Celebrate the New Year Scots Style (With Haggis)

December 29, 2013 by 1 Comment

Think “Scottish food” and haggis immediately comes to mind.

It’s a savory concoction of “sheep’s pluck” (the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep) mixed with minced onion, oatmeal, suet, and spices. Traditionally haggis was stuffed into the sheep’s stomach and simmered for several hours. Nowadays, haggis sold commercially is prepared in sausage casing instead.

Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, immortalized the haggis in his 1787 poem “To a Haggis.” And so Scots serve it up on Robbie Burns Day, the poet’s birthday, January 25, with a formal reading of the poem and lots of Scotch whisky. I guess with enough of the Scottish national drink, even Scottish food can be appealing!

I think of haggis at New Year’s, because several years ago my husband and I were in Kilbarchan, a small town near Glasgow, visiting friends of our son’s after Christmas. We were leaving on New Year’s Eve. Our hosts wanted to introduce us to some traditional Scottish fare so they made a haggis dinner on December 30.

(In deference to our dietary needs, they procured a packaged vegetarian version to serve us. It was quite tasty — but it wasn’t really haggis.)

I had thought haggis would be similar to Jewish kishka, a concoction made from beef scraps, fat and matzoh meal that was traditionally stuffed into a cow’s intestines. Nowadays, like haggis, it’s made in a plastic sausage casing.

But kishka is served in slices. Haggis has a looser consistency, more like sloppy joes. It’s usually served with “neeps and tatties” – mashed turnips and potatoes.

Making cheap meat palatable

Both developed out of the same need to use the least expensive parts of the animal in a palatable way.

Perhaps the haggis meat was the portion given to the peasants after the local lord took all the good cuts from the sheep. Other historians suggest haggis was a convenient way for the highland men to take a meal with them on their long journey down to Edinburgh to sell their cattle.

During our haggis dinner, one of the family’s daughters read the Burns poem. It starts out “Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face / Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race! / Aboon them a’ ye tak your place / Painch, tripe, or thairm / Weel are ye wordy of a grace / As lang’s my arm.”

You can get a general sense of the meaning in print, but when we heard it read in a genuine Scottish brogue we could barely understand a word. Here is the full poem, with an English translation, from the website of the Alexandria Burns Club. And here it is read on video by David Sibbald.

You can’t get it in the U.S.!

Since 1971, it has been illegal to import haggis into the United States from the Scotland due to a ban on food containing sheep lung. Then all meat from the United Kingdom was banned in 1989 because of the risk of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis, AKA mad cow disease). The general ban was lifted in 2010 – but not the ban on lungs. In fact, you can’t even buy American-grown animal lungs. Since sheep lung is a key ingredient, it’s still impossible to import Scottish haggis.

If you’d like to try your hand at actually cooking a haggis, here is a recipe from Alton Brown on the Food Network’s website. It looks pretty authentic except that it substitutes sheep tongue for sheep lung (to the horror of some Scottish reviewers). If you have a full-service butcher, you can probably get all the ingredients. (And the final snarky comment in the recipe is from the author, not from me!)

The bottom line, though, is that if you want to experience true Scottish haggis, plan a trip to Scotland!

What Jews Do on Christmas

December 23, 2013 by 6 Comments

On Christmas Eve this year, my husband and I will do what American Jews all over the country do on Christmas: eat Chinese.

There’s a simple reason why so many Jews eat at Chinese restaurants on Christmas: when almost everything else is closed up tight, Chinese restaurants are open and welcoming.

But the love affair between Jews and Chinese food is deeper than that.

Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the mid-1800s via the West Coast, where they worked on building the transcontinental railroad. By the late 19th century, there was a thriving Chinatown in New York City, adjacent to the Lower East Side which housed the city’s largest Jewish population.

A number of reasons have been put forth about why Jews latched on to Chinese food. It had to be more than proximity, because the Lower East Side was also adjacent to Little Italy. But the most popular day for Jewish families to eat out was Sunday, and for Italian immigrants, Sunday was typically a family day when restaurants were closed.

