Eureka!!! The Best Vegetarian Cholent Ever!!!

Well, that's probably an exaggeration, I did, however, make a very good vegetarian this Shabbos. It had great consistency, and for vegetarian, a very good taste. Friday afternoon before Shabbos, I put six large chopped carrots in olive oil on the bottom of the five quart crock pot. To that I added three cups of dried beans - black, red and white. I also added a cup of wheat berries, a cup of barley, three heaping teaspoons of salt, a spoon and a half of pepper, and also a half a spoon of peppercorns. I also placed six whole eggs in the pot and more olive oil. I would have added paprika, but we were out. I filled the pot with water and let it cook until just after davenning early Shabbos afternoon. The ingredients blended very nicely and yielded a thick, filling consistency. The pepper gave the cholent some kick, but not so much that our pepper-averse congregants could not eat it. I augmented my own bowl with some cayenne so that it was sufficiently spicy for my taste. I had been adding mushrooms to the cholent but some people don't like them, and I feel that mushrooms don't hold up that well in leftovers. So I made this one without mushrooms. Reviews from the other congregants were uniformly positive although they would have been much happier if they could have had meat cholent.

Old Broadway East

Our People in Israel

The Old Broadway diaspora stretches across the globe but has a particular strong representation in Israel. We are proud of the Old Broadway people everywhere even as we try to develop more of them in the vicinity of Old Broadway itself.

Orrin, and Sarah Tilevitz with daughters Yael Tilevitz Lockerman, Chana Tilevitz and grand-daughter, Meira

Yael is on her shul's board (we wish her luck) in Ariel, in the Shomron. Yael and the other members of her shul are hoping to to raise $8,000 for their congregation. If you are interested in contributing, please let me (your blog-meister) know and I will send you the contact information. 

Tim Lowe making cholent in Haifa

Tim and Amanda Lowe are spending the year in Haifa, where Tim is studying Holocaust education at the University of Haifa. Before Tim decided to go into Holocaust education, he became an advanced student of the art of making cholent. Here he is in his kitchen in Haifa. He writes,"Attempting to bring OBS's cholent experience to Haifa, Israel.  It's chicken pcs since red meat is too expensive." Replacing beef with chicken in cholent is a tricky procedure and should only be undertaken with an appropriate sense of gravitas. I hope that his cholent was successful.

Cholent Review - Shabbos Parashas Matos

As we made our way through Sefer Bamidbar, I continued to experiment with the cholent recipe. I put a whole bottle of barbecue sauce in the vegetarian cholent and it came out something like Jewish Boston baked beans. I also poured a bottle in the fleishig cholent and while I did not try it (I am trying to cut down my meat consumption) those who did thought it was good. Admittedly, a few dastardly souls dared to say there was too much barbecue sauce in the cholent, but there are always spoil-sports in any crowd. Nevertheless, I must confess that after two weeks straight of barbecue cholent, I myself was also ready for something different.

I think I found it. For Shabbos Parashas Matos I made my usual Morroccan dafina with chickpeas, barley (I am not brave enough yet to do it with rice), cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil and who eggs. I did add a new ingredient that made a big difference: wheat kernels, which are also know as a wheat berries. In the past, I added the wheat kernels in place of the barley. The cholent would often come out soupy and undercooked because the wheat does not soak up water the way the barley does, and somehow, there has to be the right proportion of dry ingredients to water in order the the cholent to cook properly. For this last cholent, I put a full cup of barley in and a half a cup of wheat kernels, plus the regular chickpeas, spices, oil and eggs. The additional wheat kernels had a great effect. The cholent was completely cooked through. even the chickpeas, which tend to be hard, were soft and fully cooked. And the wheat kernels were chewy and gave the entire cholent a sense of weightiness. In other words, the density and the texture were perfect, something which is hard to achieve in a vegetarian cholent. The following week, for Shabbos Parashas Masei, I made my usual Ashkenazi cholent but added the additional half cup of wheat kernels, and this improved this cholent's texture and density as well. Ah... the sweet taste of success! Have a good Shabbos!

