an open cupboard

Gevalt. My shoulders hurt, my back hurts. My triceps are no longer on speaking terms with me, and they’re whispering mutiny to the biceps. Yesterday, I made my own dumplings out of hand-rolled dough without the use of a pasta machine. Now I know what it must have felt like to be a housewife in a 19th century shtetl. All I need is a washboard for the laundry and a roof for my husband to fiddle on as he sings “TRADITION! TRADITION!”

I know, I know. It sounds like hyperbole. But try it, you’ll see what I mean. Making the dough is fun at first. It involves mixing some beaten eggs into a mound of flour with a fork. At a certain point, you dispense with the fork altogether and use your hands. The joy of messiness, the kneading… it’s an adult version of play dough. After letting the dough rest, the rolling begins. If you’ve rolled your own pie crust, you may not think much of this part. Ah, but pasta dough must be thin, thin, thin—like paper, like silk. When you’ve been rolling a while and realize that your dough is still thick as pie dough, you begin to wonder how much longer. You throw yourself into it, using your weight to apply more pressure on the dough. You sweat through your t-shirt. You think “holy cannoli! What was I thinking?” Just when you decide to settle for
thick, lumpy kreplach, you roll just a little longer until the sheet of pasta is smooth and thin as it can get.

But you’re not done yet. You have to cut little circles with an upside down glass, being careful to place the circles as close together as possible so as not to waste too much dough. Then each circle must be brushed with water, filled with filling, and pressed closed. The pressing is an art in itself. The filling can’t be too much or too little, so that it fills the dough just enough without poking out the sides. The edges must be pressed together carefully around the filling without any air bubbles. Then the edges must be brought together, one side brushed with water, and pressed together firmly as though the dumpling is wringing its hands in front of its plump belly. But the dough must be soft and pliable enough that the belly doesn’t burst, spewing its cheesy contents. It’s painstaking work, alternately exasperating and meditative. But the result is that much more luxurious and tasty when you’ve worked so hard to make it yourself.

If you’re short on time and patience for hard labor, you could run your dough through a pasta machine. It’s probably best to run it through the highest to the lowest setting for a really thin, silky dough. You could use one of those plastic ravioli pressing gadgets that works like a waffle iron
, if you don’t feel like pressing the dumplings yourself. You could press the dumplings like kreplach (triangular wontons), or pelmeni (Russian tortellini). I gravitated towards tortellini style dumplings, as I thought they might better keep their shape and hold their filling (those wringing hands tend to hold the stuffing). But traditional kreplach triangles might be easier to make and certainly less time-consuming. (I’ve always felt that the triangular tips of kreplach or wontons are like delicate little pasta fins, the dumplings quietly swimming in your soup.)

I stuffed my kreplach with a cheese filling in honor of Shavuoth, the Jewish festival of the ten commandments. It is traditional to prepare all manner of dairy foods for this holiday, unlike most holidays where meat and fish are the festive foods. Jewish lore has it that the Israelites did not know how to keep kosher, as they hadn’t yet received the ten commandments. So they ate only dairy foods so as not to eat any animals that weren’t sanctioned by the law. (How did they know the law would prohibit the consumption of certain creatures? Good point. But again, this is lore…)

Back in Russia and Poland, Jews would prepare cheese kreplach served with fried onions or a dusting of sugar, sometimes sour cream or perhaps a bit of jam. The name, size and shape of the dumplings might vary depending on the region. I’ve prepared mine with a filling of goat cheese and za’atar, putting a Mediterranean twist on the Eastern European dish. As for toppings, I’ve used fried onions, leftover goat cheese instead of sour cream and plum jam. Yes, all three. The combination of flavors works surprisingly well.

