News from the Meat Eating World

Rubashkin convicted on 86 charges

November 12, 2009

(JTA) -- A jury convicted Sholom Rubashkin, the former owner of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, of 86 out of 91 fraud charges.

The 12-person jury decision on Thursday in Sioux Falls, S.D. likely means that Rubashkin, 50, will spend the rest of his life in prison; combined sentences could reach over 1,250 years.

Federal authorities launched investigations into the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa after a May 2008 immigration raid. The jury took four days to deliberate after a monthlong trial, and convicted him on a range of fraud charges, money laundering and failing to pay his suppliers. Rubashkin's lawyers had argued that he was an incompetent businessman.

The trial was moved to South Dakota after an Iowa judge agreed that the juror pool had been prejudiced by media coverage.

Top Chef goes Veggie, Regional and Seasonal

If you are like me and follow Top Chef religiously, you know that this episode, and winning recipe by Atlanta's Woodfire Grill owner and Top Chef contestant Kevin Gillespie is a few weeks old already - but it sounded and looked so good I just had to share. The challenge was to cook a meal for Natalie Portman, who is a vegetarian. It was so funny watching the chef's reactions tot this "devastating" news! This is not the easiest recipe we've ever posted (I don't know anyone who has a cold smoker lying around their kitchen) but with a few adjustments - I'm sure this will be a wonderful use of our CSA turnips and kale - if anyone experiments and has tips - please share!


Duo of Mushrooms, Smoked Kale, Candied Garlic and Turnip Purée

Chef
Kevin Gillespie Kevin Gillespie

Top Chef, Season 6, Episode 10, Elimination Challenge Winner
Yield

12 SERVINGS
Ingredients
For Braised Morels:

* 2 cups morel mushrooms
* ¼ lb butter, unsalted
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1 teaspoon cream
* Salt
* Lemon juice

For Garlic Syrup:

* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup cider vinegar
* 10 cloves garlic, peeled

For Turnip Puree:

* 2 cups turnips, peeled and sliced
* 2 tablespoons heavy cream
* ¼ lb butter, unsalted
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 cup water
* 3 turnips, quartered (for garnish)

For Pistou:

* ½ cup tarragon leaves
* ¼ cup pistachios, toasted
* 2 cups parsley
* ½-1 cup extra virgin olive oil

For Greens:

* 2 bunches kale
* 1 onion, brunoised
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* ½ teaspoon chili flakes
* 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
* ½ lb butter
* 1 quart water

For Sautéed Hen of the Woods:

* 3 cups hen of the woods mushrooms
* 1 teaspoon butter, unsalted
* 1 tablespoon canola oil
* 1 celery stalk, fine brunoised
* 1 lemon, zested and juiced

Directions

For Garlic Syrup:

1. Caramelize sugar in a little water until a deep amber color.

2. Add vinegar and boil until the mixture redissolves into liquid.

3. Add garlic and reduce ¾ to a syrup consistency (about 1 hour). Reserve.

For Braised Morels:

1. In a small saucepan, emulsify butter into water and cream. Season with salt.

2. Braise mushrooms until tender. Season with lemon juice.

For Turnip Puree:

1. Melt cream, butter, and sugar together until dissolved.

2. Add turnips and cook covered until tender.

3. Pour into vita prep and puree until smooth. If too thick, thin with a little water. Adjust seasoning.

4. Roast the remaining turnips in butter until golden. Season with salt. Reserve.

For Pistou:

1. Combine all ingredients in vita prep.

2. Puree and drizzle in olive oil to emulsify to desired consistency. Season.

For Kale:

1. Smoke kale in cold smoker for 5 minutes.

2. De-stem and wash until cold running water until not slimy.

3. Trim away any brown or discolored parts. Cut into ¼” chiffonade.

4. Emulsify butter into water and add remaining ingredients. Add kale and cook to desired tenderness (5-20 minutes). Adjust seasoning with sugar and salt.

For Sautéed Hen of the Woods:

1. Melt butter with oil. When golden color, add mushrooms, celery, lemon juice and zest.

2. Let sit on heat until golden brown and tender, trying not to stir too much.

3. Take off the heat and season.

To Serve:

1. Spoon pistou onto plate.

2. Set kale next to pistou.

3. Spoon turnip puree on the other side of the pistou. Place quartered turnips on top of puree as garnish.

4. Top kale with mushrooms.

5. Drizzle garlic syrup over pistou.

Box Items This Week:
apples
sweet potatoes
butternuts
collards
kale or asian greens
grits

Enjoy!

