ingredient list and instructions imaginable. And it's barely legible. But if you're into minimalism, here you go - and really, potato, eggs, salt and fat is always a winning combination.

My grandmother served this dish every Pesach and Rosh Hashanah as one of many courses before the main meal. This dish had been served for many decades before I arrived on the scene, so that is a very old envelope! In those days, kosher chickens were bought from kosher butchers instead of big chain stores like Trader Joe's. (Chain stores did not carry kosher meat, so if you did not live in an area with a large Jewish population, you bought a stand-alone freezer and had your meat shipped in 3 - 4 X's a year from the nearest metro area with a kosher butcher.) When you bought a chicken, be it whole or cut up, it always came with its necks, pupiks (gizzards) and occasionally even feeseleh (feet). My grandmother would collect up the small parts from the shabbos chickens and freeze them separately, amassing quite a bit of material to be cooked up twice a year on the two holidays. Now I think you would have to order these parts expressly from a kosher butcher, and no, I have no idea as to what quantities, much to my sadness. She would serve this over a bed of white rice in delicate fine china high sided handled soup bowls. Individual servings would be around 1/3 of a cup over the rice. Wing bones were removed, but not neck bones. The bowls were served on saucers, and you sucked the meat from the neck bones and placed the little bones on the saucer. Despite its humble roots, this dish was very popular - even the kids would ask for seconds. This recipe is scant on both quantities and directions. I recall her talking about proportions in this - e.g. 2 necks to so many pupiks and feet. In part this is because the quantity of pupiks and necks was indeterminate due to how they were acquired. The meatballs were very small, no more than 3/4 of an inch, perhaps smaller, and they were seasoned although how is not mentioned on this envelope. I think for this recipe I will merely transcribe, rather than try to fill in.

For my formative years we had this recipe every Rosh Hashana and Thanksgiving. I'd looked through my grandmother's recipe boxes a few times in search of it, but didn't find it until now, 10 years after her passing. I'm so happy that I found it that I am using it to inaugurate a new section of my site called "The Grandma Zone" which will consist of recipes I have of hers, or those I find in her recipe boxes, many of whom she attributes to various friends who have now also passed on. This recipe has been retrieved from my grandmother's recipe boxes and the original paper (images below) was heavily spattered with food and almost illegible. I have rephrased it without changing any ingredients or techniques into a more traditional recipe format.

I really can't help you on the number of carrots, sorry. It is a lot, though. They cook down quite a bit. Also, she doesn't mention it, but she cut the beef into chunks, perhaps an inch and a half to 2 inches on a side.

This recipe is handy for Pesach, when you don’t want to have to use the typical kosher l’pesach yogurt full of guar gum, pectin, modified food starch and other low quality ingredients. You can make this directly in the metal instapot lining pot, or you can choose to use containers placed inside the instapot lining on a rack. I have come to prefer the latter. I use quart mason jars, and can get 3 into a pot at once on the rack and still close the lid. I know this looks like a wall of text, but it really takes more effort to explain than to do.

Puffs:

Technically, this recipe is a cross between a true sponge cake, a classic genoise and a chiffon cake. I like it because I do not have to separate the egg whites and yet I get a well- textured cake. It is an exceedingly MOIST cake that keep well and is a good foundation for fresh fruit, pareve, Passover mousse, or a chocolate ganache topping. Although the eggs are not separated you must treat them with care. Another must is a good, stationary, electric stationary mixer (e.g. such as a Kitchenaid, Rival or Sunbeam) with a whisk or whip attachment that will properly mount the warmed, whole eggs. "Are you sure this is a Passover cake" is the reaction most people have on their first bite of this flavorful cake. For people who loathe dry cakes and think Passover cakes are suspect at best, this is a must. A good cake to have if someone in your family has a birthday during Passover.

The advantage of making your own coffee ice cream is that you know with certainty that it's decaf. Also, home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

This is the frozen yogurt version of the ice cream recipe. It's marginally healthier than the ice cream version if you're worried about saturated fats, calories, or sugar content. We tried reducing the sugar content further and using stevia, but wound up with a tart block of ice with figs and walnuts. The bottom line is that in order to make non-fat frozen yogurt at all edible from a texture standpoint, you need to add things to alter the freezing point. Normal humans do this by adding things like sugar, fat or alcohol. Mega-conglomerate food corporations achieve this result by putting in highly processed emulsifiers and thickeners that alter viscosity and freezing point without changing fat content or sugar content. So... in the end, we realized it's a "devil you know" vs. "devil you don't know" predicament when it comes to balancing the conflicting aims of making frozen yogurt palatable/edible vs. "heart healthy" and low glycemic-index. We've opted for the devil we know and love, and just don't indulge all that often.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using. Mr. Yakityak was inspired to create this recipe after coming home from Italy, having had a stellar gelato version there.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

