Double recipe – Flavors of Diaspora

Ice Pops Are a Delight of Modernist Cooking

Shana tova! Here is one last post for 5784.

I have lately been very into ice pops – and for reference, my most recent birthday was my 33^rd, not my 5^th. You may know these as popsicles – which comes from the brand name Popsicle. I am especially fond of the mango Greek yogurt popsicles sold at Whole Foods. And while I have mostly been invested in making and eating ice pops, I do think that they are a really good example of why modern food is good, actually.

Green popsicle held by someone — Matcha yogurt popsicle (photo mine, October 2024)

Ice pops are a perfect example of modernist cooking – functionally, they were not even feasible until the late 19^th century. Why? Well, refrigeration and freezing as we know it only became widely available around then – and icehouses before that were pretty much the domain of the wealthy. (Some ancient practices like the Iranian yakhchal were available more widely in their regions.) Freezers were more common in commercial settings – like stores – well into the 20^th century; the majority of American homes did not have a refrigerator or freezer until the late 1930’s. Most people in much of the Global South still do not.

The history of ice pops closely tracks this history: frozen mass-market treats beyond ice cream became common in the late 19^th century, and popsicles were invented early in the 20^th century. In developing countries, popsicles often become popular first as commercial refrigeration becomes more common, then as more consumers have freezers at home.

Popsicles also reflect the availability of clean water and dairy. Often, the ingredients are not heated – and as a result, harmful bacteria get frozen in situ, still ready to wreak havoc on a digestive system. One reason we can have ice pops at all – and why they are still dangerous in many places – is because of access to water sanitation and pasteurization, beyond refrigeration.

Multicolored popsicles — Paletas (photo Arnold Gatilao/Wikimedia CC)

Every country seems to have a favorite ice pop. In Israel, watermelon popsicles are popular. Mexico has a whole family of paletas with flavors ranging from prickly pear to horchata. In Panama, my partner and I were able to try duros, stickless popsicles with the flavors of various tropical fruits like soursop and guava. (The passionfruit duros are spectacular.) Popsicles are big money in many countries too: Japanese consumers buy billions of yen worth of garigari-kun– soda-flavored ice pops – every year.

Popsicles are fun to make. They are also quick – I am always amazed at the speed at which a few ingredients transform into popsicles going in to freeze. A lot of ice pop recipes are out there, and many of them are quite good! I have sketched out, below, a method for making popsicles that I like, sweetened with honey and with the tang and weight of Greek yogurt. I hope you enjoy.

Make Your Own Ice Pops!

Here is a rough sketch of a popsicle recipe, with two varieties:

Set up

I have six ice pop molds, each of which has a 1/3 cup capacity. So, each of these recipes makes about two cups of filling. If you have bigger molds or more capacity, feel free to do math to increase the filling.

Always leave a little room in the mold for the popsicle to grow as it freezes.

I list Greek yogurt for both recipes, but feel free to use a dairy-free substitute for a pareve ice pop.

Matcha Yogurt Popsicles (based on this recipe)

1 ¾ cups Greek yogurt, 2 tsp culinary grade matcha, 3 tbsp honey, 1 tsp vanilla, pinch of salt. Whisk the ingredients together, pour into your molds, add the sticks, and freeze.

Cucumber Orange Popsicles

Puree one large cucumber and the flesh of one orange, then strain to get the juice. (Discard or compost the solids). This will give you about one cup juice. Whisk the juice together with ¾ cup Greek yogurt, 4 tablespoons of honey, and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Pour into your molds, add the sticks, and freeze.

Chocolate Babka

A braided ovoid chocolate-laced bread on a cutting board — A free-form chocolate babka. Yes, I am aware of what it looks like. (Photo mine, September 2021)

Note: recipe updated July 2024.

This is my chocolate babka recipe – which I have posted elsewhere, but not as a blog post. I nailed down this recipe during the initial stages of the pandemic, based on my cinnamon babka recipe and Tori Avey’s chocolate filling. It has been one of my dessert standards since then. (To the point that last year, I brought one on a plane to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with my partner’s family. I am nothing if not absolutely ridiculous.)

I talked about the history of babka in a 2019 post. What I have come to appreciate about chocolate babka since then is how it reflects a very Jewish experience: of new foods evolving with encounters with new products in new places. Chocolate babka came about in 20^th-century New York, enabled by cheaper chocolate and an enormous amount of creativity in New York’s Jewish bakeries at the time. Now, it is one of those treats that generally pleases a very wide audience. I’ve also come to appreciate the delicious babkas created by other communities – I’m a big fan of the log-like Ukrainian ones.

Slice of chocolate-swirled bread on a white plate — Cross-section of a (free-form) babka. (Photo mine, May 2020)

I make my babka a little less sweet than many are, and I like to add chopped walnuts to add weight, depth, and nuttiness. You can omit the walnuts if you have an allergy. I also make the babka with butter – though dairy is only partly traditional, it is delicious. The butter also adds to the delicious density of a babka – something that certain people on certain British baking shows do not appreciate, I am told.

