Orange County, CA caterer, Blueberry Hill

This week's recipe: BLUEBERRY HILL’S MANGO CHUTNEY BRISKET

I can tell Rosh Hashanah is approaching, because I’m already getting phone calls from my family and friends, my mother’s friends, even strangers!

“Can I make the brisket ahead and freeze it?” “Can I freeze the kugel?” “What should I do about my burnt honey cake?” (Yes and yes to the first two and “Um, do you have a dog?” to the third.)

Jewish cooks the world over are shopping and chopping, searing and sautéing – so many dishes, so little time.

In bygone days our foremothers, stay-at-home moms before that term ever became popular, had little distractions from the task at hand: putting a holiday feast on the table for their large extended families.

Today’s cooks squeeze the job in between work, carpools, meetings, etc. – all while trying to recreate those labor-intensive recipes their grandmothers slaved over. For what is a holiday if not the gathering of families connecting to their roots and traditions?

Now Orange County boasts its own kosher caterer, Blueberry Hill, that can provide a full dinner or even help out with a dish or two so you can enjoy your guests as you celebrate together.  

(“The perception always was that kosher food is awful,” said Beverly Scheftz, who with her son Trevor owns and operates Blueberry Hill, “but it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s definitely not that way.”

When I was growing up, my large, boisterous family would gather in my grandparents’ tiny apartment inMom and me Belle Harbor, New York, for the festive Rosh Hashanah meal. Papa Harry, who had emigrated from Russia in 1906 as a carpenter, would extend the dining table with boards reaching practically to the walls. The arrival of the aunties with their foil-covered dishes signaled the beginning of the holiday feast, a menu that seldom varied:

For the forshpeis (appetizer) Aunt Estelle’s homemade, lovingly shaped gefilte fish served with Uncle Lou’s horseradish, hand-grated on the back porch to keep out the fumes;

Aunt Irene
Aunt Irene’s golden chicken soup and ethereal matzo balls, followed by Mama Hinda’s roast chicken and brisket with oven-browned potatoes and Aunt Sally’s tsimmes (sweet carrot stew).

The centerpiece of the table was Mama Hinda’s grand spiral challah, round for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a symbol of the endless cycle of life. Only for this holiday would she add raisins, a sweet embellishment to enjoy a sweet New Year.

Sweet notes echoed from the beginning of the meal, as all assembled dipped apples in honey, to the dessert platters wedged onto Mama’s groaning sideboard: Aunt Irene’s dark, dense honey cake, Aunt Estelle’s mile-high sponge cake, Aunt Hilda’s chocolate chip

Up to my eyeballs with Rosh Hashanah preparations – lamb shanks roasting, honey orange sponge cake cooling upside down over a soda bottle, chicken soup simmering, apples all over my counter waiting to be sliced – I hear the doorbell. Slightly annoyed at the interruption, I open the door to find the UPS man delivering my eagerly-awaited copy of “Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean Flavors of Sardinia” (Rizzoli International) by restaurateur Efisio Farris with Jim Eber.

A cookbook with honey taking center stage arrives erev Rosh Hashanah. How beshert (destined) is that?

Sardinians flavor not only their desserts, but also their savory dishes with many varieties of local honey: miele millefiori (thousand flower honey), eucalyptus, chestnut, and the afodelo, acacia, and cardo flowers.

But two are truly unique in flavor – abbamele, a honey and pollen reduction they drizzle over ice cream, cheese, fresh fruit...even salads, and miele amaro or bitter honey, made from the flowers of the strawberry trees – a staple in every Sardinian kitchen – whose flavor Farris describes as “a deep yet fleeting sweetness, followed by an appealingly bitter aftertaste.” (Bitter honey as well as

Nonni LizzieA Yom Kippur recipe story. Now, there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is a day of repentance, prayer, forgiveness…and fasting. So this would be a really short story if not for the fact that all good fasts must come to an end, and indeed they do in the lovely tradition called Break-the-Fast.

Dede and Ed Ginter have been hosting a Break-the-Fast at their Fullerton home for the past 35 years. “We have mostly the same people every year,” said Dede, “and we stagger the meal, because different temples get out at different hours."

“But we do have some turnover from year to year,” Ed pointed out. “Whenever we hear of somebody with no place to go, we invite them. Sometimes they are students, or my granddaughter will have a friend who likes to eat, so we say, ‘Bring her along!’”

After a day of praying and fasting, the meal, as in most homes, is dairy. “We have lots of fruit, lox and bagels, a kugel (noodle pudding), poached salmon, a variety of sweets, and my kids’ favorite, cheese blintz soufflé,” said Dede. ”It’s an old recipe and really nice, because you can prepare it before you go to temple. Then when you get home, you bring it to room temperature, and 40 minutes before your guests arrive, you just pop it in the oven, and it puffs up beautifully.”

