Silverbrow on Food

Bedfordshire Poultry - the start of something good?

A regular reader pointed me yesterday to the website of Bedfordshire Poultry. Today, there's an article about them in The JC.

As you'll see from their website, Bedfordshire Poultry are selling kosher free range lamb, chickens, geese and ducks.

I can't say I'm all that surprised by the ructions this is causing.  According to The JC, the London Board of Shechitah has retracted its hechsher because their butchers didn't get the supplies they were expecting.  Manchester Beth Din kindly stepped in, because one of their butchers, Titanics, did get the chickens.

And people try and argue these regulatory bodies are not political and commercial entities.  There's a quote in The JC article from the London Board's director, David Rose, where he makes no attempt to disguise his commercial - as opposed to religious - imperatives.  The London Board has retracted its hechsher because Bedfordshire Poultry is an unlicensed authority, erm but so are all the supermarkets that sell kosher meat, with a nice big London Board hechsher on them.  No wonder kosher meat is always so bleeding expensive. 

Letter in the JC re kosher chickens

I was remiss in not posting this sooner.

It's my letter in The Jewish Chronicle in response to an article about the supposedly high quality of kosher chickens. As you might appreciate, I had some views on that.

The original article, in the paper a couple of weeks ago, appeared to be something of a knee-jerk reaction to Hugh et al.

Neither Stephen Grossman nor Rabbi Yehuda Brodie was explicit in their rejection of the possibility that intensively farmed chickens could enter the kosher food chain. Mr Grossman said that his suppliers grow birds about 20 per cent less densely than the intensively reared birds that Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall have been railing against.

He does not say his suppliers raise free-range hens and reject intensive-rearing farming.

In fact, at slaughter weight, Mr Grossman’s suppliers grow 14 birds per square metre. That’s not all that far off from 17 per square metre that got Jamie so exercised. More importantly, it is significantly more than the 12 per square metre, which is the maximum that Defra will allow for a bird to be labelled free-range.

Similarly, Rabbi Brodie says that a damaged bird doesn’t end up in the kosher food chain. By what measure does he mean damaged? I appreciate a bird with broken bones won’t, but what about one with hock burns, caused by sitting for extended periods in its own ammonia-laden faeces?

Reuben's

Reading about the reincarnation of the 2nd Avenue Deli in New York has got me salivating after a good kosher deli. Even though I have a feeling my most recent meal at Bloom's was an abberration, I couldn't face risking it. Anyway, I was in the West End and since the not-so-sad demise of Zvika, I was left with Reuben's. I haven't been for a couple of years, but my lingering memory was of grumpy staff and a dull room.

This time the staff were a bit more welcoming but, as I twittered, that dining room is still thoroughly depressing. It reminds me of the dining room at my now departed Great Grandmother's nursing home. Not because of the age of the other diners, just because it is so sterile and institutional. There is none of the warmth one should associate with a restaurant that serves copious quantities of schmaltz.

But, that could be because the depressing room simply reflects the food. My chopped liver looked good, but was fridge cold and tasted flabby, as though it had been padded out with bread, or made with anaemic liver. My main course was a mix of tongue and salt beef. Again, the beef looked very good, but the taste was awful. Both meats were significantly over-salted suggesting someone had either forgotten to rinse the brine off the raw meat, or over salted the broth they were cooked in. They also managed to be very dry. That the slices of tongue were as thick as a doorstop. Silverbrowess' schnitzel looked like it had been cooked in a factory: the evenly golden crumb and uniform thickness were a bit spooky.

The only bit of the meal I enjoyed was a decently astringent sweet and sour cucumber. Doesn't really say much does it?

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Reubens, 79 Baker Street, London, W1U 6RG, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7486 0035

What others think

Time Out - Chicken soup was richly flavoured, with a good dark colour

Avazi

Where does all the offal go? I ask because I've got into my chicken hearts. I had my second helping yesterday and they're pretty darn good, but I've never seen them on sale in the UK.

They have a more subtle taste than liver and are just the chewy side of being tough. Yesterday's meal was at Avazi. I had been expecting a slightly grubby, hole in the wall. In fact, it is a rather slick mini-chain, with a few branches in Tel Aviv.

We ate at the original in Hatkiva, a slightly run-down neighbourhood, with a larger than usual immigrant population. Which is saying something for a country made up almost entirely of immigrants. The current wave of immigration into Israel is from Africa and former Soviet Union and quite a few from China as well.

Overall the food was good. The numerous salads they brought at the start, as is the norm in these sort of grill restaurants, were an odd combination of traditional Ashkenazi dishes like egg and onion and traditional Middle Eastern dishes like falafel. Once I overcame that shocking dissonance, I was able to delight in the pitta. Fresh out of the taboon, boiling hot, crispy and pitted with sesame seeds it was one of the highlights of the meal. Dipped in their house special of tehina with grilled aubergine, washed down with a cold beer, it reached the zenith of what any pitta-parent could want for its pitta-offspring.

Salads and bread are very nice, but meat was the main order of the day, specifically offal. As I've mentioned the hearts were good, but the star attraction was the foie gras, which was excellent. You can see it nestling in-between the spring chicken skewer (foreground) and the aforementioned chicken hearts.

I can't vouch for the grade of foie gras they use, but it seemed pretty decent quality. I may be a traditionalist at heart, but I reckon it could have done with some sort of marmalade type sauce to cut through the fat. Then again, simply grilled and unadorned, I was able to delight in the meaty goodness.

