Here is a quick recipe for an arugula basil pesto that I cobbled together from a few recipes recently. Arugula adds a peppery kick to the basil, and also, many nutrients. I also added some nutritional yeast for an umami kick, but feel free to leave that out. This is a great recipe for using up the arugula-in-baggies that you find at many supermarkets here in the US.
Eat this with pasta, fish, potatoes, vegetables, bread, or whatever else you wish. I have eaten this pesto with gnocchi – as shown in the photo – and very much enjoyed it.
Arugula basil pesto served on gnocchi – forgive the messiness of the photo please! (Photo mine, December 2025)
Arugula Basil Pesto
Makes 2 cups
½ cup pine nuts ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese 5 cloves garlic 3 cups arugula 3 tablespoons lemon juice ½ teaspoon table salt 1/3 cup basil leaves 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast (optional)
Toast the pine nuts. Here are two ways to do so:
Heat a dry skillet over medium heat, then add the pine nuts and heat, stirring constantly, for three minutes, or until they visibly change color or have a noticeable toasted-nut smell. Remove immediately from the heat.
Spread evenly on a microwave-safe plate, then microwave in 30-second spurts on high heat until golden color and fragrant.
Place the pine nuts in a food processor with the remaining ingredients.
Puree the mixture until it is consistent and well-mixed throughout.
Store in the refrigerator in a covered container for up to four days.
I laughed – of course I like Jews. My interlocutor, who was from Spain, seemed confused. She was talking about green beans.
Never mind that I was more accustomed to the deeply Mexican word, ejotes, or the less common poroto and vainita. (Every Spanish-speaking country has their own word.)What I found interesting was that in Spain, and several other countries, the word for “green bean” is literally “Jews” or “green Jews.” (PDF in Spanish) Well, “green Jewish women.”
Green beans and carrots (photo David Ouziel/March 2025)
Many fantastic green bean dishes exist across the Jewish world – especially stewed with another New World star, the tomato. That recipe, fasolyas or fasolakes, has hundreds of variations. Jewish and non-Jewish Iranians cook lubia polo, a rich dish of rice, green beans, and often, meat. Egyptian Jewish stew lamb or beef with green beans – and sometimes, tomatoes too. Indian Jews sauté green beans with mustard and cumin. They are all delicious.
I took inspiration from three sources for this dish. One is a green bean dish perfected by my husband’s late grandmother, who was from the venerable Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica). She cooked her green beans in a tomato-based stew – a different recipe, but the seasoning is inspired by her. When my father-in-law makes the dish, I usually consume four helpings. The dry stew and the addition of carrots are inspired both by a recipe from Tuscany and Italian Jewish communities and the Ethiopian fasolia, in which green beans and carrots are sauteed such that the green beans’ juices become part of the stew.
Eat this dish with bread, rice, or any carbohydrate you like.
Green Beans and Carrots
Serves 4-5 as a side
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon white wine or rice wine vinegar
1 pound/450g green beans, chopped into 1.5”/4cm pieces
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped into 1.5”/4cm matchsticks (roughly 1/4”/1/2cm wide)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon bouillon base (or 2 bouillon cubes)
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup water
Heat the oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat, then add the onions and garlic.
Sauté the onions and garlic for a 4-5 minutes or until the onions are quite soft and translucent.
Add the vinegar and sauté for another minute.
Add the green beans and carrots and mix in, then sauté for 30 seconds.
Add the tomato paste, bouillon base, and black pepper and mix in thoroughly. Then, add the water.
Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring regularly. Allow the vegetables to become soft and the sauce to reduce. If the sauce is very reduced, add a splash more water.
Once the green beans and carrots are tender and the sauce is reduced, turn off the heat.
Serve hot or warm. Keep leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge for up to five days.
Thank you to David for conducting User Acceptance Testing on this recipe!
Here is a nice, fun recipe that I have made often recently. I enjoy this recipe because while the gnocchi, tiny Brussels sprouts, and beans all are of similar sizes, the textures and tastes vary in a pleasant and joyous way.
