3 posts tagged “passover”
I just love food porn. You know, those lascivious, moist, mouthwatering food photos that send you into paroxysms of bliss, hunger, and longing. One of my porniest cookbooks is Rozanne Gold’s collection of 3-ingredient recipes, Healthy 1-2-3. Which is kind of funny, considering that it’s a health food cookbook, usually the domain of overseasoned, unappealing stews, spartan rubbery chicken breasts, and bland steamed vegetables. But Healthy 1-2-3 is packed with the juiciest food photos you can imagine. There is one succulent-looking lamb recipe I’ve been drooling over for years – in fact, when Jorie and I lived together, I’d often suggest that we make it for dinner, and then she’d point out (again) that it was for an entire leg of lamb, and served 8-10 people. But that photo of juicy, pink lamb and plump apricots kept luring me back.
Finally, I had the perfect occasion to make it. As I mentioned a few weeks ago I was drafted by my aunt Wendy to cook dinner with my cousin Jorie for our family’s Passover Seder. As soon as Wendy emailed me, I was flipping through Healthy 1-2-3 making a shopping list.
Since we were cooking for 16 people, Jorie bought 2 pre-boned legs of lamb and brought them to her mom’s house for us to cook. As we unwrapped them from their packages, we found they were rather unevenly shaped, with a 6-inch tall chunk at one end while the rest of the meat was 2-3 inches thick. No problem, Jorie had a quick fix. She brought down a ladle and covered the meat with a large piece of saran wrap, then proceeded to smack down the lamb to even out the thickness of the meat.
Suddenly, we had attracted an audience. Cousins, aunts, even Uncle Larry’s girlfriend Kathleen had gathered round to watch the pummeling of the Pascal lamb. Only problem was, Jorie, a delicate flower of a girl who also happens to be about 7 months pregnant, was deemed too gentle to sufficiently even out the lamb. “Here, gimme that ladle,” offered Kathleen. As soon as she grasped the handle, a murderous gleam came into Kathleen’s eyes. Everyone instinctively took a step back. And a good thing too – as she raised the ladle high above the meat and brought it down with a mighty whack, blood spattered the counter. She began whacking it faster, and more furiously. We all laughed together at the vigor and enthusiasm she brought to meat tenderizing. It was like something out of a late, late show – “Tune in at 12:30 for ‘Kathleen, Mistress of Meat.”
When she was done, the lamb legs were perfectly even, and after we seasoned them and tucked a row of apricots along the center, they submissively rolled up into tidy packages for roasting. I don’t know if it was the cumin crust, the apricots, or Kathleen’s thorough meatbeating, but the lamb turned out just as delicious as I had always imagined.
Note: For very observant Ashkenazic Jews, cumin falls under the banned-for-Passover category of foods known as kitniyot. But if you have a motley, irreverent Jewish family like me, they will love it. Or else just serve it for Easter.
Cumin-crusted Lamb with Apricots
from Healthy 1-2-3 by Rozanne Gold
Ingredients:
7 lb leg of lamb, boned and butterflied by the butcher (net weight about 4 1/4 pounds)
1/4 cup ground cumin
1/2 pound large good-quality dried apricots
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400F.
Place apricots in a bowl. Pour boiling water over apricots to cover. Let sit for 15 minutes to plump. Drain thoroughly.
Remove all visible fat from the lamb.
In a small skillet, put cumin powder plus 2 teaspoons kosher salt. Heat over medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until the aroma rises. Let cool.
Open lamb and place on a work surface so that it remains flat. Sprinkle lamb with hafl the cumin-salt mixture and freshly ground black pepper. Place drained apricots in a long, overlapping row, lengthwise down the center of the lamb. Roll lamb tightly around the apricot filling. Using heavy string, tie roast at 1-inch intervals. Rub exterior with remaining cumin-salt mixture. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.
Coat a large shallow roasting pan with nonstick vegetable spray. Place roast in pan. Roast for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until meat thermometer reads 135F for medium-rare.
Remove roast from oven. Place on a large cutting board and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan bring 2 cups water to a boil. Pour off almost all the fat from the roasting pan and pour in the boiling water, scraping up browned bits. Strain through a fine mesh sieve into a saucepan.
Carve lamb into thick slices. Add any juices from board to saucepan. Heat briefly, adding salt and pepper to taste. Pour over lamb.
Serves 10
However, we wily Jews can make lemonade out of any lemony situation, and have found a way to have our cake and eat it too, even during Passover.