The staff were especially friendly. As soon as I got out my camera to photograph the plate, they whipped it away and sprinkled some salad on to make it look a bit jazzier. This place is worth a detour, if only to see a bit of Tel Aviv you're unlikely to venture into for any other reason.

Avazi, 54 Etzel Street, Hatikva, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel: +972 (0)3 687 9918

Roladin sfuganiyot, or doughnuts to you and me

Poor web connection has resulted in me posting this after the end of Chanukah, but there is still merit in posting it, just for the food-porn aspect.

Sfuganiyot are basically doughnuts, but these ones from Roladin are at best, distant third cousins, several times removed, of the stodge available at Krispy Kreme.

Mine was stuffed with dulce de leche, Silverbrowess' had strawberry jam. Both were very good, oddly, mine was lighter and fluffier, perhaps its was fresher. Also - and this might be sacrilege - I preferred this dulce de leche to some of the over-sweetened stuff we had in South America.

Wall Street Journal on kosher turkeys

For those as interested as me in the new wave of kosher movements in the US, here is an article from the Wall Street Journal.

The coughing and spluttering from the entrenched interests is quite amusing, but I imagine we'd hear the same from the likes of the United Synagogue or London Beth Din if there was an attempt to replicate the ethical kosher movement over here.

FFS

Ignorance isn't always bliss.

Ooh look, there goes the tumbleweed

Well, my article on kosher food had absolutely no impact on the JC's letter page. I can't say I am surprised as I have some form. Nonetheless, I am a bit disappointed. However, I should be heartened by some of the interesting debate on a couple of the food forums on this subject - even if I did have to start the discussions myself.

This is something I feel strongly about and intend to take a more active stance on, beyond simply putting finger to keyboard. Maybe it is time to sharpen my knives and buy a cow.

Americans driving quality kosher?

My article in the JC is already paying dividends for me.

A friend in the US, sent me an article from the Washington Post detailing the growing eco-kosher movement. I have to admit, the noun 'eco-kosher' sends a chill down my spine, but on reading the article I realised there was some depth to it.

Interestingly, this is an east-coast led movement, not kooky California. Also, it is being driven by Conservative communities. Conservative communities are not traditionalists or the most observant, despite their name - and yes, that is a loaded and very subjective statement. An example of this is referenced in the article, which notes that they are trying to develop a new hecscher that is not based on widely regarded fundamentals of kashrut, such as the separation of milk and meat, but instead are focused on the ethical rearing of animals. For those that have read my article, you will know that is something I wholeheartedly support, but as someone who is relatively observant, I find it depressing that observance and well bred food appear mutually exclusive, at the moment at least.

The same article also introduced me to The Jew and the Carrot, a blog that is pushing forward this movement of decent, healthy kosher food. One to watch.

I demand healthier

I have been known to rant a bit about the state of kosher food in the UK.  Until now, you dear reader and the long-suffering Silverbrowess are the only ones who have been subjected to my moaning and wailing.  Until now.  Because now, I have vented my fury, my wrath and my despair on the pages of that organ of British Jewry, The Jewish Chronicle.

It is my first published article and I'm rather excited.  Many thanks to the paper's editor, David Rowan and Simon Round, editor of the food page, for publishing it.

I hope it will stir things up and start a debate, although given my track-record I'm not holding my breath.

Feel free to comment here, or you can write to the JC's letter page by emailing letters@thejc.com.

You can read the article on the JC's website or for those too lazy to click a link, read on.  What follows is the article in full, as it appears in the paper.

The Food Standards Agency, the UK’s food regulator, recently published a report linking some food additives to hyperactivity in children. The Times and the JC both reported that these additives have a habit of turning up in kosher processed foods. Ingredients such as sodium benozate, ponceau 4R and tartrazine are rather less evocative than cholent, adafina and kreplach.

The laws of kashrut are determined in the Torah, and kosher can be translated as “fit to eat”. According to Nachmanides, a 12th-century Kabbalist, “the birds and many of the mammals forbidden by the Torah are predators… we are instructed not to eat those animals, so that we should not absorb these qualities into ourselves”. So, if we are what we eat, religiously speaking kosher food must not be unhealthy.

Yet as the FSA demonstrated, there is a gaping void between what we expect of our kosher food and what we get.

I have yet to find a kosher butcher in London who can assure me that his chickens are free range, or even tell me the exact ingredients of his sausages.

Similarly, if you ask a kosher grocer for their fresh-food section, your browsing will be brief. Kosher food shops are heaving with processed, packaged and often frozen items. Even seemingly fresh kosher deli products have a shopping list worth of additives.

This is not just a problem for the home cook. There is not a kosher restaurant in the UK that makes a virtue out of where it sources its produce. This is not because kosher restaurateurs are bashful, but because they have got nothing to shout about.

The upshot is that the consumer is not fully informed. Bizarrely, this is occurring at a time when there is an evangelical approach to provenance among producers not targeting the kosher market.

Any half-decent restaurant will name-check the farmer who reared the ribeye, or the river the salmon last spawned in. TV programmes are dedicated to identifying heroic food producers. Visits to farmers’ markets are de rigueur for any self-respecting yummy-mummy. In the non-kosher world, traceability is a growing obsession.

So why the gap between kosher and non-kosher food? There are three inter-connected factors which ensure a race to the bottom: limited demand, the cost of regulation, and complacency.

There are no definitive statistics on how many people keep kosher in the UK, but the number is small. There are under 300,000 Jews in the UK; even conservatively, the most who keep kosher are 150,000, a number that anecdotally seems to be falling. Those who keep “kosher” encompass a broad spectrum of observance of the laws, from those that insist on everything having a hechsher to those who simply abstain from pork and shellfish.