Other traditional ways to serve kreplach include frying them with onions, or boiling them and then serving them in soup. Kreplach can be stuffed with potatoes, beef, chicken liver, or a combination of beef and pork if you want to make Ukrainian pelmeni (a non-Jewish cousin of the traditional kreple). You could alternatively make a sort of kreplach lasagne, layering sheets of fresh pasta with filling and toppings. How do you like your kreplach?

cheese kreplach for shavuoth

for the filling:
10 oz. soft goat cheese (chevre), or other cheese of similar consistency
5 stalks fresh za’atar, or other fresh herb such as dill, parsley, chives, oregano
salt and white pepper to taste
1 small egg

for the dough (adapted from a recipe in the NY Times):
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 large eggs
lukewarm water, if necessary

for the topping:
goat cheese or sour cream or smetana
1-2 diced onions
butter
good plum jam (should be a little loose—I used June Taylor’s Elephant Heart plum conserve)

Preparing the filling:

• In a large bowl, crumble in the cheese.
• Hold the top of a stalk of za’atar with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. With the thumb and forefinger of the other hand, gently slide your fingers down the stalk, catching the leaves as they fall. Repeat for the remaining stalks. (This works for oregano as well, but any of the other herbs should simply be finely chopped.)
• Rip or chop the za’atar and throw it into the bowl of cheese.
• Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Taste and correct seasoning. Add a beaten egg and stir to combine.

Making the dough:

• On a large, clean flat surface (a wooden table would be good), make a hill of flour. Form a well in the center of the hill.
• Beat the eggs lightly and pour them into the well. Begin mixing the flour into the eggs with a fork.
• At some point, you’ll want to use your hands to mix the egg and flour. If the mixture appears dry, add a little lukewarm water (say 1 or 2 tablespoons). My dough was moist with just the egg.
• Knead the dough well, then let sit covered with a bowl or plastic wrap for 30 minutes.

Rolling the dough:

• Separate the dough into two parts, leaving one portion under the bowl. Take the other half and begin to flatten and stretch it a bit with your hands.
• Flour your surface and start rolling. You can use a pasta machine for this part. Roll the dough into an oblong shape rather than a circle. Be sure to move your dough frequently so that it doesn’t stick to the surface. Flour your surface just enough to keep the dough from sticking. You can patch any holes or cracks.
• Roll until you can’t roll anymore, and then roll a bit more. You want to get your dough as thin and smooth as possible. Remember, the pasta will absorb water and expand when cooked. Feel the thickness of your dough and try to imagine what it might taste like when cooked. If it tastes like a mouthful of dough, you need to keep rolling.
• When finished rolling, you might want to sprinkle a little water on the dough if it looks a bit dry.

Cutting the dough:

• Use a glass with a 3 inch diameter to cut circles of dough. Use a dull knife to help cut the dough if necessary. Try to minimize the space between each circle of dough so as to avoid excess scrap dough.
• When finished cutting the circles, collect the scraps and mush them into a ball. Place the ball under the bowl of resting dough.

Filling and shaping the dumplings:

• With a barely damp pastry brush, brush one circle with a little water, mostly around the edges.
• Place about a teaspoon of filling in the center of the circle.
• Bring one end of the dough over the other in a half circle sandwich of dough and filling. Use your fingers to press the edges of the dough from one edge of the semi-circle to the other, while gently smoothing out any air bubbles along the edge of the filling. Dance your fingers along the edges again to get a good seal.
• You can stop here, or you can continue folding the edges tortellini style. To do this:
  • Brush a little water on one tip of the semi-circle.
  • Then gently wrap the tips over your forefinger, the wet tip under the dry one.
  • Use your thumb to squeeze the tips against your forefinger, sealing them together.
  • Remove your forefinger, and gently squish the tips the other way (vertically).
• Place the dumpling on a lightly floured plate. (I used two plates for my dumplings, simply to avoid the hassle of stacking them on top of each other, in case they stuck.)
• Repeat for the remaining dough circles.
• Take out the second piece of dough and follow the rolling, cutting, filling and shaping instructions. You can ball up and roll out the scraps too, or slice them into jagged, randomly shaped noodles. These can be cooked briefly before boiling the kreplach. Drain and slather with butter for snacking on while the kreplach cook.

