An Idiot In the JCC’s Kitchen for Passover

When I opened the email asking if I wanted to take a Passover cooking class at the JCC, I was just opening up all the windows on the first floor after turning my kids’ frozen pizza into a burnt offering. 

My at Livingston Patch is wonderful, brilliant and apparently has a wicked sense of humor since I’ve written before that I am a culinary catastrophe. Make that a renowned culinary catastrophe. People do not come to my house for the food. But sure, I was willing, as long as 1) Patch was footing the bill 2)  I could get childcare  3)  the JCC had stomach pumps on site. 

Patch was kind enough to pay my tuition (at $15 a bargain!), my husband promised he’d be home on time, and although I couldn’t confirm that the JCC had a stomach pump, we were five minutes from Saint Barnabas Medical Center, so I figured humanity was safe. With little to lose, I very nervously trekked off to the JCC in West Orange. 

I realized how stupid I was for being nervous when I met Jo Sohinki, the Director of Early Childhood Services at the JCC (the class was held in the center’s preschool).  She could not have been warmer or more welcoming.  She introduced me to Jodi Eisner, a Livingston resident and our instructor for the night. 

Jodi’s approach to cooking is simple: Start with a few basic recipes and adapt them to what you need.  She explained that she was going to show us how to prepare foods without the Passover staples of matzoh (good news for me since I’m currently following the Atkins Diet), eggs, and onions (also glad tidings because I HATE onions).  Some in the class balked at that, but Eisner proved completely true to her word.

She started out with dessert first (bless her) and showed us how to make Chocolate Dipped Frozen Bananas, which are so easy that a child (or someone like me) could do it.  The dish also looked great and you could assume that since it has a fruit in it, there’s a vitamin in there somewhere. 

Next she showed us how to make a Fruity Quinoa Salad. Quinoa is a faux cereal and though it looks like grain, it’s actually related to beets, spinach, and amazingly enough, tumbleweeds. Anyway, it’s not a grain, so apparently it’s OK to use for Passover. It’s also listed as a superfood, a term my husband LOVES. 

The salad seemed easy to make, although I have burned quinoa in the past. It’s ridiculously bad-smelling when you burn it beyond recognition, so I’m not sure I’d try anything involving cooking quinoa again.  In any case, the way Jodi made the dish, it did look pretty.

She then showed us how to make a Citrus Marinated Chicken involving grilled chicken in an easy marinade; the chicken  goes well over her dish, Chicken Berry Salad. The salad is made with blackberries, something I know nothing about, but it did seemed simple enough if, and only if, I bought pre-cooked chicken and used that.  Last year I burned some chicken on the grill so bad I thought I’d have to call the Livingston Fire Department to put it out.

I loved Jodi’s simple, concrete approach to cooking.  She gave out lots of little cooking tips (I love tips) and her “don’t mess any more dishes than you have to” is something I wholeheartedly agree with.

I limited my tasting due to my diet, but could easily see myself fashioning the banana dish or the chicken berry salad. She also gave us a copy of a recipe for Potato Chip Chicken which she said is popular with the kids. I don’t get it: Why bother with the chicken when potato chips are a perfect meal on their own (thus the reason I’m on Atkins).

I hope the JCC has more classes taught by Eisner. Her style of teaching is friendly, practical, and completely do-able, even for a culinary disaster like me. If she teaches more, I’ll be there. Maybe I’ll even sell the family stomach pump.