TJH Speaks with Rivky Kleiman, Cookbook Author

ON APPLES, HONEY, SALT, AND FRENCH TOAST CHURROS

Rivky Kleiman Talks About Her Newest Book, Simply

BY SUSAN SCHWAMM

Rivky, I was amazed when I saw that you came out with another cookbook because I’m still delving into the depths of Simply Gourmet. I have my favorite recipes that I use all the time, but I still have some recipes I didn’t get to. How did you manage to put out another cookbook so soon after publishing your first one?

Well, really, it’s not so soon. It’s about two-anda-half years. Simply Gourmet came out in May of 2019. And now we’re here with my newest book,

Simply.

I will be honest. When ArtScroll asked me, I didn’t know if I wanted to do it. But I had a little bit of a lull in my life. You know how sometimes you have a lot going on, and you just can’t even think about doing something? But I had the time, and I went into it like that. I was really grateful because, baruch Hashem, with my first book, I had five months from the time that we said, “OK, let’s do this,” until it was printed and in everyone’s hands. I still hyperventilate when I think about that. This time, baruch Hashem, I had a year. A year is just great to work on a book. You can have your more hectic times. You can have your less hectic times. When you have your yamim tovim, it really lets your creative juices flow.

That’s how it all started and, baruch Hashem, I’m really grateful. The timing just couldn’t have been more perfect.

Did COVID contribute to that – did you have extra time at home to think about recipes?

Absolutely. I found that when I looked at the world at large, I felt that everybody was home. Everybody was cooking. I have a brother-in-law who is a rabbi. He called me up around Purim time – we were knee-deep in lockdown and it was so frightening – and he said to me, “Rivky, are you posting on Instagram?” And I said to him, “Look, I’m doing the best I can,” but we all were busy with cooking and cleaning and trying to figure out how to stock our houses without leaving because nobody really knew what to expect. There was so much fear. And I remember he told me, “Rivky, you have to. People really need it now.” And I definitely saw that – people were picking up pots and pans and their batters and doing so many things that they hadn’t done for a long time.

So true. And food, in a way, is a comfort to many peois a comfort to many people.

I agree 100 percent with that. Then the trick is to that. Then the trick is to make sure that your comfort foods don’t equate with your waistline, right?

Speaking about our waistlines, how do you manage to prepare really yummy foods but also make sure they’re healthy for your family?

It’s something that, I think, the world at large has really made a tremendous movement towards – healthier and cleaner eating. I feel like there’s much more of an awareness out there than before. And I guess, also, as you age – I’m not old, but I’m not in my teens anymore – all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, you got to start watching what you eat.

I noticed that you have a few salads in Simply. What else are more of your healthier dishes in the Simply cookbook?

You know, I have a mantra. When you’re doing desserts, and when you’re making a cake, just do it right. And then worry about portion control. But if you’re going to do dessert, come on, enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be not tasty. Do it right. And when you’re baking as well, do it right.

Truthfully, I do have a couple of really nice muffins that are really healthier-geared, because a breakfast muffin, to me, doesn’t have to be a fattening piece of cake. You can incorporate healthier ingredients. Use oatmeal or whole wheat flour or be cognizant of the sugar in the muffin. I will tell you, though, that in all of my baking and all my recipes nowand all my recipes nowadays, I’m so much more adays, I’m so much more cognizant of the sugar cognizant of the sugar intake than I used to be. intake than I used to be.

Sometimes you open up your old recipes and you see three-quarters of a cup of sugar going into something like spareribs. That would never happen now. There’s so much more awareness.

In terms of side dishes, I am always aware of keeping it healthy. You’re going to laugh but I always struggle with my “sweet” component in my menus. In heimish cooking, people will always offer an apple crisp or sweet muffin to serve during the meal. And that’s what I struggle with – I always wonder how you can eat a piece of cake in middle of your meal. I always offer it, but I struggle with it.

Speaking of sides, in Simply, I noticed you have an interesting method for cooking your potatoes with the Salt-Baked Garlic Roasted Potatoes. Where did you come up with that method?

Interestingly, I happen to have read that method in Cooks Illustrated, I believe. They had done it just as a baked potato with big potatoes. In my recipe, I used small potatoes with that same method.

The whole concept of salt-baking is that you’re laying your potato in a bed of salt, and you cover the pan as it’s baking. The potato starts to release steam as it starts to bake, and the steam then gets absorbed because it’s covered by the salt. The potato then, in turn, becomes more porous, and begins to reabsorb the moisture that was absorbed into the salt. It’s almost like recycling, and it does not add salt to the potatoes. After they’re cooked, you actually need to add salt to your dish.

It looks like it’s almost the same method as the Salt-Baked Rib Roast in the book.

You just took the words out of my mouth. So many people, when they see the method of making this roast, they’re so afraid. Please tell them don’t be scared. It is the most epic piece of meat ever.