I now often use the pressure cooker – which I discussed in my modernism and climate change cooking post – to cook beans for later use in other recipes. I like doing so because then I get to use beans that are not too frequently canned – for example, scarlet runner beans or Royal Corona beans. These beans are delicious – and many of them have been part of Jewish kitchens for centuries or millennia. Canned beans, however, work well too for this and, honestly, most recipes. I used large Lima beans in the rendition pictured, but this recipe works with scarlet runner beans, great Northern beans, or any other big bean. The Lima beans add a starchy sauciness that I enjoy.
Gnocchi with (very saucy) Lima beans and Brussels sprouts, and a generous amount of Parmesan. (Photo mine, August 2023)
Longtime readers may remember that I have posted other gnocchi recipes on the blog as well. For the rendition pictured, I used purple sweet potato gnocchi that I found in the frozen aisle at my local supermarket. Feel free to use any color you want – it adds to the pop of the dish.
Gnocchi, Brussels Sprouts, and Beans
Makes 3 servings
2 ½ cups petite Brussel sprouts
Water
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (more for roasting method)
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 cups cooked large beans, such as Lima beans, scarlet runner beans or great northern beans (1 15.5oz/428g can) – see note below for cooking the beans from scratch in a pressure cooker
1 pound/454g gnocchi
Parmesan cheese, grated, for serving
Prepare the Brussel sprouts. There are two ways you can do this, and both work equally well:
Roasting – coat the whole petite sprouts in oil and bake for 20 minutes at 400F/200C on a lined cookie sheet.
Steaming – cook on a steam rack over boiling water for 8 minutes. (Learn how to steam here.)
Set a pot of water on high to boil.
While the pot of water is heating, put the olive oil, garlic, salt, red pepper, and oregano in a large skillet and set on medium heat. When the garlic begins to bubble or you can smell the aroma, add the vinegar. Immediately add the cooked sprouts and the beans, and mix thoroughly. Turn off the heat, and set aside.
When the pot is at a rolling boil, add the gnocchi and cook according to package or recipe directions. Generally speaking, gnocchi take about 2 minutes to cook and float when they’re ready.
Drain the gnocchi and add to the skillet with the sprouts and beans. Mix until everything is thoroughly combined. Serve immediately, with Parmesan cheese to taste.
Leftovers keep in a sealed container for 3-4 days. Note that the textures will change slightly.
A slice of the castagnaccio I made with (not vegan) ricotta and honey, and white wine. (Photo David Ouziel, January 2022)
Though I myself still partake in many animal products and a rather abundant amount of gluten, I am trying to learn some more gluten-free, vegan dessert and snack recipes. Some of this has to do with the fact that I now interact in spaces with people with each or both of these dietary needs, and I’m too lazy to make two things. Also, some of this is that this skill is probably useful to develop for potlucks. In my research, I was reminded of a delicious dessert or snack from Italy – castagnaccio, a nut- and herb-studded chestnut flour pudding. This traditional snack has not only a wonderful, chewy but dense texture and earthy, nutty taste – but is also vegan and gluten-free.
Chestnuts have a fairly interesting Jewish history which I have touched on in prior posts, particularly in my recipe for kestaneli kuzu – lamb stewed with chestnuts. In additional research, I came to learn that the Jews of Northern Italy put chestnuts into many delicious things – including a traditional charoset recipe, polentas, and stuffed pastries. Some of the use of chestnuts had to do with poverty – before potatoes and corn arrived in the New World, chestnuts were a key source of starch for many European peasants. Wealthy people ate chestnuts too, often cooked with more expensive things like meat or sugar. I have a suspicion that dishes like castagnaccio crossed some boundaries – because while the chestnuts themselves were accessible, grinding chestnuts into flour required significant labor. It is a modern miracle that I can simply order chestnut flour online that has already been ground for me. I imagine castagnaccio graced more well-off tables more frequently – especially if there was someone else doing the grinding or cooking.
Back to today – most of the recipes called for raisins. My partner despises raisins, which is one of the traditional cornerstone ingredients in castagnaccio. I solicited advice from my Facebook friends on how to substitute the raisins – a key source of sweetness – without losing too much in taste. (Thank you!) I landed on a substitute with a splash of wine and some added sugar – which many castagnaccio recipes traditionally omit.I served the castagnaccio along with some ricotta and honey for added moisture – though you can obviously substitute similar vegan things or omit these. The texture is very difficult to describe but quite lovely – with a certain firm chewiness, and the nuts add a wonderful taste and aroma. I will definitely make this again.
