Category: Shavuous

Beer Braised Brisket with Onion Gravy

This post has been a long time in coming. And not just because it’s taken me a while to write it. But because it’s taken me a while to learn it. Like many home cooks, when it came to meat preparation, I was stumped. I didn’t understand the different cuts of meat or how to prepare them. After lots of reading, and a hands-on butchery class at The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts, I feel like I’m finally beginning to understand where my meat comes from and how to cook it. With the holidays upon us, I thought I should share some of that invaluable information with all of you!

So, without further adieu, I give you my Guide to Kosher Meat: Cuts & Cooking Methods!

In my guide, I speak about the different cuts of meat and where they come from on the animal. In a nutshell, tough cuts of meat requires slow, moist heat cooking to help break down the connective tissue and tenderize the meat. Braising, a combination cooking method involving dry and moist heat cooking, is a popular method used.

This deliciously tender brisket is braised with caramelized onions and beer, resulting in a mouthwatering gravy. First cut of brisket will yield a drier, less flavorful dish, while 2nd cut will yield a more tender flavorful meat. If you choose to use 2nd cut of brisket, don’t remove the excess fat until it’s done cooking. As the fat breaks down, it adds moisture and flavor to the meat, so if you want to remove it, it’s best to do so by refrigerating the meat after cooking and removing the congealed fat after it solidifies. In addition, cutting the brisket when it’s cold, minimizes it’s propensity for shredding.

Keep in mind, that since braising is the best method for cooking tough cuts of meat, you can use any tough cut in this recipe such as the French Roast, Chuck Roast, Shoulder Roast, or Deckle.

Beer-Braised Brisket

3 lbs. brisket (or any tough cut that requires braising)
salt and pepper, to taste
2 Spanish onions, peeled and thinly sliced
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 12oz. bottle beer, ale preferred
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Method:

Season your  brisket with salt and pepper and sear in an oven-safe pot over high heat on all sides. Set the meat aside. Add some oil to the pan and saute onions, picking up the little bits from the bottom of the pan as it cooks. Add brown sugar, salt and pepper and cook over medium-high heat until onions are golden, sticky and caramelized (about 25 minutes). Deglaze the pan with a bottle of beer. Add vinegar and brisket to the pot, cover tightly and bake at 325 degrees for 2 hours. Turn the brisket over and cook until fork-tender, 30 minutes-1 hour (or longer, use a fork to check tenderness).

Once cooled, remove the brisket from the pot and slice thinly against the grain. Serve with onion gravy.

TIP: If the gravy needs thickening, let it cook uncovered over high heat until it reduces to desired consistency. Adjust seasoning, if needed.

VARIATION: for more flavor, you may add some fresh rosemary, thyme or dried bay leaves.

NOTE: For a larger brisket, cook for an additional 30 minutes – 1 hour per lb, until fork tender. Add additional beer, if necessary, so that 1/3rd of the meat is covered in liquid.

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Summer Tomato Feta Salad

Believe it or not, I’m not the biggest tomato person. I’ll happily leave them out of my burger, and I never put them in my tuna sandwiches. My husband, on the other hand, is tomato-obsessed. Ask him what he would take to a desert island, and I know without a doubt, that it would be a boat-load of tomatoes. So when it comes to salad-making, you can imagine that we are not always in agreement.

Summer, though, is the exception. There’s just something about summer tomatoes that is so deliciously sweet. Instead of arguing about adding tomatoes to the salad, we end up making tomato-only salads. Using an assortment of tomatoes like red and yellow tomatoes on the vine, or colorful heirloom tomatoes, makes for a beautiful presentation. With summer tomatoes being so juicy and delicious, you really don’t need much to make them sing. A simple drizzle of good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar is enough to dress them up. Feta adds protein, color, and saltiness, to balance out the tomatoes sweet flavor.

Needless to say, my husband is in LOVE with this salad. I hope you will be too.

Summer Tomato Feta Salad

Red & yellow tomatoes on the vine (or heirloom tomatoes)
Feta cheese
Good quality olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Kosher salt
Black pepper, optional
Chopped parsley, for garnish

Method: Slice the tomatoes, about 1/4″ thick. Lay the tomatoes on a platter, alternating between red and yellow. Sprinkle the feta cheese over the tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and season with kosher salt. Garnish with parsley.