You can braid in a loaf, which is what I direct here, but I’ve come to enjoy free-form babkas braided like a challah. I added directions in a note at the bottom. You can also add an egg wash if you are feeling fancy, but I am invariably too lazy.

Chocolate swirled loaf in a loaf pan — A baked babka. (Photo mine, May 2020)

Chocolate Babka (with Optional Walnuts)

Makes two medium loaves

1 cup/250mL whole milk

1 package active dry yeast

2/3 cup granulated sugar, divided in half

5 tablespoons salted butter, melted

2 eggs

3 ¾ cups sifted white flour (about 450g)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 oz/120g dark chocolate chips

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup walnuts, finely ground (optional)

Warm the milk to about 100F/39C – I do it in 15 second spurts in the microwave. The milk should be warm enough to touch with your finger but not feel like it’s burning you.
Add the yeast to the milk, stir in, and let sit for five minutes.
Mix the yeast mixture in a large bowl or stand mixer bowl with the eggs, salted butter, and 1/3 cup of the sugar.
Add the flour, ½ cup at a time, and mix in thoroughly, either with your hands and a spoon or the dough hook on the electric mixer. Once it is in, knead for six to eight minutes on a floured surface, or use the dough hook on the electric mixer for about five minutes. The dough, when ready, should be roughly the texture of your earlobe and should be smooth and bounce back.
Oil a large bowl, put the dough in it, and cover. Let rise for about 1 ½ hours, or until a bit more than double in size.
Meanwhile, you can make the filling. Melt the unsalted butter and the chocolate chips together until smooth. (I use the microwave). Mix in the other 1/3 cup sugar, cocoa powder, and walnuts if using until combined. Set aside.
Grease two loaf pans. Grease – not flour – a large surface and a rolling pin.
Punch the dough down, then split into two parts. Take one part, roll it out to about half an inch/1 centimeter thickness. Spread half of the chocolate filling evenly on it, leaving a 1 inch/2.5 cm perimeter around the edges of the dough.
Pick up one edge and roll tightly into a tube. If you want, you can slice the tube in half before the next step.
Bring the two ends together, and twist into a figure eight-ish shape. Place in the pan.
Repeat with the other half and other pan.
Preheat your oven to 350F/175C.
If you want a lighter or fluffier babka, you can proof it again a second time for 30 minutes. Let it sit undisturbed on/in the pan at room temperature.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until brown on top and hollowish-sounding when you tap it. Let cool for five minutes in the pan, then until your desired temperature on a rack. Store in a sealed plastic bag for up to a week or so.

For a free-form babka: Bake instead on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Shape the coils however you want – I recommend in this case slicing the tube in half and twisting the two halves together for a visual effect.

Many thanks to the friends, neighbors, and roommates who have helped me develop this recipe over the years: AJ Faust, Zachary Maher, Ying-Ying Chow, Rebecca Fedderwitz, Bo-Young Lee, Joseph Jeffers, Hannah Cook, Douglas Graebner, Melanie Marino, Margaret Curran, Maryam Sabbaghi, Sara Weissman, Gilah Barker, Zach and Hannah Kinger, and of course, my partner David Ouziel.

Five Great Recipes for Office Return Weeknights

Here in the US, things are beginning to change around COVID. Obviously, these changes are a good thing – and we hope the same for elsewhere. However, there are some things that we will need to readjust to, and for some, that includes all the habits around returning to the office. Given commutes, we might need to cook more quickly on weeknights now.

In preparation for this, I have been trying some new recipes that do not take too long and make for hearty, tasty dinners. Some do require a bit more work than others in chopping vegetables, but none takes too long, and can easily feed a family or just yourself. Four of the five are by other authors, and I strongly suggest you make other recipes from those sites, blogs, and books!

Orecchiette alle Cime di Rapa – Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe

round pasta and dark greens with a bit of brothiness in a brown bowl — Orecchiette alle cime di rapa (photo mine, May 2021)

This recipe is one of my favorites, and comes from the south of Italy. The convenient part is that the vegetables and pasta are cooked in the same pot – something that, before learning how to make this myself, I thought was quite untraditional. This recipe also comes together quite quickly, and you can substitute kale or mustard greens for the rabe. Some people cook this with anchovies, but I leave the anchovies out and swap in a few more cloves of garlic and a bit of salt.

Orecchiette alle Cime di Rapa from Oldways Table/Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Hiyayakko – Dressed Cold Tofu

Tofu with sauce and bonito and scallion on blue plate — Hiyayakko (from Just One Cookbook)

This is a classic Japanese summer recipe. Silken or other soft tofu is simply dressed with a few sauces and things for seasoning – scallions, ginger, and soy sauce are most common. It is very refreshing and filling and has a lovely, pudding-like filling. I use this recipe from a Japanese author, which also adds katsuobushi – very delicious dried bonito flakes. The optional black sesame seeds add a nice touch.