Ricotta and honey for serving (optional, and you can use vegan equivalents)
Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Grease a 9-inch/23cm cake pan with olive oil.
Sift the chestnut flour into a mixing bowl, then whisk in the water, wine, and cane sugar. This mixing should create a batter.
Pour the batter into the greased pan.
Sprinkle the pine nuts, walnuts, and rosemary evenly over the surface of the batter.
Put the pan in the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the batter has firmed up and the cake begins to pull away from the edges of the pan.
Remove from the oven and let cool. The castagnaccio will shrink slightly – that is okay!
Transfer to a plate and cut into slices. Serve with ricotta and honey on the side. Keep any leftover castagnaccio covered at room temperature for up to three days.
A simple recipe this time, for something that I’ve made for dinner quite frequently over the past few months. Olive oil is a prominent ingredient, so I guess it is Hanukkah appropriate? I have not found any specifically Jewish history for this dish, which has variations that come from across Southern Italy – I based this one on the version from Calabria. While this dish is often made with broccoli rabe, which I love, I wanted to master a version with simple broccoli as well – broccoli rabe is a chore to find out of season.
One thing that I do find interesting is that most traditional variations on this dish involve cooking the vegetables and pasta together – something that felt counterintuitive to me, since cookbooks so often direct one to cook the pasta separately! Many recipes mention this as some sort of flavor bomb, but I think the true, and simpler, origin is that this trick makes it quicker to cook and clean up. Unglamorous convenience, but delicious results.
This recipe, with gemelli. (Photo David Ouziel, November 2021)
CalabrianPasta with Broccoli
Based on recipes by Micol Negrin and Lidia Bastianich
Variants listed at the end.
10.5 ounces/300 g short pasta (orecchiette, gemelli, and casarecce work best here – penne works in a pinch)
1 pound/450 g fresh chopped broccoli florets*
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
¾ teaspoon dried rosemary
¾ teaspoon table salt
Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Then, add the pasta and broccoli together. Bring to a boil again, then cook for as long as you need to cook the pasta to be al dente. Check the package.
Meanwhile, combine the oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, and rosemary in a small pan. Place on medium heat until you begin to smell the garlic, which should be changing color, and the oil begins to bubble. Stir over heat for 45 seconds, then turn off the heat.
Two minutes before the pasta is done, ladle out two ladle-fuls of the cooking water and set aside.
When the pasta and broccoli are done, drain them out. Then, return the pasta and broccoli to the pot.
Pour over the oil mixture and add the salt, and mix in together. Add a few splashes of pasta water to ensure the oil gets evenly distributed.
Serve hot. Add grated Parmesan on top of each serving. Leftovers should stay good for about three days.
*For a more traditional dish, use broccoli rabe and cut the rosemary. Cauliflower also works well in this dish. I also recommend chopped green beans – for which you may want to cut the rosemary, and add 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice to the oil mixture.
Thank you to my partner, David Ouziel, for conducting repeat User Acceptance Testing and taking photos for this post.
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
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.
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.
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.
A particularly successful shakshouka from 2014. (Photo mine)
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.
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.
A quick corn recipe this time. Polenta has an interesting history in Jewish tradition – like other maize products, it really only became a thing after corn was brought from the New World in 1492. Polenta and similar corn porridges like mamaliga and gomi became common in certain pockets of the Jewish world: Italy, Romania, and Georgia are primary among them. Unlike rice, breads, and noodles though, there was no broad swathe of cornmeal-eaters. Georgian gomi tends to be white; Romanian mamaliga tends to be mushier, and Italian polenta tends to be firmer.
I made this casserole back over the summer when our internet was out for three days during Isaías, but had the wisdom to write this down.
Casserole, as finished. Ugly but delicious. (Photo mine, August 2020)
Serves 5-8
6 cups cooked polenta (about 2 cups uncooked)
2 ½ tablespoons olive oil or butter + more for greasing
1 medium white onion, chopped
6 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 sprig fresh rosemary, chopped finely
1 15-oz can cannellini beans, with the fluid
Salt and black pepper to taste (I find the goat cheese adds enough salt.)
