18 minute read
A Taste of the Giving Table
The Jewish Home | DECEMBER 15, 2022
The Giving Table
Naomi Ross Talks About How Food Can Connect and Elevate Our Lives
By SuSan Schwamm
Naomi, you just wrote your first cookbook, The Giving Table. Can you give us a little background on Naomi Ross and how you got into cooking and recipe creation?
This has been what I’d call a grassroots process. I didn’t start out 19 years ago saying I’m going to be a cookbook author. I always loved cooking. I always loved food. I had little aspirations that were more of just in the back of my head, but nothing seemed real. I certainly had no trajectory or professional aspirations. I really started this as a community service, to be honest. I was living in Boston at the time. I was newly married myself. I was expecting my second child, and my husband had said to me, “You should really do something with this,” because he saw I was good at it. But I said, “What am I going to do with these skills?” I never went to cooking school. Should I open a restaurant? It just seemed impractical, and I sort of forgot about it and put it away in the back of my head.
Then, around six months later, I was in shul and there were these four newly married young ladies all basically standing around commiserating with each other that they didn’t know how to cook and they were completely overwhelmed in the kitchen. I went over to them, and I said, “You know what? I could help you. Would you like me to put something together? I could do a class with you.”
It was really just meant to be as a help for them. I didn’t charge them. I put together a two-part crash course, not just on cooking, but also incorporating tips and techniques on running a Jewish home and a kosher kitchen and kitchen management skills – the stuff that is not in cookbooks, the stuff that you learn the hard way on your own.
We did this two-part course and they loved it. I was really fired up about it. But I realized that the only problem with the course was that it was too short. And so I extended it and expanded it to four classes. And I started running these courses in Boston. I ran them a few times, and I was very, very excited about it. I felt passionate about it.
When I moved back to New York, I continued doing these classes here. Although the demographic is slightly different, I saw that there was this same need. The need was more for people who needed inspiration, for people who needed help that never really ever got it. They were already married for a bunch of years, but they just weren’t that good in the kitchen, or they were relying a lot on purchased food because they just didn’t have the time or the abilities to prepare food for their families.
Eventually, I started getting involved with the JCC teaching classes, and I started teaching for other institutions. And one thing led to another, and the more I was asked to teach, the more I had to learn and the more I had to prepare myself and become more proficient in different subjects so I can feel confident giving over these skills.
And then people started asking me to write for publications. Well, I always liked writing, and that was a very nice outlet for me my whole life. So I started doing food articles, and then it just progressed, progressed. At a certain point, I asked my husband, “When did I start working?”
This was never in the game plan.
Right. It just sort of evolved. And as my kids got older, I took on more responsibilities and more jobs. When they were very little, it was very super part- time. My focus was them, and I fitted in where and how I could. And then, as the years went on, it became more serious and more of an actual profession. And then I started developing much bigger coursework, like curriculums for institutions and programs that were longer, not just one-off classes, but semester long courses. And I did a bunch of those for different institutions – I’m still doing those.
What do those classes focus on?
They’re recreational classes. You can have one-off class on pasta making or Indian cuisine. I did a bunch of these kinds of one-off classes for 10 years at Five Towns JCC. But these classes are a 10-week, a 12-week, a 15week semester. These are for people who are not just tinkering around. They may have some semi-professional aspirations or maybe they want to really up their game. In these classes, I’m able to extend it to cover a whole gamut of cooking basics, from stock making to pastry to all different subjects. That has kept me busy.
A few years ago, before I started working on the book, I took a job working as a culinary director for Apron Masters. I did that for two years.
When did this idea for the book germinate in your mind?
In my head, once I got started with the writing, it became for sure a dream to write a book. But this definitely started germinating many years ago. I spent the whole summer just doing the cookbook proposal, and it took me two years to find a publisher. So it definitely has taken several years to come to fruition. But I had many different ideas over the years of what my book was going to look like. And I always had this idea of fusing together Torah and Torah ideals, like spirituality, with food.
Ultimately, these are all of the ideas about food and cooking that I had presented to students over the years, trying to give them a holistic, spiritual feeling about the fact that it’s not just the food you’re making, it’s also the energies and love that you’re putting into your food. It’s what you’re doing with your food. Food is a vehicle. It’s a facilitator for what you’re trying to accomplish. There’s a theme running through my book of what motivates us with our cooking and our food. And that really comes down to how we give with our food. It took me a little while to refine and crystallize the idea and how to run the theme throughout the book.
You wrote in the book that at one point, you were in Bobby Flay’s restaurant. Tell us more about that.
There were different points over the years that I felt that in order to be able to teach well, I needed to improve and raise myself in terms of my own knowledge. I did that in several ways. I talk about it in the book.
In terms of Bobby Flay, in two of his restaurants, they allowed me to do what’s called trailing. It’s basically when you show up, and they let you basically work for free. It’s not an easy thing to do. You have to have some kind of a foot in the door, a connection, to get you in.
How pressurizing was it to be in that environment?