So, as a business proposition, kosher is not attractive. The market is small and comprises a broad demographic. Demand is relatively limited, but, thanks to the rules imposed by the kashrut authorities, so is supply, because only certain foods are deemed kosher. Prices are therefore higher than comparable non-kosher items.

The inflated cost is not helped by the levy kashrut authorities insist on imposing on producers before their products will be certified kosher. As a producer faced with these issues — limited supply, diverse demand, high fixed costs — you will look to maximise your profits by appealing to as many people as possible. You will also try to keep your prices low because things are expensive enough already. Very quickly, it is difficult to remember whether you are a widget manufacturer or food producer.

Underpinning these economic issues is complacency. There is an assumption that because kosher food fits its religious requirements it is healthy. As the FSA has demonstrated, that is frequently not the case. Producers race for the bottom to maximise their returns. Shoppers buy what is on the shelves as they are blinded by the kosher stamp of authority or have no other choice.

Observant or not, it is time those of us who keep kosher returned to the core of our beliefs and insisted on eating food that is fit to eat.

Verze Sofegate or Suffocated Cabbage

I sometimes suggest to Silverbrowess that she could afford to be a little more adventurous in the kitchen.  It's not that she's not a good cook, she is, her roast potatoes and banana cake - N.B. not eaten together - are talking points in the finest salons of North London.  But, she has no confidence to move beyond her comfort zones or rely on our over-flowing shelves of cookbooks.  Or at least that was what I thought until earlier this week when I lifted the lid on a saute-pan and smelled something fantastic.  Turned out it was verze sofegate, or less romantically, suffocated cabbage.

She had been mulling over what to do with the head of cabbage in the fridge and all those cookbooks provided inspiration, in particular, Joyce Goldstein's Cucina Ebraica, a history of Jewish food in Italy.  One method for cooking vegetables was by suffocating, read slow cooking, them in goose fat.  Although we didn't have any goose fat on hand, we did have some recently rendered duck fat and I was flabergasted to learn that Silverbrowess used that, she normally recoils from it in horror.

This should be served as a remarkably light but strongly flavoured side-dish with gutsy meats.

Serves 4-6

• 1 head cabbage
• 3 or 5 tbp goose/duck/chicken fat
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 or 2 tbp chopped fresh rosemary
• Dash of wine vinegar
• Pinch of sugar

Cut the cabbage into narrow strips, removing the core.

Warm the fat in a saute pan over a low heat.  Add the onion, garlic and rosemary and saute until it is tender.  Don't let it brown, you want the onions to be translucent - remember this is all over a low heat.

Add the cabbage, vinegar, sugar and salt and pepper.  Cover the pan.  Cook until the cabbage is very tender.  In her recipe, Joyce Goldstein recommends about 30 minutes, but she also notes that the traditional method was to really slow cook this, sauteing for up to 3 hrs.  Silverbrowess, used the shorter time period.  I imagine if you go for tradition you need to make sure your heat is way down and you might need to add a bit of water as well to make sure it doesn't all burn.  Just keep a close eye on it.

Blooms: the redecoration

Jewish Mean Time is a bit like Greenwich Mean Time, but a bit less accurate. JMT is the excuse usually given for the genetic tardiness of my co-religionists. JMT can often be GMT +2 hours, more of course if it is British Summer Time. To the best of my knowledge, it has never been used as an excuse for being early. I was therefore gobsmacked to see Blooms reopen after its refit. It wasn't due to open until Sunday.

Sorry to get all AA Gill on you, but I am not keen on the redecoration. They've dumped the drawing of shtetl life for a much more contemporary frieze, which was not completed at lunchtime today, but looks like a scene of the (Israeli?) countryside. They've upgraded the tables and chairs and cutlery and crockery. They've got the waiters in black smocks, rather than their grubby white numbers. They have even gone for an spidery light fitting in the take-away bit and stone-effect tiling in the toilets. To me, it simply does not match the food. I was also a bit disappointed to see that they haven't bothered to update the website yet to reflect the new interior design.

But that doesn't matter because the salt-beef sandwich I had was outstanding. It was nice and moist, the flavour was subtle, not too salty and with a hint of sweetness. I would guess this is a reflection of the stock it was cooked in, although could owe a lot to the cow itself. (Although, given that most kosher beef is not from prime herds, I wouldn't expect much in that department.) The rye bread was as good as ever, with a decent punchy English mustard.

I did not have the opportunity to have a full meal, but I took a look at the menu and things don't seem to have changed much. Old favourites like wurscht and eggs or liver and onions are still there. From the the handwritten scribble at the bottom of the menu, it looks like someone forgot about the veal and chicken schnitzels, but other than that, everything is present and correct.

The menu is pretty lengthy so you have to question just how freshly cooked everything is, but despite that, on the basis of today's tasting, they do their stock-in-trade very well indeed. I'll be back for dinner soon, the livers and onion are calling.

Blooms, 130 Golders Green Road, London, NW11 8HB, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 8455 1338

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What others think

At the time of writing, there are no other reviews post re-furb. I'll post them when I see them.

Blooms

I remembered yesterday that I had to write-up my recent meal at Blooms.  It is one of the oldest kosher restaurants in London and is in the deli, salt-beef and tongue style of Ashkenazi tradition. The type of food that kept Polish peasants warm - and therefore alive - whilst plowing potatoes.  Such concerns are not so relevant to the inhabitants of Hampstead Garden Suburb, the 21st century Pale.

