Succos is a time of joy – really. But the cooking can be a little overwhelming. Here are some possible 2nd day menus and recipes to help relieve you of the burden of planning. (Sorry we can’t come to your house and do the cooking for you!) Enjoy and remember “Vesemachta b’chagecha!”

Second Night Succos:
French Onion Soup
Carmelized Onion and Mushroom Pizza
Caesar Salad
Honey Glazed Salmon
White Hot chocolate
Biscotti

Second Day Succos:
Cappuccino Mushroom Soup
Succulent Ribs
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Zucchini Kugel
Piperade with Olives
Chocolate Molten Cakes

Salad
2 large heads Romaine lettuce
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups chunky croutons (homemade are the best)
For the Dressing
Dressing
1 extra large egg yolk at room temperature
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
5 -8 anchovy fillets (optional)
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
2 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ cups good mild olive oil
½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Wash the lettuce leaves carefully and spin-dry in a salad spinner. Stack the leaves on a cutting board and cut them crosswise into 1 ½ inch lices. Place them in a large mixing bowl.

For the dressing, place the egg yolk, mustard, garlic, anchovies, lemon juice, salt, and pepper into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a stell blade. Process until smooth. With the food processor running, slowly pour the olive oil through the feed tube and process until thick. Add ½ cup grated parmesan cheese and pulse 3 times.

Toss the lettuce with enough dressing to moisten well. Add 1 cup grated parmesan and toss. Add the croutons and toss with the rest of the salad. Serve on chilled salad plates.

Most of our fast days are days of mourning. They are imbued with sadness and the pain of klal Yisroel. Not so Yom Kippur. It is actually a day of joy, a wonderful opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start a fresh. Before the fast begins, we are obligated to eat a Seudas Mitzvah. Here are some suggestions for that meal:
It is traditional to eat soup with kreplach. This gourmet kosher cook confesses to using the frozen ones. I also confess to making a simple, hearty meal for Erev Yom Kippur and not an elaborate or elegant one.

Menu:
Semolina Bread
Breaded Chicken
Mashed Potatoes
Creamed Spinach
Watermelon

It is better not to have a sweet dessert before the fast since sugar makes you thirsty.

Adapted from the Silver Palate Cookbook

Ingredients
2 teaspoons yeast
2 cups warm water
3 cups semolina flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 to 3 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 to 4 tablespoons cornmeal
1 egg

Preparation
Pour water over yeast in a bowl and allow yeast to proof. Add semolina flour and salt and stir well. Add 2 cups of bread flour and stir. Continue adding and kneading flour until dough is smooth and elastic. Pour olive oil over dough and turn to coat. Cover with towel and set aside until dough has tripled in bulk – about 2 hours.

Punch down dough, knead briefly and cover and let rise again until double.

Punch down the dough again, cut it into thirds, and shape each third into a thin loaf about 24 inches long. Sprinkle a baking sheet with 3 to 4 tablespoons cornmeal and arrange the loaves on the sheet leaving as much room between the loaves as possible. Cover and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Beat egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush on the loaves. Slash loaves decoratively on top with a sharp knife, making diagonal cuts.

Slide the baking sheet onto the middle rack of the oven and reduce heat to 375 degrees. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until loaves are brown and sound hollow when thumped. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

On Rosh HaShanah we need a lot of things. We need to evaluate the past year and make plans for growth and change in the future. We need to try to understand what the shofar call really means and work on crowning Hashem King. We need to imbue our tefillos with real cavana and renew our focus on our relationship with our Creator. And we need recipes – there are a lot of meals to make. Since we can’t help you with your spiritual lives, we are trying to ease your cooking challenge by offering yet another possible Yom Tov menus and recipes. This is what I am making for the second night.

Roasted Vegetable Soup
Honey Game Hens
Sweet Potatoes with Carmelized Apples
Roasted Asparagus
Pretty Little Honey Cakes
Harvest Pie

Not that long ago, I might have thought that I was qualified for the title foodie – after all, I like food. But once you have lived with someone who reads recipe books like they’re novels, who creates menus like a football coach creates plays and who ponders food combinations and possibilities the way a chemist plays with their beakers and bunson burners, you realize that true foodies are a breed apart. Julia Child and her alter ego Julie Powell were foodies.

This film is a delightful and warm journey of two very determined women who are incapable of living the lives of quiet desperation that others might have led in their situation. Their story begins with the universal feeling of being lost and in search of purpose and ends with salvation discovered no further away then your kitchen door.

Both Julia Child and Julie Powell follow their spouses to foreign cities allowing them to pursue their careers. Ms. Child has been brought to paradise in the form of a wonderful flat in post war Paris, while Ms. Powell is left to her own defenses in post 9-11 Queens. Ms. Child greets her neighbors with a big smile and “Bonjour Fredric!” Ms. Powell avoids making eye contact with anyone and tries to ignore the sounds of the trucks passing under her bedroom window at night. But after a slightly heavy handed scene of realizing her friends are all seemingly self-important if not fairly shallow, Julie Powell decides to attempt to make all of Julia Childs recipes while writing a blog about her daily challenge. It is no easy task. Along the way she discovers the strength required to make self-imposed deadlines, boil a lobster and debone a chicken… She’s our generations “Rosie the Riveter”, and since she’s also Amy Adams, she’s really cute as she stands to conquer her mother’s pessimism, her own self-doubt and her need to know what Julia would do.

