I Have a Hot Idea

I caught this item (thanks HSM):-

OVERLAND PARK, KC — There are only a handful of kosher BBQ’s around the country, but of course Kansas City has the first sanctioned kosher BBQ contest. Jewish and non-Jewish BBQ teams faced off in overland park on Sunday for first place and some bragging rights.


...Everything at the competition had to be provided to insure that it met Old Testament standards.
“The differences are they all the meat, chicken, and every ingredient used in any of the food process is certified kosher from beginning to end,” Rabbi Mendel Segal said...“I can’t inject butter into my brisket, but we get creative and do other things,” Kerschner said.  But in the spirit of competition, it’s all good, because Goodbinder has his own completely kosher strategy.  “Pray hard,” Goodbinder said.

There are others:

In a city where treif BBQ restaurants far outnumber synagogues, it was only natural that a creative team at the oldest, Jewish Orthodox congregation in the Mid-South, Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth (ASBEE), decided twenty-four years ago to offer a kosher alternative to the long-standing Memphis BBQ contest of the swine variety.

ASBEE is proud to produce the ASBEE World Kosher BBQ Championship, which has become one of the year's most anticipated events in the Memphis Jewish community. Last year, the festival hosted 40 teams and more than 3000 attendees. 

That one earned CNN coverage. 

and this

The Long Island Kosher BBQ Championship brings an iconic aspect of American culture – team barbecue competition – to Long Island’s Jewish community. This competition, which is for both barbecue enthusiasts as well as casual backyard grillers, is sanctioned by the World Kosher BBQ Championship in Memphis, Tennessee and hosted by Temple Beth Torah in Westbury, New York.

There's also one in Birmingham, Alabama.

In Atlanta, as well.

Just like the first Long Island Kosher BBQ Championship, this event will be filled with great food, family fun and old-fashioned hospitality. With events ranging from a pickle-eating contest to a basketball skills tournament to an array of live entertainment...In 2012, 0ver 2,500 guests, sponsors, participants and teams traveled from near and far – Miami, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Yonkers, and all across Long Island – to make the first annual Long Island Kosher BBQ Championship a success,

So, why not a contest at ... Tel Shiloh.


Can we get Ancient Shiloh to cooperate and provide the space while we mobilize sponsors for equipment and get our wineries to offer reduced prices for their products grown in the area?



I even have two names from which to choose:


The first is 

אַחַת אַפָּיִם

based on the verse in I Samuel 1:

וַיְהִי הַיּוֹם, וַיִּזְבַּח אֶלְקָנָה...וּלְחַנָּה, יִתֵּן מָנָה אַחַת אַפָּיִם:  כִּי אֶת-חַנָּה אָהֵב,

but unto Hannah he gave a double portion; for he loved Hannah, 

and the second choice could be

זבח מַּזְלֵג שְׁלֹשׁ הַשִּׁנַּיִם

based on the other verse in I Samuel 2:


 וּמִשְׁפַּט הַכֹּהֲנִים, אֶת-הָעָם--כָּל-אִישׁ זֹבֵחַ זֶבַח, וּבָא נַעַר הַכֹּהֵן כְּבַשֵּׁל הַבָּשָׂר, וְהַמַּזְלֵג שְׁלֹשׁ הַשִּׁנַּיִם, בְּיָדוֹ.

when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came, 

while the flesh was in seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand; 

Isn't that a hot idea?

^

Eastern European Food - The Academic Approach

Does this qualify for the Kosher Cooking Carnival?

