Final Bits of Fun Playing with Passover Foods in 2008!

Ok, back to Passover, which ends tonight one hour after sundown. Growing up, an expected Passover treat was Hebrew National Kosher for Passover Salami. We ate Hebrew National cold cuts and hotdogs exclusively in my house, all year round. With all of the culinary restrictions at Passover, Hebrew National could always be counted on for snack or meal food, regardless of whether the supermarket ran out of any other "Kosher for Passover" food. Remember, "regular" Kosher salami etc. are made with all sorts of fillers derived from soy, which is forboten to an Ashkenazic Jew during Passover.

But things have changed, big time, in the last 30 years. Sometime in the 1990s, I think, Hebrew National was acquired by Agribusiness powerhouse Conagra Foods. And the products have never tasted the same to me - they taste almost plastic. Which isn't such a bad thing, since hotdogs and salami are not the healthiest food. And my husband Bob could never understand the attraction - especially with all of the wonderful pork sausage and salumi that Cleveland has to offer. And even though I could still get a salami chub and a package of hotdogs KP when I first moved to Cleveland in the mid-1990s - no supermarket carries it anymore here. So - what to do?

To the rescue came Boris' Kosher Meats, on Cedar Road on the border of Beachwood and Cleveland Heights. They make their own salami, and they make it Kosher for Passover at this time of year! Not only that - in the face of the "KP Food Shortage" this year - I was able to score a bottle of KP Cottonseed Oil (and this is the place that supplied my Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt earlier this year, an essential kitchen staple that none of the local supermarkets carried, and the only mass market Kosher salt without chemical anti-caking agents).



And yes- you can hang them and let them dry, which intensifies the flavor (try doing that with Hebrew National!). Salami comes in mild and spicy - I took two of the spicy; one of them is still hanging.



The other is opened, and made for a wonderful Passover lunch last week.






Boris' Fresh Made KP Spicy Salami Sandwich on Potato Kugel



This morning, we had our last Passover breakfast. Yesterday, Bob finished the last piece of Gefilte Fish, and I had Matzo Brei with our last fresh egg (Bob went out to the Blue Egg Farmer for a new supply yesterday after breakfast). Today was for Cheesy Matzo Pancakes. Bob is not a huge fan of Matzo Brei (though he will eat it if I add a bunch of salami to it - see above!) or the traditional matzo pancakes my mother made, which are eggs, matzo meal, salt, and sugar and served with jelly.

I learned to make the Cheesy Pancakes because Bob like them better, and I have to admit, they taste pretty darn good! This recipe is from Elegant Essen, the 1973 cookbook published by the East Northport Jewish Center, and credited to Miriam Asher. We start with these ingredients:



Three eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of Pot Cheese (Friendship brand is required - thank you Heinen's for carrying it). Since I was little short of milk, I used extra pot cheese. Heather's cinnamon, Kosher Salt and a TB of sugar are not pictured, but you get the idea. It is very simple - beat the eggs, add the remaining ingredients and mix well.



Form into pancake shapes (easy to do due to the thickness of this batter) and fry. Though Mom always used oil, I decided to try ghee this year.






Yum!



We topped the pancakes with Maple Syrup (and a bit of Cherry Jelly) and some amazing organic Strawberries that Bob got from Mustard Seed Market yesterday, macerated in Maple Syrup.



What a way to finish the Passover Holiday!





Again, I wish all who read this a happy, healthy and green Spring! Filled with lots of great food to play with!

It was fun playing with Seder food, but all good things. . .

Wow - seven blog posts showing our Seder preps. Hard to believe it is all over, but this is the last one. It has been a labor of love to prepare and serve all of this food to some of our family and friends, while my own family is so far away in Massachusetts, and Long Island and Binghamton NY. And I didn't even include everything - I was not happy with the brisket pictures, so those will await another occasion (although, be assured, Mister Brisket's meat cooked up magnificently, as it always does).

The last prep I photographed was the Charosis or Charoset. This mixture of nuts, apples, wine and sweetener is another of those holiday delicacies that can be prepared in innumerable variations. Every year, I think of adding exotic Sephardic spices like coriander and tumeric - but in the end, I make this once a year, and I can't bear to mess with perfection.