Welcoming and inexpensive

The Chinese and the Jews were the largest non-Christian immigrant groups in New York. Chinese restaurants were open all the time and welcoming of everyone, no matter what their religion or color. And they were inexpensive.

Chinese food was familiar to Jews in some ways – the use of onions, garlic and rice, and serving family-style, with everyone sharing a number of large dishes, rather that each person eating a separate meal.

But it was also very different from the food most Eastern European Jews were used to. In the 1920s and 1930s, eating Chinese food was seen as urban and sophisticated. To the sons and daughters of Eastern European immigrants, it was a way to demonstrate their American identity.

“Safe Treyf”

One interesting theory is that Chinese food was “safe treyf” – treyf meaning food that was forbidden by the Jewish dietary laws. If pork was in wontons (which looked very much like Jewish kreplach) or in tiny pieces in chop suey, it didn’t seem as bad as chowing down on a ham sandwich. And the Chinese typically don’t cook with dairy products, so no one had to worry about mixing milk and meat.

A couple of scholars, Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine even wrote a paper on the topic for the journal Contemporary Ethnography (1992: Vol 22 No 3. pp. 382-407). The article also appears in The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods edited by Barbara G. Shortridge & James R. Shortridge (Roman & Littlefield, 1997). And you can read it online here.

For many Jews, Chinese food was the first non-kosher food they ate. It’s not uncommon for Jews who keep a kosher home to eat non-kosher food when they are away. I’ve even known a few who bring Chinese takeout home – but eat it only on paper plates so as not to sully their kosher kitchen dishes.

When I was growing up in Philadelphia, if my family “ate out” it was most often at the Jade Palace, our local Cantonese restaurant. My family didn’t keep kosher, and I grew up loving wonton soup, shrimp in lobster sauce, and other Chinese delicacies (but not barbecued spareribs: “All bone, no meat,” my mother would sniff.)

My eating habits may have changed, but my love of Chinese food has not diminished. Luckily, it’s usually easy to get vegetarian dishes at a Chinese restaurant.

Some major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations even have kosher Chinese restaurants. The first of these was Bernstein’s-on-Essex-Street, at 135 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

A pioneer in kosher Chinese food

Bernstein’s, which started as a deli and catering hall, has a special place in my heart because it’s where my parents were married on March 25, 1945. It was then known by its original name, Schmulka Bernstein’s. In 1959, owner Sol Bernstein began serving Chinese food. He substituted beef and veal for pork and avoided dishes that used shellfish.

My husband and I were in New York for a conference in the mid-1970s and trekked down to Bernstein’s-on-Essex-Street. The waiters wore black Chinese skullcaps with red tassels, and even the Chinese ones spoke a decent Yiddish. The food wasn’t as good as what I remembered from the Jade Palace, but for us it was a real treat to be able to eat meat at a Chinese restaurant.

Unfortunately, the Bernstein family sold the restaurant in 1989 and it closed a year later.

Jennifer 8. Lee, a Chinese-American woman who wrote a book about Chinese food called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, has what may be the final word on why Jews love Chinese food.

“I sought out the Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, on the Silk Road, for more profound insight (these are like not like European Jews who escaped to Shanghai, they look like me but are Chosen like the Jews),” she says. “When I asked the sole Jewish Chinese woman there ‘Why do American Jews like Chinese food?’ She answered me with koan-like simplicity: ‘It tastes good.’”

Here is a recipe for eggrolls that I clipped many, many years ago from the Jewish Exponent newspaper in Philadelphia. It includes the eggroll wrappers, which I confess I have never made since it’s so easy these days to buy eggroll skins in grocery stores.

You can easily make this dish vegetarian by omitting the chicken and adding an extra cup of vegetables.

Christmas Cookies 2: Lebkuchen

December 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Soon after I started this blog in June, a reader asked about Lebkuchen, a traditional German Christmas cookie.

Nuremburg is Ground Zero for Lebkuchen (in deference to German style, I’m capitalizing it wherever it is used in the sentence–and note that the word can be singular or plural.)