One of our favorite Passover desserts. From "The Jewish Kids Catalog"

From the Columbus OH Dispatch

The origin of this recipe is from my aunt's favorite cookbook - a Sephardic cookbook made by the sisterhood of a synagogue in Atlanta, GA. I have modified their recipe to the point that it's unrecognizable, so decided to write it down rather than rely on my pencil notes. If you look at a variety of Jewish cookbooks featuring the cuisine of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, you will find variations on this dish of ground meat and eggplant. It is the kosher version of moussaka. Because of the prohibition of mixing milk and meat there is no bechamel sauce or cheese, and as a result these kosher versions invariably have a slightly different, lighter taste. The use of cinnamon and nutmeg in a savory dish still imparts the characteristic complexity to these dairy-free moussakas. It is a two-step cooking process, first step on the stove, second step in the oven. This recipe makes a large quantity. Use a 6 quart skillet if you have one. Be warned that a regular 9 X 13 lasagna pan is too small to hold this.

This is the charoset I make every year. I always hear "I don't like Ashkenazi charoset, but I like your charoset," which... I don't understand because this really is bog standard for it as far as I know. Anyway, knock yourself out.

Most years I just do a variation on the charoset instructions found in AvRutick's classic Passover cookbook. But 2020 was different, and for a variety of reasons, I wound up deciding to make a charoset that I could can in jars. I had gotten the idea from a canning cookbook, but their version was very underseasoned in my opinion. This has all the flavor of my usual charoset, retains most of its texture, and can last 18 months. Which turned out to be handy for 2021, which was another unusual year. Anyway, this charoset is delicious year round, so you could consider making it and then using the jars throughout the year.

Here's the problem with cream of mushroom soup recipes. They always call for chicken stock, and that ain't kosher. I had a hankering for cream of mushroom soup during Pesach, and that provided a second hurdle... how to deal with the prohibition of chametz. There are two major steps to this recipe. The first is to make a vegetable stock and the second is to convert that to legit cream of mushroom soup. It is not practical to make small amounts of vegetable stock, so my stock recipe is enough for two batches of cream of mushroom soup. Once the stock is made, you can freeze one half for later. (Or make a double batch of cream of mushroom soup. Your choice.)

It's now 2019, and I first wrote this page over 20 years ago. I've made a lot of turkeys since then, and some of what I do has changed over the years. It's time for an update. I have switched over to a dry brined technique. It takes a little more planning because the bird needs to sit in the brine, but actually requires very little work. If, like me, you are forced by circumstance to buy frozen turkeys anyway (the only way I can get a good organic kosher turkey in my area), it represents no change because you can brine the bird as it defrosts in your refrigerator. This is a very surefire technique and does not require much skill, so don't be afraid to tackle a turkey for your holiday meal!

I use golden beets because my family and I prefer to have the beets peeled before cooking. This is much less of a hassle when the beets are yellow as they do not stain. But there is no reason you cannot use red beets or unpeeled beets of any color. Also, the beet greens can be saved and braised. There are many options, but I have included a second recipe below in the event that you don't have.

Note - crockpot Coq au Vin comes out messier than if you made it the conventional way in the oven... but it's also a lot less labor intensive. Often the chicken is falling off the bone - typical for crockpot recipes. You're trading presentation for ease of use... without affecting taste.

This is a fairly tart plum butter, which is the way I like it. However if that's not your style, you may wish to up the sugar by a cup. Dedicated sweet tooths might even want a cup and a half more sugar. You can also opt to use less of the lemon zest to reduce tartness. The spices are identifiable without being prominent. This recipe perfectly fills six 12 oz. jars with very little left over. Six 12 oz. jars is identical in volume to nine 8 oz. jars, for your reference.

I live on the west coast (USA). In practical terms, this means I can go into any grocery store and buy taro root and bok choy, but so help me if I want okra. Even kosher organic skinless boneless chicken isn't that hard to come by. (Thank you Trader Joe's®!) This recipe is what happens when I get fed up looking for ingredients for a more traditional stew out of the Rival Crock-pot® cookbook and run with whatever's out there. It's pretty good! If you like taro root and want to use more of it, substitute out potatoes by weight. Taro is a root vegetable that is common to oceanic cuisines around the world. You may be more familiar with it as a gourmet "potato" chip.

The simplicity of the name comes from when my children were very little. I typically rotated through a handful of chicken dishes for shabbos and because of the turmeric in this recipe, this is how the three of them referred to this particular dish.