Call for Papers

Food for Thought:Culture and Cuisine in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1800-present

Symposium at the University of Texas – February 7-8,  2014

The Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies in cooperation with the Department of History and the Center for European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin are hosting a one-two day symposium on the culture of food in the Russian Empire (and Soviet Union) and its successor states as well as “Eastern Europe” broadly defined. Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplines, speakers will explore how patterns of food cultivation, preparation, and consumption are embedded in local, national, and trans-national cultural configurations. Scholars from all disciplines are welcome to apply, but organizers especially welcome contributions from history, literary and cultural (including film and media) studies, and
anthropology. We hope to reexamine the history and culture of the region through the lens of its food—that is, cultural attitudes, marketing and packaging, memories and representations of particular foods, patterns of eating, cultural dietary restrictions, or local cultural difference that were expressed through divergent patterns of food preparation and consumption. How was food as “tradition” experienced, how was its cultivation and production gendered, how was it tied to religious or ethnic differentiation, in what ways was it processed, “packaged” or otherwise modernized—for example, tied to global patterns and flows.  How was it tied to private and public socialization—the kitchen versus the restaurant or cafeteria and what did this mean for local or national cultures? How was food depicted in film and literature, described in cookbooks, marketed at home and abroad? Did food take on new meanings—cultural, political, or otherwise—under communism? And finally, what about food culture or food nostalgia after communism? We hope for creative approaches to these and other questions related to the production, consumption, exchange, and service of food in Russia and Eastern Europe from 1800-present.


Featuring Dr. Ronald LeBlanc as Keynote Speaker
“From Russian Vegetarians to Soviet Hamburgers: Tolstoy, Mikoyan, and the
Ethics/Politics of Diet.”

^

Kosher On-line and Apsy

My good friend, Yechiel Spira, has, after a hiatus, returned to posting on issues of Israeli Kashrut concerns at Online Kashrus Information, announcing that:

Some of the larger hashgachas have taken a giant step forward towards assisting consumers, using today’s technology to provide us with real time information anywhere in the world. The OU, OK and cRc offer free programs that may be downloaded to one’s Android or iPhone device. While the programs vary, one is provided with an ability to confirm a hechsher, search under product categories, product type, view kashrus alerts and more. Best of all, it is free.

I am not that technologically savvy but for those who are, go and read the entire article and follow his blog.

^

Is That L'chayim Kosher?

The story:

Beer that tastes like breakfast? It almost sounds too good to be true, but until relatively recently in beer-making history, it was the norm: Before the mid-1700s, barley used for brewing was dried over wood fires, and all beers tasted a little smoky as a result. Today, we may have the technology for pale, clean-tasting malt, but smoked beers are making a comeback, from Bamberg, Germany's traditional Rauchbiers to more-creative interpretations by America's best craft brewers.

These probably aren't beers you'll want to order by the pint at your local watering hole — they're a bit intense and bizarre-tasting unless you drink them with food. The good news is, they're the best possible accompaniment to smoky, slow-cooked meats like barbecued ribs, cheeses like cheddar or gouda, Chinese food (especially if it involves sesame oil, black bean sauce, or hoisin), Mexican food (especially carne asada or anything in a mole sauce), game meats, burgers, mushrooms... you get the picture. Discover how much better these foods are with smoked beer, and you'll never want to be Rauchbier-less again...my favorite might be the darkest (and most local) of the smoked beers I've had recently. Captain Lawrence Brewing Company in upstate New York makes a delicious smoked porter that smells a bit like a coffee milkshake with candied bacon in it (hey, that's not a bad idea!). It's creamy and understated with roasty chocolate notes that make grilled steak or lamb chops taste even richer.

^

Another Reason Not to Eat Ham

Not only is it not kosher but dangerous:-

...Retired fork-lift driver Ronald Burns was tasting the meat at a branch of Sainsbury's during a weekly shopping trip with his wife Vera when a piece became lodged in his throat and he stopped breathing. Unaware that he had started choking, Mrs Burns walked away from the delicatessen counter and carried on with her shopping.

It was only when she wondered why her husband had not followed her that she returned and discovered him on the supermarket floor.

Mrs Burns then watched horrified as staff at the store in Hatch Warren, Basingstoke, Hants, desperately tried to revive her husband of 57 years.  He was taken to hospital, where doctors removed the five centimetre by three centimetre piece of meat.

However the 78-year-old had been starved of oxygen to the brain and died five days later.

^

Kosher Coexistence

Only in New York?

Coney Island Bialys and Bagels...has been rescued by two Pakistani Muslims — and they're keeping it kosher.

