My Father-in-Law has a serious affinity for all things smoked fish, so much so that every time he comes to visit my wife and I, there is always a stop at Russ & Daughters.  He eats it all, lox, whitefish salad, herring, etc. but there is nothing he seems to love more than chubs.  Sold whole, he can polish 2 or 3 off in one sitting.  The Chub is a thing of beauty and something I wasn’t aware of until he first introduced me to them years ago.  Smokey and salty, they are absolutely delicious with a crisp, cold beer. Chubs have been a staple of the Jewish diet for decades, and now, thanks to FoodCurated.com, I know how they’re made.

Hot-Smoking for Gold at ACME Smoked Fish from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

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A cookbook that focuses on the recipes made by Jews during the holocaust may not immediately strike home cooks as a must own manual, but “Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival,” is the attempt of author June Feiss Hersh and The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York to keep these recipes and the stories that surrounded them alive.

In the book June not only works from recipes given to her by survivors and their family members, but also employs celebrity chefs such as Jonathan Waxman and Daniel Boulud to help her create recipes that have existed for decades but were never written down.  In writing the book June told Reuters many of the recipes existed from memory with no formal measurements at all.  “”Women would say, ‘You add an eggshell of matzoth meal, and a ‘bisel’ of sugar.’ I would smile through and think, ‘how am I going to ever make this recipe?’ It’s charming, but you can’t replicate it for a cookbook. So through trial and error I’d assign measurements. A ‘bisel’ resolved into a teaspoon.”

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A sad day has come to pass, even all of the Jews in Manhattan’s Upper West Side couldn’t fight the rising rents of the borough and sadly H&H bagels closed.  This doesn’t mean H&H is done, they still will have their huge factory in the 40s on Manhattan’s far west side, but the retail location many have come to rely on for pre-work breakfast and Saturday and Sunday brunch noshing is sadly no more.

The company has had trouble in the past, the owner was recently charged with a felony for owing $300,000 worth of taxes to the state, but still the closure of their retail location in the heart of Manhattan’s iconic Jewish neighborhood, is unfortunate, and this just means we are one step closer to Montreal bagels taking over New York.

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Taking a cue from the national food-truck craze started in cities like NYC and LA, Chef Matt Marcus founded the Eatsie Boys in his hometown of Houston, TX.  In only a short time, the gourmet food truck has built a name for itself among not only our Jewcy community in Houston, but the entire community as a whole.  Although the menu isn’t exactly ‘kosher” with items such as Pork Snuggies, The Sabotage (five hour roasted pork au jus) and Pork Revere, we’re told the sandwiches are some of the best you can get in Houston…just hope your Rabbi isn’t driving by when you’re purchasing one.   Like other food trucks around the country, the Eatsie Boys truck location changes daily, and the crew announces their location for the day each morning via twitter.  They call themselves “purveyors of good eats,” and from what we here at Jewcy can tell, Matt Marcus and his crew are certainly living up to their claim.

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For a food writer that didn’t start out writing about food, it’s pretty incredible to realize all that writer Leah Koenig has accomplished.  Already in her brief career she has published an incredible cookbook on everyday Jewish cooking for Hadassah, is a regular contributor to Savuer Magazine (one of the most respected and well-thought-out food magazines on the market) and has appeared on the Today show to display recipes.

Coming from a background in Environmental Studies and Religion, writing about food and creating recipes for publication was not always her primary focus, but food has always played a strong role in her life.  “I’ve always loved making dinner and hosting friends in my home, either for Shabbat or a weeknight meal,” says Koenig.  “To me food just doesn’t make sense outside the context of friends and family eating together.  It’s what I love about it.”

A job with Hazon would lead Leah from a strong interest in food and the culture surrounding it, to a career immersed in writing and thinking about it everyday.  “I came to Hazon because I was passionate about the mission of the organization,” says Koenig, “once there I found myself leading their food programs, working on their food conference and getting to know the farmers that created the food Hazon was championing.  I realized, from these experiences, that I wanted to help tell the story of this food.”

The rest, as they say, is history.  Koenig founded Hazon’s food blog, The Jew and the Carrot, serving as editor, and then left in 2008 to pursue writing about food full-time.  In her writing about food and in her creation of recipes, Koenig strives to focus on seasonal cooking with some understanding of cooking local, though she also admits it’s not always easy or realistic to cook completely local for every meal.  “One of the beautiful things about being a global society is I can buy and use incredible soy sauce from Japan or olive oil from Italy in my cooking, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” said Koenig.

