What do you like about the holiday of Shavuot?

Several fun things:

It coincides with great weather, lots of spring fruit and produce in season.

Fun foods, sort of like a “Brunch à Toute Heure!”

It gives us a license to cook and serve all those dairy dishes we love to hate, although to be perfectly honest, I try to balance it by making dairy-free versions of several dairy dishes, just because I have a heart: My dairy-free cheesecake is so fabulous I never go back to the dairy version!

Do you stay up all night to learn? and Do you have any good food tips to help keep people awake and interested throughout the night?

hmmm, food tips to stay awake? Coffee and lemonade will do the trick.

Eating at night is my nemesis.  So forgive me if I don’t recommend anything. I will only say that the Shavouot night of learning is very big in our Sephardi tradition.  We used to host it every year, and it was always packed to the rafters, not only because my father Z”L was a great Chazan, but because my mother is a magnificent cook and baker, and she used to bake up a storm, sending the men home with a spectacular doggie bag for their wives! Who wouldn’t stay up for THAT?

At your cooking demo for your Shavuot menu, included below, you teach how to make polenta as a casserole with sauce, what are other ways to use polenta?

The first rule is to please ignore those insipid cooked polenta rolls you find in the supermarket: Making the polenta base takes minutes!

You will love to explore all the various ways to enjoy polenta, as it is not only delicious but very nutritious, and gluten-free to boot. You can:

• Eat the polenta as is, hot and un-assembled (in other words, only the first step of the recipe) as the grain for a main course.
• Thin it with a little water, garlic and minced basil, maybe a couple diced tomatoes for a great soup
• Cut the cooled polenta in cubes or triangles and put it right under your broiler flame
• Make other fillings: Roasted diced vegetables (mushrooms, eggplant, red pepper, fennel, artichoke hearts, etc…..
• Make it dairy-free. Cook it in water or dairy-free milk, and/or substitute some white wine for some of the water or milk.

You tell people not to throw the kitchen sink into their salads, that less is more, why do you feel that way?

A dish should tell a story, just like in everyone’s respective field, every presentation should tell a story. A story with too many details just isn’t a story: It’s tiresome!

By making the selection short and sweet, you give an opportunity to showcase your ingredients, and let one, two or three, be the stars. It will also give you the chance to vary: Variety is important, and won’t happen if you throw everything in.

Below, taken from my cookbook:

“Pick only a few ingredients and a few colors, leaving plenty of room for variety on other salad days. You can even select one ingredient and do perfectly well: all romaine or all watercress and so on. If you are choosing salad as
a main course, you can make the selection a little, not much, longer. How short can the selection get?

Here are just a few suggestions that seem so ridiculously simple you might not think of them by yourself, each starring just one salad ingredient:

• a whole bunch of celery, all ribs peeled and very thinly sliced, oil and lemon, salt and pepper to taste
• a whole head of fennel, ditto (no peeling); lots of red radishes, very thinly sliced, with brown rice vinegar and salt

Enjoy these recipes for your Shavuot Menu or any time:

Cream of Watercress

Mushroom Stuffed Tilapia Rolls

Polenta Casserole au Gratin

Endive, Apple and Walnut Salad

Tiramisu

Shavuos is just around the corner. Quick – what do you think of first? Me too. Images of cheesecakes start dancing before my eyes, calling my name as they do every year. I love them and they love me so much they just plant themselves on my hips, forever – now that’s love. This year Shavuos begins the evening of June 7 and ends the evening of the 9th. I wonder, how many cheesecakes I can squeeze into 48 hours?

Creamy Polenta

Have I got a menu for you! It’s not all cheesecake, unfortunately, but I will start with that. I know you are not supposed to start with dessert, but in my family, it’s our solemn tradition. No really – my mother always ate her chocolate mousse first ‘cuz she was worried she wouldn’t have room for it at the end of the meal. Smart lady, that Momma of mine; why should I tamper with her genius?

Coeur a la Creme

So to honor her, and my love of cheesecake, I tried something super sensationally different than your everyday ho hum cheesecake: Coeurs à la Crème with Rhubarb Compote — creamy, smooth and so absolutely decadent. Coeur is French for heart and it’s traditionally made in a heart-shaped mold (so cute!) Be still my heart, this baby is so bad it’s GOOD! I confess that I use regular ramekins or bowls instead of heart-shaped ones, but if you’ve got heart-shaped molds, go for the gold!