1 year ago: picture perfect teacher’s gift
2 years ago: Asian bigger bowl soup

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3-Cheese Broccoli Pull-Apart Buns

I’m on a serious broccoli-cheddar kick right now, and every time I go to the pizza store, I find myself ordering a broccoli calzone. Or, at the very least, a broccoli pizza. There’s just something about broccoli and cheese that go together like cookies and cream, peanut butter and jelly or spaghetti and meatballs.

Now, I’m no baker, so the thought of making individual calzones is just too much for me. But after I made these amazing cinnamon buns (from scratch!) recently, I felt inspired to try a savory version. Using store-bought pizza dough made it all-the-more simple (thanks, Trader Joes!).

Making broccoli calzones into pull-apart buns, not only saves you on calories (if you can stick to eating just one!), it’s also cheesier, gooier and especially, prettier. Serve this up at a lunch with friends for some serious wow-factor!

If you’re not a broccoli person (what’s wrong with you?) then serve these up with the vegetables of your choice. Think olives, roasted veggies, caramelized onions, or whatever pizza toppings you wish! You can go also go crazy with the cheese varieties, using feta (feta and olives sounds great!), brie (how about some brie and figs!), or goat cheese (with pesto and sundried tomatoes, mmm…) Oh, the possibilities!

3-Cheese Broccoli Calzone Buns

1 lb. store-bought pizza dough (I use Trader Joe’s)
1 10oz. package frozen chopped broccoli, cooked and drained
1 cup ricotta cheese
1-2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1-2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
parmesan or garlic powder, for topping (optional)
marinara sauce, for dipping

Method:

On a lightly floured surface, roll out pizza dough into a large rectangle. Spread ricotta cheese over dough. Top with chopped broccolli, shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. Starting from the shorter side, roll the dough up tightly. Cut the roll into 7 slices and place in a lightly greased 9″ round pan. Sprinkle the buns with parmesan cheese or garlic powder (optional) and bake at 350 degrees until dough is puffed and cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

1 year ago: DIY teacher’s gift
2 years ago: fast food, lightened up

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Sachlav Rose Water Pudding

Sachlav (also pronounced sahlab, salep, or saloop) is a popular warm winter drink in the Middle East. Even though I spent an entire year living in Israel, this light rose water pudding made it past me somehow and my first taste of it was actually in a restaurant in Brooklyn, named Bissale. I was reminiscing about my Bissale experiences in this recent post, and the fragrant rose water drink just came back to me.

I thought a rose water scented pudding would be the perfect way to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. It is told that Mount Sinai was covered in roses at the time the Torah was received, so many communities have a custom to decorate their homes and synagogues (as well as Torah scrolls) with roses. Persian Jews even refer to this holiday as the Feast of the Roses and in some Sephardic synagogues, it is customary to sprinkle rose water on the congregants.

Rose water, which is made by steeping and distilling fresh rose petals in water, is featured in many Sephardic desserts and pastries. It can be purchased at most Middle Eastern and specialty food stores.

Sachlav was traditionally made with ground orchid tubers called sahlab. The tubers of the orchid were dried and ground up to create a fragrant powder that thickens the milk into a pudding. Nowadays, cornstarch, which is cheaper and easier to find, is used to thicken the drink. Sachlav is usually finished with a touch of orange blossom or rose water, but some prefer to forgo the fragrant waters and garnish it with coconut, cinnamon and/or nuts and raisins.

Sachlav is usually served in the winter, like a Middle Eastern hot chocolate. Personally, I have a weakness for hot pudding (I always eat chocolate pudding boiling hot, right out of the pot) so I’m good eating it all year long. If you prefer a cold pudding, you can set the sachlav in the fridge, and serve it up like traditional malabi.

So what’s malabi? It’s a cold rose-water-scented milk pudding, that is pretty similar to sachlav, except it’s usually garnished with raspberry syrup and pistachios. If you’d like to turn this recipe into malabi, simply pour into serving glasses, let cool and then refrigerate until set. You might want to garnish it with my strawberry rhubarb compote for a seasonal garnish that would compliment the rose water really well.

Sachlav (or Malabi) Rose Water Pudding

3 cups milk
4 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp corn starch
2 tsp rosewater
shredded coconut, chopped nuts and cinnamon, for garnish

Method:

Mix the cornstarch with 1/2 cup of the milk and set aside. Bring the remaining milk and sugar to a slow boil, watching that the milk doesn’t scald or boil over. Slowly add the cornstarch mixture, whisking to combine. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly to keep lumps from forming. When pudding starts to bubble, and it coats the back of a spoon, add the rose water. Stir again to incorporate and pour into individual serving glasses.

