an open cupboard

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.

This is my post for the Dishes of Comfort blogging event, hosted by Cream Puffs in Venice and Viaggi & Sapori.

One of my favorite foods growing up was kashe varnishkes, an Eastern European Jewish side dish full of carbs and mushrooms. As a child, I enjoyed nothing more than a bowl of steaming, sticky white rice, a slice of crusty bread or challah, or a bowl of pasta, hot or cold, with olive oil and salt. I was, and still am, enthralled by the texture, flavor, and the soulful satisfying nature of carbs.

Kashe varnishkes, however, stands apart. A combination of pasta, buckwheat, and mushrooms, kashe varnishkes is the Eastern European answer to Egyptian kushari and Yemeni majadra. The unique pleasure of Kashe varnishkes lies in its combination of nutty, tender buckwheat kernels, with earthy, juicy mushrooms, along with al dente pasta. Kashe varnishkes is pleasantly toothsome, yet very warming on a cold night.

Kashe varnishkes is one of the few dishes that my mother learned to cook from her Eastern European mother. Back in pre-WWII Europe, my great-grandmother enforced the rule that the kitchen was no place for children. Consequently, my grandmother didn’t learn much in the way of cooking, and my mother was often shooed from her mother’s little kitchen in Israel. Kashe varnishkes was one of the few dishes that survived the broken chain of culinary tradition, along with gorgul morgul—a peculiar yet tasty concoction made of egg yolk, lemon juice, and honey—which was meant to soothe a sore throat.

My mother would prepare kashe varnishkes as a treat for a Friday night Sabbath dinner, perhaps with chicken and salad or broccoli. I loved the steaming kernels of toasted buckwheat as much as I loved the big, chewy pasta bowties that poked through the mound of grain. The mushrooms were little buried treasures that exploded with earthy flavor in my mouth.

On Saturday afternoons when everyone napped, I would tiptoe to the refrigerator and fix myself a bowl of leftover kashe varnishkes. They were cold, and I couldn’t reheat them on the Sabbath, but I didn’t care. I would correct the seasoning with salt and perhaps a little pepper. Satisfied, I would take the bowl and a soup spoon and go to the living room, where I would choose an interesting book from my father’s extensive library. Maybe Jonathan Swift, or Dickens, perhaps Aldous Huxley. I’d climb into the big leather Eames chair and cross my legs Indian style. I’d pick up the book and cradle the bowl in my lap. As I disappeared into the universe of my book, I’d dig in my spoon and take a big, luscious bite.

kashe varnishkes

butter
150-200 gr pasta, preferably bowtie (I used fettuccine, which I broke into large-ish bite-size pieces)
3/4 c buckwheat, toasted
1/3 lb mushrooms (I used shitakes and chanterelles)
salt and pepper to taste

• Cook the pasta as you usually would, rinse it to stop it from cooking.
• In a large skillet, melt a little butter and fry the buckwheat until fragrant.
• Add one cup of water to the buckwheat and bring to a boil. Then lower to a simmer and cover.
• Meanwile, slice the mushrooms and fry them in a skillet with butter.
• Season the mushrooms to taste with salt and pepper.
• After a few minutes of simmering, check to see whether the buckwheat needs more water. If it looks dry and isn’t yet tender, add a little more water. You want to add just enough water to keep the buckwheat from drying out. The goal here is tender, yet slightly firm buckwheat, as opposed to buckwheat mush. Towards the end of cooking, remove the cover so that excess liquid evaporates. If a little buckwheat sticks to the pan, do not scrape it up.
• Season the buckwheat with salt and pepper to taste, bearing in mind that you’ve already seasoned the mushrooms.
• Combine the pasta, mushrooms, and buckwheat and correct seasoning. Serve at room temperature or briefly reheat in a pan.

Serves 3-4

I was recently amused to see a lulav and etrog on display at the Berkeley Bowl. Apparently, you can order them from a guy at the produce section and buy them along with the rest of your groceries.

The lulav and etrog are symbols used in the Jewish celebration of Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. The lulav and etrog consist of a citron, a ripe palm frond, a myrtle branch, and a willow branch. Each element of the Four Species, as they’re called, represents a different type of Jew. Like Voltron, the Four Species are bound together to create a greater whole, representing the entire Jewish nation. Traditionally, the lulav and etrog are blessed and then gently shaken in four directions, representing the presence of the divine in the four corners of the earth.

