creative jewish mom

10 Benefits of Slow Cooking

Above Left: A cast bronze cholent pot from Germany, circa 1708, with the name of the family embossed on the pot, from the collection of The Jewish Museum, Jerusalem, on loan from the Jewish Museum of New York  Above Right: Bialystock, Poland Nov 20,1932 Bringing pots of shabbos cholent to a baker’s oven on friday afternoon. Photo courtesy of YIVO Polish Jewish archive

Slow cooking is part of a culinary culture that’s been around for centuries, and is in fact a huge part of Jewish culture, and specifically the Shabbat day meal, in Jewish homes around the world. Because cooking and baking are forbidden on Shabbat, special Shabbat dishes are cooked on Friday and kept hot overnight to be eaten on Saturday morning/afternoon. Cholent, (called Hamin or Dafina by Sephardic Jews) a meat stew of sorts simmered overnight, has been eaten on Shabbat in all Jewish communities since the days of the Mishnah. In many cases families would place their pot in a baker’s oven before Shabbat and retrieve it when it was time to eat. Since the oven served the entire community, it was important to identify the owners of each pot, and often their names were engraved on the pot, as seen in the photo above. Today, with the advent of electricity and gas in our homes, we either plug in a warming tray before shabbat, or use a gas flame covered with a sheet of metal on the stove top to slow cook food (that is already 50% cooked before Shabbat) to be eaten the next day.

Of course, slow cooking can also be employed anytime, as It’s hassle-free and a great way to prepare food the night before or in the morning so you can get home after work, and serve a meal without having to spend hours cooking. Slow-cooked food is rich in flavor and nutrition and because the preparation is ahead time, and likely less rushed, it gives us an excellent opportunity to  actually enjoy the process of making the meal. In this day and age, everything is faster, from our busy lives to the food we eat. Slowing down is great for both our bodies and our minds.

Okay, lets learn some more about how to go about slow cooking and some options for including it in your weekly meal plans!

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Sprinkles For Chanukah Or Any Festivity!

Wishing everyone a lovely light-filled Chanukah on this fourth night of Chanukah. It is pouring cats and dogs here in Northern Israel creating a very dramatic setting for the glowing flames of the holiday. My kids are all snugly tucked in bed with a book so I’m taking a moment to share these fun cookies with you. Courtesy of my teen daughter I might add, who does all the baking......and who baked some more goodies today as we have a small army of guests coming for meals this special upcoming Shabbat!

This idea is pretty self explanatory but keep on reading for a few tips......

Key Shaped Challah

The Ashkenazic Jewish custom of making key shaped bread, or rather challah, (called schlissel challah) for the first shabbos after Passover is something I love to do, though this year on that particular shabbos we were in the Ukraine, so no key shaped challahs.......but then again, since it is a symbolic custom rather than a Jewish Law I figured I'd bake those key shaped challahs the very first time we made challahs at home, which was last Friday. And since my camera battery charger is broken and the replacement has yet to arrive my daughter quickly took some photos to share with you. At this point you may just want to keep this in mind for next year as serving key shaped challahs this shabbos will likely result in some strange looks and/or confusion, but if that doesn't bother you, I say go right ahead and enjoy! Keep on reading for all the links to previous posts with lots of inspiration as far as exactly how to make a key shape!

Today Is The Day To Bake Schlissel Challah!

According to a custom observed by many Jews of Ashkenazic (Eastern European) descent, key shaped challahs are baked the first shabbos after Passover as a symbol of the desire to bring blessings into the home. After the holiday, and the Jewish people's deliverance from slavery, is the time for new beginnings, so it is only fitting that one would want to grace their home with good things, and what can be better than freshly baked challah?

Now, one doesn't have to actually bake challahs shaped like keys, one can also simply place a key (wrapped in aluminum foil) in the bottom of the pan, or under the braided loaf, but in our house the key shaped challahs are certainly more interesting. I have baked large challah keys, medium sized keys and even small keys, and even whole wheat challah keys, and speaking from experience and the desire for the key to stay intact, I'd say a medium sized key like this one is the way to go.

Snowglobe Cookies With Royal Icing Make Great Winter Party Favors!

 

How about a big round of applause for my 15 year old daughter on her second attempt ever at royal icing, the outcome being these too adorable for words snowglobe snowman cookies! There is just something so wonderfully irresistible about royal icing, though since I'd rather not spend my creative time baking I'm more than happy to let my daughter have all the fun with this one. Since I'm there in any case I do get to live vicariously......though hoping we can figure out how to do this kind of thing without the huge time investment required, at least until we get to the top of the learning curve. We are learning all about royal icing and getting totally inspired to get really good at it from a lovely online cookine decorating class from brit and co, that I can recommend. Plus winter is a great time to spend learning something new, and especially something you can then use to spread joy all around.

