This post was developed in collaboration with Jay Stanton. Thank you Jay!
Happy Passover! Some of you may choose to eat rice for Passover – and if you, like me, are Ashkenazi, it may be your very first time. One requirement for many people on Passover is that all kitniyot – roughly, wheat-like foods – must be checked to ensure that they don’t contain chametz – one of the forbidden grains. Rice, with its small grains, is particularly hard to check.
My friend Jay Stanton was kind enough to teach me an efficient and fun way to check rice for chametz. Sharing is caring, so I will show you here. Many, many thanks to Jay Stanton for his assistance.
What you will need: a baking tray, parchment paper, an unopened package of rice, a place to store checked rice.
First, make sure that your space is well lit, and that you have a flat surface, and a comfortable place to sit. Your rice should be unopened for kashrut reasons. Make sure your hands are dry.
Choose a baking tray that has a lip. This will be helpful for making sure you do not lose rice.
Lay a layer of parchment paper over the baking tray.
Now, pour a handful of rice onto the parchment paper. Shake the tray so that the rice is in a layer that is one grain thick.
Scan the rice pile and start picking out anything that does not look like a grain of rice. In the United States, you are unlikely to find chametz, but you will find other things. For example, we found: some rice husks, some rice grains that had been damaged and discolored, and some tiny stones. If it does not look like rice, take it out and discard it. (Or feed it to a bird.) You
You may need to shake the tray a few times to spot everything.
Once you have taken everything you can see, use your finger to scan the edges to find any other impurities.
Once you are done with that, use the parchment paper and pour your rice into a sealable container or bag. Congrats! That is your first Passover rice.
Repeat the process until all rice is checked. This process also works for other small kitniyot.
A few notes:
Some people have the custom of checking a batch three separate times. You can decide whether or not to do this yourself.
If you keep a strictly kosher or kosher for Passover kitchen, you need to do this process before Passover.
Be mindful that where you live and the type of rice you buy will affect what ends up in your rice.
Canned fish – essential for many. (Photo public domain)
A preface: I do not tend to be fond of “must-have” articles. What each person needs to do or keep for food differs: what do they eat? How much can they spend? Where do they live? What do they do? Must-have articles always seem to make far too many assumptions, and then ask folks to keep things that they never actually use, or do things that are totally unreasonable. (Three types of salt? To quote the kids, “whomst.”) That said, I do seem to write a lot of advice articles. People seem to like having ideas or general advice, and I strive to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. So for this article, please correct me if I mess up.
A few people wanted me to write an article about “how to stock a pantry.” Despite what so many food bloggers tell you, this is actually a hard thing to write. What to stock and how to stock depend on where you live, what you eat, what you can afford, your cooking habits, and all the social things that also intersect with food. So instead, here are some thoughts about stocking your pantry, which come from two places. One is my own experience and research. The other is you. I surveyed friends and readers about what they kept in their pantry. Then, I cobbled together data from dozens of responses to get an idea of what other pantries look like, in all sorts of situations.
So, here is some advice. Keep in mind that what you can afford, where you live, what you can and cannot do, and what you eat all play a role in stocking your pantry. You may not be able to have very much in a dorm room or a temporary place. You may not have a good refrigerator. You may have tons of space and money and be able to go all out – but not really have a diet that necessitates all those ingredients. Some things someone can tell you, but this is one thing you will need to partly figure out yourself.
Which is to say: this advice is not prescriptive. I give only suggestions! Mix and match as you need.
Canned vegetables: a life saver for some. (Photo Parenting Patch via Creative Commons)
An important note on cuisines: your pantry should change based on what you eat. This pantry list is largely for Ashkenazi and Western Sephardic cooking, with some other addendums. If your primary diet is a different cuisine, be it Japanese, Korean, Senegalese, Ethiopian, Lao, Mexican, O’odham, or Cree, you will need to stock accordingly for the base ingredients in your main cuisine. So, you will probably want to first look at advice from other folks that eat those cuisines primarily. Many “pantry” stocking articles assume a generic Western standard that applies for everyone. Let us not do that here.
With that said, let us dive in!
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Pantry Stocking Advice
I have sorted the following out into three sections, and the second section has three parts of three parts each. The first is a general rule on what to make sure you have. The second part sorts some things out by how to store them, then split up into how much preparation they require. I give suggestions across a range of flavors and budget levels. The third selection is on building up a spice and seasoning stockpile.
Frozen vegetables are handy for many. (Photo public domain)
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Things You Should Try to Have
You should try to have the following two things: some food that they can eat with no or very little preparations, and ingredients for a simple meal.
I am about to say something heretical for a food blogger to say. You need to have a ready-made meal, or something that can be treated as such, on hand. Ideally, a few. There are going to be days when you cannot cook, days when your stove is out of commission, or days when you’re suddenly stuck at home because your road is blocked off, and you have few groceries. This is where industrial food comes in. Platitudes about real food are all nice and good until you have a real need for food that cannot wait. So, keep some things on hand. Some things I recommend are: instant noodles, microwave meals if you have a working freezer, canned soups, protein bars, breakfast cereals, and microwave-pack shelf-stable meals. I personally stock some protein bars, breakfast cereals, frozen mac and cheese, and shelf-stable microwaveable pasta and vegetables for emergencies. I do not recommend making these a mainstay of your diet if you can avoid it, but they are a good idea. We live in a time where industrial food has enabled us to stockpile safe, somewhat tasty food if we can. It would be a shame not to take advantage.
