Blogger Spotlight

Today we welcome a special Bread Blogger, Jennifer MacLeod, who got into bread making the lazy way (thank you no knead) and who aspires to make Aliyah one day soon just like Jamie. You can learn a lot about bread making here and comment below with any questions.  And make sure to head over to the Breadland blog for a chance to win a set of Kosher Kitchen Labels.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:
I’ve been baking for years, but a couple of years ago, I realized that too much of my regular blog, Adventures in MamaLand was being taken up with my latest obsession, which – at the time – was no-knead breads. So I found a similar Blogger domain name and took it from there! I don’t post there quite as often, but I like to think I have a dedicated core of kosher-bread aficionados who read it regularly.

What is your earliest cooking memory?
Baking one-pan brownies with my little sister in my mother’s kitchen. I didn’t really learn to cook at home, because my mother is as tidy as I am NOT and it didn’t make for a very comfortable relationship in the kitchen. But one-pan brownies, we could usually manage without messing up too much. Later on, when I was going to school and living alone with my future mother-in-law (my future husband was in a different city), I was amazed at how mellow a person could be in the kitchen – she didn’t care where I put stuff in the dishwasher and loved coming home to fresh-cooked and -baked food. With that freedom, I started experimenting! I remember making a jelly roll, step by step – baking it flat, rolling it up in a towel to cool, gently unrolling and filling it -and being so proud of how perfectly it turned out. Even though, these days, I’m usually rushing to get family food on the table, it’s wonderful to sometimes find a stretch of leisure time to cook or bake.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

Hands-down, my Danish dough whisk. Here it is on Amazon; it’s a beautifully simple gadget, made in Poland – they’re all made in Poland, apparently. Basically, a twisted coat-hanger on a wooden handle… but it WORKS. It’s great for no-knead doughs; literally, you just stir them together. But it’s also the best thing for muffins and anything that suffers from overmixing. And it’s super-easy to clean!

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?
Can’t every dish be a kosher dish if you fiddle with it enough? I didn’t grow up eating kosher, and I remember at one point missing dim sum terribly. Now, dim sum is practically the opposite of kosher – little dumpling pockets of shrimp, “mystery meat,” tripe, you name it (okay, the tripe never appealed). It’s all about presentation and little bursts of flavour. I didn’t mourn; I gathered ingredients, rounded up recipes, bought some bamboo steamers, and spent the better part of a day re-creating my favourite dim sum of all: “char siu bao,” the well-known “barbecue pork” buns… using kosher beef. They were utterly delicious, but it was a ton of work. I guess that’s a very long answer. In my work as a freelance writer, I interview a lot of caterers, who all claim that their food “doesn’t taste kosher.” I have no idea what this means, so my short answer is that my favourite dish to cook, period, is one we’ll share with friends and family. I love thinking about who’ll be eating it while I cook; it’s almost meditative.

Who is your cooking inspiration?
I don’t know if I have one. Honestly, any eishes chayil [woman of valour] who manages to cook a delightful meal for her family seven nights a week (or organize takeout or husband cookery for one or two of those evenings!), year in and year out, regardless of how she’s feeling and what else is going on, should be an inspiration to us all. In that sense, my mother was an inspiration – I guess everybody says their mother, but now, my jaw drops when I think about everything she accomplished. I have the same number of hours in the day… perhaps the difference is that she didn’t have the Internet and great sites like joyofkosher.com!

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:
MEASURE! Cooking is fun, an art, but baking is a science. Measure your ingredients properly. A normal cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 170 grams; we North American home bakers are terribly lazy, but you can find good recipes that give exact weights, and you may be amazed at how much more reliable your baking becomes! Also: measure the temperature of your finished bread – 185 to 195 is a good internal temperature. My digital thermometer cost under $10 and it’s saved so many loaves from over- and under-baking! Again, it’s one tip: MEASURE! Oh, and don’t “punch down” your bread, no matter how many times your Bubby’s challah recipe says you must.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?
Two recipes – one is an easy and practical Pareve Hamburger Bun recipe, and one is a Blender Challah Recipe which is a little harder to work with but which should yield the softest, fluffiest challahs you’ve ever tasted.

Jennifer is a Jewish supermama of four and my family’s adventures in learning, eating, growing, and living according to Hashem’s plan.  Visit her on her bread blog, BreadLand or on MamaLand or AliyahLand.

Erin Grunstein hails from Canada, at least that is what her email says and she and Jamie have a lot in common.  In turns out Erin didn’t really know anything about cooking until she got married, but once she gave it try she fell in love and decided to share that love with the world on her blog, Erin’s Kosher Cooking Adventures.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

I’m not sure what inspired me to start a cooking blog – I’m not a professional chef, nor am I someone who really followed blogs. I honestly didn’t know what to do in the kitchen until getting married (only 3 years ago) and I’m still learning to this day. I found that frequently, friends were asking me for recipes, so one day last summer, I started posting my favorite creations. At first I was a bit shy, but I had a few people look at it and they loved it, so I shared it. I started getting amazing feedback from people I’d bump into all over the city, and from there, I decided to keep it going.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

I have pictures of myself as an 18-month-old baby baking cookies with my mom. As a kid, this was one of my favorite pastimes – especially baking sugar cookies and dousing them with multicolor (food coloring dyed) sugars.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

The magic bullet! It’s amazing for making salad dressings, pesto sauces, mincing garlic, grinding nuts… Also, it doesn’t take up too much space so you can easily put it into the dishwasher. As well, it comes with different plastic containers to process and then store your food in.

