When South Jersey turned to home cooking during the quarantine, Ellen Zinn unearthed her mother’s recipe for sweet & sour stuffed cabbage – the one she always considered delicious but too impractical to make herself.
“My mother used to spend a whole day making it,” she recalls. “During the shutdown, I had the time, so I decided to spend all day doing it.”
The savory meal is among dozens featured in “Pots and Pandemic – Cooking in Quarantine,” a collection of recipes that helped members of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill get through the darkest days of the pandemic.
“It reflects a time when people weren’t leaving their house except for essential items and had to largely make do with what was in their pantries,” says Marsha Seader, who co-produced the book with Zinn. “We wanted to showcase the ways that people were creative and also how they helped each other by sharing recipes, and even ingredients, when they couldn’t be together.”
The cookbook, which is expected to come out later this month, is one of a handful of pandemic-themed collections hitting the shelves. Another, the “Soups and Sweets Cookbook” showcases recipes developed in connection with Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ culinary program for adults with disabilities.
Elyse Notarianni
Elyse Might be a Chef
If you’re looking for some easy and delicious recipes that even the most basic home cook can successfully make, check out our IGTV series “Elyse Might be a Chef” on SJ Magazine’s Instagram. Editorial Assistant Elyse Notarianni has been tackling recipes from South Jersey chefs. (Not that anyone is calling her a chef just yet.)
Armed with an iPhone stacked on a pile of cookbooks and some ingredients, Elyse has been cooking away. So far, she’s tackled Dolce Vida pasta from Sal & Joe’s Spaghetti and Pizza House, fried up shrimp tacos with homemade salsa from Blue Claw Crab Eatery and carefully stirred up pumpkin risotto from Tre Famiglia, and that’s just a start.
“Fans call it ‘charmingly chaotic,’” Elyse says. “And by fans, I mean my college roommate who once saw me set our kitchen on fire making coconut chicken.”
Look for new episodes of “Elyse Might be a Chef” every Thursday on Instagram.
