One of the guest lecturers on-board was Sir Patrick Moore (who sadly died yesterday). He was due to take passengers out onto the deck and show them the night sky from Antarctica.

The night was overcast with low cloud cover. Sir Patrick makes an appearance and says the following, (please try and visualize his appearance and voice) “Sorry we can’t do a thing tonight, too much cloud cover, not my fault, not my fault, we’ll try again tomorrow” Which is exactly what we did.

Dedicated to Sir Patrick Moore.

We are now preparing for Hanukah the Feast of Lights. (I told you the El Al joke before so I won’t repeat it) It’s a lovely time of the year, especially for children. Today my eldest granddaughter had her Hanukah party at her Gan (kindergarten). I don’t know why they had it today, a week before the actual festival, but they did and I must say it was wonderful. The children learnt about 20 songs, most with movements and for 3 year olds they were great. (So says the proudest ever grandfather) I was even given the doughnut that Maya didn’t like the taste of!!

So what does 2013 hold for us? A 4^th Mystical Ireland Tour, a tour of Australia and a tour of South America. Plus weddings throughout the world and bespoke holidays.

In Ireland we are spending 6 days in Dublin and then going over to Balinsaloe. This is a reversal of the previous programs. The reason is the beautiful hotel in Dublin. It was such a hit last year that we have doubled our time there.

We have started to build up a nice reputation in the U.K. having recommenced catering there under KLBD supervision about 4 years ago. The Crown Plaza in Marlow has asked us to become their kosher caterer and it’s our pleasure to do so.

Since the last blog we have been through another war of sorts.

Once again the entire world press was against us. Hundred dying everyday in African wars. Tibet burning themselves to death against the Chinese. Thousands dying in Syria. However, when we retaliate against thugs and murderers we are condemned by pogroms of the press.

We are told we are using overwhelming force against Hamas. What should we do then? Send over hundreds of indiscriminate missiles and kill thousands of innocents. Or stick to what we do best, pinpoint strikes against the leaders of Hammas and their missile stores. The missile stores, of course are in family homes!!! We will never win the war of pictures when the BBC uses pictures of dead Syrians and claim they are from Gaza.

So I am off my soap box. A happy Hanukah to my Jewish readers and a very merry Christmas to my Gentile readers and Salaam Aleikum to my Moslem readers.

Firstly apologies to everyone for not updating the blog. Yes, work is the partial excuse but we have also been blessed with another granddaughter, Yuval, this time from my son Adam and his lovely wife Noa. Maya & Yael now have a little cousin on the Green side to play with. Thank G-d all are doing well.

Pesach was hard work followed by some functions here in Israel and even more abroad. We were catering in U.K. at the time of all the celebrations around the 60^th year on the throne of Queen Elizabeth 2nd. My only worry was that we were catering in London on the day that many people were having street parties and therefore would we be held up. Fortunately the roads were the clearest I have ever seen them.

One of the functions was in an exclusive hotel in Richmond, where, as a result of them seeing how we work, we have arranged to do their kosher catering.

The bookings have been very good for the Ireland trip and we only (as of today) have 4 places left to sell.

I am also catering once again on the 6* Crystal Serenity, this time sailing from Haifa. Here are some of the details:

KOSHER 6 STAR CRUISE ON THE CRYSTAL SERENITY FROM HAIFA TO VENICE DEPARTING OCTOBER, 17, 2012

For the first time ever the 6 star Crystal Serenity will sail from Haifa on Wednesday 17^th October 2012 on an 8 day luxury cruise ending in Venice on Wednesday 24^th October 2012. (Details attached)We will have on board our own Glatt Kosher kitchen under the direction of renowned kosher chef Malcolm Green and under the supervision of Rabbi Stewart Weiss. The cruise is all inclusive which means that you do not pay extra for tips or for drinks (alcoholic and soft drinks). Wines and liqueurs all included. We will have a full cultural program on board run by your host and hostess Rabbi Stewart and Mrs. Susie Weiss. We will also organize tours of Jewish interest where applicable. This will be the first time that a 6 star luxury cruise will sail from Haifa. After arrival in Venice guests can fly back to their home destination after disembarking or we can arrange for accommodation in Venice or Rome or anywhere else in Italy or in any other country. Our kosher cruise is the only one that operates on a 6 star luxury cruise liner. All other kosher cruises are operated on 3-4 star ships and none of them are all inclusive. On other cruise ships you pay for everything extra on board. Compare our prices and standards there is no comparison with any other cruises offered. Book by July 25^th 2012 and benefit from 5% discount on the cruise fares. Hoping that you will decide to join us for this wonderful cruise.

OPHIR TOURS / Cruise No.1 Telephone:         972 (0) 9 7602062 Mobile:               972 (0) 547455359 USA Direct:         1.718.395-3755 UK Direct:            0203-239-2115                 Email:    joey@netvision.net.il

Venice is one of my favorite cities. It’s like nothing else. St Petersburg has it’s canals but they do not compare to mystery of Venice. Diane & I have been there many times but I am sure that she has photographed every bridge over every canal!

I am pleased to let you have another favorite recipe of mine.

CHOCOLATE PECAN PIE

PASTRY

1 cup plain flour

⅔ Cup self-raising flour

2.5 tbsp. custard powder

120 grams butter

2 tbsp. water, approx.

CHOCOLATE PECAN FILLING

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1¼ cups light corm syrup

½ cup caster sugar

175 grams dark chocolate, melted

40 grams butter, melted

400 grams  pecans

Pastry: Combine sifted flours and custard powder in large bowl, rub in butter.  Stir in enough water to make firm dough.  Knead dough on lightly floured surface until smooth,  roll out large enough to line 23cm flan tin, trim edges; refrigerate 15 minutes.

Pour pecan mixture into pastry case.  Bake in moderate oven for about 1 hour or until filling is set.  Cool pie in flan tin.

Chocolate Pecan Filling: Combine eggs, corn syrup, sugar, chocolate and butter in bowl, stir in pecans

Today is the Fast of Esther, the precursor of our festival of Purim.

Purim celebrates the saving, at the last minute, of the Jewish Community of Persia, sounds familiar!!! It reminds me of the time I prayed in the Synagogue in Cuneo.

I was there trying to set up weekend kosher holidays at luxury hotels in Europe. The Synagogue now only opens on the eve of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) but the keeper of the keys opened it up for me, so I could say the Shacharit (morning prayers). Now some background linking Cuneo and Purim.

The Synagogue of Cuneo is the oldest of the sixteen synagogues still in existence in the Piedmont area in Italy. Most of its Orthodox congregants have been Sephardic; however, much of its history is unknown.

The town of Cuneo was founded in 1198 and became known for the seven sieges it has endured. It was the capital of its province and sits in an area between two rivers that cross in a ‘v’ shape, which both flow from the Alps. The land the town is situated on is shaped as a ‘v’ or ‘wedge,’ and the Italian word for ‘wedge’ is ‘cuneo,’ hence the name for the town. Originally, it was fortified with walls, due to its proximity in guarding the Tenda and Maddalena passes into France. In 1797 Napoleon’s army overtook Italy for a short period, during which time, Napoleon instructed his men to tear down the walls of Cuneo.

In 1555 Pope Paul IV declared that Jews were not fit to live with Christians. As a result, the Jews of Cuneo had to live in ghettos. The ghetto in Cuneo was comprised of a single street, which was shorter than the average New York City block, where approximately 300 Jews lived. These were productive people: scientists, bankers, poets and Rabbis, who daily would go forth from this ghetto and perform their occupations, often for gentiles.  The synagogue was built in 1611 in the heart of the ghetto.

On one wall there is a plaque from the original synagogue dated 1611. Embedded in the wall near the plaque is an unexploded cannon ball which fell on the synagogue in 1779, when Napoleon attacked the city. The cannon ball was placed in the synagogue to celebrate the fact that since the “bomb” did not explode, the Jews were unharmed and the synagogue was not destroyed. This happy event is known as “the Purim of the bomb.”

