| A Heaping Scoop |

A Heaping Scoop

By | November 4, 2020

Roasted Squash

Slice up any type of squash. Drizzle with olive oil + maple syrup.

Sprinkle with brown sugar + smoked paprika + chili powder + salt. Roast at 400°F (200°C) until tender and caramelized.

—Chanie Apfelbaum

FT, HELP ME!!

I’m trying to cut down on salt. What are some ﬂavor punch ingredients that will keep my food tasting great?

As I mentioned in my article on cooking salts, Mrs. Dash’s Garlic and Herb or Table Blend is fantastic as a general sub for salt. You can put it on meat, chicken, ﬁsh, salad, soup, eggs — basically anything. And it’s as easy as giving the bottle a shake.

If you want to work harder and go gourmet, various alliums add ﬂavor punch — shallots, scallions, garlic, yellow or white onion, etc. Roasted or fried, they’ll add mild sweetness and depth of ﬂavor; raw they’ll add a sharpness that can take the place of salt. Cut them very thin if serving raw so the ﬂavor isn’t too over-powering. So many chefs ruin a great dish with huge pieces of onion that are just a bit too sharp, in my culinary opinion!

—Sarah Faygie Berkowitz

Review It!

I recently got a clay tagine pot. It’s a traditional Moroccan cooking vessel that’s used for braising because of its ability to retain moisture. I love slow cooking and, even though the same results can be achieved with a cast-iron Dutch oven, there’s something authentic about cooking in this type of pot. I imagine myself cooking just like my great-grandmothers did in Morocco. Also, it doubles as a seriously beautiful serving piece.

—Sina Mizrahi

Issue 709

I substituted the chocolate pudding with vanilla pudding in the Fully Loaded Chocolate Chip Cups, and it was a winner! Without fail, I usually ﬁnd a keeper in the Family Table recipes. The Beer and Beef Soup and the Succos Soup were the other winners from this season’s Family Table supplement.

—Shuli Nakdimen, Monsey, NY

JUST ASKIN’

If I didn’t plan anything for dinner and it’s 4 p.m., I ______?

It’s kind of embarrassing, but these are my choices (depending on how starving the kids are and how quickly I need it ready):

Scrambled eggs and Israeli salad in pita (the kids love it and eat it right up).
Defrost schnitzel in a bowl of water and grill on a grill pan with spices.
Add pasta or frozen fries as a side.

Sometimes I’ll pull out a frozen container of soup to start them off — it gives me more time, and I can push off supper if they ﬁll up a bit.

—Faigy Grossman

Ok, Quick:

Coffee or tea?

Coffee.

Lately, because I lost my sense of smell due to COVID, I can’t taste coffee, but I can taste some teas. But really, come on, coffee.

—Chaia Frishman

HERE’S A HALACHAH

ANSWERED BY RABBI DONIEL NEUSTADT

Question:

If I stab a pickle with a ﬂeishig knife, is the entire jar now ﬂeishigs? Can I eat another pickle from the jar with a milchig meal?

Discussion:

Some poskim consider sour pickles to be “sour fruit,” which may have the status of a davar charif, a sharp-tasting food. If so, the one pickle that was actually stabbed with the knife should be considered ﬂeishigs. That means that this particular pickle should not be eaten together with a dairy food. It does not mean that you are not allowed to eat dairy food after eating that pickle. The rest of the pickles in the jar remain pareve. Even if the knife that was used to stab the pickle wasn’t a ben yomo, meaning that it wasn’t used to cut hot ﬂeishigs in the previous 24 hours, you should still avoid eating that speciﬁc pickle together with dairy food. If, however, the pickle in question became mixed together with other foods (either with other pickles or in a salad, etc.), it may be eaten along with dairy.

(Originally featured in Family Table, Issue 716)

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