Ilan Hall, winner of Bravo’s Top Chef, cooked “crispy lamb” for about 50 students and Hillel staff at Hillel’s Fiedler Center yesterday. It was easily the best-cooked dinner I’ve ever had on campus. Between the snaps, crackles and pops of the broiling lamb, Hall dished a little about himself to me.

Emily Glazer: How did you become involved in cooking?

Ilan Hall: My father was the cook of the house and I’d watch him and imitate and copy. My grandfather was a kosher butcher in Jerusalem. I guess the males have the [cooking] genes in my family.

EG: How did you get on Top Chef?

IH: All I did was sent in a video of me heating up Ramen noodles. I went in with no preconceived notions. The first day I got there I started writing a journal of everyone.

EG: What’s your favorite Jewish food?

IH: I love pickled herring and other eastern European dishes, and all things with matzoh.

EG: What’s your favorite meal to cook?

IH: French fries with salt. Both to prepare and to eat. A perfect french fry is hard to master. You have to poach it in oil, blanch it. It has to be crispy on the outside.

EG: What’s your favorite meal in general?

IH: Breakfast and dinner. I like the act of breakfast even though I usually don’t eat it because I’m running around in the morning- but I love brunch. Dinner is sexy. I’ve been cooking dinner service for years. You just go out, drink… it’s dinner.

Six Northwestern students bypassed the Bahamas this spring break and opted instead to travel to Israel through Jewish National Fund Alternative Spring Break. The students: Ronen Bay, Adam Fusfeld, Rachel Greenberg, Sybil Ottenstein, Rachel Silverman and Katherine Vedeer were joined by about 75 other people, both college students and post-graduate young adults. I was lucky enough to speak to both Fusfeld and Silverman about their experiences.

EG: How did you get to go on this trip?
AF: JNF (Jewish National Fund) sponsors the trip, and to qualify for the trip each person had to raise $800. I contributed some of that money on my own, and also asked family and friends. Other students held fund raisers and raised over $5,000.

EG: How was the week broken down?
AF: We arrived in Jerusalem at about 4 p.m. local time on Friday, March 16th. We spent all of Friday and Saturday in Jerusalem, where we couldn’t do much because of Shabbat. By Sunday we were traveling to Northern Israel, very close to the Lebanon border so that we could work in the areas affected by Lebanese destruction. Sunday – Wednesday, we rebuilt trees, cleared out burned forests, planted new trees and also painted bomb shelters. We left Israel in time for a 10:45 a.m. flight on Thursday morning.

RS: We spent Shabbat in Jerusalem, and then stayed at Kibbutz Malkiya in the north, directly next to the Lebanon border. I could see into Lebanon from my bedroom, and during the war last summer the 500 person kibbutz turned into a 2,500-person army base.

We spent most of our time cleaning up forests that had been damaged in fires caused by the Ketusha rockets from last summer. This involved picking up fallen trees and cutting off low to the ground branches to help prevent another widespread forest fire in case of an attack. We also cut down burnt trees and cut off the burnt branches of trees that were still alive in order for them to be able to grow more successfully.

Additionally, we spent one day painting murals inside bomb shelters to make them a happier place to be. When we got there they were cold, white, and barren, and I couldn’t imagine having to live in a place like that for weeks or months at a time. Hopefully these bomb shelters will never need to be used again, but in the event that they are, I hope our paintings will make the experience a little more positive.

EG: What did you think of the trip?
RS: It was a really great experience, and I loved being able to help out Israel in a more personal way. It’s one thing to send in a check, but it’s quite another to fly halfway around the world to get your hands dirty. Some people asked me why I “gave up” my spring break to go on this trip, but I never thought of it as a sacrifice. I was thrilled to go on the trip, and to be part of such a big effort to help the country I know and love so much.

EG: What do you think of NU’s Jewish scene? Or lack of?
AF: I don’t really go to Hillel, I went a couple times early in the year for Shabbat dinner, and then also for the high holidays. Since then I haven’t really gone back. But a lot of that is because I don’t feel a need to go to Hillel to interact with Jews, because so many of my friends are – by coincidence – Jewish. I just feel like a lot of the more social people at Northwestern, the kids that go out, are in fact Jewish. So I’m not really concerned with the actively partaking in Jewish activities. When I go back home though I try and go to shul, just so I stay a little involved.

Applications for positions in one of Hillel’s many groups are available online at Hillel’s website. They are due at 5 p.m. on April 8. Contact Danielle Gershon (dgershon -at- northwestern.edu) for more information, especially if the Hillel website is still under construction.

This year, Northwestern’s Hillel has a variety of ways to celebrate Passover.
The first night Seder will be spent on campus at one of 14 different student-led seders. The second night will take place at Hillel. Students can sign up for home hospitality at a local family’s seder or can do it themselves with “Seder in a box.”
Sign-up is at Hillel’s Website.

This year’s Passover art competition, “Expressions of Freedom,” will award a winner $100 in four categories: visual art, photography, poetry and prose. The competition is open to all Northwestern students. For more information, e-mail nufreedomofexpression@gmail.com.