Chabad Jewish Center has culinary classes for women
South Florida Jewish women are taking an opportunity to create delicious culinary classics through the Chabad Jewish Center’s Jewish Culinary Club in Coral Springs.
The club’s seven classes, which are designed to be a fun and interactive social setting for women, take place at the Chabad Jewish Center, 11325 West Atlantic Blvd. in Coral Springs. Each class focuses on a food genre and includes personal ingredients and a takehome finished product with everything being kosher.
Chana Denburg, the synagogue’s rebbetzin and co-director, said the Jewish Culinary Club offers something for every woman to learn.
“I think there’s something to learn for everybody, whether you’re a novice and never stepped into a kitchen, or whether you’re really a chef. However, even more than that, I think it will be a really positive experience to get together with friends and meet new ones in a warm inviting welcoming atmosphere while connecting to your Judaism at the same time.”
Denburg said that Chabad Jewish Center’s women programs have included in the past events such as culinary, crafting and humanitarian ones. However, she noticed that the culinary events had by far the best attendance.
‘I think that because, while not everyone loves to cook, everyone loves to eat, and I think a lot of people have a very strong Jewish connection to the foods that their mother and their grandmother made. it’s just a very warm positive feeling that those foods and those memories bring, so this year we decided we’re going to really tap into that and create programming that is going to be exclusively about food and give people an opportunity to connect to those memories and learn to create a lot of classic as well as contemporary food.”
Denburg said that while the club gives women an opportunity to replicate a lot of food that they could possible remember as a child so they can learn how make those recipes as well, there is also a very contemporary twist.
“We’re going to be pairing a lot of more classic things with modern things,” she continued. “For example, around Hanukkah time, we’re going to be making latkes and exploring modern healthy vegetables that could be incorporated into the latkes, so it’s really kind of connecting the past and present, and I think people will really, really enjoy this experience.”
Randi Grossman, a committee member for the Culinary Club, said, “The Culinary Club is not only an eating process, but an educational process a well.”
A recent culinary event that women from the synagogue took part in was a Mega Challah Bake. The synagogue co-sponsored the bake along with Chabad of Coral Springs, Temple Beth Am in Margate and Hadassah. Proceeds benefited Hadassah’s breast cancer research and Chabad Mikvah renovation in Coral Springs.
Denburg, who said there were more than 400 women at the bake which she felt had a powerful and loving energy, feels that the event’s participants would be interested in the Culinary Club’s classes being that it’s a Jewish culinary event.
“I think a lot of those same women would be interested in following up with the Jewish Culinary Club. If they enjoyed the challah bake, they’re going to love the Jewish Culinary Club.”