Kasha varnishkes can be made with shelf-stable ingredients. (photo mine, May 2017)
The other thing I recommend is keeping shelf- or freezer-stable ingredients for a simple, easily cooked meal. This could be as simple as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You should have a carbohydrate and a protein, and sources of salt, fat, and acid. Vegetable matter is always nice, too. I usually keep the ingredients for pasta with tuna or beans at all times:
Ingredients for Tuna/Bean Pasta
Pasta
Canned or frozen vegetables
Canned tomato sauce
Canned tuna or beans
Salt and some spices
Onions or garlic, using powders as a backstop
Cooking oil
Vinegar
In this list, the pasta, beans or tuna, salt, oil, and vinegar are the most essential, with the seasoning and vegetables adding flavor and nutrition. You can mix and match as necessary.
Here are ingredient lists for four more shelf-stable based cooked meals that you can plan for:
Rice and beans
Rice
Canned black beans
Salt and some spices
Onions or garlic, using powders as a backstop
Cooking oil
Vinegar
Couscous and beans
Couscous (the add-hot-water kind)
Raisins
Canned lentils
Salt and some spices
Onions or garlic, using powders as a backstop
Cooking oil
Vinegar
Kasha with Mushrooms and Beans
Kasha
Canned mushrooms
Canned white beans
Salt and some spices
Onions or garlic, using powders as a backstop
Cooking oil
Vinegar
Pasta with Green Beans and Canned Fish
Pasta
Canned green beans
Canned salmon
Salt and some spices
Onions or garlic, using powders as a backstop
Cooking oil
Vinegar
Again, if you can, I encourage expanding from these bases. But keep basic ingredients for a basic meal on hand. Again, this does not even necessarily have to involve cooking.
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Bouillon cubes – just as Jewish as homemade stock. (Photo Creative Commons/Wikimedia)
Beyond the Basics
Once you have the very basics, here are some things that you could consider placing in your pantry, based on your diet, your space, what you can do, what you cannot do, what you can afford, and what you can realistically keep.
I don’t even have all of these things in my pantry. You do not need all of these things at once! This list is suggestive, not prescriptive.
Note: some things are listed twice, because you can store them in either place.
Things That You Store in Cupboards
No or little preparation required:
Bread (I tend to freeze bread.)
Add hot-water or microwaveable rice
Add hot-water or microwaveable pasta
Add hot-water or microwaveable mashed potatoes
Add hot-water oatmeal or Cream of wheat
Canned baked beans
Canned sardines
Canned peas
Canned corn
Canned vegetables
Canned mushrooms
Canned carrots
Canned fruit
Nutritional shakes or protein bars
Canned soup
Breakfast cereal
Add hot water soups
Corn tortillas
Instant noodles
Snacking nuts
Potato chips
Apple sauce (can also go in fridge)
Rice cakes
Coffee
Tea
Long-life milk or plant milk
Some preparation required:
Pasta
Noodles
Rice
Potatoes (can also go in fridge)
Onions (can also go in fridge)
Garlic (can also go in fridge)
Rolled oats
Buckwheat groats
Canned beans
Dried beans (Though I strongly prefer canned.)
Things you add to other food:
Salt – people will tell you to have multiple types of salt, but having basic salt that you can shake or grind is honestly manageable enough.
Vinegars – I recommend rice wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar to start for food, and white vinegar for cleaning. Red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and malt vinegars are nice to have if you can.
Oils – I recommend canola or vegetable oil to start. Sesame oil, olive oil, and sunflower oil are nice to have.
Spices – see the section below.
Sugar – I recommend white sugar to start, brown sugar or confectioners’ sugar as needed. I personally store sugar in the fridge, since I find it keeps bugs away.
Flour – I usually recommend all-purpose flour to start, unless you cannot have gluten, in which case, an all-purpose gluten-free blend. Keep it sealed!
Cornstarch – for thickening foods.
Onion powder and garlic powder (even if you have onions and garlic)
Stock cubes or soup powder.
Syrup or honey, if you prefer that to sugar.
Yeast, if you bake breads.
Baking soda or baking powder for baking – I find baking soda and vinegar is great for cleaning too!
Soy sauce.
Peanut butter.
Ketchup – this can also go in the fridge, but it is fine if not.
Worcestershire sauce – do keep in mind that some folks have kashrut issues around this.
Hot sauce – check which kind, since some types do need to be refrigerated.
Things That You Store in the Fridge
No preparation required:
Pickles
Yoghurt
Applesauce
Cheese
(Most ready-made stuff that is kept in the fridge does not keep for very long – so I would not rely on always having that specific type of thing on hand.)
Things you add to other food:
Butter
Vegan butter substitutes
Milk
Plant milk
Lemon juice
Eggs – admittedly all three, but so versatile!
Applesauce – admittedly, the same as eggs.
Onions – can be stored outside, but keep longer in the fridge. If space allows,keep at some distance from potatoes.
Garlic – can be stored outside, but keep longer in fridge.
Pasta sauces (as needed)
Ketchup – this does not need to be in the fridge, but I do find that it is less messy
when it is refrigerated.
Miso paste – if you cook things that require it. If you seal it well, it actually keeps equally well in the freezer.
Mustard
Jams – they can be kept, if not yet opened, on a shelf.
Chutneys – same rules as jams.
Things That You Store in the Freezer
Little preparation required:
Microwave meals/frozen meals, for backup situations
Frozen prepared foods (I am a fan of frozen kugels and frozen dumplings)
Some preparation required:
Frozen meat (I’m a fan especially of freezing mincemeats)
Frozen meat substitutes (Frozen tofu has a tradition of several hundred years)
Frozen beans
Frozen fish
Frozen bread
Frozen vegetables – including: frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen spinach, frozen okra, frozen broccoli. Note: some frozen vegetables have more nutrients than their average fresh equivalents.
Frozen stock – which is especially useful for soups and rice.
Frozen garlic or frozen crushed garlic – a lifesaver.