Cooking the dumplings:

• In a large skillet, melt some butter and fry the chopped onions on a medium to low flame until golden brown.
• Boil heavily salted water for the dumplings. When the water is boiling gently, tip the plates of dumplings into the pot.
• Agitate the pot lightly so that the dumplings don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Cook until the kreplach float to the top.
• Remove the kreplach with a slotted spoon, draining the water.
• Top with fried onions, cheese or sour cream, and finally plum jam.

Serves 2-4

I picked up some great pasta making techniques from a class given by the inimitable Omnivorous Fish. Useful links here and here.

I have fond memories of eating matzah brei for breakfast of a Sunday morning during Passover. I’d wake up to the smell of browned butter and cinnamon, and wander into the kitchen.

My dad preferred the scrambled style of the traditional dish. He’d break several sheets of matzah into large pieces and soak them in water or milk, then mixing them with beaten eggs and stir-frying them in a large skillet. He’d sprinkle the crisp, golden matzah pieces with a little sugar and cinnamon, and serve them up to my brother and me. We would raid the refrigerator for all manner of toppings—cottage cheese, butter, cheddar cheese, American cheese, jam, chocolate syrup—and carry them, teetering, back to the table.

The adventure began when we sat down to eat. Cottage cheese and jam? Jam and butter? Cheddar and jam? Cottage cheese and chocolate syrup? The possibilities were endless and no combination was too weird. The matzah brei itself was a delight, a more rugged version of French toast we only ate once a year. I can still taste it, eggy, warm, buttery and bread-like, the sandy sweetness of cinnamon and sugar in my mouth.

savory matzah brei

1 1/2 cups matzah farfel
4 eggs
butter
1-2 handfuls fresh parsley
1 stalk green garlic or spring onion
1 poblano pepper or other pepper
smoked paprika
salt and pepper
cheddar cheese or any other cheese

• Pour the matzah farfel into a large bowl. Break the eggs into the bowl and mix with a fork, beating the eggs slightly and tossing to coat the matzah farfel.
• Melt some butter in a large skillet over medium heat.
• Coarsely chop the parsley and toss into the bowl.
• Finely chop the green garlic or spring onion and toss into the skillet.
• Chop the pepper into 1 inch (3 cm) pieces, adding it to the skillet. Toss to coat with butter and let the mixture sweat.
• Scoop the pepper mixture out of the skillet and into the bowl of farfel.
• Season the farfel egg mixture with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. Mix to incorporate the peppers and seasoning with the farfel and eggs.
• If necessary, melt more butter in the skillet. Spoon the batter into the skillet and smooth it into a large pancake.
• Crumble some cheese onto the matzah mixture. Turn on the broiler as the matzah brei cooks.
• Once the matzah brei has cooked for a few minutes, turn off the flame and place under the broiler. Remove when the top is golden and the cheese has melted.

Serves 2-4

Make matzotto. Matzotto? Let me explain.

Last Saturday evening was the first night of Passover, that eight day festival of freedom during which observant Jews abstain from eating leavened baked goods. The prohibition extends to grains of all kinds, and for many Jews, certain legumes and seeds as well. This means no bread, pasta, oatmeal, and even popcorn, hummus, tofu, mustard. Homes are cleaned from top to bottom and kitchens turned inside out so that any stray crumbs are disposed of. Pots, pans, and dishes must be kashered or replaced with kitchenware specially reserved for the holiday. Household cooks must then prepare meals based on such varied carbohydrate sources as potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, and potatoes. (World Jewry heaved a collective sigh of relief a few years ago when quinoa was designated kosher for Passover. Quinoa is a new world seed rather than a grain, so rabbis have permitted its consumption on Passover.)