Next Thursday, November 19th - The Turkey free Thanksgiving Table
Whether you are consdiering a birdless meal, or just want some inspirational side dish recipes - join Rabbi Norry for a delicious evening of cooking, eating and gratitude.

Come at 5:30 if you can for minyan, then stroll over to the kitchen for a pre-holiday treat to be truly thankful for! After the class we will share the prepared meal together to culminate another wonderful CSA season. Please RSVP to naomi.rabkin@gmail.com - space is limited!

Reflections On the End of the Season

By Madeline Guzman,
Newsletter coordinator and member of Hazon CSA in Rockville, MA

Tikvat Israel has now experienced almost three seasons of CSA produce. For most of us, being part of a CSA has been a new experience. The reaction to participating in our CSA has ranged from ecstatic to greatly disappointing. Those who have enjoyed the experience aresigning up for the next season. Those of us less pleased are either dropping out or giving the CSA “another chance.” This has led me to think about what each of us is expecting of a CSA. If one comes into this experience expecting a delivery of the “right” quantity of vegetables in perfect size, shape, and flavor that are most enjoyed by your family, you may be disappointed. If one comes into this experience learning to accept what the land produces, one might be amazed by what the earth (and our farmer) have to offer.

As our summer CSA season drew to a close, I reflected on the responses to the produce received by our members. I’m not sure everyone fully appreciates the meaning of a CSA. To me, it means the shared responsibility for bringing fresh food to our table. In conjunction with my CSA membership (and inspired by Danny Bachman), my husband and I started a vegetable garden. Like the experiences of both Danny and Pam Stegall, our CSA farmer, not all has gone according to plan. Some of our produce came out unlike what we expected, some better than expected, and a few crops were even a total loss. The results in my own vegetable garden were probably a mini-experience of what Pam feels throughout her growing season. The difference is that her commitment is to many more people than my own.

True, CSA produce is not perfect. The pesticides and fungicides used on conventional produce do not protect organic produce. Sometimes this means being very careful to wash away animal pests or cut away a damaged portion of a vegetable. Like us, animal pests (and even bacteria and fungus) find our veggies tasty! We need to be a bit gentler and forgiving of what the earth produces.

One particular Hazon CSA in Tenafly NJ, has been hit particularly hard this year. When Steve Golden (Tenafly’s site coordinator) visited the farm, he saw first hand the inexplicable fact that the beets did not grow, despite being planted in the best soil of that particular field. Indeed, the other rootcrops – turnips, carrots and radishes – did not really produce. So too the arugula, as well as the broccoli – which looks like it had some leaf disease which limited its growth. Not to mention the horrible late blight that killed all of our tomatoes and those in neighboring Rockland County and throughout the Northeast.

Crestfallen, Ted (another one of our famers) brought us the few cherry tomatoes which were not completely rotting in the field even though they too were infected (if you left it on your counter to ripen, as we did, the blight overtook the little fellow overnight). We all sympathize with the Stephens who will now have to pull up all the myriad tomato plants and burn them. What a great shame – so much painstaking care and tending going up in smoke. Thankfully, the squash did much better, although the green zucchini harvest was only a fraction of what we would have had if the season were “normal.” That goes for the first planting of cucumbers and string beans. All in all, the spring/summer harvest has been a devastating experience for the Stephens family. (excerpted from The Jew and the Carrot blog, “A Difficult Summer: A Letter from the Tuv Ha’aretz in Tenafly” by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster)

Reading afterward about the support provided to the devastated farming family in this situation was heartwarming. My point is simply that CSA members are literally sharing the successes and failures of farm life. So, dear members, thank you for thinking hard before you commit yourselves to this practice and immersing yourselves in it completely once you have.

Nine Faiths, One Vegan Lunch at Windsor Castle

On the Agenda — The Largest-Ever Commitment To Take Environmental Action
By Leah Koenig
Published October 27, 2009, The Forward


On Tuesday November 3, His Royal Highness Prince Philip will host over 200 guests for lunch at Windsor Castle, the 900-year-old palace that serves as an official residence of his and Queen Elizabeth’s. But this lunch will be noticeably different from the roasted quail and crème fraîche typical of castle meals. Instead, the menu is entirely vegan and centered on seasonal, regionally sourced ingredients.

