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Fast & Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays
Marlene Sorosky
(in collaboration with Joanne Neuman and Debbie Shahvar)
Publ: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
Copyright 1997
223 pages + 16 pages of color photos
I am writing this on December 27, 1997, which is coincidentally my wedding anniversary. For the math-impaired, that means that JB and I took our vows twenty-eight years ago today. The only reason I bring this up is to compare the cookbook markets of then and now.
Twenty-eight years ago, there weren't enough cookbooks around to warrant whole stores devoted to nothing but their sale. We also didn't have the superstores that abound in nearly every community in the U.S. today. If you wanted to buy a cookbook back in the "good old days," you went to your local (tiny, by current standards) book shop and picked up a copy of "Joy of Cooking" or something similar among a dozen or so others. Julia Child was gaining a name for herself, too, so the "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" was very popular, as were a number of other ethnic cookbooks.
There were Jewish cookbooks at that time, too, but the selections in any single category were quite limited. When I go into my local Barnes and Noble today, I find about four whole aisles of cookbooks; on the day I got married, I would have been hard-pressed to find any bookstore that carried more than four small shelves of them.
There are thousands of cookbooks out there now, and with such fierce competition, they have to be exceptional to succeed in a market where it seems that as many are sold as remaindered books as not. I consider "Fast & Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays" to be exceptional.
The format is "friendly," both for the novice and the experience cook. The book is divided up by Jewish holiday and other religious occasions. Beyond holidays, Ms. Sorosky presents the reader with such culinary solutions as what to serve for a bar or bat mitzvah or a brit milah. Among the holidays covered are Shabbat, which is considered the most important of all, and Havdalah, a short service which signals the end of the Sabbath, something I don't recall ever seeing included in other cookbooks. There is even an Israeli Independence Day picnic menu.(It should be noted that the book includes three unique menus for Shabbat: "A Dinner in Provence," "A Taste of the Near East," and "Dinner on the Mediterranean.")
I tend to stay away from "menu-driven" cookbooks because I usually find myself looking for specific categories of foods to round out a menu I am planning myself. A menu format is difficult to browse for suggestions in this instance, and too often, an author's complete meal suggestion falls short of my expectations. Not so with this book. It's normal to find our individual tastes clashing with those of others, leaving us with a desire to replace an author's suggestions with dishes more to our liking. It may be sheer fortune, but it appears that, in nearly every instance, I would plan to stick with Ms. Sorosky's suggested combinations.
Each holiday is described briefly, and the basic rituals are presented. Prayers over candles, food and wine are presented in both transliterated Hebrew and English.
In addition, there is a section which the author calls "extra points," in which she offers suggestions for interesting and unique invitations, table settings, place cards, special touches for the children and festive notes. An example of this would be from the section on brit milah: "Plant a new tree in the yard for the baby to enjoy as he or she grows up. In keeping with ancient tradition, a cypress tree is planted when a baby girl is born; for a boy, a cedar. When they marry, branches are cut from their trees and used to support the chuppah (canopy) they stand under at their wedding."
Complete menus are organized with their corresponding recipes. Now, while the title of the book denotes "fast," many of the dishes from this cookbook require considerable time to prepare; however, she presents these along with a "game plan," a specific schedule by which tasks are completed so that most of the real work takes place over a period of several days or weeks, leaving the cook free to tend to other matters on the day they are to be served, with only finishing touches remaining immediately before sitting down to eat.
Each recipe includes a description, interesting notes about its origin or unusual ingredients, the amount of time allotted for preparation and cooking, and the amount of the recipe which may be completed beforehand.
So far, I've presented only the positive side of "Fast & Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays." While the overwhelming majority of the book is exceptional, I did find several problems regarding matters of kashrut, the dietary laws which govern what foods may be eaten, which may not, and the manner in which they may be prepared and eaten, plus a potential health issue about one particular technique.
