An Award and Ten Things About Me
I don’t usually do this kind of thing here, but when Penniless Parenting awarded me a “Sugar Doll” award I decided it’s time to be more sociable. Thank you for thinking of me!
The idea is to list ten things about yourself that people generally don’t know. So here goes:
1. When I moved to a new neighborhood after college, an acquaintance invited me to Friday night dinner at his neighbor’s apartment.
Passover Egg Noodles
Wednesday is Recipe Day at Cooking Manager.For the next few weeks I’ll be sharing gluten-free, Passover recipes.
Matzah balls are the classic accompaniment for Passover soups, but these gluten-free egg noodles make a tasty alternative. I make a double batch before the holiday and they keep all week long. But they usually get eaten first.
Passover Egg Noodles
Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- 4 tablespoons cold water
- 1 tablespooon potato starch (for gluten-free) or matza cake flour.
- Dash of salt
Instructions:
Rapes in Potage (Turnips)
Wednesday is Recipe Day at Cooking Manager. For the next few weeks I’ll focusing on recipes that are kosher for Passover, as well as gluten-free. This recipe was submitted by reader Devo:
Here is a recipe I made once for a medieval feast. You can use any combination of root vegetables in place of the turnips, carrots, or parsnips.
Rapes in Potage
Interview with Viviana: Cooking with My Grandmother
Please welcome Viviana, the subject of this week’s reader interview:
Name, Location, Family: Viviana Aaron, originally from Argentina, then USA and now Israel. Married, mom to two girls, one in college and one at home.
Describe family meals and your mother’s cooking style. Growing up we only had dinner at home, with breakfast and lunch at school. For dinner we always had soup, even in the summer, and some kind of protein with salad or potatoes on the side. My mom was always working so she did not invest much time in the kitchen.
How is your cooking style different from your mother’s? My meals are more varied than my mom’s. I like to experiment in the kitchen. Sometimes this bothers my family because if I cook something they really like I might not be able to reproduce it a second time. So they better enjoy it the first time!
How did you learn to cook? I was my grandmother’s helper since I was very little. I can still cook her recipes by remembering the way she used her hands to knead dough, mix meat for stuffing, cut vegetables in different ways and many other pictures that I keep in my mind.
Guide to Buying Gluten-Free Products on Passover
In Jewish communities across the globe, stores are stocking shelves with Kosher for Passover (KFP) products. And people with celiac disease, or their parents, whether Jewish or not, are stocking up on KFP foods for their children. What’s the connection?
The central food of the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover is matzah. Matzah can be made of any of five species: barley, oats, rye, spelt and wheat. Wheat is the only kind generally available. Because of the quantities required and the strict rules surrounding its production, matzah is generally made in a separate factory.
Eating matzah is an important part of the Seder, the festive meal served on the first night of Passover. This doesn’t concern non-Jews with celiac. What’s important for celiac sufferers is the prohibition against leavened foods, or chametz.
Blog News and Friday Roundup #28
If you read Cooking Manager by email or RSS reader, you may not have seen my new header, designed by Leora. Leora designs banners, logos and websites and is a pleasure to work with, a true professional.
I’ve also switched to a new theme (layout), and I’d appreciate feedback on ease of reading, navigating and commenting.
Some Jewish readers are starting to think about Passover, which is just around the corner. Religiously observant Jews clean their homes, especially their kitchens, to remove all traces of leavened foods. With that in mind I’ve opened three Passover discussions on the Facebook Cooking Manager fan page:
Handle Raw Chicken Safely to Prevent Illness
I read in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that there’s been a seven-fold increase over the last twenty year in the number of children hospitalized with intestinal ailments caused by campylobacter, a bacterium commonly found in raw poultry. More than half of children admitted to the hospital for intestinal problems tested positive forthe bacterium.
The newspaper (print, Hebrew version) reviewed safe methods for handling raw chicken:
Recipe: Challah Bread with Sponge Method
Bread making is an art as well as a science, and may take a while until you get the kind of challah you want. It takes more time than most recipes on this site.
My friend Miriam Kresh of Israeli Kitchen suggests using less yeast in baking, leading to a lighter, airier bread with less yeasty taste. But it involves a longer rising time. She helped me work out the recipe below.
A sponge contains all of the yeast and liquids, and about two-thirds of the flour called for in the recipe. It allows you to use less yeast, compensated for by a longer rising time. This means that you end up with an airier dough with more flour taste than yeast. Sometimes it consists of only the water, yeast, and the majority of the flour.
The Potato Cake Mystery
Potato cakes are a food I remember fondly from my childhood. My mother made these crispy treats often, for two reasons: First, the main ingredient was leftover potatoes, and second, they cooked in the broiler.
Friday Roundup #28: Purim and the Olympics
The Kosher Cooking Carnival is up at Adventures in Mamaland.
PhD in Parenting wrote on the irony of fast-food companies sponsoring the Olympics. What do you think?
Below are posts from Cooking