Aside from potatoes, many Jews traditionally prepare a variety of starchy side dishes using matzah, such as the famous matzah balls or kneidlach. These are light and fluffy soup dumplings that melt in your mouth when you eat them, in stark contrast to the matzah from which they are made.

As matzah is scarce this year, I bought a huge container of matzah farfel. Matzah farfel is bits of crumbled matzah, which is the cracker bread we Jews eat during the 8 days of the Passover holiday. To be precise, matzah as it is known in the Western world represents the Ashkenazi (European) Jewish tradition of baking flat, hard unseasoned cracker-like breads for Passover. The traditional matzah of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of the Levant or Middle East) on the other hand, is often a soft flatbread much like naan, which is much more fun to eat. It’s hard to make a matzah sandwich that doesn’t turn into a plateful of crispy, shard-like crumbs. If you’ve ever tried spreading cold butter on a slice of matzah, you know what I’m talking about. You may as well eat it with a spoon. I guess that’s where matzah farfel comes from. Matzah factories must have giant buckets full of inadvertently broken matzah which they process and sell as farfel. And there you have it. European Jewry’s answer to pasta for Passover.

In this recipe, I cooked matzah farfel risotto style, more or less. You can also use matzah farfel to make kugel, a traditional savory or sweet pudding served on Jewish holidays.

matzotto

butter and olive oil
1 cup matzah farfel or bits of broken matzah
1-2 handfuls dried mushrooms, soaked in hot water
handful of chopped parsley or other herbs
salt and pepper

• Melt some butter with olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
• Add the matzah farfel and stir to cover in butter and lightly toast until slightly golden. Add more butter or olive oil if the pan gets dry.
• Remove mushrooms from from water and squeeze out any remaining moisture. Reserve the soaking water.
• Coarsely chop mushrooms and add to farfel. Stir to cover in butter.
• Add some of the mushroom water to farfel mixture and stir. As the farfel absorbs the mushroom water, add more and stir.
• Taste as you go to get the consistency you prefer. Then season to taste with salt, pepper, and herbs.

Serves 2

Variations: Use smoked salt and/or smoked paprika. Add bits of smoked duck or goose. Use hot chicken stock to soak the mushrooms. Use whole wheat matzah farfel or spelt matzah farfel. Grate in some parmiggiano or pecorino.

Note: To keep the matzotto kosher, use either dairy or meat ingredients, but not both.

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Joyful Kwanza!

Recently, Mr. Fetched, the man behind Tales from FAR asked people to record their earliest holiday memories for a special holiday podcast. Having never podcasted before, I thought I’d give it a try. It was fun. Check out the holiday podcast by Mr. Fetched featuring my holiday stories over at the FAR Manor blog. While you’re there, do check out the blog for some entertaining anecdotes from the chaotic life of Mr. Fetched.

Every Hannukah, my tone-deaf father who sang “in the key of R” would sing “Who put the latkes in Harry Truman’s gatkes?” No, that’s not the name of a song. It’s just a silly phrase that he’d sing intermittently, while preparing the holiday dinner. I have no idea who put potato pancakes in Harry Truman’s underwear, or why, for that matter.

Last night I finally girded my loins to make our first Hannukah dinner for this year. I’ll be making potato pancakes on Friday for a holiday party, so I wanted to make something a little bit different. Hannukah is all about fried foods, potatoes just happen to taste good when fried. So I opted for celeriac carrot pancakes.

These are a little trickier than potato pancakes, as the celeriac and carrots lack the potato starch that helps bind together traditional latke batter. As long as you squeeze out any excess water and fry them at a fairly high heat, these fritters should come out crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. You could use avocado or safflower oils coconut oil or schmaltz for frying, as these fats tend to have a high smoking point (see note below). I used bacon fat to fry the majority of my latkes. It’s cheaper and imparts a subtle smokey flavor to the fritters. Be sure to turn on your kitchen fan to drive out the greasy bacon odors. (The noise of the fan also helps drown out the sound of your Jewish ancestors turning over in their graves.)

