Our Table: Time-Tested Recipes, Memorable Meals

Apple–honey muffins

Sweet-and-tangy spare ribs

The table is where we gather to talk, to socialize, to catch up, and—most importantly—to eat! At our table is where it all comes together because it’s not just about the food, it’s about stopping whatever we are doing and carving out some much-needed time to nourish our souls and bodies in the company of loved ones.

In her beautiful new cookbook, Our Table, food stylist and recipe columnist Renee Muller invites home cooks to come to the table and partake in some of her family’s favorite kosher recipes. Renee’s recipes are refreshingly simple, distinctively delicious, crafted from common ingredients, and vividly presented with beautiful full-color photos.

Through heartwarming stories and culinary wisdom, Our Table is as readable on the couch as it is useful in the kitchen. “As a child growing up in Lugano, Switzerland, I enjoyed spending time in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother watching them talk and cook, always with passion and dedication to the task at hand, no matter how mundane,” Renee says. “From them I learned that meals shared with family and friends are memorable, especially when imbued with love and care.”

Throughout the pages of Our Table, Renee walks readers through each recipe with subtle suggestions, insights, and techniques that turn good food into great food. Recipes are arranged in chapters such as Appetizers, Soups & Salads, Fish & Dairy, Meat, Chicken & More, Snacks & Sides, and Desserts and Breads, providing everything needed to create an easy weeknight meal or a special holiday dinner.

Some of the recipes in Our Table include Sweet Chili Salmon Cubes; Mushroom Barley Soup Done Right; Crunchy Asian Salad; Silan, Lemon, and Mustard Salmon; Tangy and Succulent London Broil; Fall-off-the-Bone Tender Flanken; Pulled French Roast Sliders; Oven-Baked Honey Mustard Chicken; Homemade Egg Kichel; Light-as-Air Marble Cake; Buttery Chocolate Scones; and Wähe – Swiss Fruit Tart.

There is also a special selection of recipes with links to online video tutorials, just as if Renee was right in the kitchen cooking with you. “Many times while writing down recipe instructions, I wished I could just invite my readers to join me in my kitchen and cook with me. That thought led me to create a variety of videos of some of the recipes so you can view them as you want and see some of the techniques I use when cooking my recipes.”

Renee has also included a complete substitutions guide for Passover, making Our Table the go-to book any time for any occasion or holiday.

“My treasured family recipes are sure to find a welcome place at your table—every day of the year. I welcome you to join our table, our recipes, and the foods that make my family—and I hope yours—happy.”

Raised in the pristine surroundings of southern Switzerland’s Lake Lugano, Renee Muller learned to cook in the traditional Northern Italian tradition emphasizing freshness, simplicity, and flavor. When she moved to the U.S. in 2002, she continued honing her culinary skills. On a whim, she entered and won a recipe contest, which landed her a regular column in a national weekly Jewish magazine. Our Table is her first foray into refining, compiling, and sharing her favorite recipes in a single volume, all time-tested and confirmed by her most discriminating tasters—her family, friends, and tens of thousands of column readers. Gifted with an artistic eye for presentation, Renee has become an in-demand food stylist, working frequently with world-class food photographers. A popular writer and professional foodie, Renee lives in Lakewood, NJ, with her husband and children. To learn more about Renee, visit www.ReneeMuller.com.

This holiday season, try these delicious favorite recipes for your table.

Apple And Honey
Rosh Hashanah Muffins

From “Our Table” by Renee Muller

Dairy/Pareve, Freezer Friendly, about 48 muffins

At our house, Rosh Hashanah cannot happen without honey muffins. At least, that’s the way my kids see it. It’s a family project, and by now, a family tradition, too. This recipe was given to me by a relative in Israel who bakes them all the time and claims that no matter how many batches she bakes, there are never enough. She’s absolutely right. We once baked a quadruple batch of these (sans the apples) for a bake sale on our block and we were left without a crumb!

For the apples:

2 Tbsp. butter or margarine

4 Granny Smith apples, diced

4 Tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

For the muffins:

2 cups prepared tea, lukewarm

2 cups sugar

2 cups oil

2 cups honey

12 eggs

6 cups flour

2 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

2 heaping Tbsp. cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Prepare the apples: In a saucepan, melt butter over a medium-low flame. Add apples, sugar, and cinnamon; cook until apples are fragrant and soften a bit, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.
3. Prepare the muffins: In the bowl of a stand mixer, on medium speed, combine tea, sugar, oil, honey, and eggs. Mix until smooth. Reduce speed; gradually add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
4. Fill each muffin cup halfway with batter. (I like to use a cupcake pen for this; I find it very helpful.) Top with a teaspoon of prepared apples. Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out almost dry with some moist crumbs attached.

Note: The apples are optional; I find that some children prefer the muffins plain. We add the apple for Rosh Hashanah (very loudly singing, “Dip the apple in the hooooneeeyy” as we do so) but throughout the year, we bake them plain.

Tip: I recently discovered an amazing gadget called “The Cupcake (or Muffin) Pen.” It really removes the whole messy aspect of filling cupcake pans with batter. Look for it in specialty equipment stores.

Sweet And Tangy
Spare Ribs

From “Our Table” by Renee Muller

Meat, Freezer Friendly, 4 entrée servings; 6 appetizer servings

A friend once called me, asking for a meat recipe. “It has to be amazingly good and incredibly easy,” she said. “I’m kidding,” she then added, but I knew she really wasn’t. And I had just the thing. Whenever I meet her husband, he makes sure to thank me—again—for “those awesome ribs.” Where does it say that great dishes have to be long, hard, and complicated?

Ingredients:

about 8 1-inch-thick spare ribs, nicely marbled

2½ cups duck sauce

1 cup water

2 Tbsp. teriyaki sauce

5 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp. paprika

2 Tbsp. dried onion flakes

1 Tbsp. salt

black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a baking pan, arrange ribs in one layer. In a medium bowl, combine duck sauce, water, teriyaki sauce, garlic, paprika, onion flakes, salt, and pepper. Pour over ribs. Cover tightly with foil; bake for 3 hours.
2. Let ribs cool; then refrigerate overnight.
3. Preheat oven to 375°F (use the “roast” setting, if available). Remove congealed fat layer from the ribs. Roast, uncovered, spooning sauce over the ribs once or twice, until ribs are braised and glistening, about 20 minutes.

Note: I like to cool the ribs in the middle of the cooking process so I can remove the fat layer, but it’s not a necessity. You can raise oven temperature, uncover meat, and proceed with the braising part immediately after the 3-hour slow roasting. v

Our Table: Time-Tested Recipes, Memorable Meals (hardcover, $34.99) by Renee Muller is published by ArtScroll/Mesorah.