Fun Playing With Passover Food 2009

We are in the midst of the Passover holiday. I have always loved Passover, because of the special food memories that go with it. Many foods eaten during Passover are made and consumed just this once a year. Since moving to Cleveland 13 years ago, I usually make the traditional two Seders (unless we go to NY to visit the family). This year was a Cleveland Seder year.

The week before Passover turned out to be exceptionally hectic - as a result, I was too exhausted to take any Seder photos. However, you can see a wonderful narrative of our first Seder on my friend Tom's Blog, Breads My Way. Seder: Part 1, Part 2. Also, if you have a Facebook account, you can see the gorgeous photography of my friend Chris here.

So this year, I can offer you some photos of prep steps from some different perspectives than in my previous posts (I hope), and photos of some items in "leftover" mode.

We begin with the creation of one of the best pots of chicken soup I've ever made. I was lucky to have a Breychak Farms pullet in the freezer. This young lady still had her feet and neck intact:



In these two photos (above and below) - she has one food manicured - I realized after I snipped off the first set of toenails that I should take a picture before continuing!





By this point, I've finished the manicure, removed the feet, and removed the neck. Unfortunately, the neck was the only giblet - no poopick (gizzard), liver or heart. I did have an extra supply of feet and the back and bones from a recently cooked Breychak chicken, so I wasn't worried.


My secret weapon for skimming.




Soup Greens

Carrots, Onion, Celery, Parsnip. Flat and curly parsley will be added later.









I start with just the chicken and parts - remembering how long the feet take to give their all, I decide to leave the pullet whole.



That amazing alchemy happens - and after skimming and simmering (NEVER allow it to come to a boil) - the soup clears.




Everything is in the Pot!

While the soup simmers, I prepare the matzoh ball mixture. Since Kathy is no longer in the egg business, I needed to locate a new source for farm fresh eggs. I am very fond of Aaron Miller's eggs, but I was advised that they were in short supply.

None other than Hank Kornblutt at Mister Brisket supplied my answer! He pointed me to Hensbury Farm, where I hooked up with the owner, Jennifer. She agreed to meet me and provided me with all of the many dozen fresh eggs I needed - and these are truly wonderful eggs!



These eggs dated 3/15/09 were deliberately a little older, for making hard-cooked eggs. They peeled like a dream!






Yolks for Matzoh Balls

Some of these eggs are not Kosher, because of the bloody specks. Jews who keep Kosher are not permitted to consume any blood from any animal. I, however, have never let a blood speck get in the way of enjoying a farm fresh egg, so into the Matzoh Balls they went.


Whipped Yolks




Whites - Beaten to a Stiff Peak

The soup, meanwhile, simmers for many hours, until the feet have given up all of their collagen. Once chilled, the soup shimmers and shimmys like Jello.






The Final Product - Matzoh Ball Soup

Next up was the Gefilte Fish. As usual, I sourced my fish from Mister Brisket. Hank made sure I got some heads this time!

Bag 1 contains the stock making parts:



These are rinsed, put in a pot with onion, covered with water and brought to a simmer. As with the chicken soup, the fumet begins cloudy:



But through the magic that comes from the stove - it clears.



Skimming helps!

In the meantime, I beat several Hensbury Farm eggs in the bottom of a pot, then add my fish mixture. Hank has ground 1 part Pike, 1 part Whitefish and .5 part Carp fillets with onion, which looks like this:





My seasonings are simple - salt, white pepper and sugar. And a little matzoh meal to hold it together.

I form the mixture into quinelles (ovals) and poach them in the fish stock. After the first hour, I add carrot sections. I then poach for another 1.5-2 hours. I scoop the cooked fish out into one pan, and the carrots into a dish. Everything else, I'm sad to say, becomes compost - we never have the energy to save the fish fumet.

Bob makes horseradish from a root dug up from our garden, a little salt and vinegar:



The fish is eaten with carrots and horseradish - and, after the Seders - accompanied by buttered matzoh. Yum!