Garnish with coconut, nuts and cinnamon and serve hot.

VARIATION: To make malabi, pour the pudding into serving bowls and set aside to cool. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until set. Garnish with silan (date honey) and pistachios, raspberry syrup, or my strawberry rhubarb compote.

YIELD: 3 servings.

1 year ago: pesto & goat cheese crostini
2 years ago: sundried tomato olive tapenade

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Lotus Cookie Cinnamon Buns with
Speculoos Cream Cheese Frosting


Every since Trader Joe’s introduced their cookie butter, speculoos has been flying off the shelves faster than their pareve chocolate chips disappeared. If you live under a rock, and you still haven’t heard about speculoos, let me fill you in. Speculoos is a spiced shortcrust biscuit, or what Lotus (a popular manufacturer of speculoos cookies) calls, “The Original Caramelized Biscuit.” 

Speculoos cookies have been a popular treat in Belgium for years, and are sometimes referred to as Lotus or Biscoff cookies. Their popularity reached new heights, when a few years ago, a woman won a television contest for inventing a sweet spread made from the cookies. Speculoos spread went viral, with many companies, like Trader Joes, selling their own versions.

With TJ’s nonkosher cookie butter’s popularity rising, kosher foodies everywhere were left out in the dark. My fellow kosher food bloggers TheKosherFoodies and KitchenTested wanted a taste so badly, they made their own cookies just so they could crush them up into spread afterward.

But if you know me, the nonbaker, I was not about to follow suit. Slave over homemade biscuits and crush em up into crumbs? What am I, crazy? So I went the easy route…I bought them. And how, might you ask, did I find kosher Lotus cookies? Well it just so happens that I live in Brooklyn, where Pomegranate, the most awesome kosher supermarket in the world, is located. Pomegranate pretty much carries every kosher item available under the sun, from mundane to gourmet. If they don’t have it, it’s probably not kosher. And since Lotus Cookies are manufactured in Israel with a kosher symbol, Pomegranate imports them, so all their kosher consumers can enjoy “The Original Caramelized Biscuit.”

We spoke a lot about Speculoos’ origin, but what about the taste? Well when I first bit into these cookies, I immediately thought of ginger snaps, but without the ginger. They have more of a faint cinnamon & brown sugar taste, and they practically melt on your tongue when you eat them. Basically, they’re insanely delicious.

After picking up a package (ok, maybe 2), I thought about how I could turn these caramelized biscuits into something truly extraordinary. Since they’re reminiscent of cinnamon and brown sugar, I figured I would pulverize them into cookie crumbs, and use them inside, and outside, of cinnamon buns. Instead of a traditional speculoos spread, I did a play on cream cheese frosting, just like you’d spread over traditional cinnamon buns. The results were out-of-this-world amazing. If the picture doesn’t speak louder than words here, I don’t know what will.

Do me a favor. If you live in New York (or Israel for that matter) and you can get your hands on a package of these melt-in-your-mouth cookies, MAKE THIS. Better yet, if you’re up for the challenge, and you can’t get a hold of these cookies. Make your own. And then make this. You can thank me later.

Lotus Cookie Cinnamon Buns with Speculoos Cream Cheese Frosting

1 package Lotus biscuits (250 grams)
3 c. flour, divided
1/4 c. sugar
1 packet quick rise yeast
1 tsp salt
1 c. warm water
6 tbsp butter, softened, divided
1 egg at room temperature
1/3 cup brown sugar

Method:

Grease a 9×13 pan and set aside. Add Lotus cookies (about 30) to a food processor or blender and process into crumbs. Divide into 2 cups.

Add 2 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt to a large bowl and whisk to combine. Stir in water, 2 tbsp butter and egg. Mix (by hand or with a mixer) until smooth. Gradually add in remaining flour until soft dough forms. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a 12×15 inch rectangle. Spread with remaining butter. Mix brown sugar with 1 cup of Lotus cookie crumbs. Sprinkle over surface. Starting with 12″ side, roll the dough up tightly.

Cut roll into 12 slices and place in the pan. Cover and put in a warm place (I like to turn my oven on and place it on top) until buns double in size, about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Uncover the buns and bake until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.

Frosting:

1 8 oz. pkg cream cheese
2 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup lotus cookie crumbs
3-4 tbsp milk

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until smooth and creamy.

Spread frosting on buns and serve.

1 year ago: pesto pinwheels
2 years ago: 6-spice Morrocan stew

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