It was definitely very, very intense. We’re not talking about just your average Joe trade restaurant. His restaurants are of the top tier restaurants. There’s no fooling around. And you have to know how to step out of the way during busy time, at dinner service. And you need to figure out how you can step in at the right times. The workers there were very nice to me, but they had no idea why I was there. When they found out that I had a family, I had a life, I eat dinner with children and a husband, they were like, “So, what do you want to do here? Why are you here?”
Being in the restaurant world as a chef or even a sous chef – that’s your life. You don’t have time for anything else. So, they wanted to know what I was there for. It was hard for me to explain to them, but really, I came to learn. I came for was knowledge. I came to be able to take the lessons of how an efficient restaurant kitchen is run and how professionals do things. Why don’t the home cooks have that knowledge? Why don’t we run our kitchens in such an efficient way? Why? Because we don’t have to get dinner service on. Right? But we do, in a way.
What are some lessons that you learned from being behind the scenes at Bobby Flays’s restaurants?
By the way, I didn’t do it just at Bobby Flays’s restaurant. Chef David Kolotkin and I had become good friends because he allowed me to do it at Prime Grill when he was the executive chef there, and he’s great. We’re hoping to do a class together at De Gustibus.
There are different people and places that let me do it over the years, and I think it changed me and it changed the way I taught and cooked. The home cook thinks about the specific recipe that they’re making in that day and in that moment, and that’s where it starts and that’s where it ends. But that’s not how restaurants or chefs operate. They’re thinking about a much wider scope of everything in components, everything in building blocks. When they’re making a pesto, but it’s not the pesto that’s just for this recipe. This pesto is going to be applied to this dish, this dish, and this dish. And this chicken stock is going to be applied to this dish, this dish, and this dish. And in order to make their food sing and in order to make their food stand out, it’s a layering of flavors and it’s a layering of signature building blocks. Now, at home, we don’t have the time and we certainly don’t have the staff to do it. But those lessons definitely permeated into my own kitchen and how I teach people. Now, I’m not thinking when I start my week in terms of just this one recipe, but I’m thinking about all the total amount of dishes I’m making this week and how I can try to simplify and break down the tasks so that I can use them for different things. I can repurpose my food so I’m spending more efficient time in the kitchen.
Your book seems so unique because it incorporates different concepts that not every other cookbook incorporates. In between chapters you mention what to send to a shiva house or to a young mother, connecting the food to our spiritual and seasonal lives.
I think it’s a very genuine mix of both practical and meaningful and spiritual. I tried to make it a mix of those things in terms of the segments in between the chapters. Originally, my original vision for the book was going to be all the chapters were going to be thematic. I felt like the book would read wonderfully that way because it was all conceptual – chapter one: Cooking for a Crowd; chapter two: Shabbos Cooking; chapter three: Weeknight Suppers. Ultimately, when we cook, we’re cooking for a specific purpose or reason. But I wanted the book to be user-friendly, and so I reformatted the book, and I was able to weave my concepts in between the chapters to keep it user-friendly, which I think worked well.
My hope is that I can help to build the home cook’s confidence in terms of knowledge and skill building with the step-by-steps in my book, with QR codes for difficult skills, with all the organizational tips that I offer. It’s always been my philosophy with teaching that the more you’re good at what you do, the better you can get it done with less stress. The more you’re good at what you do and you feel good about what you’re presenting, the more you can have esteem about what you’re serving.
Part of my experience of being in restaurant kitchens made me feel like if we view ourselves not as a short order cook, but rather as the executive chef of our house, then we will feel differently about what our role is in providing nourishment for our families.
Food also provides us opportunities to give outwards, which is so important. There’s a segment in the book about what I did during Covid called the #soupgivingchallenge. It’s in the soup section. I wanted to be able to reach out and build social connections with people during Covid. I felt like everyone was very isolated, but we were all so taxed during the quarantine with just day-to-day living that I didn’t have the time to make whole meals for other people. But I realized that could add an extra potato or some extra stocks to my soup. At the very least, I can make a quart of soup once a week and just send it to somebody that I know needs one.
Each week we would try to think about somebody who was going through a hard time, who was sick, who was just alone during Covid and I dropped off a quart of soup by them. And it was such an eye opener because what I realized was, I’m terrible at keeping up with people on my phone. But when I knocked on the door with a quart of soup in my hands, it was a good excuse. It was a good facilitator to start a conversation with someone who I wouldn’t normally be checking up on.
I feel like if I can give a message that food is not just a functional – obviously, Hashem made it taste good so that we could enjoy it and elevate what He gave us in this world as nourishment. If He wanted our nourishment to be tasting like nothing, He could have made it that way. But we have the ability to make it attractive and tasty because we can use it to elevate things. In the same way, we’re able to view it hopefully as a tool and a facilitator to draw people in, to draw people around the table, to make it an inviting place to be. Why not get takeout dinners every Friday night? A lot of people do, but you’ll never convince me that it has the same enticement to draw people around the table. And then what happens? The conversations happen. Once you get them at the table, then the conversations happen.