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

There are so many! It’s so hard to choose. I love making food that not only tastes delicious but also presents beautifully and I have a thing for mini and individual food items. So I would probably say appetizers, like my Caprese Eggplant Stacks (the one pictures above) or my Asian rice paper rolls. I also should probably say anything with pesto sauce is a personal favorite- it’s just so yummy!

Who is your cooking inspiration?

My mother – she’s a phenomenal cook. The only problem is she never remembers what she does to make the food so tasty and she can’t give a recipe to save her life! Many of my recipes are spin-offs of hers (such as my Moroccan meat pie) or are mother-daughter creation, such as our Pesto-Stuffed Mushrooms.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

Continuing with the pesto talk – when making pesto, always coat the top of the container holding the pesto with olive oil so that the basil does not turn brown.

Another tip when cooking for a crowd and to help make things run smoother: take a place in your kitchen (I just use my table) and prepare all your serving dishes and utensils beforehand, so that when serving (and your guests are waiting for their food) all you have to do is place the food on the plate, instead of scrambling to find each serving dish one by one. It sounds simple but makes a huge time (and stress) difference.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

Eggplant Caprese Stacks

Pesto Stuffed Mushrooms

Lebanese Chicken Kabobs

We welcome Dena Price to our spotlight.  We first met Dena when she submitted her Stuffed Dates with Almonds recipe on our site, we quickly learned that she is in the midst of writing her first cookbook, The Everything Kosher Slow Cooker Cookbook due out in November.  We had to learn more about this librarian by day, food blogger by night.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

Oh! You Cook! started out in 2007 as a website project for one of my grad school classes. Unlike my other term assignments, this one was actually fun to do! After graduation, I continued with it on and off as the blog Kosher Kuisine. In 2010, I decided to emphasize the recipes as delicious food that just happens to be kosher, so after brainstorming with the Hubby, we (and by we I mean he) came up with the new improved name.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

I recall helping my mother make Passover sponge cake. Even though I was barely tall enough to reach the kitchen table (our ancient Bronx apartment kitchen had no counter space), I learned how to gently wield a spatula through the batter and egg “snow.” After the cake went into the oven, my sister and I were then warned to be very quiet so as not to cause the cake to fall. Years later, we realized it was just a ruse by our mother to get a some peace in the house, if just for a little while.

Roasted Herbed Baby Eggplants

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

My dishwasher. I used to joke that it saved our marriage, since both of us hate to clean up after dinner.

Bruschetta

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

Chicken in Orange-Ginger Sauce. There were many crazy days when I had to cook with a blood-curdling colicky baby on my hip, so dinners that didn’t require a knife or measuring used to be the norm. Schmear oil on a pan, plop in the chicken, dump on the spices and shove into the oven. My youngest is a college sophomore, but crazy days go on forever.

Who is your cooking inspiration?

I have two, really. The Galloping Gourmet is the first. I’d practically run home from school to watch his antics. I couldn’t make anything he created on the show, but he really made cooking look like fun. Julia Child is the other. I loved when something didn’t turn out correctly, she managed to recover, even joking about it. She proved the maxim, “It’s not a mistake, it’s a new dish!”

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

There’s a french term, mise en place, which means get everything ready before you start. Assemble, peel, slice, chop, measure, then proceed. My tip is to ignore it. You’re not on TV. Scan the recipe before you start, and mentally figure out what can be done while something else is cooking (ie, first start up the water, then measure the rice and the other ingredients). Every minute counts on days I get home at 6, start dinner, serve dinner, clean up dinner, then arrive at a Hadassah meeting by 8.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

At this moment we are in the midst of a heat-wave, so here are a few easy recipes with little to no cooking:

Bruschetta (a simple diced tomato salad served on thinly sliced Italian or French bread)

Fruit Salad with Honey-Lime Dressing

Roasted Baby Eggplants, which can be made outside on the grill if placed over indirect heat

Today we welcome Tzirel Chana to the spotlight.  Tzirel has been reaching out to us and offering wonderful recipes and articles that connect to the spiritual side of our religion.  She gave us a challah shaped like the ten commandments for Shavuot and the well known Key Challah after Pescah.  She also shared Amalek kugel for Purim.  Today we are talking to Tzirel to learn more about her and her blog.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

We welcome Chaya Selig to our spotlight.  Chaya is the author of 2 active blogs featuring easy delicious recipes that are mostly gluten free.  Chaya comes across warm and friendly and all about sharing with fabulous linkys on her site.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:
One day, I came upon the world of foodie blogs and as I looked through them, I thought to myself, this would be fun to do.  I did not realize the high caliber of cooks, we have in Bloggerville. A few lovely bloggers took me under their wings and  helped me along.  My photos were atrocious and the way I shared recipes were equally so.  What frightens me is that someday, I may look back on my present blogs and say the same thing.
My first blog was a kosher gluten-free blog but as time went on, I realized, I did not want a gluten-free blog even though my two blogs now are 90% gluten-free.  The difference is that when I don’t term it that, I can sneak in a non GF recipe without making a big fuss to watch out for the gluten.  It did take off a lot of pressure.  That was good-bye to Chaya’s Comfy Cook. 

