On a recent Tuesday night, a cooking class in a new Midwood culinary school had nine women and one man attempting to braid dough into challah loaves. Each was eager to learn the proper braiding technique as taught by the instructor. Some had flour on their faces and sweaters, but all struggled equally with the folding technique.
“Who wants to braid four strips?” asked the teacher, Sarah Kassai. “Or should we do six?”
The workshop was lively, as Kassai’s teaching style encouraged discussion. Conversations about baking issues flew across the worktables: “What type of yeast is best? Can I replace the sugar with honey?” And interspersed with these questions were inquiries about the Jewish kosher tradition.
Unusual for a cooking class? Yes. But the course was being held at the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts, a new school dedicated to all things kosher.
“What about raisins?” asked Kassai. “Who uses them?”
“They don’t use raisins in Europe,” one attendee replied, “so I don’t use them.”
Kassai later sliced off an egg-sized chunk of dough and passed it around.
“This you can use for the ‘hafrashat’ challah,” she said, referring to the act of ritually burning a piece of dough.
Two of Kassai’s students, Sarah and Esther Sochet, a mother and daughter who live nearby on Flatbush Avenue, had come more for a bonding exercise.
“We wanted to find something we were both interested in,” said the mother, Sarah. “We came to see if the instructor has any secrets. The way she does the yeast is new to me.”
The Sochets discovered the classes through the housewares store beneath the school called Happy Home, owned for 15 years by Baruch and Elka Pinson. Over the years, they had held cake-decorating classes in their store, but when the upstairs space became available, the Pinsons rented it and moved the classes there.
“We had the space,” said Elka. “In New York, space is everything. We also had the customer base and the infrastructure, and we saw a need for a kosher cooking school.”
In early 2007, the Pinsons ramped up the course load, renovated the large one-room space, and found themselves needing help. They brought in Jesse Blonder as the director and a co-owner, and since October, what they describe as New York’s first, full-scale kosher cooking school has been in operation.
“We’re kosher, but anybody can participate,” said Elka. “It’s kind of an open appeal.”
“Everything’s kosher, but not everything’s Jewish,” explained Blonder. “We do have traditional Jewish foods; it’s an element. And I bring in professional chefs from around the city and country that specialize in different things. I explain what the guidelines are and [the chefs and I] work around that.”
Among the more well-known guest instructors are Food Network veteran James Parker of Virginia and Ray Duey of California, who taught classes in fruit and vegetable carving. Indeed, they’re so popular, students are coming from Canada to attend the chefs’ next courses, said Blonder.
The center offers a variety of classes: French, Italian, Spanish tapas, and even sushi. Others are designed to teach Jewish-specific situations, like pareve baking and cooking for Passover.
Although a professional-level course is being developed, it is still a recreational school, with the most popular classes being cake decorating, fruit garnishing and those taught by cookbook authors. They also offer instruction in gluten-free cooking and preparing for diabetics.
“The menus that we’ve offered have been from cuisines all around the world,” said Elka. “The kosher clients now are pretty sophisticated.”
Blonder, who was raised in nearby Manhattan Beach and is a non-Orthodox Jew, developed the curriculum in tandem with some chefs and teaches, too. He was working as an apprentice at the Culinary Center of New York until he answered the Pinsons’ ad on Craigslist.
“It seemed like a unique opportunity,” said Blonder. “It was the chance to have my own thing, which in a restaurant takes years before you run your own kitchen. I’m working with food alongside business and marketing. It was a more complete opportunity, and that’s why it appealed to me.”
Elka said that people from the community — both Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews — make up the majority of the attendees.
“In the Jewish community, people tend to entertain a tremendous amount,” she said. “We have family and social functions all the time, so it really pulls on the need to prepare and present food.”
Which brings us to Esther Sochet’s interest in challah bread-making. “You never know what God has in store for you,” she said, referring to the potential of one day baking for children of her own.
The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts is located at 1407 Coney Island Ave. between avenues J and K in Midwood. For a class schedule and more information, call (718) 692-2442 or visit the Web site at www.happyhomepage.com/ kosherculinary.
