What’s your go-to chicken recipe? One you can use for any given weekday or even, in a pinch, for Shabbos? One that just takes a few minutes to throw together? One you feel good about sending to other families in the community - or just keeping it and eating it yourself? Do you even have one? I didn’t used to, but I do now! And I'd love to share it with you. Many years ago, I was given Norene Gilletz's cookbook The Pleasures of Your Food Processor as a wedding present. Like a few cookbooks from this beloved Canadian food writer, it was actually

Cabbage rolls… I admit it, they used to be a big YUCK from me, but they’ve really grown on me over the years. Think of them as Jewish sushi… heated up… in tomato sauce…? Okay, maybe not.   But I hope these quick tricks will have you thinking twice about maybe throwing some cabbage rolls into your family’s mix.   This post is exactly what it says: two tips that will save you a ton of time. Cabbage rolls are so totally forgiving, I'm not even going to give you a recipe. To make them, just mix up a bunch of meat with some parsley, salt, pepper, eggs, maybe rice if you like that sort of thing, and roll it into balls. (Omit the meat and just roll up rice for a veg/vegan version, as I do for NR!). Wrap balls in cabbage leaves, place on a bed of cabbage leaves in the pan (these don't get served or eaten, they're just there for flavour / moisture), and bake with your choice of tomato sauce / ketchup / brown sugar / ginger ale / garlic / sweet & savoury combo in ...

So my super-smart baker-almost-psychologist sister (aka Vegan Ukelele on YouTube ) has decided to branch out into super-smart musical baking videos.  Since she's vegan, almost everything will work for kosher kitchens as well. Did I mention she went to baking school and everything?  If she tells you something's good, it is . And her first video is all about one of my favourites: cornbread.  Or cornbread muffins.  It’s all in how you bake them up, as I’ll let her explain in the video, which I’m embedding below. Watching this video, so proud of my “sister-from-the-same-mother,” I had quite a few weird separated at birth moments, thinking in my head, "That's exactly what I would have said."  That was especially true because I was watching with NR, who has

Ya know, there's nothing like a sister!  Let's all head out onto our balconies at 6 p.m. tonight and clap for our sisters.  No?  All clapped out? I thought so. (if "clapped out" means something obscene, I don't want to know about it, so just leave me and my naivete in peace) This vegan sweet potato flatbread recipe from Teenuja at Veganlovlie kept popping up in various social-media channels, as recipes do during corona times, when suddenly everybody has time to cook.  And I kept batting it away, ignoring it, vaguely interested but not quite enough to actually try it. (Okay, I confess, maybe both the word "vegan" and the non-word "lovlie" deterred me a little... why pay money for a URL with a misspelling in it?) And then my sister, who happens to be vegan, happened to mention that she'd happened to try it.  Which got those gear-wheels a-turnin', or whatever it is that gear-wheels do... and away I went the very next day. ...

I don't know what I did right, and I certainly don't want to ask too many questions for fear of jinxing it, but the truth is... shhh... my family LOVES beans. And that has made refried beans (or, as the people who invented them call them, frijoles refritos ) one of our go-to favourites for after-school eating, especially in chilly weather, that both warms them up and tides them over until suppertime. The truth is that refritos are sometimes good enough to make converts even of devout non bean lovers.  Try it and see, even if other bean recipes haven’t gone over as well.  The long cooking time gives the beans a magical “powdery” texture that isn’t really beany at all (at least, in our opinion here!). These refried beans are basically a one-ingredient, one-pan recipe.   I strongly recommend a

Need a little something to bring an ordinary weekday over to the sunny side? Here’s a way to elevate rice from a humble side dish to a glorious main course for one person, perfect for weekday lunch or light supper?  I don't usually talk about cooking for one, for the obvious reason that I live with several other people.  But when the kids are off at school all day, sometimes I want to invest a few minutes into making something truly delicious that’s just for me. There aren't many foods as simple and comforting as rice, and though this fried rice dish has a number of steps, it's simple enough to prepare in the background while I’m working, and the end result is flavourful and incredibly comforting.  There are two possible variations -- "Indian" and "Chinese" (I'm using quotation marks because I don't want to pretend that these are authentic flavours...) that are equally simple to prepare. This is why I love working from home – I can’t ...

When you’re overwhelmed with yamim tovim and absolutely desperate for flavour and CRUNCH, there’s absolutely nothing like samosas!  I’m making these as part of an India-themed sukkah meal, which I hope to post the entire menu for at some point over the next little while, but you could absolutely serve these delicious crunchy bites all on their own, and fill them up with whatever savoury filling you happen to enjoy. I happen to think Indian flavours go particularly well in the sukkah – whether your sukkah nights are chilly, like ours were in Toronto, or a little on the warm side, as they definitely are here.  If your meal is pareve, there’s lots of opportunity for delicious milk-based Indian sweets for dessert – otherwise, whatever you normally serve is just fine. One reason I love these samosas is that you bake them in the oven, making them slightly healthier than a deep-fried treat, while these wrappers stay super-crispy no matter how you cook them.  It’s the satis...