My current blogs are My Sweet and Savory and Bizzy Bakes.  My Sweet and Savory is better established, having been around for two years longer although I am happy to see Bizzy Bakes growing into adulthood.  They were meant to have different purposes but I am not sure that is seen.  Bizzy Bakes was to be mostly for baking and quick, easy and delicious recipes (QED).  My Sweet and Savory has a wonderful linky for meatless  meals and I leave each Monday with tons of ideas.  Bizzy has a new linky called the Recipe Box which I have plans for and hopefully will develop into something that will be fun and filled with deliciousness.

Please come and visit.  I am open to all suggestions and questions and would love to hear from you.

Honey Almond Strawberry Spinach Salad

What is your earliest cooking memory?

I remember having nourishing meals, on the table, every night but nothing about what happened in the kitchen.  My Mom was a plain cook.  A meal would be a piece of chicken, baked potato and some green beans.  Of course, years ago, ingredients we now use, were considered exotic. When I got married, I knew how to boil water and that is a serious statement.  I have a patient and loving husband who knew more than I did and I had a Betty Crocker cookbook.  I have to pat myself on the back.  I was baking breads within a few years but that stopped after the first two children arrived on the scene. My children are all great cooks except for one and that includes the boys as well as the girls.

You asked about my earliest memory which was after I was married and had made this “elaborate” chopped meat casserole which I dropped on the floor where it stayed in the midst of shards of ceramic.  I didn’t care about the casserole dish.  I cared about my meal.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

 OXO Good Grips Multi-Purpose Pastry Scraper/Chopper.  Don’t laugh.  I have three, two for the year and one for Pesach.  I keep them out and use them daily.  I use them to chop, slice, pick up, scrape away —- you name it —–it does the trick.

Who is your cooking inspiration?
My oldest daughter.  She took to cooking and baking like a fish to water and had her own business for a while.  She is one of those people who works quickly and efficiently and produces wondrous dishes. I have learned more from her than anyone I can think of.  Perhaps, it is her joy in cooking that is what I am inspired by.

Avocado No Mayo Egg Salad

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

Simply organization.  Clean up as you go along.  Keep your tools and ingredients in logical and neat areas.  Clean them out often so they stay that way.  Organization saves time and makes food prep much more pleasant.

Nut Sweet Potato Patties

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

Honey Almond Strawberry Salad 

Orange Veggie Polenta Dish

Avocado No Mayo Egg Salad

Nutty Sweet Potato Patties

For years, I thought I was a decent cook.  Three years ago, when I started blogging, I found out differently.  There is a whole world of new foods and new techniques for me to expand my horizons with and I am working on that. I blog at Bizzy Bakes and My Sweet and Savory.

***Giveaway*** We are kicking off Summer with 10 Days of Giveaways!

Win a Mauviel New Msteel Fry Pan 9”  (approximate value $100)

To enter:

Submit a recipe (make sure you are logged in) on the site, each recipe will count for an entry – there is no limit to the number of entries you can have.  Every recipe that is submitted between now and July 13th will automatically be entered into this contest.  Please make sure your recipe complies with the laws of Kashrut.

Contest ends July 13th  at 9:00AM EST. Make sure to check our contest page daily for new and exciting giveaways.

One winner will be chosen by online randomizer on July 13th .  Winners will be announced on the contest detail page.

All contests are open to US Residents 18 years old and up.

Today we shine the spotlight on The Kosher Foodies.  Identical twins, Jessica and Stephanie, have always loved to cook together and make a mess together.  Their syrian background influences their cooking style, but their modern lives bring on new and different flavors for them to experiment with.  We are delighted to welcome them today in to the spotlight.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

Our blog is The Kosher Foodies, and we started it almost three years ago. We have always loved cooking, baking, and experimenting in the kitchen. We have also both been into photography since our father bought us a digital camera in 2002. Friends and family would always
ask us for recipes and tips, so we decided to write things down, take pictures, and post for all to see. We saw that there were not enough
kosher food blogs, and wanted a place to document all our kosher recipes and ideas.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

Stephanie and I have been cooking for as long as we can remember.  We used to help stock the freezer by rolling yebra, making kibbe, and
scooping mechshe when we were still in elementary school. In high school, we once cooked Shabbat dinner for the whole family and gave
our mom a break, and after that have really not stopped in the kitchen.

Veal Tomato Sauce Pasta

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

I appreciate many of my kitchen gadgets, since growing up we didn’t have anything fancy! If you follow our blog, you’ll know that our mother does not have a stand mixer or a food processor. I definitely love my Kitchen Aid, and use it often, especially because now I invested in a bunch of attachments.

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

My favorite dish to cook is…that’s such a hard question, and I definitely go through phases. Right now I’m cooking a lot of cauliflower, mostly because Richie loves it. It’s pretty versatile, so we’re not getting bored. I’m making it in the form of soup, gratin, steaks, and just simple roasting with salt and pepper. I’m also spending a lot of time baking cakes and cupcakes, probably in anticipation of his first birthday (7/2).