The meal I had was ok, the salt beef was a bit drier than it should have been.  But, it did have a good flavour, thanks to the ring of fat attached to it.  For all you quivering weight-watchers, you don't eat the fat, you just want it to impart flavour to the meat it is snuggling next to.  The chips, disappointingly were frozen, rather than the hand-cut version I remember they used to serve.  More positively, the sweet-sour pickles packed a punch and the coleslaw was peppery and thankfully was not abominated by onion.  Despite this somewhat mixed meal, I really enjoyed myself.  I had not been to Blooms in years and I loved the atmosphere, the familiarity of the decor and the waiters, and the food itself was pleasingly comfortable but far from stellar.

I was therefore horrified to discover last night that they are currently closed for a re-furb.  Usually, re-furb means we're shutting down.  But given the licence application plastered to the front window, the massive notice in the window and on their website, I am confident this does not herald the end of an institution.

I am intrigued to see what they are doing to the place.  The infamous mural of street life left a lot to be desired (above), but was an essential element, as was the enormous mirror running down the right hand wall.  I'm particularly interested to know if they are planning on tinkering with the menu.  The majority of kosher restaurants in London, and the few near Blooms in Golders Green, are Middle Eastern: lots of grilled meats, hoummus, tahina, that sort of thing.  Dizengoff is the best, with the friendliest service and the best grilled meat, Solly's is a distant second.

However, the stodgy mittel-European food served up at Blooms appears to be going out of fashion.  Or is it?  Afterall, there are few restaurants in London that win plaudits as much as The Wolseley which is famed for its chopped liver (which I haven't tried) and its cucumber salad (which I have).

I hope the team behind Blooms stick to their guns and don't veer too far from the original.  I also hope they get rid of those sodding frozen chips and replace them with the real version.  I'll report back soon after they have reopened on 11 March.

Norm on chicken soup

Norm is a learned man, but when it comes to chicken soup he should be careful what he posts.

Garlic, is a must.  Dill, I can't say I have tried.  A stock cube is apostasy, not celery.  Vegetarian chicken soup?  Where's the wall and rifle?

Time and love are the most important ingredients.

Margarine, bleh

I was surprised to read that the French are to blame for margarine - the devil's own fat product - but Kate at Accidental Hedonist is usually right about such things.

In one of the comments to the post, Rachael of Fresh Catering suggests that marg is good for those who keep kosher. No, it's not. It is a nightmare for those who keep kosher because it results in laziness and a lowering of standards.

Against my better judgement I made a cake last night using marg, because it is to be eaten after a meat meal tonight. Normally I chew my right (chopping) arm off before I make anything with marg. But it's my Mum's birthday and it would be far too curmudgeonly of me not to have a cake for her. So, I 'substituted' margarine for butter. Except it's no substitution. Margarine is greasy crap, with none of the subtleness, taste or properties of butter. There are thousands of other recipes out there that do not require butter. Those of us that keep kosher should focus on those, rather than shovelling hydrogenated fat down our gobs. Sorry Mum.

A view on Monsey

There is uproar in the religious Jewish neighbourhood of Monsey, New York.  It appears that a kosher butcher has been repackaging non-kosher chickens and selling them as kosher.  This is an enormous act of betrayal.  This rips out the heart of the system of trust (or is that subservience) that those of us who keep kosher have with our kosher food suppliers and the authorities that regulate them.

I am nowhere near as observant as the frummers of Monsey, but I know I would be deeply shocked if this happened at my local butchers.  This must be a nightmare for them.  There the considerable hassle of re-koshering anything that might have come into contact with the unkosher meat, there is also the religious issue.  Never is the adage "You are what you eat" more true than in Judaism.  Kashrut is very often the first tool one uses to identify oneself as an observant Jew.  The more religious you are, the more strictly you adhere to the laws of kashrut.

Some blogs have been going crazy on this, even the New York Times (registration required) has got in on the act.  My own interest was piqued by a Jerusalem Post article that was sent to me by a reader.  I was reminded of my favourite bugbears: the poor quality of kosher meat and the acceptance of this by kosher consumers.

What the people in Monsey are obsessing about is the provenance of their meat.  Not in the same way that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall might obsess about provenance (and not in the way those chefs who put on their menus which grid-reference your steak came from, obsess) but nonetheless they are obsessing.  They want to know that their animal has been killed in a certain way, that the shochet's knife was unblemished, that they are eating the right bit of the animal, that it has been stored correctly and that it has been labelled correctly.  Fundamentally, they want to know about their animal in death.

That is fine - but what about how it lived?  Some of the rules of kashrut do relate to animal husbandry, but they are sufficiently relaxed to enable kosher chickens to be intensively farmed.  I cannot help but think that if we as consumers placed greater emphasis on holding our butchers accountable for how our meat lived, we would have much more comfort in how it died.

I am not saying that the people of Monsey brought this on themselves.  I do believe that what has happened in Monsey, could happen in virtually any kosher community.  But it is a warning to the rest of us to take more interest in the food we eat.  The Jerusalem Post article indicates that rabbinic authorities think more regulation is required.  I am not religiously knowledgeable enough to know if they are right, but I do know that wherever I encounter regulation it is usually a bad thing.  I think consumers must accept more responsibility for the food they eat.  Rather than relying on authorities to impose further rules - and then trusting them to enforce them.

This mess does destroy another belief that kosher cooks had always held dear: that kosher chicken tastes so much better than non-kosher chicken.  After all, if that was the case, how come nobody noticed sooner?