Cholent Review - Shabbos Parashas Tazria: What??? Green Cholent???

It is true, the thought of green cholent is hardly appetizing, but if we think of green as being ecologically friendly then this adjective for traditional Jewish rocket fuel does not sound so bad. So, one might hesitatingly ask, how does one make "green" cholent?  Now I must confess, I really don't know, except as a tangent let me say that I once had the cholent that was prepared for another Jewish community that hails from the other side of the world. It really was green, and it did not sit well on this Ashkenazi palate, nor in this Ashkenazi stomach. But I digress... Here is how I made my cholent, "green" or at least, here is how I was trying to be ecologically responsible: Every week we use lots of styrofoam bowls and plastic spoons for the cholent. Couldn't I reduce the trash stream a little by using real bowls and spoons? (There is, of course, a position, that the amount of energy and resources used to wash dishes negates, to some degree, their advantage over disposables, but I am convinced that the non-disposable stuff still is "greener.") I began researching different products. I initially thought about buying melamine bowls and then I learned that melamine in made with urea and formaldehyde, and is generally safe unless it is heated too much or microwaved, so I decided this was too complicated for me. Then I thought about buying some of the bowls with the beautiful Chinese designs on them at the local odd lots store. Then I read that some of the glazes in China are made with lead, and the more colorful they are, the greater likelihood that they will contain lead. In the end, following the suggestion of my student, I  purchased 30 plain ivory bowls and 30 stainless steel spoons at Fishs Eddy, a great place if you are looking for that sort of thing. After shlepping the bowls and spoons home (they were heavy), I brought them to the mikvah to be toiveled. This in itself was an adventure because I brought them in on an afternoon when the mikvah gets a lot of traffic. Finally, I was able to use them on Shabbos. I felt great serving the cholent on something a lot more Shabbosdik and elegant than styrofoam and I was delighted to be able to do something positive for the environment. After kiddush, I collected the bowls in a bin to let them soak, and then cleaned them quickly and easily after Shabbos. I am looking forward to using them next Shabbos.

Cholent Review - Shabbos Parashas Tetzaveh

I made very successful vegetarian cholent this past Shabbos, and I would to share the fortunate concatenation of events that made it happen. First of all, I realized that most of my vegetarian cholents are largely potatoes and therefore very starchy. So I decided to reduce the number of potatoes and compensate by increasing the amount of beans, since these contain also contain fiber and should be healthier than potatoes. Now I have tried this in the past and discovered that one of the defects of the otherwise mighty six quart Hamilton Beach Stay-N-Go slow cooker is that it tends to cook at a low temperature (when on low; high is too high), which means that dried beans such as kidneys do not get cooked all the way through. So, I compensated for this problem by soaking the kidney beans overnight, which definitely helped. Secondly, I added hot water to the pot (until all the ingredients were covered) as opposed to the cold or room temperature water that I normally add. In the end I estimate that in included two to two and a half cup beans (a cup or so of kidneys and the same amount of large lima beans). I chopped up and threw in six large carrots, one large potato (as opposed to two) and a sweet potato. Finally, I added some button mushrooms together with some dried shiitake mushrooms. For flavoring I hard three teaspoons salt, one teaspoon black pepper, a healthy amount of paprika and olive oil. After I pulled the cholent off the heat on Shabbos morning, I added some soy sauce to taste. It was a delicious cholent with a perfect, almost creamy consistency. Geshmak!

