Last night for the first time I had the most beautiful platter of neat turkey slices. I followed this video from the NY Times.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2007/11/20/dining/1194817096866/the-butcher-carves-a-turkey.html

The man is a genius!! End of turkey hassles! The only thing I did differently (and it actually worked even better) was I removed the drumstick first and then held on to the thigh bone and slid my knife down that bone to remove it with no meat on it. Then it was a simple matter to remove the thigh - whole! Slicing boneless meat is a breeze! We will never carve a turkey on the bone again! My platter looked just as great as his! We should have taken a picture!

My friend Eileen Cohen knows her chocolate. In a blind taste test she can tell Tobleron from Godiva with her hands tied behind her back.

That’s why, when she raved about the chocolate mousse that nutrition expert and cookbook author Jennifer Flynn had served, I was intrigued. A healthy chocolate mousse? What was the secret? Would you believe avocado?

“Nobody believes me when I tell them they are eating avocado,” said Flynn, author of “The Super Food Generation: 14 Foods That Get You Glowing.”

“It’s amazing how well the other ingredients mask the flavor of this buttery fruit. The heart-healthy fat of the avocado is a perfect replacement for the dairy cream used in traditional mousse.”

Flynn became a vegetarian when a friend brought her an article about the conditions in slaughterhouses.

“I’m a really big animal lover, and I thought, I don’t want to be a part of this. My family didn’t think it would last, but I started paying attention to ingredients and noticing the hidden animal byproducts and ingredients you can’t even pronounce the names of.”

“The Super Food Generation” is not a diet book. “I wanted to get back to basics and promote healthy foods and ingredients rather than a particular diet,” she explained. “I want people be open-minded and not think so much about having to stick to a diet, but become more familiar with the healthy foods out there and adapt them to their own particular diet.”

Besides the avocado, pumpkin – along with carrots, sweet potatoes and its relatives in the squash family – is another of the 14 super foods that work “synergistically with the human body to unlock vitality, strengthen immunity and literally slow down the aging process,” Flynn writes.

Excuse me? Pumpkin Pie a health food? We’re talking about a healthy Thanksgiving feast now?

Okay, before you have me arrested, I’m not cursing here.

Shiterein (Yiddish): v. to add an unspecified amount adj. describing one who cooks from experiece and touch without recipes or measuring

Our foremothers were shiterein cooks. Who needs to measure? You throw in a little of this, a little of that, and a wonderful dish emerges. Far from haphazard, it’s a style borne of experience, confidence, instinct, and skill.

Shiterein cooks don’t usually write down their recipes. Fortunately Aunt Sally recorded my grandmother’s recipes or I wouldn’t have them. When they do write them down, they provide rather quirky measurements and instructions:

“a glass flour” or “a gluzzela” (little glass)
“an eggshell water”
“2 cents yeast”
“a nice piece of veal”
“knead until it feels right”
and of course the ever popular: “cook until done”

Aunt Hilda’s recipe for Chocolate Chip Mandelbrot ended this way: “If too sweet, next time add less sugar.”

Recently a friend told me that when she asked her mother when to put the dish in the oven, her response was, “So you’ll wake up a little earlier.”

Have you got a shiterein tale to tell? Would love to hear the instructions your foremothers left for you. Click "comments" below.

My column at OU's Shabbat Shalom entitled A harvest of recipes for Sukkot 5768 features the following recipes: Spinach-Stuffed Acorn Squash, Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil with rice, pine nuts and currants, and Polish Apple Cake. Chag Sameach! And in keeping with the harvest season, here's my latest column in the Orange County Register:

Cooking at the farmers' market

The Orange County Register/Fullerton News Tribune
October 4, 2007

by Judy Bart Kancigor

Amelia Saltsman is on a mission. With a cooking demonstration and book signing a month away, she is trawling the farmers’ market, querying farmers as to availability. Will there be persimmons? How about pomegranates? I tag along for the ride.

“Because I work with seasonal ingredients, and we are now on the cusp of the change of seasons, I need to best guess with the farmers when things will become available,” explains Saltsman as we stroll down the aisles.

But there are frequent interruptions, because this is the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market and Saltsman – writer, cooking teacher, producer/host of her own TV show and author of “The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook” – is the undisputed queen of this market and instantly recognized by shoppers and farmers alike.