Gefilte fish alert

I always knew there must be a reason that traditional Jewish recipes require fish to be cooked within an inch of its life.  I now know what that reason is.

And there was I thinking that "Jewish housewives' disease" was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Harrumph

As I had thought, it turned out to be a damp squib.

The quality of the food they eat, appears to be a non-issue for the readers of the Jewish Chronicle letters page.  I suppose that isn't all that surprising.  It tends to be single-issue obsessives, foaming at the mouth, who read the letters pages; not to mention the type of people that go to the effort of actually writing a letter.

Ta ta Zvika

In October 2005, I gave Zvika six-months before it went under.  I was about two months too pessimistic.  I went past the restaurant the other day and noticed the windows were white washed and the doors locked.  A sign in the window said they would soon be reopening with a halal kitchen.

I don't know what has caused this volte face.  Either the economics of a poor quality kosher restaurant in a Soho back street not known for its passing traffic didn't work out, or there was some other problem.

When will kosher restaurants learn that just by being kosher is not enough?  In somewhere like Soho, where there isn't a strong Jewish, let alone religious presence, another grotty restaurant serving overpriced mediocre food is not very appealing.  When the food is further inflated because it is kosher and the food is even more mediocre than usual, it would appear doomed from the beginning, as I had predicted.

Man of Letters

The Jewish Chronicle is the UK Jewish community's most high profile newspaper.  There are others, but they tend to be geographically focused (such as The Jewish Telegraph in the North) or targeted at particular Jewish groups (such as The Tribune for the frummers).

Generally it is a pretty conservative paper.  It gives faithful listings of who has been hatched, matched and dispatched and it notes which members of the community have received honours from Her Maj. Every once in a while it rocks the boat.  Its scathing coverage of Richard Desmond's appointment of Chairman at family charity Norwood was picked up widely in the mainstream UK media.  On other occasions, it looks like it's about to rock the boat, but in fact is merely shuffling it's bum on the seat to get a better grip on the oars.

A front page 'Investigation' in last week's paper (9 June 2006) was one such bum-shuffling event.  Above a photo of a dozen or so fluffy yellow chicks, the front page screamed "These chicks will be going to kosher and non-kosher butchers".  As headlines go it really isn't that snappy and it was stating the bleeding obvious.  It's a bit like having a headline screaming "Cars need fuel."

Anyway, the thrust of the front page article and the seven related articles on an inside double-page spread, was that kosher food is more expensive than non-kosher food and the charges levied by the Shechita Boards are the main reason.  To me, this totally missed the point and I wrote a letter to the paper explaining what I thought.  My argument essentially was that if we were paying more for a better quality product it would be fair enough.  But we're not, we're paying more for crap.

My letter was published in this week's edition.  The only problem is, they have heavily edited it and even added in the odd word here or there.  So, what you see below is the full unexpurgated letter I sent in.  The bits in bold are what made it into the paper, the bits in square brackets are where they added in words.

Interestingly, the only other letter on the so-called 'Investigation' is from the owner of Menachem's, the one kosher butcher I rate.  Their letter is at pains to say that at Menachem's you get good personal service and the meat is of high quality.  The first point is undoubtedly true, the second is true, within the context of the limited quality of kosher meat on sale.

Dear Sir

Your ‘Investigation’ (9 June 2006) into the kosher meat industry entirely missed the point.

Virtually all kosher meat available for retail consumers is of appalling quality.  If it was excellent quality and expensive then we would be getting value for money and no-one would complain.  This is not the case, it is extortionate and rubbish in equal measure.

Those of us that eat kosher meat, accept standards that much of the non-kosher world has long turned its back on.  Not only is our meat generally flavourless but animals raised for the kosher dinner table often live bad lives.  As anyone with an understanding of food will tell you, the better the quality of life, the better the animal tastes on the plate.  As anyone with an understanding of kashrut will tell you, good animal husbandry is supposed to be a fundamental tenet of our dietary laws.

I fail to understand why one of your articles breathlessly notes that kosher and non-kosher chickens come from the same farm, but ignores the fact that when it is sold by Tesco or Sainsbury’s, it is in their value ranges.  When it is sold by a kosher butcher, it is presented as the highest quality.

Some kosher butchers have become lazy selling low quality, high margin products.  They seem to have lost any sense of pride in selling the best quality meat.  All too rarely do kosher butchers do any butchering.  They receive their meat in handy cuts that at most they need to trim and pack.  They seem to have no interest in the provenance of the food they sell.  Their attitude appears to be "Why should we?  It’s kosher, so it’s fine."  Afterall, with margins so tight on fresh meat, they can make far more profit from value-added products, like ready-meals.

This sort of wilful ignorance is matched by the Shechita Boards, [seem] obsessed with the letter of the law and seemingly ignoring its spirit.  If they did not take such a narrow view of their role, they would not countenance chickens spending their lives in ‘humid sheds’ and ending up as flaccid, fatty, pale birds on our Friday night dinner tables.

One of the most ridiculous examples of the Shechita Boards’ closed-minded attitude is their ban on porging.  Not only does it cut-off a valuable revenue source for butchers, it actually results in higher prices for the meat we can eat.  Half of every slaughtered cow or lamb is useless to a kosher abattoir [and this too puts up prices].  Consequently, the half destined for the treyf table, has to be sold at a heavy discount, suppliers know the kosher abattoirs have no choice but to dump it.  As a result, the half of the animal we can eat has to priced-up, to off-set the losses made on the hind quarters.  It is a vicious cycle thanks entirely to the Shechita Boards’ refusal to allow a process that has been practised, under rabbinic direction, for centuries.