Frozen animal fats, if you use them – I particularly like frozen schmaltz.
Frozen sauces, if you use them.
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A cabinet of spices. (Photo public domain)
Spices
Let me be clear about one thing first: getting a spice or ingredient stockpile together is not easy. Spices are expensive, need to be stored properly, and can easily be “lost” in a pile of bottles. Organization helps, but so does a bit of advanced knowledge.
Some people go off generic lists or kits, but I do not advise that. Instead, I suggest that before going out and buying spices you never use, get a sense of what you like to eat. Do you like spicy foods, bland foods, sweet foods, or savory foods? Look up a few recipes for things you like to eat often and note down the spices that you see. Buy those spices first, and make sure you know which ones you have. Then, only buy other spices as you need them. Over time, you will build a stockpile. Properly stored ground, dried spices can be stored for years.
I put together a joint list for spices based on the frequency I use them in Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern cuisines. I’m Lithuanian and German by heritage, so I tend to skew more seasoned than Polish or Russian Jews. I cook quite a bit of Middle Eastern food at home, and Mexican food.
Spices to start:
Black pepper
Cinnamon
Cumin
Dill
Garlic powder (alongside fresh garlic)
Ginger
Oregano
Parsley
Red pepper (flakes or powder)
Salt (iodized or sea)
Thyme
More spices:
Allspice
Basil
Bay leaves
Cardamom
Caraway seed
Cayenne pepper
Chili powder
Cilantro
Cloves
Coriander seed
Mustard seed
Nutmeg
Paprika
Poppy seed (for baking)
Rosemary
Turmeric
Vanilla extract (for baking)
Even more spices:
Asafoedita
Celery seed
Fennel seed (Anise)
Fenugreek (extremely needed for some cuisines)
Juniper berries (I personally am not a fan)
Mace
Marjoram
Nigella seeds
Saffron (very expensive, only buy if absolutely needed)
Savory
Sesame seeds
Star Anise
Sumac (but if you frequently cook Levantine food, get this)
Tarragon
If you want to experiment with several spices at a time, I highly recommend buying spice mixes. Some of these are quite beloved by their users, and are “standard” for many cuisines. I keep a very large amount of South African spice blends for cooking meat and pickling things on hand at all time. You can get some of these mixes very cheaply at the supermarket – for example, Pumpkin Pie Spice. There is no shame in using these!
Special thanks to the dozens of readers who told me what they keep in their pantries.
On readers’ request, I am starting off 2019 with something very practical: a guide to avoiding common aversions.
Food aversions are a real and serious thing. More than a dislike, an aversion is to a taste or texture. Exposure can throw one’s senses and function out of whack. Sometimes, a food aversion can make someone feel violently ill. This reaction happens famously to pregnant women, but really can occur to anyone. The reaction also happens without an allergy. Other times, an aversion can leave a sticking sense of anxiety or discomfort – as happens with me when I accidentally consume a marshmallow. Many people get raised heart rates, jitters, or nausea from aversions.
Fish is a common aversion. (Photo Toby Dylan, CC)
Aversions are difficult to shake. Doing so takes time, effort, and most importantly, the person’s consent. (It is a painfully slow process.) It is not your job to “help” someone lose an aversion as a host or cook, unless you are explicitly told so by the person. You would not consent to someone making you anxious, jittery, or ill because they felt like it. So do not do it to your guests, friends, or family! Believe your guest or friend, and cook something that they can eat.
As it happens, substitutes are a venerated part of the Jewish culinary tradition. Meats have been replaced with fish and beans for dairy dishes. Kosher animals replaced pork in meat dishes that imitated whatever neighbors ate. An entire world of dairy-free, pareve desserts exists for serving at meat meals. Vegetable shortening was first marketed among American Jews as a pareve substitute for butter. (Gil Marks discussed this extensively in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.)
Some of these noblemen probably had aversions, though they were probably identified as something else in 15th century France. (Image from Le Livre de chasse de Gaston Phébus, 15th century.)
I mean to say: there is no shame in swapping. We are lucky to live in a time when we have the ability to do so. We have historically unprecedented access to good, safe, and varied food products. We can take advantage of this plenty to better accommodate aversions. Not that aversions did not exist through history – they most certainly have. More that we can now better identify and address them.
This list is meant to help. I have listed some common aversions and substitutes. Try different things! Sometimes, though, you need to avoid the recipe. This is particularly the case when there is an aversion to a broad category of food, like fruit, or flavor combinations, like sweet and savory. (Or specific aversions, like my friend’s aversion to “cold, wet kitniyot.”) There are many delicious foods and I am sure you will find something for your guest to eat that you can enjoy too.
This chart is for when you only need to substitute one ingredient, and is aimed to common aversions rather than common allergens – which are different! Please do not “try to get someone to like X.” That is rude, and forcing people to eat abominable food goes against Jewish tradition and basic decency. This chart is meant to help you be a nice host, and make something good for everyone!
Canned vegetables: not just a life saver, but also a good place to find substitutes. (Photo Parenting Patch via Creative Commons)
Cause of aversion
Good substitutions
Onions
I find that leeks and scallions tend to work well if you need something to replace the texture. If the flavor is okay, a half teaspoon to a teaspoon of onion powder (depending on brand) for each onion. You can also ramp up the garlic. Raw onion can be replaced with cabbage and fennel, but keep in mind that it changes the flavor.
Garlic
Garlic has a very distinctive, pungent flavor, so it is difficult to replace. I would enhance the flavors of other spices, or add some more onion or scallions. Asafetida, fenugreek, and celeriac root serve as good substitutes for pungency. Celery is a good substitute for body and aroma.
