Kosher Diva: Stir Fry for One...Sort Of

Last week I catered a very small event. Of course the vegetable platter was cancelled right after I purchased the vegetables, so I immediately used a couple of celery stalks, a pound of carrots and chopped a couple of onions to make matzo ball soup. I chopped the rest of the celery right away and put it in the freezer. There's just no way I can use celery before it goes bad.

Living alone, I've done a lot of trial and error freezing. Celery holds up well. So do peppers and onions.

So now I'm stuck with a bunch of broccoli that I usually purchase only when the grandkiddles come to visit. I love vegetables, but I like most other vegetables more than broccoli. I decided to turn it into stirfry. For some reason, broccoli just tastes better in stirfry dishes.

I kashered the broccoli by soaking it for 20 minutes in cold water with a tablespoon of salt and a splash of lemon juice. Even if you don't keep kosher, or never intend to, if you ever see those little broccoli bugs flushed out by salt and lemon, you will become an ardent fan of kashering vegetables! Even if you need the protein!

On that note, let me give a mini lesson on kashering vegetables. All fruits and vegetables are kosher in their unprocessed state. However, leafy vegetables and fruits and vegetables that cannot be peeled, need to be "kashered", or inspected and treated for the removal of bugs. Most fruits and vegetables that can be peeled, usually only need to be washed, like tomatoes and cucumbers, but not pineapples. I remember the first time I saw a nearly invisible bug on lettuce. It was like a chameleon, in that it was the identical color of the lettuce, and only visible because I was searching for it. The best way to discover bugs on leafy vegetables is to hold them up to a light, or better yet in the daytime, hold them up to a window, and then the bugs are easy to spot.

Spinach is a special challange because bugs can actually bore into the leaf and look like part of the leaf, like a "vein". Romaine lettuce can harbor bugs up in the hollow stem where they are hard to detect. You can check the leafy part, and either split the stem to examine the inside, or you can slice the stem out and remove it. Scallions usually harbor bugs in the area where they "branch off." So we trim about 3/4 to an inch from where the scallion begins to divide, below and above.

Back to the stirfry. I found a small piece of skirt steak in the freezer. Fish would have been delicious as well, or just vegetables. I sliced up a couple of carrots, threw in a handful of chopped celery and chopped red pepper from my freezer. Then I added 3 cloves of sliced garlic and a chopped purple onion. I checked my pantry and there was a can of miniature whole corn, (they're so cute!) and a can of water chestnuts. I threw in some "five spice" and 1/4 cup of Teriyaki sauce once the meat and vegetables were alsmost done.

In all honesty, this would serve 4 to 6 people, but that's fine. I hated the thought of throwing out perfectly good broccoli, ("good" being a relative term!), and now I won't be cooking much the rest of the week. Oh yeah, something was missing... What was it?... Mushrooms! I love mushrooms, but I just didn't have any. Still this was a substantial, colorful, healthy and yummy meal. And all those healthy veggies, I didn't feel guilty about serving them over a bed of fragrant basmati rice.

Still keeping it simple...

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Kosher Diva: Don't Make It Complicated!

I've been wanting to blog about all things kosher for awhile now. With Rosh Hoshana almost here, this seems like a perfect time. The first thing that I want to say is that kosher doesn't have to be complicated, and kosher doesn't have to be yucky!

Kosher can be simple, elegant, festive, healthy,- whatever you want it to be. But you don't need to make it unnecessarily complicated.

I was really surprised last night when I was surfing for kosher menus, to find many sites billing themselves as kosher. Upon reaching many of these sites, it was clear that they were trying to capture the kosher market, which is pretty tough to do when touting chicken parmigiana and crabcakes. The companies involved are not necessarily being deceitful, just uninformed. So let me set the record straight. If you are considering a kosher way of eating, beware of a caterer who says, "we can also make a kosher version!" If you already keep kosher, I'm not worried.

In the months ahead, I will be sharing recipes, menus and tips for making kosher simple and enjoyable. For those new to the concept, I will suggest ways to make the process as painless as possible. For the kosher veterans, I will be stealing and sharing tips from some of my favorite kosher cooks! And I invite your ideas and suggestions as well.

Please know that if you don't keep kosher, don't need to, don't want to,- you will still find great ideas for preparing food for one or a hundred.

So, last week we had a Jewish Cultural Festival here in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The festival featured Jewish books, local artists, Jewish music, and of course, kosher food.

Asked to prepare matzo ball soup with 150 matzo balls, we quickly came up with a plan to keep it simple, and make transportation easy. The food had to be prepared at the synagogue, and transported to the hotel where the festival was to take place.

Several days before the event, matzo balls were simmered in water, drained and frozen in large foil pans. The soup HAD to have color, (I insist!) so I finely chopped and sauteed onions, carrots, garlic and celery and sprinkled them over each layer of matzo balls. Oh, and just a tip, I sneaked some dill into the matzo balls. With sheets of foil between layers, the matzo balls went into the freezer.

The night before the festival, the matzo balls were taken out to defrost. Still a little icy the next morning, they were easily transported with no sloshing. We removed the foil between the layers, covered the matzo balls with broth, and simmered them right in the foil pans over warmers. What could be simpler? No dishes, no fuss, no muss. Take a look. This was before going into the freezer.



See? Simple! Just the way I like it.

Welcome to the Kosher Diva associate
program. Happy surfing for Judaism's
greatest treasures, including recipe books!