Have you tried cauliflower lately? I know, it’s been around for a bazillion years, but trust me – today’s cauliflower ain’t, as they say, your bubby’s cauliflower, steamed or boiled, mushy, drenched in cheese sauce.  Not that there’s anything wrong with cheese sauce (slurp!). I admit I'm a latecomer to the cauliflower revolution.  But this versatile veg, which is showing up these days in everything from pizza crusts to vegan tacos , has won me over totally and utterly. I mean, honestly, what's not to love? - You can buy it frozen (no checking for bugs!) and just cook normally - It's colourless so it can look like whatever you want - It happily takes on the flavours of whatever you cook it with - It's low-carb (okay, I don't care about this one much, but some people do!) I mean, basically, cauliflower is the tofu of veggies.  Or, like the midrash says about mann (manna), the food the Jewish people ate in the desert, if you were righteous en...

How do you feel about coleslaw??? I’ll be honest – I’ve always hated it.  I just found it bland and uninspiring.  Of course, I was used to the KFC style of coleslaw, which is essentially pureed or finely chopped-up cabbage with a ton of mayonnaise.  Just not much to get excited about there. This one’s from Popeye’s, not KFC, but I’m sure you get the idea: One more complicating factor in our coleslaw lives was this:  one of our kids hates mayonnaise with a passion.  Cannot stand to be

If you’re like me and cook by intuition, it can be hard to know when a kugel is just right to go into the oven.  How do you know you’ve added enough salt and other seasonings?  You don’t want to accidentally go overboard, but how much is enough?  And you certainly don’t want to invest all that effort and bake the thing for an hour or whatever only to discover that it tastes bland as paste. Of course, you could just take a taste of the raw mixture, but somehow, that option has never seemed appealing to me. So what can you do? This isn’t a fancy tip, but it’s one has helped me so much over the years.  I think it will come in handy for you in all sorts of ways – not just with kugels, but also with gefilte fish, cakes, cookies, breads; anything you don’t want to sample raw for whatever reason. (Lots of real bakers eat raw bread dough, even sourdough, and claim to love it… I am not one of them, and the thought of eating raw flour products seems just icky to me....

It's taken over the gourmet world.  You pretty much wouldn't write a recipe that includes salt without it.  It's also an annoying fact of life for those of us googling "kosher" recipes - that yummy salt bumps up almost every recipe to the top of the list even if it's a recipe for bacon double cheeseburgers. First of all, you may already know that "kosher" salt is no more or less kosher than any other salt.  That is, it's kosher, but so is table salt, coarse salt, sea salt, Himalayan pink mountain salt , and every other form of pure salt. So if you eat kosher and cook kosher, you CAN use kosher salt.  But you don’t have to. So why is it called kosher ? That’s actually just a mistake.  This flattish crystalline form of salt is actually kosher-ING salt - the kind of salt used to "kasher" meat to make it kosher. Most kosher salt has air between relatively flat crystals.  So when you're using or substituting kosher salt,...

Are you sick of kugels but aren’t sure what else you can make to serve on the side of a Shabbos or Yom Tov meal?  Here’s something that’s just as EASY as a kugel, only in tasty, crunchy, bite-sized morsels.   Last week, I wanted something like the Alexa brand sweet potato “tater tots,” which by all accounts are absolutely delicious.  We can’t buy them here, so I knew I had to make something from scratch.  My puffs came out totally different, but utterly delightful in their own right.  They’re a great way to sneak even more of that sweet potato goodness onto your family’s menu. Plus, they’re terrifically simple: Bake or boil the sweepoes (I boiled mine), puree them with egg yolks, cornstarch and seasoning, and then coat the mixture with panko before baking.  I added a little melted coconut oil to the sweet potatoes; you could probably leave it out OR substitute canola if you wanted something subtler (there wasn’t a strong coconut taste, however)....

     How hangry do you and your kids get in the morning?  (Or afternoon, depending on how late you've slept in and/or procrastinated.) Around here, the answer is... VERY. These quick, easy, eggy muffins are exactly what you need:  the cure for Hangry.  Shh… don’t tell anybody: they’re basically little mini-quiches, just without a crust. These are sometimes called "scrambled egg muffins."  But on most sites, you'll find them chock-full of some type of meat that just won't work in a kosher kitchen.  Pork, ham and bacon are all super-popular at breakfast time, apparently. Even if you could use some kosher kind of meat, you'd miss out on all the cheesy goodness of these delighful, bite-sized breakfast treats.  So why bother?  Just toss in lots of veggies and you'll never miss the bacon, I promise. Make your life super-easy and prepare these in reusable silicone muffin cups.  I didn’t used to like the idea...