Tomato (raw or cooked)
Raw tomato is usually fairly easy to leave out of things like salad. For cooked tomato, I suggest using tomatillos or eggplants to substitute in sauces, though keep in mind that the sauce will be far thicker. If the texture aversion has to do with seeds, remove the seeds and cook with just the flesh of the tomato. The seeds are hard to use alone but are very good for compost.
Bell pepper
Tomato flesh can be used in most places as a substitute for bell pepper.
Mushrooms
Depending on the type of mushroom and consistency, you can replace them with marinated tofu, eggplant, zucchini, or turnips.
Squashes
Mushroom is a pretty solid replacement for zucchini. For pumpkin or butternut squash, using sweet potato is a time-honored American tradition.
Eggplant
Zucchini is a fairly solid replacement for eggplant in dishes that do not require long cooking. Mushrooms with a strong acidic counterpart work well for longer cooking.
Fish
Tofu, seitan, or mushrooms tend to work quite well. There is an Ashkenazi tradition of making “false fish” with chicken, but I have never had this and cannot confirm the effectiveness.
Cabbage or Brussel sprouts
For some things, broccoli (which is ironically the same species) works very well in my experience. This is particularly true for slaws and quickly cooked dishes. For pickled and raw dishes, dark lettuces also work very well. For longer-cooked dishes, fennel is a good substitute, but keep in mind that the flavor will change.
Eggs
If you are just trying to make a cake moist, applesauce is by far the best. Eggs are hard to replace in some dishes – for those, use an egg replacer or common baking combination. Where the egg is eaten in egg form, soft tofu or mushrooms.
Mayonnaise
Greek yogurt works very well, as does any non-dairy yogurt.
Beets
Very difficult to replace, but I have had moderate result with harder varieties of squash, like butternut. The color is inimitable.
Cilantro
Parsley or the Mexican herb epazote tend to work quite well.
Visible seeds, like poppy or sesame seeds
99% of the time, you can leave them out. If you really want the flavor, add some ground poppy or sesame seed into the batter or dough of what you are making.
Raisins
99% of the time, you can leave them out. For a flavor substitute, just add a bit of sugar.
Caraway seeds
Fennel or dill seeds.
Fennel seeds
Caraway seeds
Fennel
The flavor is going to change, but for texture and approximation, leeks and caraway seed.
Mustard
For dry mustard, horseradish powder or more black pepper and vinegar. Add a bit of yogurt or mayonnaise if it’s for wet mustard.
I was originally going to post a recipe for tripe cooked with peppers and tomatoes, served over rice. It was really good. However, the butcher’s poor food safety practices seem to have given me food poisoning, which I have spent the past two days recovering from. (I knew something was off when he was lackadaisical with his gloves, but I was too excited for tripe.) The tripe was good, but it was not worth that.
Good but so not worth the aftermath. (Photo mine, November 2018)
Anyway, I am mostly feeling better now. I was originally going to rant about the poor safety practices of the kosher meat industry, but that has been covered extensively in Jewish media. So instead, I am going to provide some Jewish reading materials, liquids, foods, and advice for getting through a bout of food poisoning.
Read: so a shameless plug here – my cousin Lexi Freiman wrote a very Jewish, very gastric novel called Inappropriation that is absolutely fantastic. If you want to follow a satire of left- and right-wing identity politics told through the coming of age of an anxious teenage girl, this book is for you. You will laugh a lot.
Read: but if laughing is hurting your stomach, save Inappropriation for when you are not feeling ill. For this circumstance, I am going to recommend reading a nice history book or series of articles, so that you can feel elegant even as you feel violently sick. How about browsing through the Early New York Synagogue Archives from the Center for Jewish History?
Drink: soup! Clear chicken broth is not just the “Jewish penicillin” – it’s also easily digestible even when you can’t digest anything else. Slow sipping prevents vomiting, and will also both hydrate you and provide much needed electrolytes. It is also way better tasting than Gatorade.
Drink: South Africans drink rooibos tea when sick – and my South African dad definitely gave me quite a bit when I felt ill at times. Steep a bag of rooibos tea (yes, just get the bags like any South African) for three minutes in hot water, and add honey or sugar to taste. The caffeine-free tea will hydrate you and make you feel better.
Advice: do not guilt trip yourself! Food poisoning happens to most everyone at some point, and making yourself feel bad for eating something or drinking something sketchy will only make you feel worse. In Jewish communities we often like to guilt-trip, but that’s not healthy! No one deserves to vomit out their insides.
Ruby Tandoh is great. Ever since she was catapulted to food fame by her appearance on The Great British Bake-Off, I have been gleefully following her. Her recipes are straightforward and delicious, she is unapologetically queer and nerdy, and she celebrates food for what it is! Reading her writing or hearing her talk feels like one of my friends sitting on my famous metal mesh chair, holding a glass of wine and telling you that yes, fancy hazelnut porridge and Cream of Wheat with Raisinets are both great. (Confession: the second one is something I have eaten more than once.) So I was thrilled to finally read her new book, Eat Up.
It was so good.
Eat Up is a manifesto, but it does not tell you what or how to eat. Instead, it tells you how to live ethically with food. Tandoh walks you through all the ways you relate to food: as sustenance, as a vehicle for emotions, as a vehicle for politics, and as something that engages all the senses. Sometimes, the book is political, arguing against fatphobia, ableism, classism, or racism as made manifest through food. Sometimes, the book is meditative, asking you to savor whatever it is that you are eating. And sometimes, it is a food memoir, and that is where the writing is best. I laughed as I read of Tandoh seeking her Ghanaian great-aunt’s groundnut soup recipe, and grimaced right alongside her as she ate eels by the seashore. Most of all, though, this book is a response to the same authenticity-obsessed, elitist, snotty food world that irritates me.