Hiyayakko from Just One Cookbook

Huevos con Ejotes – Eggs with Green Beans

eggs and green beans on mexican pattern brown plate with salsa and tortillas on side — Huevos con Ejotes (Maricruz Avalos)

This recipe from Mexico is tasty and very balanced – the green beans add a vegetal texture and taste to the richness of the eggs. There are also many regional varieties. I’ve made a few different recipes, and these two really stand out to me. One is from Maricruz Avalos’ excellent blog, and the other is from Oaxaca by Bricia Lopez, which is a truly excellent cookbook. I usually eat this with corn tortillas and some salsa macha or some cheese and cilantro. I use vegetarian chorizo in Bricia Lopez’ recipe.

Huevos con Ejotes from Maricruz Avalos

Oaxaca by Bricia Lopez

Shakshouka

This is one of my favorites – and, contrary to what people tell you, is probably from North Africa. That said, it has become – in various forms – a classic around the Mediterranean, including in Israel and Palestine. It is also quick to make and quite flexible – you can take all sorts of delicious vegetables and use them. This recipe was one of my first for the blog, and I am still quite proud of it. My only new addition is to suggest making it in a cast-iron skillet, which makes for a lovely serving presentation and adds a bit of weight to the flavor.

Shakshouka recipe from this blog

Cigrons amb Espinacs – Chickpeas and Spinach

Spinach chickpeas and onions in a white bowl — Cigrons amb espinacs (Gimme Some Oven)

This is a traditional Catalan recipe with a long Jewish history – Claudia Roden mentions a similar recipe in her Book of Jewish Food, and such recipes spread throughout the Mediterranean after the expulsion from Spain. This recipe is also delicious and very easy to make with canned chickpeas. I eat it with nice bread, which you can get from a store – after all, you are busy.

Catalan Chickpeas and Spinach from Gimme Some Oven

Fun With Pickles

Pickled kohlrabi and turnip in an orange brine — Pickled kohlrabi and turnip. (Photo mine, July 2017)

It finally happened: I made pickles. It is such a Jewish category of food – and so tasty – and I had simply skipped it. No longer.

Jews have been preserving food since Jews have … been Jews. The pickles that we enjoy today are all ultimately related to methods of food preservation from ancient times. In the Ancient Near East, people Jewish and non-Jewish alike dried, salted, and fermented foods for long-term use. (Some ancient ferments like feseekh in Egypt are still with us today.) Cabbage has been fermented in Eastern Europe since ancient times, and foods have been preserved in vinegar or whey from Iceland to India to Ethiopia since at least the medieval era. As salt became cheaper because of colonialism and expanded trade networks, pickling in Europe and North Africa became far more affordable and thus common. New pickles often joined existing pickles and preserved foods – pickles eggplants alongside preserved lemons in Morocco, pickled radishes alongside sauerkraut in Eastern Europe, pickled herring alongside … other pickled herring in Germany. The invention of the boiling water bath certainly helped. By the early 19^th century, a scepter was haunting Europe – the scepter of many preserved vegetables.

Even today, each Jewish community’s pickles have a strong toehold on Jewish tables around the world. In Ashkenazi communities, cucumber pickles are found seemingly everywhere – at Shabbat tables, in sandwiches, as snacks. In the United States, the “kosher dill” pickle has transcended ethnic boundaries to become something of a regional food in the Northeast. (I remember a Catholic friend from New Jersey who brought back a jar to the United Kingdom from a visit home.) In other countries, but especially France and Israel, meanwhile, many preserved Mizrahi foods are popular: pickled eggplants from Iraq, preserved lemons from Morocco, and preserved onions from everywhere among them. Today, in any food shop catering to Israeli expatriates, you can find cans of Kvutzat Yavne pickles for sale. At all stages of assimilation and cultural and culinary change, pickles have accompanied Jews for the ride – even if the pickles themselves have changed.

In an age of mass pickling and a stronger food supply (both of which are good things), fewer people are pickling. I do not hold by arguments that something is lost here: let’s not romanticize a past in which death by food poisoning was common and nutrition more lacking than today. This is a view that Rachel Laudan correctly described as ahistorical in her wonderful book Cuisine and Empire. What is true, though, is that pickling is a lot of fun. The work is satisfying, and a new generation of millennial picklers are bringing new flavors to the table. Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern, for example, included not only classical Ashkenazi cucumber pickles and sauerkraut in their book The Gefilte Manifesto, but also kimchi-like sauerkraut and shallots in red wine. Not authentic at all, totally Jewish, and stunningly delicious. Other cultures, too, are playing with their pickles – I recently found a recipe for Iranian torshi that used Fuji apples!

Onion and chopped pieces, while the kohlrabi and turnips stand behind

In this recipe I used some pickling spices from South Africa. The blend includes turmeric and paprika, which lend the pickles I made a spicy undertone and a bright color. You, of course, can have your pickles as plain as possible. Remember to use the freshest vegetables for the best flavor. This recipe is very easy since the fermentation and preservation all take place in the refrigerator. This recipe is suitable for canning – remember to follow safe canning guidelines.

Happy Pickling!

Easy Refrigerator Pickles

Makes one quart

2 cups chopped and peeled vegetables (I used kohlrabi and turnips for one pickle, onions for another, cucumbers for another, and lettuce – yes, lettuce – for the last. The recipe is easily scalable.)