We were in Nuremberg for a short visit in May of 2012, and even so far removed from Christmas, Lebkuchen were all over the place, from stalls in the market to bakeries and gift stores in the town.

First made in 1296

According to Wikipedia, the first record of Lebkuchen comes from the city of Ulm in 1296. Nuremberg lore tells that Emperor Friedrich II held a Reichstag there in 1487 and invited the city’s children to a special event where he gave out almost 4,000 Lebkuchen imprinted with his portrait.

No one really knows what the word means, though “kuchen” is “cake” in German. Says Wikipedia, “Derivations from the Latin libum (flat bread) and from the Germanic word Laib (loaf) have been proposed. Another likely possibility is that comes from the old term Leb-Honig, the rather solid crystallized honey taken from the hive that cannot be used for much beside baking. Folk etymology often associates the name with Leben (life), Leib (body), or Leibspeise (favorite food).”

Large cookies (or cakes)

“Cake” may be a more descriptive word for this confection than “cookie,” because they are usually quite large – in Germany, they’re usually at least five inches in diameter if round and even larger if rectangular, though minis are also available.

Lebkuchen are often packed in decorative tins, chests and boxes, some of which become collectors’ items. Some are shaped like hearts, or horses, or other special shapes.

Lots of varieties

Recipes differ, but Lebkuchen usually include honey, nuts or candied fruit, and a variety of spices such as ginger, aniseed, coriander, cloves, cardamom and allspice.

Historically, and due to differences in the ingredients, Lebkuchen is also known as honey cake (Honigkuchen) or pepper cake (Pfefferkuchen).

Most Lebkuchen are soft, but there are harder varieties as well, including the type used to make gingerbread houses and gingerbread men.

Here are some of the various types of Lebkuchen, as described by the German Food Guide.

Oblaten Lebkuchen
“Oblaten” are thin wafers. Oblaten Lebkuchen are cookies in which the dough is baked on a thin wafer. Historically, this was done to prevent the cookie from sticking to the cookie sheet.

Elisen Lebkuchen
These are the highest quality Oblaten Lebkuchen available. They must have at least 25 percent almonds, hazelnuts, and/or walnuts (no other kinds of nuts are allowed). Likewise, they must contain no more than 10 percent flour.

Nürnberger Lebkuchen
These are Lebkuchen that are baked in the city of Nürnberg, and are worldwide the most well-known. They are often baked on Oblaten (thin wafers), and they are known for their light, soft texture. Marzipan is often an ingredient of these cookies.

Kaiserlein
These are Lebkuchen onto which a picture is drawn or imprinted.

Brown (Braune) Lebkuchen
These cookies are made from a honey or syrup dough. The dough is either molded, cut, or formed and it is baked without Oblaten (thin wafers—see “Oblaten Lebkuchen” above). The baked cookies are often covered with a sugar glaze or chocolate.

White (Weisse) Lebkuchen 
These cookies get their name from their very light color. They get this color from a high amount of whole eggs and/or egg whites in the dough. They are usually decorated with almonds and/or candied lemon and orange peels.

Trader Joe is selling chocolate covered Oblaten, but if you want some, get ‘em now—they’re a seasonal treat and when they’re gone, that’s it till next year.

Here is a recipe I got from a blog called Brown-Eyed Baker. I chose it because it looked relatively easy to make. It has no fat and lots of spice flavor. You can easily add chopped nuts or dried or candied fruit if you like.

Some people commenting on the blog said these cookies came out hard, so try not to work in too much extra flour when you knead and roll out the dough. Also do not overbake them. Most of mine were fairly soft. I overbaked a few—by only a few minutes—and they were indeed very hard though still tasty. If you like very crunchy cookies, you won’t have to worry. If your baked cookies are too hard for your taste, put them in a storage container with a few slices of apple and they should soften up in a few days.

Memories of Christmas Cookies Past

December 9, 2013 by 1 Comment

(Please note: We have updated the caption on a photo in last week’s story, Working for Food to correct an error. The photo shows author Jean Alicia Elster’s grandmother, ‘May’ Ford, with her oldest grandchild in her grandfather’s wood yard.)

