A First Hillel Shabbat Dinner Experience from a Non-Jewish Standpoint

My Jewish friend and I have been going to Hillel for dinner on Friday nights, and recently we decided to take our non-Jewish hall-mates along with us. I enjoyed watching their reaction as they experienced food from a culture they had never experienced before. I interviewed my friend Ashley Copeland, about her experience:

Q: Was this your first experience with Jewish food?
A: Yes.

Q: What was similar and what was different about the food from what you typically eat?
A: “The Jewish people can get down.” The food has a traditional quality to it; it has a story behind it. The food was similar to what I normally eat as it had the same concept: main dish, bread, different types of drinks. They were “all comfort foods.”


Q: What was your favorite food? Why?
A: The challah because you didn’t need butter and it was “inviting.” “It wasn’t just a side, it was its own part of the meal and it’s pretty.”

Q: What was your least favorite food? Why?
A: “The string beans, they didn’t have any flavor to them.” Normally I like string beans, but they typically have more flavor.

Q: Was there anything different about the progression of the meal?
A: “There were more courses, it was high quality, and they eat much more than I’m used to.” It seemed to be a “20,000 course meal and you have to eat everything on the table.”

Q: Would you/have you returned to Hillel?
A: Yes and I plan on going again!

Further comments:
It was a chance to try something new; “it’s a great opportunity to get to know a different culture because everybody bonds over food, especially good food. So combining the two you get to know people better. Food makes the world go round.”

Interview by Stephanie Cohen

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Fall Festival

What: Fall Festival
When: This Saturday (10/10) from 2:00 to 6:00
Where: College Green

Check out the Fall Festival for fun and food. Penn Appetit's Culinary Committee will be selling gourmet goodies like fudge, caramel corn and chocolate dipped pretzels. Hope to see you there!

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Multicultural Cooking Series

What: Multicultural Cooking Series--Latino Cooking
When: Tuesday, October 6 from 5:00pm – 7:00 pm
Where: The Carriage House (LGBTC) 3907 Spruce St.
Price: Free!

Come learn about culture, cuisine and cooking style, while enjoying a delicious meal. Join the Associate Director of La Casa Latina, America Espinal, who will be our guide to preparing a quick and tasty Tostones.(Vegetarian and meat options available). This series is open to student, staff and faculty. Please RSVP to Ninah@upenn.edu Tuesday at Noon. Walk-ins welcome but space is limited! This is a monthly series hosted by the LGBT Center, La Casa, Makuu, PAACH and the GIC from 5pm-7pm the first Tuesday of every month.

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Brian’s Banana and Chocolate Bread Pudding

Brian’s Banana and Chocolate Bread Pudding

Ingredients
6 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
6 eggs
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 loaf of challah bread
2 ripened bananas
2 bars of Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate
A pinch of nutmeg

Directions
In a large mixing bowl, combine the half and half, heavy cream, eggs,
sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Dice the challah bread into
1 in. x 1 in. cubes and add it to the mixture, stirring to allow all of
the cubes to become soaked in the mixture. Cover the mixing bowl with
plastic wrap and let the ingredients sit. After 30 minutes stir the
mixture again. Cover up the bowl again and let it sit for another 30
minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

After letting the mixture sit for its second session, remove the plastic
wrap. Slice the bananas into thin slivers and add them to the bowl. Break
the chocolate bars into tiny pieces and add as well, stirring with each
addition. Add the mixture to a greased, 12-quart pan and place it in the
oven for 1 hour and 5 minutes (or until the top of the bread pudding is
golden brown).

Enjoy!

For those who do not like warm bread pudding, place the dessert directly
into the refrigerator upon completion and let it sit for a minimum of 2
hours. The once gooey dessert becomes a rich, creamy flan!

*Adapted from Emeril Lagasse’s bread pudding recipe
Recipe by Natalie Rosen

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Food Photo

Photo by Sika Gasinu

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Autumn Apple, Caramel Pie

Autumn Apple, Caramel Pie

When the air starts to get crisp I like to pull out this recipe.

Fresh apples are a necessity, and this pie is particularly enjoyable if you’re able to pick them yourself.

Ingredients

Crust:

1 ½ cups flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp sugar

½ cup shorting

4 tbsp of ice cold water

Filling:

3-4 large green apples

1tsp of cinnamon

¼ cup flour

1 tbsp sugar

Caramel:

1¼ cups sugar

¼ cup + 2 tbsp water

3 tbsp butter

Topping:

1 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

½ stick softened butter together

Directions

First thing to do is to make the crust.

