Grandma Jenny's stuffed cabbage

My father's mother was a fabulous cook of the Litvak variety.   There are many recipes for stuffed cabbage (in our family, holishkes or gewicklete kroyt) out there.  What made hers so much better than the others?  I think there are three "secrets":  she put flanken and/or stew meat and soup bones in the pot, which added a lot of flavor and richness to the sauce;  she used sour salt (citric acid) and NEVER vinegar or lemon juice to make it sour since you want the pure sweet and sour flavor and not the taste of vinegar or lemon; and   she added prunes to the pot, which made the sauce richer and tastier.

My grandmother's cabbage recipe died with her.  Barbara, my cousin Lonnie's wife, sat with her one afternoon to try to learn how to make it, but didn't get too far.  My grandmother was not a great teacher, and the concept of measuring ingredients was as foreign to her as the Queen's English.   I have tinkered with the recipe over the years, and found a lot of help in Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking , particularly in getting the sweet/sour balance of the sauce right, but departed from it in significant ways, especially in the use of bones and prunes.  Making this is a labor of love, with the accent on both labor and love, but well worth the effort. 

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients

Filling

• 2 to 2 1/2 pounds ground beef (not too lean -- chuck works well)
• 1/2 cup rice, boiled for 3 minutes (I like short grain pudding or risotto rice, but Carolina will work as well;  just avoid fragrant rices like jasmine or basmati)
• 3 eggs
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs (challah crumbs from last week's bread are best, but panko or any old breadcrumbs will suffice)
• 2 onions, coarsely grated
• Salt and pepper (depending on the quantity of meat and whether it is kosher, 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon of salt and about 40 grinds of a pepper mill;  use less if you are unsure and test as below)

Sauce

• 28 ounce can tomato puree
• 1 teaspoon sour salt 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup to 1 cup water or stock

For assembling the dish

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 heads of cabbage (you should be safe with one 4-5 pounder and one 3 pounder)
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 6 pieces flanken, about 2 pounds -OR- 1 to 1 1/2 pounds meaty soup bones and 1-2 pounds of stewing beef
• 1 pound pitted prunes

 Method:

1. Soften the cabbage leaves by your favorite method (either freezing and defrosting, blanching, or microwaving -- all are described following the recipe). I prefer freezing and defrosting.  Since you never know exactly how many usable leaves a cabbage will yield, I think it is a good idea to have two on hand.  You don't want to be caught short.
2. Set aside the larger cabbage leaves for stuffing, and the center of the cabbage and smaller leaves for the pot. You should have between 15-20 large leaves.
3. To make the filling, put the beef in a very large bowl, and make a hollow in the middle of it.  Break the eggs into the hollow and beat.  Add the remaining ingredients.  I prefer the full amount of salt and pepper, but you might want to cut down.  Mix well with your hands and set aside.  If you do not trust your instincts on seasoning, take a small piece and fry it quickly in a nonstick skillet and taste.  Adjust salt and pepper accordingly.
4. Combine the ingredients for the sauce and set aside.
5. Take a large, heavy ovenproof 6 to 8 quart casserole and oil it with the vegetable oil. 
6. Shred the reserved inner leaves of the cabbage as well as any torn leaves.
7. Set the shredded cabbage, chopped onions, prunes and meat on a cutting board in separate piles.
8. Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.
9. Put about 1/3 of the shredded cabbage and chopped onions in the bottom of the casserole.  Arrange 3 pieces of flanken (or the soup bones) on the bottom.
10. Stuff the cabbage leaves, starting with the largest leaves.  Lay a leaf on a cutting board with the top closest to you and the rib away from you.  If the rib is still very tough, cut it out.  (I find that this is less likely to happen with frozen defrosted leaves.) Take a small handful of beef and form it into a meat ingot of about 2 inches by 1 inch by 3/4 inch. Place it near the top of the cabbage leaf about 1inch from the end.  Fold the end of the cabbage over the ingot, and then fold over the two sides.  Roll the leaf up.  You should have a fairly compact roll. 
11. As each roll is done, place it in the pot to make one layer.  You will probably have about 8 rolls.  As the leaves get smaller, you will use somewhat less meat for each.
12. Scatter 1/2 of the prunes on top, and then top with 1/3 of the cabbage and chopped onions.  Put the remaining flanken or stew meat on top, and then arrange the remaining rolls on top.  If you have any meat filling left, you can either make them into meatballs and add them to the pot if there is room (they benefit from a quick browning first) or make them into old-fashioned hamburgers which are best pan-fried and served well-done. 
13. Top with the remaining prunes, cabbage and onions.
14. Pour the sauce ingredients over the stuffed cabbage.  It should come nearly to the top.  If not, add some water.
15. Place a  lightly oiled heatproof plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the pot over the cabbage.  This will weigh down the rolls slightly and improve their texture. 
16. Bring the pot slowly to the boil, cover, and then transfer to the oven.  If your pot is very full, put a pan that is larger than the casserole on a lower shelf in the oven.  Put some cold water in the pan.  This will catch boilovers and prevent you oven from smoking up and your fire alarm from going off. 
17. Cook for 3 hours. 
18. Take it out and cool off before refrigerating.
19. Reheat in the oven for a long time before serving 8 as a main course and 12-15 as an appetizer.  My grandmother would usually serve it with mashed potatoes or rice, but I think that all it needs is some challah to soak up the juices. 