The flavor of these pancakes is both sweet and earthy, with a touch of the metallic sharpness of celeriac. Apple sauce is redundant here, the carrots are sweet enough. A little sour cream, crème fraîche, or yogurt are fine toppings. A mixed holiday genres by topping his with cranberry sauce. I prefer sour cream.

carrot celeriac latkes

300 grams celeriac, washed, peeled, and trimmed
300 grams carrots, washed and trimmed (don’t bother peeling)
1 small onion, peeled and quartered
3 eggs, beaten
a scant pouring of matzah meal, just a tablespoon or two
about 1-2 TBS freshly minced dill
about 1 scant TBS salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
fat for frying (choose a fat with a high smoking point, such as grapeseed oil, coconut oil, or rendered animal fat such as schmaltz or, ahem, bacon fat)

• Cut the vegetables to fit the chute of your food processor, and process using the grater attachment. If you’ve got time and want to work out your biceps, grate the vegetables manually. Alternate between celeriac, onion, and carrot (the onion prevents the celeriac from oxidizing).
• Mix in the beaten eggs. Add a little matzah meal if the batter looks like it needs help keeping together.
• Season with dill, salt, and pepper and mix well.
• Heat your fat in a heavy frying pan on a medium-high flame (I like cast-iron). Optionally, heat fat in two large pans to more efficiently cook all the latkes.
• When the fat is very hot, place a large soup spoonful of batter in the pan and flatten the batter with the back of the spoon. You want a very thin fritter that just keeps together. Repeat until the pan is full. You want some space between each latke, and you don’t want to crowd the pan. Depending on the size of your pan, you’ll probably be able to fry two to four latkes in each pan.
• When the latkes turn brown at the edges, turn them over with a spatula. Fry until the other side is browned.
• Taste the first batch of latkes. Correct the seasoning if necessary.
• Fry the rest of the batter, allowing the latkes drain on some paper towel.
• As you fry, monitor the heat of the frying pan. You may need to adjust the heat slightly, up or down, as you go along. If the latkes are too brown, you may need to turn the heat down a little. If they take too long to cook and aren’t crisp, you may need to turn the heat up. Be sure to melt more fat in the pan between batches. Then allow enough time for the fat to heat up.

Serve with sour cream or crème fraîche with a bit of dill for garnish, and optionally, a slice or two of gravadlax.

Serves 2-4

Note: Check out this page for a list of oils and their smoking points. Avocado and safflower oils have the highest smoking point.

It takes only one holiday full of cooking, eating, overeating, and endless cleanup to smash a twenty two day NaBloPoMo streak. By the time the last dish was in the dishwasher and the kitchen counter was white again, I was thirty minutes past the daily deadline and several minutes away from collapsing into bed. But I’ve continued taking photos of all my meals, although, strangely, I only have a few photos of some of the numerous dishes served at the Thanksgiving meal.

breakfast

Welcome to breakfast on Thursday, November 23rd. This is my attempt at photographing the usual shake from a different angle.

snack

For my mid-morning snack, I ate a slice of sourdough bread dredged in a little bacon grease and spread with a bit of butter. I had just prepared the dressing for the turkey. The herbed bacon grease that coated the otherwise empty cast-iron skillet smelled so delicious, I had to taste it.

lunch

Lunch was a brief, hurried affair, consisting of a slice of buttered sourdough bread and the remaining tofu cilantro salad.

thanksgiving dinner!

The heritage turkey was gorgeous and delicious. I slipped herb-infused butter under its skin and stuffed the cavity with a quartered lemon, half an onion, some unpeeled garlic cloves, a carrot, a celery rib, and some sprigs of fresh thyme. The turkey baked for about an hour or so at 450° F (232° C). I baked it breast-side down, then turned it breast-side up about halfway through baking. The turkey was evenly browned all over, and had wonderfully crisp skin and succulent meat.

