For those of you who don’t know, Bais Yaakov just came out with a beautiful 380 page gourmet cookbook. Being a professional cook with a lifelong obsession with Bais Yaakov girls I deemed the publishing of this much needed cookbook as an act of God on my behalf. Unfortunately there were no up-skirt shots of Bais Yaakov girls, but there were a lot of interesting recipes.
One of my problems with frumma, heimishe, gourmet, cuisine is that it tries to go so far outside the “box” that it ends up messing with you. Can you please tell me where you’re going to find organic heirloom tomatoes in Boro Parkl in order to make the heirloom gezpacho? Or what about the recipe for broccolini and crasin salad (a gourmet spin off of the classic frum dish of frozen broccoli stems and cranberry’s in a mayonnaise slather) do they expect frum ladies to have the time or energy to wash the broccolini (whatever the heck that is) for this salad? Rapini seemed like the better option to me.
It was a welcome site to see so many classics in print. Deli Roll is showcased in their fleishig section (I’m glad that Bais Yaakov has become a little more modernishe in recent years and finally allowed the cookbook to contain both milchig and fleishig dishes in the same book – they are split up by fish in this book) and in this case their recipe for Deli Roll shines, they use real pastrami from the deli, rather than the packaged kind and the recipe calls for grainy mustard, rather than smooth – it is truly gourmet deli roll.
Other super gourmet recipes included were the classic iceberg lettuce, mangoes and strawberry salad. Cabbage and la choy noodle salad and the classic cucumber and onion salad. I also really appreciated the guide to kugels, it finally laid to rest the debate in our home about whether or not cake served at the main meal is called kugel – according to a nearly unanimous vote – everyone single Bais Yaakov girl in America besides those in Baltimore (Baltimore is only a Bais Yaakov in name) agreed that cake served at the main meal is called kugel. I especially the liked the recipe for zucchini kugel, change the name to bread if served at desert.
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