Ummmmm I just came home from a Filipino Jewish bakery and y’all…
Filipino Jews have won Purim and maybe the entire baked goods category.
I don’t wanna brag but I’ve acquired an ube challah and an ube hamantaschen and that doesn’t even touch the variety of pandan offerings they had. Omg. This is easily the best discovery I’ve made in my city.
And yes, they ship nationally so I will be ordering from them when I move away.
Guys, if you keep kosher for Passover and do not eat kitniyot and want something exciting this year, you NEED to head to @sialiaskitchen and check out the recipe for matzo meal tortillas. I had a go making them properly today and these things are MAGIC!
The only things I'd recommend are:
1. Make sure to knead each portion of tortilla "dough" until they are properly smooth, it will make sure you get a smooth outside to the tortillas and prevent them cracking. This will take maybe 1 minute for each one. I just kept squishing it in my hand and then rolled it into a ball.
2. If, like me, you don't have a tortilla press, you can place the balls between parchment paper and then put it on the floor with a flat board above and then gently step on the board. I ended up on one leg with my entire body weight on the board and then gave them a little roll with a rolling pin just to even put the shape if necessary.
3. Trust Sialia's process. They need to stand, covered, to soften and I promise they will - just don't be worried if it takes a little longer than you expect. I piled them all up under a bowl and once a few were there and steaming, they softened much faster.
For anyone interested, the filling is pulled jackfruit and butternut squash in a guajillo and ancho chilli sauce. It's then sprinkled with queso fresco - although pick your fave cheese if you prefer, chopped red onion (purple), red onion soaked in red wine vinegar and sugar - a quick pickled onion (pink), and coriander/cilantro. 10/10 will be making again
when i say no think just vote i mean going off your gut reaction, not any internal corrections you make after the fact. it’s not a judgement poll, just an observation poll.
I often make this as a meal prep situation so I make a large dish and then we have it for lunches/dinner during the week. Or for Shabbat. This is a Bukharian Jewish dish called Bakhsh, which is a simple dish of rice that's cooked with tons of herbs, usually cilantro and dill, and with meat (most traditional is lamb iirc). I can't get kosher lamb easily where I live at all, so mine is always chicken and it's made in a glass baking dish in the oven.
Bakhsh (green rice)
Ingredients:
2 cups rice (I always use short grain bc that is what we have on hand), washed/rinsed, uncooked
4 whole bunches fresh cilantro (or 3 + 1 fresh parsley -- can also add a bunch of fresh dill if desire), chopped
1 cup cubed meat of choice (I always use chicken breast), uncooked
1 diced yellow onion
1/2 c oil (I use avocado)
1/2 c water
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp chicken consomme powder (I use the Osem brand)
Ground black pepper, cumin, turmeric, and coriander to taste
Instructions:
Line glass baking dish w/parchment paper.
Combine all ingredients in the dish, stir well. Cover with foil.
Bake covered at 400F for 45 minutes, then remove and stir well. Re-cover and bake for 45 more minutes.
Enjoy! The favorite part of this dish in my house is the brown crust that forms on bottom, similar to what we call 누룽지 (nurungji) in Korean (it's the scorched rice I guess that forms on the bottom of the stone pot) -- it's so tasty and crunchy!
Description: a supermarket endcap with a sign that says "Be ready for Rosh Hashanah." The foods on the endcap are, from top to bottom: Honey, in plastic bears; whole wheat tea biscuits; gluten free matzah; tahini, Manischewitz apple butter.
Supermarket managers really are allergic to asking any Jewish person a question, huh.
I was hoping you maybe be able to give me some inspiration for a small series of food photos I'm assembling for Channukah! I'm doing an 8 part series celebrating the different groups within Judaism to 1. Be loudly and proudly Jewish at this current time, and 2. raise awareness for non-ashki Jews. In the UK it's super hard to find many non ashki peeps which makes it hard to chat to people about other classic Channukah foods, but I was wondering if you knew of any particularly good ones (that aren't latke or sufganiyot)? Would hugely appreciate any suggestions you have!!
Hi darling, sending you the biggest hugs right back! <3
Oooh, Hanukkah foods! I'm not gonna lie, some of my fave Jewish foods come from this holiday. With your permission, I'll give a small introduction, just for anyone reading, who might be unfamiliar with Hanukkah, and curious... and also talk about some of the lesser known Hanukkah food traditions among European Jews, too.
So during Hanukkah, we celebrate a miracle that happened with the oil at the Temple in Jerusalem. After the Jews defeated the occupying Greek forces that had desecrated our Temple, we wanted to light again the eternal flame of the Menorah (the Temple candelabra) with olive oil, but after the destruction caused by the Greek forces, there was only enough left for one day, and it would take 8 days to get more oil. The miracle is that somehow, that small amount of oil lasted for the whole 8 days, meaning the light didn't go out again. To remember this miracle, we eat food fried in oil! Being Jewish is so good for your health. XD
In shops and bakeries around Israel, there are already sufganiot being sold. They are YUMMY, and while some people call them "the Jewish donuts," I can say that after having eaten American donuts, I def think sufganiot are way yummier (in part 'coz they're not as "heavy" because the dough it's made of is fluffier? More... airy? Not sure how to say it, but I hope you get the idea). Also, you don't get robbed, because someone made a hole in the middle of the sufgania, taking out nearly half of it. The traditional type has strawberry jam injected inside, and sugar powder on top, but in Israel there are some crazy fancy kinds, and every year they seem to become more extravagant.
