As a longtime food writer, I wasn't sure what to expect from Kosherfest, the only food expo dedicated solely to kosher comestibles. Would I find the usual comfort food most assimilated Ashkenazim (like me) associate with kosher: vegetarian cutlets, leaden knishes, fatty delicatessen meat and a groaning board of preserved fish products? Not quite. Kosherfest, recently held in Manhattan, actually surprised me.
Kosher food has emerged from its niche to embrace a wider-reaching and often secular or even—gasp!—non-Jewish audience. As recently as 20 years ago kosher-keeping housewives had to trek to the kosher butcher to find an acceptable chicken; now Empire Kosher poultry can be found in most urban supermarkets. In fact, brining poultry in salt water (which is essentially koshering minus the rabbi) prior to cooking is a standard step in the preparation of many contemporary poultry recipes.
"Health and lifestyle awareness is a middle-class phenomenon everywhere; it crosses religious boundaries and goes beyond kosher," says food writer Peter Kaminsky, formerly New York magazine's Underground Gourmet and the co-author of several celebrity-chef cookbooks. But the kosher food industry, helped by events like Kosherfest, now in its 19th year, has started looking outward and reacting to eating trends seen across America and the world. As chef Ron Ben-Israel, whose eponymous wedding cakes are among the country's most stylish and costly works of edible art, says, "Sure, kosher food has to 'answer to a higher authority,' but I have to answer to the aesthetics and palates of my clients."
The main appeal of kosher food for the non-Jew is its commitment to covenantally regulated wholesomeness. Kosher victuals wear their "OU" (or Circle K, Star K, K-of-K, etc.) badges proudly. To the observant, these hechshers prove that food was prepared under rabbinic supervision, adhering to strict ingredient sourcing, recipes and cooking methods. To the unobservant, kosher certification means quality and purity. But one thing a kosher label doesn't ensure is tastiness. As a weekend at Kosherfest confirms, there is plenty of non-delicious food prepared under strict rabbinical supervision.
Echoing the food world at large, the prevailing themes at Kosherfest were organic, healthy foods and "ethnic" flavors, specifically those from Asia. "Asian flavors are going into the kosher world," says Jeff Nathan, the kosher chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and host of the PBS show New Jewish Cuisine. "The consumer is becoming more educated and wants to be able to use these ingredients at home." The exhibitors who offered Asian ingredients and tastes at Kosherfest were plentiful. Nathan's own offering included a line of panko, a traditional Japanese shardy bread crumb whose crispiness is unrivaled for coating fried or baked foods (tempura, for example, relies on panko for its unique crunch). Since he could find kosher panko only in 50-pound food service bags, he decided to repackage it for the rest of us.
The winner of Kosherfest's "Best of Show" award was Mikee Shitaki Teriyaki sauce. I wasn't crazy about it—it's overly salty and has a one-dimensional savoriness—but for the unadventurous cook, one who doesn't want to bother mixing his own soy sauce, sugar, mushrooms, and rice wine, it might do. Ming Food, a British company, offered Chinese wheat pancakes, whose primary purpose, says Lilin Mak, Ming's marketing person, is to wrap "aromatic crispy duck. Known to you Americans as Peking duck." Ming hopes the kosher community will embrace the pancakes as an all-purpose pareve sandwich wrap. Because of kosher restrictions, Ming was unable to tote in any Peking duck, and without a filling, these wrappers could have been moistened paper towels.
Perhaps the quirkiest items at the convention were the surimi offerings from Asian Star. Surimi is a sea bream-based imitation crab product used most frequently in sushi rolls. Without sushi's trappings, surimi is simply bland, watery and stringy fish; it's all texture with just a hint of seafood flavor. But Asian Star presses surimi into faux shrimp, scallops and lobster tails, offering the kosher customer a frisson of the forbidden. Robert Lau, the sales manager for Asian Star, says these fake-shellfish products are very "big in kosher-eating France. They're more open-minded there."
Of course, Kosherfest did have its share of kosher grocery stalwarts, none of which claim to be "antioxidant-rich" or "sustainable." Gold's prepared horseradish is practically the same product my parents enjoyed as newlyweds in the late 1950s. Streit's matzah is still made on the Lower East Side, as it has been since 1925. Manischewitz Concord Grape will always be the default Pesach wine. But going into its third decade, Kosherfest has become a decidedly multicultural event, one that can encompass organic cheese and free-trade tea alongside matzah meal and barley soup. One can only guess what's next: line-caught gefilte fish? Single-origin Hanukkah gelt? Let's hope so.