Tandoh makes short shrift of the cute world of the food movement, the tyrannical one of the diet industry, and all the ways status is disguised by concern. There are many books that talk about the sugar lobby and the corn lobby. One of Tandoh’s strongest points is when she points out how, contrary to a lot of scientific evidence, a diet lobby also exists. The world of health foods and weight loss plans is not just about fake concern, but a multibillion dollar industry. It just happens to be an industry supported by the elite. Tandoh’s point regarding this is pretty unusual in the food world, and it is welcome. She also skewers the food movement, pointing out how unrealistic the locavore, artisan world it promotes is for so many. Some of this is direct – but some of it is simply honoring the food that the food movement often ignores. Tandoh might sing the praises of home-baked cake, but you will find love for cheap tea, Wotsits, and Burger King here too. Above all, Tandoh has little patience for the fake concern of much of the food world. People in the food world, she rightly points out, are not actually concerned about your weight or your tastes or your exposure to something. They often just enjoy the power and making fun of you. And Tandoh proposes resisting that temptation – and eating while we do it. After all, we need to eat to be strong.
Like me, Tandoh traces an emotional world through food. Recipes interspersed throughout the book seek to summon up a feeling – of joy, of ease, or of comfort. More than that, she talks about the meanings of food, and how different foods are needed at different times. She also discusses, effortlessly, the distance between what is socially “acceptable” to eat and what we actually crave – and how the latter is sometimes more helpful than the former. Many food books tell you not to eat Kit-Kats. Tandoh reminds you that, of course, it is okay to have one – and that your attachment to them is not a bad thing. This is the book’s strongest point: that food and emotion does not always go in a specific marketable, status-oriented direction.
The book can get repetitive at points, and sometimes a bit wordy. Tandoh herself jokes about this as a former philosophy student. I also think the recipes may be a bit hard for some people to follow, since they are written in a highly narrative style. That said, the book is still incredible as a resource and as a way to think about food. Tandoh is young, and Tandoh is bursting with ideas, and I think this is going to be the first of many incredible books about food. You should absolutely read Eat Up, so that you can join me in eagerly waiting for more.
I am starting this piece in Israel, where I am visiting my grandmother at the moment. Israel, as I have written before, is a really weird place in terms of food. There is plenty already written about the influence of Palestinian cuisine on Jewish cooking, continued diaspora traditions, and the “kashrut wars” in Israel. I have even watched a fantastic documentary about the pork industry in Israel. What I find most interesting, though, is that it is ground zero for industrial Jewish foods. Most of the canned gefilte fish, powder-mix matzah ball soup and latkes, and instant farfel have some link to industrial food companies here. If they were not invented here, they are certainly made here.
Canned vegetables: a life saver for some. (Photo Parenting Patch via Creative Commons)
My grandmother is a fan. At the age of 91, she still enjoys her jarred gefilte fish on Passover, Mandelbrod from big boxes, and the smell of soup made from powdered mix. (She also eats some food that is unlikely to ever have an industrial market, like baked fish heads.) I used to dismiss these products as industrial dreck. But now I find them fascinating, because they still influence our homemade cooking. And just as Israel’s government uses nostalgia to drum up support for Zionism, so too do these food products use nostalgia to not just sell their wares, but redefine Jewish cuisine.
We who write about food are too quick to dismiss these products as unimportant to the grand story, or only negative. Except we often end up imitating them. For people whose first experience of Jewish food was these foods – and we have sixty years of this – that is the “benchmark” for whatever we make. It also becomes the norm. And we end up adding more of the things that people want … which often circle back to these products. Never mind that some people do not have the time, energy, ability, or resources to make everything “from scratch.” Making stock, making kneidlach, and making farfel takes time. The industrial manufacturers hit on a market – and the result is fascinating. Why? Because of how it plays with our psychology.
Makers take memories, smash them together, and create food products out of them. I find that fascinating. The company of course uses that “authentic” taste to sell the food. And eventually those tastes – which are often similar – become fixed. So then we have to adjust our handmade recipes to reflect those. We cannot remember the pre-industrial food that we never tasted! What we mistakenly call authentic is as much a product of marketing as anything else, even foods like p’tcha that do not have a version from the box. Some mourn this reality. I do not.
Bouillon cubes – just as Jewish as homemade stock. (Photo Creative Commons/Wikimedia)
We have to remember that industrial food came about and stayed for a reason. Well, actually, it came about for many reasons, right alongside the development of capitalism, redistribution of wealth, and redistribution of cuisines. Food has also, in all civilizations, been industrial to a certain extent, with products being made, processed, and consumed in separate places. To return to the point though: industrial food made it far more efficient, practical, and possible to make food, make different types of food, and make a variety of food available. Canning made vegetables more regularly available during the winter. Dried pasta made noodles affordable. The packaging of rice made it shippable. Industrial bread made affordable bread without dangerous or unsavory additives that often caused illness or debilitating pain from indigestion. (The latter was common in Europe before the 19th century.) The natural next step in some ways was to industrialize other foods. That went well with the faith in scientific everything of the early and mid-20th century. True, these foods were seen as suspicious, and the women who were first to embrace them were often criticized for not doing things “the real way.” But the ease and simplicity of cooking them made industrial foods much more popular. Women, who still do most of the housework in homes today, had more time. (The use of industrial food maps closely to the ability of women to enter the workforce.) Fewer people were malnourished than before – a fact that goes contrary to many screeds about the obesity epidemic. Things that were once rare for most common people, such as chicken in the United States and pasta in Italy, became common. For Jews, festival foods also became more common – though the gefilte fish from the jar was certainly quite different. In Israel, industrialized food got a population of refugees dumped by the Israeli state into transit camps through a long period of austerity. Industrial food also ameliorated the malnutrition common in Palestinian refugee camps – as it still does today. The high-end “organic, handmade” cuisine that later developed in Italy, France, and the Bay Area is not natural or historic. It is an elitist reaction to a new common availability of food, which happens to be industrial. And though industrial food can improve, we should not simply dismiss it.