1 cup water

1 cup vinegar (any should do)

1 tablespoon coarse salt (do not use table salt)

1 tablespoon pickling spices of choice (optional)

Wash thoroughly and dry a liter- or quart-sized container with a lid. This can be a jar, Tupperware, former peanut butter vessel… you name it.
Stuff the chopped vegetables into the container, leaving room between them and at the top for the brine.
In a saucepan, blend the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. This makes the brine.
When the brine is boiling, stir again, then turn off the heat.
Ladle the brine into the container with the vegetables until full, leaving a bit of space at the top. Close the container completely.
Place the container in the back of the refrigerator for three days at least before eating. The pickles keep for up to six weeks.

Remember to can safely if you can!

Thank you to Evan Bialostozky and Jessie Thompson for selling me the vegetables used in this recipe.

Three Easy 20th-Century Jewish Summer Salads

I get very lazy during the summer. Some of it is the heat, some of it is my rare-but-real Summer Seasonal Depression, and some of it is that things during the summer always feel a bit more hectic. So, as much as I love cooking, I do not necessarily have the energy for a long and involved preparation process. Hence, salads become central in my meals. Not a few leaves with a sad dressing, but weighty and substantial salads that are, in fact, very Jewish.

In the past seventy years or so, Jewish communities have been having a bit of a…salad frenzy. Some of this has to do with the central place salad takes in Zionist cooking, as a way of “becoming of the land.” Salad is also part of Jewish assimilation into surrounding countries. And though some Jewish communities have had “salads” for centuries, salad is far more popular and central now. The ingredients have, of course, changed with the times. The three salads here use three ingredient combinations popular in Israel and the United States at different points since World War II.

1950s: Potato Salad with Yogurt

In the 1950s, Israeli cuisine was in a strange moment. In a completely Eurocentric state, certain Middle Eastern and North African foods were still considered unhealthy or unsanitary, and new immigrants were encouraged to “switch” to European, Ashkenazi food. Yet at the same time, that food was being amended with ingredients and recipes taken from local Palestinian cuisine. Hence you ended up with beet salads with cilantro, hummus with European bread, and recipes in which original ingredients were swapped with Middle Eastern ones. This potato salad with yogurt and za’atar would not be out of place in this environment.

(For more history, I highly recommend Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nation.)

Potato salad with yogurt and za'atar

Potato Salad with Yogurt

Serves 4-8

2 lbs/1 kg new potatoes, chopped in halves

Juice of 2 lemons

1 cup thick plain yogurt or Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon za’atar

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Water

In a pot, boil the potatoes in the water until soft to the fork, but not mushy. Drain the potatoes, then let cool.
In a cup, mix together the lemon juice, yogurt, salt, za’atar, and pepper until thoroughly combined.
Put the potatoes in a large bowl, and pour the dressing over the potatoes. Mix to coat. Serve cold or at room temperature. The salad keeps for 4-5 days refrigerated.

1970s: Corn and Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Garlic

The midcentury was the time of canned corn – especially in the 1950s and 1970s. In the United States, it ended up in strange combinations; in Israel, it was campfire food (and my mother’s one true teenage love); in the Soviet Union there was an entire, extremely bizarre campaign featuring talking cans of corn. And so corn often found its way into salads, including a corn-chickpea salad one man at synagogue told me about. Without the recipe, I updated it with carrots and garlic for more contemporary tastes – and it is definitely delicious.

Corn and chickpea salad with carrots and garlic

Corn and Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Garlic

Serves 4-8

2 cups cooked corn kernels (you can use canned)

2 cups cooked chickpeas (you can use canned)

1 cup chopped carrots

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or white vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon molasses or honey

½ cup water+1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Mix together the corn and chickpeas in a large bowl. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, place the carrots, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, oil, vinegar, molasses, and ½ cup water. Bring to a boil, then let simmer on low heat for 5 minutes, or until the carrots are soft and the “sauce” has reduced.
Mix the remaining water and cornstarch, and add to the carrots and mix in. You should notice the sauce thickening.
Remove the carrot mixture from the heat, and pour over the corn and chickpeas. Mix thoroughly, and then let the dish cool to room temperature before serving. This salad keeps for up to a week in the refrigerator.

1990s: Cucumber Avocado Strawberry Salad

Avocados were not just hip now, but in the 1990s too. At that time, avocados were first beginning to make themselves common in the upper-middle-class neighborhoods of the United States and Canada – and they were already common in the Southwest, Israel, Australia, and South Africa. And just like the avocado toast craze today, in the 1990s, avocado seemed to pop up everywhere – and especially in salads. Avocados, of course, were largely seasonal then due to pre-NAFTA import restrictions, and limited to the summer – just like strawberries. When NAFTA allowed for avocados to be imported year-round from Mexico, consumption exploded. Israel, meanwhile, had been growing avocados since 1924. This salad combines avocado with another 1990s trend – fruit in salad.

Cucumber avocado strawberry salad

Cucumber Avocado Strawberry Salad

Serves 4-8 as a side dish or 1-2 as a main dish

1 large cucumber, diced

1 large avocado, peeled, pitted, and diced

2/3 cup chopped fresh strawberries

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon soy sauce

Mix together the cucumber, avocado, and strawberries.
Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, and soy sauce separately.
Add the dressing to the cucumber mixture. Serve cold or at room temperature. This keeps refrigerated for a few days but is best served within 24 hours of preparation.

