Arriving at the crowded restaurant Itzik Hagadol Grill in Encino is like entering the hustle and bustle of Israel. Large groups of happy, noisy people talk at once while consuming platters of wonderful salad dishes and grilled meats that overflow tables.
Some of Jewish Journal Writers’ Favorite Recipes
Be aware that these delicious matzah balls in a recipe brought over from Germany are denser than typical \”Eastern\” ones, and are akin to a German dumpling or \”knoedel\”. I have enjoyed these many times at Passover seders at the Ermans, and to me they are more authentic than what we usually eat. Enjoy!
Preheat oven to 375 – 400.\nMix together the following ingredients in a large bowl:\n
Line a cookie sheet with tin foil-shiny side down. Spray with cooking spray.\nFill cookie sheet with matzah.\n\nIn a pan, boil 1/2 cup of margarine or butter and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar until caramelized\nPour over matzah. Bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes.\n
In our house, a man’s place is in the kitchen. That’s the way it’s been for all 18 years of our marriage. I do the cooking, not because I have to, but because I like to. I actually worked as a chef and caterer for years before we met. My wife picks up the domestic slack doing those household chores I don’t enjoy, like everything else. This is an arrangement that has worked out well from the start of our marriage.
Food plays an important role during Passover — from the six symbolic items on the seder plate to those foods avoided during the eight-day holiday, like chametz (leavened grains) and kitniyot (legumes). But the dinner that follows the seder on the first two nights, when family and friends gather to retell the story of the Jews’ exodus from slavery to freedom, can leave a host slaving away in the kitchen.
They say we are all children of the same God, but it’s clear we don’t act like it. For centuries we’ve slaughtered one another in the name of God. We’ve enslaved, oppressed, reviled and ridiculed our fellow men and women because their god just looked at us funny. I belong to a people who, because we chose not to believe in somebody else’s idea of God, suffered 2,000 years of mayhem at the hands of true believers. I’m over it — sort of — but a quick glance in any history book makes me wary of those who say the path of human unity is through the Divine.
A Beijing dairy has begun distributing fresh kosher milk throughout China.
For anyone who has grown up in a Jewish household, deli is a byword for comfort, promising big cushy booths and matzah ball soup and old-fashioned sodas, egg creams and malteds. Portions tend to be oversized and unabashedly hearty; the deli menu may be the only one in America immune to the scourge of the side salad.