Coney Island Bialys and Bagels makes everything by hand, the old-fashioned way. Zafaryab Ali, who worked in the bakery for 11 years before leaving to drive a cab, now runs the shop, along with his partner Peerzada Shah...The store was founded by Morris Rosenzweig, who came from Bialystock, Poland, at the turn of the 20th century, where bialys originated.

Shah, Ali and Ross say that not much has changed. They are using the same ingredients, from the same suppliers.

"I gave them all the phone numbers," says Ross. "If you need this. this is who you are going to get it from, and they stayed with all that."

...As for keeping the bakery kosher, Ali says, "Kosher and halal is very, very close, like brother and sister, maybe twins."

Ali and Shah say the only thing remaining is official kosher supervision and certification. They are looking for a rabbi to bless and supervise.

^

Palestinian Tartar?

After that Gross tour of Jerusalem, the NYTimes continues with this:

Street Wise | Tel Aviv’s Hot New Block

Food, Travel By ANTHONY GRANT

Nahalat Binyamin Street, which crosses lower Rothschild Boulevard — Tel Aviv’s chief axis of white Bauhaus beauties — is emerging as the microhood of the moment. By day this thin strip is all garment-district shuffle and cheeky graffiti art, but at night the street takes on a moody but electric air. You might find Bar Refaeli, or at least plenty of women who look like models, at the street’s hottest spot, Mizlala (No. 57). Here the city’s star chef, Meir Adoni, whips up dishes like fish kebabs, garlic-sage linguine with white asparagus and something called Palestinian tartar — ground beef, raw tahini paste, pine nuts, charred eggplant puree, cumin and parsley.

A less clublike energy prevails at the new 44, named not for the address (No. 29) but for the house libation, which involves 44 oranges, coffee beans and as many quarts of vodka (or something like that: none of the revelers here seem bothered with keeping count). The kitchen is captained by a talented graduate of Joz and Loz, Tel Aviv’s famously lesbian-owned eatery, who feeds the hipster brigade pomegranate seed salad, oxtail tortellini and a crushed sesame semifreddo that opens new doors of Levantine bliss.

High-ceilinged HaTraklin (No. 41) looks like a Paris bistro crossed with a Greenwich Village cafe, and has a staggering selection of Israeli wine. (Try some Asif, a fruity white made by two rabbis who tend a nonkosher vineyard [?] in the Negev Desert.) You can also roast your meat on a piping hot rock at the bar, then rip off bits to dip in the chef Moshe Assaf’s date- and honey-infused roast garlic bulb. Yossi Ben-Odis, the sommelier and owner, organizes regular cinema-themed feasts in the back room.

Skip the garlic if you’re headed to Shpagat (No. 43), a mixed-but-mostly-gay bar whose name means “splits” (as in what those Batsheva dancers do so well). The modish duplex space, with unusual tiered seating, fills up fast with a smart but low-key crowd swilling and chilling over glasses of arak.

But kosher?  Well, for sure the wine is.

^

Eat Kosher at Shiloh's

No, not at Shiloh in Benjamin Region of the Land of Israel but in Los Angeles, West Pico, land of the Jews.

Shiloh's is a restaurant.  One where a new generation of gourmet go-tos go.  Fusion food between traditional and haute-cuisine.  What seems to be a great steak house.

If anyone has been there and sampled the menu, let me know.

^

When Kosher is Funny

While having dinner just now, I was watching Rush Hour 2 and saw, for the first time the scene on the plane when being served food, he asks if it is Kosher.

Searching, I found this:

The scene where Carter gets the kosher meal was originally scripted to have Carter ask if Lee "want some of my gefilte fish?" after the stewardess left. But Chris Tucker couldn't pronounce "gefilte", so the scene never made the final cut (outtakes of this scene are in the end credits).