A bonus salad: last year, I published a recipe for a Chickpea Arugula Salad with the Jewish Daily Forward. It is very 2010s. Take a look!

Thank you to Dov Fields and Dana Kline for participating in User Acceptance Testing.

Shavuot II: Cheesecake!

Me with cheesecake — I’m really excited about this cheesecake. (Photo Gabi Kirk, June 2016)

Mention Shavuot to a Jew in the United States or Canada, and their first response is often “cheesecake.” The holiday associated with dairy foods has now become, for many, only associated with a creamy concoction of cheese, eggs, and sugar, soft and yet mysteriously solid. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for many American Jews the cheesecake on Shavuot matters more than the important event the holiday actually celebrates: revelation. This connection may seem modern, but – as I noted in my last post, when I made cheese and talked about dairy on Shavuot – dairy and this holiday have a long history together, and cheesecake and Jewry also have a long and delicious relationship.

Cheesecake has a long Jewish history spanning the Ashkenazi and Sephardi worlds – in fact, the longest of any recipe yet profiled on the blog. In Ancient Greece, combinations of flour, fresh cheese, and honey were baked and dried; this recipe was likely known in the Holy Land. (The Priestly Source may himself have eaten this.) Similar desserts were eaten across the Roman Empire, probably including by those Hellenized Jews who sought to assimilate into access to imperial power. Later on, Jews settled in many cheese-eating parts of the world: and so you ended up with Italian Jews making ricotta-based cheesecakes (more on that later), and Ashkenazi Jews – as Claudia Roden notes in her book – absorbing and reimagining the cheesecakes of their non-Jewish neighbors. English Jews before the expulsion of 1290 probably made a cake like the sambocade found in medieval cookbooks; medieval Spanish Jewry probably ate cheesecakes not unlike the quesada pasiega (video in Spanish) still common in Spain today. By the 19^th century, cheesecakes were popular Shavuot and festival dishes in many places of the Jewish world.

Three cheesecakes — Cheesecakes, ready to go. (Photo Gabi Kirk, June 2016)

Cheesecake is now considered in many places a “Jewish” food. In Rome, the traditional ricotta-based cassola and crostata di ricotta (video in Italian) are both recipes that originate in the Jewish quarter of that city. The recipe is based on the Shavuot and Sabbath delicacies of the Sicilian Jews that arrived in Rome after being expelled from their home island in the fifteenth century. Today, the Jewish cheesecake has become a Roman Christmas tradition, one that has even attracted the attention of the New York Times. Across the ocean, in New York City, Toronto, and Montréal, the cream cheese-based cheesecake of North American Jewry is considered a “Jewish” food of the first order – and in the rest of the United States, “real” cheesecake is often “New York, and Jewish.” Indeed, as Joan Nathan notes in Jewish Food in America, cheesecake was first popularized in the United States by Jewish delis in New York. (In college, the first question one non-Jewish friend asked of me, when he learned I was Jewish, was for a cheesecake recipe.)

For this recipe, I made a simple ricotta cheesecake with an almond base, using the homemade cheese I made for the last post. Of course, you can also use store-bought ricotta and/or quark cheese. One of the great things about ricotta cheesecakes or quark cheesecakes is that you don’t need to have a water bath for them, as you do for the far more delicate cream cheese-based cakes common here in the United States. This means that the recipe is both far quicker to make, and far easier – especially for beginning cooks. The recipe here resembles in some ways the ricotta cheesecakes from Italy I mentioned earlier, and in some ways the quark-based Käsekuchen or sernik common in Germany and Poland. Perhaps it also resembles the cheesecakes of pre-war, pre-Holocaust Lithuania – Fania Lewando’s recipe also uses farmer’s cheese (tsvorekh). The innovation I made is using an almond base. Not only does this provide a wonderful nutty counterpart to the light, sweet cheese – with which the almonds meld wonderfully – but also makes the cake gluten-free. Feel free to make a dough or biscuit crust, like that in the Baked Apple Pudding, but the almonds really do work.

Putting down the base…

…adding the batter…

…baking and maybe I added a preserved fig because yum. (Photos mine, June 2016)

Ricotta and Quark Cheesecake with an Almond Base

Almond base:

1/3 cup whole, raw almonds, soaked in water

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Cheesecake:

1 1/2-2 cups fresh ricotta

1-1 1/2 cups fresh quark cheese (you can also use ricotta only, it should add up to three cups of cheese)

5 eggs

1 cup white sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Butter for greasing the pan.

In a food processor, blend the almonds, butter, sugar, and cinnamon until you have a thick paste. You do not need to peel them.
Preheat your oven to 400F. Grease the bottom of a 9″ round pan. You can use a springform pan for easier cutting or a normal deep round cake or casserole pan for easy transport.
Press the almond base into the bottom of your pan. Your almond base should be pretty soft and a bit of a paste, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. The almond mix should be evenly distributed.

