Cholent or What Is That Stuff - as written for Bonai Shalom's bulletin

What does summer mean to me?
Hot days, warm nights, afternoon thunderstorms, fresh corn on the cob, the smell of grilled meat, fireworks, the Independence Day Stampede Parade in Greeley (which bring with it the smell of meat on the hoof), swimming suits, juicy tomatoes, and picnics in long green grass. And at Bonai it also means mosquitoes and the Great Cholent Debate. Who wants to eat cholent in the hot dog days of summer? The answer is no one in theory but everyone in practice.

But before we get to that…let’s back up and ask, what is cholent? Some people will tell you that cholent must have potatoes, or beans, or barley, or onions, or meat, or all of those to be the real deal. They are wrong. Cholent, or chamin as it is called by Sephardim, is a casserole meal that is prepared and started cooking well before Shabbat comes in on Friday and eaten for lunch after services on Saturday. I have heard of some people who eat cholent as a bedtime snack before retiring on Friday night (on Kibbutz Revivim some young people would sneak into the kitchen through an open window on Friday nights and take a bowl of cooked but still soupy cholent to eat as an accompaniment to Goldstar beer) and those who eat cholent both for lunch and the third meal on Shabbat day. And although traditional Ashekanazi cholent does contain potatoes, beans, onions, barley, and meat – in proportions according to the maker’s wallet and taste – it can contain just about anything. I have been served cholent consisting of chickpeas, chunks of tofu, and strips of seaweed. My grandmother liked to make, as a special treat, hers with one giant knaidel, or matzah ball, in it. Sephardim traditionally use rice instead of barley; many people (Rabbi Marc included) like to make theirs with sweet potatoes; some people (Rabbi Marc included in this category, too) make theirs with Marmite (which is a fermented yeast paste popular with about half the Brits in the world and almost no one else.)

If you’ve been eating Bonai’s Kiddush lunches consistently, you have probably noticed that I don’t go in much for traditional cholent. Sometimes I make a cooked-all-day chili or vegetable stew; sometimes it has spinach or red rice; sometimes it is full of mushrooms and fresh garlic. In the summer I try to make it a little lighter and full of vegetables and in the winter make it heartier with more potatoes and grains. And this season it has been, and will continue to be, full of the delicious, fresh, organic produce that we are getting from Red Wagon Farm as our share of the CSA (community supported agriculture.) As of this writing (two weeks into the CSA season) we’ve had turnip coconut milk curry cholent and mushroom red rice chili cholent (which used turnips, garlic scapes, and spring shallots from Red Wagon.) You can expect to see more of these unusual cholent variations over the next several months, and into fall and winter as we use produce that I freeze and bring out as the dark, cold days approach. So, if you come to Bonai on the weeks that there is a full lunch, you can expect a cholent; just don’t expect a traditional stick-to-your-ribs-and-the-pot barley, potato, onion one.

Happy summer and happy eating.