Jewlicious Reads: Craving Our Jewish Meat

Tired of those Jewish and Kosher cookbooks that focus on Passover dishes, blintzes and desserts? Do you crave the real food: meat and poultry? Do you celebrate the carnivore that you are? Then this Jewlicious read is for you. THE KOSHER CARNIVORE: The Ultimate Meat and Poultry Cookbook by June Hersh was published this week by St. Martin’s Press.

This is a rarity, cooked medium well.

It is a meat-only kosher cookbook, with 120 recipes. And you don;t have to worry about lactose intolerance or bugs in vegetables. You don’t have to be Argentinian either. Her recipes include those for beef (Classic Pot Roast, Grilled Steak Chimichurri, Slow-day BBQ Brisket); veal and lamb (Veal Meatballs, Grilled Lamb Riblets, Lamb Sliders); chicken (Simple Roast Chicken, Simpler Roast Chicken, Simplest Roast Chicken, Pretzel Crusted Chicken Tenders, Moroccan Chicken, Chicken with Prunes Tsimmes, Chicken in Red Wine Sauce, Peach and Ginger-Glazed Chicken); and turkey and duck: (Country-style Turkey Meatloaf, Oven-roasted Spicy Turkey Sausage, Pan-seared Duck Breasts with Figs and Madiera. As for Tur Duck en, you have to see the shatnez squad for that one. For Soups and Stocks there is a kosher “Creamy” Mushroom Soup, Hungarian Bean Soup with Smoked Turkey, Beef & Barley Soup, and more. Hersh has a Creamed Spinach (without the butter or cream).

The Kosher Carnivore also provides instructions on how to grill, roast, braise, stew, pan-sear — and even fry. It includes “Sides Notes” and “Behind the [Butcher] Counter” pointers, such as what to tell your butcher. For example, for Moroccan Chicken, the author recommends you serve it on lemon basmati rice; for chicken piccata, she tells you with thickness of cutlets (thinner than for the pretzel crusted chicken); croquettes need “medium” ground chicken; and grandma Rose’s Cabbage Soup needs flanken that are cut short-rib style into 2 inch strips. The author also tracks down how to make the greatest burger. Okay, I will tell you. You grind your own meat. You freeze it or get it very cold, grind it at Medium, and use 30% brisket and 70% chuck.

I am too lazy to type out a recipe for you, but you can read one here.

Hersh hails from New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City, and she received a degree in education from The University of Pennsylvania. She has worn many hats, or perhaps outfits. She taught at Solomon Schechter Day School in Westchester County, NY; she founded a fancy children’s clothing business; and she sold lighting in order to illuminate the world. All the while though, she had an appetite for meat, and an interest in butchers. Publishers Weekly joked that she gave up bulbs for blintzes, when, earlier this year, she published RECIPES REMEMBERED: A CELEBRATION OF SURVIVAL, a cookbook which gives voice to the remarkable stories and cherished recipes of the Holocaust community. It is a moving compilation of memories and stories of families and food from from Holocaust survivors from Poland, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Greece. She is currently probably pondering a brisket for Rosh Hashana, and working on her third cookbook, tentativley titled, “Simple, Simpler, Simplest.” I wonder if anyone has optioned the film rights yet?