• Barbra Streisand will sing at the Oscars this year, her first performance there since 1977. [NYDN]

• Cholent saves lives. Actually though. [Tablet]

• ‘You Had to Be There’ podcast hosts Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer talk about their new MTV show, Nikki and Sara Live, which premiered last night. [Splitsider]

• This just in: cool Shabbat dinners happen in New York City. [Observer]

• We’d probably go see Bloomberg: The Musical. [NYT]

• Meet Animated Saul Berenson [College Humor]

The post Daily Jewce: Babs to Perform at the Oscars, Cholent Saves Lives appeared first on Jewcy.

The second the temperature drops and the countdown to the start of Shabbat seems to halve, every Jewish cook knows what’s on the horizon: cholent season. Whether you use the traditional Dutch oven or the more modern Crockpot, you share a common goal: Keeping your friends and family warm from the inside out.

Growing up, my grandfather would often tell me stories about how on Friday afternoons his mother would send him to the local bakery with her cholent pot. In Israel’s early years no one had an oven big enough to fit the large pots. Everyone would walk over to the bakery and place their pots in the baker’s gigantic oven. After shul, each family would pick up their pot of cholent that had cooked overnight. Occasionally, my grandfather and his family would sit down to enjoy their cholent only to open the lid and discover that they accidentally took the wrong pot!

The concept of cholent is tied to the commandment not to light fire on the Sabbath. Faced with the challenge of eating fresh food for Shabbat lunch, the idea of sticking everything you have in a pot, cooking it overnight, and hoping for the best was born. As a result, Jews from all over the world, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, have their own distinct traditional cholent recipes.

I’ve found that cholent is one of those things that you either love or hate. There is very little space for middle ground on such an important matter. Some people love the fact that by cooking your cholent overnight you receive a soft mush, and while others prefer their meat and potatoes on the same plate, but not blended together. Many enjoy the simplicity of the dish while others have trouble digesting something so bland.

As the sort of person who likes to put hot sauce on their hot sauce, I have a bit of problem dealing with cholent’s lack of flavor. I like my dishes’ flavors to be bold and for the food to look nice on the plate; cholent posseses neither of these qualities. While the look isn’t likely to change, there is something you can do about the flavor.

Southern food is all about flavor, and much like cholent, it’s comfort food. Like the classic Jewish dish, Southern food is soul food. It seemed pretty natural to combine these two together. By taking some classic Southern ingredients and the spices often found in chili, you give the dish you’ve eaten for years some extra flare. This Southern version kicks this classic around the curb and gives it a fresh new taste.

Not Your Bubbe’s Chili Cholent
Serves about 12

Ingredients:

1\2 cup dry lima beans
1\2 cup dry black eyed peas
6 potatoes, cut into cubes
2 sweet potatoes, cut into cubes
2 tbsp margarine
2 large yellow onions, sliced
8 garlic cloves, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
3\4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp coriander
3\4 tsp allspice
1 tbsp cumin
3\4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 can of beer
3 beef marrow bones
1 1\2 lb of shoulder beef, cut into cubes
1 cup strong coffee
1\2 cup ketchup
1\4 cup honey
1 1\2 tbsp of cocoa powder
1\3 cup frozen corn

Directions:

1. Soak your lima beans and black eyed peas in water for two hours. In a separate bowl, place your cut up potatoes and sweet potatoes in salt water and allow them to soak for two hours.

2. Melt your margarine in a large frying pan over a medium high heat and add the onions.

3. When the onions have softened, about five minutes, add your spices.

4. Cook for two more minutes and then pour half your can of beer into the frying pan. Leave your onions in the pan until the beer has been completely reduced. Then place the onions in the bottom of a Dutch Oven or a Crockpot.

5. Combine the rest of your beer, coffee, ketchup, honey, and cocoa powder in a medium bowl and pour over your onions.

6. Drain the beans and place on top of your onions along with the corn.

7. Next add the marrow bones and meat.

8. Drain and then place your potatoes and sweet potatoes on top.

9. Cover your Cholent completely with water.

10. If you are cooking in a Dutch Oven, cook the Cholent on the stove top on a high flame until it boils and then let it simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the Dutch Oven from your stove top to cook in your oven on a low heat overnight.

11. If you are cooking your Cholent in your Crockpot, cook on a high setting until it boils and then reduce to a low heat overnight.

12. Cholent should cook for at least 12 hours.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Thanksgiving Turkey

Not Your Bubbe’s Stuffed Cabbage Kugel

Not Your Bubbe’s Squash Pie

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Southern Chili Cholent appeared first on Jewcy.

I have never been one for Jewish customs. I do not shake a lulav on Sukkot nor do I dress up on Purim; I cannot remember the last time I prayed and I have not danced on Simchat Torah regardless of how much I engaged in the celebratory drinking the holiday seems to encourage. This lack of tradition also strayed to the Shabbat table. Growing up, I feigned vegetarianism to get out of eating my mother’s brisket (which with age and eventual sampling has proven to be absolutely divine) and cringed at the thought of peppery Yerushalmi kugel (its that kugel in the shape of a bundt cake that’s oddly sweet but packed with pepper). That being said, there is one Jewish comfort food that I have never been able to resist and was responsible for easing me into eating like an omnivore later in life – cholent. While it may not look appetizing as it sputters from a grease-stained crock pot on your mother’s kitchen counter, a bowl of my mother’s cholent can heal me of any ailment, mental or physical and pulls me from a rut faster than any grandmother’s chicken soup. Hands down, my calorie counting, quasi-vegetarian, British mother seems to have been a zaftig Eastern European woman in a past life. This recipe, in my opinion, could win awards, not only for its conversion of non-Jews to the wonders of Jewish cooking but for its ability to turn any frown upside down – or maybe the latter has more to do with the fact that the lady behind it happens to be in the form of an adorable, red-headed, Jewish educator standing at 5’2 named My Mommy.

When I asked my mother, Ricky Stamler Goldberg, for her forever-praised cholent recipe, here is the email she sent me:

Carrie,

Here is the recipe. Remember, it is cholent not baking. It is not an exact art rather an act of warming the soul. Throw it in there, wait until it smells delicious and eat!

Also – use a crockpot. To make clean up easier, spray the pot with cooking spray first and then add:

5 peeled and cubed potatoes
1 peeled onion
1 bag (16 oz) barley, rinsed in warm water
1/2 cup cholent cholent beans (yes, that is what the bag says). Use a little more if you like beans…
3-4 lbs flanken meat on the bone
1/2 lbs cubed chuck steak
3/4 lb chunk of pastrami

In a medium size bowl mix:
4-5 cloves crushed garlic
salt & pepper (be generous, but if you are worried you can always add later)
1/4-1/2 a cup of ketchup
1-2 tbsp of paprika
2 cups warm water
* if you like a kick- throw in some red chili flakes

Add all this to the cholent pot then add another 2 cups warm water. The water should just cover the cholent mixture.

Cook on low for 24 hours.

Take Beano and enjoy!

Stick to this formula, with your preferences accounted for, and you could be enjoying what has rescued me and my flailing devotion to Judaism for years. While I am most certainly biased, my fantastic mother, her fantastic cooking and her understanding that our culture is best bound together with the thick potato-y paste that is her cholent has made me far more traditional in my Jewish ways than I ever thought possible. Enjoy!

The post Jewish Mothers Cooking: Mama Goldberg’s Cholent appeared first on Jewcy.