Flavors of Diaspora

Great Books: The Gefilte Manifesto

The cover for The Gefilte Manifesto. (Photo Amazon)

Normally, I don’t tend to fall into cookbook or food book hype. Yes, I tell you about “Great Books” but that is because a lot of Jewish food books simply don’t live up to the hype promised to us by marketers, the media, and the priests and priestesses of the Cult of Authenticity. (Authenticity in cooking is bullshit.) So I was a bit nervous when I picked up a copy of The Gefilte Manifesto by Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern, promising that Ashkenazi cuisine was “one of the world’s great cuisines…right under our noses.” Another well-publicized book, a historical one, on Ashkenazi cooking earlier this year did not live up to hype. The authors, essentially professional Ashkenazi chefs, were proclaimed to be revitalizing Eastern European Jewish cuisine itself. That is quite a lot of hype.

Thus I was more than pleasantly surprised when I opened the book to find a true gem. This is a cookbook that celebrates the wonders and underrated glory of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine: some of the classic dishes, but some of them with a new twist. The crisp, delightful flavors of Eastern Europe are rendered lovingly, but not cloyingly. As someone who grew up with these tastes, this book is delightful. It must be even more so for those who were not as exposed to traditional Ashkenazi cooking. And the hype, if hyperbolic, was appropriate for the book. You should all buy a copy of The Gefilte Manifesto as soon as you are able.

Gefilte fish pre-khrayn…

…and post-khrayn. (Not the same ball) Photos mine, April 2016.

I will briefly state what the book is not before I go through all the things that it is. It is not a book on authenticity, it is not a book of manufactured memories, and it is not a book that makes demands of certain dishes for the reader’s Jewishness. Rather, it approaches Ashkenazi cuisine as a tradition embodied in methodology and memory, and for that alone it is valuable. As it happens, Yoskowitz and Alpern are excellent arbiters of memory and new taste. Recipes are preceded by and placed in the context of recollection – be they historical, personal, or somewhere in between. But the food that is remembered is not taken as a given – and homage is given to how memory in fact influences the way we eat.

The book is incredibly well-written, and practical too. Within the book’s contents, you have guides to dressing poultry, making kreplach, and braiding challah – and not to mention all types of pickling. Thus readers are taught at a variety of levels how to make all of the book’s tasty treats – and in language that is neither cloyingly saccharine nor sentimental.

And the recipes themselves? They are wonderful! Some of them are what are popularly called classics: matzah ball soup, savory blintzes, and the namesake gefilte fish. Others are inspired by the Ashkenazi tradition but are certainly welcome departures from the “canonical” dishes: Polish sour rye soup, kimchi-stuffed cabbage, or a gluten-free buckwheat bread. My current favorite new recipe is for a spiced blueberry soup, which promises all the tart-sweetness of yagdes and the creamy indulgence of dessert for dinner. In addition, many of the “basics” are covered – such as pickled cucumbers, farmer’s cheese, and bread. All are well-presented, and all have an eye not to the idol of authenticity in the past, but that Ashkenazi food is still in evolution.

Challah

It has been almost a year since I started this Jewish food blog, and I am only now making challah. This, I admit, is to the chagrin of many readers: since starting this blog I have been asked, harangued, flirted with, email, telephoned, texted, and Snapchatted (!) for my challah recipe. I deflected for a while: “I don’t often make challah,” I told myself. Then again, nor do I make quince jam that often. Besides, making challah is really fun.

Challah occupies a vaunted place in the American Jewish imagination. It is challah that is the marker of Shabbat, challah that is the marker of holidays, challah that non-Jews ask Jews about, challah that goes in French toast, challah that every Ashkenazi cookbook seems to include. As a bread, it’s pretty delicious, and it’s not the worst symbol of Judaism out there. That said, challah is also a very interesting example of how class and luxury intersect with Jewish practice to create a tradition that evolved quite a bit over the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Challah evolved from the tradition of serving special bread on Friday night to commemorate the showbread used in Temple ceremonies in ancient times. The name itself commemorates the Biblical commandment to “separate the challah” as a tithe to the Kohanim, or priestly class. (Today, those that still follow this commandment burn the challah instead.) At some point in the Middle Ages, challah came to refer to braided, wheat-based breads with egg in the Ashkenazi world. These breads have also been called kitke, berkhes, and koylatch at various points. It should be noted here that non-Ashkenazi communities have their own “challahs” and other Shabbat breads. (Note: the Hebrew plural is challot, sometimes Yiddishized as khales, but “challahs” has entered colloquial American usage. I use the latter here.)

Challah before rising…

…and after. (Photos mine, October 2016)

Ultimately, challah is not unique. Other Central and Eastern European cuisines have similar braided, egg-based breads, such as the Hungarian kalács and the Lithuanian velykos pyragas. The recipes that we know today probably came from interactions with our neighbors and was certainly not a Jewish invention alone. Challah was historically a bread of luxury: in a region where rye was the predominant grain and wheat was pricy, one did not simply eat challah every day. Moreover, the eggs – another commodity that was not cheap before the 20^th century – made challah that much more of a treat. Thus the bread became part of the special nature of Shabbat: a culinary way to set the day aside from the rye-filled workdays of the week. Having challah or any wheat bread more frequently was a sign of prosperity, having “black bread” on the table on Friday night was a sign of poverty.

Challah started out as a celebratory ritual, but has become a culinary force of its own in the United States. In a country and era with plentiful wheat flour and eggs, challah has gone from being a marker of celebrations and good fortune to being a frequent treat. One can buy challah every day in New York – fulfilling the claims of early immigrants, as documented by Michael Wex, that the United States was a country “where one could eat challah every day.” You can find challah French toast, challah bread pudding, challah grilled cheese, and I have even seen deep-fried challah. Those in the 19^th century who celebrated having a challah every week would probably be stunned by this abundance. Even then, for most Ashkenazi Jews in the United States, challah is firmly a “Shabbat food.”