Another Seder delight is the Charosis - a mixture of walnuts, apples, Passover sweet wine and seasonings. Although I am always tempted by descriptions of exotic Sephardic preparations including dried fruits, dates, other kinds of nuts and seasonings - I can't bring myself to change this - because I LIKE it so much. We eat the leftovers as matzoh spread (since we don't eat peanut butter during Passover).

I have started adding a little cardamom and tumeric in recent years - but it's still mostly seasoned with cinnamon and Ohio Honey.





Looks like mortar, but tastes delicious!


Another Seder item that is just as yummy cold is the Sweet Farfel Pudding with Apricots; the Hensbury Farm eggs really kicked this up:





Finally, the "Day After" plate:


Brisket with Gravy & Onions, Potato Kugel, Sauteed Asparagus with Lemon-Grapeseed Oil Spritz



I hope that you are also playing with the Holiday foods of your choice - or if you do not celebrate a Spring holiday, that you playing with the bounty of the burgeoning Spring!

Fun Playing (One-Handed) With Holiday Food and Good Friends

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately - lots of time devoted to PT and rehabbing my shoulder. I've got a backlog of photos to share!

When last we left our intrepid food lover, she had just survived catering a weekend party for 65 people one-handed, with the help of some very special people. As the calendar would have it, Rosh Hashonah was scheduled to begin the next day, Monday September 29, at sundown. What to do?

As it happened, my good friend Linda, who has recently been through some tsorres (troubles) of her own, had neither the energy nor the desire to deal with her usual family holiday celebration. Together, we concocted the perfect plan - she'd bring some ingredients to my house on Monday morning, and we'd prepare our holiday meal together in my more spacious kitchen, then we'd enjoy a quiet New Year celebration with just our two couples the first night, and another friend in addition the second night.

I wasn't very camera-able at this point, so most of the photos are courtesy of our dear friend Edsel, who was the "other friend" the second night!

I did take photos of our beautiful soup pot - filled with lovely vegetables, and one pullet from Linda's freezer (which had started life at the Breychak Blue Egg Farm) and one pullet from the one and only Mister Brisket. Together with a few Blue Egg chicken feet, it was going to be something special:



Linda made the Maztoh Balls, using the recipe from her book, Onions, Onions, Onions. This is not the way I make them - she adds onion, schmaltz (chicken fat) and seltzer to the basic egg and matzoh meal batter - and she doesn't separate her eggs. I was game to try something different!


Linda's Matzoh Balls Cooking


The Festive Holiday Table

Sliced apples and Ohio Honey honey are first, together with Challah from On the Rise Bakery. Also, sliced hot peppers from the garden.


Gefilte Fish and Garden Horseradish

Thanks to Mister Brisket for providing the delicious raw fish mixture!


Garden Tomato Salad

This was surprisingly tasty with the addition of Thai Basil (I thought Bob was nuts when he told me that was how he was making it).


Chicken Soup, Matzoh Ball, Carrots, Noodles


Linda's Citrus-Braised Brisket



Linda did the brisket at her place over the weekend - a gorgeous hunk of grass-fed meat from Miller Livestock. She used a combination of North African spices and citrus for an interesting and tasty spin on the traditional holiday brisket.


Bob's Potato Kugel

Delicious, as always.

We were too stuffed both nights to cut up the garden melons we'd been gifted with, so no dessert (well - we did kinda dig into the leftover Chocolate Covered Bacon with Almonds the second night - but don't tell, since that wouldn't be kosher).



Since there was lots of soup left, we froze some, and I made another batch of Matzoh Balls for Yom Kippur the following weekend. It was sublime!

Fun Playing with Chicken Soup

We prepared our Chicken Soup over the last two days. It was an interesting experience for me. I realized, after reading about stock-making here, that in a way, my soup-making process combines the stock and soup making processes into one.