Red Lentil Soup

Who is your cooking inspiration?

My cooking inspiration is…I can’t say that I have one. I grew up watching cooking shows (back before Food Network was cool), so those
original celebrity chefs are pretty special to me. I love Ina Garten’s style and simplicity, and Alton Brown for his food knowledge, both history and science. He taught me that anything can be homemade, and I definitely work on that a lot.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

A very helpful cooking tip that I always share with people who ask is to always read and reread the recipe before starting it. I have often thought I was ready to cook/bake something, only to realize halfway through that it needed to rest for an hour, or baking took two hours and I only had 45 minutes till dinner. So definitely read the recipe carefully. Also, prepping all your ingredients before starting to cook or bake is key. Makes everything SO much easier.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

I’m sharing three very different recipes with you. The first is a simple salad, made with roasted corn and peppers. The second, a classic Syrian soup, and the third, a pasta with veal dish that our grandmother used to make.

Roasted Corn Salad

Ades Red Lentil Soup

Grandma Renas Veal Tomato Sauce Pasta

The kosher foodies are twin sisters Stephanie and Jessica. They love baking, cooking, and experimenting in their kosher kitchen. Jessica, a grad student and new mom, wants her 10-month old son to make her breakfast in bed for mother’s day. Find out more at TheKosherFoodies.

Looking for more blogger spotlights – check it out.

***Giveaway*** We are kicking off Summer with 10 Days of Giveaways!

WIN a basket of Products worth $100 from Star Fine Foods.

Contest details and how to enter can be found here and below.

Make sure to check our contest pagedaily for new and exciting giveaways.All contests are open to US Residents 18 years old and up.

We are overjoyed to be shining the spotlight on Miriam Pascal, who shares her tales of an Overtime Cook through recipes and photos on her blog, OvertimeCook.com.  Miriam is a helpful Twitter friend and generally someone that just wants to share her knowledge with everyone else and we appreciate that.  Let’s welcome Miriam and find out a little more about her and her blog.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

Believe it or not, I started my blog because I had spare time, and wanted to do something productive with it. (I can’t remember what spare time feels like anymore!) I had been baking and cooking a lot at that point, and was constantly giving out recipes. I decided to create a blog where I could direct people to for my recipes. My nature is that I really like to be prepared, so I did a lot of prep work before getting started. First, I had a professional photographer that I work with teach me about food photography. We spent a long time on all of the basics, and I really feel that it helped the success of my blog. Next, I spent forever picking out a name. I had a really hard time choosing, but I do feel that Overtime Cook describes my current situation quite perfectly.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

Believe it or not, it was a baking flop! I was really young, and trying to bake a basic vanilla cake. I don’t even remember what went wrong with it, but I have very vivid memories of everyone assuring me that something was wrong with the oven, not the cake I had made. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I used a plastic drinking cup to measure a cup, and a plastic spoon for a teaspoon, so it’s not hard to figure out what wrong. I’ve definitely learned my lesson: even now as a very experienced baker, I always measure my ingredients very precisely.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

My kitchen aid stand mixer has a special place in my heart, probably because I use it so often! Also, I can’t imagine life without my 8 inch chef knife. It makes really quick work out of chopping 20 onions. (Sadly, it doesn’t do anything about the tears.;)

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

My favorite thing to make is cookies. Cookie recipe ideas constantly pop into my head, and I have to try them out! I have about 20 cookie recipes on my blog, and I’m constantly adding to those.

Spiced Corn Fritters

Who is your cooking inspiration?

I get inspiration from all over the place! I own a ton of cookbooks, (and I’m constantly getting more!). I read lots of cooking magazines, and more food websites and blogs than you can imagine. You never know what might inspire the next great recipe! Also, both of my parents are excellent cooks, so I definitely grew up in an environment that inspired cooking and baking.

Grilled Vegetable Rice Salad

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

Grilled Vegetable Rice Salad

Rella Kaplowitz is the blogger behind PennyPinchingEpicure.com.  He philosophy is about budget cooking and just happen to be gluten free as required by her personal allergies.   We love that many of her recipes have dollar amounts at the bottom so that you can really see how to cook on a budget.   Rella shares easy recipes for everyone.

1. Tell us about your blog and how you got started.

I started my blog in September of 2009. It was kind of a whim–I love cooking, and have since I was pretty young (lucky for my Mom!). People are always asking for my recipes, so I thought maybe other people would be interested in them too. And if not, I figured at the very least it would be a great repository for my friends.  And so was born the Penny Pinching Epicure.

My philosophy is that you don’t have to spend a ton of money to make delicious, really flavorful food. Shortly after I started blogging, I discovered I was gluten intolerant, so all of my recipes (except for a few at the beginning) are totally gluten-free and largely dairy-free.

Honestly, I wasn’t even sure anyone would read it when I started. But it turns out, there are lots of people interested in budget cooking, especially when you have food allergies.

Baigan Bharta with Chickpeas (eggplant)

2. What is your earliest cooking memory?

This is a little embarrassing, but my first actual memory is being in a restaurant eating dinner with my family, getting my food stuck in a chair, and falling over backward while at the same time flinging a cup full of ice all over the people sitting around us. Apparently, I was so cute nobody cared!