Above all, Koenig strives in her recipes to take the iconic dishes of Jewish cuisine and make them relevant to today.  “If everyday we ate some of the most iconic Jewish dishes, we wouldn’t be very healthy,” says Koenig.  “When writing recipes based on Jewish culture, especially for my Hadassah cook book, I acknowledged the traditional flavors we associated with these dishes, but placed them in the context of the healthier way we eat today.”

With writers like Leah Koenig, Jewish food and cooking is in good hands.

The post The Big Jewcy: Leah Koenig – The Future Of Jewish Cooking appeared first on Jewcy.

Mike Rosenthal first started drawing comics in Middle School, moving from reading the funnies, to creating them himself. As he got older, Mike not only got better at drawing, but more creative as well.  He created Vectorbelly.com as a way to give his work an online home and began posting his comics to the web.  The comics gained Mike attention, but things really took off when Mike had the idea to pay homage to one of his favorite authors, Samuel Beckett.

Mike had the idea to create a video game that would pay homage to Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”  “Beckett created works that were art for arts sake, and I thought, it’d be cool to show that in video game form, since most often, video games are for commercialism’s sake,”  said Mike.

As soon as the video game hit the internet, press, especially literary press, went nuts.  The game became an instant sensation, and Mike even received a cease and desist letter from Beckett’s estate asking him to remove the Waiting for Godot title from the game.  While Mike says he has no plans to make another video game based on iconic literature, for fear of becoming that guy that makes video games based on literature, he’s still creating tons of interesting stuff over at vectorbelly.com, and we here at Jewcy.com are pretty sure his best work is yet to come.

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Brooklyn Winery is a site to behold.  The first fully operational winery in Kings county that also allows guests to make their own wine alongside the Brooklyn Winery’s winemaker, in only it’s first year, Brooklyn Winery has gained dramatic attention across the country for it’s innovative model and exceptional wine.  Co-owner Brian Leventhal, who is only 28 (!) saw an opportunity in the marketplace for the Brooklyn Winery idea to be a huge success while working in tech in New York City.  Below we sat down with Brian to discuss how the winery came to fruition, and took a tour of the space.

(Oh yeah, we’re having our Big Jewcy party at Brooklyn Winery on Wednesday the 15th.)

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Zachary Sharaga is the owner of Louis 649, one of the most respected cocktail bars in NYC.  We spent the day talking to the cocktail master on a beautiful Spring day.

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Jesse Israel co-founded Cantora Records while still a student at NYU, releasing the first album for MGMT and catapulting Cantora Records instantly into the realm of indie-rock elite. Currently Jesse is working on launching a new project, Cantora Labs, an incubator of music focused tech start-ups backed by Cantora Records.

We sat down with Big Jewcy Jesse Israel at the Tribeca Grand, near Cantora’s new offices, to talk music, the founding of Cantora, and the forward-thinking label’s next steps.

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With the approach of summer comes thoughts of Saturday afternoons spent in the park al fresco drinking.  Nothing says the day of rest like getting sun and a slight buzz.  There are several beverages one could consume outdoors that would suffice, crisp pilsner, light wheat beer with a slice of orange, or Rose (which we have written about), but I think there’s nothing better to consume outdoors than Sangria.

Sangria, which means bleeding, originates from Spain, where it can be found all over the country, but first became popular here in the US after the 1964 Worlds Fair when it was introduced at the Spanish Pavilion.

Sangria is a drink many have come to associate with cheap red wine, and horrible hangovers.  But that’s not the way Sangria should be.  To all those bar and restaurant owners using old or bad red and white wine in Sangria as a way to still move product and take in revenue, sham on you! You are ruining what Sangria is supposed to be! 

A good Sangria should be made with a good quality red wine, that has assertive flavors.  Red wines typical of these characteristics would be Rioja, Cabernet, or Burgundy.  And just because I am advocating that you not use cheap red wine, does not mean the wine you do use shouldn’t be affordable.  There are plenty of great reds under $15, just trust your wine merchant and ask, if they steer you to the jugs of red wine, just don’t shop there again!

After you get the wine, head home and make up a batch.  This is the recipe I like:

• 1 (750 ml) bottle Rioja or other red wine
• 2 teaspoons superfine sugar – if using sprite, omit
• a wide array of fruit cut into bit sized chunks, including orange, apple, strawberry, grapes, etc
• 2 ounces Cointreau or Triple Sec
• 2 ounces brandy
• 12 ounces cold club soda – can substitute sprite here

Mix this all together and let it chill for an hour or more, then serve!  It’s the perfect outdoor summer drink.

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