Heather Bien works in digital content and copywriting by day and lifestyle and travel blogging by night. While she’d never had a latke before meeting her fiancé, Adam, and she’s still working on cooking shakshuka with perfectly runny eggs, she’s fully embracing Jewish culture and food one recipe at a time. You can find her on social media @hmbien and online at www.heatherbien.com.
I embarked on this project in hopes of incorporating the flavors of my Southern upbringing—pecans, bourbon—into that beloved cookie of my adopted Jewish culture. Doesn’t barely sweet cream-cheese dough wrapped around a rich pecan filling sound like a match made in heaven? That’s because it is.
Heather was excited to incorporate the flavors of her Southern upbringing into rugelach, that beloved cookie of her new Jewish culture, but along the way she hit more than a few bumps…
If you’re building a summer mezze platter, you can find most of what you need already prepared at the grocery store: hummus, roasted red peppers, tzatziki, seasoned nuts. However, harissa and spicy feta are two simple dip recipes you can add in to give your platter a homemade touch. Both of these spreads keep beautifully,…
When the heat rises, get out of the kitchen and onto the patio with a mezze spread that excites guest and lets summer produce and snacks shine without requiring you to cook.
Hosting your first Passover seder? Heather put together a menu, shopping list and timeline so you know exactly what to buy and when to prepare everything. Holiday meals have never been easier!
My first foray into baking hamantashen was with a Nutella-filled recipe. You can’t go wrong with that, right? Well, yes, yes you can. We cut the dough too thick, couldn’t fold them correctly into triangles and ended up with what I would call dough clouds rather than cookies. Delicious, but not quite right. So, this…
For Heather’s second attempt at hamantashen, she decided to go a chocolatey route, but with a special twist inspired by that other beloved traditional Jewish treat: black and white cookies.
For shakshuka, it all starts with tomatoes, onions and peppers—much like a lot of Mexican food. Inspired by her own Mexican background, Heather decided to mix up her shakshuka.
For this take on shakshuka, I decided to do a culinary mashup of the Israeli recipe with classic Mexican flavors. With my recent conversion to Judaism and my Mexican heritage, this seemed like a fitting tribute to my past and present. The ingredients in shakshuka easily merge with Mexican seasonings—the base of the recipe remains…
Heather puts a spin on the comfort food of her Southern childhood, adding in the flavor of fall (pumpkin) and using the rich bread that represents her new Jewish present (challah).
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