Healthy Jewish Cooking

from The Orange County Register September 13, 2001 by Judy Bart Kancigor, author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family With Jewish cooks busily preparing for Rosh Hashanah (beginning Monday night), the last thought on anyone's mind is low fat, but Steven Raichlen's new cookbook, "Healthy Jewish Cooking" (Viking), a lusciously photographed homage to his family, offers tasty renditions of over 150 classic Jewish recipes that nourish the soul without damaging the heart. And with his slimmed-down versions of his family's beloved recipes, we can now have our knish and eat it too. "The great cooks of my childhood - who came of age during the depression - were more interested in filling plates than in the health consciousness of their dinners," says Raichlen, who was a restaurant critic for a major city magazine in the '80's and eating out constantly when he developed a cholesterol problem. So he began reducing the fat in his favorite recipes, and the result was his "High-Flavor, Low-Fat" series. Now Raichlen, famous as the grilling guru ("The Barbecue Bible," "How to Grill"), applies his 10 Commandments of low-fat cooking to the last bastion of the clogged artery, Jewish food, with "think flavor, not fat" his mantra. "'Barbecue Bible' took me four years to write," says Raichlen, who traveled to 25 countries on five continents researching the book, writing "Healthy Jewish Cooking" during the same period. "There was a lot of overlap. The Middle East is one of the real hotbeds of grilling expertise. Barbecue is not part of the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) tradition. I don't ever remember watching my grandfather grill, for example, but in Israel it's very much a part of their culture." So what will the Raichlen family be eating this Rosh Hashanah? Surprise, surprise. Son Jake Klein of HeartBeat at the W Hotel in New York (and incidentally the food stylist for "Healthy Jewish Cooking") will be visiting, and together father and son will fire up the grill. "We will probably be the only Jewish family in Miami to barbecue its brisket instead of braising it in the oven with dried fruits. We will rub it with cumin, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper and smoke it for six hours. It will be amazing barbecue, the way God meant for you to eat it!" Sweet foods are the order of the day on this holiday. "At the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we wish for sweetness," says Elaine Asa, wife of Fullerton Temple Beth Tikvah's Rabbi Emeritus, Haim Asa, "so we dip apples in honey as our hope for a sweet year." Challah, the symbolic sweet egg bread, normally braided, is baked round for Rosh Hashanah "to symbolize the continuity of life," says Asa. "It has no beginning or end. This is the season when we are written in the book of life." A lovely sweet side dish for the Rosh Hashanah table is Raichlen's Moroccan Carrot Salad, "the round slices of carrots representing gold shekels, a symbol

This was a real find of a cookbook. I am looking to expand my repetoire of Jewish recipes and want them to be healthy as well. The introduction is a treat to read as well as the personal entries at the top of each recipe. The recipes I have made thus far have all turned out terrific and inspire me to want to cook more out of this book. I'd eat in this author's kitchen any day!

Once again noted cookbook author, Steve Raichlen has hit a homerun. His adaptations of time honored Jewish comfort foods to suit the modern , healthy life style is phenomonal. Cabbage soup is as good as my bubbe's and it is completely vegetarion. From blintzes to borscht; from chopped liver to chicken fricasse, Raichlen runs the gamut of Jewish cooking perfectly. Add the personal touches of wonderful stories of family feasts, the cookbook is a key to opening the vast storehouse of long held memories that we all share. A must for etnic cooks everywhere.