Brooklyn, NY – Combine an iconic symbol of Jewish food, with a fundraiser and an award winning filmmaker turned rabbi and what have you got?
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The Great Cholent Challenge, a two day competition that will let local men battle in a cholent cook off while raising money for the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network.
Taking place on February 25th and 26th at The Second Floor at Gourmet Glatt, the Cholent Challenge will be emceed by Avi Levy, host of Avi’s Kosher Kitchen. Levy, who won Emmy and Telly awards for his work in the film industry, is a both a rabbi and a chef and his video channel, Avi’s Kosher Kitchen showcasing innovative kosher cooking, has over 55,000 views on YouTube.
Alexander Rapaport, executive director of Masbia, hopes that the fundraiser will raise over $12,000 for Masbia, which over the past year provided 1.5 million meals to the hungry.
“We doubled the amount of meals we gave out since last year but have only increased our budget minimally so we still need additional help,” Rapaport told VIN News. “Since we are almost entirely funded by private donations and reliant on the masses we wanted something new and creative to raise money so that we can continue to grow our options and be able to feed people with dignity every day.”
Rapaport hopes to attract 20 contestants to the Cholent Challenge, with each contestant committing to raising $600 as an entrance fee, an amount equivalent to the cost of feeding 100 people at one of Masbia’s three soup kitchens. A crowdfunding page set up by Masbia is available to help contestants raise the necessary funds to take part in the cook off and all monies raised will go directly to Masbia.
The Cholent Challenge, which is sponsored by Gourmet Glatt, The Second Floor at Gourmet Glatt and VIN News, will kick off on Wednesday, February 25th from 7 to 9 PM at Gourmet Glatt’s Second Floor. Contestants will be able to take all their ingredients from the shelves at Gourmet Glatt and will assemble their cholents in the provided crock pots.
“This is obviously going to be a formula cholent,” said Rapaport. “A lot of us baby the cholent and check on it several times throughout the day but here, they are putting the cholents together and then coming back almost 24 hours later.”
The actual cholent tasting and judging will take place the next night from 7 to 10 PM, with cholents judged both by the general public and a panel of judges including Jesse Blonder of the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts, Elan Kornblum of Great Kosher Restaurants Magazine, Chef Ruben Diaz of Masbia, who prepares the soup kitchen’s cholent twice weekly, Chef Boris Poleschuk of The Loft Steakhouse and Moishy Moskowitz, front end manager at Gourmet Glatt.
The Thursday night cholent tasting party will be open to the general public with a suggested minimum donation to Masbia of $36 and will also include food tasting from the Gourmet Glatt deli. VIP tickets, which will allow access to both Wednesday and Thursday night’s events, will be available for $180. All participants at the Thursday night event are invited to vote for their favorite cholent.
The winning cholent recipe will be featured in a future edition of Avi’s Kosher Kitchen on YouTube and will be featured on VIN News.
Levy noted that from a chef’s perspective, the contest involves several interesting wrinkles. Cooks will be unable to add water to the cholents as they cook and all chefs will be using pots that they have never used before.
“There are so many variables that can go wrong here and this is anybody’s game,” said Levy. “No matter how great you are at home or in shul or wherever, this is going to be a brand new ball game.”
A Miami resident of Sefardic origin, Levy admitted that he isn’t a big cholent fan but is looking forward to the competition.
“The last thing I thought I would ever want to do is leave Florida and go to the blizzard, cold environment of New York and eat cholent,” said Levy. “But because I am so impressed with Masbia and everything that they do, I will do anything to support them.”
Levy, who will be arriving in New York on Wednesday, the first day of the Cholent Challenge, said that he plans to spend his afternoon at Masbia.
“I want to go help them out, do whatever they need. If they want me to bus tables, I will bus tables,” said Levy.
“It is our greatest privilege to partner with Masbia for this event and help them in their efforts to feed the hungry,” said Mordechai Silberstein, proprietor of Gourmet Glatt. “Masbia is a shining example of how each of us can make a difference in the lives of others and we are honored to host the Great Cholent Challenge.”
To find out more about the Great Cholent Challenge go to http://bit.ly/1zUfSZy.
To register for the Great Cholent Challenge, to purchase VIP tickets for two night access to the competition, or to RSVP for the cholent tasting party go to http://bit.ly/1EJG22k.
We all win with free cholent
There have been several similar cholent competitions in the past several years and they have raised lots of money for worthy mosdos and been great fun. While the meat options always win, the chicen and tofu cholent categories have gotten much better and may give the real stuff a stiff challenge. Yidden have to get over their obcession with red meat and realize that a vegetarian chulent using high quality tofu or other soy products is much better for your heatlh and for the environment since beef production is a major source of greenhouse gas (which is obviously not an issue when tofu is the protein). Stop cattle flatulence and eat veggie cholent.
Why do we need to import from Goyishe culture their way of marketing have we reached a new low Tzuduke doesn’t justify the means of this nonsense
With all due respect for BT’s but we shouldn’t copy their way of life
#2 is soy so healthy?
Mr Anonymous; your last line betrays you…
There should be a cholent eating contest, with the one who eats the most getting the prize.
And anonymous 9:49pm – What is better cattle flatulence or human flatulence? Your tofu cholent causes more human flatulence, global warming and Shabbos mincha disturbances than anything else. Please leave our cholent and metzitza bepeh alone!
Goyishe culture? I guess so…my most requested cholent (OK, my only requested cholent…ok, the only thing I know how to cook) is turkey sausage and peppers with tomatoes and garlic and Italian herb, over stale bread. No one has ever turned that one down.
Masbia serves a clientele that is 90% goyi, giving them is NOT maaser.