The response when we served these cookies with desert this past shabbat was worth all the effort, though the Israeli born folks at the table aren't all that familiar with snow globes, so it was largely lost on them, nonetheless, the American guests appreciation was enough for the crowd. And as it turned out, we were in the middle of a huge storm, that even included a very nerve wracking power outage on Friday night, so the snowglobe theme fit right in.

Special Grape Leaf Challahs For Tu B'Shevat

Wednesday night is the perfect time to bake delicious homemade challah, and with the special shabbat of Tu B'Shevat coming up this week, how about making your challahs just a little bit special? Well, of course all challah is special, but when you spend a few minutes to add a bit of extra something, well special takes on a whole new meaning! Let's do it, shall we?

Black And White Flower Or Spider Web Icing Trick

Making baked works of art can really be quite simple if you know a few little tricks, right? Courtesy of my 14 year old daughter who I have now appointed as chief family baker, I bring to you a little tutorial for how to make black and white icing flowers or cob webs! While she made black and white flowers on mini doughnuts, one can certainly use this trick on cookies, cupcakes and even cakes.......the results will be truly gorgeous, promise! And doing this on a cake would be so less time consuming than many other types of decorations, so give it a try, I'm going to encourage my daughter to do so as well sometime soon, and will share the results, of course. (Well assuming there is time to photograph the results, that isn't always possible, as you can well imagine.)

One disclaimer, we are not professional bakers, and certainly not specialists when it comes to making icing with dairy ingredients as almost all of our baking is for items that will be eaten on shabbat after a meat meal, and thus cannot contain any dairy products. So I will provide you with the icing recipe we used, but there are likely many more options out there that may be more suited to your needs.

The Best Chicken Soup Recipe Ever With Lots Of Vegetables But No White Potatoes!

Photo courtesy of Bon Appetite, check out their chicken noodle soup recipe.

Last Friday afternoon as I was preparing our meals for shabbat, (and taking note of the cold weather forecast) I decided to whip up a big pot of chicken soup as the main course, and the results were so delicious I just had to share my recipe with you. And I'll admit, I love using this blog as a place for saving recipes, so there's something in it for me too! And yes, it is true that it is pretty hard to mess up chicken soup, but know the right veggies to add really makes a huge difference as far as the end result is concerned.

To make my chicken soup even more special and earn it main course status, I also made some croutons, which everyone loved, and they are certainly many steps above the traditional "soup nuts" that so many Jewish families serve with their soup. Just saying folks, those soup nuts are just about the least healthy thing to get your family used to eating, so do keep that in mind!

Ah yes, the recipe, no problem, just keep on reading.....

Chocolate Spoons With Sprinkles

Chocolate spoons with sprinkles made using silicone molds are a fun way for kids to get involved in the kitchen, and they are amazing way to finish off a delicious meal or as a part of a dessert bar. Plus they are one of those things that are simple to make but look really impressive. Adding the sprinkles was my idea as a simple way to make them look more festive, and I just love the results! My daughter actually made about 40 of these for a sheva brachas that i made just before Purim, and I had put aside a few in the freezer to photograph. Now a month later I unearthed them as I was cleaning out the freezer for Passover!

Speaking of Passover, these would be fun to make for Passover, and if you can't find kosher for Passover sprinkles, so improvise with some chopped nuts!

Sugar Free Biscotti With Dried Fruit And Nuts

I love biscotti, what can I say, but I don't love the idea of eating a cookie packed with sugar and wheat, even if it is low-fat, as most biscotti are. So, I decided it was time to come up with a sugar free biscotti recipe, even though I'm not exactly an expert baker! Experimenting in the kitchen can have all kinds of results, but I have to say, my daughter and I really loved these fruit filled oat biscotti, even if my young boys crinkled up their noses and didn't even finish the pieces I gave them. Silly boys, I guess they need some chocolate chips thrown in there, sigh.

So I will say, these biscotti are for those who have shunned the taste of processed, sugar laden, white flour baked goods and whose tastes lean in the all natural, not so sweet direction. And I won't claim to have come up with the end-all in recipes, but it certainly is good enough to share, and maybe one of you will have fun tweaking it some more? I would love to make an egg-free version so that these could be classified as vegan biscotti, any ideas? And I do wish that these were crisper, like real biscotti. These are much softer, not sure why, maybe I needed to bake them at a lower temperature, so that they would bake longer without burning, next time! And just by the way, one can make biscotti that are vegan, and if you are vegan or want to incorporate more vegan foods in your diet, check out more tips for vegan deserts and lifestyle from Vegan Liftz