Eat Eat! You’re Skin and Bones!

From Bubbe’s Kitchen to the Bank

(Jews in the field of Culinary Arts)

Step 1: Create an experience

Option A: introduce topic and share previous knowledge/experience:

How do you summarize every Jewish holiday in 1 sentence?

“They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”

Ask each USYers to share either:

  • Their favorite standard or classic Jewish holiday dish
  • A family recipe served every ______(fill in the Jewish holiday)

or Option B:

Call out an ingredient such as “noodles” and the USYers must come up with every Jewish food they can think of that has that ingredient.

(examples: kugel, chicken soup, szakoi – Jewish noodle stew).

Step 2: Discuss the exercise

  • Why are these particular foods special to you? Why are they favorites of yours?
  • Does it spark a memory? Tell your family history in some way?
  • Tie you to other Jews when others around you look at you strangely when you bring cardboard looking crackers to school on Pesach?
  • “You are what you eat.” What does Jewish food say about us as Jews?

Step 3: Integrate the discussion and experience

Jewish food tells the story of the Jewish people. From Jewish dietary laws that distinguish us as unique and make the ordinary act of eating, holy, to Jewish delights that have been integrated into secular culture (who doesn’t love a good bagel and lox), Jewish food says a lot about who we are.

What is it about food that not only provides comfort but tells a story? Food is a tool we use to tell our story, recall memories, relive history and keep the memories of those no longer with us alive. Food links us to our past with every bite, carries in each morsel the oys and joys of generations of Jews from Sinai to your own homes.

Each of us has a relative who entertains our taste buds with Jewish culinary delights. Sure, your bubbe makes the best challah or your dad’s sweet potato latkes are to die for! But could they cook up some cash? Do Jews ever take their talents from the kitchen to the bank?

Step 4: Teach the Concept- Jews in the world of Culinary Arts

Hand outs (attached):

#1- Jewish texts

#2- “Top Chef Previous Winners are Keepin’ it Kosher”

#3Jewishjournal.com- “New Kosher Cooking School Steps Up to the Plate

Optional (for their info)

Center for Kosher Culinary Arts

Have the group read the first source page (Jewish sources on food) together and discussguiding questions.

Explain: “V’achalta V’savata”- you should eat and be satisfied. We should enjoy what we eat. Kosher culinary arts is becoming a hot field to enter. From the Top Chef winner catering Shabbat Across America (March 7, 2009) to a new Kosher culinary arts school in New York, Kosher cooking is cool!

Did you know that…

  • 2 of the 5 finalists for America’s Top Chef were Jewish (Leah Cohen and Hosea Rosenberg).
  • That the top chef winner, Hung Huynh was hired to cater Shabbat across America in New York?
  • That there is now a Kosher school for culinary arts in Brooklyn?
  • That there are nearly 350 Kosher cookbooks on the market?

Hand out and read source sheets 2 and 3

Step 5: Practice the Givens- “Jewshi” (invent a new recipe)

Materials: Assign groups of 2 or 3 a traditional Jewish food (see list attached for ideas)

You are a student at the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn. You have been asked by Hillel at Columbia to compete in their great “Dorm Room Dilemma Jewish food cook-off. Each group of 2 or 3 will receive a traditional Jewish food and must think of a creative twist to reinvent the traditional treat (eg. latkes made with squash instead of potatoes or an apple cinnamon “dessert” kugel”)

Step 6: present and discuss

Have each pair or group present their new recipe.

Discuss:

  • What is “kosher culinary arts”
  • Is Kosher food destined to be bland (matzah)? What are the benefits to the new trend of Kosher culinary arts and the new surge in the Kosher cookbook industry?
  • Are Kashrut observing Jews craving to be able to eat what others eat and become more demaining for better food? What do you think is the source for the new trend for upscale, trendy Kosher food?

Bottom line: If Jews are so ”into” good food, and the kitchen such a focal point of the Jewish home, why is culinary arts not such a popular career choice?