From the original script:

Chris Tucker: "Is this the kosher meal?"
Flight Attendent: "Yes sir, thot's our kosher meal?"
Chris Tucker: "What's the name of it?"
: "Gefilte, gefilte fish."
Chris Tucker: "Gafilka fish. Locks and Bagles. This is my faverite. What's the name of this stuff?"
: "Gefilte fish."
Chris Tucker: "Gafilka fish. Oh, what's the name of this fish?"
: "Gefilte fish."
Chris Tucker: "Gafilka, gafilte. You know what this is? What is it?"
: "Gefilte fish."
Chris Tucker: "It's filte fish. Filte fish, you want some of my filte fish? You want any of this shi... Uh what's the name of this fish?"
: "Gefilte fish."
Chris Tucker: "(Laughs)"
: "Gefilte fish!"
Chris Tucker: "Gafilte Fish, alright. okay."
Bret Ratner: "Gefilte fish. I love this stuff."
Chris Tucker: "I really don't. You'll have black people all over the world eating this. Who eats locks and Bagles? I'll have sowe filte fish."

In another scene, while going into another restaurant to talk to a contact and find out if his money is countereit, he also notes he prefers kosher food.

Funny.

^

Kosher Locust?

Well, locust bean gum anyway is.

I saw this

and was intrigued.

So I found this about Locust bean gum

is a galactomannan vegetable gum extracted from the seeds of the Carob tree, mostly found in the Mediterranean. The long pods that grow on the tree are used to make this gum...Locust Bean Gum occurs as a white to yellow-white powder...Locust Bean Gum is used as a thickening agent and gelling agent in food technology. The bean, when made into powder, is sweet—with a flavor similar to chocolate—and is used to sweeten foods and as a chocolate substitute.

As for real locusts, are they kosher? well that's another story.

Are you Yeminite?


^

This Post is Not Kosher

Take a look, pork slaughtered according to the Beit Yosef which is under the supervision opf Rav Ovadia Yosef:

Here's the bottom line and the whole - non-kosher - story is here:

On Thursday morning, I heard back from Rabbi Luzer Weiss, the director of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Kosher Law Enforcement, who e-mailed:

I was at the store this morning and spoke to the manager. He said that this store at no time sells kosher meat and as a matter of fact specializes in pork cuts only. The machine was bought used and had been at the store only a few days. From what was on the label most likely the machine came from a store that sold kosher. He said an employee punched the key to print labels and put the labels the machine printed on the packages. When it was brought to his attention he had a person from where he bought the machine delete the words. The machine now can’t print any kosher labels—I saw it myself this morning and had labels printed which I took with me.

Read it all.
^

Amy, Kosher Is Better

Oh, oh.

It is not known exactly what caused the 27-year-old British singer to suddenly feel so ill, although her unease became so bad that she decided she needed professional help.  "Amy is in the clinic being treated for food poisoning,” a source told British newspaper The Sun.  "She hasn't said what she's eaten but has been telling patients that she feels dog rough."

Amy, you're Jewish.  Keep to a kosher menu.  I can't say it's perfect but it's your best chance to keep from food poisoning.

^

Yuch

.

Reported:

...bacon soda...unveiled by Jones Soda Co. - is vegetarian friendly and kosher. Those who tried it said it tastes like swill. Half of more than 40 people approached refused the taste test outright. "You are supposed to eat bacon not drink it," snapped Arlette Cepeda of the Bronx.

David Horowitz was among a brave handful of Orthodox Jews willing to sample the swine-flavored soda. "My mother is rolling over at this one, but I will give it a try," said Horowitz, 46, who provided a running commentary as he guzzled. "Tastes like beef or something. It's quite strong, and thick. Oh! And it is gross! Who would want that?"

...Seattle-based Jones Soda teamed up with J&D's Foods, the maker of bacon-flavored products such as Bacon Salt and Baconaisse, to produce the burgundy-colored beverage. For months, a team of "flavor experts" worked to simulate the perfect bacon flavor without adding any real bacon.
The soda is being touted as part of a new cocktail, mixed with bourbon, an egg, cream, and soda water.

^

And Now, A Bit on Judaism

This wall poster warns of bugs in the food most used for the "signs" for the first night of Rosh Hashana:


This one warns about double-ovens without the proper division for meat and dairy cooking and baking and roasting and suggest one product, Dalongi? Delonghi (I was corrected but they only make table-top ovens):


And this is a new book, "Darchei Tohar", 120 pages of how to keep separated from your wife during her "niddah" time:



- - -

The Chutzpah of Traif

Chutzpah, you know.

