A growing number of new cookbooks are oriented towards the more health conscious Jewish cook. One such book is Nechama Cohen\’s \”Enlitened Kosher Cooking,\” published just this year.
Minerva \”Min\” Leonard doesn\’t have time for breakfast. She\’s too busy shopping for ingredients and preparing a salad bar luncheon for 80 people at Adat Ari El Sisterhood\’s weekly Multi-Interest Day. Or making 10 lokshen kugels for her friend\’s daughter\’s bat mitzvah. Or baking \”I can\’t even begin to tell you how many\” batches of cranberry and chocolate-chip mandelbread to bestow on friends, neighbors and an appreciative Jewish Journal reporter.
With the flurry that surrounds a b\’nai mitzvah celebration, we often lose sight that this day — this passage from childhood to adulthood — will be one of the most meaningful memories of his or her life.
Margie Pomerantz and her fellow volunteers from Congregation Beth David, a nearby Conservative synagogue, were out looking for Jews. In a supermarket. Unaffiliated Jews, if possible, but they weren\’t being picky.
Something new for the holiday, use the charoset ingredients to make a Passover Fruit Cake filled with nuts and dried fruit that offers a tasty and a crunchy treat. It is similar to the Italian delicacy known as Panforte that originated in Sienna. The mixture is tossed together in a large bowl, spooned into parchment-lined baking pans, and baked for an hour and a half. The good news is that these loaves will easily keep for the eight days of the holiday.
But, for the past 15 years, the festivities have included our special friends, artist Peter Shire and his wife, Donna. It all began when we invited Peter to visit the Skirball Museum, which was then located on the campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, next to USC.
\”I never think of food as something that\’s stationary,\” Nathan said on a recent book tour stop in Los Angeles. \”Things change, neighborhoods change, food changes, we get new ingredients, people get ideas. And when you come to a country you adapt what you knew to that country.\”
While Crostini di Spuma di Tonno, Zuppa di Pesce Passato, Dolce di Tagliatelle might not sound like Jewish food, Italian Jews have long enjoyed these dishes.
Joyce Goldstein made her first trip to Italy in 1957 and instantly became what she calls a \”fanatic Italophile.\” The former chef-owner of San Francisco\’s Square One and daughter of Russian immigrants, Goldstein threw herself into Italian art, architecture, language, culture and food.
For many years, my daughter and I were lucky to be invited out for Passover. Besides joining a big group of people, and sampling a variety of Passover foods, I relished the added benefit of not having to plan, shop and cook for the daunting seder (first and second night) meals.
We just returned from a trip to Italy, concentrating on the provinces of Puglia and Campania close to Naples. It is a region that we enjoy because of the diversity of the foods and wines available.
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