I would hazard a guess that a large proportion of consumers buying kosher meat, are far more discerning when making their other food purchases.  The only explanation for this aberration is that consumers have fully bought into the trope that kosher equals better.  Consumers have forgotten that there was once a meaningful difference between dark and light cuts of their chicken.  They have also seemingly forgotten that their Friday night roast chicken did not always render as much as half a litre of fat.

I am unclear who is more to blame for the parlous state we are in, but that is almost irrelevant because the situation is so bad, the quality so low.

It is instructive that kosher restaurants and caterers in London often buy their meat from France, a country where they would never allow standards to collapse in this way.  In the Marais, you will have no problem finding home made pates, sausages or porged legs of lamb in butchers supervised by the strictest rabbinic authorities.  In the UK, you have more chance of finding gold at the end of the rainbow.

I am disappointed that you failed to address the real subject that requires investigation, hopefully next time you will consider broadening your remit.

Yours faithfully,

Anthony Silverbrow

I'm uncertain whether this will get any response in the letters pages next week.  It is possible it will rock the boat, then again, it might well die like a damp squib.  If there is any follow-up, I will post it here.

When Do We Eat?

As questions go, few are more central to the thought process of any self respecting Jew. Given the title alone, one can tell the directors of this new film understand something of what makes us tick. I haven't seen it, but from what I understand When Do We Eat? is a fairly close approximation to the seder nights so many of us experience. The trailer is promising.

Pesach food redux

Further to my post on kosher shopping, The Kosher Blog has an interesting take on what you can and cannot eat over Pesach.

Stop with the food already

It's that time of the year - around Easter - when etiquette, driving skills and good humour sink into an even deeper morass than usual in North West London.  The reason is Pesach (aka Passover), or more particularly Pesach shopping.

There are many aspects to Pesach, but the central focus of it is the Jews' Exodus from Egypt under Moses.  One of the major features of the festival is the rule that we must not eat any leavened food, which is known as chametz.  The most well known manifestation of this that we don't eat bread and instead eat matzos - unleavened bread - which are basically glorified crackers.

A ban on anything bread-like sounds relatively straight-forward and for eight days I really shouldn't have a problem.  However, the reality is, I find it quite tough.  Wheat, rye, barley, spelt and oats are all grains that if they are leavened for more than 18 minutes (why 18 minutes?) are considered chametz.  In addition, Ashkenazi Jews need to steer clear of rice, corn, beans and peanuts because these were traditionally used in bread making and our rabbinic leaders want all avoidance of doubt as to what we're eating.  It seems that the Sephardic rabbis don't have such concerns regarding the fallibility of their flock and they're allowed to eat these foods.  It has to be said that for Sephardis not eating rice or beans would be a bit like telling a Frenchman that onions and garlic were off the menu - they would wither and die.

In addition to not being allowed to consume these items, we are forbidden from benefiting from them and therefore need to be certain that none are in our houses.  That means that even those things that are okay for the rest of the year need to be dumped (or 'sold') in favour of explicitly kosher for Pesach products. The practicality of that, for those of us who are even vaguely observant, is that we need to empty our store cupboards, change our cutlery, crockery, pots, pans and anything else that has come into contact with the dreaded chametz.  So, imagine it, across the world there are millions of Jews desperately cleaning, sorting, storing and most importantly buying, buying, buying.

I have just returned from a two hour shopping trip and have spent over £200 on eight days worth of food. This year is slightly unusual because Silverbrowess will be stuck at home throughout the eight days of the festival so I've had to buy for every meal of the entire eight days.  Normally we try to foist ourselves upon our respective parents and get them to go to the hassle of doing the cooking.  However, that is not a choice a lot of people have, so they have to undergo the tortuous shopping expedition and the result is long queues and bad tempers.  My mood was lightened by the impressively humorous bag packer who told me he was on a break from yeshiva in Gateshead.  Clearly though he was bored senseless if the excitement he displayed when a disgruntled customer returned to shop complaining about the three bottles of wine that had smashed over his food, was anything to go by.  The other customers looked ever more weary and kept an especially beady eye on the packers to ensure their bottles of wine didn't suffer a similar fate.

As often seems to be the case with kosher food, over Pesach, it is of impressively crap quality.  Yoghurts that have only the vaguest hint of what a cow is, food that is deep fried or deep frozen or conveniently dehydrated so all I need to do is add water.  Why do I buy it?  I'm really not sure, except that with the advent of Pesach I'm beset by a malaise that results in cooking being at the very bottom of my agenda and eating to survive at the very top.  Every year I'm shocked that a belligerent big-gob like me can be swayed into buying this crap and every year it happens without fail.

The first night of Pesach is Wednesday 12th April and it goes out on Thursday 20th April (in Israel it goes out on the day before - a quirk of the Jewish calendar.)  I don't imagine I'll be minded to post too much during the period so apologies if I'm a bit slack.

My culinary heart sinks with the first whiff of the Pesach shopping trip and doesn't return until I've wiped the crumbs from my lips of my first post-Pesach bagel.

Knaidlach

I promised in my post on chicken soup to include a post on what you can add to it.  So here we are.

I'm not sure why there is a tradition across numerous cuisines of putting some sort of carbohydrate solid into soup - think croutons, noodles and dumplings - but there is definitely a theme.  I would assume it's a good way of adding substance to a product that might otherwise appear measly.  Very often, those dishes that call specifically for some such addition are the thinner, brothier kinds of soups that tend to be associated with home or street food, rather than haute cuisine.  Chicken soup is no exception, with its addition of knaidlach.