Making Cholent at Old Broadway (in Yiddish)

Cholent Review - Parashas Naso

I think I am getting close to making a decent vegetarian cholent, or I should say, my son Binyamin and I are getting close. This past Shabbos we made a tasty cholent with most of the usual ingredients: a potato, a sweet potato, carrots, barley, beans and shiitake mushrooms. This cholent differed from my previous vegetarian cholents in a number of ways. First, I put only one large potato in rather than two. I also made sure there was more water than I have in the past. As with my other cholents, I added olive oil, but in this cholent, in addition to salt and pepper, I also added soy sauce. I did not add it once, but twice, first, I added it with the rest of the seasoning before I put the pot on the fire, but then after tasting the cooked cholent before serving it, I added a but more, maybe two tablespoons (for a three quart cholent). It was savory and delicious. The only problem is that since the Hamilton Beach Stay&Go Slow Cooker doesn't cook at a high temperature (I always use the low setting - I would not recommend using the high setting), dry beans often are not thoroughly cooked. For next week, I hope to soak the beans ahead of time. Shavua tov to all!

Cholent Review - Parashas Shemini

This past Shabbos Hashem blessed me with success with two cholents. The first cholent was my regular meat cholent, whose recipe I have discussed on this blog before. The second cholent (assembled by my son, Binyamin) was a version of the North African hamin called Dafina. For various reasons that cannot be discussed here, I could not follow the recipe precisely as I found it on the Internet, but I think what I did do was a good approximation and was even acknowledged as such by one the Sephardic members of the congregation. I used our other six-quart Hamilton Beach slow cooker and threw in a large cup of barley (pssst - not traditional - real Sephardim use rice in cheese cloth) and three cups (or so) of chickpeas (after having been soaked overnight), two baking potatoes and a sweet potato. I also added two large teaspoons of black pepper, two large teaspoons of salt, some paprika (maybe a teaspoon), a small amount of cayenne pepper, a quarter cup of olive oil, raw eggs (in the shells) and the coup de grace, two large teaspoons of ground cumin. I did not add any meat since I used the parve slow cooker. I put the pot on the heat at about 7:15pm and took it off at about 12:30pm the next day. It was spicy and delicious, and had an excellent consistency! The eggs, which were boiled in their shells, came out brown! I hope that I will have another opportunity to make this great cholent again soon.

Cholent Review - Parashas Tzav/Shabbos Ha-Gadol

The cholent that I made for this past Shabbos came out very well. I am now putting the carrots at bottom followed by the beans, the potatoes, the meat, and finally the barley, the spices the olive oil and the water. The layering seems to allow everything to get cooked properly. It is true that I have to stir the ingredients, after we take the cholent off of the heat source, but this is a small price to pay for good comfort food.

I would like to take this opportunity to share, regrettably, a cholent disaster that befell me on Shabbos Parashas Vakhel-Pekudei. I made two cholents, meat and vegetarian (actually, my son prepared the vegetarian cholent under my strict supervision). I have felt that the vegetarian cholents in the past have been undercooked, so I put set out Hamilton Beach parve cholent pot to high, and, to my chagrin, the vegetarian cholent was burned. True, it wasn't totally carbonized, but it had the burnt flavor, and funny, nobody ate any, even Michael B. I look forward to having another opportunity, of making a vegetarian cholent, and I hope that this next one will be blessed with the crown of success

Cholent Review - Parashas Terumah

I haven't posted a cholent review in a few weeks because I really had nothing new to add. I did a few things differently for my cholent this past Shabbos so I would like to share my experiences with my cholent making colleagues out there. I have mentioned before that my Hamilton Beach slow cooker is not as hot as the old Rival Crock Pot was, however, I have larger been able to compensate by the way I layered the ingredients as they are placed in the pot. The most important ingredient in this regard is the chopped carrots. I put all of them at the very bottom yesterday afternoon, and they all were cooked perfectly. Another ingredient that needs to be placed with care is the barley (this past Shabbos I mixed it with wheat kernels - yummy!). The barley (and wheat) are the last dry ingredients before the spices to go in. After I pour these grains in, I shake the pot so that they fall between the the meat and cut vegetables. This way, they will also be fully cooked. The last point that I want to share is also an important one. After Igor brought the pot up from the basement during kiddush, I stirred my cooked confection to make sure everything was well mixed. And so it was. For anyone out there following my reviews and making your own cholent, Ess gezunterheyt!