What would Jewish cooking look like today without industrial food? The honest truth is, I do not know, and nor do you. Industrial food has changed our tastes: it is so common that it is part of all of our memories of taste. It has been around and popular for generations. I would hazard that what we considered the central parts of Jewish food would have a lot less meat, a lot less complexity, and many more foods reserved only for the most important holidays. Perhaps there would also be less salt. I do not think it is useful, though, to recreate pre-industrial Jewish cooking. We are at five generations of cooks who have grown up with stock cubes and bouillon powder, canned tomatoes and packaged noodles, jams from the store and premade matzah meal. Those tastes are in all of our palates – even the ones with organic, fair-trade labeling. We cannot reconstruct that taste. We simply have to move on and acknowledge that these jarred and canned foods, whether or not we like them, a part of our cuisine. We should partake, and participate in how they are developed.
The lines of Israeli industrial dairy. The fruit yogurts at bottom left are a personal favorite. (Photo Rakoon via CC/Wikimedia, 2018)
In short, we should embrace what I call modernist Jewish cooking. (The term is an adaptation of Rachel Laudan’s term “culinary modernism”). It is pointless and unhygienic to masturbate to fantasies of the authentic Jewish kitchen. Why complain about frozen gefilte fish, when we can make it different or better for us? Why judge the person who makes matzah ball soup from the box? (Would you rather they not eat?) Why should we be so scared of the shortcuts our grandmothers and great-grandmothers knew better to malign? Why should we romanticize the misogynist misery of cooking “in the old days,” a misery that hundreds of millions of women still live? Why should we embrace the myths of the “natural” kitchen, when nothing about human cooking is ever fully “natural”? And can we even run away from these tastes, that shape us as much as anything that is celebrated?
For more reading on industrial food, I highly recommend the work of Rachel Laudan and Josh Ozersky. “A Plea for Modernist Cuisine” (Laudan) and “In Defense of Industrial Food” (Ozersky) are two of my favorite articles ever written about food. For more on how industrial food products emerged, read Laura Shapiro’s Something From the Oven. For more on industrial food in Israel, Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nationis spectacular. For a lovely, if incomplete, takedown of “locavore” thought, The Locavore’s Dilemma by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroki Shimizu is quite good.
Potato frittata with cilantro and chilies – the missing bit was eaten by yours truly. (Photo mine, March 2018)
And now for the second in our series of potato dishes for Passover – a dish most people associate with Spain, the potato omelet. In Spain, this dish is made with chunks of potato and known as a tortilla española. It is a common favorite at tapas bars around the world. However, a similar dish exists across Italian, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities. It is called frittata de patate by Italian Jews, kuku sib zamini by Persian Jews. It is also named makroud fil-batates in North African Arabic or a variety of things in Ladino.
Enjoying a slice of frittata. (Photo mine, March 2018)
One of the great things about many of the Jewish versions of the frittata is that it is made with mashed potato instead of potato chunks, which does wondrous things for the texture. Instead of admittedly delicious chunks of potato, you get a creamy, almost mousse-like texture. I based my recipe off of Claudia Roden’s, but with a few adjustments. I swapped the parsley with cilantro, and added a touch of another New World introduction – chili peppers – to give it a bit of a spicy kick. This dish makes for a great sharing food, or as breakfast for Pesach and the whole year. However, I skipped the onions in the North African version and made a riff off of the deceptively simple Italian version. I have been eating it for breakfast, piece by piece. Enjoy!
Potato Frittata for Passover
Based on several recipes by Claudia Roden
2lbs/1kg potatoes, peeled
5 cloves white garlic, minced
2 fresh hot chili peppers, finely diced
4 tablespoons olive oil or sunflower seed oil
1 fistful fresh cilantro, chopped
8 eggs, beaten
Salt and black pepper to taste (I used about 2 teaspoons of salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper)
Boil the potatoes in water until soft. Then, drain the potatoes and rinse them under cold water to cool them. Mash the potatoes and set aside to cool further.
In the meantime, heat a deep non-stick or cast-iron skillet and add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Then, add the garlic and chili and sauté for 1-2 minutes, or until the garlic is browned. Pour out the oil, garlic, and chili, and mix them into the mashed potatoes.
Mix the cilantro, eggs, salt, and pepper into the mashed potatoes until you get a thick batter.
Heat the skillet again, and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Then, pour the egg-potato mixture into the skillet. Cook for 15-20 minutes on a medium-to-high flame, or until the omelet is set and browned on the bottom. If you want it brown on top, you can bake the frittata afterwards for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can bake the frittata in the skillet or a pan for 35-45 minutes in an oven preheated to 425F/220C.
Remove from heat. Serve the frittata in slices, hot, warm, or cold.
A number of readers have asked me for advice on how to host a Shabbat dinner and not become upset, lose one’s metaphorical spoons, or have a fairly unpleasant time. Hosting a Shabbat dinner is a great mitzvah, a lot of fun, and a nice way to combine Jewish food, ritual, friends, and a good time. It also does not have to be upsetting to host. I am no domestic goddess, but I do have some sage advice that I think can serve us all. Here are thirteen basic guidelines to follow when hosting a Shabbat dinner – or any dinner party or event that you cater yourself, really.