Not ready to start with dessert at your Shavuos feast? Oh, okay – you can always begin with bread – my Four Cheese Flatbread with Basil. How can you go wrong with FOUR cheeses? Then you can dig into that Coeurs à la Crème…

Sundried Tomato and Brie Stuffed Mushroom

No, I mean, then you serve Sun Dried Tomato and Brie Stuffed Mushrooms – featuring the divine smoky, “meaty” flavored Portobello caps, and then Coeurs…no, Wilted Spinach with Crispy Garlic and Creamy Polenta. And speaking of creamy, did I mention Coeurs à la Crème for dessert?

Have you ever tried Coeurs à la Crème? Will you now?

Shavuot is just two weeks away, and just like every year my phone is ringing off the hook. As it is customary to eat dairy foods on this holiday, it is no wonder that everybody should think of calling their Italian friend and asking for recipes.

After all, Italian Jews (and Italians in general), unlike their Ashkenazi counterparts, have never been huge meat-eaters. For Jews in Italy, meat used to be so hard to get that they would add vegetables to meatballs and meatloaves to “stretch” it.

On the other hand, cheese was always widely available, in many shapes and forms, and included in countless recipes.  The most versatile among cheeses were always ricotta and parmigiano.  Technically, Ricotta should not even be called a cheese, but a cheese by-product: it’s made by re-heating the wheys left over from cheese-making.  By the way, this is why ricotta is naturally low in fat (about 5%, against 40+ % in cheddar) – no need to buy the “fat-free’ kind! For its light creamy texture, and its delicious but neutral flavor,  which can be made salty or sweet depending on the ingredients added, ricotta is one of the most versatile ingredients in Italian cuisine.  Mixed with vegetables, spices and parmigiano cheese, it can be used to stuff ravioli, lasagnas, manicotti, and savory pies. Blended into smooth creaminess with the addition of sugar and eggs, it’s the star ingredient in some of the most famous Italian desserts: cannoli, cassata and crostata di ricotta.   And it is the star of the show in one of my favorite desserts for Shavuot,  Cassola (Ricotta Souffle). When I was a child, one of my favorite treats was a bowl of ricotta mixed with a little honey, sprinkled with cinnamon on top! Simple, decadent, AND healthy! Ricotta can also be substituted for cream in many dishes if you are watching your diet.

But no discussion of Dairy Italian food would be complete without mentioning the king of Italian cheeses, Parmigiano Reggiano.  Parmigiano has been made since the Middle ages, in a specific area of North-eastern Italy, using more or less the same artisanal methods. Which include aging for a whole year (as opposed to the generic American ‘Parmesan’, sold pre-grated). This magnificent cheese, delicious in chunks drizzled with honey or balsamic vinegar, can also add complexity and depth to most savory dairy specialties. In this case, it should be grated, not shredded, to blend more evenly with the rest of the ingredients. Real Parmigiano Reggiano, now available in many kosher stores, also boasts many health benefits: being made from natural part-skim milk, it’s low in fat and sodium and high in many vitamins and minerals. The long aging also breaks down the milk proteins, making it more digestible, which is why it’s usually the first dairy product to be enjoyed by Italian babies, before yogurt and cow’s milk, added to their oatmeal or vegetable purees.  Parmigiano blends beautifully with the vegetables in this Pizza D’erbe (Herbs Pie).

Pizza D'erbe

All three recipes included in this feature are based on either ricotta or parmigiano, and all three are so delicious that while Jewish in origins they have long been enjoyed by Italians of all religious denominations. The creamy Cassola, cheesecake, a very old Jewish recipe, is now widely considered the standard dessert for a truly Roman Christmas’ dinner!

Buon Appetito!

Pasta Roulade with Ricotta and Spinach

Quiche is a perfect make-ahead dish for Shavuot. If you’re looking for a great kosher quiche recipe, here are 5 of my favorites including my foolproof Quick & Kosher Cheese Quiche.

Kosher Quiche Recipes

Crowd Pleasing Kosher Cheese Quiche	Quick & Kosher Cheese Quiche Crustless Quiche Potato Crust Smoked White Fish Quiche Spinach-Mushroom Quiche Spinach-Ricotta Quiche

Watch me make my Quick & Kosher Cheese Quiche on our YouTube Channel.

Happy Shavuot!

What are you making for Shavuot? Leave us a comment below!

Shavuot doesn’t have to be exclusively cheesecake and blintzes, but just in case you’re looking for a great kosher cheesecake recipe, here are 5 of my favorites including two Quick & Kosher low-fat versions.

