In a world where most jobs have us as “cogs in a wheel” working for low wages, without sight of a final goal for the company or ourselves.
Instead, as a Personal Chef I speak to people about what food means to eeds that would determine the choices of foods we will preparethem. Is it simply for nourishment? Must it be a work of art for them to enjoy it? Are there specific dietary n
I just started with a new client last week, nice guy. I found him through a dietitian I had met at least a year or two ago. When we met I suggested meeting and seeing if we could work together at least as a referral source for each other. I tried following up but she did not seem interested.
A few weeks ago I noticed she was a friend of a friend on Facebook. I “friended” her. Fortunately she remembered me “Aren’t you the Personal Chef that does Kosher?” She asked. yes, that’s me. She told me that she specializes in a specific diet plan and has clients with specific dietary plans. I told her as long as I know what the client can eat (and can not eat) , how much, and want they don’t like or want and any other specifics to their diet I can make delicious food for them.
Of course, it worked. Ten meals with sides as well as freshly made brown rice rice, quinoa and hummus and a special salad dressing and happy as a clam. I asked yesterday and the only problem was that I gave him more hummus than he needed….
Good news. the dietitian told me that if things worked with the first client more to follow. Happy dance!
In a world where most jobs have us as “cogs in a wheel” working for low wages, without sight of a final goal for the company or ourselves, as a Personal Chef I do everything soup to nets for each client. I find out what
Instead, as a Personal Chef I speak to people about what food means to them that would determine the choices of foods we will prepare for them. Is it simply for nourishment? Must it be a work of art for them to enjoy it? Are there specific dietary needs such as diabetic diet or salt free diet for clients that have been through heat failure or similar issues. Vegetarian or vegan is easy for me since I keep kosher I am very conscious of any indication meat, dairy and shellfish ingredients that would make a dish non-kosher or trayf.
Within the limitations of these health related issues, I find the dishes they most enjoy (or won’t go near). I am able to prepare some of my client’s favorites (and mine) with minor adjustments.
Two weeks ago I prepared one of my signature salmon dishes that normally is marinated in lime, ginger, garlic.oil and soy sauce for a salt free client. I removed the soy sauce for the recipe (I may try the liquid aminos in the future). It was delicious. The husband and wife said they never had such delicious food. I will be back in their kitchen this week to refill their fridge with the foods they most enjoy.
My most requested dishes include roast chicken, beef stew, chicken picata, baked marinated salmon. Roast vegetables, brownies, chicken matzoh ball soup, lentil soup. peanut butter cookies .and meat loaf.
People want healthy well prepared home-style dishes. They can’t believe how good this food tastes. When they tell me this, it is SOOO satisfying. Of course, making money doing what you love is pretty cool too!!
I can use the knowledge I acquired in college studying nutrition as well as the latest trending diet programs to tweak recipes and food choices to an individuals needs.
Call me, tell me what you need, or want. Chef Helen can put together weekly meals, dinners for 2, dinner parties, and of course baking. Always open to new ideas.
Call me at 561-676-2078 or email chefhelen@helenshomecooking.com so I can talk about helping you.
As a Personal Chef I talk to people about food. Most importantly I speak with my current and future clients about how food makes them feel. Food is emotionally charged. Some people had bad experiences, being forced to eat poorly prepared vegetables growing up that made them forever avoid healthy choices and add to their poor nutrition and poor health.
My goal is to turn that around for people. I talk to the potential client , preferably in their home. I find out what they eat and WHY. I am no therapist but giving people roast cauliflower or roast beets that are good enough to snack on has been the beginning of changing people’s lives.
I learn about their cultural food choices. while with my background as an Ashkenazic Jew, brisket and Pflaumen kuchen top my list as do my mother’s spritz cookies (recipes another time) for an Italian it my be meatballs and spaghetti or Lasagna. I find your comfort foods, your dietary needs (are you allergic to a specific food? are you kosher (my specialty!!) supposed to lower your fat or salt or do you just HATE peanut butter like I do?) .
I figure out the menu with your help. I shop for all ingredients on the way to your home and cook everything there.
Since my focus is kosher clients, by using the clients equipment I don’t have questions about anything getting mixed up.
561-676-2078 helen@helenshomecooking.com
Chef Helen Gottesman
Personal chef Helen Gottesman of Helen’s Home Cooking prepares a kosher holiday meal. (Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post)
Before Helen Gottesman looks into the depths of the new year, she glances back to remember the sweetest, most flavorful dishes of her childhood.
The most vivid culinary memory of Rosh Hashanas past: Pflaumenkuchen, her Czech-German grandmother’s special plum tart.
“I remember the smell of the plums. My mother made a couple of dishes wonderfully, and one of them was my grandmother’s plum tart. She would use Italian prune plums. They came into season shortly before Rosh Hashana – and it was a short season,” recalls Gottesman, a New York native who works as a personal chef in Boynton Beach.
