Learning the secrets of a good home-cooked Kosher meal

Celebrity kosher chef Susie Fishbein, booked by the Jewish Women’s Circle a year and a half in advance, disclosed some of her tips while giving a cooking demonstration at Sharon’s Chabad Center.

Some of her tips include: place chicken on a rack in the pan so all of the skin gets crusty; let cuts of meat rest in the pan after cooking so the proteins can reattach or you’ll lose the juice to the cutting board; scoop out cucumber and apple seeds with a melon baller; and avoid that unpleasant aftertaste by roasting and caramelizing garlic.

Sara Wolosow, one of the center’s educators and wife of Rabbi Chaim Wolosow, introduced the self-taught, nationally televised chef to the Sharon audience on June 12.

Seated around tables for 10, the women savored Fishbein’s fancy but user-friendly recipes — Thai beef in cucumber cups, roasted garlic chicken, and apple crunch Galette – which she shaped, seared and sizzled right in front of them on a portable stove.

Fishbein, who’s guested on shows like “Allie & Jack” and “Sheila Bridges Designer Living,” said one of her career’s top highlights was getting to meet Katie Couric on the “Today” show.

“She was witty and warm,” Fishbein said. “Before the show, she came to the green room and said she wanted me to know she was Jewish. And the right part. Her mother is Jewish.”

As Fishbein’s matzo ball soup materialized before the cameras, Fishbein said Katie had turned to her and remarked, “You know what would be good in here? Noodles!” adding, “You must think I’m a schiksa!”

After the meal, the women savored cookbooks Fishbein was signing for them: “Kosher by Design,” “Kosher by Design Entertains” and “Kids in the Kitchen.”

Soon to come out, by popular demand, is “Fabulous Foods Faster.”

Rivka Horowitz of Sharon said she often has 20 or more people over for holidays like Shavuot, when it’s customary to eat dairy. Once, though, after whipping up Fishbein’s recipe for cheesecake, she confessed she downed the whole thing.

Reviewers rave about Fishbein’s “cooking tips and down-to-earth instructions” for the triple-tested recipes that “make every cook feel like the author is standing in the kitchen.”

Fishbein graduated from Queens College in New York with a master’s degree in education and has taught at the De Gustibus Cooking School at Macy’s in New York as well as fourth grade science.

“My 12-year-old is independent in the kitchen and knows all the safety rules,” Fishbein said. Her 10- and 7-year-olds make burritos and smoothies with her, and her 2-year-old now knows the difference between flour and sugar. Sometimes though, she said, only hot dogs and Wacky Mac, the kosher equivalent of mac and cheese, fit the bill.

Sharon resident Marsha Schaffel, a vegetarian, said her son Ari, a seventh grader, cooks a lot at home and had helped Fishbein roll out dough and peel apples for the night’s dessert. Schaffel said she came to the cooking demo “to see a live show.”

But not everyone who attended was a cooking enthusiast.

“I don’t like to cook,” said Jennifer Bell of Sharon. “My husband didn’t marry me because I fed him well.”

Bell picked up a children’s cookbook with recipes for Egg in a Frame and Chocolate Haystacks.

She said the simple list of ingredients appealed to her, unlike the cookbooks geared toward adults with “ingredients for the dough, for the stuffing, for the sauce.”

Fishbein owned up to a few failures herself, finally abandoning trying to perfect a six-generations-old recipe for Strawberry Tart with Pretzel Crust.

Her cookbooks include photographs of the dishes and holiday decor, including floral arrangements for the table. Her first book became an international bestseller in two weeks and is now in its third printing.

Fishbein, who lives in New Jersey, has spent the past year giving cooking demos around the country. This dynamo who “even likes doing dishes” said, “I finish one cookbook, take a day of rest and start the next.”