With Jewish New Year just around the corner, I feel a bout of phantom nostalgia coming on. Why phantom, you may ask? Because my family never really kept any of the Jewish traditions.  Sure, my aunt made Gefilte Fish every fall, along with some other staples of classic Jewish cookery. She’d invite the family over, and we […]

We didn’t have a lot of cookies growing up. This whole love affair with cookies is more of an American phenomenon.  What we did have was  more like crackers — dry and crunchy things of various shapes, flavors and colors, which my grandpa in the very old-fashioned way called biscuits. We loved them.  When I […]

Today there is going to be no nostalgic excursions. I threw this stew quickly together for dinner the other day, and it turned out very well. It’s got a somewhat soupy consistency because I didn’t brown the meat, I sweated it together with onions, just like my mom taught me. Then I added a few […]

Growing up in Ukraine, we were consuming vast quantities of farmer cheese.  It was a staple, the kind of thing that you almost certainly would find in anyone’s fridge. It was cheap, it was filling, and it was made from whole milk.  Not ricotta. And certainly not the slimy clumpy foodstuff charmingly called “cottage cheese” […]

Every time I pass perfectly flat triangular brisket slabs in a store,  my inner Jew wakes up from a deep sleep and starts with the questions. “When are you gonna start cooking like a good Jewish girl?”  “Where are the Gefilte Fish and Latkes?”  “Why aren’t you making Mandlech for your chicken soup any more, […]