As a Jewish girl, I never celebrated Christmas, but when I was around 11, my best friend Carol and I started a new Christmas ritual. Every year on the day after Christmas I would go over to Carol’s house to look at her gifts and eat her mother’s Christmas cookies.

I always asked her mother how she got her money that year. Carol’s father had a Christmas tradition of giving his wife a couple hundred dollars every year for Christmas, but he would do it in a different creative way each year. One year he rolled up $10 or $20 bills into tubes and used them to spell “I love you” on a piece of cardboard, which he then framed. Another year, he bought a child’s top and plastered the bottom with bills; he gave them to his wife with a note that read, “You’re tops with me!”

My own mother sniffed at this. She didn’t think much of men who gave their wives spending money. Maybe this was because, although my dad was the sole breadwinner in the family, my mother was the one who managed the family finances. In fact, it was she who gave him an allowance!

Scrumptious cookies

But I was charmed by Carol’s dad’s money gifts, almost as much as I was by her mom’s Christmas cookies, which were truly scrumptious. There were pecan-studded butterballs; little green Christmas trees with colored sprinkles; Rice Krispies wreaths, also tinted green, with little red cinnamon berries; jam thumbprints; red-and-white striped candy cane cookies; meringues with chocolate chips; and more. I think I envied Carol’s Christmas cookies more than the gifts.

As a child I thought there was something inherently wonderful about these “Christmas” cookies. That notion was dispelled many years later when the people I worked with decided to have a Christmas cookie exchange. Each participant would bake one kind of cookie and create packages containing a half-dozen cookies each. They’d all be laid out on a table, and then everyone would go around and collect one package of each cookie.

I was excited to be part of the exchange, but if I was expecting to be transported back to Carol’s mom’s kitchen, I was sorely disappointed. Most of the cookies were terrible!

A circle of friends who bake

In an effort to help you avoid that fate, I wanted to offer a good recipe for Christmas cookies.

But while the recipe below is terrific, I can’t say it’s for Christmas cookies, because it was developed by a little Russian Jewish lady named Klara who is a member of my synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom in Oak Park, Michigan.

Klara belongs to a synagogue group of refugees from the former Soviet Union called Circle of Friends. The group was started in 1998 to help the newcomers acculturate to life in America and learn about Judaism, which they had been unable to practice in the USSR.

Fifteen years later, the group still meets weekly. We usually call the Circle of Friends members “Russian” just because it’s easier. Klara, 84, actually comes from Moldova, which was part of the Soviet Union but is now independent. She arrived in Michigan in 1991.

Circle of Friends members have become famous in our congregation for their baking skills. A few years ago, several of the women got together and baked a tray of rugelach, cookies similar to today’s recipe in taste if not in shape, for a silent auction. It sold for more than $100.

Intergenerational baking

Recently, some of the younger women said they wanted to learn to bake from the older women.

So a few weeks ago, on a chilly Sunday morning, Klara and some of her Circle of Friends buddies gathered in the synagogue kitchen with a half-dozen women in their 30s and 40s. They rolled up their sleeves and churned out a few hundred of these Russian Rose Cookies.

While there’s nothing “Christmas” about them, they will work well as a holiday dessert, as part of a cookie tray or cookie exchange or even as a gift. I think Carol’s mom would love them.

Jean Alicia Elster: Memories & flavors from ‘The Colored Car’

December 2, 2013 by 1 Comment

(A note from your FeedTheSpirit host Bobbie Lewis) This week’s blog is by guest writer Jean Alicia Elster, whose work as a writer is recommended by our ReadTheSpirit magazine. Our latest coverage of her children’s book The Colored Car was published in Debra Darvick’s column in September.  She is the granddaughter of Douglas and Maber (May) Jackson Ford, whose family story forms the basis of The Colored Car. Her other books include Who’s Jim Hines?—which was selected as a Michigan Notable Book—as well as I’ll Do the Right Thing and I Have a Dream, Too!

