Eat, Drink & Think is your daily destination for recipes, restaurant news, holiday menus and great food journalism — all through a Jewish lens. From the traditional to the cutting edge, we explore the worldwide Jewish culinary landscape and bring…
Food
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Ziskend Family Matzo Ball Soup
Joan Mass, the grandmother of Herbie Ziskend, shared her recipe for matzo balls (they’re usually floaters, but sometimes sinkers) with the White House. 4 eggs, slightly beaten 4 tablespoons ice water 4 tablespoons oil 1 cup matzo meal 1 teaspoon salt 1) Place ingredients in large bowl and mix well. After mixing, cover and refrigerate…
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Recipes Raspberry Ganache Marjolaine
Jewel Chaudhary, mother of Arun Chaudhary, submitted this recipe for Raspberry Ganache Marjolaine for the White House Seder dinner. She originally found it in an issue of Bon Appetit in the early 1990s. “It was introduced into the family because we are big chocolate lovers, and other than jell-rings or chocolate covered macaroons it’s not…
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Winter Family Haroset
At this year’s Seder, the White House will try out a new haroset recipe, which comes from Melissa Winter’s mother, Patricia. Melissa says: “[My mother] makes it several days in advance so all the flavors come together and its delicious. And of course she thinks I should go down to the White House kitchen before…
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Recipes Ziskend Family Chick Roast Recipe
Herbie Ziskend’s grandmother, Joan Mass, sent in the follow recipe for Chicken Roast to the White House Seder, which has been served several times. “My grandmother has been using this recipe forever…[she] has been serving this dish to her kids and then her grandkids since the 1950’s,” Ziskend told us in an email. The recipe…
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Lesser Family Carrot Souffle
Eric Lesser grew up having his family’s carrot souffle at Seder. When he was invited to celebrate the holiday at the White House, the President’s chef recreated it. Eating it the first year was “jarring experience,” Lesser recalled. “I’m sitting in the dining room of the White House, with portraits of first ladies and a…
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Superfruit and Superaromatic Charoset
Let’s face it: even without the charoset, we honor mortar on Passover. The food of this holiday isn’t—how can I say this nicely?—easy on digestion. Matzoh, potatoes, eggs, various proteins, cheese, it seems that most of what we eat is pretty heavy, and we often pay the price, feeling sluggish and fatigued, especially after the…
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How To Host an Elegant Vegetarian Seder
Whether it’s eating a fish head on Rosh Hashanah or mom’s turkey on Thanksgiving, traditional holiday foods are often not vegetarian friendly. Meat consumption on holidays is deeply embedded in Jewish tradition, where Maimonides and others propagate the idea that one cannot properly observe a holiday or celebration without consuming meat. Even the seder plate…
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At This Seder, It’s All About the Chocolate
Rabbi Adam Schaffer, who’s been leading chocolate seders since he edited a chocolate seder haggadah in 1996, acknowledges that “people often do feel ill” from all the chocolate. Still, Schaffer, the religious school director at Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, Calif., says he was motivated to “experiment outside the box and engage college students who…
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Recipes Tamar Adler’s Fried Jewish Artichokes
I believe there are certain things to which we are each driven, like lemmings to their cliff. Probably the most curious of mine is a tenacious pull to cook unrealistic dishes I’ve never cooked before, at bad times. These attacks are particularly acute at holidays, when all the cousins -nth removed are coming and there…
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Gefilte Fish With a Human Face
Occupying a prominent place in the dustbin of Jewish history is the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, the founding document of Reform Judaism — the one that abolished the kosher laws, kippot, tallitot and bar mitzvahs, and renounced Zionism. The reaction against the Pittsburgh Platform was fierce and immediate — the nearly instantaneous founding of Conservative…
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Passover Dessert Staple Won’t Appear on the Shelves
Months after super storm Sandy, the full extent of the damage is still coming to light. This year, customers around the country scouring local grocery stores for their favorite Passover sweets will be sorely disappointed. Shabtai Gourmet, a company that provided gluten-free kosher for Passover cakes and cookies — including favorites like rainbow cookies, cupcakes,…
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