Unbaked challah on a tray — Challahs, braided, waiting to be egg-washed and baked. (Photo mine, October 2016.)

The tradition of making challah at home, by hand, has continued strong in this environment of industrialized plenty. Some use family recipes passed down through generations. Others add new ingredients first encountered in the United States – like chocolate chips. Some braid new patterns, others use food coloring to make “rainbow challahs” for gay pride. Making challah, like all Jewish cooking, is still a gendered practice: historically, like other culinary pursuits, it was considered a “women’s practice.” Many still consider it as such.

Many “schools” of challah exist. Some challahs are braided with three strands, others with the far more intricate six strands, and for Rosh HaShanah, braided round challahs are served. Some challahs are large and fluffy – aided by a second rising of the dough. Other challahs are dense and tightly packed – but still sweet and soft. Many people fill their challah with raisins, cinnamon, or even – as one colleague did – fig paste. Density varied historically, but sweetness – like that of gefilte fish – was a Polish trait, encouraged by the 19^th-century proliferation of the sugar beet industry there. In all forms, though, challah is delicious.

This recipe is for a denser, smaller challah. The salted egg-wash gives it a pretzel-like twang; indeed, “pretzel challah” is increasingly popular. As for the density, I like challah to be cute and soft, but also able to absorb a good amount of soup, stew, or sauce. After all, I too cannot resist a piece of challah dipped into lentil soup.

Challah

Based on recipes by Jay Stanton, Dana Katz, Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern in The Gefilte Manifesto, and Claudia Roden in The Book of Jewish Food.

Makes three small-medium loaves

1 packet active dry yeast

1.5 cups (350mL) lukewarm water

1/3 cup (80mL) honey

1 tsp table salt

1/3 cup (80mL) canola oil

3 eggs, beaten

5 1/2-7 cups (23-30oz/660-840g) white bread flour, plus more for kneading

Egg wash:

1 egg, beaten

1/5 cup (50mL) cold water

1/2 tsp table salt

Sesame seeds or poppy seeds for garnish (optional)

In a large mixing bowl, mix the yeast and 1/4 cup of the water. Leave alone for ten minutes. Your yeast should “proof” and start to bubble in the water. (If it does not, you need new yeast.)
Add the honey, salt, oil, eggs, and the rest of the water. Mix well until thoroughly blended. You can use a whisk or wooden spoon for this step.
Now, add the flour, one cup at a time. Mix it in first with the spoon, and then with your hands. Flour your palms to prevent the dough from sticking. You should have a thick, but not too sticky dough, by the end.
Now you should knead the dough on a well-floured surface with your hands, also floured. Knead for ten minutes, or until you have a smooth and elastic dough with the texture of an earlobe (yes, I am serious, as are others). If your dough gets sticky, add a tablespoon of flour to your hands and the dough. If you have never kneaded bread dough before, I recommend this video.
Place the dough ball into a clean bowl, and cover with a towel or cheesecloth. Leave alone at room temperature to rise for one hour or until doubles in size.
Punch the dough down, then knead for a few minutes on a well-floured surface with well floured hands. You should once again have a smooth, elastic dough with the texture of an earlobe. Split the dough into nine equally-sized balls. If you want longer loaves, split into six equally sized balls – this will make two long loves.
Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Prepare a large tray – cover the bottom in either tin foil or, preferably, parchment paper.
Now it is time to braid the challah. Roll three of the balls into ropes about 8-9 inches (20-23cm) long (or longer for bigger loaves) and lay out side by side on your baking tray. Lay the right rope over the middle rope close to the top, so that the right strand becomes the new middle strand. Then, lay the left strand over the new middle strand so that the left strand becomes the new middle strand. Repeat, alternating, until you can’t loop the ropes anymore without extending them. Then, pinch the ends together. (Here is a nice video from Once a Month Meals.)
Repeat for the other two loves as you did for the first one. Give a few inches/centimeters space between the loaves, since they will expand while baking.
Mix your ingredients for the egg wash.
Brush the egg wash on your loaves so that the surface is “glistening” but not dripping. You can do this with a pastry brush, cheesecloth, or a paper towel. At this point, you may choose to sprinkle sesame or poppy seeds on top.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, the intersection between the ropes is no longer doughy, and the challah sounds hollow if hit on the bottom with a spoon or the backside of a fork.

Thank you to the 17 of you who participated in User Acceptance Testing for this challah.

Khoresht-e Beh (Quince and Split Pea Stew)

Firstly an apology: for the past while, this blog has been very, very Ashkenazi. I of course did not mean to fall into a trap of Ashkenormativity, but alas, I did and I am sorry about that. Many readers have complained that this blog can skew “too Ashkenazi” and I agree. Ashkenazi numerical dominance does not play out into Ashkenazi cultural monopoly. I will make more of an effort to be “balanced” in the future – especially because – contrary to popular misconception – Sephardi and Mizrahi ingredients and customs have informed Ashkenazi cooking for hundreds of years. One need only look at a chickpea soup recipe in Yiddish, which uses a Turkic word – via Russian – for the bean.

quince-61574_960_720 — Quinces on a tree. (Photo Hans Braxmeier via Pixabay/Creative Commons)

Sukkot, which is happening now, is a pretty fabulous holiday, and fruit is only one tiny reason for it. The holiday is of course better known for the waving of the lulav and etrog, and the eating in huts (sukkot), but it started out as an a harvest festival on the ultimately very agrarian Jewish calendar. This tradition is still maintained in that many choose to eat a “new” fall fruit (or spring in the Southern Hemisphere) in the sukkah – which may be apples, pears, or my favorite, the quince.