The Jewish Home | DECEMBER 15, 2022 “It’s a genuine mix of the practical and meaningful and spiritual.”
I’m sure every recipe is so close to your heart because you put so much effort and thought into them. What are three to four recipes that you really urge people to try if they’re going to open up this book and start somewhere?
That’s a very hard question. A lot of the recipes in the book the reader will find are ethnic or international in terms of the style of the cuisine. Part of the reason for that is because of all the international classes I taught over the years at JCCs or different places. They ended up allowing me to develop a repertoire of more ethnic recipes. I think that’s a big feather in the cap of the book. But there are also some very “non-ethnic” recipes that are also close to my heart that are in the book.
I guess for the adventurous person who wants to expose themselves to different flavors and tastes, then I would say the Chicken Tikka Masala is something that you’re not going to find in any average kosher cookbook. That was the recipe that I adapted for kosher, because, generally, the chicken is marinated in yogurt. I found that coconut yogurt works very well, and especially in terms of the flavorings, was complimentary. So that’s for somebody who’s, I would say, adventurous and does not mind spending time in the kitchen. My challah recipe is not adventurous. It’s just a great challah recipe.
What are some other “easy-peasy” recipes – as you put it – that you have in the book that you feel people need to try?
One of the simplest recipes in the book are the umami green beans. They are a five-minute recipe. They’re very, very easy. You throw it on a sheet pan and roast. Super easy. The Murgi Chicken is basically schnitzel, but it first has a very flavorful marinade that it sits in, and it is by far the best schnitzel. The marinade is a mixture of onions and turmeric and ginger and garlic, and it soups up the flavor. So everybody loves that. And what are the other easy recipes? There are some things that seem hard, that are not hard. The Chocolate Rum Puddings, in my opinion, are a weeknight treat. They’re dairy, and they’re just delicious. It’s not really fussy, and they’re just, I would say, a childhood favorite that I made a little bit more adult with some rum.
It’s funny – I also recognize a lot about my cooking styles by writing the book at a certain point, I said to my husband, “I put alcohol in everything.” I feel that the alcohol just intensifies the flavors.
You mentioned the Murgi Chicken that has so many different spices. What are spices that you go to time and time again in your cooking?
I definitely use a lot of thyme. I had taught a bunch of Indian classes that were, I would say, unique in the kosher world because there weren’t so many people teaching Indian cooking at that time. So that opened up my nostrils to a whole different array of whole and ground spaces. After learning that cuisine a bit, it definitely made me much more prone to using an array of both sweet and pungent spices that I wasn’t using before. A lot of coriander, a lot of cumin, turmeric… all those I guess you could call them ethnic spices but they definitely opened up my world to different flavors. Also, in that cuisine, they use a mixture of whole and ground spices. You can build a huge amount of flavor by infusing with whole spices or even mixing the two.
I also tried to make the recipes very accessible for different kinds of diets, not just from an array of ethnic flavors. But over the years of teaching, I’ve seen that there are so many special diets that people follow. I tried to make sure there was something in it for everyone in terms of gluten-free, sugar-free, or low sugar. I definitely have the awareness about that. One of the hardest recipes in the entire book was the gluten-free challah. It took me many, many years of work on that. It’s a hard recipe to get right.
There’s also a recipe for low sugar chocolate date muffins. That was a recipe I started working on a lot of years ago when I was doing an alternative sugar class for the JCC. The original recipe I worked on was really not that great, I’ll admit. It’s very hard once you’re playing with the chemistry of baking and you take sugar out. Sugar adds huge amounts of texture. So, I worked with that, and that recipe took me a lot of times to get right, but it is definitely a low-sugar recipe. I put a disclaimer on the bottom that diabetics should check with their doctor because it’s not sugar-free. It has Medjool dates and a touch of honey and the flavor of unsweetened chocolate. That was hard to get right, but I wanted very much for there to be something for people who were watching their sugar or who don’t want to rely solely on refined sugar.
What do you usually prepare for your family for Chanukah?
It might turn people off for me to say that I basically smell like oil the whole week.
That’s great. It’s in the spirit. I love it!
My house smells like a fast food restaurant the whole week because I’m just frying the whole week. But there are some very nice Chanukah friendly recipes. I have a set of menus in the back of the book, and there’s actually a nice Chanukah menu back there.
I make an array of latkes. The latke recipe I put in the book is only one of many recipes for latkes that I make at home. But I wanted to have a nice variety, so I only put one in the book. We also make doughnuts, but I didn’t put that in the book. The shiitake vegetable egg rolls are delicious, and they are a treat as a fried item. The Fried Caprese Skewers are also a very nice treat for a Chanukah party. For that recipe, there are frying tips for frying cheese because a lot of people can get challenged with that. Another great recipe for Chanukah is the Baked Brie. It’s very easy. If you can get a good wheel of Brie, like from the Cheese Guy, you won’t have any leftovers.
You may have noticed that my dairy section is tremendously big in the book. I enjoy cooking dairy dishes. And I really had to narrow down the section, to be honest.