In 1910-20, the peak years, the Jewish population of Cuneo was approximately 200-250. During the Holocaust, though there were problems, of course, most of the Jews of Cuneo were saved from death. Many were hidden by local townspeople; others hid in the mountains. About 1000 people fleeing France, Austria and Germany came to Cuneo. Many of these also escaped the camps by hiding in the mountains. However, 350 were captured and taken to the nearby village of Bargo san Dalmazzo. From there they were put on trains to Auschwitz. There were no survivors from this group.

Today, there are only approximately 16 or 17 Jews in Cuneo. They are proud of their synagogue, their city, and all that “being Jewish” means to them. Although the congregation at Cuneo is small, they are intent upon keeping Jewish culture, traditions and faith alive.

When I prayed I looked up at the canon ball and I honestly felt that the souls of all the late residents of Cuneo were smiling down on me and helping me to make up a minyan (quorum) in their wonderful town.

Now for another Pesach recipe, enjoy.

CARAMEL HAZELNUT TORTE

This cake is best prepared a day ahead.

185gr unsalted butter

2 tsp. grated orange rind

¾ cup brown sugar, firmly packed

6 eggs, separated

185gr dark chocolate, melted

165gr ground hazelnuts

300ml carton thickened cream

WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM

1/3 cup cream

200gr white chocolate, chopped

Grease 23cm spring form tin, cover base with paper, grease paper.  Combine butter, rind and sugar in small bowl, beat with electric mixer until light and creamy; beat in egg yolks, beat until combined. Transfer to large bowl, stir in cooled chocolate, then hazelnuts.

Beat egg whites in medium bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form; lightly fold into chocolate mixture in 2 batches.

Spread mixture evenly into prepared tin, bake in moderate oven for 20 minutes; reduce heat to moderately slow, bake a further 45 minutes or until firm, cool in tin.  Remove spring form side, lift cake onto serving plate.

Spread top of cake with white chocolate cream.  Beat cream until soft peaks; spread top and side of cake with cream.

WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM

Place cream in small saucepan, bring to boil. remove from heat, add chocolate, and stir until smooth; cool.  Refrigerate for about 30 minutes or until mixture is thick and spreadable.

Well it’s now on the website, our Grand Jewish Heritage Tour of China. http://www.kosherservicesworldwide.com/jewish-heritage-tour-of-china/

I am really pleased to be working with Lune Tours who are experts in China Travel. They have arranged all the best hotels and permission for us to kosher a small kitchen and serve our guests glatt meals whilst enjoying a magical tour around Jewish and regular China.

If there is somewhere where you and group of friends want to travel, but it lacks kosher facilities contact me and we can arrange everything for you. Anywhere in the world.

We will soon be publicizing the China and the Mystical Ireland Tours so get in touch to reserve your places on the tours.

As Pesach is coming upon us I will be including in my blog some great pesach recipes, here is the first. Enjoy

WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE

8 servings

1 lb cream cheese, softened

½ cup sugar

½ tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

3oz white baking chocolate, melted

1 crust formed with ground Passover biscuits and butter

Mix cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.  Add eggs, mix until blended.  Stir in white chocolate.  Pour into crust.  Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes or until center is almost set.   Cool.  Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.

Hi, I have just been asked to cater a week for potential clients St. Maarten. It’s a lovely Island, two thirds Dutch and one third French. Although most of the Dutch side owe more of their demeanor and accent to the States than to Holland. I have catered a wedding there and numerous holidays. I have written about St. Maarten in a previous logs so I wont this time.

We have had two of Diane’s sisters staying with us. They came out for our youngest granddaughters 1^st birthday. I have to tell you Shula, our daughter, prepared a very beautiful and tasty spread. Shula used to help me with the catering until she got her B.A.

She now works for Johnson & Johnson on their medical side. I keep trying to persuade her to come back into catering. Alas to no avail.

