Event

Grandmother Workshop: Blintzes with Your Bubbe

Join us for our second Grandmother Workshop, an informal class on the traditional cooking skills our grandmothers used to teach us.

Shelley Handler will be teaching us how to make blintzes, an Eastern European Jewish delicacy, traditionally associated with the late spring holiday of Shavuot, and less traditionally with loud family brunches and other gatherings. We'll make the tender, eggy crepes and creamy cheese filling that form the classic recipe and we'll talk about common and uncommon variations and make a few of our own. And like at any good Jewish meal, you won't go home empty-handed.

Our honorary Bubbe, Shelley, comes from a family of good cooks and even better eaters. Granddaughter of Russian and Ukrainian Jews, her grandmother Frieda's kreplach and blintzes take center stage in delicious family memories. Besides Shelley, there is only one other professional chef in the clan, her great-grandmother Itka, who ran a restaurant that fed most of the starving young medical interns in Chicago during the 20s and 30s. Shelley feels she's channeling both Frieda and Itka when she prepares the blintzes you'll be making. Shelley's cooking took her to Chez Panisse, where she served as the first chef of the upstairs Cafe. She served as an instructor at the California Culinary Academy and now both writes about food (sometimes directly on the package) and develops product for the food industry. In her next incarnation she hopes to combine the puzzle-solving excitement of product development with programs or products that serve the greater good.

The workshop is open to the first 20 people who sign up, so reserve your spot now.

Please bring an apron, a chef's knife, a plate, a fork, your friends and family!