Ask Lévana!

Do you have a burning question regarding cooking techniques or recipes? Here is the place to ask me! Please leave your question in the comment section below and I will be happy to reply with an answer.

Upcoming Cooking Class Demo: Monday, August 2nd Chocolate Fantasies!

Staying put this August? Don’t miss this popular demo! I want to warn you about the brand new drop dead mousse torte and frozen dessert I have just developed, so you can come prepared and save your diet points for this one. If it requires you to “suffer” a setback in your brave resolutions, or [...]

Tropical Fruit Cake Recipe

Sometimes I take my playing with food a drop further than even I myself dare, tinkering endlessly, picking my family and friends as willing victims as I subject them to constantly evolving batches and asking them to please forget they ever tasted something if it was just way too wacky. This cake is a perfect [...]

Tilapia Niçoise en Papillotte Recipe

A packaged meal. Only, not that kind of a package! Enclosing the fish and its toppings in foil or wax paper seals in all its flavors. Papillotte is a cute French word that means curl, flutter, blink. In the food world it refers to the frill that tented paper forms around an enclosed ingredient, which [...]

Cooking demo in New York: Monday July 26th: Latin Fiesta!

The solemn week of Tish’a Be’av is just behind us. Time to have a good time! Singles, doubles and crowds: Nothing spells P-A-R-T-Y like a great Latin night of delicious food and drink. Bring your fun props and friends! I’ll be demonstrating: Sangria Pineapple rum cocktails Black bean chocolate soup Arroz con pollo Seviche Green [...]

Renewing Old Vows, the Virtual Way

Recently I said to Sara, who helps me and tutors me in all things technical, I should have more of a profile on Facebook. My list of friends was expanding, G-d bless, and so it would be a nice idea. So we edited the profile to include my status (married) plus my kids” name. Nothing [...]

NYC Hick Goes out to Queens

  I have been living in the United States almost two generations. I have lived in an apartment structure my whole life, in big cities only: Casablanca, Paris New York, etc…. you get the picture. I am a complete city mouse, don’t drive, and cannot conceive of any viable setting where subways, buses, museums, restaurants, [...]

Spicy Steel-Cut Oat Soup (Lahshou) Recipe

This is a most unusual combination of flavors, and it works beautifully. We serve it after the fast of Tish’a B’Av. When we were children, we were often given this soup to fortify our diet. We made it with wheat or barley, but steel-cut oats are just as delicious, accommodate gluten-free diets and are ready [...]

Cooking Demo: Monday July 12th: No Meat Today: The Pareve Feast

Do you notice, as I do, some people madly gorging on meat dishes just before the nine days in prevision of the impending culinary “recession”? Since meatless is the way we eat at home most of the time except on Shabbos, let me assure you you will hardly feel deprived; This is our opportunity to [...]

Mock Crab Pasta Salad Recipe

Several of my favorite summer flavors are in! The only cooking that goes on in this dish is boiling water to soak the pasta. Although it is delicious with rice noodles, if you are a diehard wheat pasta lover, simply substitute your favorite pasta for the rice noodles, and proceed with the recipe. Ingredients: 1 [...]