You'll find variations on this recipe all over the internet. What distinguishes mine is the absence of ginger. I love the flavor of ginger, but sadly ginger does not love me, so I have to leave it out. This recipe is typically written for the grill, but it does equally well under the broiler, so I've written instructions for both, along with how to make the marinade safe for consumption. I sometimes make this for shavuos, because it's a good protein for a dairy meal.

This recipe is handy for Pesach, when you don’t want to have to use the typical kosher l’pesach yogurt full of guar gum, pectin, modified food starch and other low quality ingredients. You can make this directly in the metal instapot lining pot, or you can choose to use containers placed inside the instapot lining on a rack. I have come to prefer the latter. I use quart mason jars, and can get 3 into a pot at once on the rack and still close the lid. I know this looks like a wall of text, but it really takes more effort to explain than to do.

The advantage of making your own coffee ice cream is that you know with certainty that it's decaf. Also, home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

This is the frozen yogurt version of the ice cream recipe. It's marginally healthier than the ice cream version if you're worried about saturated fats, calories, or sugar content. We tried reducing the sugar content further and using stevia, but wound up with a tart block of ice with figs and walnuts. The bottom line is that in order to make non-fat frozen yogurt at all edible from a texture standpoint, you need to add things to alter the freezing point. Normal humans do this by adding things like sugar, fat or alcohol. Mega-conglomerate food corporations achieve this result by putting in highly processed emulsifiers and thickeners that alter viscosity and freezing point without changing fat content or sugar content. So... in the end, we realized it's a "devil you know" vs. "devil you don't know" predicament when it comes to balancing the conflicting aims of making frozen yogurt palatable/edible vs. "heart healthy" and low glycemic-index. We've opted for the devil we know and love, and just don't indulge all that often.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using. Mr. Yakityak was inspired to create this recipe after coming home from Italy, having had a stellar gelato version there.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

We gave up on trying to make this super healthy. It’s probably healthier than ice cream in that it is lower calorie and higher in protein, but don’t kid yourself… it’s still high in sugar and fat. It’s just not possible to make it lower in sugar and fat without making it turn out like a sour block of ice.

My aunt and uncle lived next door to me in childhood, and I grew up in my aunt’s kitchen as if it were my own. Her Sephardic cooking was very different than the Ashkenazic cooking of the rest of the family, but I thought nothing of this because I ate it so often. Somehow all these different flavor profiles worked just fine together, with little to no distinction being made. I wish more of the world worked together just as easily.

I promise this is easy. You will look like such a badass to your friends when you serve them this. In fact, the hardest part is making sure you have a 9-10" pan you can take from the stovetop to the oven. I use a skillet that is all metal including the handle, but a braiser, a low-sided cast iron pan, or a loop handled skillet would be a bit more convenient. (I'm sure you'd be less likely to burn yourself because the skillet's long handle is hot and sticks out!) I have a particular take on pears: nothing beats them in pastry (or in fall cocktails) even though I don't particularly like to eat them raw. Pears have such a delicate and interesting flavor profile, and baking addresses the gritty (and unpleasant, to me) texture very well. They're very seasonal, so I like to take advantage of them when they're available. If you want to make this pareve, Pepperidge Farms makes a pareve puff pastry dough, and you can use fake butter to make the caramel. Yes, I know fake butter will never be as good as the real thing, and yes, I know that it doesn't "set" right. But it works well enough, if you're stuck doing that. Of course I recommend the milchig version if you have the choice - it's unquestionably better. But the pareve version is still delicious. The downside to this recipe is the downside to all recipes that have liquid mixed with puff pastry - it does not hold up well to being made far in advance. That said, it is fast to make, and does not take much time to set up. In planning a dinner, you can make this last, put it in the oven to bake while you are eating, and don't forget to set a timer to flip it out of the pan 10 minutes after you take it out.

This dessert is wonderful late in summer, when the peaches are still in the market... but maybe they're starting to be of lesser quality. I think of it as sort of a last hurrah for peaches for the year. You do not need to peel the peaches (as you would for a pie). I do my best to avoid substitutions with inferior ingredients to meet dietary restrictions. I think it's better to find recipes that naturally exclude the problem ingredient because the outcome is tastier. A crumble really doesn't need wheat flour by definition and actually benefits from the flavor of almond flour, which makes this recipe taste like it was always meant to be this way... because it was.

You get older, and suddenly find yourself with your very own cardiologist and get told that you need to switch over to less processed food and whole grains. Well, farro fits the bill. It’s actually quite delicious, and can be used as a substitute for white rice in many recipes that call for such. This recipe however was written expressly for farro based on something my mom used to make with farro when I was little. It makes a nice shavous dish. I also use it for when I am having a milchig shabbos.