I talked about the Jewish history of quinces last year, when I made quince jam. These fruits have been part of the Jewish imagination since the time of the Talmud, and have remained common on Jewish tables from Morocco to Spain to Iran. Quinces have also stayed as a Sukkot treat – the fruit is in season in the fall, and smells like the etrog (citron) used in the holiday’s ceremonies.

Quinces being candied for future use in pastries. (Photo mine, November 2015)

We in the West normally think of quinces as an ingredient in sweet dishes, but in many Jewish cuisines it is also a savory ingredient – for example, the Moroccan quince tagine (link in French). This recipe is from Iran, where quinces are also cooked with rice or in a tas kabob stew. Other Persian recipes also make good use of fruits and nuts that Westerners or Ashkenazim would normally place into savory dishes: for example, the delicious adas polo, a lentil pilaf with raisins. The use of fruit in savory dishes is a culinary habit shared with Ashkenazim – one need only look at the red cabbage and apple recipe on this blog.

Though this recipe is normally made with meat, I made this khoresht-e beh vegetarian. It is traditionally cooked with beef and is absolutely delicious that way as well. Persian cooking and other Iranian cuisines, however, have a long vegetarian tradition as well – and in this form, a kosher-keeper could pour delicious Persian yogurt on top. (Recommended! – but with that said, the recipe itself happens to be vegan and gluten-free.)

Stirring the khoresht-e beh after adding the quinces. (Photo mine, October 2016.)

Vegetarian Khoresht-e Beh (Quince and Split Pea Stew)

based on recipes on Mastering Persian Cooking, and by Sally Butcher and Azita from Turmeric & Saffron

Serves 4-8

1 white onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1/2 tbsp ground salt

1.5 tsp ground paprika

1.5 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground sumac (optional)

1/2 tsp honey

1 1/3 cups (250g/9 oz) dried split peas*

5 cups (1.2 liters) hot water

2 large quinces (you can peel, core, and dice them in advance but I will tell you why not to do that)

2 tablespoons table sugar

Juice of 2 large lemons

1 bunch fresh spinach, chopped

Grapeseed or olive oil (about 4 tablespoons)

Fresh cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Heat a deep saucepan or 4-quart pot. Add 2 tablespoons or so of oil to the bottom, then the onions and garlic.

2. Sauté the onions and garlic for 3-4 minutes, or until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the salt, paprika, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sumac, and honey and mix in thoroughly.

3. Sauté for another minute, or until the onions begin to brown.

4. Add the split peas and mix in thoroughly, then add the hot water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

5. While the split peas are cooking, peel, core, and dice the quinces. You can do this in advance but they tend to oxidize fairly quickly.

6. Heat a skillet, then add 2 tablespoons of oil. Then, add the quinces, sugar, and juice of one lemon.

7. Sauté the quinces for 8-10 minutes, or until the pieces turn golden and have softened.

8. By this time the split peas should be quite tender and the water will have reduced somewhat. Add the quince mixture and the juice of the other lemon, and mix in thoroughly. If a lot of water has cooked off, add a cup of water.

9. Bring to a boil again, then simmer for 15-20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

10. At this point, the water should be reduced, the stew thickened, and the split peas should be very tender. At this point, you should stir in the spinach so that it is evenly distributed throughout the stew. Cook for one minute, then remove from the heat. (You can also stir in the spinach with the heat off, it will still cook in the heat of the stew.) Serve with rice or a good bread – the traditional noon-e barbari or another doughy flatbread would work really well for this. Garnish with fresh cilantro if you so desire.

*Do not use canned or soaked split peas! They tend to fall apart in this recipe and in other Persian stews. You don’t need to soak split peas before cooking, in any case – it is a common misconception that that is needed.

Thank you to Ariel Goldberg, Francesca Littman, Jessica Belasco, Abigail Teller, and Benjamin Chaidell for participating in User Acceptance Testing for this recipe.

How to Pair Cider, the Jewish Way

I’m back! The posting schedule is still a bit less frequent due to Sukkot, but there is a Sukkot treat I did want to remind you of: cider! It may seem very much like a non-Jewish beverage, but cider and other apple-based beverages in fact have deep Jewish roots: “wines,” particularly for sacred use, were often made from the fruit in an Eastern Europe where grapes were not readily available. (These would be understood as ciders or liqueurs today.) Going back even further, the word for cider derives, via Latin, from the Hebrew word shekhar, which means both “liqueur” and “hooch.” (It is the origin of the Yiddish shikker.)

Ciders on my windowsill — Two of my cider acquisitions: Gurutzeta Sigardoa from the Basque Country, and Aval Cidre from France. (Photo mine, October 2016)

On a recent weekend, I had the opportunity to go to a cider tasting held at the Astor Center, led by the wonderful Tess Rose Lampert. (This was a birthday present from a dear friend.) During the workshop, in which we tasted seven delicious ciders, we were given tasting recommendations. Naturally, my mind wandered to the Jewish culinary traditions…and the ciders were so good that I couldn’t resist sharing these with you! Thus, in this table: our ciders!