1 teaspoon white wine or apple cider vinegar
3 cups frozen spinach
2 cups goat cheese crumbles
If you haven’t already, make the polenta according to package directions. I use Bob’s Red Mill Polenta.
Preheat the oven to 425F. Grease a 9×13” casserole with a very light layer of olive oil or butter.
Heat a large skillet, then add the oil or melt the butter. Add the onions, garlic, and rosemary and sauté for a few minutes, or until the onions begin to wilt.
Add the beans and fluid, salt, and pepper. Stir, then add the vinegar. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for five to ten minutes, or until the fluid is mostly gone.
Add the frozen spinach and mix in thoroughly, until it is cooked through. Remove the skillet from the heat.
Spoon the polenta into the casserole. Then, spoon the skillet mixture on top. Add the goat cheese crumbles in an even layer on top of that.
Bake for ten minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown. Serve hot.
Chocolate red wine cake with homemade ice cream. (Photo mine, April 2020)
It’s hard to feel like you have “made it” during a global pandemic and a world-historical crisis. The crushing disappointment of not being able to see one’s loved ones, of goals gone and dreams deferred, and of plans spilled out like milk is truly taxing. And even for me – I have things pretty good, compared to most – it can be rough, with all the uncertainty and being far from my partner and my mother. So I have turned to the familiar comfort of cooking, and to a dessert that is at once very assimilated and very Jewish: chocolate cake. When I eat my cake, I – like many other Jews since the 1880’s – can feel like, for a moment, that I have “made it.”
A Jewish merchant woman’s advertisement for chocolate and other goods in 18th-century Rhode Island. (Document found in Library of Congress archive)
Chocolate has a long history in Jewish cooking. Of course, cacao and the chocolate it comes from originated in what is now Mexico, and only reached Europe after the Spanish conquest. Despite the Inquisition, Sephardi Jews were involved in the chocolate trade from almost its beginning in Europe, and well-off Jews in the Netherlands were already making and consuming chocolate in the 17th century, and in Italy and the Americas in the 18th. New developments in cocoa processing and production gave us eating chocolate and cocoa powder for baking in the 19th century; Jewish people in Europe and the Americas were involved in early manufacture of both. By the late 19th century, chocolate was still a luxury good, but widespread across Europe, especially in cities; Jewish merchant families and better-off Jewish communities began to incorporate chocolate into baked goods. As a result, the consumption of chocolate quickly became a status symbol. Incorporating a bit of chocolate, even as a paltry glaze or with store-bought candy was a sign of the times and living large. Contemporary recipe books from the United States, Germany, and Lithuania all contain recipes with chocolate in holiday food sections.
This Yiddish-language cookbook was distributed by Crisco to sell their products to Jewish communities – and like many others of its time, it included chocolate cake. (Image from Yiddish Book Center/CC)
One way that chocolate became a status symbol was through cake. Home baking became far more common in the 19th century, with new types of ovens coming into homes and a more ready availability of sugar, dairy, and sources of fat. Middle-class families often served – withthe assistance of domestic labor – cake as a way of being “civilized” or showing off their success. Jews were no exception – this was also a time of fervent assimilation into certain norms of decorum and class across Europe and North America. (Reminder: assimilation is not necessarily a bad thing.) The earliest Jewish-authored cookbooks I found in online archives to contain chocolate cake recipes are German-language examples from the 1880’s; English-language examples follow a decade later. By the early 20th century, respectable Jewish housewives on both sides of the Atlantic, Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike, were expected to make – or direct a domestic worker to make – chocolate cakes. In a short time, such cakes became a keyword for luxury and comfort, and began to be served on Sabbath tables and at major events. Since then, different communities have developed different chocolate cakes. Yiddish-speaking bakers in interwar New York often baked certain loaves from Yiddish-language cookbooks, just as well-off Salonican and Cairene Jews educated in French-language schools made decadent cakes in their homes. Italian Jews had chocolate cake recipes, too, for special occasions. By the 1950’s, most Jewish cookbooks contained at least one chocolate cake recipe – and chocolate had found its way into traditional cakes that originally did not have chocolate, like marble cake and sour cream cake. A chocolate cake was not only a food of deliciousness, but a potent symbol of success and plenty for many. I think we all know people for whom that still rings true today.