But "treif" (okay, traif)?

A new non-kosher restaurant:

IN the valley of the shadow of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where bearded Hasidim cross paths with mustachioed steam punks, stands the restaurant Traif.

The name, in Yiddish, refers to food forbidden under Jewish dietary law. To underscore the point, the front door has the logo of a cute little piggy stamped with a heart.

Some would call this wit, others blasphemy. No matter. The name generated plenty of buzz before the place opened in April, which presumably was the intent of the owners, Jason Marcus, the chef, and his girlfriend, Heather Heuser. (He’s Jewish, she’s not.)

But here is Traif’s little secret: it is, simply, a very nice restaurant...Yes, there is pork belly ($8); calamari ($8); a flat-iron steak with blue-cheese butter ($18). But no kid goat seethed in its mother’s milk. No frog legs or rabbit. Not even filet mignon...

Traif
229 South Fourth Street (Havemeyer Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (347) 844-9578, traifny.com

There are some Jews who always are trying to be different.


- - -

I Presume It's Kosher

Decided to have a Chinese "last meal" before the "Nine Days".

And I played my wife and took a picture of the portions:




But that soy sauce.

The OU, it seems, assures me it's kosher.

But the dispenser did not have any symbol on it and it was a product of Japan, not the USA.


- - -

He, Too, Makes A Moral Point

Rabbi Asher Zeilingold

...For the last four years, the Conservative Movement has waged a relentless and unyielding campaign against Agriprocessors and its most visible leader, Sholom Rubashkin. The Conservative Movement declared a boycott of all Rubashkin products, based on their many allegations and claims of worker abuse.

None of these claims had or have ever been substantiated, verified, validated, or proven by any respectable justice authority.

In tandem with their efforts to destroy Rubashkin, they promoted the Hekscher Tzedek, the Conservative mark of “ethical kashrut”. With every mention of the claims of atrocities purported to have happened at Agriprocessors, they spoke about the need for the Hekscher Tzedek. However, the first axiom of “social justice” must be that one may not destroy the life of another human being in order to promote one’s own concept of ethics.

I am deeply saddened to have to tell you that I believe without question or doubt that the Conservative Movement beleaguered Sholom Rubashkin with charges that were totally unproven only because they wanted to promote their Hekscher Tzedek.

Hekscher Tzedek was created by tormenting a fellow Jew.

- - -

Jewish Deli. What's Your Response?

Can the Jewish Deli Be Reformed?

...New delis, with small menus, passionate owners and excellent pickles and pastrami, are rising up and rewriting the menu of the traditional Jewish deli, saying that it must change, or die. For some of them, the main drawback is the food itself, not its ideological underpinnings.

So, places like the three-month-old Mile End in Brooklyn; Caplansky’s in Toronto; Kenny & Zuke’s in Portland, Ore.; and Neal’s Deli in Carrboro, N.C., have responded to the low standard of most deli food — huge sandwiches of indifferent meat, watery chicken soup and menus thick with shtick — by moving toward delicious handmade food with good ingredients served with respect for past and present.

...These new deli owners are bringing a high set of culinary standards to once-plebeian food. They are mashing local potatoes to make peppery hand-wrapped knishes; holding tastings to determine the most savory fat for chopped liver (Mr. Gordon says that butter, the nonkosher choice, tastes best); and even brewing zippy homemade celery tonic — to reduce the carbon footprint, to save on the shipping from Brooklyn and because it simply tastes more like tradition.

...These cooks are fighting — independently, but with similar weapons of salt, smoke and fat — to rescue the Jewish deli, an institution that has been deteriorating in numbers and quality for decades.

“The old-school places are closing faster than I can write about them” said David Sax, the author of “Save the Deli,” a 2009 history of, and guide to, the remaining authentic Jewish delis in North America.

By today’s standards, the classic deli’s food is strikingly unhealthful, its vast menu financially unmanageable and its ingredients no longer in tune with the seasonal products of local farmers. Too many shortcuts are taken: sourdough bread instead of rye, prepared blintzes, lax lox.

