Lox is salmon fillet that has been cured

Lox is salmon fillet that has been cured. In its most popular form, it is thinly sliced (less than 5 millimeters in thickness) and, typically, served on a bagel, often with cream cheese.

Noted for its importance in Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine, the food and its name were introduced to the United States through Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The term lox derives from Lachs in German and לאַקס laks in Yiddish, meaning "salmon". It is a cognate of Icelandic and Swedish lax, Danish and Norwegian laks, and Old English læx.

Sometimes called regular or belly lox, lox is traditionally made by brining in a solution of water or oil, salt, sugars and spices (the brine). Although the term lox is sometimes applied to smoked salmon, that is a different product.

Similar products

• Nova or Nova Scotia salmon, sometimes called Nova lox, is cured with a milder brine and then cold smoked. The name dates from a time when much of the salmon in New York City came from Nova Scotia. Today, however, the name refers to the milder brining, as compared to regular lox, and the fish may come from other waters or even be raised on farms. * Scottish-style salmon. A mixture of salt and sometimes sugars, spices and other flavorings are applied directly to the meat of the fish is called "dry-brining" or "Scottish-style." The brine mixture is then rinsed off, and the fish is cold smoked.

• Scandinavian-style smoked salmon. The fish is salt-cured and cold-smoked.

• Gravad lax or Gravlax. This is a traditional Scandinavian means of preparing (salmon). Gravad lox is not smoked, but it can be served in a similar fashion. The salmon is coated with a spice mixture, which often includes dill, sugars, salt, and spices like juniper berry. It is then weighted down to force the moisture from the fish and impart the flavorings. It is often served with a sweet mustard-dill sauce.

Beef tongue

Beef tongue is literally the tongue of a cow. The human consumption of beef tongue dates back to the days of Paleolithic hunters, who preferred the fatty portions of the carcass including tongues, as well as organs, brains, feet and marrow. Beef tongue is very high in fat however, at almost 75% of its calories derived. Some countries, such as Canada, and specifically the province of Alberta who have a large beef export industry, export large quantities of beef tongue.

Preparation

Beef tongue is often seasoned with onion and other spices, and then placed in a bowl to boil. After it has cooked the skin is often removed and served. Pickled tongue is often used by the preparer because it is already spiced. If cooked in a sauce, it can then later be reused as a sauce for meatballs or any other food item.

Beef tongue around the world

Tongue is widely used in Mexican cuisine, and often seen in tacos and burritos. Boiled tongue or boiled brisket is traditionally eaten on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, a harvest festival also known as the Feast of Tabernacles. Also, beef tongue is a part of German cuisine, Portuguese cuisine, Persian cuisine, Philippine cuisine, and Albanian cuisine.

Babka

Babka (бабка), also known as baba (баба), is a sweet spongy yeast cake. Babka originated in Eastern Europe and was introduced to North America by early immigrants. Traditional babka has some type of fruit filling, especially raisins, and is glazed with a fruit-flavored icing, sometimes with rum added. Modern babka may be chocolate or have a cheese filling.

Despite its Christian associations, babka is also popular among Jews, particularly those with family origins in Eastern Europe.

Other than the dessert variety, there also exists a traditional Eastern European Jewish variety prepared during Passover in lieu of bread. Generally, this sort is not sweet and is prepared using crushed matzos with water, egg, and salt.

The Babka is sometimes mentioned in the show Seinfeld, where they also reference a Cinnamon Babka. It has been parodied in Cory in the House as a "Nakishka", implying it is from Bahavia.

Etymology

The name babka is a diminutive of baba ‘old woman’ or ‘grandmother’, and probably refers to the shape of the pastry, a tall cylinder, sometimes with corrugations resembling a skirt’s pleats.[1] The name of the pastry entered the English language from Polish, via French, although it is also sometimes used in its original sense, especially among those of Eastern European descent.

Jewish Foods: Charoset

Charoset or charoses is a sweet, lumpy paste served during the Passover Seder. Known in Jewish cuisine, it is a favorite of children. Some people believe it is the tastiest thing eaten during the holiday. The consistency is intended to remind those participating in the Seder of the bricks and mortar their ancestors made as slaves in Ancient Egypt.

There are as many recipes for charoset as there are Jewish families, but a typical recipe from the Eastern European (or Ashkenazi) tradition would include crushed nuts, apples, cinnamon, sweet wine, and honey. Recipes in the Sephardic tradition usually include raisins and may also include ingredients native to the Middle East, such as figs, dates, and sesame seeds.

Recipe:

• 1.5 C peeled, cored and chopped apples (MacIntosh, preferably)
• .75 C finely chopped walnuts
• 2 T sweet red wine
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 T honey
  
  Mix together and refrigerate overnight for best flavor. Adjust seasoning, if necessary, after it's chilled. For a family Sedar, triple this recipe. Serve with matzah. Or just eat with a spoon.