The Torah says you're not allowed to eat any wheat, barley, rye, spelt, or oats that have come in contact with water for more than 18 minutes before being cooked. But if you mix together flour and water and cook it before 18 minutes elapses, then grind the resultant crackers back into powder, you can use that for baking cakes, dumplings, pancakes, or basically anything you like. This magical get-out-of-carbo-jail-free substance is commonly known as matzoh meal.
I will admit that I was not too optomistic about the prospect of a matzoh meal cake. The only Passover cake I'd heard of previous to this week was matzoh meal sponge cake. I was not enthused. I don't even like regular sponge cake - it's dry, rubbery, and tasteless. So taking dry, tasteless cake and substituting matzoh meal for the flour did not seem like a great culinary idea.
However, the idea of substituting ground nuts for the flour did seem like a good one. I made an almond cake a few weeks ago that was absolutely divine (soon I will get around to posting about it, I promise!) and something rich and nutty sounded like just the thing for Jorie's and my Sephardic-inspired seder menu. Fortunately epicurious.com has a wealth of great sounding non-sponge cake Passover dessert recipes. I decided to put two of them to the test this week.
The first one was a Honey Nut Cake, pictured above. Basically it's ground almonds and walnuts mixed with sugar, eggs, oil, and a little tiny bit of matzoh cake meal, baked, and then soaked in a honey-orange syrup. I tested this dessert on our dinner guests, Heather and Johnny, last Saturday night. Nutty, sweet, sticky, and vaguely Greek-seeming, this cake went perfectly with the yummy dessert wine Heather had brought from her collection. Everyone reached for seconds, so I considered the dessert a success.
Recipe note: If by any chance you cannot find matzoh cake meal (in Chicago look for it at Dominick's on Division) you can make your own by pulsing regular unsalted matzoh meal in a clean coffee grinder until it resembles the consistency of flour.
Honey Nut Cake
from A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman via epicurious
Ingredients:
Cake
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon finely minced orange zest
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon ( or 1/2 teaspoon for a more pronounced cinnamon flavor)
1/2 cup matzoh cake meal
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts or almonds
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
Soaking Syrup
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 7-inch round layer cake
pan (if you do not have one, you can use a round foil pan of the same
or similar size available in the supermarket baking aisle).
Cake:
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, using a wire whisk, beat the granulated
and brown sugars with the oil and eggs until the mixture is thick and
pale yellow. Stir in the remaining batter ingredients. Turn the batter
into the prepared pan.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top is light brown and set. Cool for at least 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the Soaking Syrup.
Soaking Syrup:
In a medium saucepan, combine the ingredients. Heat to dissolve the
sugar and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, until the mixture becomes syrupy.
Cool well.
Pour the cooled syrup over the cooled cake, poking holes in the cake
with a fork, to permit the syrup to penetrate. Allow it to stand for 2
to 4 hours to absorb the syrup. I prefer to refrigerate this cake so
that while it is absorbing the liquid, it is also firming up. Also,
chilling the cake offsets its sweetness and makes it easier to cut.
Serve it on splayed muffin liners.
Serves 10-12. To serve more, double the recipe and bake it in a rectangular 9x13 pan (or 2 round cake pans).
adapted from Gourmet magazine via epicurious
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups walnuts (51/2 oz), toasted in a 275 degree oven for 15-20 minutes and cooled
1/2 cup matzo cake meal
8 large eggs, separated, at room temperature for 30 minutes
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh orange zest
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 oz bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), coarsely grated using 1/4-inch teardrop-shaped holes of a box grater, or just pulsed in a food processor if you find grating a candybar as much of a pain in the ass as I do.
Instructions:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.
Insert bottom of a 10 inch springform pan upside down (so that turned-up edge faces down for easier removal of cake). Grease well and dust with matzo cake meal to coat.
Pulse walnuts with 3 tablespoons matzo cake meal in a food processor until nuts are finely chopped (be careful not to pulse to a paste). Add remaining 5 tablespoons matzo cake meal and pulse until mixture resembles a grainy flour.
Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until they form soft peaks. Add 2/3 cup sugar a little at a time, beating until whites just hold stiff peaks.
Beat together yolks and remaining 2/3 cup sugar with 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl at medium-high speed until thick and pale, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or about 5 minutes with a handheld. Fold in nut flour, then zest, juice, and vanilla. Fold grated chocolate into batter gently but thoroughly. Fold in one third of whites to lighten batter, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.