Richard II dining – and drinking – with his dukes in the Chronique d’Angleterre (Bruges, late 15th century). The boat probably contains salt. (British Library, public domain)
Do: plan ahead. You should know, before you begin to cook:
what you are cooking,
what your ingredients are,
how many people are eating,
how much time you need, and
what equipment you have in your kitchen.
From there, you can adequately prepare for your meal. When you buy ingredients, you know what to buy. You know roughly how much time to set aside to cook, and you have an idea of how much to cook. I generally have an idea of who is coming for a Shabbat dinner and what I am cooking by Tuesday. If you are less experienced, you will need more time.
Do: know your limits. You should know how long it takes you to cook and to prep for cooking – from chopping an onion to making a full meal. Know how much time you have, and how much energy you have, and how much you can afford to spend on ingredients. Plan from there. It’s hard to do an elaborate meal you do not have the energy to make, or the time, or the money. There are plenty of affordable and time-efficient dishes to make, and if you can do more money-wise or time-wise, feel free to go ahead. This also requires you to know how experienced you are in the kitchen. If you do not have a lot of experience, you may want to make simpler things, because your limits are not as wide as, say, someone who’s cooked for fifteen years.
Apple cake. (Photo mine, September 2017)
Do: know how to troubleshoot. Things go wrong in the kitchen – dishes boil over, an ingredient is not very fresh, you drop an egg. You should know what might go wrong with your dishes, and at the very least how to do without an ingredient or to make something up on the fly. Some of this is from experience, but you can also get an idea by reading various cooking books. If you are not sure what could go wrong with a dish, make it for yourself or your family first before you try it on guests.
Do: cook with your guests in mind. Cook things based on what your guests can eat. This means that you should take into account dietary restrictions, allergies, and aversions whenever possible before planning what you will cook. I will nowadays shoot a Facebook message to my invitees asking this question before I even plan a single dish. For friends who I have cooked for before, I also take into account their allergies, practices, and aversions – for example, one friend has an aversion to raw fruit, and another has an allergy to certain types of chili. Then, once you have this information, plan your menu. This makes preparing the meal far less stressful – you will not end up cooking things that only you can eat.
Do: cook things you would make normally. This sounds counter-intuitive: don’t you want to make guests something special? But other than one “ta-da!” dish, it is actually fine to have things that you are used to making. Not only does it let your labor shine, but “normal” food can be good food too! Besides, it is far easier to make.
Do: have only one or two labor-intensive dishes. A labor-intensive dish might be good, but it definitely takes a lot of time and energy to prepare! And so it is best to only have one dish that requires heavy preparation time – be it in mincing many ingredients, a complicated assembly, or a long cooking process. Keep the other dishes fairly simple. This means that your efforts will be appreciated and you can have the focus you need to make the dish.
Finished and plated tamatiebredie with mieliepap. (Photo mine, June 2017)
Do: allow your guests to contribute. There is nothing wrong with asking for a bit of help – and it is okay to ask your guests to bring some smaller things! (In fact, this is the custom in many Jewish communities.) I routinely ask my guests to bring some challah, a bottle of wine, or lemonade. If a guest offers to bring something, do not automatically say no! That said, be sure to offer things when you go over to others’ houses too.
Do: balance out the dishes. Generally speaking, try not to have everything be the same flavor or the same type of dish. So, for example, don’t have three carbohydrates and a green salad, or have everything taste like maple syrup. Even a taste-themed meal should have variety so the guests are not bored, overwhelmed, or do not eat enough. I usually aim for one protein, one carbohydrate, and two vegetables.
Fennel for sale at a market in Holon, Israel (photo Ariel Palmon via Wikimedia Commons)
Don’t: be afraid of simple dishes. Simple food is often good food. So though we rightly celebrate complex dishes, do not be afraid of the simple things! Potatoes, simple vegetables, and bread still have their places in great meals. In addition, allowing the flavor of something to be alone or almost unadorned is a hallmark of many great cuisines, from China to France to Mexico. Simple foods also go well with complex dishes. Besides, they are much easier to make.
Don’t: be afraid of canned ingredients. Soaking beans for 24 hours sucks. Mincing tomatoes is a task that is easily forgotten. Canned corn lasts longer and keeps more nutrients than fresh corn. There is no shame in using a canned ingredient or a few. I use canned beans and canned corn all the time.
Don’t: make it too complicated. This is the death of so many good parties. If you make your dinner too complicated, there are many more places where things can go wrong: a sauce burns; an allergy appears; the cat eats a key ingredient. (Yes, the last one happened.) Besides, a complicated dinner is really exhausting to put on. Best to only have one complicated thing at most, and keep the other things pretty simple. It makes for a better dinner and a better time.
Don’t: make too many new recipes or use too many new ingredients. One thing about cooking with ingredients is knowing how they behave: how they cook, how long they cook for, what they do to your food, and what can go wrong. It is great to try new things: a different vegetable or fish, a new spice, or a new starchy food. But in order to learn how this item cooks, and to feel less overwhelmed, stick to only that new item, or maybe two new items. Otherwise, cook with ingredients you are familiar with. It is much easier to lay out a meal if you know what you are cooking, and you feel comfortable cooking it. As for new recipes, even if they are with ingredients you are familiar with, you may want to only stick to one or two totally new recipes at a time for a meal. Otherwise, cook things that you have cooked before to reduce the stress. For example, for a recent Shabbat dinner, I made an Iranian herb omelet called kuku sabzi – which was delicious! Though with familiar ingredients, I had never made it before – and the preparation method is somewhere between an omelet and a frittata, but far more reliant on fresh herbs. I also made the Eggplant with Lentils and Pomegranates. For everything else, I used recipes that I was not only familiar with, but I had made many times before. I was barely stressed, and the dinner was a success.