The reason: an interfaith conference called “Many Heavens, One Earth: Faith Commitments for a Living Planet,” to be attended by leaders from Jewish, Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Muslim, Shinto and Sikh backgrounds. Co-sponsored by the Unite d Nations Development Program and Alliance of Religions and Conservation (or ARC, a faith-based environmental organization co-founded by Prince Philip in 1995), the conference has the goal of presenting unique seven-year commitments that outline each religion’s plan to foster action around climate change within the participants’ communities.

The seven-year framework resonates deeply within Jewish tradition, which mandates a weekly day of rest on Shabbat and a septennial resting of agricultural land in Israel during the shmita year. At the conference, eight Jewish delegates — a collection of educators, entrepreneurs, rabbis, activists and politicians from the United States and Israel — will present a commitment that calls upon Jewish individuals and organizations to “play a distinct and determined role in responding to climate change” between now and the next shmita year, which starts September 2015.

“Jewish people have moved through history by marrying small steps with big vision,” said attendee Nigel Savage, whose organization, Hazon, played a lead role in crafting the Jewish commitment. Now is the time, he said, to connect small actions — like switching to energy-efficient light bulbs or planting a synagogue vegetable garden — with education and advocacy.

While not the first gathering to marry faith and sustainability, this conference marks the largest-ever commitment by faiths to take environmental action. “Religions have the unique capacity to think beyond the next business cycle to long-term generational change,” said delegate Rabbi Yedidya Sinclair, who founded the Jewish Climate Change Campaign in Israel.

Not coincidentally, the conference has been scheduled to precede the international climate-change talks that will be held in Copenhagen in December. “The U.N. and World Bank (which will attend both gatherings) are among the world’s biggest, multilateral organizations,” said Rabbi Sinclair. “These organizations are beginning to realize that religions have a crucial role in addressing climate change.”

So what about that lunch? The meal at Windsor will be, in effect, a model for the type of eco-minded choices that the delegates hope to encourage within their constituencies. Co-conference organizer Victoria Finlay said that ARC chose vegan food to provide a low-impact meal that accommodates the widest spectrum of the delegates’ dietary needs. Daoists, for example, cannot eat onions, garlic or other ingredients that might cause a disruption of airflow within the body. Religious Hindus avoid meat and eggs and observant Muslims eschew pork and meat that has not been ritually slaughtered. (Understandably, the organizers avoided the logistical headache of offering separate meals that cater to nine different religions.)

The resulting menu includes roasted pear salad with cobnuts and chicory, Portobello mushrooms stuffed with artichoke and herbs, pearl barley risotto and organic wine bottled by Orthodox nuns in France’s Rhone Valley. This will be the first-ever vegan effort undertaken by Edible Food Design, one of Windsor’s regular catering companies. Head chef Sophie Douglas-Bate said her “heart sank at the thought of cooking without butter and cream,” but she ultimately enjoyed the challenge.

Despite the organizers’ least-common-denominator approach, however, the lack of a mashgiach and separate dishes means that kosher-keeping Jewish delegates will not be able to eat the lunch — they are the only participants unable to do so. And although they were offered the option of ordering food from an outside kosher kitchen, some of them declined. “I realized I’d be eating food that was triple-wrapped in plastic with disposable cutlery at an environmental conference,” said Rabbi Sinclair of the kosher offerings. “That was a moment when I realized kosher is important, but not enough.” Instead, Sinclair plans to eat fruit, salad and “a few granola bars,” brought from home.

While Rabbi Sinclair’s lunch might not be entirely satisfying, ultimately the more important challenges lie beyond one lunch at Windsor. “We’re interested in what happens next.” Savage said. “The next shmita year is far enough away to imagine big changes, but near enough that it’s not pie in the sky.”

For Hazon, the seven-year plan is part of a larger campaign that has already begun to galvanize action around climate change in the Jewish community. Delegate Naomi Tsur, a seasoned environmental activist who recently became deputy mayor of Jerusalem, intends to use the plan as a springboard toward a more thoughtful approach to the shmita year in 2015. “Shmita is big business in our city, but the way it is currently observed is a tragedy,” she said. Tsur hopes to involve Jerusalem’s city gardens in raising awareness around sustainable agriculture’s connection to climate change. “This is our opportunity to think globally and act locally,” she said.