More Charoset Recipes

Jewish Foods: Challah

Challah or hallah is a traditional Jewish bread eaten on Shabbat and Jewish holidays (except Passover, when leavened bread is not allowed). This association with Judaism is most prevalent in the United States, as challah is also a traditional bread in numerous European countries, such as Hungary, among local non-Jewish peasant populations.

Also see: Challah Recipes - Challah and Bread Baking - How to braid Challah

On Shabbat every Jew is commanded to eat three meals (one on Friday night and two on Saturday). In Judaism, a "meal" includes bread. Hence, Jews will traditionally eat challah at the beginning of their Shabbat meal. As with any other type of bread, the blessing "Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz" is recited before the challah is eaten. Translated, it means "Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth."

The dough is made with an especially large number of eggs, and sweetened with honey. The dough is traditionally cut into three rope-shaped pieces and then braided together before baking. An egg wash is applied to the dough to give a golden color after being baked. Poppy or sesame seeds are sprinkled on the bread before baking; the seeds represent manna that God gave to the Israelites to eat while they wandered in the desert.

On Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish new year, raisins are added to the dough and the Challah is braided into a special crown shape, representing God's crown.

The name refers to a small piece of dough which is reserved and baked separately. This is done in commemoration of when the temple stood in Israel. Originally, during temple times, the dough was given to a Cohen (priest). Since the destruction, the dough is burned and thrown away after a special prayer is said.

Jewish Foods: Blintz

blintz, is a thin pancake.

Recipes: Blintz Recipes

The word "blin" comes from Old Slavic mlin, that means "to mill", compare the Ukrainian word for blin млинець, mlynets’. Blins had a somewhat ritual significance for early Slavic peoples in pre-Christian times since they were a symbol of the sun, due to their round form. They were traditionally prepared at the end of the winter to honor the rebirth of the new sun (Pancake week, in Russian Масленица). This tradition was adopted by the Orthodox church and is carried on to the present day. Bliny are also served at wakes, to commemorate the recently deceased.

Blins were borrowed into Yiddish as בלינצע (blintse) and came into English in the form of "blintz".

Blins may be prepared and served in three basic ways.


Frozen pre-packaged blintzes may be fried.They may be eaten "as is". In this case the batter may contain various add-ins, from grated potato or apple to raisins. These blini are quite common in Eastern Europe and are more solidly-filled than the spongy pancakes usually eaten in North America.
They may be smeared with butter, bacon fat, smetana, jam or caviar and possibly folded or rolled into a tube. In that form they are similar to French Crêpes. The caviar filling is popular during Russian-style cocktail parties.

(The term "blintz" is mostly applicable to this kind) A filling may be rolled or enveloped into a blintz and lightly fried, sautéed or baked. Possible fillings are jam, fruit, cottage cheese or other cheese, ground meat, potato, or poultry. They are also called nalysnyky in that form (Ukrainian: налисники).

Buckwheat bliny are part of traditional Russian cuisine, almost forgotten during the times of the Soviet Union, because buckwheat requires a good deal of care to grow and process, and it became a rare commodity. They are still widespread in Ukraine where they are known as hrechanyky (Ukrainian: гречаники).

blintz, blintze or blin (Russian: блин, блины (pl.); Ukrainian: блинці, blyntsi; plural: blintzes, blini, bliny)

Jewish Foods: Bagels

The bagel (or sometimes beigel, in Poland also bajgiel, bajgel, precel, obwarzanek) is a food traditionally made of yeasted wheat dough in the form of a roughly hand-sized ring which is boiled and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior.

also see -- > Bagels Recipes

It often features seeds, such as poppy or sesame, baked on the outer crust. Other flavor varieties include: salt, onion, garlic, egg, pumpernickel, cinnamon-raisin, "everything", cheese, caraway, whole wheat, multigrain, blueberry, muesli and others.

A related bread product is a bialy, which has no hole, is often onion or garlic-flavored, and is less crispy on the outside. A key ingredient is it's high-gluten flour.

Though often made with sugar, malt syrup or honey, bagels should never be confused with doughnuts (donuts).

New York, Montreal and Quebec City are North America's bagel capitals.

Bagel care

The ideal way to eat a bagel is fresh out of the oven from a reputable and friend-recommended bagel shop.

Refrigerator Storage: If your bagel is not eaten while exiting your favorite bagel shop, let it cool in a paper bag. To keep bagels 5-7 days, they should be stored in a carefully closed paper bag, then wrapped tightly in a plastic bag, and placed in the fridge.