The first problem concerns the use of chicken liver in two recipes. In one case, a chicken liver is combined with beef to form the basis of a filling for kreplach. After the raw meats are ground together, they are encased in wonton wrappers and boiled in soup. In the second case, chicken livers are sauteed for chopped liver, a traditional Jewish food. The problem stems from the fact that kashrut commands us to subject liver to flame until no trace of red remains before eating it or continuing with a recipe. (I'm actually reluctant to mention this because I have my own recipe in my recipe collection in which I do the same thing; however, I don't feel too bad about it since I'm not billing it as a Jewish or kosher recipe.)The second problem I noticed was a matter of kashrut involving the Hanukkah menu. The meal starts with hummus (a traditional chickpea-tahini dip), followed by brisket, a zucchini dish, and a choice of standard potato latkes, sweet potato latkes, a potato-carrot pancake or a potato kugel. While those who maintain a kosher lifestyle know that they should not serve sour cream with latkes when they are consuming meat at the same meal, the sweet potato latkes are prepared with milk. Perhaps if Ms. Sorosky had offered the option of using a non-dairy replacement for milk...
The last problem I observed involves the use of optional ingredients which conflict with kashrut. Near the beginning of the book, Ms. Sorosky has a section called, "About the Book," in which she covers the subject of dietary restrictions. In this area, she acknowledges this discrepancy, stating: "All of my menus and recipes adhere to the laws of kashrut, but in some I offer alternatives. For example, in a dessert served after a meat meal, I suggest nondairy or regular margarine or butter. By doing this, I have tried to make it easier for anyone who does not keep kosher to use this book."
Please understand that I'm not a "kosher" fanatic. I don't even make pretenses at keeping a kosher kitchen or lifestyle. My point is that I believe that a cookbook which bills itself as having a "Jewish" focus should take extra measures to ensure that it does not blatantly violate kashrut. With that stated, I should add that when it comes to kashrut, there are two kinds of Jews: those who maintain a kosher existence (at whatever level they feel comfortable) and those who don't. For those who do, my comments on this matter are unnecessary; they know not to use milk and meat together, and they are fully aware that they should not use chicken broth for a sauce to go on fish. Those for whom kashrut is not a factor should not be offended in the least.
As a final comment on this subject, I should add that my comfort level would have been greatly elevated had these non-kosher alternatives not been offered (though I can't explain why in a meaningful way) or at least, had they been notated in each instance, with comments from the author as to why they are being included and cautionary remarks.
The matter of the health issue to which I referred earlier involves
a recipe which uses ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to keep grated potatoes from
turning dark before cooking latkes. At first, I thought this was
rather clever, but when I mentioned this to a friend who happens to be
a doctor, she wrote to say that, "from a medical point of view, various
medical problems preclude the use of vitamin C...your guests may have medical
problems that don't allow them to take vitamin C at the incredibly high
doses found in a normal over the counter vitamin C tablet...not to mention
the fact that a sudden fluctuation in vitamin C blood levels...can disrupt
the efficacy of oral contraceptives. Explain
that to your young female guests when they call you to tell you
the news a few months later."
All in all, though, the book is well-written and the meals beautifully planned, both with an eye toward ease of advance preparation and the eye appeal of the finished product. Did I remember to mention that I -really- love this book? Yes, I'm a cookbook junkie, but I'm also the first to admit that the last thing I need is another cookbook. I bought this as a gift for a special friend, but after having studied it, I'm tempted to buy a copy for myself. Could I offer a better endorsement?
Among the innovative dishes the author has created for this volume are:
Lamb
Shanks with Portobello Mushrooms and Dried Cranberries
Tournedos
of Salmon with Dill
Piccata Sauce
Cinnamon-Spiced Couscous
Mediterranean Fish Chowder with Red Pepper Rouille
Salmon Gefilte Fish
Rice Pilaf with Fideo Nests
Double Apple Noodle Kugel
Artichoke and Mushroom Bread Pudding
Lox and Cream Cheese Pizza
Orzo Salad with Feta and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Breadstick Sukkah (for Sukkot)
Barley and Bow-tie Pilaf
Dreidel Sundaes
Chocolate Cherry Dreidel Cake
Double Apricot Strudel
Mushroom, Goat Cheese and Pine Nut Hamantashen
Baked Asparagus with Toasted Walnuts
Mixed Greens with Apples, Blue Cheese, and Sweet 'n'
Spicy Walnuts
Cheese Pastry Torahs
White and Wild Rice Timbales
There are many, many more. I wish I could share with you all the recipes in "Fast & Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays" which appear to be so special, but I doubt the author and publisher would be happy about that.
