L ifestyle /C ulture
Got Milk — Shavuot Is Coming
F OO D
LINDA MOREL | JE FOOD COLUMNIST
FALLING SEVEN WEEKS
after Passover, the most
observed of all Jewish holidays,
Shavuot is the most overlooked
holiday on the Jewish calendar.
That is remarkable since
Shavuot honors the anniver-
sary of God giving the Torah to
the children of Israel at Mount
Sinai. Where would the Jewish
people be without the Torah?
After fleeing from Egypt, it
took Moses and the Israelites
seven weeks to trek through
the dessert to reach Mount
Sinai. When they received the
Torah and read the laws of
Kashrut, they realized their
cookware and meat were not
kosher. Because butchering and
SHOP THE
HOUSE FROM
YOUR HOME.
preparing fresh meat would
take a long time, the hungry
and tired Israelites ate what
was around. Just like modern
Jews grabbing a yogurt, they
relied on milk products until
they koshered their supplies.
From the onset, Shavuot
has been associated with
dairy foods. Because it is pure
and white, milk has come to
symbolize the Torah.
In the weeks following
Passover, cows, goats and sheep
in Israel graze extensively
on new grass. By late spring,
the females are producing
abundant milk. With fresh
Salmon with curry cream sauce
milk in season, it’s no wonder
tasha_lyubina / iStock / Getty Images Plus
dairy products are whipped
into creamy foods of all kinds
at Shavuot.
on Sunday evening May 16, a and crunchy.
This year, Shavuot begins perfect time to invite family
Serve immediately with the
and friends, even if you’ve never curry cream dressing below.
done so before. The Torah has
guided the Jewish people from
Curry Cream Dressing:
Mount Sinai to the present.
½ cup light mayonnaise
A document that precious
¼ cup reduced fat sour
deserves to be celebrated with
cream an elegant dairy dinner.
¼ cup 2% fat Greek yogurt
BROILED SALMON WITH
CURRY CREAM SAUCE |
DAIRY Serves 4
Broiled Salmon:
Nonstick vegetable spray
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
Kosher salt to taste
1 pound salmon filet, cut
into 4 oblong slices
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20 MAY 13, 2021
⅛ cup 1% milk
1½ teaspoons curry powder
Place the ingredients in
a small bowl. Whisk them
together until they are well
combined. Serve the dressing
on the side in a small bowl.
SAVORY PANCAKES WITH
MUSHROOM CREAM SAUCE |
DAIRY Yield: approximately 12 pan-
Preheat the broiler. Set up a cakes, serves 4 as a side dish
broiler pan and coat it with the
vegetable spray. Sprinkle garlic
Mushroom Cream Sauce:
powder and salt on all sides
3 tablespoons olive oil, or
of the salmon filets. Place the
more if needed
filets on the broiler pan, skin
1 tablespoon unsalted
side up.
butter Broil them for 3 minutes.
3 garlic cloves, minced
Turn them over and broil them
1 (10-ounce) package of
for 4 minutes. Turn them again
mushrooms, sliced
so the skin side is up. Broil
½ teaspoon rosemary
the salmon for 3 minutes,
needles, crumbled
or until the filets are cooked
A dash of nutmeg
through and the skin is brown
Kosher salt to taste
JEWISH EXPONENT
1 cup whole milk
⅓ cup cream
In a large skillet, heat the
olive oil and butter over a
medium flame until the butter
melts. Scatter the garlic and stir
it briefly. Add the mushrooms,
rosemary, nutmeg and kosher
salt. Sauté until the mushrooms
are browning. Lower the flame
if the garlic browns. Add more
olive oil if the pan becomes dry.
Remove the skillet from
the flame and let it cool for
a minute or two. Add the
milk and cream and stir it to
combine. Return the skillet
to a medium flame and stir
until warmed through and the
sauce thickens slightly. Remove
it from the flame and reserve
while making the pancakes.