Meryl Streep is wonderful as Julia Child. Of course Meryl Streep is always wonderful, but making the shrill voice and alcohol laden life of Julia Child sympathetic and vulnerable isn’t easy, but ultimately very rewarding for her audience.

Given today’s genre of “women’s stories” perhaps the most remarkable facet of Julia and Julie was that they didn’t need to leave their husbands or have torrid affairs to break out of their confines, but rather they worked hard to become very good at something that gave them joy and in the process brought them closer to their husbands and to the sense of fulfillment they so eagerly sought.

As the husband of an equally determined woman, who can bone a chicken, change a diaper, check her Google analytics and whip up a lemon dill sauce along with her Yerushalmi kugel, I found this story and movie to be a feast of enormous satisfaction.

Bon Appetit!

More kosher recipes at GourmetKosherCooking.com

Dicing vegetables or any food with a dull knife can be a real challenge, not to mention very dangerous. I like to sharpen all my knives in August before the high intensity cooking for the holidays.

The best way to sharpen a knife is to hire a professional who uses a sharpening stone. Rabbi Chatzinoff in New York says that you can use knife sharpening stones and the professional’s wheels to sharpen clean knives, and they do not get treifed up. Most Farmer’s Markets have professional sharpeners who come on market day and sharpen knives for as little as $2.50 per knife. Also, check for stores that provide the service in your town. Alternatively, most butchers use professionals and will often provide the name of their service to their customers

For more great kosher recipes, visit www.gourmetkoshercooking.com

With so much in the media about “going green” and limiting our carbon footprint, I have been thinking about how difficult it is to contribute to the “go green” lifestyle with a large family. We drive bigger cars with less fuel efficiency; we use more water and have more garbage than the average household. So how can we help keep this world beautiful for our children and grandchildren?

Here are three simple ways that large families can help.

1) Buy reusable water bottles for your family. They can be purchased at www.sigg.com, Costco, and Target.

2) Use dishes and forgo serving children on disposable paper and plastic. If you have small children and need durable tableware, check out what IKEA sells www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50096905. It is dishwasher safe, bright and colorful and very reasonably priced.

3) Invest in a good roasting pan. These can be a bit pricey but worth every penny. First, they conduct heat much better than the aluminum trays so your food cooks evenly and more timely and they are very easy to clean. Image how many aluminum pans you throw away in just one month!

For more Kosher recipes, visit www.gourmetkoshercooking.com

I’m all for time-saving gadgets (see earlier blog about immersion blenders?!) but the amount of time required to knead challah by hand is actually so minimal that it seems hard to justify the extra cleaning, effort and expense of a machine.

Not to mention that the machines are frequently too small for the quantities we need to make.

So don’t be intimidated. Making challah by hand is as fast, as delicious and as easy as using a machine. You will only have one bowl and one spoon to clean (and maybe a whisk and some measuring cups).

To begin, check out one of the challah recipes in the Shabbos section.

For more recipes, visit www.gourmetkoshercooking.com

I love Caesar salad. I am not sure what it is exactly, maybe the
crisp, cold romaine lettuce, or the freshly shaved parmesean cheese,
or the toasty homemade croutons, or maybe the dressing, bold with a
hint of anchovy but just a hint so one may not even be able to
identify the anchovy.

But what is it about Caesar salad? I have yet to find a good one in a
restaurant. So many restaurants do not even spell it correctly on the
menu. I can understand that a meat restaurant would struggle with this
and in substitution offer something like a creamy garlic mayonnaise
dressing, usually overdressed and a bit under-chilled for my taste,
but dairy restaurants? What’s the problem? I’ve tried so many that
my husband has requested that I stop ordering it.

If you are a fan of Caesar salad try the following recipe adapted
from Ina Garten. It’s a big hit in my home and has that authentic
Caesar flavor. If you cannot get great homemade croutons from your
local bakery or bagel store, make your own with leftover challah.
They are worth the effort and can be used for more than one salad.

Caesar Salad

2 large heads Romaine lettuce
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups chunky croutons (homemade are the best)

For the Dressing

1 extra large egg yolk at room temperature
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
5 -8 anchovy fillets (optional)
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
2 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ cups good mild olive oil
½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Wash the lettuce leaves carefully and spin-dry in a salad spinner.
Stack the leaves on a cutting board and cut them crosswise into 1 ½
inch lices. Place them in a large mixing bowl.

For the dressing, place the egg yolk, mustard, garlic, anchovies,
lemon juice, salt, and pepper into the bowl of a food processor fitted
with a stell blade. Process until smooth. With the food processor
running, slowly pour the olive oil through the feed tube and process
until thick. Add ½ cup grated parmesan cheese and pulse 3 times.

Toss the lettuce with enough dressing to moisten well. Add 1 cup
grated parmesan and toss. Add the croutons and toss with the rest of
the salad. Serve on chilled salad plates.