Proper Revival Method: To properly revive a refrigerated bagel to near fresh-baked status, remove bagel from the fridge, slice in two and lightly moisten, or 'banetz' (Yiddish term for 'moisten') surfaces with a small amount of cold water. Toast or bake the bagel until hot throughout and slightly crispy on surfaces. Keep bagels away from microwave ovens as these machines are not a proper means of reheating bagels.

Freezing: Bagels can be frozen quite reliably. Remove air from freezer-bag of room-temperature bagels, freeze. To thaw, moisten lightly banetz (see above) with cool water and bake in toaster-oven or stove. Once half-baked you may cut open then toast to perfection. You may freeze bagels pre-cut to save a step. Bagels that are frozen are good up to six months.

The bagel's history

The bagel originated in Central Europe, probably in Poland. A 1610 document from Krakow mentions "beygls" given as a gift to women in childbirth. This is often cited as the earliest known reference to the bagel, but the document is not clear what a "beygl" is; it may be what is now known as a bagel, it may be something related to the word for stirrup "beugal", or something else the meaning of which is lost to history.


Bagel slicerAn often repeated story says that the bagel originated in 1683, when a baker from Vienna created them as a gift to King Jan Sobieski of Poland to commemorate the King's victory over the Turks that year. The baked good was fashioned in the form of a stirrup to commemorate the victorious cavalry charge. That the name bagel originated from "beugal" (stirrup) is considered plausible by many both from the similarities of the word and due to the fact that traditional handmade bagels are not perfectly circular but rather slightly stirrup shaped. More prosaically, the name may simply originate from the Yiddish word "bugel" or the German word "bugel", meaning a round loaf of bread (see Gugelhupf for a German cake with a similar ring shape).

Immigrants in the 1880s brought the bagel to New York City, where it continues to flourish. Until the 1920s it was rare in other parts of the United States other than a few cities with large Eastern European Jewish communities. The bagel came into much more general use throughout North America in the last quarter of the 20th century. Specialized devices have even been invented to allow for easy slicing of bagels without "squishing" them (a perceived "danger" when using a knife and hand).

Bagel types

The two most prominent styles of traditional bagel in North America are the Montreal bagel and the New York bagel. The Montreal bagel contains malt and egg and no salt; it is boiled in honey-sweetened water before baking in a wood oven; and it is predominantly either of the noir/"black seed" (poppy) or blanc/"white seed" (sesame seed) variety. The New York bagel contains salt and malt, is available in a wider variety of flavors (though Montreal's oldest bagel institution is quickly catching up), and is also boiled prior to baking in a standard oven. The resulting New York bagel is puffy with a noticeable crust, while the celebrated Montreal bagel is smaller (though with a larger hole) chewier, sweeter and even less like a frozen supermarket-variety "roll-with-a-hole" than the New York bagel is.

In addition to the plain bagel, there are variants with seasoning on the outside, including sesame, garlic, poppy seed, onion, rye and the "everything" bagel, a mixture of all of the above. Other versions which change the dough recipe include cinnamon, raisin, pumpernickel, egg and sourdough. In New York City green bagels made with food coloring are sometimes created for St. Patrick's Day. In Montreal, places that sell "New York-style" bagels rarely become popular with the local populace.

In the late 20th century, many variations on the bagel flourished, including those made with different types of doughs, and with new non-traditional foods and seasonings added to the dough. Breakfast bagels, a rather softer, sweeter variety usually sold in fruity or sweet flavors (cherry, strawberry, blueberry, cinnamon-raisin, chocolate chip, ...) are commonly sold by large supermarket chains; these are usually sold pre-sliced and are intended to be prepared in a toaster and often are served with jam (though they may also be eaten with the more traditional cream cheese as well, especially fruit-flavoured cream cheese). More traditionally flavoured bagels (e.g., plain, or onion) are commonly used to make sandwiches with egg, cheese, ham, and other popular breakfast foods.

A recent addition to New York City bagel stores are "flagels," a flat bagel sprinkled with usual bagel toppings, favored by low-carb dieters.

Bagel chips are a snack food variant on the bagel.

The bagel around the world

In Russia, the bublik has become so mainstream that most Russians aren't aware that it was originally a Jewish bread.

The Uighurs of Xinjiang, China enjoy a form of bagel known as girde nan, which is one of several types of nan, the bread eaten in Xinjiang (Allen, March 1996, p. 36-37). It is uncertain if the Uighur version of the bagel was developed independently of Europe or was the actual origin of the bagels that appeared in Central Europe.

In Turkey, though narrower and larger, simit is very similar to sesame seed bagels.

