Shmaltz Brewing Company’s Hanukkah beers make refreshing gifts.
I’ve got 99 problems, but the Shmaltz ain’t one. An exhibit of beer paintings in Harlem includes a Jewish brew, along with a shot of community spirit.
The 8th-annual Latke Festival, held at the Brooklyn Museum this week, raised money for the Sylvia Center.
Shmaltz Brewing has embraced its Jewish heritage to carve out a niche in the booming microbrewing beer market. Sales are growing at a brisk 40% clip.
Plenty of formerly maligned foods have been catapulted into the culinary spotlight. Just look at the makeover Brussels sprouts have received in recent years, or the heftier price tag that anything fried in duck fat can demand. But schmaltz just can’t seem to get a break. James Beard Award-winning food writer and cookbook author Michael Ruhlman latest volume, “The Book of Schmaltz: A Love Song to a Forgotten Fat” is trying to change that.
Glorious excess is what most people remember about schmaltz: the love that went into it and, especially, the innocence that allowed everyone to revel in it.
Theodore Bikel’s 1998 album “A Taste of Passover” gets a little peculiar on the ninth track. Rather than music, it features Yiddishist Chasia Segal teaching a live audience how to prepare kneydlakh, or matzo balls. After combining matzo meal, eggs, salt and chicken broth, she announces, “And now I have a problem!” In an ideal world the next ingredient would be schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat, but Segal observes that “We’re not supposed to have any more schmaltz” and uses vegetable oil instead.