 

By JEAN ALICIA ELSTER

I offer this paraphrase of a commonly quoted Biblical passage from 2 Thessalonians 3:10: If you do not work, then you will not eat.

This phrase is often quoted as an admonition against idleness and laziness. I dare say it is the reason that people standing at the corners of well-traveled intersections of our urban centers or even at freeway exits hold up signs saying, “Will work for food.” It is ingrained within our Judeo-Christian notion of ethics that expecting a meal or other form of sustenance without doing something in return to warrant the receipt of that meal is, well, sinful.

That said, while writing my most recently published book, The Colored Car, which takes place in the city of Detroit in 1937, I came to appreciate another take on the 2Thessalonians verse. This second paraphrase embodies the food ethos of that particular era in our American history that is too often lost in our 21st century world of carryout meals and processed food: If you do not work in the preparation of your food or your meal, then you will not eat.

‘The Colored Car’: A novel based on family history

The Colored Car is based upon actual events in my family’s history. And, in the summer of 1937, my grandmother, “May” Ford, put up (canned) fresh fruits and vegetables in the family’s summer kitchen adjacent to the wood yard that was the core of my grandfather’s business. Times were tough, and my grandmother often helped neighborhood families by sharing the food that she preserved.

In Chapter One, I describe my grandmother chopping, grinding, grating, boiling and, not to forget, sweating to make that pungent mixture of cabbage, onions, celery, hot peppers, green tomatoes, vinegar and pickling spices known as piccalilli or cha-cha. That substantial concoction could stand on its own as a side dish or be heaped on a sandwich. The not-even-close approximation we have to that today is the unnaturally green-colored relish found in the condiment section of the grocery store.

Homemade grape jelly

Chapter Six tells how May Ford made jars of grape jelly. She washed and boiled bushels of grapes and then strained them – twice – through a muslin bag. Her hands were, at that point, purple, and she was only half way through the jelly-making process.

No, we will never return to the days when work and food were that closely related. We are firmly in the 21st  century and there is no turning back. But that Biblical admonition at the very least mandates  that we, even occasionally, seek a more direct relationship between work and food. That we feel the satisfaction of making — that is, causing to come into being — what we eat.

Having written those chapters and internalized those processes, I am now ready to more fully embrace the connection between work and food. Piccalilli and grape jelly provide a very good start!

Get ready for “Thanksgivukkah”

November 18, 2013 by 1 Comment

The Jewish holiday of Chanukah usually falls in December, often close to Christmas. This leads to what some Jews call “the December dilemma” – how to celebrate our holiday in a meaningful and fun way without making it seem like “the Jewish Christmas,” because the two celebrations have absolutely nothing in common.

This year, due to a quirk of the calendar, the first day of Chanukah coincides with Thanksgiving. It’s not much of a problem to celebrate the two in tandem, because Thanksgiving, though it has spiritual overtones, is not a religious holiday and there’s nothing about it that makes Jews uneasy about celebrating it. Writers who think they’re clever have taken to adopting the term “Thanksgivukkah.”

A rare congruence

I think everyone is going so crazy about it because it is so exceedingly rare. Data crunchers have discovered that the first time the two holidays would have coincided was 1861–but there was no all-American Thanksgiving then; President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the first Thanksgiving in 1863. Until 1942, Thanksgiving was the last Thursday in November; now it’s the fourth Thursday in November (sometimes there are five). In 1888, Chanukah started on Thanksgiving Day because it was the last Thursday of November, November 29. The next time the start of Chanukah and Thanksgiving will coincide will be–well, maybe never! From now on, due to the way the Jewish calendar is organized, the earliest Chanukah can start will be November 29, which is too late to ever be Thanksgiving.

But wait, there’s more! The Jewish calendar is slowly getting out of sync with the Gregorian calendar, by a few days per thousand years. This calendar drift means the Jewish calendar will slowly loop through the Gregorian calendar until it’s back where it is now. But that won’t happen until the year 79811 – and the most prestigious rabbis will probably get together before then to correct it so that the fall holidays will remain in the fall and the spring holidays will remain in the spring.