The Cider	The Taste	We were told…	The Jewish pairing
Wölffer No. 139 Dry Rosé Cider – it’s from Long Island and a mix of apple cider and a bit of grape juice. (NB: if you follow many interpretations of kashrut on wine, this is not kosher.)	It’s a slightly bitter, but crisp cider with a nice fizzy aftertaste and simple aroma. The taste is quite light.	This can go with anything – cheese, meats, salads – or even on its own.	This would go well with some dishes that have delicate flavors – for example, sambusak, pumpkin fritters, or keftes de prasa. The bitter and crisp flavors would balance out the earthiness of leeks or chickpeas quite nicely.
Gurutzeda Sagardoa Sidra Natural – a cider from the Basque country that is cloudy.	The smell is very fermented – a bit like kombucha or a very aged sauerkraut. The taste is incredible – an exact balance of bitter and sweet with a mysterious and dancing richness on the tongue. This cider is one of the best I have ever had and there is now a bottle in my pantry waiting for Sukkot. (On my notepad this cider is marked with “!!!!!!!!” and “This is the herring cider.”)	Funky cheese and fatty foods – one example given was a rich risotto.	This is the cider that would go well with herring – especially matjes herring, which is quite fatty and salty. (Or a herring marinated in beer.) I could also pair this with something served with gribenes (an upcoming blog recipe).
Pilton Somerset Keeved Cider – this one is from England and is produced using keeving, a slow and cold fermentation method. (The method is similar to how Lithuanian Jews would make fruit wines in the 19^th century.)	The cider itself is very clear and sparkly, and has a very musty smell. The taste is a bit like an alcoholic bitter apple, with a pleasant acidic twang. This is another cider for easy drinking.	This cider is easy to pair but would go well with roast meats, soups, and cheeses.	I would pair this with the “traditional” Ashkenazi canon – chicken soup, potato kugel, tzimmes and brisket, or p’tcha (another upcoming blog recipe). The lightness of the cider balances out the heaviness of the food.
“Lost and Found” Cider, Shacksbury – this cider is from Vermont and made with foraged heirloom apples from early 20^th century varieties.	The smell of this cider is a very pleasant one – a honey or floral smell, like that of quinces. The taste is clean and tart, with a hint of caramel.	Turkey, smoked meat, and roasted vegetables – very American pairings for a very American cider!	I can see this one going well with two sets of Jewish dishes. One is the salty side – lox or the beloved Sephardi dried cod come to mind. Then there are the smoky-rich dishes: red cabbage with apples, a good shakshouka, for example, or even a corn kugel.
Millstone Cellars “Hopvine” Cider – this is a cider from Maryland brewed with hops, like beer, and honey. It is somewhat cloudy.	The first smell that hits you is the hops – and hence this one has a vegetal, wheaty smell. The taste is earthy, crisp, and bitter, with some similarities to rhubarb.	We were suggested sausage and cheese, since this cider would go well with the richness of Central European food.	This one was a bit harder to pair, but I could see this going well with cabbage soup, stuffed cabbage, or cholent (yet another upcoming recipe, though I’m not the biggest fan).
Aval Cidre – this French cider is a dark caramel color, like other Norman ciders	This cider smells like apples and quinces. The taste is a sweetish, caramelized one, with a hint of bitterness and a good dose of wild gamey-ness. In short, absolutely delicious. (This one also has “!!!!!!!!” and there is a four-pack waiting for Sukkot in my pantry.)	Our teacher gave us a multitude of options: cheese, mushrooms, pastries, lighter meats, and even desserts. Or on its own.	This cider is versatile and can go with so many things! The first few I thought of were kugels, tagines, and the Tunisian fish dish hraime. This is the cider I would pair with the chickpea, collard, and pumpkin stew I made for Rosh HaShanah.
Poiré, Cidrerie du Vulcain, J. Perritaz – this is a fizzy Swiss pear cider.	The odor is musty and a bit tart, but the taste is incredibly sweet and has a jam-like and fatty quality.	Our two suggestions were fatty and spicy food, or desserts.	This is the cider to serve with noodle kugel or qatayef. The sweetness would also make it a good pairing with latkes. Who is ready for Hanukkah?

Nota bene: some Orthodox kashrut traditions require that any cider consumed have a hechsher, or kosher seal. None of these ciders do. I, like many Jews, hold to a less stringent interpretation of kashrut and consider these ciders kosher.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew with Collard Greens

First, a note of housekeeping: there will be a brief hiatus of blog post for the next three weeks, due to the onslaught of Jewish holidays. I will continue to link holiday-appropriate recipes on the Facebook page for Flavors of Diaspora, the Instagram page, and my personal Twitter. I wish all readers a shana tova u-metukah – a Happy and Sweet New Year.

Here is a stew, filled with the flavors of autumn, that is Jewish in character but somewhat of my own creation – and it makes for both a delicious weeknight dinner and a Rosh HaShanah centerpiece! Moreover, it is that rare combination: vegan and gluten-free. Thus I present a Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew, interspersed with the lush color of collard greens.

This recipe comes from requests from several readers. Adele M. in Oxford has requested more vegan-friendly recipes for a vegan member of the family, and Amram A. in New York requested additional pumpkin recipes. Emmett T. in Toronto also requested more gluten-free recipes – a sometimes difficult task in the gluten-heavy world of Jewish cuisines. This recipe is for all of you. Though it is my own creation, it is based on several ingredients and recipes common to Jewish and non-Jewish traditions in Turkey: collard greens (karalahana) has been grown in the Black Sea region since ancient times, and chickpeas (nohut*) have been eaten throughout the country for millennia too. Pumpkin (kabak) became a hit across the Mediterranean after it was introduced from the New World in the 16th century. Italian Jews called it zucca barucca – a Hebrew-Italian mishmash meaning “holy squash” – and Turkish Jews made fritters from the squash. Even today, a delicious pumpkin halva is popular in Turkey. This is an inauthentic combination of familiar ingredients.