You might have guessed that I haven’t been a college student for some time now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still addicted to one of the staples of college-student life.  I don’t feed it to my family, but when I’m looking to treat myself, one of my favourite indulgences is… ramen noodles. You can find all sorts of articles online about how ramen is the perfect college food because it’s something like 20 cents a packet.  That’s not quite true if you’re cooking kosher.  Kosher ramen has always been a little more of a luxury; I don’t think we ever found it for less than $1.99 in Toronto.  Here in Israel, it’s about 4nis (about $1), though it’s sometimes on sale for less (like 5 for 10nis).   These aren’t recipes, more like suggestions.  The key is to not try to do too much at any one time.  Too many flavours will only clash with each other; choose two or three distinctive notes that will work well in harmony.  Here are some flavour no...

Want a secret weapon in your cooking arsenal that you can pull out anytime to make anything taste better? One that can make the difference between a dish that's good and a dish that's fabulous?  Between so-so and WOW?  A secret ingredient you can toss into almost anything, because it's totally pareve and versatile? No, it’s not a dream. Yes, this magic ingredient exists... and it's onions - the caramelized kind. Is it magic?  Or science? Onions are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  When they're raw, they're hard, sharp, with a nasty sting that makes your eyes tear up.  But when caramelized, they're soft, mellow, sweet and... well, full of all that caramelly goodness. The word "caramelization" refers to the browning that happens in the onion's sugars.  Sugar in an onion?  You betcha.  Even the most humble yellow onions have plenty of sugar, and the special sweeter varieties like Vidalia have even more. Did you know that yo...

I know I’ve been doing a lot of soups lately.  Forgive me… it’s winter and I could not be happier.  Before we moved to Israel, we got used to inaugurating Soup Season at Sukkos and finishing sometime after Pesach.  Here, Soup Season is way shorter – more like December to February than October to April.  So little time, and so many soups to cram in while we’re still shivering. This Zucchini-Potato Soup is pareve because it gets its creaminess from pureeing potatoes.  It is super-fast, mainly because you make it in a small batch.  It can easily be doubled, tripled, etc., to serve a crowd.  Did I mention that my daughter is nine?  She found this herself in the cookbook and has actually made it entirely by herself, except for the pureeing part at the end. If you are just starting out on the soup-making journey, this is the perfect soup for you to start with.  It can be anything you want it to be.  You don’t taste the zucchini, whi...

Do you love Asian flavours as much as I do? Then maybe you miss them as much as I do, too. Even though Israel is technically IN Asia, it’s tough to get authentic-tasting Asian food here.  Takeout places are hit and miss, mostly on the “miss” side of things… as in, I totally MISS delicious hot and sour soup.  Yes, it looks disgusting (if you make it right).  But the mix of flavours, of sweet, spicy, pungent, salty… well, it’s divine. (And on the plus side, the hottest thing in Tel Aviv is kosher dim sum, and it actually tastes okay, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.) Still, while the cool weather lasts a little longer here, I thought I’d share one of my all-time favourite soup recipes – to make, to share, to just lean over and inhale.  It’s very, very fragrant.  You can adjust the hotness and sourness to suit your family’s taste. RECIPE DISCLAIMER:   As with most of my favourite easy soups, this recipe is an approximation, not an actua...

Planning for Pesach yet? No???  Why the heck not? Oh, yeah... because it's January.  Then again, when better to test out recipes so your family doesn't have to live with those thrown-together first-time "experiments" when yom tov rolls around? And if you think of it as the most incredible gluten-free pie crust you've ever seen, EVER, then it becomes a little easier (so to speak) to swallow. Plus, hey, who doesn't love a new cookbook?  Especially when, like Maryland mom Paula Shoyer's brand-new The New Passover Menu , it's a totally user-friendly experience, complete with prep times, cook times, hints for advance prep and freezing... plus, get this:  equipment lists.  Yes!  A cookbook writer who GETS what it's like to work in a bare-bones Pesach kitchen, not sure if you have a pareve sieve or not.  (Though she recommends that everybody run out to buy a waffle iron for Pesach, which may not be the most practical suggestion eve...

What do you feed your kids when they walk through the door? (Or do you feed them at all?) I admit, this is one of my weaknesses as a parent.  One of the things I’m really not so good at. Maybe you’re better than me at this (if so, I want to hear from you in the comments!), but perhaps the thing I’m worst at, as a parent, is feeding starving kids – my own. When they walk in the door after school, they’re famished.  Not literally starving, as I’ve told them many times.  But they are very, very hungry. Worse still is that they usually don’t realize it yet.  They don’t feel hungry – but they are.

Here it is:  The bean snob’s guide to delicious quick-cook, no-soak beans. Do you love beans?  Or do you just put up with them? For years, in Canada, we were hooked on canned beans.  We put up with them, even enjoyed them, if they were seasoned heavily enough. Blah.  Never again. Here in Israel, I’ve become a beany snob.  (nothing delicious can come out of here…) Canned beans may be easy, but they are also mushy and worse than flavourless – they’re tin -flavoured.  Here, canned beans practically don’t exist, so we don’t have any choice.  And the great news is that from-scratch beans are tastier, too.  By which I mean they taste like something .  As opposed to a tin can.