Bagel sandwiches

The bagel sandwich, where a sliced bagel substitutes for the two slices of bread, has become common nowadays, although the bagel sandwich with cream cheese, lox, tomato and onion had already been a tradition among Jews for some time. McDonald's created a line of bagel sandwiches for their breakfast menu, but have recently scaled back the varieties available; however, key ingredients are some form of egg/cheese/meat combination, sandwiched between the bagel slices.

Another interesting and popular bagel dish is the pizza bagel. The bagel is sliced, topped with tomato sauce and cheese and then toasted or re-baked. It is an ideal toaster oven food.

Sliced bagels are often (and best) toasted. Spreads may include: cream cheese, butter, peanut butter, jam, marmelade, apple butter, maple butter and more.

Jewish Foods: Baba Ganoush

Baba Ganoush is a very popular Middle Eastern dish made primarily of eggplant and tahini, a paste made from sesame seeds.

In the Levant, baba ganoush is a sort of salad made of grilled eggplant with finely diced onions, tomatoes and other vegetables blended in. It is normally served with a dressing of oil and pomegranate concentrate.

Recipes:

• Baba Ganoush
• Eggplant
  

In Egypt, baba ganoush is a paste made of roast or grilled eggplant and tahini, a paste made from sesame seeds. This dish is known as mutabbal in the Levant. Traditionally, the eggplant is first roasted in an oven for approximately 45 minutes. The softened flesh is scooped out, squeezed to remove excess water, and is then pureed with the tahini. There are many variants of the recipe, especially the seasoning. Possible seasonings include garlic, lemon juice, ground cumin, salt, mint, and parsley. When served on a plate or bowl, it is traditional to drizzle the top with olive oil.

This is a healthy snack that can be eaten in a variety of ways, including as a dip with whole wheat bread or crackers, spread on pita, or added to other dishes. It is usually of an earthy light brown color.

In Ethiopia, the dish is more commonly known as Blagadoush.

Traditionally

The eggplant is first roasted in an oven for approximately 45 minutes. The softened flesh is scooped out, squeezed to remove excess water, and is then pureed with the tahini. There are many variants of the recipe, especially the seasoning. Possible seasonings include garlic, lemon juice, ground cumin, salt, mint, and parsley. When served on a plate or bowl, it is traditional to drizzle the top with olive oil.

This healthy snack can be eaten in a variety of ways, including as a dip with whole wheat bread or crackers, spread on pita, or added to other dishes.

It is usually of an earthy light brown color

Variation: Baba Ghanouj

Also See: Eggplant

Jewish Foods: Apfelstrudel

Apfelstrudel (Apple strudel) is a traditional Austrian pastry, and is the most widely known kind of strudel.

Apple strudel consists of an oblong strudel pastry jacket with a filling of chopped apples, sugar, cinnamon, raisins and bread crumbs. Rum is also often used to add flavour. Other ingredients include pine nuts or slivered almonds. The art of preparation is in making the pastry very thin and elastic; it is said that a single layer should be so thin you could read a newspaper through it.

The filled Apfelstrudel is baked in an oven and can be served warm, usually sprinkled with icing sugar. The traditional way to serve it is with vanilla custard, though vanilla ice cream or whipped cream are also very popular.

To bake a juicy Apfelstrudel, Elstar apples are recommended. Apples chosen should be good cooking apples, sour, crisp and aromatic.

Recipes:

Apple Strudel (Apfelstrudel)

Citrus

Citrus is a common term and genus of flowering plants in the family Rutaceae, originating in tropical and subtropical southeast Asia. The genus contains three species, and numerous natural and cultivated origin hybrids, including commercially important fruit such as the orange, lemon, grapefruit, lime, and tangerine. The taxonomy of the genus is complex, but recent genetic evidence (see e.g. external link cited below) supports the presence of only three species, C. maxima, C. medica and C. reticulata, with all the other taxa previously accepted as species being of hybrid origin between these three. They are large evergreen shrubs or small trees, reaching 5-15 m tall.

Citrus fruits are notable for their fragrance, and most are juice-laden. They contain a high proportion of citric acid giving them their characteristic astringent odor and flavor. They are also good sources of vitamin C, and apparently flavonoids. In botanical terms, "The fruit of all Citrus trees, in which the true fruit is the peel, [is] made up of an outer layer, brightly colored and rich in glands, a spongey whitish mesocarp, and a membraneous endocarp surrounding the segments. The succulent parts we eat is only a secondary tissue developed as a filler" - Paola Lanzara and Mariella Pizzetti Simon & Schuster's Guide to Trees, pp. 44.

Cultivation

As citrus trees hybridise very readily (e.g., seeds grown from limes can produce fruit similar to grapefruit), all commercial citrus cultivation uses trees produced by grafting the desired fruiting cultivars onto rootstocks selected for disease resistance and hardiness.