Challah Hot Dogs

By Shannon Sarna on The Nosher for MyJewishLearning.com

Its officially hot dog season if ever there was one, and I freely admit: I love hot dogs. I have even found a way to combine a love of hot dogs with a love of challah with my famous challah dogs.

What are challah dogs you might be wondering? Well it’s my answer to the bagel dog, or the pretzel dog. And one of the great things about this recipe is you can use any challah recipe you prefer. The key is rolling your challah into roughly 3 oz size pieces and then snaking it around the hot dogs. I brush them simply with a beaten egg before adding toppings.

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Best Cholent Ever? An Iraqi Stew

Tebit, a sticky, sweet chicken dish traditionally served on Shabbat, is gaining popularity—for good reason

By Dana Kessler for Tablet Magazine

Every Jewish community around the world developed its own version of a hot meal that conforms to the prohibition of cooking on the Sabbath: Ashkenazi Jews have cholent, Sephardic Jews have hamin, Central and Western European Jews have shalet, and Iraqi Jews have tebit. The trick for making all these dishes Shabbat-friendly is simple: You bring the pot to a boil on Friday afternoon, in the last minute before the Sabbath rears its holy head, and let it simmer until the next day. All these different versions of Shabbat stews, stemming from each and every corner of the Diaspora, have made it safely to Israel. But these days, the exotic and extremely sticky tebit is more popular than ever—and not only among Iraqi Jews.

Tebit begins with chicken, or more specifically, the skin—traditionally the skin of an entire chicken. The skin is then filled with a mixture of rice, chopped chicken, and herbs. In this respect, tebit is comparable not only to cholent but also to helzel, an Ashkenazi dish that also involves stuffing a chicken skin. But while helzel is made by stuffing the skin of a chicken neck, thus sometimes making it just one of the components of cholent, tebit is a whole meal in itself. After long hours of slow cooking, tebit’s rice mixture becomes the chicken skin’s whole world; it is not only filled by it, but the rice also surrounds it.

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Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food

By Zelda Shluker Hadassah magazine

Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food 

(by Aaron Rezny and Jordan Schaps. (powerHouse Books, 232 pp. $35)


What made my heart stop when I was visually devouring the images of beloved Jewish foods in this beautifully photographed book was not the pistachio halvah, the toasted onion bialys or poppy seed and onion topped pletzels; crispy potato latkes; rich, dairy matzo brei; or even Ratner’s cheese blintzes or raisin and walnut filled rugelach—all of which I love, love, love. (Certainly not the p’tcha, Cel-Ray soda, gribenes or kasha varnishkes, which are not my favorites.) What made me gasp was the Charlotte Russe. Like Proust’s madeleine, the Charlotte Russe, which I used to buy in a small candy story across from my Bubbe’s stoop on Henry Street on the Lower East Side, brought back the most delightful memories. While cheese cake, fricassee, chicken soup and the many other wonderful dishes in Eating Delancey can be replicated, it is rarer to find the Charlotte Russe, that delicate delight of sponge cake and jam held together in around, open-bottomed paper cup, topped with a mound of sweet whipped cream and a maraschino cherry.

Eating Delancey is filled with historical as well as mouthwatering images, memories and recipes. Maybe you will find in it the dish that touches your gastronomic heart. Joan Rivers wrote the introduction and Fyvush Finkel, Jackie Mason, Milton Glaser, Paul Goldberger and Robert Klein are among the many contributors to this wonderful volume. Yum.

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Kanafeh/Kunefe (Sweet Cheese Pastry)

By Kevin Lynch for ClosetCooking.com

A few months ago I got an email inviting me to explore Israel, it's people and it's cuisine on a project called Taste of Israel put on by a group called Stand With Us. At first I was a little leery about the offer but after a bit of research it seemed legit and it was an opportunity that I simply could not pass up and so I went! It turned out to be an absolutely amazing experience filled with lots of great people and of course plenty of amazing food! I enjoyed a lot of dishes in Israel and I just had to try making a few of them at home and sharing them with you!

The adventure started as soon as we got off the plane, after almost 20 hours travel time from Toronto, as we were whisked away to the beautiful Dan Hotel Tev Aviv where after checking in we headed out for dinner at Yaffo Tel Aviv restaurant by Haim Cohen. The meal that we had there was filled with plenty of tasty dishes including a flat bread that was covered in melted garlicky butter and roasted cherry tomatoes but the one dish that really stood out for me was a dessert, the kanafeh.

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