Well, rib roasts in general just scare me because they’re expensive and they’re fancy. And I say to myself, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do that.”

You don’t want to mess it up, right?

So I will tell you, in the Simply Gourmet cookbook, I put in a guide for how long a rib roast should be cooked, depending on if you like it more to the rare side, medium-rare, or medium well. I also very much encourage everybody to use a meat thermometer when cooking meats and roasts.

But interestingly, there’s one other way that you can actually gauge how your meat is doing. You can open your oven. It’s not like a cheesecake where if you open it up, it’s going to fall. I’ve learned there’s a method where you can actually press down on the meat with your fingers. If it’s going to be very jiggly, it’s probably still raw. If it’s a little bit firm, but with give, like there’s a little bit of bounce to the meat, usually, at that point, it’s perfect. And if it’s very hard, it’s very possible that it’s very done.

It’s also very important to realize that when you do take your meat out of the oven, it is going to still continue to cook on your counter for about another five minutes and it can go up even five more degrees. I will very often take my meat out at 125°F on the thermometer because I know that, ultimately, it’s going to bring it to 130°F, which is that perfect medium-rare.

gly, it’s probably still raw. If

Those are great tips for cooking meat. Which recipes did you have already in your repertoire before you decided to create Simply?

I actually had the Mushroom and Leek Soup before I made the cookbook, which is off the charts. And the Lemon Maple Salmon, I also had before I

“The apple and the honey, how much more religious can I get with this muffin?”

started. Those were totally there and ready. I ended up needing a filler for Mishpacha one time, so I ended up putting the mushroom recipe in Mishpacha. There are not that many recipes that I had developed for Mishpacha that are in the book. Sometimes people think that my books are the “best of Mishpacha.” But they’re really not. I believe, out of the over-140 recipes in the book, maybe 20 or 21 recipes came over from Mishpacha.

When I was doing Simply Gourmet, Renee Muller, my food stylist, told me, “Rivky, you must put in some recipes that people recognize as your fantastic recipes, recipes that are epic and game-changing. People want to see what they recognize as you in a cookbook.” So we did that.

The apple galette is one recipe that I pulled over from Mishpacha. It was so good with apples, and my kids were like, “I don’t get you, Ma. Why are you

trying to mess with perfection? If it ain’t broke, why are you trying to fix it?” But in this book, I put it in as a dessert, as a plum galette. It’s just that good. galette. It’s just that good.

I love that galette and I make it all the time – as make it all the time – as an apple galette and as a an apple galette and as a plum galette, too. But we plum galette, too. But we never make it to dessert – never make it to dessert – it’s always finished in midit’s always finished in middle of the meal. dle of the meal.

It’s a great dish, and there is not a lot of sugar. Compare it to an apple crisp – the total sugar content is not that much. So if you want to use it as a side dish, by all means. There are some people who never serve sweet dishes during their meal, and for them, I say that it’s a great dessert.

There was a bochur who ate meals at our house a lot of times. He used to quip, “Ms. Kleiman, I love eating by you. I get dessert in the middle of meal, and then I get dessert again at the end of the meal!”

Isn’t that true at every Shabbos table?

Maybe he was from a more “Yekkishe” family, so maybe their eating habits are different. But I got to tell you, I thought his comment was so funny.

Which recipe in Simply did you feel you had to try the hardest to get it to work for perfection?

Now, that happens to be a great question, and hands down, it is my Honey Apple Muffin that was in my side dish section. It was a killer for me because I wasn’t willing to turn it into a cakey muffin. Every once in a while, you have this idea like, ah, I’m thinking Rosh Hashana. This is going to be epic for Rosh Hashana – a honey apple muffin. Right? The apple and the honey, how much more religious can I get with this muffin?

But it just wasn’t working. What was interesting was that my flavor profile was spot-on. My children were like, “Ma, don’t change it. Don’t change it.” But I played with it a lot – with the baking powder and the baking soda, with the different additives. To maybe reduce some of the moisture, but it wasn’t yielding a really “good-looking” muffin. Is that horrible to say?

No, that’s very honest. And that’s a lot of work that I didn’t have to do in my house to get the perfect mu n, so I appreciate that you did the work for me.

I appreciate you saying that, because I was about to pull it from the book. But then, I had my

last photo shoot coming up, and the night before, I made four different batches of the muffin. Finally, I thought about getting rid of the honey because I thought maybe the honey was ruining it.

In the end, I did a bit of research on leavening factors and honey, and I discovered that honey is an acid – which I knew already, and which is why I put baking soda in the recipe to equalize it. But then I realized that the lemon juice I used for the “buttermilk” was perhaps causing all the problems.