My grandmother always served baked apples for dessert after Shabbas dinner. It's an extremely simple and healthy recipe that can be served hot or cold. We make one apple per person, but you can always make more to refridgerate them for Saturday! She never put any seasoning on the apples since they're quite yummy without any additions, but obviously things like cinnamon-sugar would go well over these. You can use any sort of apple - my grandmother always used red delicious since those were always the nicest apples in our area of the country.

I make my chicken soup in a 12 quart pot. That's huge. Most people have an 8 quart soup pot, maybe a 10. So, you will likely need to scale it back. I also do this almost entirely by feel - I know I've got the right amounts in by looking. I'll try to guestimate as well as possible amounts, but as a benchmark, know that the soup pot is pretty full of ingredients (with lots of airspace, of course) by the time it's time to add the water. This was transcribed from phone calls with my grandmother when I had just graduated college, so there is no scrap of paper to photograph. I just have it written in my own hand, from long ago, somewhere. I've made it so many times that I don't need to look... I'm putting this here for everyone else's reference.

Grandma made this all the time, but it was a staple on shabbos.

"Luchshen" is Yiddish for noodle, and a "kugel" is a casserole. There are a great variety of luchshen kugels out there... and they can be either sweet or savory, or somewhere in between. My grandmother's kugel is a fairly simple one, and falls in the 'somewhere in between' category. It's a reliable old favorite that is easy to make, complements many dishes and refrigerates well. She made it every shabbos without fail.

This is such an emotional dish for my husband. He was very close with his grandmother, a lovely lovely woman, and she made these for him often because she knew how much he loved them. The recipe is imbued with the love in their relationship.

Here's the recipe I use 'most every week - it makes having a bread machine worthwhile - even if I don't use it for much else :-)

I've spent years developing my challah recipe. Success with bread recipes are highly dependent on elevation, ambient temperature and humidity. (Quality of ingredients matters too.) For your reference, I live at sea level with generally cool temperatures and high humidity. You may need to adjust your rising time, amount of liquid, use of gluten, etc. to suit your locale. If you are short on time, you can reduce the kneading time and omit the first rise, but this will affect the crumb and it may not rise as high. Regarding gluten - I find it gives me a much better rise, but you can certainly make challah without it.

I promise this is easy. You will look like such a badass to your friends when you serve them this. In fact, the hardest part is making sure you have a 9-10" pan you can take from the stovetop to the oven. I use a skillet that is all metal including the handle, but a braiser, a low-sided cast iron pan, or a loop handled skillet would be a bit more convenient. (I'm sure you'd be less likely to burn yourself because the skillet's long handle is hot and sticks out!) I have a particular take on pears: nothing beats them in pastry (or in fall cocktails) even though I don't particularly like to eat them raw. Pears have such a delicate and interesting flavor profile, and baking addresses the gritty (and unpleasant, to me) texture very well. They're very seasonal, so I like to take advantage of them when they're available. If you want to make this pareve, Pepperidge Farms makes a pareve puff pastry dough, and you can use fake butter to make the caramel. Yes, I know fake butter will never be as good as the real thing, and yes, I know that it doesn't "set" right. But it works well enough, if you're stuck doing that. Of course I recommend the milchig version if you have the choice - it's unquestionably better. But the pareve version is still delicious. The downside to this recipe is the downside to all recipes that have liquid mixed with puff pastry - it does not hold up well to being made far in advance. That said, it is fast to make, and does not take much time to set up. In planning a dinner, you can make this last, put it in the oven to bake while you are eating, and don't forget to set a timer to flip it out of the pan 10 minutes after you take it out.

As I mention in the milchig farro recipe, this is a grain that nutritionists recommend. Like bulgur and the wheat used to make bread flour, farro is a species in the genus Triticum. They're siblings, as it were. The farro recipe I make most often is unabashedly milchig, as it calls for smoked cheese. But sometimes you want to make this to go with a fleishig meal. I have adapted the recipe to be pareve, getting the smoke and umami flavors from other sources. The dishes are not the same, but they can play similar roles on the plate.

This is a staple we often made for shabbat.

The simplicity of the name comes from when my children were very little. I typically rotated through a handful of chicken dishes for shabbos and because of the turmeric in this recipe, this is how the three of them referred to this particular dish.

You get older, and suddenly find yourself with your very own cardiologist and get told that you need to switch over to less processed food and whole grains. Well, farro fits the bill. It’s actually quite delicious, and can be used as a substitute for white rice in many recipes that call for such. This recipe however was written expressly for farro based on something my mom used to make with farro when I was little. It makes a nice shavous dish. I also use it for when I am having a milchig shabbos.