Traditional sufganiot (you can see a bit of the jam on top, but half the fun is biting and getting to the "treasure" of lots of jam at the center of the sufgania):
Fancy sufganiot:
Then there's the latkes, or as they're called in Hebrew, levivot. They're like savoury pancakes made out of potatoes, and obviously they're fried in oil.
In many Jewish communities, there was a custom of giving kids special pocket money for Hanukkah. In Israel, this "money" is given in the form of chocolate "coins." I freaking loved this as a kid! It was fun unwrapping the "coins," eating the chocolate, and then (assuming I was careful when peeling them off), make a collection of the different "coins," or just play with the wrap.
Greek Jews used to make a bread from potatoes and yogurt:
Georgian Jews made levivot out of corn flour (sometimes filled with cheese), or out of potatoes AND nuts, giving it the shape of a big omelette. Here's the corn flour version:
Czech Jews had a custom saying goose is the best meat, so for Hanukkah, they often ate goose related dishes. For example, they would make levivot from potatoes, eggs, sugar, lemon and goose fat.
French and Swiss Jews would make levivot out of apples.
The Jews of Iraq, Algeria and Buchara (which is in Uzbekistan) used to put the Hanukkah pocket money for the kids inside honey cakes. In Algeria and Buchara they also sometimes made levivot with meat added inside.
The Jews of Romania and Austria used to light potato Hanukkah candles! This was likely because they were so poor. Still, a pretty cool thing, when you can light your candle, and eat it (or at least a part of it), too.
In northern Africa, Jews used to make a type of cookie called Debla (sometimes nicknamed "dough roses"), which originated in Libya. They're usually eaten with a sweet syrup. It's more of a Purim dish (the equivalent of Hamantaschen), but was sometimes prepared for Hanukkah as well. Traditional Debla:
And a slightly "fancier" Israeli version:
Okay, maybe my fave Hanukkah dish! It's called sfinge (the 'ge' is pronounced like in "sponge"), and it's basically the Moroccan sufgania, which later became popular among Tunisia and Libya Jews, too. It can be round with a hole in the middle, it can be in the shape of a ball, while Libyan Jews make it flat. It's eaten with either honey or sugar powder, but again, in Israel fancier versions developed... I'm not a great cook, so IDK to explain why, but it's even fluffier than the sufgania, and that's why it's my personal fave.
Traditional sfinge with honey:
With sugar powder:
Israelis always having to make everything fancier:
They even made a savoury version of flat sfinge...
I hope this helps! Have a wonderful day, darling! xoxox
Knish vendor, 1953. Knishes are fist-sized dumplings, wrapped in dough and baked, with fillings such as potato (the most common), kasha (buckwheat), or cabbage. Carts such as this were a fixture on New York sidewalks until the Giuliani administration cracked down on them in the 1990s.
As a Pokemon baker, I love adding my own nerdy twist to Jewish foods! ✡️ Latkes are fried potato pancakes we eat to commemorate the miracle of the oil in the story of Hanukah. These have got to be one of my favourite parts of the Festival of Lights 🤤
Jewish culture is your friend saying they are sick so you show up at their door with chicken soup and fret around their place like a startled grandma. ( look chicken soup will fix everything !! )
Iraqi Jewish confectionery are a window into a bygone era
Five days a week, 78-year-old Tzvi (Sabah) David rises at 4:35 a.m. and dons an all-white baker’s outfit before heading out to open up Konditorei David, the last-of-its-kind Iraqi pastry shop in Petah Tikva that was opened by his father David Tsalah.
Three days before the Purim holiday, David is getting ready for one of the busiest times of the year as multiple generations of Iraqi customers will soon stop by to purchase sweets that have been synonymous with Purim for Iraqi Jews for centuries, if not millennia.
“I love the work. It is a very tiring and difficult job and I am not 18 anymore, but I feel young in the morning when I get up,” David tells Eliyahu Freedman of The Times of Israel on a recent visit to the small shop, which doubles as a window into the pre-modern world of Middle-Eastern pastries.
His first item of business today is making a fresh batch of baba qadrasi, also known in Arabic as “mann el-sama” or “manna from heaven,” named after the legendary food that God miraculously delivered from the sky to feed the Israelites in the Exodus story.
If not truly the biblical food itself, an early recipe for baba qadrasi was found in a 10th-century Abbasid cookbook.
when i say no think just vote i mean going off your gut reaction, not any internal corrections you make after the fact. it’s not a judgement poll, just an observation poll.
Baking challah in the shape of a key (schlissel meaning key in Yiddish) is an Ashkenazi tradition the Shabbat after Pesach, and is said to represent the key to the promised land. I’m usually team poppyseed but sesame seeds are traditional for schlissel challah, because they are supposed to resemble the manna we ate in the desert.
I couldn’t find a technique I liked so I just made one up- I did a 5-strand braid for the stem, and a standard 3-strand for the teeth and the head.