I am really pleased to say that for those of you who want a wonderful glatt kosher bespoke wedding in the Caribbean we can now offer the beautiful Hilton in Bridgetown Barbados. We have already worked with the hotel and apart from our delicious food, the hotel will provide their special brand of hospitality and service.

The Caribbean seems to be the most popular spot for destination weddings. We also offer St. Maarten, the Bahamas and Jamaica plus most of the other Islands.

Also we are planning a Jewish Heritage tour in China for 2013.

Plus some great glatt kosher super luxury cruises for the end of the 2012 and the beginning of 2013. I hope we will be able to tempt you with one of the above.

Malcolm

The next morning we were in port. I was at the Hotel Managers daily 10.00 a.m. meeting when the general emergency alarm sounded. The Hotel manager phoned the bridge but there was no response. The HM said quickly get everybody to their emergency stations as the captain is doing a test. I ran to my galley where my staff was happily cooking away.

I told them to quickly get to their stations, which, of course, they did.

Later I was to find out that the night before when the GEA was sounded some of the crew instead of helping to shepherd the passengers, ran to their cabins, took their money and ran to their boat stations. After the Captain completed the test on the day after the fiasco he took all the crew and staff into the theatre and read them the riot act.

Nobody can tell how any of us would act in a situation such as occurred on the Costa Concordia, but the Chef who was onboard with us on the aforementioned cruise told me that he trusted none of the crew to react the way they were trained. It was up to the officers to ensure that procedures are carried out correctly. It all comes from the top and unfortunately on the Costa ship the man literally at the helm failed on every count.

My son was with me on a Costa ship acting as Mashgiach (kashrut supervisor); he went to the boat drill. Later he told me that the announcements were made in 7 languages. “If we had to wait for the announcement to come in English the ship would already have floundered” How prescient he was.

As you know I cater on the Crystal Serenity. It is a comparatively small super luxury craft. I have worked with the crew on this ship and have every confidence that they, led by their Captain would rise to the occasion if any emergency, small or large arose.

My brother in law Mark has just flown into the U.K. from Perth in Australia where he lives. He has gone to see Diane’s & his mother who has just undergone back surgery. I can always tell when Mark reads this blog as he is the only person in Perth who does!!

Thank you Google analytics. I have over the past couple of months been thinking about creating signature dishes. There are, of course, lots of dishes that we are known for, but I really want to put a new twist on these. Over the next couple of months I will be posting these and inviting comments from you.

Here in Israel we enter an uncertain New Year. We have the worry about the maniac in Tehran. Not knowing how the newly liberated voters of Egypt will give the mandate to. Plus the worry of anything a second term President in America will demand of us. Uncertain times with many worries. I recently wrote to the BBC to ask exactly what their correspondent in Lebanon does. Not once has he reported on the 40,000 missiles that Hezbollah has pointed in our direction. Something bad about Israel, you can be sure that the beeb is on the case. 40,000 missiles? Sorry mate never heard of it.

Back to the script. I am still finalizing details for China and hopefully within the next couple of weeks there will be a new page on the website showing full details.

Last week we celebrated our eldest granddaughters 3^rd birthday. Diane and I bought a self-assembly kitchen in Early Learning. Never again! 2 ½ hours it took me to put it together. Maya takes one look at it and is more interested in her birthday card.

Also wonderful news. Noa, our son Adam’s wife, is 3 months pregnant. More grandchildren ( P.G.) to coo over.

Well all well here in Israel. Our last President is due to start a 7 year sentence for rape and Iran still threatens our extermination. But at least the rains have come. So all is as usual!!

In my last blog (sorry it’s been so long) I mentioned the cruise where I was the project manager. We had on-board for five, consecutive three day cruises 3,000 Israeli members of staff and their families, of Israel’s leading hi-tech company.