...If anything can save the deli single-handedly, it’s pastrami. A Romanian-Jewish-American hybrid of barbecue, basturma (Turkish dried, spiced meat) and corned beef, it is loved by pit masters, salumieri and chefs alike...Pastrami, traditionally made from a fatty cut of beef belly called the navel, is not easy to master. It must be brined for days or even weeks, rubbed, smoked, steamed and sliced at the peak of juiciness. The seasonings — coriander, black pepper, salt, sugar, sometimes cumin or fennel seed — must sing in harmony. At each step, attentiveness is required: to the shape of the piece, its fat content and the tendons that run through it. Great slicers have become the stuff of legend: Katz’s and Langer’s, in Los Angeles, are among the only old-school delis that do it by hand. Some feel strongly that the slices should be thick; others, cold-cut thin.

All this means that pastrami fits right into two major contemporary food cults: traditional cured meats and barbecue. Modern cooks are so enamored of meat that even those with no particular connection to delis — like Tom Mylan, of the Meat Hook in Brooklyn; Elizabeth Falkner, of Orson in San Francisco; and Amorette Casaus, of Ardesia in Midtown — now make their own small-batch versions...

Gastronomic Note to the White House Seder: Soft Not Hard

In preparation for this year’s gathering, Mr. Lesser and others have again been collecting recipes from the guests, including matzo ball instructions from Patricia Winter, the mother of Melissa Winter, Mrs. Obama’s deputy chief of staff.

“We like soft (not hard) matzo balls,” Mrs. Winter warned in a note to the White House chefs, instructing them to buy mix but doctor it. Use three eggs, not two, she told them; substitute schmaltz for vegetable oil, and refrigerate them for a day before serving (but not in the soup).

My Trip to Tel Aviv Today

This morning I had to be in Tel Aviv for a 9:30 AM appointment. So I decided that I would take the 6 AM bus in to Jerusalem, get a breakfast at Holy Bagel and then travel by bus to the Old New Central Bus Station in south Tel Aviv and walk for a quarter of an hour to the office where I had to be. But my plans went awry.

Despite grabbing a ride down the hill that would have brought me to Ariel, I didn't proceed as that would really have gotten me to Tel Aviv way too early. However, the Egged bus never made it. We saw it approach but it didn't come in. I was in a bind as the next bus was at 6:35 and I doubted if I could make it to Tel Aviv in time.

Five minutes later, the sister of my previous driver came by, headed for Bar Ilan University and in I jumped. We arrived at the Geha Junction at 7:10 and after figuring out which bus to take, I was in downtown Tel Aviv by 7:40 and alighted at Dizengoff Center. But it was empty and no cafe open as yet. I walked up Dizengoff but no luck.

So, I headed west along Frischman and the sea appeared in the distance:


Walking slowly, I began paying attention. If you read this storefront display on Frischman Street slowly, you'll grasp a phonetic problem of the French. The proper pronunciation of the real estate project is Shirat HaYam but I guess someone swallowed it:


When I told one of my neighbors I was going to Tel Aviv but would probably be there way too early for my appointment, he told me "so go to the beach". So, I got as far as the esplanade off HaYarkon Street:



Tel Aviv has a lot of missionary activity it appears. This sticker reads: Yeishu - Yshua - Yeshu'ah which translates as Jesus-Yeshua-Salvation (a play of words)

This storefront is clear:

This sticker I found funny: Returning the color to the Leftists and is signed the National Left which illustrates the problems the Israeli Left has:

I continued south, looking for a place to munch something. Here's one of the restored old houses of Tel Aviv in the 1920s behind Allenby opposite the junction with King George St.:


I reached the new section of Nachalat Binyamin which is a pedestrian mall looking for a breakfast place. This one was seemingly Kosher but closed.

It reads "kosher", the sign in the window, but the sign doesn't look kosher:

Open but empty:

Finally, way down on Allenby near Montifiore St. I found this place. Kosher. Open.
Mirage.
Coffee and cheese cake. 25 NIS.
And a newspaper to read.

Stayed to 9:20 and walked over, right on time.