There are two schools of cooking knaidlach, there is the depth-charge and there is the light as feather, float like a butterfly version.  Being difficult, my preference is for somewhere in the middle.  I like to know that I'm eating something, but I don't like the associated heartburn.  The recipe I enjoy most is that which I grew-up with and that Silverbrowess has taken on as her own (we can thank her for providing the recipe below).

The secret to this recipe are the fried onions - an essential part of ashkenazi cooking - that add a depth and smokiness to the balls of delight.  The recipe is simple, straightforward and quick.  This recipe doesn't include the addition of schmaltz (chicken fat) but feel free to cook the onions in it.  You'll love it, your cardiologist won't.

This recipe should give you approximately 15 golf-ball sized knaidlach.   

• 115g matzo meal    
• 250ml boiling water    
• 1 onion - diced    
• 1 egg - lightly beaten

Fry the onion so it turns a deep golden brown but be careful not to let it burn. Set aside to cool.

In a mixing bowl combine the matzo meal, the boiling water, the egg, salt & pepper. Add the onions.  Put the mixture in the fridge to expand slightly and settle.  Just prior to serving the soup, remove the mixture from the fridge and roll into golf-ball sized balls.  Try not to be heavy handed as you'll end up with heavy balls (ooer missus).

Place the balls in the pot of hot soup.  They will take less than a minute to cook through if the soup is close to boiling.  Don't let them sit in the soup for too long as they will disintegrate and can turn the soup cloudy.  Some people cook the balls in boiling water and add to the soup only in the individual balls.  I think you lose some of the flavour doing it this way.

Although this is the last word in knaidlach recipes, knaidlach are not the last word in chicken soup additions.  There are also kreplach (tortellini stuffed with chicken livers) and lokschen (sliced omelette) but we can save those for another day.

You may have seen the photo below previously, apologies for that.  But it demonstrates the knaidlach in all its carbohydrate glory.

Delving into the archives

I was just having a look through some of my old posts, when I came across this.  I was surprised to note that I had suggested I might be interested to read Food and Judaism. Surprised, because only a couple of days ago that same book landed on my doorstep.

One of the things I love about the internet, all these food blogs and forums and food sections from papers around the globe, is that I am introduced to new ideas and new books.  It got to be that I couldn't keep track of all the book that took my fancy, so I started to compile a list on Amazon.  Every so often, normally when Silverbrowess is away so she doesn't notice, I'll buy a few books off the list.  The list works well - the only problem is I forget where the recommendation came from.  It would seem that Food and Judaism is just such a book.  At least now I remember where it came from.  I now can see the value in re-reading my older posts more frequently.

I've only flicked through this book, but it looks promising with essays titled "Smoked Salmon Sushi and Sturgeon Stomachs: The Russian Jewish Foodscapes of New York" or "Holy Kugel: The Sanctification of Ashkenazic Ethnic Foods in Hassidism."  No-one ever said it would be an easy read, or unpretentious, but I'm hopeful it might help me out as further source material for my growing interest in the history of Jewish food.

I will try to remember that I have posted this and come back with some views on the essays when I have had a chance to read them.

Greenspoon LJ, Simkins R, Shapiro G (eds) 2005, Food and Judaism, University of Nebraska Press (ISBN: 1881871460)

Chicken Soup

Healthy does not necessarily mean tasteless.  Chicken soup is the finest example of this.  It is known by a whole host of names, but two of the most common demonstrate health and taste are not mutually exclusive.  The soup is renowned for its curative powers and has earned the tag, the Jewish penicillin.  This is not simply hyperbole, there is surprisingly enough, some medical evidence supporting the claim.  It is also known in Yiddish as Goldene Yoich, which translates as golden broth.  The reason for the distinctive colour was because of the golden chicken fat globules floating on the top of the soup.  I accept in these fat-fearing times of ours, it might be difficult to make the causal leap of chicken fat=penicillin-like benefits, but given the other ingredients are common or garden vegetables and aromatics, I like to think that the fat off the humble bird plays a key part.

I've realised that one of the major problems with this occasional series on kosher food is that I feel compelled to keep referring to the differences and similarities between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and any other Jewish traditions.  Chicken soup it seems, once again throws up these issues.  Initially I thought I was on safe ground with this archetypal Ashkenazi dish - how I wrong I was.  When people think of chicken soup, they think of boiled poultry, some root vegetables, a couple of aromatics and some sort of dense dumpling thrown in for good measure.  My trusty culinary sidekick, Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food informs me that under names as beautifully diverse as Shorba bi Djaj (p268) and Gondy (p278), chicken broth, in various guises, is central to Jewish cuisine wherever you are.  Whilst Roden notes "In the Sephardi world, chicken soup does not have the place it has in Ashkenazi culture", she then goes on to list five separate recipes for what is, at its most base, heated chicken, water, vegetables and carbs.  There's no getting away from the fact that this combination is important for Jews, wherever they are.

The recipe and directions I give here are pretty standard.  I've been making it like this for years and although it reflects a number of influences (my mother, my grandmothers and no doubt the odd cookery book or two), this is a pretty traditional, bog standard method for making the father of all soups.  My one addition, that my maternal grandmother in particular would not recognise, is a clove of garlic.  For me, it adds a peppery depth to the soup that is otherwise unattainable - it lifts it to another level.  For any garlicphobes out there GO AWAY.  Only kidding, you're allowed to stay, but please include it in your soup, it won't end up tasting like a Frenchman's armpit, but it will taste delicious.