Chickpea and Pumpkin Stew with Collard Greens

Serves 5-10

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tablespoon table salt

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

2 teaspoons za’atar

1 teaspoon ground sumac

1 teaspoon oregano

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (any white vinegar should do)

3 cups chopped collard greens, both leaves and stems (about 300 grams/10 ounces – you can also use another green, leafy vegetable)

2 cups cooked pumpkin, chopped (you can also used canned pumpkin, which changes the final texture)

2 cups cooked chickpeas (this is one drained 400 gram/15-oz can)

2 cups diced tomatoes (also, one 400 gram/15-oz can)

1 tablespoon ground kuzu root, arrowroot starch, or cornstarch mixed in 3 tablespoons water

3 cups water, separated into one cup and two cups

Olive oil for sautéing

Salt and pepper for final garnish

1. Heat a deep saucepan, paella pan, or wok over a high flame. Add the oil, then the onions and garlic. Saute for one minute or until the onions begin to soften.

2. Add the salt, pepper, za’atar, and mix in thoroughly with the onions and garlic. Continue sauteeing for another minute or until the onions are becoming translucent under the spices.

3. Add the chopped collard greens and mix in thoroughly. Then, add the vinegar and one cup of water.

4. Cook, stirring frequently, for two minutes, or until the collard greens have begun to wilt.

5. Add the pumpkin, chickpeas, tomatoes, and remaining two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. Stir every few minutes.

6. When the collard green stems are soft to the fork, the leaves are wilted, and the liquid has reduced, it is time to add the starch. Mix the starch with water, and then mix in thoroughly with the entire stew. Simmer for 2 more minutes.

7. The sauce should now be thicker and hang longer on a spoon held sideways. Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with your preferred carbohydrate. For the non-vegans, the stew goes well with a dollop of fresh ricotta, fromage frais, queso fresco, or tsvorekh.

*The Turkish word nohut is the source of the Yiddish word for chickpea, nahit.

Apple Honey Cake

This recipe has been requested by at least seven people – I do not remember by whom exactly. My sincerest apologies.

Rosh HaShanah in the Ashkenazi world is a rather sweet and sticky holiday. Of course there is the tradition of eating sweet foods to signify a good New Year, and, like any Jewish holiday, the amount of saccharine sentimentality seems to spike on Rosh HaShanah. Sometimes, this is translated into food, including the extreme stickiness and sweetness of taiglakh, or the inexplicably sugary cookies that suddenly morph everywhere, uncontrollably, across tables in the Jewish world. And then you have the apple and honey cakes. Ever-present, sometimes delicious, and quite a vehicle for the nostalgia of many a middle-aged congregant in my childhood synagogue. (“This takes me back!”)

Apples on a tree — Apples in Upstate New York – some of these will end up in my apple cake this year for Rosh HaShanah. (Photo mine, September 2016)

The apple cake also happens to be easy to make – and delicious.

Apple cakes and honey cakes have been traditional in Ashkenazi cooking for centuries – in fact, we have records of both from the 12th century in Germany. The latter cake dates to at least the medieval era, when it was part of a ceremony called the Alef-Beyzn, which commemorated a young boy’s first day at school. Lekach, the Yiddish word for honey cake, is a homonym of the word for “good instruction” in the Book of Proverbs, and so the cake had special significance. The practice of giving cake on this day has since died out; a contemporary practice of having the young boy lick honey off a board with the Hebrew alphabet lasted quite a bit longer. (The Israeli musician Victoria Hanna references this custom in her incredible Hosha’ana music video.) The idea of a sweet cake, however, stuck around, and began to be served at Rosh HaShanah and Sukkot, in order to get the year off to a sweet start.

The apple cake’s place at the Rosh HaShanah table probably had similar origins – and the cake itself is an adaptation of non-Jewish recipes in the region. Even today, almost every Central and Eastern European culture has at least ten common apple cake recipes. The similar apple charlotte recipe – perhaps known to many readers for being referenced in Downton Abbey – became popular in England and France in the early 20th century. Meanwhile, “Jewish” Apple Cake has been popular in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States since that time. These cakes are similar but not quite an exact match to the many family recipes for simple apple cakes that Ashkenazi families use across the English-speaking world. In any case, it is delicious.

In homage of the Rosh HaShanah tradition of eating apples with honey – one to initiate the sweet new year – I am going to give you a recipe that uses both apples and honey. The apples and honey play well of each other – although an apple cake without honey is certainly no curse to a dinner table. I make many variations of this incredibly easy recipe. I have a vegan version with no honey or eggs but with raisins, date syrup, and turmeric to approximate the taste of honey. I also have another version that uses grated apples and ground almonds. My grandmother’s recipe is slightly simpler and doesn’t use honey, but I find that the honey adds both a nuttiness and a lovely weight to the cake. In the spirit of variation, I have a gluten-free and gluten-friendly version of the recipe listed below. The buckwheat version may seem new, but in fact buckwheat – in the form of kasha – has been on the Ashkenazi Jewish table for centuries.

Apple Honey Cake

loosely based on a recipe by Esther Back

Gluten version

3 medium-sized tart apples, peeled, cored, and diced into 1cm (~1/3 inch) chunks (you can leave them unpeeled)

1/3 cup honey

3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 cups flour

1/4 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking powder

Gluten-free version

3 medium-sized tart apples, peeled, cored, and diced (you can leave them unpeeled)

1/3 cup honey

3/4 cup sugar

4 eggs

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2.5 cups buckwheat flour

1/4 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

Vegetable oil for greasing your pan

Preheat your oven to 375F/190C.
Grease your pan – generally, I use a 9 inch by 9 inch (23 centimeters) pan for a deeper, square cake, but generally any medium-sized cake pan will do.
Scatter a few of the apple chunks at the bottom of a pan.
Mix the remaining apple chunks and the rest of the ingredients together. For a more carefree process, I recommend the following order: honey and sugar, then the eggs and oil, then the apple chunks, then the flour you are using, then the salt, cinnamon, and baking powder.
Pour that mixture on top of the apples at the bottom of the pan.
Bake the cake for about 45 minutes, or until the top is browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm or cold.

