Thursday, December 02, 2010

Oil Vey! Chanukah Foods From Around the World -- Handout Information

A little administrative business:

Did you attended my talk today about Chanukah Foods Around the World and not get a copy of the handout or want to see the online copy?  Please click here for the Google Doc version.

If you weren't able to attend and wanted to see the handout, feel free to click on the link as well.

I will be updating it shortly with additional recipes.

12/9/10 -- I've updated the handout with another recipe and links to others.  Enjoy.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Faith,
I came at the end of your presentation this evening, so I missed this, but the Oil Vey! recipes seem great.
I personally would have liked to see more recipes having low GI's (glycemic index numbers); see the Glycemic index Wikipedia and the South Beach Diet's Glycemic Index Food Chart
As an FYI from this GI Food Chart and similar such GI charts:
- Israeli fried doughnuts (a.k.a. Chanukah sufganyot) have a high GI of 76
- Standard white potatoes have a relatively high GI in the mid-60s on up
- Yams and sweet potatoes have a medium GI in the the low-to-mid 50s.
- Maybe surprisingly (or not!), garbanzo beans (a.k.a., chickpeas) have a low GI at 33!
Of course chickpeas make up much of the solid portion of good-old-fashioned deep-fried falafel (yep, it's true!)

I found two low-GI Chanukah fryable recipes; one uses yams for its base, the other uses chickpeas:
1. Patrick Cauldwell's Revisionist latkes
2. About.com's standard falafel recipe

For the Revisionist latkes recipe (1), presumably an unbleached high-fiber flour such as whole-wheat flour would optimally replace bleached white flour for an lower GI number.

For the standard falafel recipe (2), one could similarly substitute an unbleached high-fiber flour wherever the recipe calls for an unspecified flour.
*Note: one of the more obvious Chanukah adaptations of this falafel recipe is to form falafel-latkes patties (pancakes) instead of falafel balls.

Hope this helps and I look forward to more of YOUR Chanukah recipes here :)

FJKramer said...

Dear Aaron,
Thanks for coming by the talk and your comments. However, I was presenting on traditional Chanukah foods. Maybe you could talk to the JCC about doing a low GI Jewish food lecture, unfortunately that is not my area of expertise nor is it a focus of my blog.

My friend, Kayln, has a great blog for someone with your GI concerns,
Kayln's Kitchen. http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/
While not "jewish food" I'm sure you could find some ideas that are adaptable there since her recipes are more about low carbs, low GI than mine are.

In general, I find Sephardic foods tend to be a bit healthy for modern diets than Eastern European so I would focuse your search there.

Again, thanks.
Faith

Unknown said...

Faith,
You're humbly very welcome for my above comments! :)
I also now see that you have another food-oriented blog entitled 52 Shabbats

As the goal of your JCC lecture was "presenting on traditional Chanukah foods" (as per the above), IMHO you would be providing truth and justice to your readers by also mentioning Chanukah-time foods as well.
One decidedly non-Sephardic food that is traditionally relished on cold Shabbats is called "cholent" (and relished even on this cold, rainy Chanukah-time Shabbat!)
I think your readers should read your excellent blogpost on this food entitled Forget About the Chicken Soup, A Pot of Cholent Will Fix You Right Up -- Jewish Beef and Bean Stew, but again, that is just my own opinion.

And again, you are most humbly welcome for my comments :)
Happy Hanukkah, Chanukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, Chanuka, Chanukkah, Channukah, Chanukka, Hanukka, Hannuka,Hannukkah, Channuka, Xanuka, Hannukka, Channukka, and Chanuqa!

FJKramer said...

Thanks, Aaron.
f