Seriously though, my Mom got us into the kitchen very early. The funny thing is, she’s never really enjoyed cooking all that much, but somehow she imparted a love of food and cooking to both my sister and me. I mean, check out how excited I am to help roll out hamentaschen dough at three years old!

3. What is your favorite kitchen implement / gadget / utensil?

I live in a pretty small apartment, so multi-functional kitchen utensils are absolutely essential. I suppose it’s a toss-up between my slow cooker and my KitchenAid, although I had to completely rearrange the kitchen to find space for it. I also love my food scale–I do a lot of gluten-free baking (even more of a science than regular baking) and exact measurements are key. Oh, and I love my immersion blender too. You know, you’d be hard pressed to find something in my kitchen I don’t like (as long as it isn’t dirty in the sink…).

4. What is your favorite kosher dish to cook?

I love kugels. When I went gluten-free, a lot of the usual kugels were off limits until I figured out how to adapt them to be Rella-friendly. My favorite (and the favorite of all of my friends) is my twist on a corn kugel: Savory Sage Corn Kugel. It’s so easy, you pretty much just dump everything together, pour it in a pan, bake, and enjoy!

5. Who is your cooking inspiration?

You know, I’m not sure I could pick out any one person. I definitely have food personality favorites, but I think I’m more inspired by the food itself. It’s nerdy, I know, but I absolutely love food shopping, whether it’s at the farmers market or a mainstream supermarket. Walking around and figuring out what I can make any ingredients into is really fun for me.

Unstuffed Cabbage

6. Please share a cooking tip or trick with our readers

I love coming home in the evenings and cooking dinner–I find it relaxing, and it gives me a little bit of “me” time. However, between work and life in general, that isn’t always an option. Enter, my slow cooker. You can make pretty much anything in there, from soups to stews to chicken to jam–and of course cholent! You can even prep everything and refrigerate the crock, then just pop it into the heating element before you leave for work.

7. What recipes are you sharing with us today?

Today I’m sharing my absolute favorite gluten-free recipes: My whole grain Blueberry Breakfast Scones, Baingan Barta with Chickpeas (Indian Eggplant), and Unstuffed Cabbage.

I’m a gluten-free, dairy-free, self-proclaimed food geek. The Food Network is my background noise. I love to cook, bake, and feed others. Visit my food blog at pennypinchingepicure.com.

Trinigourmet.com is a food blog that is dedicated to helping food lovers around the world add a dash of ‘Caribbean Glam’ to their tables. I started the site in 2006 after a car accident made me unable to continue my work as a life and business coach. A chance online conversation with an old college friend brought into sharp focus the rich culinary heritage of my country. I now realized I had a new mission. To spread the word of the dishes and approaches we here in Trinidad & Tobago, too often take for granted. Within 24 hours of that conversation I registered the domain and got cooking! I’m thrilled that in seeking to preserve and elevate visual depictions of our region’s culinary heritage we’ve introduced readers around the world to a cuisine that still remains largely under promoted and increasingly vulnerable to dilution and misrepresentation.

Okra Rice

I was an extremely late bloomer when it came to moving around a kitchen. Growing up, as an only child, I spent most of my time in the kitchen watching my mother cook. She was a prolific recipe collector with a passion for international cuisine, something that definitely rubbed off on me. However, the kitchen was very much her domain and the message was clear that though I was free to watch, I was also expected to stay out of her way. What attempts I did make as a child and a teen were usually inedible – dry omelets, soggy pizzas, fallen cakes. The list goes on!

It’s going to be a battle between my food processor and my Silpat. I have extremely passionate emotions about both. If I had to pick one though the food processor would win. I didn’t get one until my mid 30′s and had no idea how liberating it would be!

Creole Vichyssoise

That’s a wonderful question. If there’s one complaint that friends and family have it’s that I don’t repeat many dishes. This is because I’m always trying new things, whether it’s for the blog, or my own recipe development. Still there will always be those favourites that we turn to for comfort reasons or because they are tied to certain times of year. I love the simplicity of a well-roasted chicken. It can be customized in so many ways, through changes in glazing and stuffing, and is wonderful for a potluck, shabbat, or yom tov spread.

Without a doubt Mario Batali has probably had the greatest influence on my culinary point of view. His seasonal approach to using the freshest ingredients, and his emphasis on allowing the essence of a main ingredient to shine in as unmasked a form as possible has really shaped my improvisational abilities, as well as how I interpret and re-interpret the dishes that I have grown up with. I have also become consumed in recent years with Julia Child. Even though I attended her alma mater (Smith College) her work had never reached Trinidad. In recent years I’ve been able to see her shows on PBS and the Cooking Channel and got a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. All of which have been positively life changing!

I love to add a touch of island flair to dishes by using coconut milk in lieu of dairy. Not only does it add another layer of flavour, it complements both sweet and savory preparations and is pareve as well!

7.  Tell us a little more about your being Jewish in Trindad?

My own background is via the Jewish Jamaican community through my mother who is Jamaican. I enjoy finding kosher ways to express
Caribbean dishes, as well as infusing traditional Jewish dishes with Caribbean approaches. You can see an example of that in this video I
did with Daniel Saks of the US Jewish band DeLeon.