That was a game changer. I got rid of the lemon juice, and I used apple juice – which I thought was great. Think about it: apple juice for an apple honey muffin – aha! It’s so moist and so delicious and not too sweet. Baruch Hashem. Mission accomplished.

That is a great story and really tells us about the e orts that go into creating the perfect recipe. Let’s talk about Chanukah. What recipes do you feel people should really make on Chanukah from Simply?

ros are epic. My grandson, who is Mr. Picky, always begs me, “Bubby, Bubby, can you make them again for me?”

Let’s talk about the section in the book called “Simple Suppers.”

The “Simple Suppers” section is there to help all of us, because we all work so hard, and we want to cram so much into a day. I tried to help take the guesswork out of that looming question that’s always there: what’s for dinner?

All throughout the book there’s an icon that will show you the different suppers that are “simple suppers.” At the end of the book, you’ll see I created different “simple supper” ideas. I list how long it will take you to prep, to complete, what’s the total time from prep to table – it’s big and bold and clear to see.

It also gives you tips and tricks for prepping this particular dish. Like, for example, there’s one that

You know, at one point, I was slowly moving away from frying because of the unhealthy connotation frying was getting. But then I did some research and I found that if you pan-fry with just a little bit of oil, sometimes you end up with more oil absorption. So you may want to oven-bake instead.

If you’re deep frying, you need to let the oil come to temperature properly and slowly, so the food doesn’t burn, but it’s not as bad as you think.

I happen to have some awesome recipes in this book that get fried. The Sesame Chicken is awesome. My family is a real meat-and-potatoes type of family. But I served it one Sukkos, and they were eating it just as quickly as they were eating the standing rib roast. It’s really that good.

The Tilapia Fingers in the fish section, with the batter, is so good. The batter is pillowy and soft and delicious. I had to play with that recipe as well. I didn’t want people to have to pull out a million different ingredients. But I did discover that the mixture of flour and cornstarch yields a crispier outcome, and it doesn’t get soggy.

There are also some great stir-fries in the chicken section, which is a bit like frying.

I thought the French Toast Churros would be a fun dessert for a milchig meal on Chanukah.

Absolutely. It’s the perfect party food. The chur-

“I love that I love what I’m doing.”

has a really, really spectacular ground beef sloppy-joe type of dish. In the book, I suggest buying a family pack of ground meat and that they make a double batch of the dish. Use one and make it, as I showed you, with the pasta. And the next time, take it out of the freezer, and you can use it as a sloppy Joe or in a soft or a hard taco. Or you can even roll it into an eggroll wrapper and turn it into a barbecue beef eggroll. It’s mind-blowing, all these different ideas.

Not only that, but I let people know how you can prep in advance. You’re a working mother. You can prepare your ground beef the night before. You can prepare your pasta the night before, and then just warm them together as soon as you come home, depending on what works for each person. If you want to prepare it fresh when you come home from work, it’s going to be on your table, the whole shebang, within 35 minutes. That’s also great.

Everybody works differently. Some people like to prep on Sunday, so that’s great. Prep it on Sunday. Have it ready, and put it all together for dinner during the week on the night you serve it. I make it so simple for people.

We’re talking about preparing dinner early because of everything we juggle during our days. You’re a mother and a grandmother, and you’re a recipe developer, and you’re doing twenty million things and putting out cookbooks. How do you do it all?

The first thing I will answer you is I am so grateful to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He has blessed me with physical strength.

And I also think it’s very important to prioritize. Your family has to always come first. And I also love that I love what I’m doing. It really helps because you can dive right into it then.

I worked with the most amazing people in making this book. Renee Muller, our food stylist and prop stylist, is a legend. And Chay Berger, our photographer, had vision. She had such a good eye, that when you put Renee and Chay together, you get an amazing team. I felt like we were a dream team, and I thank Hashem for that as well.

What do you do to relax when you’re not working, even though you love to work?

I love a good book. I’m very much a bookworm.

I happen to also love reading. But I work at a newspaper, so people expect that of me.

I really love reading. And it’s interesting, you should know that I also love perusing different cookbooks. I read them like a novel. Sometimes the recipes will inspire me – oh wow, I never thought to put these flavor profiles together.

When you go out to eat, what do you generally order at restaurants?

I like to order interesting things and try new foods. If I go to a fleishig restaurant, I won’t usually order a rib steak, because I think my husband makes a rock-star rib steak. I’ll go for the duck or the veal. I love new things, like lamb riblets.

Do you think people are scared to invite you to their Shabbos tables because it’s intimidating to have a recipe developer there?

I really hope not. I am so not like that. We’re the most easy-going people, and we love to entertain. But I have got to be honest, I love to be pampered as well. Don’t hold back that invitation. If there’s a party, I’m in.

OK, great. Maybe you’ll come to my house next week. I’ll make you the plum galette – and there won’t be a crumb left.