ICYMI alert—Buzzfeed released this cute video last week of a posse of hipsters sampling Jewish (read: Ashkenazi) food for the first time, and their reactions are pretty hilarious. They’re probably hamming it up for the camera (is “Manischewitz” really that obscure or hard to pronounce?), but still, it’s cute.

On kugel: “I feel like it wants to be macaroni and cheese, and it also wants to be a cake, it just doesn’t know which one it is yet.” (Truth!)

On Manischewitz: “I can get wasted off this.”

On chopped liver: “This is poop. This has to be poop.” (It’s actually brown, fatty gold, but I guess it’s an acquired taste.)

Also, the observations vis-à-vis food density (specifically with regard to matzah balls, gefilte fish, and kugel) are spot on. Jews do have a high caloric content per square inch of food.

Our verdict? A “WIN” for internet’s best/worst purveyor of viral content.

(Image: YouTube)

The post Buzzfeed Hipsters Sample Jewish Food For the First Time appeared first on Jewcy.

Kosher Salt is Jewcy’s monthly comic about life as a blonde-haired, green-eyed, tattooed Jew.

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Elizabeth Simins is a compulsive doodler living in New York. She splits her time between making paintings, being a production designer, and playing pretentious indie video games. She tweets here.

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So here’s where one would normally point out a serious flaw in a classic Jewish recipe. The thing is I can’t; stuffed cabbage is magical. And like most modern day magic, there’s a precise science behind it: Everything is improved when stuffed with meat.

Want the proof behind my hypothesis?

Picture yourself after a long bad day where everything is just horrible. Now picture yourself eating a gigantic steak at the end of it. And just like that, your day has improved.

The same logic works with a cabbage. By itself, a cabbage is kind of meh, stuff it with meat and it makes your day.

There’s a reason this dish has been favorite since it was called holishkes. Stuffed cabbage has been happily devoured by Jews since the 14th century. According to Sharon Lebewohl and Rena Bulkin, authors of The Second Avenue Deli Cookbook, the dish was first introduced to the Jewish and gentile peasants in Russia by the Tartars. While each Eastern European and Middle Eastern community has its own twist, Jews lean toward the sweeter sauce.

At some point between the 14th century and the 21st, it became a specialty food served on Sukkot. As Sukkot is also known as the harvest holiday, the filled cabbage was meant to symbolize a bountiful harvest “stuffed” with plenty of delicious things to eat. Sukkot may be over, but stuffed cabbage has thankfully become a winter staple, allowing it to represent good times, as well as good food.

So you must be asking yourself what’s the “but”? Why am I reinventing the wheel if it rolls just fine?

There are many reasons to love your Bubbe but one of them is that they are just about the only people with enough patience to actually make stuffed cabbage. While stuffed cabbage makes your day, it also takes an entire day to make it. That’s where this recipe comes in handy. It’s stacked up like lasagna, and simple, like any staple kugel recipe. Like your favorite kugel it’s a cinch to make and a crowd favorite.

This recipe has that great taste that you love from your Bubbe’s, but let’s you spend more time with the Bubbe you love.

Not Your Bubbe’s Stuffed Cabbage
Serves 5-7

Ingredients:

2 lbs. green cabbage

Meat Filling:
1 lb. chopped beef
1 cup long grain rice, cooked
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 medium eggs
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

Sauce:
1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
1 1/4 cups cranberry juice
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
3/4 cup craisins
1 tbsp. ginger
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsps. Black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Rip the leaves off your cabbage—do your best to keep them as whole as possible. If you accidently rip them to pieces it’s ok; it just won’t look as pretty.

3. Mix the meat filling ingredients together in a large bowl.

4. Combine the sauces ingredients in a different large bowl.

5. Spray a large round baking dish with to prevent sticking.

6. Evenly cover the bottom of the baking dish with cabbage leaves. You want to have about 2-3 layers of leaves on top of each other.