Author’s note: this recipe is an excellent one for a potluck or other event to which one brings food. For best transport, wrap when cool in aluminum foil with some looseness for the cake to “breathe.”

Tzimmes (with Meat)

As a Jewish food blogger I usually get the same questions. They are about matzoh balls, authenticity, and the food of childhood. Among the more common ones in that last category are requests for two recipes: one for brisket and one for tzimmes. Both are considered classic Ashkenazi home cooking, both are centerpieces of many a festive meal. Readers want to relive their childhoods or feel “authentic” or just eat really good food, and they think of brisket and tzimmes. And until today…I had made neither for this blog.

Brisket is good- and even though I titled a prior blog piece “Beyond Brisket,” I cannot argue with this. Tzimmes is really good – third-helping good, stuff-your-face good, drown-in-prune-and-carrot good. And many recipes…well…they ask, “why not both?”

Meat and onions…

…carrots and apricots and (white!) sweet potato…

Brown that meat!

Everything cooking together (this one still has another hour to go). (Photos mine, September 2016)

This is one of those recipes.

The backstory on tzimmes and brisket begins in medieval Germany, which is in some ways the Urheimat of Ashkenazi culture. There, cooking fruit with meat has been traditional for at least a thousand years, and the original tzimmes – derived from zum essen, “for eating” – was probably a spinoff of another local dish. As Jews migrated eastwards into what is now Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, the dish stuck – and became an institution. Brisket, in or out of tzimmes, was often consumed. It was from an undeniably kosher part of the animal, fatty, and somewhat cheap. That said, the large cut made it not a meat for every Shabbat – but rather one for special occasions. Hence, it became reified – and some would say deified. Today, both tzimmes and brisket have a legendary status in the Ashkenazi mindset. Many consider these dishes – especially the brisket – mandatory for any Jewish holiday celebration, and will be confused should a festive meal not include them. (Every Ashkenazi vegetarian I know has been asked the brisket question.)

I tend to serve dairy meals at festivities: nothing says “celebration” quite like butter. But tzimmes’ sweetness and heartiness makes it an excellent complement to meat – and the fattiness of a brisket or stew meat adds quite a bit of weight to tzimmes. That said, if you do have a dairy meal, a vegetarian tzimmes is still quite a hit.

Tzimmes on noodles. Delicious. (Photo mine, September 2016)

This tzimmes with meat is a hodgepodge of Polish recipes. A Lithuanian recipe would be less sweet and somewhat more peppery, and feature more turnips and beets. I often use chuck meat, because kosher brisket is expensive and your author is a civil servant. I will be using brisket, however, this Rosh HaShanah.

Tzimmes with Meat

2 tsp salt + 1 tsp more for seasoning

1 tsp pepper + 1 tsp more for seasoning

1.5 lbs (750g) beef chuck or brisket, coarsely chopped

2 medium onions, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp white flour

3 cups boiling water

1/4 cup honey

7 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 medium-large turnip or 1 medium-large potato, peeled and diced

12 dried apricots, soaked in hot water* and chopped into quarters,

12 dried prunes, chopped

1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced

1 tsp cinnamon for seasoning (optional)

Vegetable oil or schmaltz

Rub half of the salt and half of the pepper into the beef brisket.
Heat a Dutch oven or deep cast-iron pot. Add oil, then the onions or garlic. Sauté for one minute.
Add the beef and the rest of the salt and pepper. Brown the meat with the onions over medium heat.
Add the flour and mix in thoroughly.
Add the water and stir until the mixture reaches a boil.
Cover and simmer on a low flame for one hour.
Mix in the honey with the meat.
Cook for one minute, then add the carrots, turnip/potato, apricots/prunes, and sweet potato.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for one hour, or until the vegetables have softened and the water has reduced. The sauce should be quite thick. Stir occasionally, and add the salt, pepper, and cinnamon at some point during that hour. You can also bake it for one hour in a 375F/190C oven. Serve hot.**

*You can get away with doing this within fifteen minutes of using the apricots.

** One of my favorite heresies is to serve tzimmes with lokshen (noodles). Delicious!

Thank you to Ziva Freiman and Jeannie Cogill for participating in User Acceptance Testing.

Lentils With Okra

In much of the Jewish world, the Rosh HaShanah menu tends to skew heavily towards meat. Among Ashkenazim, brisket and tzimmes cooked with meat are almost de rigueur – and are sometimes combined into one dish. In Morocco, a delicious tagine with prunes is the custom; among Persian Jews, there is even a tradition to eat cow’s lung. Then, of course, there are also all of the traditions with fish: the fish’s head for a good “head of the year,” gefilte fish and forshmak (chopped herring) among Ashkenazim as appetizers, or spicy hraime in the Libyan and Tunisian traditions. Suffice it to say that Rosh HaShanah is not the most vegetarian-friendly of holidays.

Assembling the ingredients - lentils, okra, onions, spices. — Assembling the ingredients – lentils, okra, onions, spices. (Photo mine, August 2016)

So, what to cook for your vegetarian friends and relatives – or yourself, if you are vegetarian? There are, of course, many options, but I am going to suggest this very simple adaptation of a Indian recipe: lentils with okra. Both lentils and okra are traditional in many Jewish cuisines, and both have that wonderful ability of being very easy to cook, yet tasting like something very complex indeed. I make a simpler version of this recipe quite regularly for guests, and the contrast of the green okra chunks against the brown lentils can, with a bit of arrangement, be beautiful. The original recipe I used many years ago had a completely different spice mixture; for this recipe I used a more Middle Eastern combination with sumac and paprika.