Pour batter into greased and dusted springform pan, smoothing top, and bake
until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean, 50
minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan on a rack 15 minutes, then run a thin
sharp knife between cake and side of pan. Remove side of pan and cool
cake completely. Invert cake onto rack and run knife between cake and
bottom of pan to remove bottom, then flip onto a plate. If you like, top with lightly sweetened whipped cream.
Serves 8-10
So I've been recruited to cook Passover dinner for my extended family. Apparently the popularity of this blog combined with the yummy anniversary dinner my cousin Jorie and I made for her parents has inspired them to name us co-chefs for the seder they are hosting.
It's a pretty daunting task to cook a dinner for this group, as there are legions of aunts, uncles, and cousins on that side of the family. Not to mention the various in-laws, neighbors, and family friends who often turn up at these things. Jorie is an experienced large dinner chef since her family is the host of an annual 50-person Thanksgiving meal, not to mention the many times they've hosted Passover, as well as various family chili-cook offs and the like. Me, I've only cooked for a group this large once before, after my Aunt Jan basically dared me to.
Several years ago, Jorie created a Passover menu from Healthy 1-2-3, with a gravlax-style beef roast, garlic mashed potatoes, and asparagus with wasabi butter. It was absolutely scrumptious and met with rave reviews from all the guests. Including Aunt Jan, who wondered aloud, "Wow, where did Jorie ever come up with these combinations of ingredients??"
I chimed in, I thought innocuously, "Oh, you know, this is the new fusion cuisine!"
Aunt Jan apparently interpreted the phrase "fusion cuisine" as a slight at Jorie's skillz, because she replied, with a withering glance, "Well, I don't see you cooking any Passover dinners, Robin."
And then everyone turned and stared at me. I was so surprised at this retort, I was for once speechless. All I could muster was a 80s-style "Daaaaaaaaaaang!"
It was on. As I hunted for the afikomen (yes, they still make me look for the afikomen even though I'm over 30) I vowed then and there to host the next Passover dinner at my mom's house and cook something that would make my aunt eat her words along with my delicious meal.
So next April swung around, and it was time to put my matzoh where my mouth was. With the help of my mom and my brother's girlfriend, Kelly, as well as some of my cousins, I prepared several quartered roasted chickens and a huge pot of lemon zesty rice from Martha Stewart, along with my own fancy asparagus recipe - with aioli instead of wasabi butter. Unfortunately Aunt Jan did not make it to our house to taste the food she inspired. Although maybe that was for the best, because I have to admit it wasn't my best meal. The aioli was great, but the rice was kind of gummy, and I had a little trouble with my timing trying to have everything warm at the same time.
This year I'm determined to do better. Jorie and I have already started brainstorming about the menu, and I had an idea that this delicious, savory roasted carrot soup would be a good first course. My mom, who is a soup maven and eats soup at just about every meal (this is one of her diets that she has invented, which also include the eat-anything-you-want-as long-as-you-use-chopsticks diet and the rice-cakes-and-V8-for-lunch diet) first introduced me to roasted carrot soup. It was delicious, far richer and more complex than the usual carrot soup I make. She made hers from a recipe in Parade magazine, the insert that comes with the Sunday newspaper.
I had plenty of carrots, so I set out to replicate the soup last week. Unfortunately I didn't have parsnips, fresh ginger, or the 2 hours it required to simmer the vegetables in the oven. I decided to speed things up by roasting the carrots separately for 45 minutes while I carmelized some onions. A quick simmer on the stovetop in some chicken broth and the soup flavors were blended and ready to puree and serve. Best of all I can make this ahead of time and bring it to Passover frozen. One less pot to juggle for me and Jorie!
Roasted Carrot Soup
Ingredients:
2 lbs carrots
5 sprigs thyme
3 large onions
8 cups chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon butter
salt and pepper to taste
crème fraiche
fresh chives or parsley, finely chopped for garnish
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375
Scrape thyme leaves from stems. Set aside.
Peel carrots and cut into quarters. Toss carrots in 2 Tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with thyme leaves and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Place on a baking sheet in a single layer and roast for 45 minutes.
While carrots are roasting, slice onions into thin slices. Heat butter and remaining Tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet. When foam has subsided, add onions and stir to coat with butter/oil mixture. Lower heat to medium low. Cook for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft and golden brown.
When carrots are finished, combine carmelized onions, roasted carrots, and chicken broth in a large stockpot. Add cayenne pepper and ginger. Stir well and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Puree soup with an immersion blender or in a batches using a conventional blender. If soup is too thick, add water until it reaches your desired consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.
Ladle into bowls and top with a dollop of creme fraiche and a sprinkling of chives or parsley.
Serves 6