My fondest memories of Sukkot are of eating in the sukkah. A sukkah is a sort of temporary hut built outdoors, with a roof typically made of palm branches. The idea is to re-create the huts in which the Jews lived as they traveled the desert between Egypt and the promised land. The sukkah must have a roof that is sparse enough for dwellers to see the stars at night. Ideally, you’re supposed to live in the sukkah for seven days, meaning eating, sleeping, hanging out. For children, this is great news. Any child who loves building forts and camping has a field day, or rather seven field days, during Sukkot.

But nothing is quite like a candle-lit holiday dinner in a sukkah. The palm frond roof rustles in the breeze, and the stars peek through as you enjoy your dinner. The air is permeated by the perfume of the branches, the sweet smell of challah dipped in honey, and the fragrant etrog which is carefully wrapped in a long lock of flax and laid to rest in its own little etrog box.

At the end of the holiday, the sukkah is dismantled and saved for the following year, the sukkah decorations are put away, and the palm fronds lie beside the trash bins awaiting garbage day.

But the etrog isn’t thrown out. Unlike lemons, citrons don’t rot. Instead, they shrivel and harden, which only intensifies their lovely fragrance. An old etrog might find itself snuggled in a sweater drawer. In a Sepharadi or Mizrahi home, etrogs might become etrog jam.

If you can find citrons in your area (try next week, after the holiday), you might want to try making etrog jam, especially if you’re a marmalade enthusiast. Citron jam has a particular flavor of its own. It’s Sukkot in a jar.

Shavuot is Judaism’s gift to dairy farmers everywhere. During Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks, traditional holiday meals feature cheese-filled blintzes, creamy casseroles, and the ubiquitous, beloved cheesecake. The origins of this dairy-centered feasting are a little obscure. Shavuot marks the day on which the Jewish nation was given the Torah (Old Testament), according to tradition. One version of the story says that the Jews ate only dairy because they didn’t yet know how to keep kosher.

Another version compares the Jewish Torah to the sweetness of milk and honey. Shavuot also coincides with the grain harvest in Israel, and a time when the ancient Israelites would bring offerings of the seven species—wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates—to the temple in Jerusalem.

Like most Jewish holidays, Shavuot is a holiday with deep culinary roots. Jews the world over have evolved varied regional Shavuot menus over centuries. The holiday menu of American Jews tends to be something of a mishmash—French style quiche, Italian style lasagna, New York cheesecake (which in itself is probably a derivative of Italian ricotta pie with a Philly cream cheese twist). I drew on the tradition of borrowed foods for my own Shavuot dinner:

Salad with raspberry vinaigrette
Swiss chard and beet green lasagna
Beet, rhubarb, and goat cheese quiche
Ricotta cheesecake with strawberry-balsamic black pepper sauce

The cheesecake was a fun little dessert, though not as dense, creamy, or calorific as the usual New York style. Its charm lies in its simplicity–a lot of ricotta cheese with a little sugar, flour, and eggs. It’s light and mildly sweet, and the freshness of the ricotta really makes the dish. The strawberry sauce is a good complement, a little freshly ground black pepper adds a pleasantly spicey edge to the berry sweetness.

My favorite savory dish was the beet, rhubarb, and goat cheese quiche—an unusual, but very tasty combination. Rather than use the traditional sugar-rhubarb-strawberry trio, I thought I’d combine red beets with rhubarb, onions, and goat cheese. The tartness of the rhubarb brings out the sweetness of the beets, which are grounded by carmelized onions, that in turn, play off the earthy beets. The soft goat cheese adds a little extra tang. The whole thing is baked in a shortcrust with a savory custard to hold it together. I only used one stalk of rhubarb, but it might be interesting to experiment with more.

Here’s my shavuot dish for 2006 (Jewish year 5766). It’s fashionably late.

Beet rhubarb tart with goat cheese

1 shortcrust, pre-baked in a 10 inch quiche pan (Clotilde’s recipe, by way of Pascale)
3 medium onions, very thinly sliced and slowly carmelized in butter
2 bunches (about 8) small, fresh red beets, steamed, peeled, and roughly diced
1 stalk rhubarb, roughly diced and sauteed until a little liquid is released but rhubarb is still crunchy
2 eggs
1/2 c creme fraiche
salt and pepper to taste
soft goat cheese

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Distribute the cooled onions on the crust. Top with cooled beets.
• Arrange the cooled rhubarb evenly among the beets.
• Beat together the eggs and creme fraiche and season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables.
• Rip small pieces of the goat cheese and distribute evenly.
• Bake for 30 minutes, or until quiche sets.

Serves 8

Thanks to Clotilde for the quiche methodology.