Start by mixing 1 ½ cups flour, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp cinnamon and 2 tbs sugar in a large bowl. Once they’re blended together, cut in ½ cup shorting. Normally, a pastry cutter is recommended for this step, but they’re a little hard to get a hold of and I’ve found that a fork can do just as well. If using a fork, squish the shortening into the dry ingredients. This helps create the flaky crust texture. Next add 4 tbs of ice cold water, making sure to mix them in one at a time. By the end the dough should have rolled into a nice ball shape, if not add a little more water.

Then wrap it up in wax paper and place it in the fridge to chill while you make the filling.

Peel 3-4 large green apples and then core and quarter them. Cut each quarter into thin slices and place them in the bowl that used to hold the crust.

Toss 1tsp of cinnamon, ¼ cup flour and a tbs sugar in with the apple slices.

For the caramel, get out a nonstick sauce pot and add 1¼ cups sugar and ¼ cup water to it. Place it on the stove and turn the heat on to medium. Stir until the sugar is dissolved in the water. Then turn the heat up to high and let the mixture bubble, stirring occasionally. After about 8 min the bubbles will turn a nice amber color. This means the sugar is caramelizing. Take the pot off of the heat and add 2 tbs water and 3 tbs butter. Be careful, it will steam and hiss violently. Then place it back on low heat and stir until smooth. Quickly poor the caramel over the apple slices and let them sit for 10 min, allowing the juices to seep out.

Finally it’s time to make the topping. Mix 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp salt, and ½ stick softened butter together.

Pre-heat the oven to 3750

Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out on top of the wax paper. Flip it onto a pie tin and use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust (to prevent bubbling). Poor the apple-caramel mixture on top of the pie crust. Next spread the topping over the apples. Use a fork to crimp the edges of the crust and place the pie in the oven. (if it looks like the edges of the crust are starting to burn, take the pie out and cover the edges with aluminum foil. Then place it back in the oven to continue baking.)

Bake it for about an hour and then serve and enjoy!

P.S. It’s really good warm with vanilla ice cream :)

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Saturday Blog Lovin' - Lots of pretty pictures

Blog: Food Porn Daily

These photos are safe for work, but not for hungry bellies. Check out this blog for enticing food photos and accompanying recipes.

Note: Click here to see the original post.

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Monsoon Wedding

In August, I had the opportunity to attend the wedding of my roommate's older sister in Lucknow, India. One of the most memorable aspects of the experience (aside from the sweltering monsoon weather) was the extravagant food. Similar to trends in the U.S. of dolled-up burgers or truffled macaroni and cheese, the wedding had a strong emphasis on upscale chaat, or street food.

Chaat and accoutrements

Aloo tikki (potato croquette served with various chutneys)

A chef preparing chicken kebabs

A much more traditional lunch of potatoes, okra, and bread

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Fun Cheesesteak Facts

Philadelphia's most famous sandwich, the cheesesteak, started out as an alternative to hot dogs. In the 1930s, Pat Olivieri and his brother Harry had a hot dog cart in South Philly, but one day Pat got tired of hot dogs and wanted to eat something different for lunch. He sent Harry down to the butcher to bring back some beef. When Pat got the meat, he cooked it up on the grill and put it on a hot dog roll. At this point, a cab driver who came for lunch saw the sandwich and wanted one. He asked Pat if he could have one, and Pat either sold him the sandwich or gave him half of his. Either way, the cab driver supposedly said afterwards "You should stop selling hot dogs and sell these things". The first West Philadelphia steak shop, Jim's, opened up in 1939. Cheese, the final essential component, was first put on the steak sandwich by Joe Lorenza, an employee at Pat's on Ridge Avenue.

Source: Philly Mag

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Meating Expectations

Environmental friendliness. A healthy, energy-rich diet. A rejection of startlingly inhumane slaughterhouse practices. And a step closer to becoming a true West Philadelphia hipster. When considering these and the many other benefits of becoming vegetarian , I realized that along with my perceived advantages, my impending lifestyle switch was sure to bring its fair share of drawbacks. Would I be able to retain a varied diet, or would I be stuck with the same frozen vegetarian dinners day after day? Would I go hungry without the rich servings of protein to which I had become accustom? And, most importantly, how exactly could I survive without enjoying the rich, smoky tastes of the meats I had come to love and reluctantly, abruptly rejected?


Fortunately, others had these concerns long before I first considered them. The concerns of my vegetarian and vegan predecessors led to the creation of the wide array of imitation meat products that masquerade among the real deal on grocery shelves. Think of a meat and you're sure to find its meatless analogue, cleverly named as to ensure that the product conforms to a flesh-free vegetarian diet. What could be a better way to maintain health-conscious diet, while still enjoying the characteristic tastes of your favorite meats that your omnivorous friends continue to relish? Of course, a pressing issue is immediately raised: how exactly can something that is not meat taste like, well, meat? Could I really incorporate these faux foods into my diet and never crave the real thing again?