Charosis is one of the six items placed on the Seder Plate, together with a roasted egg (Beitza, the festival offering), onion and horseradish (bitter herbs, or Maror), roasted lamb shank bone (to commemorate the Paschal offering at the Temple in Jerusalem), and Parsley (Karpas, which is intended to stimulate the curiosity of the children). Charosis symbolizes the morter used by the slaves to make bricks for the Egyptians.



Mom made her charosis in one of those 1970s nut choppers like this one:



This resulted in a very coarse product. Yes, it kinda looked like mortar, but it fell apart when put into Hillel's Sandwich. And it was a bear to process all the apples and nuts needed for a big Seder in that little thing. I prefer to process the mixture a bit more than mom did, using the food processor.



Mom always used sugar to sweeten this dish, but I've become passionate about Ohio Honey, and so that is what I use. Walnuts, Heather's awesome Vietnamese cinnamon, Organic Apples (no waxes or pesticides, please) and KP Blackberry wine complete my ingredient list. Interesting note about the wine - Manischewitz Blackberry has no artificial ingredients, unlike the more traditional Concord Grape. And, it actually tastes good, in a sweet kind of way. So, this is my "go to" Kosher wine.

I start by giving the nuts a light buzz in the food processor, then peel and chop the apples. I then buzz them up together, finally adding the remaining ingredients as it goes.



It does eventually look like mortar - but it tastes so good!



Finally, here is a photo of our Seder table. May all of you enjoy your Spring holiday, whatever it may be, and have a wonderful season of green, growth, good health and of course, playing with your food!

Is it Fun to Play With Horseradish Root?

The answer is below.

Mom always served Gold's Horseradish (with Beets - the red stuff with no kick) with her Gefilte Fish.



When we would visit Grandma Anna's apartment in the Bronx for Seder - she always had a spicy white horseradish (or chrain, in Yiddish). I fell in love with the stuff.

These days, we grow our own horseradish root in our garden. So, when Gefilte Fish is in season, we make our own chrain to top it!










Always Wear Eye Protection When Doing This or You WILL NOT Have Fun Playing With Your Horseradish




A little kosher salt, a little white vinegar - and it is ready to go fishing!

Fun Playing with Passover Puddings

My mother always made two puddings, or kugels, for Passover. One is sweet. The recipe comes from a cookbook called "Elegant Essen, " which was put out by the East Northport Jewish Center in 1973 as so many churches, synagogues, and civic groups put out cookbooks - by collecting recipes from their members. This recipe is entitled "Pudding - Sweet and Delicious" and is attributed to Eunice Zarett.



The dish consists of 1# Matzo Farfel, which you can see in the pot behind the farfel package, margarine (which is the only box of the stuff I buy all year - and this year, Kosher for Passover stick margarine was nowhere to be found, for reasons explained here), 7 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 can apricots in juice or sugar (no corn syrup!), salt, cinnamon (Vietnamese and intense, from Heather's Heat & Flavor), hot water and about 1 cup of cold water.



Start by pouring hot tap water over the farfel. The recipe says to drain it, and mom always drained it pretty promptly. One year, when I was making this, I forgot to drain the farfel. When I finally remembered and looked into the pot - it had absorbed all of the water! I made the pudding anyway, and learned that allowing the farfel to become saturated increases the "puddingness" of the kugel - so I now deliberately leave it for a while before draining (if there is anything left to drain).


Seven Blue Eggs Ready For Beating


Not Margarine Melting

Since there was no KP margarine available anyway, I decided to try a product from the Mustard Seed Market that had no hydrogenated oil, trans fats, or artificial ingredients. It had soybean oil and corn for flavor, so it was not even close to Pasaidich, but I decided to try it anyway. And it was good.



I beat together the eggs, margarine, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the juice from the can of apricots.



The diced apricots went into the drained farfel, and the egg mixture was then added. The recipe calls for 1.5 cups cold water to also be added here, but since there was still some water left in the farfel after draining, I only used 1 cup.



This was poured into a prepared dish, topped with sprinkled cinnamon and baked.