The ship had been cruising with the same weekly menu for seven months. Then I came onboard and had to train the staff all about kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). I was onboard for two weeks prior to the cruises and spent that time with every department going over the manual I had prepared. It took a long time explaining everything as each sentence had to be translated from English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

After that, the galley crew had to prepare to kosher (prepare for kosher food) the whole galley from top to bottom in one night. In general, all ships galleys are spotless. Nothing on land compares to the cleanliness regime of a ship. In fact, I was showing the chefs from Israel, who were on the ship as advisers, around the ship. We went into the elevator that is just used for moving garbage from the various decks down to the disposal area. His comment when I pointed out the elevators use was, “For garbage????? This elevator is cleaner than the ones our guests use in the hotel where I work!!!”

The galley crew had to change from the regular menu as mentioned to an entirely new menu that also had to abide by all the rules of kashrut. I thought either they would jump overboard or they would throw me over! However, those brave boys and a few girls worked and prepared excellent kosher food for all concerned. I had asked that a particular MSC Sous Chef, with whom I had previously worked, should come aboard and run the 4 buffets on deck 13. He came, he saw, he waffled. I told him that all the food prepared by the main galley, deck 5, should be up and ready to go as soon as the buffet opened. However, he started telling me his (or rather MSC’s) mind think that you should only bring up the food as it is required. Meaning he would send the runners down to galley as he wanted more food. The galley would cook it and then the 16 runners would bring it up in the lift. I explained that he wasn’t dealing with his regular clientele. However, he knew better. That is until we were into the first half hour of the meal when he turned to me and said. “Malcolm get down to the galley, tell them to cook everything NOW and send it straight up” He never made the original mistake again.

Now for future news. Our Ireland Tour is all arranged for August 2012 and should be our best yet. Plus we are planning a glatt kosher Jewish Heritage Tour for China also in 2012.

My next blog should have full details.

This time of year is quiet for us as virtually nobody wants to have a function around this time as everybody is busy preparing for the festivals.

As soon as Yom Kippur has finished and I mean as soon as we return from synagogue we started putting up our Succah for the Succot,

(booths for the festival of Succot). This reminds me of when I undertook the task of Project Manager for the MSC cruise line. There large, 3,000 birth) cruise liner had been chartered by Elbit one of our huge hi-tech companies here. To take all of her staff and their families on five, three day cruises, out of Haifa and back.

The cruise started at the beginning of Succot, so, of course we had to have a Succah on-board. I duly arrived and we erected this beautifully made large succah

This obviously is not the one that we had on the ship but it will give you an idea of what I am talking about.

So on the first night of Succot we went into the Succah said our prayers etc etc and all was well with the world.

The next morning I went into the buffet area of the ship (Deck 11) the Succah was palced outside this area adjacent to one of the swimming pools.

I saw the assistant restaurant manger who was responsible for this area. I said to him to please make sure that a dedicated waiter looked after the Succah. What Succah says he!!.

I ran outside and to my horror no Succah. No it hadn’t blown away, but a 2.00 a.m. the officer of the watch saw that it was doing it’s best to hoist sail and fly away so he ordered it to be dismantled. The Rabbi was livid but, of course, we could not argue with the ship.

The Succah was badly bent and twisted. However, after a little restoration work……… it will be sitting on my porch for the forthcoming holiday.

That was a cruise and half. I will sort out some more stories from it and will post them in my next blog.

In the meantime here is a recipe for Date Pudding Cake. The first time I read the recipe I thought it was wrong, but believe me it’s right.

DATE PUDDING CAKE

220gr finely cut dates

60gr butter, softened

500ml boiling water

2 eggs

185gr plain flour

250gr brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

60gr chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 375F(190C) and grease a 64fl oz baking dish.

Put the dates and butter in a large bowl and pour in 250ml of the boiling water. Stir until the butter melts, then let the mixture stand for about 5 mins. Beat in the eggs and set aside.

Combine the flour with 90gr of the brown sugar, the cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir and toss together until blended. Add to the date mixture along with the walnuts and beat until blended.

Spread the batter evenly in the baking dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 155gr of brown sugar, then pour the remaining 250ml of boiling water over the top.

Bake for 45 mins, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.