Shavuot Cheesecake Recipes

	Quick & Kosher Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Quick & Kosher Low-Fat Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Quick & Kosher Low-Fat Lemon Cheesecake Savory Vegetable Cheesecake Squash Cheesecake Bars

Happy Shavuot!

For more, head over to Joy of Kosher.com Recipe Finder for a huge selection of kosher recipes.

Got a great cheesecake or blintz? Let’s hear about it in the comments!

Shavuot meals lend themselves to laid-back entertaining. The holiday is a great opportunity to having guests without fear of busting your budget.

After Passover, Shavuot, a much easier holiday, is a welcome change.  Instead of long seders and heavy meat meals, Shavuot’s simplicity (as in not having to make the house chametz-free) and dairy food are reason enough to rejoice.  The fact that we are celebrating the giving of the Torah is an added bonus!

Here are five ways you can pull off show-stopping Shavuot meals without stretching your wallet:

1. Make it Italian

Bring out your checkered tablecloth and best bottle of sparkling wine as you present your guests with an Italian-inspired pasta and salad bar.  After all, what entrée is cheaper than a box of pasta?

Ahead of time, cook a few boxes of noodles in different shapes and heat two or three different pastas sauces such as marinara, Alfredo or Romesco.  Adorn the pasta buffet with shakers of grated kosher Parmesan cheese, garlic salt, and Italian herbs and small bowls of roasted vegetables, sun-dried tomatoes and olives.

Adjoining the pasta buffet, fashion your salad bar beginning with a large serving bowl filled with ready-to-eat lettuce, surrounded by small bowls of cut vegetables, nuts, and croutons, and a cruet (or two) of salad dressing.

Super Saver Tip

To circumvent excess leftovers which often accompany a buffet, serve a home-style meal. Serving a big bowl of pasta or lasagna, a large Greek or Caesar salad, and tray of garlic bread to the table will surely win over your guests.

2. Make it a Brunch

Why save brunch for Sunday mornings?  Shavuot is a wonderful opportunity to bring out low-cost fare like bagels and eggs.  To up the ante, offer made-to-order omelets and blintzes. Give guests the choice of omelet fillings like mushrooms, diced peppers, or cheese and spinach.  Use two frying pans so you can make two omelets at a time so guests won’t wait too long for their entrée.

For blintzes, prepare cheese and potato blintzes ahead of time, but fry them on demand, with various fruit sauces and sour cream as condiments.

Super Saver Tip

Leftover bread doubles as a tasty brunch entrée.  A few weeks before the holiday, freeze leftover bread and then take it out of the freezer to make a bread casserole; panzanella, an Italian bread salad; or French toast fingers.

3. Cheese and Wine Tasting

To maintain the light and seasonal atmosphere of a Shavuot meal, present your guests with an entrée of quiche, paired with a gorgeous fruit and cheese platter.  Instead of purchasing a pre-made platter, buy whole fruit and blocks of three or four different cheeses.  Slice the fruit and cheese yourself and artfully display them on your prettiest serving tray.

If you are considering serving multi-grain crackers and cream cheese, make your own flavored cheese spreads.  Simply mix cream cheese with a teaspoon or two of milk with additional flavorings like fruit purees, roasted garlic and scallions, and lemon zest and herbs.

Super Saver Tip

If your guests suggest bringing a bottle of wine, take them up on the offer; it will be a fine accompaniment for the cheese.

4. Cheesecake Social

Instead of inviting guests for a Shavuot luncheon or dinner, host a cheesecake social in the afternoon.

Cheesecake can get expensive so instead of making a bunch of cakes, make one or two batches and divide the batter amongst mini muffin pans or mini tart tins.  Adorn with fruit and candy and you’ll be amazed at how far this trick will stretch a simple batter of cheesecake.

Super Saver Tip:

To simplify preparations even more, prepare “no-bake” cheesecakes.  Place vanilla wafers in the bottom of mini muffin tins.  Top with a blend of whipped cream cheese, sugar and vanilla, and a dollop of fruit preserves or fresh berries.  Refrigerate until serving.

5. I Scream for Ice Cream!

Make-your-own-sundaes will be a delight for kids of all ages.  Throw a Shavuot bash where guests create their own icy delights.  Present your company with ice cream in different flavors, bowls of toppings and whipped cream.

Who doesn’t love a holiday when you can make your own sundaes?!

