All Recipes

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.

This is more of a technique than a recipe - it's one of the best ways to prepare mushrooms, be they chanterelles, trumpets or portabellos. But you have to know... it's not intuitive. Mushrooms feel dry to the touch but when heated they release water. While it's tempting to put a splash of wine in the pan, you will wind up with sogginess if you do. Save the wine to make a separate sauce if you want that flavor. You'll get the best flavor out of the mushrooms if you don't add any additional liquid (other than butter at the end). Do use a timer to get the timing right until you have gotten this down pat. Note that times are approximate - different mushrooms hold different amounts of water. Chanterelles hold more than trumpets, for example. But trumpets can hold up to browning very well.

There is nothing remotely unique about this zucchini bread. You will find thousands of variations on it all over the internet. There's a reason it's a classic - it freezes well and tastes fantastic. I put "freezes well" before "tastes fantastic" for a reason... a reason that anyone who has ever acted on the "Oh what the heck, let's plant zucchini this year" impulse knows by heart. When you wind up with 15 lbs. of zucchini in a single weekend, you invariably wind up using up some of it to make zucchini bread. And once you've given all your friends, family, and neighbors their loaf (or 2), you wind up freezing the rest and eating it in February. I was told that what makes this particular version of zucchini bread freeze well is that it uses oil, not butter. Because oil is less likely to be solid at cool temperatures, it goes through fewer solid/liquid/solid cycles than butter does under similar circumstances, which means it just holds up better to freezing in general. Don't know that it's true, but I do know this version tastes just great after a stint in the freezer. It also has the grace to be pareve, which means you can foist it on people after any sort of meal.

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.)

This recipe has been up on this website for oh... at least 20 years. When i wrote the original, I was new to bread baking. I'm no master baker now, by any means, but I've made decades worth of challah and raisin walnut wheat bread, so I have a little more experience. So when I decided to make a rye loaf recently, I looked at the recipe and grew a bit suspicious about it... it did not seem ideal. The version below has been adjusted, and is current as of summer 2026. It bears mentioning that 1) there are two general categories of rye breads, and that 2) rye itself contains no gluten. The two types of rye: there is a 100% (or nearly so) rye bread, which produces a dense, moist, dark crumbly bread that often includes a sourdough starter. Then there's the type of rye bread you get when you order a "hot pastrami on seeded rye with brown mustard, the way God intended." That sort of rye often has a cornmeal crust, and has quite a bit of wheat flour mixed in with the rye. This is known as a "deli" rye, and that's what this recipe is. Because rye contains no gluten, but does contain a group of polysaccharides known as pentosans, it works with water very differently than wheat-based flours. When exposed to water, rye flour gets gummy and tacky, and does not have the long-strand structure of gluten to allow it to form air bubbles in the dough. You'll notice that I have you use a 4:1 ratio of wheat bread flour to rye, and I have you adding gluten on top of that. All that wheat and the added gluten allow the rye loaf to rise, while still having the flavor of deli rye. That said, it does not knead at all like an all-wheat dough. It's stiff and dense, and is tiring to knead. If you add water to make it looser, the dough will be a sticky mess, and it will spread sideways instead of rising. That said, it's possible that you may need a tinch more water... if the dough tears instead of kneading or does not come together well, you can add a teaspoon of water after at least 5 minutes of kneading. You can do this 2 more times for a total of 3 extra teaspoons of water, but beyond that, if you add more water, you'll likely make something that looks more like what would happen if a flatbread and a deli rye loaf loved each other very much. This recipe is for a 1 1/2 lb. loaf.

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 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.