(Author note: for a thicker base, use 1/2 cup of almonds and a tad more butter and sugar.)
If you are using a dough base, cover the bottom of the pan with a layer of dough of about ½ an inch thickness.

Mix together all of the cheesecake ingredients until you have a batter of medium thickness.
Pour the cheesecake batter into the pan over the almond base. Make sure the batter is level on top.
Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the cheesecake is set (meaning it no longer jiggles when moved) and the top is browned. Let cool before serving.

The author would like to thank Sara and Lisa Wolovick for assisting in the User Acceptance Testing for this recipe, and Gabi Kirk for User Acceptance Testing, photography, and helping me make this year’s Shavuot cheesecakes.

Shavuot I: Make Your Own Cheese

Boiling milk and cream….

…then the curds form…

…then we’re straining the cheese…

…and quark cheese happens! It’s ugly, I know. But yum.

And we boil the whey to make ricotta…(Yes this is kind of gross)

…ricotta, just strained! (Photos mine, June 2016)

Shavuot is fast upon us! For those of you who don’t know, Shavuot celebrates the revelation of the Torah unto Israel, and the time of the Biblical wheat harvest. Though oft-forgotten in secular American Jewish culture, Shavuot is one of the holiest holidays in the Jewish calendar, and was one of the three Pilgrimage festivals – along with Pesach and Sukkot. Many traditions exist for Shavuot, including pulling an all-nighter of Jewish study, the tikkun leil, decorating the house and synagogue with flowers, and eating copious amounts of dairy food. It is absolutely my favorite Jewish holiday, not least because my favorite prayer and favorite Biblical text are both read in the holiday’s ritual.

But this blog is about food, not archaic Aramaic prayers or the Biblical injunction against slut-shaming, so let’s return to our topic at hand: dairy. Now, multiple explanations exist for why we eat milk products on Shavuot. Some say it is because the Torah is like G-d’s way of giving to Jews what a mother’s milk gives to her child. The Song of Songs does call the Torah “honey and milk” that “are under Your (G-d’s) tongue” (4:11). Others argue that it comes from the fact that Mount Sinai is Har haGavnunim in Hebrew, the name of which is similar to gvina – cheese. I prefer a more practical explanation: before modern times, Shavuot was soon after the time of year most cows gave birth to calves, and milk would have been in most plentiful supply at this time in most Jewish societies across the world.

Most Jewish communities, other than those of Yemen and Ethiopia, have various dairy-eating traditions on Shavuot. These tend to revolve around the various forms of cheese and milk products each Jewish cuisine uses. Cheesecake, a very Jewish dish whose history will be discussed in the next post, is common across many Ashkenazi, Italian, and Sephardi communities, and is taken as synonymous with Shavuot in the American Jewish community. Other delights include blintzes in the Ashkenazi sphere, rice pudding (sütlaç) among Sephardim, and qatayef – very sweet fried and syrup-soaked pancakes – among Syrians. All of these are delicious, and many often involve local forms of soft cheese.

Soft cheese is a very traditionally Jewish thing. Quark cheeses, called tvarog in Russian, tsvorekh in Yiddish, and gvina levana in Hebrew, is a curd cheese that is often confused with ricotta. It is soft, sweet-tart and slightly tangy, and quite tasty. The cheese comes at various levels of hardness and sweetness – I tend to prefer a softer, tangier quark. Tsvorekh is traditionally used in kugels, blintzes, and on bread. In fact, quark on black bread was one of the most common meals of poor Jews in Lithuania and Poland for centuries. [The same cheese was used for Shavuot.]

Ricotta, that famous soft Italian cheese, is a frequent ingredient in Italian Jewish dishes. Ricotta – which means “twice cooked” in Italian – is actually made from the whey left over from making other cheeses. When you make cheese, it separates into curds – the white stuff that we eat – and whey, the acidic component. (Think of the nursery rhyme.) Whey is cooked again to separate out the curds, and then the curds are strained out and sometimes played around with. Italian Jews traditionally used ricotta both for Hanukkah cheese pancakes, cheesecakes for Shavuot, and with bread year-round.

Both cheeses are ridiculously easy to make and taste quite good. In fact, you can make them both at the same time, as I shall show you below. It’s not an everyday thing, but certainly a fun thing to do when you get the chance. This is how you do it:

How to Make Two Cheeses at Once

Makes one pound quark cheese (tvarog/tsvorekh/gvina levana), one pound ricotta, and about four cups whey

Refer to pictures at the beginning of the post for parts of the process.