This is NOT the way my mother made it - I began to studying the process of soup-making after seeing the movie Tampopo in the late 1980s. I loved the way Barbara Tropp wrote about stock and soup making in her book "China Moon Cookbook." It was here that I learned about the importance of chicken feet in soup making, and never letting the pot come to a boil. Well, that's not entirely true - my Chinese cooking teacher, Jo-Mel, taught me that the phrase "a watched pot never boils" is actually Chinese in origin, and doesn't mean that you should NOT watch the pot - it means that if you constantly watch the pot, it won't come to a boil and ruin the soup. As famously depicted in Tampopo, there is chemistry in poultry bones that will cloud the soup if the soup should boil.

One thing my mother did teach me was to make my soup from pullets. Indeed, every classic Jewish cookbook I've ever seen says to start with a pullet or "young hen" - "dressed" (that means sans feathers and organs, folks). Unfortunately, because the average consumer so seldom makes soup these days, pullets are virtually unknown in any mainstream market and even at the farmers markets, can be difficult to locate. The Blue Egg Farmer, Kathy Breychak, explained to me that pullets are hens that are, essentially, barely pre-menopause. Just as with human females, pullets still have female hormones and the ability to lay eggs, although they are slowing down. Their skin is still tight, and if fed right, a beautiful yellow that will infuse into a soup made with them. Stewing hens, by contrast, are "post-menopausal", and are tougher and longer cooking - and don't have that lovely skin anymore.

Last year, Kathy was able to supply me with two 5 pound pullets, which was perfect for 2 Seders worth of soup (plus). This year, she had none, though I was able to get a bag of lovely frozen chicken feet from her. I was unable to source true pullets, so I purchased my soup chicken from Mister Brisket, who gets nice, minimally processed chickens that are close to the pullets of my youth - but not quite. Therefore, I also order from Mister Brisket a "bag of bones" - which at holiday time is 10 pounds of freshly excised backs, necks and bones from "regular" chickens (it may be frozen at other times of the year - but is always top quality).


Mister Brisket's "Bag of Bones"

I start by rinsing the bones and placing at the bottom of my 20 quart pot.



Next, I clean and pedicure the chicken feet - note the brilliant yellow color!







Now, I rinse and add the soup chicken. Note the amazing color contrast between the feet and the soup chicken.



Add bottled water to cover (my tap water is nasty).



I turn on the flame, clamp on the lid, and attend to the vegetables.


Soup Greens: Celery, Carrots, Parsnips, Onions



As the pot warms, all of the blood and impurities in the meats extract from the flesh and into the water. It looks and smells pretty gross! Jo-Mel says that some Chinese cooks will bring a pot like this to a simmer, then empty the water, rinse the meat and start again! But have no fear - gentle heat will clear the stock - and I can't bear to throw any of the goodness away!

After about 45 minutes, the liquid clears and bubbles gently. I skim the scum and yucky looking stuff for about another 45 minutes. For a change, I didn't turn on the TV or play music - I was totally focused on the soup. It was an almost Zen-like experience! After some period of time, when it seemed that no yuckies were coming up to be skimmed, I began to add the vegetables to the pot. Onion first, then parsnip, then celery (using lots of celery leaves - my mother insists that's important for a good soup). Usually, I'd add the carrots now. But I decided to experiment with waiting longer to add them, in the hope they'd be in better shape to serve with the soup if I didn't cook the hell out of them. Once all the vegetables are in - I add some Diamond Crystal salt and whole Tellicherry peppercorns.



The last ingredient in my soup is parsley - again from mom - both curly and Italian flat. About a third of a bunch of each.





The pot is then allowed to cook at a very low simmer until the feet - which are the most dense item in the pot - have at least gotten very soft and loose. I put this pot on the stove at 5pm - and Bob came to bed at 5am, after waiting until about 3am for the feet, and then cooling and straining the soup. This is what it looked like after chilling for about 9 hours after this process:





We yielded about 2.5 gallons of soup - more than I will need for Passover, but it will freeze well. And that gelatin you see means lovely mouthfeel! What a wonderful way to play with your food!