Dairy-Free Recipes from Kosher Cookbooks

Sure I know it's Christmas Eve. I'm just feeling perverse. It's my revenge for 24/7 Christmas carols starting November 1.

In What Ever Happened to Mom's Apple Cake? Rachel Silverman talks about the findings of food historian Dr. Carol Harris Shapiro who notes that Jews in America assimilated their food along with other cultural touchstones.

Shapiro also said that the recent wave of health consciousness put Jewish food on the back-burner, so to speak. Between dishes laden with fat (noodle kugel), sodium (corned-beef sandwiches) and sugar (apple cake), the professor confirmed that "pretty much the entire Jewish Ashkenazi cookbook" has been "wiped out."

Even though Shapiro said that "food is one of the very last things to leave an ethnic group," she described contemporary Jewish cuisine as steeped "in a tremendous time of flux."

Lecture attendee Herman Jacobowitz agreed, citing his own personal ambivalence about the amalgamation process.

While he said that he enjoys the Israeli-style tapas, pungent spices and soy ice-cream his daughter serves on Shabbat, he admitted to a certain nostalgia for recipes from his youth.

So let's explore some of those new-fangled Jewish foods, with dairy-free recipes that are good for those who are lactose intolerant, dairy allergic, or vegans as well.

Leave it to the New York Times to feature the Ultimate Potato Pancake recipe, adapted from Daniel Boulud's The New American Cooking.





Nancy Coale Zippe wrote 'Where There's Food …', an article about the new cookbook Where There's Food ... There's a Celebration.

Recipes on that page include:

• "A Great Gift of Rice" mix
  
• Salmon with Mustard Crumb Crust
  
• Potato Latkes

Then there's Roseanne Gold, author of Kids Cook 1-2-3 who shares her recipes on Celebrate Hanukkah with latkes.

• 1-2-3 Latkes
  
• 1-2-3 Apple-Cranberry Sauce
  
• 1-2-3 Apple-Cranberry Salsa

Finally, there's Doris Reynolds who wrote Let’s Talk Food: Main ingredient for latkes not just potatoes. She has the most old fashioned kind of recipe in, appropriately:

• Molly Goldberg’s old fashioned potato latkes, from Molly Goldberg's cookbook Molly Goldberg Cooks.
  
• She moderns it up with Zucchini Parmesan latkes. This recipe contains a small amount of cheese as an ingredient, but the cheese is absolutely not necessary to the result and can be safely left out.