Every grower greets Saltsman, who has immortalized them in her new cookbook, which is as much an homage to the farmers, their histories, and their commitment to excellence as it is a collection of fuss-less, original and artful recipes inspired by the amazing varieties they produce.

When I think back to my grandmother’s cooking, nothing green comes to mind. Beets, carrots, onions, radishes – those familiar vegetables of Eastern Europe graced her table in America as well. When I asked my mother if she could remember eating any vegetables when she was growing up, she said, “Sure. We had potatoes.”

Oh, I suppose you could say my grandmother had a Victory garden – if you can call winning the war against aphids a victory. She grew roses, not vegetables! Which is not to say she wasn’t fiercely patriotic. For my grandparents, proud to be American citizens, Election Day was a major event, requiring hours of preparation and wardrobe consultation. But my grandmother contributed to the war effort by rolling miles of bandages for the Red Cross, not by harvesting broccoli.

By the 1950s, when I was growing up, the Jolly Green Giant had cut a mighty swath across the land and convenience was in. My generation, however, remembers vegetables as a toll to be paid for crossing the bridge to the treasure on the other side, as in “Eat your vegetables and you can have dessert.” Or so I’m told. No one had to coax us to eat anything in our house.

Ahead of her time, my mother actually steamed a veggie or two. For company she’d present a gorgeous display: a whole head of cauliflower surrounded by bursts of red, green, and orange. But in truth, she did it more for presentation than nutrition. And as for the vegetables she served for family dinners, I suspect she was more concerned about filling us up low-calorically than she was about our vitamin consumption.

My latest column on OU's website includes recipes for Tomato Pie, Tomato and Cucumber Bread Salad and Classic Tomato Soup with a Goat Cheese Swirl. Enjoy!

Like its nightshade relatives, the eggplant and potato, it was once thought to be poisonous. The French named it pomme d’amour (love apple) and considered it an aphrodisiac. Really a fruit, it’s called a vegetable. Call the tomato what you want. I call it delicious.

According to John Cooper in “Eat and Be Satisfied,” tomatoes were brought to Europe from Mexico in the sixteenth century, but weren’t

Read the whole story.

Fireworks! Parades! Barbecues! Flag-waving! It’s our nation’s birthday, and celebrating the Fourth of July with any of the above is as American as apple pie. But is our beloved classic dessert really American, I wonder?

There were no apples in the New World until the early European explorers brought the seeds
Read the whole story

My story in this week's Canadian Jewish News celebrates Shavuot with three delicious recipes: SAVOURY GOAT CHEESE STRUDEL, CHEESE BLINTZES, and SEPHARDIC
CHEESE-STUFFED EGGPLANT.

Canadian Jewish News
June 6, 2008

by Judy Bart Kancigor

If Pesach signals the emergence of spring, with Shavuot the season bursts forth in a riot of color and luscious flavors.

“The Midrash tells us that although Mount Sinai is in the desert,” writes Susie Fishbein, author of the wildly popular "Kosher by Design" cookbooks, “it suddenly bloomed with fragrant flowers and grasses on the morning that the Torah was given to the Jewish people. The custom of decorating our homes and synagogues with leafy branches and flowers is based on this miracle.”

Read the whole story.

My column on OU's website ezine Shabbat Shalom is a tribute to my wonderful mom - hard to believe she's 90! - and contains recipes for her unbelievable chicken soup, my Shiitake Mushroom Matzoh Balls and her Killer Brisket with Tsimmes. It begins this way:

My mother’s name is Lillian, but everyone calls her Honey. When I was expecting her first grandchild, Mom wanted to be called “Grandma Honey.” Mom had high hopes. My children called her “Honey” and it stuck. Even their friends think that that’s her name.

Read the whole story.

Canadian Jewish News, May 2, 2008

Manischewitz National Cookoff winner announced

by Judy Bart Kancigor

My Grandma Ruchel was very religious. When I was a child, I would watch her pray facing the cabinet where she kept the Tam Tams – those addictive, “bet you can’t eat one” crackers from Manischewitz – swaying back and forth as her arthritic fingers turned the pages of her prayer book. I had no idea she was facing east. I thought Tam Tam crackers were holy!

So it was with amusement Read the whole story