Dede makes two kugels to please all. “My grandkids don’t like raisins, so I make one with and one

My column at OU's Shabbat Shalom entitled A harvest of recipes for Sukkot 5768 features the following recipes: Spinach-Stuffed Acorn Squash, Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil with rice, pine nuts and currants, and Polish Apple Cake. Chag Sameach! And in keeping with the harvest season, here's my latest column in the Orange County Register:

Cooking at the farmers' market

The Orange County Register/Fullerton News Tribune
October 4, 2007

by Judy Bart Kancigor

Amelia Saltsman is on a mission. With a cooking demonstration and book signing a month away, she is trawling the farmers’ market, querying farmers as to availability. Will there be persimmons? How about pomegranates? I tag along for the ride.

“Because I work with seasonal ingredients, and we are now on the cusp of the change of seasons, I need to best guess with the farmers when things will become available,” explains Saltsman as we stroll down the aisles.

But there are frequent interruptions, because this is the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market and Saltsman – writer, cooking teacher, producer/host of her own TV show and author of “The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook” – is the undisputed queen of this market and instantly recognized by shoppers and farmers alike.

Every grower greets Saltsman, who has immortalized them in her new cookbook, which is as much an homage to the farmers, their histories, and their commitment to excellence as it is a collection of fuss-less, original and artful recipes inspired by the amazing varieties they produce.

When I think back to my grandmother’s cooking, nothing green comes to mind. Beets, carrots, onions, radishes – those familiar vegetables of Eastern Europe graced her table in America as well. When I asked my mother if she could remember eating any vegetables when she was growing up, she said, “Sure. We had potatoes.”

Oh, I suppose you could say my grandmother had a Victory garden – if you can call winning the war against aphids a victory. She grew roses, not vegetables! Which is not to say she wasn’t fiercely patriotic. For my grandparents, proud to be American citizens, Election Day was a major event, requiring hours of preparation and wardrobe consultation. But my grandmother contributed to the war effort by rolling miles of bandages for the Red Cross, not by harvesting broccoli.

By the 1950s, when I was growing up, the Jolly Green Giant had cut a mighty swath across the land and convenience was in. My generation, however, remembers vegetables as a toll to be paid for crossing the bridge to the treasure on the other side, as in “Eat your vegetables and you can have dessert.” Or so I’m told. No one had to coax us to eat anything in our house.

Ahead of her time, my mother actually steamed a veggie or two. For company she’d present a gorgeous display: a whole head of cauliflower surrounded by bursts of red, green, and orange. But in truth, she did it more for presentation than nutrition. And as for the vegetables she served for family dinners, I suspect she was more concerned about filling us up low-calorically than she was about our vitamin consumption.

My latest column on OU's website includes recipes for Tomato Pie, Tomato and Cucumber Bread Salad and Classic Tomato Soup with a Goat Cheese Swirl. Enjoy!

Like its nightshade relatives, the eggplant and potato, it was once thought to be poisonous. The French named it pomme d’amour (love apple) and considered it an aphrodisiac. Really a fruit, it’s called a vegetable. Call the tomato what you want. I call it delicious.

According to John Cooper in “Eat and Be Satisfied,” tomatoes were brought to Europe from Mexico in the sixteenth century, but weren’t

Read the whole story.

Fireworks! Parades! Barbecues! Flag-waving! It’s our nation’s birthday, and celebrating the Fourth of July with any of the above is as American as apple pie. But is our beloved classic dessert really American, I wonder?

There were no apples in the New World until the early European explorers brought the seeds
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My story in this week's Canadian Jewish News celebrates Shavuot with three delicious recipes: SAVOURY GOAT CHEESE STRUDEL, CHEESE BLINTZES, and SEPHARDIC
CHEESE-STUFFED EGGPLANT.

Canadian Jewish News
June 6, 2008

by Judy Bart Kancigor

If Pesach signals the emergence of spring, with Shavuot the season bursts forth in a riot of color and luscious flavors.

“The Midrash tells us that although Mount Sinai is in the desert,” writes Susie Fishbein, author of the wildly popular "Kosher by Design" cookbooks, “it suddenly bloomed with fragrant flowers and grasses on the morning that the Torah was given to the Jewish people. The custom of decorating our homes and synagogues with leafy branches and flowers is based on this miracle.”

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My column on OU's website ezine Shabbat Shalom is a tribute to my wonderful mom - hard to believe she's 90! - and contains recipes for her unbelievable chicken soup, my Shiitake Mushroom Matzoh Balls and her Killer Brisket with Tsimmes. It begins this way:

My mother’s name is Lillian, but everyone calls her Honey. When I was expecting her first grandchild, Mom wanted to be called “Grandma Honey.” Mom had high hopes. My children called her “Honey” and it stuck. Even their friends think that that’s her name.

Read the whole story.