Jewish Food Festival to start online orders June 1

LACONIA — The 2021 New Hampshire Jewish Food Festival continues with a virtual format, but with a greatly expanded menu and some additional surprises. The talented culinary team at Temple B’nai Israel will be cooking and baking in the temple kitchen preparing hundreds of servings of food and baking the most popular desserts. This is the once-a-year opportunity to place orders for favorite Jewish foods.

Online ordering will beginning June 1 by visiting tbinh.org. Orders will be prepared and ready for curbside pick up by appointment July 30-Aug. 1.

TBI is excited to introduce a special member of the Jewish Food Festival cooking team this year. “Bubbie,” yiddish for "grandmother," will enthrall the community with her kitchen adventures stories from behind the scenes in the TBI kitchen. Each week beginning June 1, Bubbie’s stories will be posted on the TBI website.

New for 2021 is a custom deli sandwich “picnic pack” made up of fresh, ready-to-eat items. The pack includes one rectangular loaf of Jewish-style rye bread, a choice of three corned beef, tongue, or black pastrami in half-pound packages, six crispy, green, half sour pickles, two pints of freshly prepared homemade coleslaw, one container of handmade deli-style horseradish mustard, and one pound of home baked rugelach for dessert.

Along with the new picnic pack offering, the Jewish Food Festival’s main menu includes the homemade traditional Jewish-style foods that everyone craves but are hard to find in this part of New Hampshire. Most items are sold frozen in multi-packs with instructions for heating at home.

Brisket is slow-cooked and available in half pound packages with savory gravy. Evan’s Deli of Marblehead, Massachusetts supplies the corned beef, pastrami, and tongue, sold fresh in half pound packages. The matzah ball soup is a rich homemade chicken broth with fluffy matzo balls and carrots. The TBI kitchen experts create amazing extra-crispy potato latkes. The blintzes are lightly fried crepes and filled with a mixture of farmers and cream cheese. The knishes are authentic New York-style with a flaky pastry crust filled with hand ground beef brisket or a mixture of potato and onion. One of the most requested items is an 8-inch square pan of noodle kugel, the ultimate comfort food. Medium-width noodles are baked in a sweet cream custard and topped with cinnamon-frosted flake crumbs. Chopped chicken liver or chopped herring will be available, freshly prepared and refrigerated. Also included on the menu are traditional Jewish desserts rugelach, strudel, and hamantaschen.

For more details and information, visit tbinh.org.