Cooked lentils and okra close-up with cilantro — The final product – the bright green is cilantro. (Photo mine, August 2016)

Lentils symbolize plenty to some, but unlike other beans in some Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, they are not actually a traditional Rosh HaShanah food. Instead, many consider the lentil to be a food of mourning, and eat lentils both during the shiva for a deceased relative, and at the traditional meal preceding the fast of Tisha b’Av. However, lentils also can and do show up on the table at joyous occasions – and perhaps, with this recipe, at yours as well.

Lentils with Okra

1 medium white onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 pound okra, chopped into chunks*

2 tsp table salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp cumin

½ tsp ground sumac (optional)

½ tsp ground thyme

1 tbsp white wine or rice vinegar

1½ cups dried lentils

3 cups water or vegetable stock

Olive or vegetable oil

Fresh cilantro (for garnish)

Heat a deep saucepan, then coat the bottom with oil. Add the onions and garlic and begin to sauté.
When the onions begin to soften, add the okra and mix thoroughly while sautéing.
After the okra is mixed in thoroughly, add and mix in the salt, pepper, paprika, turmeric, cumin, sumac, and thyme. Sauté for two minutes.
When the onions are significantly softer (beginning to brown under the spices), and the spices are sticking to the okra and onions, add the vinegar. Sauté for another two minutes, or until the okra begins to “look” and feel slightly softer against your mixing implement.
Add the lentils and mix in, then add the water.
Bring the mixture to a boil. Then, simmer for 20-30 minutes, or until the lentils have absorbed most of the water and are soft, and the okra is soft. Stir every few minutes. (If the lentils and okra are very soft, and you still have some water left over, you can add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch or ground kuzu root to thicken the sauce.)
Garnish with plenty of cilantro. Serve hot.

* The starch in the lentils naturally offsets the “slimy” part of the okra. If you want to know how to prepare okra to be less slimy, go to my bamia con limon recipe from January.

Red Cabbage With Apples

Rosh HaShanah is coming up, and with it, hours upon hours of cooking in Jewish households across the world. The Jewish New Year is a traditionally a time for much feasting and many dishes, and is more generally two days of deliciousness. Over the next few weeks, this blog will feature a few recipes common to Rosh HaShanah and the subsequent holiday of Sukkot.

One of the “classic” dishes in the Ashkenazi tradition is cabbage with apples. It is made from simple, accessible ingredients, and exhibits the sweet-and-sour combination frequently found in much of Eastern European Jewish cuisine. Though not as celebrated as chicken soup, kugel, or even tzimmes, the dish is a recognizable one for many Ashkenazi families. Similar recipes exist across Central and Eastern Europe – from Hungary to Germany to Finland. Cabbage, after all, was a winter mainstay for centuries in this part of the world. The combination is so common, in fact, that it is apparently referenced in a video-game called Skyrim. (I ask my readers who are gamers to confirm this.)

Red cabbage and apples, served with fenugreek-spiced rice. (Photo mine, August 2016)

Hundreds of variations of this dish exist. Even within my own family, three generations disagree on what best constitutes this dish. My grandmother’s recipe has a strong taste of caraway; my mother prefers the dish without any caraway. I myself the additions of both caraway and garlic for a more pungent final product. Others use pepper and vinegar for a sour taste, or raisins for a sweeter one. Across the variations, however, a sweet-and-sour taste is maintained.

On a recent trip to Atlanta, I found a most interesting cookbook in a secondhand bookstore: the 1973 cookbook of the employees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The book itself is beautiful, and provides a really great insight into what the intellectual class of the 1970’s liked to eat. Some of the recipes are quite quaint to American readers nowadays – think “molded rice” and other wobbly “salads” – and many are quite familiar, such as the Korean Spinach Soup. Yet others are extremely complex, and generally of Continental European origin – even including the infamously difficult Sauerbraten. Among this cornucopia of recipes, I found a not unfamiliar – albeit not kosher – recipe for red cabbage! It is said to be a Hungarian recipe. This version is unusual, however, in that it uses pears, which makes the final product far sweeter. “Sweet and sour” indeed!

The 1973 “A Culinary Collection From the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

The red cabbage recipe, by Janos Schulz and Linda Gillies. (Contact me if you would like a transcription.)

I provide my somewhat more garlicky recipe here. This recipe is based on my grandmother’s, which was very heavy on the caraway – a taste, though welcome, which can become quickly overpowering. The garlic and caraway balance each other out well.

Red cabbage and onions, just beginning their cooking process. (Photo mine, August 2016)

Red Cabbage With Apples

Based on the recipe by Annushka Smit Freiman

1 medium-sized white onion, finely diced

7 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon table salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried caraway seeds

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 medium-sized red cabbage, diced

2 medium-sized tart apples (Granny Smith or Antonovka*)

2 tablespoons butter or a vegetable seed oil, for frying

2 cups water

Heat a saucepan or other broad, slightly deep pan on a high heat. Then, add the butter and melt across the pan’s bottom, or add oil and spread evenly across the bottom of the pan.
Add the onions and garlic to the pan and sauté.
When the onions and garlic begin to soften, add the salt, pepper, and thyme. Mix thoroughly into the onions. Sauté for 30 seconds, then add the vinegar.
Once the pan stops sizzling, add the apples and cabbage to the pan and mix thoroughly with the onions, garlic and spices. Then, add the water.
When the water is boiling, reduce the heat to medium and braise for 20-30 minutes, or until the cabbage and apples are soft and the water has reduced. Serve hot.

*If you are so lucky as to have access to Bramley cooking apples – which are easy to find in the United Kingdom but not so much in the United States – you can use one of those large ones instead.

Thank you to Alex Cooke for participating in User Acceptance Testing.