Sorry - no photos of the hot pudding when served - it just didn't happen! But here is what it looks like - it is delicious to eat hot or cold!





The second pudding is the traditional Potato Kugel. If you look on the internet or Jewish cooking books and magazines, you'll find numerous variations on this dish. But I cannot bring myself to mess with it, it is so perfect as mom made it! Well . . . almost. We do add some hot chile (which my mother, who doesn't like any hot spice, would not approve of!), and we use a better prep method (mom used a blender and we use a food processor) - but this is still mom's kugel.



For 5# of potato (a "double" kugel) - 4 eggs, potato starch, kosher salt, ground pepper and about 4 garden Tabasco peppers from the freezer take a whirl in the Cuisinart.



The potatoes, and some onions, are peeled and grated using the cheese grating wheel of the food processor (or the smallest holes on a box grater, if you don't like having knuckles):





The grated veggies are combined with the egg mixture, and matzo meal is added a TB or so at a time, until the mixture feels right. It is then poured into a prepared casserole and baked. Again, we didn't get a picture "right out of the oven," but this should give you the idea:





No wonder my mom always called Passover Kugel Week! What a glorious way to play with your food, and then have leftovers!

Fun Playing with Matzo Balls

Growing up, the Master of the Matzo Balls was my sister, Chaya. To this day, she makes the lightest, most ethereal Matzo Balls, always perfectly round (and they stay that way). I've gotten pretty good at making them too, but I owe it all to Chaya!

The base recipe our family always uses is from the quintessential Jewish Cookbook from 1956, Love and Knishes by Sara Kasdan, which I am pleased to see is back in print. It is a very simple recipe. I will never understand the concept of "matzo ball mix." What's the point?

There is also a bit of debate as to the preferred texture - sinkers or floaters? Dense or fluffy? My research indicates that the way your mother made them probably influences your taste in this regard more than anything (as explained brilliantly by Ms. Kasdan at pps. 113-115 of the 1957 printing). We prefer the fluffy, floating kind in my family.

I begin by setting up the mise:



For every 6 eggs, Chaya uses 1 cup of matzo meal. The recipe also calls for 2 TB schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), but since no one in my family ever used it, I do not. Here, I did a double batch, 12 eggs, 2 cups matzo meal. Since these were the fabulous Blue Eggs, which vary in size, I added a 13th egg. A little salt (2 tsp for 12 eggs, according the recipe, reduced a bit to account for the strength of Kosher Salt) and fresh ground white pepper (1/4 tsp), and that's all there is to it, though you can gussy it up with seasonings like nutmeg or parsley, or whatever else you want. But I am a purist with my Passover cooking. And I always wind up glad I didn't mess with the recipe!



First step - separate the eggs. Not so easy when they've only been out of the chickens for about a week! But worth it - look at the yellow of those beautiful yolks!



Next - beat the yolks until light, then add the salt and pepper. In the Kitchen Aid, beat the egg whites until stiff. Then, add the yolk mixture on top, and gently fold in.







Next - add the matzo meal a little at a time and gently fold in.





Once the ingredients are folded together, cover with a dishtowel and refrigerate for at least an hour. This allows the matzo meal to absorb the liquid, which is essential.

Prior to removing from the fridge, I put my biggest pot (the 20 quarter) on the stove, with water up to about the 15 quart hash mark. I want the matzo balls to have plenty of room to expand, which they will. Since my stove only gets about 9,000 BTU's on a good day, I give the pot a little help to get it to the boil:



This commercial bucket warmer does wonders.

After about 3 hours in the fridge, the batter looked like this:





When forming the balls (and forgive the lack of photos - that operation requires two hands and makes a mess of them!), it is necessary to lubricate the hands to keep the batter from sticking too much. Until this year, I always used a little bowl of water. This time, I tried coating my hands with oil instead - and I think that is why, for the first time, my Matzo Balls held their shape so well. So - everybody in the pool!



I cook them for about an hour, then scoop them out to cool.





And here it is - served in the chicken soup I blogged about here:



Passover is in many ways the ultimate "play with your food" holiday - even though the ingredients are simple and limited - the final products are simply wonderful.