Chocolate red wine cake cooling (photo mine, April 2020)
This assimilation of delicious cake shows how a food can become Jewish. A food is introduced, then tried because it means something in wider society, and because it looks delicious. (In this case, is delicious.) Other Jewish folks start making it, and soon, the food has a meaning in Jewish communities – even if it is not “authentic” per se, or shows off how well assimilated someone is. A few years later – well within the lifetime of an adopter – the food then becomes common across some spectrum of the Jewish world. Chocolate cake shows how creative people can be – and how even ordinary, Gentile foods can be infused with meaning in Jewish communities. You can see a similar process with coffee cakes, lamb stews with chestnuts, and potato salads. Even p’tchaprobably started as an imitation of a nobleman’s dish introduced by the Tatars to Central Europe.
Chocolate babkas – another new application of chocolate in the 19th century (Photo Christine Garofalo/CC)
Chocolate cake is a mechayeh– something that gives life – in this time. It is sweet, and tasty, and those are sources of solace enough. But I also think that we can eat it as a sense of worth and achievement: that whatever we are, we are enough, and that we have done a lot – each in our own way. It is also a reminder of the creativity and good taste of our grandparents and great-grandparents in the Jewish world – and that having a community that can find joy in such simple pleasures is having “made it” indeed. You have decades of chocolate cake being used for solace and celebration in the Jewish world to back you up. Stay safe, and eat some cake.
And now, a cake.
I based this recipe on one by Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen, but simplified it to not require a mixer – and to add chocolate from chips as well as cocoa powder. I also added some things from a fluffier recipe at TasteMade. The red wine adds a lovely warmth. Going for simplicity, I left it unadorned and cut the sugar slightly. I like these straightforward, comforting cakes as the sign that I made it. Serve it with whatever you want though – I’ve had mine with homemade ice cream, and a simple sour cream glaze would work well too, as would whipped cream or a lovely dusting of powdered sugar. However you eat it, I hope you feel like you have “made it.”
Chocolate Red Wine Cake
Adjusted from recipes by Deb Perelman and Tastemade
Serves 8-10
6 ounces/170g salted butter (about ¾ of a stick)
⅓ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
⅔ cup white sugar
¾ cup red wine
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 ⅛ cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 ¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
Oil or butter to grease the pan
Preheat your oven to 325F/165C. Line the bottom of a round 8” or 9”/20-23cm cake pan with parchment paper, then grease with butter or a non-stick spray.
In the microwave or a bain-marie, melt the butter and chocolate chips together. (I use the microwave – cut the butter up, mix with the chocolate chips, and microwave for one minute on high in a microwave-safe bowl, then stir together.)
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the butter and chocolate mixture with the sugar until thoroughly combined.
Add the red wine. Mix in thoroughly, with the whisk.
Add the eggs. Mix in thoroughly, with the whisk.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and cinnamon together. (You do not have to do this but it distributes the cocoa powder more evenly.)
Fold the flour mixture into the mixing bowl with the wet ingredients with a wooden spoon or a mixer. You can also whisk them together, but make sure that everything gets incorporated properly.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven, and then flip onto a cake rack after cooling in the pan for 20 minutes. Let cool for about 30 minutes, at least, before serving. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, powdered sugar, or on its own.
Thank you to my housemate AJ Faust for conducting User Acceptance Testing on this recipe.
This recipe was updated in March 2021 based on additional experimentation.
Apples in Upstate New York – some of these will end up in my apple cake this year for Rosh HaShanah. (Photo mine, September 2016)
Greetings! I hope you had a lovely holiday season, be it with your family, your friends, or on a spaceship with kindly aliens.
I have been busy with applications for urban planning school, or volunteering for the Democratic Party, so I have not sat down to do quite as much food writing. However, I did make a very fun gnocchi dish using lots of traditional ingredients from Italian and German Jewry – apples, fennel, and cheese. Gnocchi and Parmesan are not Jewish per se. However, gnocchi has a long tradition in Italian Jewish cooking – though preparations with spinach or tomato sauces are far more common. I cannot find sources in a language I speak for the various hard cheeses of Italian Jewry (Italian speakers, hint hint), but Italian Jewish recipe collections in the languages I do speak use hard cheese heavily. In any case, I should not worry if Parmesan is “traditional” – authenticity is bullshit anyway. That said, this recipe would not be too out of place on an Italian Jewish table.