Super Saver Tip

Look for “By One Get One Free” deals for ice cream.  This is the perfect time to use those sales to their advantage.

Recipes

Spinach Mushroom Quiche

Panzanella (Tuscan Bread Salad)

Jewish holiday menus tend to be kosher meat heavy. Then there’s Shavuot. Arriving with the first fruits of the spring harvest, Shavuot is the time to reconnect with kosher dairy dining.

If you love dairy, this is your time of year because the holiday of Shavuot is next on the calendar of Jewish holidays.  The holiday of Shavuot begins on the evening of May 18th, 2010. For those who are lactose intolerant, get your Lactaid ready, because this holiday might otherwise do your stomach in.  Yes, it is when we roll out our favorite kosher cheesecakes, blintzes, kosher pastries, quiches or as the Israelis do, pashtida (similar to a quiche, but usually baked in square not round pans and often without a crust).

One day in Israel and two days outside. Shavuot is primarily associated with our joy in receiving the Torah.  It is also one of the three important biblical pilgrimage festivals (in Hebrew, shalosh regalim … the other two being Sukkot and Pesach).  And, as we recently discussed, it is the end of the Omer, the counting of the 50 days between the second day of Passover and Shavuot.

As with other Jewish holidays, Shavuot seems to have aliases. In biblical times, “Hag ha Shavuot” (week is shavuah in Hebrew) marked the beginning of the new growing season and was also called “Festival of Reaping” (Hag ha Katzir) and Day of the First Fruits (Yom ha Bikurim), when Jews made the pilgrimage to the holy Temple in Jerusalem with offerings of the season’s first fruits.

Dairy and Then Some – How to Eat on Shavuot

Enough with the history, back to food.  You may be asking … what is up with all the dairy?  Well, like the joke says, “If you put enough rabbis in one room to solve a problem, they may all have different answers.”

Some of my favorite explanations:

• We eat dairy to symbolize the land of Israel as the “Land flowing with milk and honey,” as is described in Exodus.
• Some sage discovered that the Hebrew word for milk, chalav, has the numerical value of 40 (in Hebrew numerals), which represents the number of days and nights Moshe was on Mt. Sinai.
• And … when the Jews received the Torah, they were told that from then on they must eat meat that had only been ritually slaughtered.  But, as the Torah was received on Shabbat, they couldn’t butcher or prepare any new food to eat that day, so they ate dairy until the end of Shabbat.

Shavuot in Israel – Flower Wreaths & Bourekas

Shavuot in Israel is a very tasty and colorful holiday.  Children in Israeli preschools (ganim) wear white to school, wreaths of flowers on their heads (learning to make a wreath or zer is a prized skill for many parents who also make them for their young children to wear at birthday celebrations) and bring baskets of fruits (fresh and dried) and vegetables and dairy treats.  And while in America and Israel a lot of blintzes are eaten, in Israel, bourekas (Sephardic cheese, mushroom, potato, etc … filled pastry pockets) are also devoured.

Not Everyone Goes Meat-Free on Shavuot

In certain communities eating dairy just doesn’t cut it as a yontif meal.  So, some will eat dairy during part of the Shavuot celebration and then later eat a meat dish (after the required kosher waiting period, of course).

For whatever direction you decide to go, dairy or meat, Shavuot is a great time to explore new and tasty recipes for all those luscious first of the season spring fruits and vegetables.

B’tayavon (bon appetit) and chag sameach!

Crisp salads and tangy dressings offer a perfect counterpoint to the many sweet dishes served on Shavuot.

If you read my Mother’s Day post, you know that my mom is the Salad Queen. While I don’t have quite her verve with salads, I do love them. Salads are quick, easy to make and they can be as bold or subtle in flavor as you like. Best of all, by adding protein, what starts as a first course can easily serve as a meal.

Here are 10 salads to try this Shavuot.

Shavuot Salads with Zing

	Avocado and Seared Tuna Steak Salad Arugula & Pear Salad Beet Salad Colorful Garden Salad w/ Creamy Pesto Dressing Claire’s Mixed Green Salad w/ Feta Vinaigrette Crunchy Pear & Celery Salad Goat Cheese Walnut Salad Roasted Apple & Cheddar Salad Sweet Tuna Salad Tuna Salad with Chickpeas & Fresh Dill

Happy Shavuot!

Try pizza with roasted vegetables on Shavuot. Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of time to eat cheesecake.