To answer my question, I decided to compare different brands of imitation meat to see how they stacked up in flavor and texture to the bona fida counterpart. Such a question is broad in scope, so I decided to split up my experiments by type of meat, choosing to sample a different variety each week. This week's subject is the processed, casing-encompassed delicacy known as sausage. I made a trip to Fresh Grocer to pick out everyone's traditional favorite along with a triumvirate of imitators, all claiming to retain the flavors of the original, but without the health disadvantages...or the meat.

To test the limits of these impostors' meatiness even further, I employed the help of my carnivorous housemate to determine if the flavor lived up to the advertised standards of being a true meat replacement. If he liked the overall taste, feel, and texture, of the products, it would stand to reason that they could be a viable meat alternative; but if he couldn't even tell the difference between real and fake, then perhaps my loss stemming from my newfound vegetarianism was grossly overstated. Meat without the meat? Maybe it just was that easy. So how did these fake meats fare?

From my first bite of Lightlife's Italian Style Veggie Protein Sausages,the full flavor that I would expect from a product calling itself a sausage immediately assured me that these veggie-catering companies seem to have it figured out. I could tell that their food engineers took great care to devise a product that approached the taste and moistness of a real, meat-filled sausage, and my taste buds were almost duped. This edition lacked the spice and bite I would expect from a sausage. While not perfect, this product lived up to its meat-imitating expectations, emulating the taste and texture surprisingly well while still maintaining an air vegetable lightness. And regardless of its ability to live up to a real meat taste, the product is delicious overall, assuring me that there are tasty, healthy, and meat-reminiscent alternatives to my favorite foods that still fit within my new diet. My taste-tester correctly guessed that the product was in fact an imitation, claiming that it did not, as its makers advertised, taste like meat. Although he appreciated the overall taste and texture, it looked like my quest for a perfect meatless replacement would have to continue.

Once we moved on to Morningstar Farms Veggie Breakfast Sausage Links our prospects were looking even better. Almost prematurely, and to the delight of both myself and even more longterm vegetarian housemate and onlooker, my taste-tester declared the product to be "a meat one." Experiencing a more satisfying tinging in his taste buds, he claimed this product to be "definitely spicier," with a peppery, more characteristic bite to it and a sharp aftertaste to go along. I agreed with him in his judging of the meat-like qualities of these links, surprised that it surpassed the already impressive authenticity aspirations of the Lightlife sausages. Smaller in both length and circumference, these sausages are the perfect side complement in a vegetarian or vegan breakfast, definitely deserving as a replacement for more traditional, meat-oriented sides. As with all other soy-based faux meat foods I've tried, they still maintain that quality of legume-like taste, however masked by added spices and flavors they may be. Overall though, thanks to the soft yet non-crumbly texture that provides for this sausage's satisfying succulence, we found Morningstar Farms' take on the meat to be a genuine replacement for the traditional pork-filled breakfast sizzlers.

Expecting to be even more impressed by Veggie Patch's Sun Dried Tomato and Artichoke Meatless Sausages, I was disappointed immediately when my teeth encountered a jarring feeling of chewiness and rubberiness, not what I would expect from a product attempting to replace a normally tender meat. The slightly juicier nature of these sausages did little to offset the unnerving synthetic feel that their unsatisfactory textures provided which added an additional layer of fakeness. My taste-tester seemed to have a more positive outlook, commenting on the pleasing, if slightly subdued, overall taste, even though it was really meaty in nature. Out of all the variants, though, we both agreed that Veggie Patch's rendition was by far the most glaring of impostors, doing little to approach the taste of a real pork sausage regardless of independent taste. I appreciate this imitator's respect for a juicy, flavorful product, but the limited spiciness contribution left my taste buds feeling flat and unfulfilled, something that might just not cut it for your average ex-carnivore.

While none of the products could be completely equated with the real thing, both critics in this experiment were pleasingly impressed with the overall quality of these promising meat analogs. None was completely indistinguishable from the original product, as is the ideal, and after tasting the traditional smoked pork sausage my taste-tester could easily tell that the competitors were just imitations. However, if you're considering becoming a vegetarian, but are reluctant to abandon the spicy, juicy taste of meats like sausage, your fears might just be assuaged thanks to these tasty and healthful products like the ones we tried. Stay tuned for the next rendition of this series, which will hopefully put even more of your meat-withdrawal anxieties to rest.

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