This is the great motif of Gottesman’s home cooking – comfort foods that pay homage to family memories. And as the Jewish New Year begins at sunset tonight, ushering in 10 days of reflection and repentance, she will greet it with prayer, introspection and kosher dishes reminiscent of her younger years in the Kew Gardens Hills neighborhood of Queens.
“We would always have the matzo ball soup and, typically, challah,” says Gottesman, 55, who now bakes eight loaves of traditional challah bread at a time.
Helen Gottesman prepares her plum tart (or pflaumen kuchen). (Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post)
And because Rosh Hashana exalts the sweetest of foods – as in honey-dipped apples to beckon happiness – there was always a piece of that fragrant, open-face plum tart, a culinary prayer for a sweet life.
Today, in accordance with her Orthodox Jewish faith, Gottesman keeps a kosher kitchen. But “kitchen” is a movable notion for a woman who turned a love of cooking Shabbat dinner for friends – and a knowledge of nutrition and kosher standards – into a small enterprise she calls Helen’s Home Cooking ( helenshomecooking.com).
Usually, she cooks in other people’s kitchens.
“Because I focus on kosher cooking and I keep kosher myself, I’m aware that people are particular about anything that comes into their house,” says Gottesman, who shares her home with husband. Robert, an educator, and 16-year-old son, Adir.
So when she cooked an early Rosh Hashana dinner at a friend’s home on a recent weeknight, Gottesman worked with fresh ingredients her friend had shopped for and brought only the items her friend was missing. While other mobile chefs may carry their own knives and trusty spice kits, she used her friend’s cooking vessels and kitchen utensils.
On the menu that day: one soul-warming comfort dish after another. She roasted a chicken with sweet potatoes, white potatoes and carrots, a sweet noodle kugel with sugar and apples, a batch of almond-flecked green beans, a steaming pot of matzo ball soup and her grandmother’s plum tart.
It’s the kind of cooking that stirs easy conversation with friends and clients.
“If I’m in their kitchen, I hear their food stories, what they like and what they don’t, what their idea of comfort food is. For some, it’s lasagna. You never know. It all depends where and how they grew up,” says Gottesman.
She says a lot of her clients are seniors who don’t cook for themselves anymore. “And they don’t like the takeout places. Typically, what they want is the comfort foods they grew up with,” says the chef.
She dreams of opening a healthy kosher café one day, “a place of coffee, homemade breads and vegetarian items.” But for now she cooks wherever a kitchen welcomes her.
“I love cooking,” says Gottesman. “When I start cooking, I can get a little carried away and my husband tells me, ‘Don’t you realize there are only three of us in this house?'”
PFLAUMENKUCHEN (PLUM TART) WITH MUERBETEIG DOUGH CRUST
TO MAKE THE CRUST:
1 cup margarine
3 cups flour
2 egg yolks
1 lemon
1/4 cup sugar
Cream margarine and sugar, add flour then egg yolks along with grated rind of lemon along with the juice. Chill dough for at least half an hour and then pat into large pie tin with fingers.
TO MAKE THE PLUM TART:
Muerbeteig dough
6-9 Italian prune plums
1 teaspoon sugar
Cut plums into eighths and place them skin side down in the pie pan starting with the outside going halfway up the side. When all of the space is covered, sprinkle with sugar and bake for about 30 minutes at 350º. Tart is done when crust is lightly browned. Allow to cool completely before serving.
ROAST CHICKEN WITH VEGETABLES
Serve with vegetables on the side.
1 chicken cut into eighths or serving size pieces
1 large sweet potato or 2 medium, peeled and cut into chunks
2 white potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 large onion sliced or cut into chunks
1 zucchini, sliced
Garlic, a few cloves
1/2 red pepper, thinly sliced or diced
Salt and pepper, to taste
Paprika, to taste
In a roasting pan place bed of vegetables and mix them up and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then, top with chicken pieces skin side up. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and paprika.
Place in preheated 350º oven. After 30 minutes, turn chicken pieces over and sprinkle salt and pepper and paprika on the chicken if you have not already done so. When this is done (it will be browned) turn chicken pieces back to skin side up and cook for another 30 minutes. (Cooking time is about 1 hour, 15 minutes to 11/2 hours.)
STRING BEANS ALMONDINE
1 to 11/2 pounds string beans
1 tablespoon margarine
1/4 cup almonds, slivered or sliced
1/4 red pepper, slivered
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cut tips off string beans. Either leave beans whole or slice into 1 to 2 inch pieces. Place into boiling salted water until they are tender, but still bright green in color.
Drain the string beans. In the same pot, melt margarine and lightly sauté almonds. Add red pepper and cook to soften slightly. Then add the string beans to heat through.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon, and serve.
Recipes by Helen Gottesman, http://www.helenshomecooking.com