There aren’t many ways to express Jewish life in my country, so kosher eating is one of the few avenues I have to do so on any regular basis.

Here is an article I wrote on the background of the Trinidad Jewish community. We are a very low-key group.

Okra Rice

Creole Vichysoisse

Main Image – Chicken Stir Fry

Sarina is the founder of TriniGourmet An award-winning blog that helps food lovers around the world add a dash of Caribbean Glam to their tables. Caribbean food that just happens to be kosher.

We recently met Victoria, the Itsy Bitsy Balebusta on Twitter, her joy and passion for food came across immediately.  Her tag line, adventures learning how to make a home and take life with a grain of salt (& a bit of chocolate too!) and her sharing her love and memories of her grandmother is inspiring.  Victoria lives in Montreal.  It is so wonderful to welcome her to the JoyofKosher Kitchen where we get to find out more about this young up and comer.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

Last year when my grandmother fell ill, I wanted to do something to recognize and celebrate the amazing women in my life. I come from a vibrant Portuguese family where food is the central aspect to all get-togethers. When I started keeping kosher my family was absolutely incredible and did all they could to help makeover all of the recipes so that I could continue to share and pass on traditional family recipes. This blog is my small way of celebrating the amazing women who have made me who I am today. Each recipe I share helps me to preserve and share memories in the hope that these dishes will bring others together to create memories of their own!

What is your earliest cooking memory?

I can remember standing next to my grandmother in the kitchen at an early age, watching her prepare breakfast and allowing me to pour milk into the sauce pan or sprinkle the cinnamon as a final touch. My earliest cooking memory that really stands out would have to be in grade ten when I was taking a cooking class at school and attempted to recreate the meal at home for my family. After a lengthy grocery-shopping trip I sent my family to sit in the living room while I prepared the meal – tomato galette and a zucchini casserole. My brave little brother made his way through half of the meal before asking if he could please make a sandwich instead! Even though we all ended up having sandwiches that night, it didn’t ruin my love for cooking and helped give me a sense of humor when preparing meals for my family!

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

For years I dreamed of owning my own KitchenAid stand mixer. A month before she passed away, my grandmother Avo Lina, made it happen (making me promise that I’d make plenty of challah and cake!). It proudly sits on my kitchen counter now and every week while I’m making dessert and challah I like to think she’ll always be a part of all the prep.

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

My favorite kosher dish to cook would be kugel! Broccoli kugel and potato kugel are definitely my favorite. They’re fun to make with very little prep or clean up and are versatile. I also love to make schnitzel! I love trying new spices in the breading as well as different ways of preparing the chicken – to date one of my favorites is to coat the chicken with barbeque sauce and then into the breading infused with whichever spices come to hand!

Who is your cooking inspiration?

My parents are my cooking inspiration. I’ve always loved and admired how they take such pride in preparing meals for the family together. Their attention to detail, creativity and passion to bring us all together over a warm cooked family meal has taught me a lot

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

My favorite cooking trick is roasting chicken in chicken soup broth with seasoning spices. No matter what the chicken recipe, if it calls for roasting I do this first and then add the necessary ingredients called for. I find this keeps the chicken moist and tender. I also always run eggs under warm water for 30 seconds before adding them to my batter. I find this produces fluffier results!

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

Today I’ll be sharing two quintessential Portuguese family recipes. The first is Bacalhau, which is a traditional Portuguese dish incorporating codfish and potatoes. Its form and texture is akin to lasagna but its flavor is distinctly European. My mother takes great pride in preparing it the same way her mother did and I am proud to do the same in my own kitchen now!

Bacalhau

No meal is complete without dessert, so I’ve also chosen to include my grandmother’s Chocolate Almond Bar recipe. It’s a quick dessert to pull together and has always been one of my favorites. My grandmother would prepare these bars for me, wrapping them in parchment paper and placing them in a tin. The smell of them baking, brings me back to being in her home!

When life gets messy I find the best way to step back and regroup is by creating a messy kitchen! There’s nothing like mixing bowls and measuring cups strewn about & the smell of warm Challah or cupcakes baking! I cook & bake to preserve the memory of & celebrate the incredible Balebustas in my family! Next to them, I’m still an itsy bitsy balebusta, learning what it takes to make a home & how to take the batches life gives us with a grain of salt (& lots of chocolate!). You can find out more about me at http://itsybitsybalebusta.blogspot.ca/p/about.html

Tali Simon is a regular contributor to JoyofKosher with gorgeous photographs and tasty recipes.  She is a vegetarian from birth who lives in Israel.  She writes for many print publications including Bina Magazine.  It has been so much fun getting to know Tali through her writing and recipes and we are so glad to have her as part of our community. We can tell you she is a perfectionist so that means her recipes are spot on perfect, give them a try.  Today we chat with Tali to find out a bit more behind the recipes.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

The answer to this probably changes every week because I’m always trying new recipes or new versions of old ones. In general, though, I love making hearty soups, especially ones with unique flavors like this pumpkin black bean soup. I also love making Asian-inspired pasta dishes and salads, or anything with fresh sauteed mushrooms.

Who is your cooking inspiration?