I have actually made an Italian Jewish dish with fennel and cheese in the past – I highly recommend it.
(Photo mine, September 2018)
Autumn Gnocchi with Apple, Fennel, and Parmesan
2 tablespoons butter
1 large white onion, chopped roughly into small pieces
1 medium bulb fennel, chopped roughly into small pieces
2/3 teaspoon table salt
1/3 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
8 cloves garlic, chopped into bits (you can vary the size according to taste)
3 medium Fuji apples, cored and chopped into cubes (you can use another crisp, sweet apple such as a Honeycrisp or Cameo)
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped with stems removed
½ cup water + more to cook gnocchi
1 500g/17.5 oz package potato or sweet potato gnocchi
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Heat a deep saucepan, then melt the butter. Add the onions and fennel. Sauté for two minutes, or until they begin to soften.
Add the salt, pepper, and vinegar, and mix in. Sauté for two more minutes, or until they are slightly softer.
Add the garlic, apples, and rosemary, and stir to combine. When the pan starts sizzling again and the apples begin to soften, add the water, then cover.
Cook covered for ten minutes, then uncovered for ten minutes on a high flame. Stir every few minutes. The apples and fennel should soften and release their juices.
In the meantime, prepare the gnocchi according to package directions. (If you want to use homemade gnocchi, try this recipe here, but I am all for industrial food.)
When the apples and fennel are soft and the liquid has mostly reduced, turn off the heat. Add the gnocchi and parmesan, and stir thoroughly. Serve warm.
Thank you to Eric Routen for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.
Potato frittata with cilantro and chilies – the missing bit was eaten by yours truly. (Photo mine, March 2018)
And now for the second in our series of potato dishes for Passover – a dish most people associate with Spain, the potato omelet. In Spain, this dish is made with chunks of potato and known as a tortilla española. It is a common favorite at tapas bars around the world. However, a similar dish exists across Italian, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities. It is called frittata de patate by Italian Jews, kuku sib zamini by Persian Jews. It is also named makroud fil-batates in North African Arabic or a variety of things in Ladino.
Enjoying a slice of frittata. (Photo mine, March 2018)
One of the great things about many of the Jewish versions of the frittata is that it is made with mashed potato instead of potato chunks, which does wondrous things for the texture. Instead of admittedly delicious chunks of potato, you get a creamy, almost mousse-like texture. I based my recipe off of Claudia Roden’s, but with a few adjustments. I swapped the parsley with cilantro, and added a touch of another New World introduction – chili peppers – to give it a bit of a spicy kick. This dish makes for a great sharing food, or as breakfast for Pesach and the whole year. However, I skipped the onions in the North African version and made a riff off of the deceptively simple Italian version. I have been eating it for breakfast, piece by piece. Enjoy!
Potato Frittata for Passover
Based on several recipes by Claudia Roden
2lbs/1kg potatoes, peeled
5 cloves white garlic, minced
2 fresh hot chili peppers, finely diced
4 tablespoons olive oil or sunflower seed oil
1 fistful fresh cilantro, chopped
8 eggs, beaten
Salt and black pepper to taste (I used about 2 teaspoons of salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper)
Boil the potatoes in water until soft. Then, drain the potatoes and rinse them under cold water to cool them. Mash the potatoes and set aside to cool further.
In the meantime, heat a deep non-stick or cast-iron skillet and add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Then, add the garlic and chili and sauté for 1-2 minutes, or until the garlic is browned. Pour out the oil, garlic, and chili, and mix them into the mashed potatoes.
Mix the cilantro, eggs, salt, and pepper into the mashed potatoes until you get a thick batter.
Heat the skillet again, and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Then, pour the egg-potato mixture into the skillet. Cook for 15-20 minutes on a medium-to-high flame, or until the omelet is set and browned on the bottom. If you want it brown on top, you can bake the frittata afterwards for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can bake the frittata in the skillet or a pan for 35-45 minutes in an oven preheated to 425F/220C.
Remove from heat. Serve the frittata in slices, hot, warm, or cold.
