Jewish Cooking

Traditional Hannukah Cooking – Some Great Ideas

There may be many reasons why you choose to research cooking in this tradition. You may be Jewish and looking for authentic recipes for yourself and your family,or perhaps your are hoping to find new and exciting recipes to prepare for this important time in the Jewish calendar. Some of you may have a genuine interest in cultural festivals. Whatever you motivation, the purpose of the following information is to reveal a few of the basic Hannukah cooking traditions and to inspire you to try a few of these great recipes for yourself. Like most important religious feasts family traditions play an important part of the celebration and Hannukah is no exception.

One element that is essential to Hannukah cooking is oil. Oil has traditional and symbolic relevance to this festival. The following are a few simple dishes you might like to try and are in keeping with the traditions of Hannukah as oil is used in their preparation. There are wonderful and extremely popular potato pancakes called Latkes, which are traditionally deep fried in oil. Also a traditional dish using oil is breaded lamb chops which are fried in much the same way as chicken is cooked in the US.

There are many other delicacies that are more like party food and are fun to eat. You might like to add these to your celebratory table. The following are all deep fried:

zuchini, mozarella, ricotta balls and onion rings are just some of the delicious treats that are enjoyed over the period of this festival to celebrate the season of light.

Continuing on the theme of deep fried food and cooking with oil there are an array of sweets to tempt your palate. During this celebration it is a good idea to put your waistline worries to one side and indulge in a few sweet snacks such as apple fitters and raspberry doughnuts! There are so many more desserts to choose from but you may like to try something really special like blintzes. There is a wealth of information and recipes for these and many more dishes that can be found on the internet at no cost to yourself.

If all of the above sounds just a little to calorific and you prefer a more health conscious option you have plenty to choose from. The holiday season whatever your religion or culture is sometimes detrimental to your weight, so if you want something a little less fattening you might like to consider a healthy salad of Israeli origin, or even roasted or oven cooked vegetables such as eggplant and peppers.

Continuing with the theme of traditional Hannukah cooking you should also try three other popular favorites, such as vegetable kugel, brisket and loukoumades. These dishes

are widely prepared and enjoyed during Hannukah and therefore the recipes for them can be found easily in bookstores or libraries that have a cookery section devoted to this kind of cooking and information about Jewish traditions and customs.

With all the other activities that are planned for Hannukah you will find that if you are well organized you will have more time to enjoy the festivities. This means advance preparation by you and try to involve other members of the family in the quest to prepare all these wonderful recipes. The key to achieving a relaxed approach to Hannukah as regards cooking is to keep everything as uncomplicated as you can, and in doing so all your dishes will be served promptly and you will be able to enjoy the celebration instead of being tied to the kitchen. As you can see most of the dishes enjoyed during Hannukah are fairly easy to make leaving you with more time to enjoy the occasion with friends and family.

If you haven’t already done so, source your recipes and hopefully cooking for Hannukah will be a pleasurable and rewarding experience.

About the Author

Abhishek is really passionate about Cooking and he has got some great Cooking Secrets . up his sleeves! Download his FREE 88 Pages Ebook, “Cooking Mastery!” from his website http://www.Cooking-Guru.com/770/index.htm . Only limited Free Copies available.

I want to invite my Jewish neighbors over for dinner, but I don’t know how to cook Kosher. What should i do?

I am a Christian and therefore do not follow the Law of Moses with regards to cooking and preparing food. I want to be friends with my Jewish neighbors and have them over for dinner. Any Jewish members out there that can give me any ideas on what to do?

First of all, that’s very thoughtful of you for wanting to accommodate the dietary needs of your neighbors – they’re lucky to have someone like you living next door. Now, as to your question…

Before I start, please note that the following answer is not an all-encompassing description of the Jewish dietary laws, and has actually been abbreviated so as to apply to your situation specifically – for more detailed information and practical advice, especially for any Jews who may be reading this, please consult your LOR (Local Orthodox Rabbi).

The truth is, cooking a kosher meal, as a person who doesn’t keep kosher (and who, from the Torah’s perspective, isn’t obligated – but G-d bless you for respecting the obligations of your friends), might not be practical, for a variety of reasons. First of all, for a cooked food to be strictly kosher, a Jew has to actually be involved in the cooking process. Exactly how involved varies depending on which custom they follow (i.e. their specific ethnic background – for example, German Jews and Spanish Jews, though they follow the same body of Jewish law, may vary in their customs). Odds are, the minimum requirement would be like, to have a Jew turn on the stove/oven. Another thing that makes it complicated is the matter of keilim (vessels). That is to say, you could make a meal using 100% kosher ingredients, you could make sure that the meal is either dairy with no meat ingredients, meat with no dairy ingredients, or neither meat nor dairy (the dietary laws prohibit us from eating meat and milk products in one sitting – this is derived from the verse, which you can find in your Old Testament, instructing the Israelites not to “seethe a kid in its mother’s milk”). Even with all these careful steps, the meal might be non-kosher. The reason is that the vessels used in its preparation, knives, spoons, blenders, mashers, pots, pans, and even the oven you cook it in, have to be kosher. That is, they can only have been used in the preparation of kosher food (or else they’d have to be brand new), and then, it can only be used in the preparation of one “gender” of food (kosher food can be either “meat,” “dairy,” or “neutral” – the commonly used yiddish terms for these are “fleschig,” “milchig,” and “pareve,” and in the context of the dietary laws, poultry is fleischig, and fish and eggs are both pareve).

Given the above requirements to cook a kosher meal, your simplest option is simply not to cook. I would recommend getting disposable utensils, and then either bringing takeout from a kosher restaurant (if you live in a major metropolitan area, this wouldn’t be too hard), or, preparing something that can be made using the aforementioned disposable utensils, and that doesn’t require cooking. If you really want to prepare a hot meal, my advice is that first, you consult with your LOR, but secondly, you could use a non-kosher oven without having to kasher it (i.e. to make it kosher), by using the same techique that airlines use when preparing kosher in-flight meals alongside the non-kosher ones. The trick would be to put the food in a disposable foil pan, and then double wrap the whole thing (wrap it all the way around, twice), before putting it in the oven to cook. If the food is sealed in that way, food particles from the non-kosher oven would not compromise the kosher status of the food. Although, if you have a self-cleaning oven, simply cleaning it out with Easy Off or something like that, and running a four hour cycle at maximum heat, would effectively sterilize your oven, thereby kashering it, and anything inside (for example, the racks).

So yeah, disposable utensils are the way to go. My advice to you is to go for either cold food (I know bagels, chopped veggies, cream cheese, and lox, doesn’t sound like a very impressive meal, but you know, I’ve done it, and it’s not bad) or some form of catering. If your neighbors keep kosher, they would probably be more comfortable with food that was prepared under strict supervision than with something you cooked – and this in no way is meant to discount your sincerity, and your desire to do it properly. But the fact of the matter is that even Jews who keep kosher, mess up once in a while. So getting your food from a place where there is a guy whose only job is to make sure that the food is kosher (a kosher supervisor or “mashgiach”), is the most reliable way to go.

I hope you find this information helpful, and that you aren’t too disappointed. Again, kudos for being such a good neighbor.

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The event was sponsored by the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn, which says it is the only all-kosher culinary academy outside Israel.

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