I don’t come from a cooking/baking family, so I get my culinary inspiration from friends and other food bloggers (I read about 10 or 15 food blogs regularly). And I’ll always have a soft spot for Norene Gilletz, whose cookbook “Norene’s Healthy Kitchen” was a gift from my in-laws soon after we got married. That book really got things started for me in the kitchen.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

One of my favorite baking tips is to press three of four extra chocolate chips on top of each cookie before baking. People will go for those over the regular ones (which only have chocolate chips inside) every time.

A vegetable tip I find really useful is to use a chef’s knife for slicing peppers open and cutting out the pith (the white stuff), but then switching to a serrated knife for chopping or dicing.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

Soba Noodle Stir-Fry

Cheese Blintzes – Gluten Free (I developed this recipe for Pesach, but they’re definitely good enough to eat year-round and gluten free.)

Tali Simon left U.S. News & World Report to move to Israel in 2010. She is now a happily settled writer, editor, and food blogger living near the Dead Sea. She loves to cook, and her skinny husband loves to eat. It works well. Catch up on Tali’s latest kosher vegetarian recipes at More Quiche, Please.

This week we talk with Shulie Madnick from the blog, FoodWanderings.blogspot.com.  Shulie was born and raised in Israel by Indian parents, both greatly influence her cooking style.  Shulie currently lives in Washington, DC where she is a recipe developer, food writer and photographer and a cooking instructor.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started.

In November 2009 when my son was getting ready to graduate high school, I inaugurated my blog with Shakshuka, for every college kid’s hot plate in anticipation of his upcoming college days. One of the inspirations and motivation to start this site.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

Helping my mom in an assembly line sort of way with my sisters, I am the eldest of 6 kids.  One kneading, one forming perfect size dough balls and me rolling out dough with my mom tending the stove.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

I love my heat resistant spatulas!

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

Hmm so many but one I didn’t grow up on and I love is matzo ball soup. It’s sooooo goood!

Who is your cooking inspiration?

Dishes from growing up, farmers markets’ in season ingredients and food memories that trigger inspiration to develop new recipes like the Frozen Strawberry Yogurt.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

In my daal (Indian lentil stew) I cook garlic cloves whole not minced. When sauteing garlic, minced, the risk is you will burn it or over caramelize and it will become bitter. This way you cook it whole and mash it at the end when garlic is cooked and soft and avoiding disasters.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

In addition to the Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, perfect for the season, and Majadra – Rice and Lentils – an ideal vegetarian dish. A staple in every household in Israel as well as the entire Middle East.

Shulie Madnick is a recipe developer, food writer and photographer and a cooking instructor. She writes about food at FoodWanderings.blogspotcom Follow her on Twitter: @foodwanderings and Facebook.

The blogger spotlight is posted every Friday and gives us a little peek into the person behind the blog.  We are grateful to learn about all the wonderful bloggers out there and hope they continue to help us grow this kosher food community.

Today we shine our spotlight on Melissa Kaye Apter from LilMissCakes.com.  Melissa has become a favorite guest blogger of ours with her ever popular Peanut Butter and Jelly Hamantashen and Passover Chocolate Chip Cookies.  She has been baking from a very young age and clearly is also artistically talented (take a look at some of the cakes on her site).  Now it is time to find out more about Melissa.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

My blog is a place I created to share my adventures in baking.  I am always baking for customers, family and friends and figured that I might as well share my tips, tricks, and recipes with those that are interested.

Blondies

What is your earliest cooking memory?

My earliest kitchen memory is very vivid and clear to me.  I remember baking banana bread with my mom.  I must have been 5 or six years old, but I clearly remember mixing the batter by hand and licking the bowl.

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?

I absolutely cannot live without my stand mixer.  It kneads my challah dough, whips my egg whites, and gently blends my cake batter.  Doing all these things by hand would be quite the workout!

Oatmeal Cream Pies

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?

Although I am known as a baker, and technically dessert is my specialty, I also love to cook.  I love to cook everything and anyththing.  I guess I would say that my favorite Kosher dish to create is potato kugel.  Making a good heimeshe potato kugel is a real science!  I had been struggling to make the perfect potato kugel for years before I got it right.

Who is your cooking inspiration?

My mom is my kitchen inspiration.  Although she is a great cook and is always cooking new and exciting dishes, my earliest memories are of my mom and me baking for the holidays.  I loved baking hamentaschen for Purim and sugar cookies for Chanukkah.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

My best kitchen trick is for baking perfectly even and round cookies.  To keep your cookies looking perfectly uniform, try using a small cookie scoop to portion your cookie dough out.  Not only will it speed up your baking process, but your cookies will look so professional!

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

I would love to share my pareve recipes for Blondies, Oatmeal Cream Pies, and Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

Melissa is a classically trained pastry chef who uses her expertise to create delicious kosher desserts. She started her baking blog, Lil’ Miss Cakes Lil’ Miss Cakes, to share her easy kosher pareve recipes and over the top cookies and cake creations.  Yum!

Today, our spotlight is on Amy Spiro of BakingandMistaking.com, she loves to bake and doesn’t mind sharing some of her mistakes for all of us to learn from.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:
Well, my blog is called Baking and Mistaking, and as you can guess it focuses 90% on baking and desserts. I always loved making desserts and cookies and cakes and all sorts of sweet things, and I would constantly take photos of everything I made and send them to friends. One day my friend said “why don’t you just start a blog!” and the rest is history. Now I’ve been blogging for a little over three years, including a 6 month stint in a pastry course at the Jerusalem Culinary Institute!

