Jewish Ethnic Food = Completely Underrated (Yum!)

[BloodyWilliam]

I'm sitting right now with a plate of kasha and farfalle and two blueberry blintzes on the table (we had our huge Thanksgiving turkey dinner around lunch, and are saving the leftovers for tomorrow), and I just realized that Jewish ethnic food is really, really underrated!

Kasha and farfalle? (For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's bowtie pasta and buckwheat) Simple and tasty.

Blintzes? Well, yum!

Bagels? An American standard.

Anyone here have some good Jewish ethnic recipies they want to share?

I'd like to pitch the brand "Mrs. Cohen's," because I'm eating their kasha and farfalle right now and it's simply awesome.

Heh... Jews: We don't just eat Chinese food anymore. ;-)

[wryter2000]

1. Chopped liver

Ummmm...chopped liver. Lord, I love the stuff.

[Hand]

5. So'd my old man...

He'd make it fairly coarse with chicken liver (natch), a little extra schmaltz (chicken fat), boiled egg, and chopped onions. Great stuff! Needless to say, we also had chicken skin cracklings from rendering the schmaltz.

Cripes--no wonder he had an aneurysm.

:9 :9 :9

[BloodyWilliam]

2. Oooh, forgot lox!

There's only one way to properly eat a bagel. You take the bagel. You add about an inch thick layer of cream cheese. Then you add another inch thick layer of smoked nova salmon. Then you eat it. And have a stroke. And die happy.

[JAbuchan08]

3. gefelte fish

one of the most unfairly maligned foods - and you can't forget potatoe latkes!

[Hand]

4. Beef brisket...

Oy, it's lovely stuff, boiled carefully 'til it's nice and tender. Makes sandwiches like ambrosia.

Not to mention kosher corned beef and pastrami--sliced hot off the steam table and piled a couple inches deep on good rye bread with a schmear of mustard and a couple of dill pickles on the side... Ai yi yi--cholesterol, where is thy sting?

:9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Hate to break the news to you, but

farfalle are Italian. It's the Italian word for "butterfly."

That being said, I love potato latkes, kugel, cheese or berry blintzes, beet borscht with sour cream, and real New York bagels.

And I'm an Episcopalian, although a very ecumenical one.

[eyesroll]

7. I make a mean chicken soup

Take a roasted chicken carcass, an onion peeled and cut into 8ths, two carrots, two celery ribs, two parsnips, two bay leaves, a small handful of parsley, a few peppercorns, a clove or two. Cover the whole mess with water, bring just below a boil, then let simmer for three hours or so. Strain. Salt & pepper to taste.(Chill and peel off fat if you feel like it.) I sometimes add back the carrots and chicken from the carcass, or I sometimes add new meat and vegetables, and then noodles or matzoh balls cooked seperately.

I also do chopped liver -- 1 pound chicken liver, broiled or sauteed (sauteed isn't technically kosher, but I don't keep); one sauteed chopped onion, four hard-boiled eggs, salt. Chop in a food processor to desired consistency. My mom allegedly lived on cheese blintzes and chopped liver while she was pregnant with me.

My sister aptly calls our immediate family "food Jews" -- not in the least observant, but we can cook with the best of 'em.

[Interrobang]

8. Montreal style bagels (I'm one of these heretics!)

Montreal bagels & Montreal smoked meat! So very Canadian! So very kosher! So incredibly yummy!

(Montreal has one of the oldest Jewish communities in North America, but, as with all things in Quebec, they do their things in their own way. A Montreal-style bagel is about twice the thickness and half the density of a NY style bagel, with a much more 'bready' texture, and a smaller hole in the centre. Montreal smoked meat is a kind of corned beef with a different, distinctive spice blend on it.)

I also like dill pickles, fresh pickles, and almost everything else, as long as it doesn't involve fish, tongue, or that awful culinary imposition known as 'mock kishkes.' And the *next* time a group of elderly Jewish ladies from New York crowd around me and say, "Try this; it's good, you'll LIKE it!" I'll be a little more wary (although unfailingly polite, as always)...