Roasted Broccoli

Spread 24 oz (680 g) frozen broccoli on a sheet pan. Sprinkle with ½ tsp salt and 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil. Bake at 425°F (220°C) for 25–30 minutes.

—Chaya Suri Leitner

FT, Help Me!!

Are wonton wrappers the same as spring roll wrappers?

Wonton wrappers are thicker and smaller than spring roll wrappers. Think of that shatter you get when you bite into a fresh spring roll — no wonton wrapper will do that!

—Michal Frischman

Staff Room Q:

What is an underappreciated fruit this time of year?

Importing and exporting has made it possible to get just about every fruit during every season. But I still implore you to eat in season! Watermelons come out in the summer when we need hydration, and citrus fruits, with their vitamin C, are great in the winter.

My favorite fruit for this time of year is the blood orange. To me, it tastes (and looks) like fruit punch. To stave off colds and add some flair to your desserts, try it out!

—Chaia Frishman

Okay, quick:

What’s your favorite snack or candy bar?

I know I should be saying fruit, but that’s not true as often as it should be. Most of the time you’ll find me breaking off chunks of a chocolate bar (72%, my favored kind, as noted in the past), or dunking graham crackers into a cup of coffee.

—Barbara Bensoussan

Technique:

I’m trying to go off sugar, but I have headaches all the time. Any advice?

Headaches can happen when you’re weaning yourself off sugar. If you’ve been eating a highly processed diet until now, it’s best to wean yourself off of processed sugar slowly. Additionally, unless you have a blood sugar or other medical issue that led a doctor to suggest that you completely eliminate sugar, it’s important to have some sugar in your diet — ideally from natural sources. Natural complex carbohydrates do contain sugar, but they also contain nutrients and fiber to help your body metabolize that sugar effectively. So my next tip would be to make sure that even though you’re avoiding refined sugar, you’re including enough natural “sugars” in the form of natural plant-based carbohydrates in your diet.

—Rorie Weisberg

Product review:

I was in Ikea a few years ago and picked up three of these tongs, which I use in the kitchen for everything! They’re lightweight and not cumbersome and nestle neatly into each other. It’s never a good idea to pierce meat or chicken, so these help you treat them much more gently!

—Chanie Neiman

Reader Feedback: (Issue 721)

Hazelnut Ripple Ice Cream with Chocolate Chip Cookie Chunks

The hazelnut cookie recipe looked so yummy, I had to make it. But since one of my family members is gluten free, I switched out the flour for almond flour at a 1:1 ratio. The cookies came out amazing. For all those readers who don’t want to miss out, these cookies can easily be made with almond flour and enjoyed by all.

—ChanaLea Lisza Jessel, Moshav Matisyahu

Halacha:

What needs to be added to onions to be able to leave them overnight?

According to Chazal, a ruach ra’ah, a “bad spirit,” rests upon a shelled egg, a peeled onion, or a peeled garlic clove that was left overnight, even in a closed container. Accordingly, those foods should not be eaten. But this is only so if the peeled egg, onion, or garlic clove were kept separate from any other food. Therefore, it is permitted to mix them together with other ingredients, such as vegetables, tuna fish, vinegar, oil, or mayonnaise, and leave them overnight. Even adding a significant amount of salt or sugar to the peeled foods is sufficient to permit them to be left overnight.

The ruach ra’ah only rests on an egg, onion, or garlic clove that were entirely peeled. If even a minuscule part of it was left unpeeled, or if even the root hairs on top of the onion or garlic remain, the food is not considered to be “peeled” and the prohibition does not apply.

Scallions are considered the same as onions as far as leaving them overnight.

-Answered by Rabbi Doniel Neustadt

(Originally featured in Family Table, Issue 728)