Drink spring: Make your own bittersweet aperitif
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. Every spring morning I walk into my backyard, take a deep inhale, and wish I could bottle that smell. This year, I did it. The artichokes put an herby bitterness into the air, the […]
Shamrock-taschen? This year make corned beef and cabbage hamantschen.
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. This Purim, which happens to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day, there are two kinds of hamantaschen you should consider buying or making. The first are any of the traditional three-cornered Purim cookies that are […]
When Purim falls on St. Patrick’s Day, drink a Haman O’Reilly
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. If Purim and St. Patrick’s Day, which both fall on March 17 this year, have one thing in common, it’s drinking. To mark the two holidays’ joint appearance on the calendar, Jay Sanderson, the […]
Ukrainian rugelach are the cookie you should be making now
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. The historian Timothy Snyder called them the “bloodlands:” the region including Russia and Ukraine that gave us the massive killing fields of Stalin and Hitler, and that now gives us Russia’s vicious war. But […]
Gary Shteyngart is stress-eating Ukrainian stuffed cabbage. You can too.
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, author Gary Shteyngart posted on Instagram that he was “stress eating holubtsi.” That makes perfect sense. The Ukrainian-Russian-Jewish Shteyngart, who spoke of his passion for food to […]
Korean chicken soup is also Jewish penicillin
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. There’s nothing uniquely Jewish about chicken soup. There, I said it. Everywhere on earth where there are chickens — which is everywhere on earth — people soupify them. Some versions are every bit as […]
How I solved New York’s cream cheese shortage in 24 hours
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. I’ll get right to the point: the easiest and most delicious way to overcome the Great Cream Cheese Shortage of 2021 is to make it yourself. As the New York Times reported, a combination […]
Here’s the cheesy, crispy dish that made me and Alice Waters swoon together
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. Here’s a name drop I don’t deserve: Many years ago I attended Slow Food’s Terra Madre food conference in Turin, Italy. I happened to be standing in line to get a slice of freshly-made […]
Gorky’s hot Russian borscht will revive your faith…in borscht
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. I miss Gorky’s. If you hung out in pre-gentrification downtown L.A., circa 1980, you’ll know what I mean. Gorky’s was a warehouse-sized cafe, open 24/7, a glorious Socialist workers commissary crossed with a starving […]
When life gives you etrogs, make etrog liqueur
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. When my wife first came home with an etrog, I was enchanted and aghast. This was before we were married, when we were just beginning to celebrate the cycle of Jewish holidays together. I […]