ANT KATZ

Bagels are back!

Foodie Shannon Sarna, writing on The Nosher, says it was an exciting year for Jewish food: fusion delis, crazy bagels and a slew of new kosher products cropped up near and far to make 2015 an especially delicious year.

She has a good point, of course, there have been a slew of new foods and it certainly has been a creative year for Jewish food-lovers.

Here are just a few of the trends that got US Kashniks most excited:

• CHOCOLATE BABKA: Babka is the New Black, writes Sarna. Whether you are part of the cult following of Breads Bakery in New York or a blogger creating flavours like matcha black seed babka, the sweet yeast cake was everywhere this year. From doughnut babka and savoury babka, everyone fell in love with the beloved Eastern European dessert. And we couldn’t be happier. Some of the more outrageous included nutella babka, chocolate brown sugar babka and classic babka.

   

• THE BAGEL’S BIG COMEBACK: It’s not that bagels ever went out of style, says Sarna. “Who doesn’t love a Sunday morning bagel with coffee and the paper?” But in 2015 we saw a whole resurgence of bagels. From Montreal-style bagels at New York’s Black Seed Bagels to crazy concoctions like the rainbow bagel with funfetti cream cheese, bagels took the spotlight this year. Now if only California could produce a great bagel…

   

• KOSHER “BACON”: JR Online was on top of this one early this year, read: NOW TRY THE US BOERIE SAUSAGE. There really is nothing quite like bacon. Unless of course you keep kosher and don’t eat it, in which case, you might be on an endless search for the holy grail of kosher meats. And this year, non-pork bacon products really took centre stage, both from purveyors of meat products like Jack’s Gourmet, Kol Foods, Grow and Behold and Schmacon, as well as kosher restaurants serving up kosher bacon as part of their menus. Melinda Strauss of the blog Kitchen-Tested shared that Wandering Que in New York makes their own lamb belly bacon as does Chaim Silverberg (aka as Lamb Baaacon) of Baltimore. And Dani Klein of YeahThatsKosher.com shared that kosher bacon is appearing on menus everywhere from La Gondola in Los Angeles, which features candied bacon on their secret menu, to Izzy’s BBQ in Brooklyn, which served beef bacon donuts this Hanukkah.

Pastrami quesadillas. Reuben arancini. Sabich tostada. If the names of these dishes sound a bit confusing to you, it’s because they are part of a whole new era of Jewish fusion food emerging all over the United States.

From latke-BLT sandwiches in Seattle, Jewish-Italian cuisine in Philadelphia to Israeli-Mexican fusion from Einat Admony in New York, Jewish food mash-ups are the cuisine of the moment.

One wonders what new kosher dishes await in 2016?