So here's my list of ingredients.  As you'll notice I haven't given weights for anything.  As I see it there's no point.  You don't want to make an exact amount, you want to make enough to last you and friends and family a few servings over a few days.  This recipe will offer up the best part of 10 decent size bowls of soup:

• 1 roaster chicken with giblets & feet
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped into large pieces
• 1 stick of celery, destringed and chopped into large pieces
• 1 clove of garlic, peeled
• 1 stick leek, out leaves removed and chopped into large pieces
• 2 fresh bay leaves (if using dried, just use 1)
• 4-5l water (or enough to cover all the ingredients in a large pot)

Or to put that list another way

Frankly the directions couldn't be much more straightforward.  Put everything into a large pan and heat slowly. As the pot comes close to the boil, impurities from the chicken and vegetables will bubble to the surface of the soup, keep skimming this away.  You'll know when this tiresome but crucial job is done, when there is no more froth (grey, black or white) sitting at the top of the pot.  What you need to make sure you don't do is remove too much of the fat.  Afterall, the golden globules are what give it its taste and in my view, its health benefits.

The crucial element to this dish is how long you cook it for and how many giblets and feet you have in it.  Although the chicken feet and giblets are not the most aesthetically pleasing bits of the bird, the gelatin that comes from boiling them, adds a real depth to the dish.  Harold McGee in Food & Cooking (p628) explains the thickening and emulsifying benefits of gelatin in soups.  In McGee's example he offers up bouillabaisse, but the theory is the same with chicken soup.  Fat is rendered from the bird as it is boiled, as is gelatin, from the bones of the bird.  "When the soup is at a vigorous boil, the fat breaks up into tiny globules and is coated in the stabilising layer of gelatin.  The consistency is thus a combination of gelatin's viscosity and the enriching creaminess of the emulsified oil droplets."

In my experience the ideal cooking time is to bring the soup up to the boil and let it simmer for two hours.  Remove the chicken, giblets and feet. The chicken is delicious eaten as is, with a bit of the broth poured over it and some chips.  Throw away the giblets and feet.  Let the soup cool and put it in the fridge, if possible for 48 hours.  The longer you leave it for (within reason) the better it gets, the flavours seem to mature as the soup settles after cooking.  Then, when you are ready to eat it, reheat, bring to the boil and serve.  It's that simple.

Chicken soup is not only easy to make, there are no real secrets to it - any that are, are busted by McGee's science.  As with any cooking, the higher quality your ingredients, the higher quality of the finished product.  Leaving the soup to sit in the fridge for a couple of days does no harm either.  The trick of this is the simplicity and patience required to make it.

The one thing I haven't yet mentioned and will save for another post, is the glorious subject of knaidlach, kreplach, mandlin and all the dumpling type things you have to have in your soup.  The photo below is my finished product, with a fluffy, light kneidle (singular of knaidlach).

References
Roden C, 1999, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkind and Vilna to the Present Day, Penguin Books (ISBN: 0140466096)
McGee H, 2004, Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture, Hodder & Stoughton (ISBN: 0340831499)

Introducing my mini-series

I frequently write about kosher food on this site, but having gone through my archives I can't see a single example of where I've written about Jewish food and I want to change that.  By 'Jewish', as opposed to 'Kosher', I mean food that is closely identified with Judaism, whether that is for religious reasons or historical and cultural reasons.  What I don't mean, is any old food that is deemed kosher just because it hasn't got anything unkosher in it.  I'm not interested in finding substitutes for non-kosher recipes, in order to make them kosher.  I am a firm believer that there more than enough recipes and concepts in our culinary canon (and other, not specifically kosher recipes) that means we don't need second best substitutes.  I also believe there is a misunderstanding of kosher food as heavy, fatty and relatively bland - a criticism especially levelled at Ashkenazi food.  However, in the wider food community, where the mortal fear of fat is receding in favour of a love affair with confit and the like, I feel the time is ripe for a bit of rehabilitation, for what, if you're a religious person, has to be one of the oldest culinary traditions around.

I appreciate I'm entering a minefield given that what can be deemed Jewish is vague at best, but I'm feeling bullish at the moment and reckon my shoulders are broad enough.  So let me do a little bit of explaning:

If one is an Ashkenazi Jew, what you think of as traditional Jewish food, will be very different to if you're a Sephardi Jew.  This is largely a factor of geography, Ashkenazi's came from Eastern Europe and needed food to get them through the hardships of farming in the frozen wastes of the Pale.  Sephardim on the other hand came from Southern Europe and North Africa.  Their food is far more influenced by the Muslim cooking of the region and the highly spiced local foods - required to overcome rotting meat in the sweltering heat of the Baghdad souk.  Then you've got the added confusion of those groups of Jews that don't fit into the Ashkenazi / Sephardi paradigm, such as the Bnei Roma in Italy.

However, for the purposes of this Silverbrow sponsored mini-series, we don't need to worry too much about all these differences.  I'm going to try to look at Jewish food and recipes in the round, what has influenced Jewish cooking and where Jewish cooking has been influential.  For example, we can thank Portugese Jews for Britain's national dish of fish and chips.  (Before the pedants get too excited, I'm fully aware that the UK's most popular dish is chicken tikka masala, not F&C.  It is interesting though that neither of these foods are generations old, both being introduced to our fair isle within the last 150 years.)  I'm going to do this largely by cooking the food, doing some research and letting you know how it all goes.  I can see that this might take some time, so I had better get started.

There was never really any question about what to start with, empires were built on chicken soup, so I must start there.