Vegetarian cornbread stuffing, made with Anson Mills cornmeal (great stuff!). I combined a few recipes to make this stuffing. It features pomegranate seeds, leeks, and celery. Tasty, but a bit crumbly. It might’ve needed more vegetable stock, or perhaps some MEAT to make it stick together.

These are chocolate birthday cake, flourless chocolate birthday torte, and pecan-crust pumpkin pie, all prepared by my brother d, all delicious. The chocolate cake is based on a very caramelly Callebaut, whereas the flourless torte includes a smokey Valrhona.

Stay tuned for more reports on Thanksgiving dinner…

I’ve been collecting recipes over the past month or so, storing the links in an e-mail draft in my gmail account. This is standard practice for me before every big holiday meal. The process goes something like this:

1. Think about seasonal ingredients that pique my interest for the holiday menu, such as cranberries, pecans, pumpkins, squash, chestnuts, sage, fennel, celery, beets.
2. Scout the blogosphere and epicurious.com for recipes that sound good.
3. Save links in an e-mail according to topic, for example, 15 pie recipes that all sound really good.
4. Prepare certain staples in advance, such as ordering the most expensive turkey I’ve ever purchased and canning my own cranberry sauce.
5. As the holiday hype snowballs in the media, search for and save links to yet more recipes.
6. Consider the number of guests and their particular dietary requirements. Current estimates: thirteen people, including two vegetarians, two young children, two people who hate peppers and cilantro, 1 person who dislikes turkey, 1 hater of all things chocolate.
7. Panic.
8. Take a deep breath and thank the gods I don’t need to prepare a fat-free, sugar-free, salt-free, low-carb holiday meal.
9. Look over the list of recipe links, realize I haven’t a clue which I will actually prepare, which I won’t, and which I will use as a springboard for my own recipes. I have no idea what items I need to buy and how much of them I need to get, let alone an actual shopping list.
10. Panic.

That’s about where I’m at right now. I need to narrow down the menu by the end of this week, and fill out an order with Fatted Calf as well as my CSA/organic food delivery service. This involves printing out the most appealing menus and fleshing out a shopping list based on the ingredients. After that, I’ll have to plan the preparations down to the hour or so. I will begin by following the plan religiously, and then run dangerously late and panic again.

I’m not sure whether the key is planning too many dishes, and not managing to prepare them all, or planning just enough dishes, and making them all on time. On the other hand, I could print out one of those pre-planned menus with recipes developed by chefs and a to-do list with e-mail and cell phone reminders. But aside from the utter annoyance of being spammed by your own to-do list, a pre-planned menu means actually sticking to the recipes, and that’s just no fun. In the end, toying with the menu as I go is well worth the cost of driving myself just a little bit batty.

Here is my current, tentative menu:

heritage turkey preparation

• Stuffing and gravy
• Preparation tips and dressing between skin and breast
• More specific gravy and roasting instructions

vegetarian dressing baked on its own, one or a combination of the following

• Sausage, cranberry, and cornbread stuffing (sausage omitted)
  
• Cornbread, pecan, and apple stuffing
• Pomegranate cornbread stuffing
• Cornbread recipe for the dressing

poultry alternatives for the turkey hater

• Jamie Oliver’s chicken in milk
• Roast chicken
• Stuffed quails from the Fatted Calf

sides and vegetarian staples

• Squash, spinach, and leek salad with maple syrup dressing
• Green beans with grapes and possibly parmigiano
  
• Whole roasted cauliflower with capers and olive oil
• Jansson’s temptation (not vegetarian, but damn tasty)
  
• Potato parsnip casserole with apples
• Roasted yams with citrus coriander butter
• Braised fennel with lemon

bread

• No-knead bread (hat tip to Rebecca’s Pocket for posting the link)

dessert!

• Apple and pumpkin pies
• A la mode?