Savory Pancakes:
¾ cup flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
A dash of white pepper
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
1 egg
½ cup whole milk, or more
milk if needed
4 tablespoons sweet butter,
or more if needed
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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Books: Falling Short After a
Great Start, Going Beyond
B O O KS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
Great Premise Falls
Short Pancakes with mushroom cream sauce grafvision / iStock / Getty Images Plus
In a medium sized-bowl,
whisk together the dry ingre-
dients (flour through onion
powder). In a second medium-sized
bowl, whisk together the egg
and milk. Pour the wet ingre-
dients into the dry ones. Whisk
until the flour disappears. If
the batter is stiff, add milk a
teaspoon at a time, whisking
briefly until combined. Don’t
overwhisk. Plenty of lumps will
remain. You’ll need to make
pancakes in two batches. In
a large skillet, melt the butter
on a medium flame. Using a
tablespoon, drop the batter
into the butter, creating silver
dollar-sized pancakes. Add
more butter at any time, if
needed. When tiny craters form in
the batter and it turns golden
around the edges, flip the
pancakes and cook them on
the other side until golden.
Move them to a platter.
Repeat the directions for
the first batch with the second.
When the second batch
of pancakes is nearly ready,
heat up the mushroom cream
sauce on a medium flame
until rewarmed. When all the
pancakes are on the platter,
pour the sauce over them.
Serve immediately.
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM CRAZY CAPRESE SALAD |
DAIRY Serves 4
⅛ cup pine nuts or blanched
slivered almonds
2 beefsteak or extra-large
tomatoes 1 large ball of mozzarella
cheese 2 clementines
2 tablespoons fresh basil
leaves Kosher salt to taste
Red wine vinegar for
drizzling Olive oil for drizzling
Place the pine nuts or
almonds on an aluminum lined
baking sheet in the toaster oven
or a standard oven. Bake at
350 degrees F. for 1-2 minutes,
or until fragrant and golden.
Nuts burn easily, so watch them
almost continuously. Reserve.
Slice the tomatoes and the
ball of mozzarella cheese on the
thin side. Peel the clementines,
discarding the peel and pith.
Arrange the tomatoes,
mozzarella and clementine
sections attractively on a
platter, letting them overlap
a little. Tuck the basil leaves
in between. Sprinkle the salad
with salt. Drizzle on the vinegar
and olive oil. Scatter the nuts
on top. Serve immediately. l
THE DECEPTION THAT
sets up the story of “Secrets of
Happiness” is revealed on page
10. The premise — after 32
years of conventional marriage
and a comfortable Upper West
Side existence, a father reveals
that he has a second family
in Queens — is so juicy, so
ripe for exploration, that one
appreciates Joan Silber’s to-the-
point-ness here.
Don’t mess around; state the
problem so we can get to the
richly dramatic consequences.
But the focus falls away
shortly afterward. Silber, a
decorated novelist who won the
2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction, has a particular style
that she returns to in “Secrets
of Happiness,” shuff ling
through first-person-narrated
perspectives to complicate the
reader’s understanding of some
part of the larger story.
In “Improvement,” Silber
weaved her narrative with
the perspectives of a man on
Rikers Island, his girlfriend
and German smugglers who
spent a single night at the home
of the girlfriend’s aunt decades
before. In “The Size of the
World,” Silber gave center stage
to an engineer, a man who sold
that engineer some screws and
then that guy’s sister.
Writing her novels in this
way, spinning off into the
minds and stories of characters
that don’t appear at first glance
to elucidate anything about the
story at hand, Silber is able
to generate irony, to rhyme
strange narrative rhymes and
JEWISH EXPONENT
Courtesy of Counterpoint
“Secrets of Happiness”
Joan Silber
Counterpoint present new perspectives on
her own characters. Tossed-off
comments in one story become
life-altering utterances in
another; one person’s family
heirloom is another’s junk.
In exploring the fullness of
conversations, linked objects
and shared experiences, Silber
is able to examine a story from
every angle.
The risk in writing the
way Silber does is that in
those spins away from the
main narrative, Silber needs
to reassert the “why” for each
new section. Why should the
reader care about this periph-
eral character, especially if
their section doesn’t appear to
serve the main narrative?
Reading “Secrets
of Happiness,” I found myself
asking myself that far too often.
The initial chapter, narrated by
the family-franchising father’s
legitimate son, Ethan, is rich
with intrigue. Not one person
in the first family knew about
the second family! The second
family in Queens is quite a bit
poorer than the first family,
and the mother in the second
family is a Thai immigrant with
shaky English. When the father
dies and leaves behind some
serious money, everyone in the
first family aside from Ethan
is hesitant to give any to the
second family.
There’s enough there
to sustain an entire novel.
And the next section, which
switches over to a son of the
See Books, Page 22
MAY 13, 2021
21