Chanukah being an eight day long holiday with no particular food or cooking restrictions makes it a great time to experiment and the second volume of Cooking for the King is full of great ideas for the Festival of Lights. Faux crab fish cakes are the perfect latke to fry up when you feel like you just can’t peel another potato, and mozzarella fried cheese sticks are a great way to reproduce that pizza shop favorite from the comfort of your own kitchen, whether you bake or fry them. Don’t forget to check out Chernin’s adorable cupcake menorah, a great centerpiece that can be devoured by all once the candles burn out.
A recipe developer and creator of KosherChannel.com, Chernin takes advantage of both her Sefardic roots and her Southern style, combining them into dishes that are creative, fresh and truly delicious. Is there another volume of Cooking for the King in the works? I most certainly hope so.
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I confess that my first thought as I flipped through the pages of Efrat Libfroind’s latest book was that while these recipes were likely way above my pay grade, at least from a culinary standpoint, I was going to carefully remove all of the photographs in the book, frame them and then decorate my house with them because that’s how absolutely stunning every single one of them is.
But that thought only lasted for a minute or two as I remembered the conversation I had with Libfroind after her first book was published. At the time, she told me that while many of the dishes are pictured with show-stopping presentations, the recipes themselves are far less complicated, and while you can choose to plate them adorned with pearls, edible leaves and carefully combed chocolate rings, they can just as easily be served on their own. The same holds true for a vast majority of the recipes in this volume and, I promise you, the taste alone is enough to wow everyone at your table, with or without the sophisticated decorations.
Efrat Libfroind Entertains, subtitled Kosher Elegance at Home, was actually published by Dani Books in 2014 and distributed by Feldheim. How I missed this book when it debuted, I have no idea, but I was delighted to be able to make up for lost time, plunging headfirst into Libfroind’s culinary artistry, my stomach growling louder and louder with every page I turned.
Some of the recipes here feature interesting cooking techniques that I had never before contemplated. The impossibly beautiful stuffed chicken balls were actually filled chicken breasts rolled into a spherical shape and then secured tightly in plastic wrap before being boiled, sauced, baked and plated atop a cashew based herb cream. Similarly, the meat rolls with cranberry relish were mini cylindrical meat loaves that had been wrapped in plastic and boiled before being foiled and baked. Neither of these two appeared to be overly complicated to make but the results were nothing short of spectacular.
Other recipes were impressive not just in their presentation but in their innovative use of standard items that you probably already own. At first blush, the salmon gateaux looked and sounded like something I could never reproduce on my own, but, in truth, it was just baked salmon, pureed with mayonnaise, wine, Dijon mustard, white wine, garlic and a few other ingredients, with the entire mixture poured into muffin cups lined with slices of lox. The preparation? Not overly difficult. The presentation? Wow. There is also an entire section dedicated to dessert cups, with relatively simple recipes elevated to superstar status by assembling them in individual glasses.