You will need:

Ingredients

1/2 gallon/2 liters milk

1 pint/500 ml heavy cream

1/2 tsp salt

Juice of 2 large lemons

1/2 tsp white vinegar

Equipment

A big soup pot

Two colanders – one should be quite big

A giant bowl

Cheesecloth

Big wooden spoons

Line one of your colanders – the big one – with cheesecloth, and then place over the bowl so that there is a good two-three inches between the bowl floor and the bottom of your colander.
Pour all the milk and all the cream into the pot. Add the salt and stir in.
Bring the milk mixture to a low boil. When the milk begins to froth, start stirring rapidly to prevent it boiling over.
When the milk is boiling, add the juice of the two large lemons, and stir rapidly in. Simmer for one minute.
You should notice the milk start to curdle. This is the curds separating from the whey. The curds are the cheesy bit. The whey is the leftovers* from which we will make more cheese.
Turn off the heat and let the mixture sit for five minutes. It will look weird – white clumps and white fluid. This is how we make cheese, do not worry one bit!
Pour the entire mixture into your big, lined colander. Then let sit and have the whey drip out for anything between fifteen minutes and two hours – the longer it sits, the harder your cheese. I go for 30-40 minutes since I like my cheese super soft.
When your time is up, scoop up the cheese in the colander and put into a container, and refrigerate. Don’t throw the whey (liquid below) away! Congratulations! You have made quark cheese! It keeps in the fridge for up to a week.
Now it’s time to make the ricotta. Pour your whey – you should have about six cups – back into the pot, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.
When the whey is boiling, turn off the heat and quickly stir in the 1/2 tsp of vinegar.* Then leave alone for ten minutes.
You should have a lot of green mixture (whey) and then more white curds clumped around!
Pour the mixture through a colander, preferably a fine-meshed one – with a bowl underneath if you want to save your whey. The curds should collect in the colander right away. Scoop them out into a container and refrigerate. Congratulations! You have made ricotta! It keeps in the fridge for up to a week.
You can save your whey – it is really great for making hearty breads and baked goods when you use it instead of water.

*Traditionally many cooks allow their whey to sit for a few hours to allow it to acidify, which negates the need for additional vinegar. However, this can be a rather smelly process that is not conducive to relaxing cheese-making.

Bonus Recipes: Iraqi Charoset and “Gifts of Gold”

Two bonus recipes for you all today, before Parts 5 and 6 of “Pesach of Colors” are unleashed on the internet.

Huppit Bartov Miller at the wonderful Sephardic Israeli blog Afooda tweeted me her lovely Iraqi charoset recipe after finding my recipes on Twitter. It’s a delicious combination of peanuts, walnuts, silan, and grape juice, and yours truly was very impressed with the test batch he made this week. Make the charoset – linked below – and also check out the rest of the blog!

Afooda’s Iraqi Charoset Recipe

iraqi-charoset-in-a-bowl-up-close — Iraqi charoset (photo Huppit Bartov Miller)

If Passover cleaning also makes you want to drink – to forget your misery or make it more fun – my friend the “Kiddush Club President” at Tippling Through The Torah mad the delicious “Gifts of Gold” cocktail for Parashat Vayakhel a few weeks back. It’s fruity, sweet, and tastes like divinity. Check it out:

The delicious “Gifts of Gold” at Tippling Through The Torah

Hamantaschen with Poppy Seed Filling

We never celebrated Purim much when I was a child. On years when there is only one month of Adar – the month that Purim is in, which is repeated in leap years – it was the yahrzeit, or death anniversary, of my maternal grandmother. That said, even without the somber occasion, Purim was a bit too…gaudy for my understated parents. The holiday celebrates the redemption of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire from the machinations of the evil Haman, as narrated in the biblical Book of Esther – named after the heroine of the tale. Historically, this has been a day of much celebration and much drinking. Yet this has somehow morphed in the modern era to a day of mandatory fun masked as chaos, complete with costumes and a lot of yellow. My father hated chaos, my mother hated yellow. Purim was not really a thing in our house.

One memory does stand out from Purim though: poppy seed hamantaschen. Fluffy, triangular cookies, sweet – but filled with the nuttiest, most beguiling poppy seed filling on the inside. I was hooked. Even as my peers went for chocolate chip, apricot, or sprinkle-flavored hamantaschen, I stayed loyal to the poppy seeds. Which, in some ways, is in keeping with history.

hamantash — Two poppy seed hamantaschen and a quince one. Photo mine (March 2016).

Hamantaschen come from the intersection of Jewish folklore and European pastry. On the one hand, filled cookies – and especially those with poppy seeds – were common in the medieval Europe where Ashkenazi cuisine developed. On the other hand, there is the command to simultaneously obliterate the name of the evil Haman (and, metaphorically, Amaleq) while remembering what he did! At some point, the cookies, which may have been called Mohntaschen in German (poppy-pockets) became Haman-tashen, Yiddish for Haman’s pockets. And thus the humble hamantasch was born.

I have attached two recipes here: one for my poppy seed filling (the mohn), and one for the hamantaschen more generally. You can, of course, also fill your hamantaschen with other things: apricot, prune, and berry jams are traditional fillings, and I have been known to make Nutella ones. (This year, I’m making quince hamantaschen with the jam I made this past November.) The poppy seed filling goes very well in a cake. Do note that this poppy seed filling is especially strong.