Step 7: Become a KCA- Kosher Culinary Artist- DO try this at home

Nowadays, anything dairy can be made pareve. Milk and ice cream become soy or rice milk, butter turns into margarine, crab becomes Pollock…sushi can be made into “Jewshi” (Jewish friendly sushi).

Take home challenge- look through the cookbooks you have at home, read recipes online and search for something you’d love to make. Challenge yourself to make it Koshe and try out your chef skills at home!

Text Sources:

Devarim 8:3

גוַיְעַנְּךָ, וַיַּרְעִבֶךָ, וַיַּאֲכִלְךָאֶת-הַמָּן אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יָדַעְתָּ, וְלֹא יָדְעוּן אֲבֹתֶיךָ:לְמַעַן הוֹדִיעֲךָ,כִּי לֹא עַל-הַלֶּחֶם לְבַדּוֹ יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם--כִּי עַל-כָּל-מוֹצָא פִי-יְהוָה,יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם. / 3 And He afflicted thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
Source 2: Davrim 8:10
יוְאָכַלְתָּ, וְשָׂבָעְתָּ--וּבֵרַכְתָּאֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, עַל-הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לָךְ. / 10 And thou shalt eat and be satisfied, and bless the LORD thy God for the good land which He hath given thee.

Source 3 (Contemporary Source)

“Eat, eat! You’re skin and bones!”

-every Jewish bubby

We’ve come a long way since our nomadic lifestyle of sustaining ourselves with manna. The Torah tells us that we need more than just a good piece of challah to live off of. So…we got cookin’!

  • Was manna considered a punishment? Is bad food a form of affliction? Why do you think Bnai Yisrael were forced to live off of manna?
  • What does being hungry (or craving good food) teach us?
  • Where does our obsession with food come from? Where does the stereotype of the force feeding Jewish mother come from? Do you think the origins of the obsession with food comes from the fact that we were often without?
  • “You shall eat and be satisfied.” Is it enough to just eat or do should we enjoy what we eat?
  • We should ENJOY what we eat!

List of common Jewish foods:

  • Kugel
  • Matzo balls (eg. make them whole wheat, spice them up!)
  • Cholent
  • Matzah
  • Malawach (a Yemenite crepe made from puff pastry layers)
  • Couscous (Middle Eastern)
  • Jachnun (also Yemenite, flat bread, dough served with dipping sauces)
  • Gefilte fish
  • Honey cake
  • Hamentashen
  • Chicken soup
  • Brisket
  • Challah (put in some craisins!)
  • Latkes
  • Blintzes
  • Chopped liver
  • Shabbes chicken

Top Chef: Previous Winners Are Keeping It Kosher

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Top Chef 2 winner Ilan Hall and Top Chef 3 champ Hung Huynh each came to their win via a different story arc. Ilan was the young chef with the Spanish cuisine know-how who battled against the chef, Marcel Vigneron, that many viewers that season found to be thoroughly unlikable. Classically-trained Hung, on the other hand, was the chef many viewers found to be unlikable himself.
Since their seasons on Top Chef, the two have continued their culinary ambitions, and each recently had a new challenge to face, each, coincidentally, within the realm of kosher cooking.