“Yagdes!” And the Jam That They Become

Picture this: it’s the late 1960’s, and my mother and her family are in a car driving through Western Europe. They immigrated to Israel a few years before from South Africa, and its their first trip together out of the country they had just moved to. For my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, it is her first time in Europe since the Second World War. As they pass through the Swiss and French countryside, her eyes are on the landscapes and plants familiar from her Lithuanian childhood (Europe is remarkably uniform in its middle latitudes). And, as they drive along a country road – at my grandfather’s characteristic crawl of 20 kilometers an hour – my grandmother yells in her strong accent:

“Darling, you must pull over! The bushes are full of yagdes! Shvartze yagdes!”

That is to say, “berries! Black berries!” Which were regularly made into jam during my grandmother’s childhood.

Bilberry in a bush — A bilberry – the blueberry-like fruit native to Lithuania. (Photo Ilena via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons)

Jams and preserves are, to put it simply, a pretty big deal in Ashkenazi Jewish cooking. Some of these jams and preserves might be familiar to North American or South African readers: plum jam, strawberry jam, and cherry jam. Others – such as the radish or beet ayngemakhts still served by many families at Passover – may seem a little foreign. (Even more foreign to some is the Yiddish term preglen ayngemakhts – literally “frying jam” – for cooking the beets in a sugar and honey mixture.) Fruits would be picked in their seasons and made into lekvar (povidl), jams, or preserves, which would then be sealed and preserved for the whole year. This practice paralleled that of local gentile communities – whose diasporas in America still import jams from the homeland to this day. Historically, for some Jews jam was a frequent part of the diet; however, for others – in fact, until the 19^th century, for most Jews in Eastern Europe, it was a special treat. When sugar became cheaper in the 19^th century after the development of industrial refineries to process sugar from beets, jams became far more economical to make – and began to more frequently appear on Jewish tables. By the time of the great emigrations of Ashkenazi Jews in the late 19^th century, fruit jams and preserves were frequently found on Jewish tables. In her 1937 Yiddish-language vegetarian cookbook, published in Vilnius, Fania Lewando thought it useful to include an entire section on jams and preserves – perhaps indicative of her audience’s need for them.

Homemade strawberry-blueberry jam on farina. Breakfast of champions! (Photo mine, August 2016)

Even today, preserved fruit shows up in a lot of places in Ashkenazi cooking, be it in desserts like hamantaschen to new recipes in books like Leah Koenig’s Modern Jewish Cooking. And, of course, Eastern European Jews in North America have assimilated into another jam-eating culture: that of White America. Though Smuckers and Welch’s, or even Bonne Maman, hold hardly a candle to homemade jam, they all draw on a long American tradition – white and black – of jam-making that dates to the earliest years of the colonial era. Much of this tradition was first expressed in the eighteenth-century marmalade – which, more often than not and like every other White American food, was made by enslaved people in the South and often the North – and not only by white housewives, as later myth would have it. This marmalade itself was brought to England by Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition there – and the fruit was originally quinces, not oranges. (Colonial cookbooks contain recipes for quince jam, and so does this blog – albeit an Iranian version.) So in many ways there is an interesting dichotomy: jam is from the “old country” of Europe, but also something that is a very old Jewish influence on American cuisines.

Jam on toasted bagel — Committing true New York heresy and eating my jam on a toasted bagel! (Photo mine, August 2016)

For this post, I made a berry jam in honor of my grandmother’s love for yagdes. The strawberries and blueberries from farms here in New York State are in season, and I bought a big batch of fresh berries to make into a jam. Blueberries themselves are native to North America; my grandmother would have probably had the very similar bilberry. My jam is a little tart, though I certainly added more sugar than my grandmother, who loved tart food, would have wanted. Feel free to add more sugar to your taste – or enjoy the tart bite that could send my grandmother into a nostalgic reverie.

Strawberry-Blueberry Jam

makes about five cups – this recipe can be easily multiplied

1 pound / 450 grams strawberries, with the leaves removed

14 ounces / 400 grams blueberries

2 tablespoons lemon juice or white vinegar

1 cup white sugar

3/4 cup water

In a large pot, mash the strawberries and blueberries together until you have a thick pulp. If your strawberries are large, it may help to chop them into chunks first.
Pour in the lemon juice or vinegar, sugar, and water, and mix thoroughly with the berry-pulp.
Bring the mixture to a boil on a high flame. Once the mixture is boiling, reduce the heat to have the mixture simmer.
Simmer the mixture, stirring regularly, for 30-35 minutes, until the mixture has thickened into a jam. Here is how to check: dip a cold metal spoon into the mixture, then hold it on its side. If, instead of drops, a “sheet” comes off the spoon, the jam is at your desired thickness. Otherwise, continue simmering the jam.
When the jam is done, remove from the heat and let cool. Scrape off some of the foam (“jam scum”*) and place it on a separate plate or bowl.
Once cool, pack the jam into containers. The jam keeps in the refrigerator for about two weeks and in the freezer for three months. You can also can it using a safe method to do so, though I would recommend slightly increasing the amount of lemon juice in the initial recipe for canning, and doing so with a larger batch. This jam goes very well at the bottom of a quark-based cheesecake, between the cheese and the crust.

*”Jam scum” – the “useless” foamy bit at the top of the jam that is trapped air – has a hallowed place in much of 19th-century Russian and American literature – for in this period jam scum was a special treat for many children. One of my favorite scenes in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina – and one of my favorite scenes of food in literature – is Dolly’s thought-monologue on the delights of jam scum as she supervises her maid Agafea/Agatha’s jam-making at her country house in Part Six.

The author thanks Brian Pritchett, Robbie Berg, Amy Estersohn, and Kate Herzlin for participation in User Acceptance Testing.