Not every recipe for Shavuos has to involve cheesecake (although I personally don’t mind if they do!)  In fact, not every recipe for Shavuos has to involve dessert!  Here is a possible fun main course option – pizza!  I like this grilled vegetable version but I would probably make a plain one also for the kids and other finicky eaters.

Recipe

Roasted Veggie Pizza

For Shavuot splash out with the perfect cheesecake. These 5 tips show you how.
Shavuot is a wonderful time of year. This special holiday celebrates the giving of the Torah, so dairy foods are traditional for festive yom tov meals because the rules for meat-eating were established only after the giving of the Torah. Many of us use Shavuot as the one time a year to experiment with decadent dairy dessert recipes, most notably the fabulous, rich and unique cheesecake.

Cheesecake recipes can be simple or complex, but as long as they’re not overbaked, they are uniformly delicious. We at CKCA prefer a simple-to-prepare cheesecake with very few ingredients, and we will share our Oreo® Experience cheesecake at the end of this article.

For Unforgettable Shavuot Cheesecake Remember the Eggs but Watch the Fat

The following 5 tips will help you make this year’s Shavuot cheesecake unforgettable:

1. Cheesecake is not cake, it’s custard!

The biggest mistake people make about cheesecake is assuming it’s a cake and should be baked as such, until dry and firm. Rather, cheesecake is a baked custard, an egg and sugar concoction, which happens to contain a smooth cheese, such as cream cheese, ricotta, cottage or farmer’s, to give it a unique and decadent depth of flavor. These cheeses only firm up after they have been chilled, so it is better to gently bake cheesecake at a low temperature, and leave it to cool completely before trying to cut or serve it.

2. The more eggs and fat in the recipe, the more you need a water bath to ensure even baking.

Baking cheesecakes with a shallow pan of water surrounding them is a classic French approach that ensures that the custard bakes slowly and evenly. If the egg volume in the recipe outweighs the cheese, it’s best to use the water bath so that you don’t end up with scrambled eggs at the outer corners of your cheesecake.

3. Minimize cheesecake cracks and imperfections with a gelatin product.

Until recently, kosher-keeping consumers had to simply live with the cracks and sunken middles associated with cheesecakes, but no more! With the introduction to the kosher market of real, kosher gelatin, commercially known as Kolatin®, your cheesecake will be photo-ready and perfect from the moment it comes out of the oven to until it is served. Just dissolve a packet of unflavored gelatin with a small amount of warm water, and add it to the eggs before beating them.

4. Mix cheesecake batter only until incorporated.

While well-beaten eggs are an important part of any custard, don’t mix your cheesecake batter too much beyond creating a smooth product, especially if your recipe contains flour. Since you are creating a delicate product, there’s no purpose to developing the gluten, and mixing the eggs too much with the other ingredients will only serve to bind and toughen up the cake’s chemical composition. As is often the case, less is more.

5. Watch the fat.

We don’t like to be the bad guy who is going to reduce the butter content of your favorite cheesecake that you make only once a year, but it’s important to try (at least) to keep control of the fat and calorie content of your cheesecake, to prevent one slice from packing a 2,000 calorie punch, an entire day’s worth of calories!

Often, there are unnecessary calories present in recipes for crust, so you can often reduce by half the melted butter or oil in those, or replace it with apple juice or unsweetened applesauce. In my Oreo® Experience Cheesecake, for example, I simply did not add melted butter to my ground Oreos, patted them into a pan, and then poured in my cheesecake batter without first baking the crust. The weight and moisture of the cheesecake batter more than helped build a crispy, crumbly crust, and no one missed the butter.

Choose Light Cream Cheese for a Moist and Fluffy Cheesecake

Neufchâtel cheese, which is also marketed as the low-fat version of cream cheese, works just as well if not better than full-fat cheese in most cheesecake recipes. It contains 33 percent less fat and more moisture than regular cream cheese, which makes for a slightly airier cheesecake, which I like. For thicker, sink-your-teeth-in New York-style cheesecakes, you may want to stick with full fat cream cheese. American farmer’s cheese is also a Neufchâtel-style cheese.

One can also be creative with cheesecake toppings to reduce the overall calorie count. As Shavuot is a great time of year for fresh berries, a plain low-fat cheesecake topped with fresh blueberries and raspberries can be amazingly decadent.

Recipe:

Liz’s Oreo® Experience Cheesecake

Got any cheesecake tips? Leave us a comment!