Poppy Seed Filling (Mohn)

Makes about two cups (I usually make a double batch)

3 tbsp butter

1 cup milk

One egg, beaten

2 tbsp shlivovitz or other brandy

5/8 cup white sugar

¼ tsp cinnamon

1 ½ tsp cornstarch dissolved in 1 tbsp water

¾ cup poppy seeds*

In a small or medium saucepan, melt the butter.
When the butter is melted, add the milk and bring to a boil.
When the milk is boiling, reduce the flame. Take a bit of hot milk out of the pan and mix into the beaten egg to temper it. Then, add the egg, shlivovitz, sugar, and cinnamon to the pan and mix in thoroughly.
Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring continuously to prevent the mixture from burning.
Once the mixture is boiling, add the cornstarch and water and mix in thoroughly. Boil until the mixture is thick.
Add the poppy seeds and mix in thoroughly, or until the mixture is dark. Remove from heat and allow to cool and set, preferably refrigerated.

*Author’s note: though it is traditional to grind the poppy seeds, I actually prefer to leave them whole – it adds a wonderful nutty flavor to the filling.

Hamantaschen

Dough

5 1/2 cups white flour (sifted)

1 tbsp baking powder

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 tsp salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

Filling

Have some filling on hand – look above for a mohn recipe. I also recommend a good, thick jam. Such as my quince jam!

Mix the dry ingredients together until thoroughly mixed.
Cut the water and oil into the dry ingredients and mix together – with your hands, a big fork, or a pastry cutter – until you get a dense dough. Cover and set aside for a while – I recommend refrigerating the dough overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350 F/175 C.
When you are ready to make your hamantaschen, roll out your dough to between 1/8” and ¼” of an inch thick (about 4-7mm thick) – I recommend a slightly thicker hamantasch. Cut the hamantaschen into circles of about 3 inches/7cm in diameter.
Place no more than a teaspoon of filling into the center of each Then fold the edges of the circle over the center of the filling to make and seal the triangle. I recommend this order:
1. Lift the left-hand flap of the cookie and fold over the filling.
2. Then, fold the right hand flap over the filling, and push down a bit over where the right hand flap overlaps the left-hand one.
3. Now, fold over the bottom flap. Have it fold over the right hand flap, but under the left hand one, and push down on the overlaps. This seals the cookie.
4. (For a demonstration of excellent hamantaschen technique, visit Tori Avey’s blog.)
Place, evenly spaced, on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the cookies are golden.

Chicken Soup / Mock Chicken Soup Part II

For part one, click here.

So we’re back: Chicken Soup, Part II: now that you’ve got your stock, it’s time to have some soup!

Chicken soup with kreplach (image Yoninah via Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

But first, let us note that chicken soup has a long history in the Jewish world. In the Talmudic era, it was already a festive tradition to cook a chicken in broth; the medieval scholar Maimonides touted it as a curative dish for one’s health. By the modern era, chicken-based soups were common across the Jewish world, including among Turkish Sephardim and Yemenite Jews. But they were perhaps most widespread – as yoikh or goldene yoikh – among Ashkenazi communities in Eastern Europe, where dozens of variations of chicken soup were consumed for Shabbat and festivals. These soups were brought by Ashkenazi immigrants to wherever they landed – and especially America. And, as other dishes became less popular, chicken soup had a certain staying power. It was comforting; it was easy; it didn’t have calves’ feet. By the mid-20^th century, “Jewish penicillin” – coined by performers on the Borscht Belt comedy circuit – was an icon of what we can roughly call mass Ashkenazi culture. And it stuck: mass media has have also helped reify chicken soup in today’s Jewish world. From blogs to television shows to Tumblr, chicken soup is the Jewish classic.*

So, you want to make this classic. But how? There are many different ways, particularly if you have your stock. I have five recipes here, with the basic parts of liquids, soup-solids, and additions. I’ve written them in order of difficulty.

Of course the ingredients and methodology vary. For mock chicken soup, ignore all directions involving the chicken.

Easy

Don’t even take your ingredients out of the stock. Just add your additions if you have any – noodles, matzoh balls, ground hazelnuts, etc., cook them in the soup, and you’re good to go.

Friday Night

Take out the chicken and cut it up, leave the vegetables in there. If you would like, add some boiled broad beans or some carrots. Add back the chicken, with any additions. Enjoy!

Some Friday Nights

Take out the chicken and vegetables. Keep the stock vegetables for something else, but add new vegetables and boil them in the soup until they’re soft. (I recommend a few carrots, a few peeled parsnips, and some finely chopped onion. Chop up the chicken and add it back in, with separately cooked additions.

Birthday Shabbat/Holidays

See Some Friday Nights, but cook a more difficult addition – such as matzoh balls with neshommes (forthcoming), kreplach, or homemade farfel.

Rosh Hashanah and Pesach

I only do this twice a year at most. Essentially, you make a stock all over again using half first round chicken stock, half water with fresh chicken and fresh vegetables – including some cabbage and apple for Rosh Hashanah – and cook again for about an hour or so. (Keep the chicken and vegetables from the stock for later meals.) Then, you add separately cooked additions – and it’s one of the two biggest food holidays of the year, so go all out here – and freshly chopped herbs as a garnish. Chop up the chicken for the soup and add it back in. There is also a veritable tradition in my family of using the fattiest chicken you can find – or even turkey – for even more flavor. Pesach is no time for a diet, because we are being liberated.

*Albeit this entire post is a tad Ashkenormative. Apologies.