Wow, sounds exciting how you decided to attend the Jerusalem Culinary Institute and what was it like?
I’d always had a semi-professional interest in food because I work as a food writer and journalist, and the timing was right for me to take the course so I figured, why not! We learned a lot of different techniques and recipes and traditional pastries from laminated dough for croissants and bourekas to pulled sugar for decoration and of course tackling the classic French macarons. I definitely have some great base recipes to turn to for inspiration and a starting-point for innovations, though I don’t make any of the very complicated stuff on a regular basis. For now I’m not working in a professional kitchen, rather I’m still an editor and food writer, for places like The Jerusalem Post, the New York Jewish Week and a variety of websites, but anything is possible in the future!

What is your earliest cooking memory?
Hmm, I’m really not sure. I definitely have vague memories of cutting out and decorating cookies at home when I was little. I remember one time when I was about 5 and I went with a summer camp to visit a challah making factory of some sort – and of course we got to make our own little challahs and take them home. Otherwise I’m pretty terrible at childhood memories!

What is your favorite kitchen implement / utensil / gadget?
Well, I have a digital scale which is really crucial to great baking results. I also love my whisk, and my microplane grater for zesting citrus fruits. Having a stand mixer makes everything easier but I’ve created some pretty impressive things in some seriously lacking kitchens, so just know that it isn’t a necessity!

What’s your favorite kosher dish to cook?
I’m a sucker for a great potato kugel. I have a very favorite recipe, which I am able to find in the cookbook since the page is so warped and dirty with food and dried out stains. The book opens right to it. But as long as it’s extra crispy on top and bottom and smooth and creamy in the middle – I’m sold.

Who is your cooking inspiration?
I definitely don’t have just one or even just 10. I have a stack of cookbooks about my height that I love to flip through, plus tons and tons of blogs I read every day for inspiration, and I even love watching the Food Network and Cooking Channel. Plus I get a whole bunch of food magazines – basically, I take inspiration from anywhere!

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:
Ah, where to start. Well, first off, make sure you have all the ingredients and tools you need for a recipe before you start. I’m sure you’ll roll your eyes at that one, but I’ve definitely dashed out to the store or a neighbor mid-cooking for an ingredient. Plus – as I said earlier, definitely invest in a microplane grater. It’s perfect on any kind of citrus fruit but it’s also great for putting a little bit of freshly ground ginger, nutmeg or cinnamon on anything.

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?
I’m sharing a recipe for Pink Lemonade Bars, which is a really delicious cookie bar with a jam and lemon filling that is a great way to have a taste of summer in the middle of winter. The other recipe I’m sharing is for a classic Linzer Torte, with a butttery dough made from ground hazelnuts and almonds flavored with lemon, cloves and cinnamon before becoming the base for a sweet slick of jam. Both very tasty options!

Amy is a writer, blogger, reporter and kitchen entrepreneur. I love to bake, I’ll try anything once, sometimes even twice if I’m feeling a spurt of patience (rare, but occasional) and I make plenty of mistakes along the way. Check out my blog, BakingandMistaking.com

Yosef Silver is the blogger behind This American Bite, a relatively new blog devoted to healthy seasonal recipes.

Tell us about your blog and how you got started:

I’ve been blogging since September of last year, and I started to record my own recipes and dishes – more often than not I make it up as I go along and had no record of how to recreate the finished project.  I’m not new to blogging, just to food-blogging, so this seemed like a logical next step.

What is your earliest cooking memory?

My whole life has been food-centric.  Even being raised by a single parent, my mother would cook for six to eight people every night and people would show up and dine with us!  Breaking the fast after Yom Kippur was always a big family event, and even when we moved to a new city, our home was the destination for the break-fast.

I tend to cook different dishes all the time, one of my go-to chicken dishes for Friday Night would have to be Chicken Marbella.  It’s possibly the easiest dish I can make and people always enjoy!

Who is your cooking inspiration?

My mother had a straight forward philosophy – if she was going to raise me to grow up and leave home one day, I needed to know how to cook for myself.  Food reminds us of our parents, grand parents and for the lucky few of us, great grandparents too – it’s our way of connecting the next generation with the people that got us to the point we’re at today.

Please share a favorite cooking tip or trick with our readers:

If making chicken soup with wings, wrap them in cheesecloth to ensure a clear broth

Which recipes are you sharing with us today?

Main Image – Tyler Inspired Swedish Style Meatballs

Lemony Radish Soup

Polenta and Black Bean Tamale Pie

To see more about recipes and articles contributed by Yosef, check out his JoyofKosher.com profile – Yosef Silver.

Author of This American Bite, Yosef lives in Overland Park, KS with his wife and son.  As passionate cook, card-carrying foodie, and an active WeightWatcher, Yosef loves to re-create restaraunt meals in his home kitchen. As a parent, healthy food is a priority and most home-cooked meals from the “American Bite” full of seasonal, local produce.  You can follow Yosef on Twitter @ysilver.