Then again, Jewish holidays always start at sundown, so even though the first day of Chanukah is on Thanksgiving this year, we’ll begin lighting Chanukah candles the night before Thanksgiving.  In 2070 and 2165, the first day of Chanukah will fall on the day after Thanksgiving; in those years, the first candle will be lit on Thanksgiving Day after sundown. Maybe that will count as another “Thanksgivukkah,” maybe it won’t.

For some interesting charts comparing the Jewish and Gregorian calendars, see this blog by Jonathan Mizrahi (where I got a lot of this information).

Newspapers, magazines and websites are having a heyday with articles about how to combine the celebration of Thanksgiving and Chanukah. One enterprising retailer is even selling a turkey-shaped Chanukah menorah called a Menurkey.

Some clergy are looking for ways to combine the Thanksgiving message of gratitude with the Chanukah message of dedication (the literal meaning of the word, for the rededication of the Temple after the Jewish victory over the Assyrians). One who does it well is Rabbi Yael Levy in this table blessing.

A Thanksgivukkah grinch

Grinches are usually associated with Christmas. If there’s a Thanksgivukkah version, it’s probably Rabbi David Brenner who wrote “Why I Will Not Be Celebrating ‘Thanksgivukkah’”  for the Huffington Post. He says mash-ups dilute the message of both holidays. Thanksgiving helps all Americans overcome the divisions that separate us, he says.

In the rituals celebrating this fall harvest festival, we Americans are united in connecting to our land and the good things it produces. Chanukah is the opposite. Rather than celebrating the coming together of disparate parties, like the Native Americans and the Pilgrims, it commemorates a military victory in second century BCE Judea. The Maccabees were not a tolerant lot, but they triumphed over a much larger force. Rabbi Brenner says Chanukah could better be compared with Independence Day.

(See a cute anti-Thanksgivukkah video by Rabbi Brenner on the Heeb Magazine website.)

Cook New World foods in oil!

Most of the “whee-it’s Thanksgivukkah” articles are food-related, because that seems to be the easiest way to combine the traditions of Thanksgiving and Chanukah. As I pointed out last week, traditional Chanukah foods are fried or baked in oil, to symbolize the Chanukah miracle: when the Maccabees overcame the Assyrians and reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem, they could find only one tiny cruse of pure oil for the Eternal Light, enough for one day. They lit the lamp, and the oil lasted for eight days, until more oil could be procured.

So for “Thanksgivukkah,” just combine a harvest-y and New World food (e.g. cranberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkin) with an oily preparation and you’re all set: potato latkes (pancakes) with cranberry sauce, or latkes made from sweet potatoes or squash, or pumpkin doughnuts.  Or if you’re adventurous, deep fry your turkey! There are some good recipes on the MyJewishDetroit website.

Personally, I’m very much looking forward to celebrating the two holidays together. Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family, the one time of year when my siblings and I all get together. My brother in New Jersey and my sister outside Washington, DC take turns hosting. When our children were little we would deliver Chanukah gifts at Thanksgiving because it was easier than shipping them later, but we were never able to celebrate Chanukah together. This year will be a first.

In the spirit of Chanukah, with a bit of a fall-harvest-Thanksgiving flavor, I offer this recipe for Cinnamon-Apple Latkes. They can be served as a side dish or a dessert. Whenever I’ve made them I’ve gotten rave reviews and requests for the recipe. This recipe makes about 16 latkes. Happy holidays, everyone! 

Celebrating the Season of Gratitude

November 11, 2013 by 1 Comment

As Thanksgiving approaches, many of us start thinking about what we’re grateful for. I asked my Facebook friends and got some interesting answers:

  • I’m grateful that you and I are still breathing, still know each other and still have our wits about us!
  • I am grateful for so many births and young people in the family for filling a small part of the space lost from loved ones departed. I am grateful those departed are forever woven into the fabric of our lives and not so gone after all.
  • I’m grateful more than anything for lessons in human awareness. Learning how to be kinder, more compassionate, whatever the circumstance, for speaking up for what is true to me instead of suppressing emotions. Those close to me would say this is a very good thing.
  • I’m thankful for my mom. Even though she’s been gone for almost 10 years, she’s still my best friend and my rock. Every day, I still feel like she’s right by my side. I’m so thankful for all the days I was able to laugh, hug, and hear her voice.
  • I am most grateful for all those I know who are more about “us” than “me,” who have a social conscience.
  • I am most grateful for the full, rich life I have, which has nothing to do with “stuff” and everything to do with having an awesome son, amazing and loving family and friends, and a deep spiritual connection to my religion.
  • Having worked in hospice for the last 10 years, I have learned to be grateful for the things that we take for granted. I find myself, daily, being grateful for my wonderful parents, who nurtured me, gave me a strong Jewish identity including moral guidelines and a strong sense of awe for the miracles that are daily with us. Due to this safe, nurturing home, all of the other blessings in my life have followed.

One thing I am grateful for is being a board member of WISDOM, Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue in Metro Detroit, an amazing and diverse group of women committed to fostering interfaith connections through friendship.

In fact, a book by WISDOM members, Friendship & Faith, was one of the first books published by Read the Spirit!

In about 10 days, WISDOM will host one of its periodic potluck dinners, where participants are encouraged to bring dishes that represent their religious or ethnic heritage.

This is a good month for a WISDOM potluck, because it perfectly defines the type of Season of Gratitude event envisioned by the  Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit (IFLC).

We associate Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims, and churches and villages in the colonial and early American periods often held annual harvest dinners similar to the first Thanksgiving.

But Thanksgiving didn’t truly become an American holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln’s issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation, inviting “my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

You’ll find lots of fascinating historical materials about Lincoln and Thanksgiving at our Lincoln Resource Page. In addition, the IFLC has prepared a guide, available online, to help congregations and organizations plan a Season of Gratitude event—a “salon” (discussion group), or meal, or a combination—that is open to people of all faiths. “The event should celebrate and demonstrate gratitude for all of the diverse contributions people make to our civic community,” notes the IFLC’s guide.

Here is the recipe for the dish I plan to bring to the WISDOM potluck: Jerusalem kugel. A kugel is a pudding, It’s most often made of noodles, but can also be made of potatoes, corn, rice, zucchini or just about any grain or vegetable bound with eggs and baked. Most people pronounce it with a “u” like in “sugar,” but others say “koogle” or even “kiggle.”

A Jerusalem kugel is a sweet-and-spicy noodle pudding, with lots of caramelized sugar and black pepper.

I’m also planning to bring it to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, because Thanksgiving this year coincides with Chanukah. That’s a subject for another blog. Suffice it to say that traditional Chanukah foods use a lot of oil, usually to fry the food in. This dish is not fried, but it does use a lot of oil so it qualifies.

Most recipes direct you to cook the noodles, then caramelize the sugar in the oil and add it to the noodles with the eggs. I adapted this recipe from one that appeared in the New York Times in 2005. You caramelize the sugar first, then add water to it for cooking the noodles. I found this to be an easier method that results in a smoother consistency, without little hard bits of caramelized sugar in the kugel. It’s somewhat time-consuming but well worth the effort.

You have to be careful when caramelizing the sugar. If you let it go even 30 seconds too long, it will burn. And if you’ve never done it, you may not know what to expect. This is what happens when you mix the sugar with the oil and heat it: First the sugar will seem to dissolve, but much of the oil will remain separate. As the mixture continues to cook, it will seem to solidify as the oil is absorbed, and you’ll have clumps of moistened sugar. Keep stirring. Finally the sugar will start to melt and turn brown. Stir it constantly and watch it like a hawk. As soon as the color is golden brown, almost as dark as you want, pull it off the flame–I say “almost” because the hot syrup will continue to cook for short while.

This makes a very large kugel, enough to feed 12 or more. To make a smaller kugel, use 8 ounces of noodles, ⅓ cup oil, 1¼ tsp. salt, ½ tsp. black pepper, 1 cup sugar and 3 eggs, and bake it in an 8-inch square pan.