As we've seen, neither chef has really been established as a kosher chef, a discipline that follows Jewish dietary laws, and requires following rules around acceptable cooking and serving practices and excluding certain ingredients like pork and shellfish.
For Hung's kosher adventure, he is headed to the Big Apple. He has a one-month contract as Executive Chef at Solo, a Mediterranean kosher restaurant with some Asian influences. His tenure will begin March 2, but, he told the New York Times, “Who knows, maybe I'll fall in love with the place.”
Hung is currently in Ho Chi Minh City, no doubt soaking up new flavors and ideas for his new role. While Vietnamese cuisine isn't necessarily an obvious inspiration for kosher cooking, its reliance on highly flavorful ingredients like lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves can help give a meal very satisfying flavors without relying on techniques that might be forbidden, like mixing meat and dairy.
Ilan's recent brush with kosher cooking wasn't quite as serious as a new job, but it was still an interesting challenge. He participated in a kosher cook-off called “Dorm Room Challenge” at the University of Michigan.
The Top Chef winner squared off against a professional kosher chef to create a dish that could be made by a college student in his or her dorm room. They were very limited to ingredients typically found in the average student's place, like peanut butter, bagels and bananas. They had $20 with which to buy additional ingredients, and then could only use a microwave, electric griddle and an electric kettle to complete their meal.
Ilan found himself a winner again, creating a tomato ravioli with poached egg yolks. Like Hung, he wasn't deterred by the challenges bringing big taste while keeping kosher, saying, "Food is food is food.”

Source: Jewishjournal.com

July 16, 2008

New kosher cooking school steps up to the plate—and that’s not chopped liver!

By Sue Fishkoff

A student at the new Center for Kosher Culinary
Arts in New York City slices potatoes on the
first day of classes. Photo by Sue Fishkoff

On the first day of class at a new kosher cooking school in Brooklyn, 22-year-old Erica Zimmerman carefully slices raw potatoes into a stainless steel bowl.
Zimmerman, a student at New YorkUniversity, says she's always been interested in cooking, but as an observant Jew only wanted a kosher school.
"The only kosher cooking school is in Israel, and I can't take off a year to go," she said. "Then I heard about this new school on Facebook, and I jumped at the opportunity."
Last week, the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts opened in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Flatbush. The $4,500, six-week intensive course, run in cooperation with the continuing education department of KingsboroughCommunity College, is the only professional kosher cooking school in North America.
According to director Jesse Blondel and founder Elka Pinson, it is the only one in the world besides the Jerusalem Culinary Institute, a 5-year-old school in Israel.
Pinson has been dreaming of establishing such a school for years. Last year she took over the top floor of her husband's housewares shop on Coney Island Avenue and advertised for a chef/teacher on craigslist.
Blondel, a 26-year-old Brooklyn native, responded. The kitchen manager at the Culinary Center of New York, he was seeking a new position. Organizing and directing a new cooking school seemed just the ticket.
"I realized there isn't any other kosher cooking school, I'm Jewish, and I grew up not far from here," he says.
Thirteen people showed up for the course, which teaches basic French culinary skills, from making sauces and soup stocks to cooking the perfect omelet, as well as applying kosher laws in a commercial kitchen.
If you keep kosher, Pinson says, you might shell out $40,000 or more to attend the Culinary Institute of America or one of the other prestigious cooking schools, and never be able to taste what you're learning to cook.
"Then you go home, buy the ingredients, and cook and taste it there, double the work," she says.
Pinson says that's the experience of many, if not most, of the chefs working in kosher restaurants in this country. The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts is the first step in changing that, she says, by providing professional training for the kosher cooking crowd.
The center's six-week course can only cover the basics, but it's a start.
"We're on the crest of this new interest," Pinson says. "Guaranteed in six months somebody else will do it, too. Good luck! It's a lot of work."

CKCA = THE CENTER FOR KOSHER CULINARY ARTS

Located in the heart of Flatbush Brooklyn, The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts offers hands-on cooking and baking classes for men, women, children & teens of all ages and experience levels. Classes are taught by experienced chef instructors and offered during the day, in the evenings, motzei shabbos in the winter, and on Sundays. CKCA is also the first kosher cooking school in the US to offer professional level training programs in Culinary & Pastry Arts. Our programs are sponsored by KingsboroughCommunity College, a college of the City University of New York (CUNY).

CKCA chefs are also available for on-site demonstrations, private cooking classes, small catered affairs, and personal chef work!! Bring the expertise of a trained kosher chef in to your home or synagogue and impress your friends and neighbors!

Check out the other areas for our site for more specific information on who we are and what we do.