7. Cover the leaves with half of your meat filling.

8. Ladle a third of your sauce onto the meat filling.

9. Repeat the last few stages, as if you are making lasagna.

10. Your final layer should be the last of your sauce.

11. Cover the stuffed cabbage kugel with tin foil and bake for an hour.

12. Remove the foil and bake for another half an hour. Baste the top leaves with sauce every 10 minutes in order to prevent them from burning.

13. Serve with a sharp knife and spoon in order to scoop up all the layers.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Squash Pie

Not Your Bubbe’s Kasha Mac and Cheese

Not Your Bubbe’s Honey Chiffon Cake

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Stuffed Cabbage Kugel appeared first on Jewcy.

Maybe you haven’t heard, but it is officially the time of year when we are bombarded by pumpkin-flavored seasonal treats. While this is a largely seasonal phenomenon, in certain Jewish circles the reach of squash pie knows no bounds.

I had never heard of this dish until I got to college. Our first week there, we were all trying to make friends and play nice, so when a few girls decided to put together a Shabbat dinner in the dorm, somehow it became a 50-person meal. A few people pitched in to make chicken, I made a ton of green beans (which became my assignment for the rest of the year); there was challah and grape juice. But as I looked around the room checking out people’s food so I wouldn’t have to remember their names, I noticed that squished onto paper plates between the chicken and the green beans was a slice of something bright orange.

The mystery food, of course, was squash pie. I’m still not sure if it’s because my home was too traditional or not traditional enough, but as far as I could tell pies were—and still are—dessert foods. My dad grew up in a meat-and-potatoes household, where every dinner had at least two vegetables complementing the plate. My mom’s home cuisine was a fusion of her varied heritage—Cuban with dashes Hungarian and Romanian.

My childhood was basically a mix of both—we always had two vegetables and something green, but not quite so “all-American” since instead of meat loaf the entree was usually albondigas or chicken paprikash. In other words, squash pie did not factor into weekly menu plans. While the dish is made from vegetables, these veggies are loaded up with margarine and brown sugar and plopped into a graham cracker crust. Last time I checked, sweet potato pie was a dessert—so why isn’t squash pie? We’ve already covered how we feel about serving dessert as a side dish.

But that’s not to say you can’t have a little sweetness with your meal. And certainly the idea of a baked custard or pudding side dish has a long history at Jewish dinner tables. To make this dish fit in with the main course, eliminate the crust (or at least replace the graham cracker with your favorite savory crust). Next, the margarine and sugar have to go. In order to appease those of you who are certainly cringing at the desecration of this sweet treat, this recipe takes squash pie in an entirely new direction by giving it a Mexican spin and placing it squarely in “side-dish territory.” Honey is commonly used as a sweetener in Mexican cuisine and here it is used to provide smoothness and balance to the final product. The recipe also calls for a variety of traditional Mexican spices, such as cumin and oregano. This warm and whole-heartedly fall food is now ready to share a plate with your chicken. If you want to carry the theme out, pair the squash dish with a chicken cooked in mole sauce. Or, if you really need to have a pie, put it in your favorite crust and serve it for dessert.

Not Your Bubbe’s Squash Pie
Serves 6

Ingredients:

2 pounds winter squash, peeled and cooked
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup whole wheat pastry flour
¼ cup honey
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to 350F. Spray a 9-inch baking dish with nonstick spray.

2. In a medium bowl, mash or blend the cooked squash.

3. Add eggs, flour, honey, cumin, chili powder, oregano, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. Mix until combined.

4. Pour batter into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with cinnamon and a drizzle of honey.

5. Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes until the mixture has set and it is beginning to turn gold/brown.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Kasha Mac and Cheese

Not Your Bubbe’s Honey Chiffon Cake

Not Your Bubbe’s Kibbeh Agemono

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Squash Pie appeared first on Jewcy.

Growing up in my house we had kugel and chicken soup in my house; the Syrian Jews next door had different food, as did the family of French Jews down the block.  Food is one of the greatest things that unites all different walks of Jewish life.

Today, rabbi, chef, and James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, Gil Marks, talks about his new Encyclopedia of Jewish Food at the Vox Tablet podcast.

The post Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Jewish Food In One Podcast appeared first on Jewcy.