Don’t: be scared of mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes in the kitchen, even when cooking for guests. Don’t feel embarrassed: it is part of the learning process. Merely make a note of where you went wrong, and try again next time! Even the most experienced cooks mess up from time to time – I myself messed up while trying to thicken a soup the other day. After all, our sages said it best: “no one is perfect but G-d.”
Thank you to Alex Cooke and Jeremy Swack for talking through points in this piece with me.
Here’s a quick recipe in honor of the Nine Days before Tisha B’Av. It is traditional in this time to eat foods associated with mourning, to avoid meat, and to avoid alcohol, all in honor of the destroyed Temples – and for many modern Jews, other tragedies as well. Garlic has an interesting duality in traditional Jewish cuisine – it is simultaneously a food of pleasure for Shabbat but also traditional for mourning, along with eggs and lentils. I haven’t found very much on the Jewish history of cashews, but I do know that they are frequently found in the cuisines of Brazilian and Indian Jewry.
Cashew and Garlic Spread
Serves 10-20
6oz/170g raw cashews
2 cups water
16 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon table salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
Soak the cashews in water for fifteen minutes. Then, drain the cashews.
You can optionally saute the garlic cloves whole in the olive oil and then save both. Or you can use them raw for a stronger flavor.
Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth but with some chunkiness. I have a hand-crank food processor and find that I can better get the consistency I want with that. You will get a smoother product more quickly with an electric food processor.
Let it sit for ten minutes before serving. It will keep for up to a week refrigerated.
Thank you to Alex Cooke, Jonathan Bressler, Rebecca Galin, Berakha Guggenheim, Akiva Lichtenberg, and David Hughes-Robinson for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.
Pickled kohlrabi and turnip. (Photo mine, July 2017)
It finally happened: I made pickles. It is such a Jewish category of food – and so tasty – and I had simply skipped it. No longer.
Jews have been preserving food since Jews have … been Jews. The pickles that we enjoy today are all ultimately related to methods of food preservation from ancient times. In the Ancient Near East, people Jewish and non-Jewish alike dried, salted, and fermented foods for long-term use. (Some ancient ferments like feseekh in Egypt are still with us today.) Cabbage has been fermented in Eastern Europe since ancient times, and foods have been preserved in vinegar or whey from Iceland to India to Ethiopia since at least the medieval era. As salt became cheaper because of colonialism and expanded trade networks, pickling in Europe and North Africa became far more affordable and thus common. New pickles often joined existing pickles and preserved foods – pickles eggplants alongside preserved lemons in Morocco, pickled radishes alongside sauerkraut in Eastern Europe, pickled herring alongside … other pickled herring in Germany. The invention of the boiling water bath certainly helped. By the early 19th century, a scepter was haunting Europe – the scepter of many preserved vegetables.
Even today, each Jewish community’s pickles have a strong toehold on Jewish tables around the world. In Ashkenazi communities, cucumber pickles are found seemingly everywhere – at Shabbat tables, in sandwiches, as snacks. In the United States, the “kosher dill” pickle has transcended ethnic boundaries to become something of a regional food in the Northeast. (I remember a Catholic friend from New Jersey who brought back a jar to the United Kingdom from a visit home.) In other countries, but especially France and Israel, meanwhile, many preserved Mizrahi foods are popular: pickled eggplants from Iraq, preserved lemons from Morocco, and preserved onions from everywhere among them. Today, in any food shop catering to Israeli expatriates, you can find cans of Kvutzat Yavne pickles for sale. At all stages of assimilation and cultural and culinary change, pickles have accompanied Jews for the ride – even if the pickles themselves have changed.
In an age of mass pickling and a stronger food supply (both of which are good things), fewer people are pickling. I do not hold by arguments that something is lost here: let’s not romanticize a past in which death by food poisoning was common and nutrition more lacking than today. This is a view that Rachel Laudan correctly described as ahistorical in her wonderful book Cuisine and Empire. What is true, though, is that pickling is a lot of fun. The work is satisfying, and a new generation of millennial picklers are bringing new flavors to the table. Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern, for example, included not only classical Ashkenazi cucumber pickles and sauerkraut in their book The Gefilte Manifesto, but also kimchi-like sauerkraut and shallots in red wine. Not authentic at all, totally Jewish, and stunningly delicious. Other cultures, too, are playing with their pickles – I recently found a recipe for Iranian torshi that used Fuji apples!
In this recipe I used some pickling spices from South Africa. The blend includes turmeric and paprika, which lend the pickles I made a spicy undertone and a bright color. You, of course, can have your pickles as plain as possible. Remember to use the freshest vegetables for the best flavor. This recipe is very easy since the fermentation and preservation all take place in the refrigerator. This recipe is suitable for canning – remember to follow safe canning guidelines.
Happy Pickling!
Easy Refrigerator Pickles
Makes one quart
2 cups chopped and peeled vegetables (I used kohlrabi and turnips for one pickle, onions for another, cucumbers for another, and lettuce – yes, lettuce – for the last. The recipe is easily scalable.)
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar (any should do)
1 tablespoon coarse salt (do not use table salt)
1 tablespoon pickling spices of choice (optional)
Wash thoroughly and dry a liter- or quart-sized container with a lid. This can be a jar, Tupperware, former peanut butter vessel… you name it.
Stuff the chopped vegetables into the container, leaving room between them and at the top for the brine.
In a saucepan, blend the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. This makes the brine.
When the brine is boiling, stir again, then turn off the heat.
Ladle the brine into the container with the vegetables until full, leaving a bit of space at the top. Close the container completely.
Place the container in the back of the refrigerator for three days at least before eating. The pickles keep for up to six weeks.
Remember to can safely if you can!
Thank you to Evan Bialostozky and Jessie Thompson for selling me the vegetables used in this recipe.