Preparing the cabbage:  Although it takes planning, I find that freezing and defrosting the cabbage works best.  Start by removing the outer leaves of the cabbage.  I have read that the heads are so tight that this will remove any dirt, and that you actually add more contaminants by rinsing it with tap water at this point.  Who knows?  Core the cabbages carefully (you don't want to mess up too many leaves) and place in the freezer.  This takes up a lot of room, so be prepared.  Freeze for about 2 days, and then defrost in your refrigerator for about two days before proceeding with the recipe.  Alternatively, place one cored cabbage in a large pot, add boiling water, and after 5 minutes remove it and peel off those leaves which you can.  Replace the cabbage in the pot and continue until the leaves are too small to stuff.  You an also microwave the cabbage in a large microwave-safe dish for about 8 minutes, remove, peel off the leaves, and then return and zap some more.  I think that you can see why I prefer the freezing method, even if it takes up a lot of valuable freezer real estate and is a bit mafia-ish, sort of like having a head in your freezer. 

The meat:  To me, this is the key to the dish.  In addition to enhancing the flavor and texture, you have a good amount of meat that you can serve to those who claim not to like cabbage.  My grandmother would always use flanken but this was before chefs had discovered short ribs and it was considered a budget cut.  I find that meaty soup bones sold but kosher butchers are often bony flanken at less than half the price, and I use that for the bone layer.  For the meat layer, I would recommend chuck or kalechal, or even brisket if you can find it at a good price.

Sauce variations: I prefer scant, thicker sauce.  If you prefer a thinner one, substitute about 1 quart tomato juice for the puree and water.  You can use raisins if you must, but you will be missing out on the true experience.

Pulled Barbeque, Farkashert

The Jewish prohibition on pork goes deep.  This is not to say that there are no fans of the meat amongst the tribe.  But archeological excavations in ancient Canaan turned up pork bones in all settlements except for those of the Israelites. (For an interesting take on the Jewish taboo on pork and its possible origins, see this Smell Test by Shmarya Rosenberg in Tablet Magazine, where he discusses some insights inspired by Christopher Hitchens.  Don't read this near meal time.)  However, pork has numerous distinctive characteristics that make it a wonderful cooking medium -- witness the spread of pork belly to almost every high-end menu in the civilitzed world.  There is discussion in the tradition about whether pork is prohibted because it is disgusting or because it is delicious and the prohibition tests the faithful.  I definitely hold with the latter.

Pork is ultimately irreplaceable, but Jews have tried for centuries to substitute.  The most noble efforts were those of the Jews of Germany, represented in the US by the late and much lamented Bloch und Falk which made kosher cold cuts that tasted like treyfe cold cuts but out of veal, goose and who knows what.  In many recipes on this blog, I substitute vegetarian or turkey sausage for pork products.  However, it is more difficult to substitute for uncured fresh port.

A few years ago on Christmas day we went to a Kosher Gospel concert and brunch featuring Joshua Nelson. At the brunch, they served a creditable pulled barbeque made out of chicken thighs. This was in a spicy tomato sauce, and a classic pulled pork would be much less saucy. But, given the substitution of the main ingredient it is more than not made.  I have been playing around with this dish for a few years and found that a spice rub of vinegar, garlic, and smoky chili and paprika worked well in a home oven. Although I started making it with chicken, I have recently switched to turkey.  Although I prefer the taste of chicken in general, it makes no difference in this dish and the turkey is far easier, since  instead of needing two to three thighs to serve each person, one turkey thigh serves two to three. 

The following recipe serves 4 generously.  It can be multiplied -- I have made it with up to 10 thighs. It is mildly spicy, so increase the quantity of chitpotle chili if you want it spicier, though this is not always a great idea if you are serving a crowd.

Pulled Turkey Barbeque

Ingredients

• 2 turkey thighs, about 1 pound each

  Marinade

•  8 cloves peeled garlic
• 1 teaspoon chitpotle powder
• 2 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika
• 2 teaspoons ancho chili powder
• 1 tablespoon  mustard
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

  Remaining ingredients

• 8-10 cloves peeled garlic
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, quartered and sliced
• 1 medium sweet red pepper, quartered and sliced
• 1/4 sweet green pepper, sliced
• 1 jalapeno chili , quartered and sliced (optional, and remove seeds and ribs if you want it milder)
• 1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce (from a can is fine)
• 2 tablespoons smokey barbecue sauce (any good commercial sauce is fine)

 Method

1. Drop the garlic cloves for the marinade into a food processor or blender with the motor running to chop finely.
2. Add remaining marinade ingredients and process to have a smooth paste.  Add a bit more vinegar or water if you need to.
3. Rub the marinade into the thighs and set aside in the refridgerator for a day or two.
4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
5. Flatten 8 of remaining garlic cloves and slip under the turkey skin.  Put the thighs in a roasting pan in which they will fit rather snugly, and roast until tender, about 1 hour 15 minutes.  Particularly if the pan is large, the fat may begin to smoke, so after a half hour, pour some boiling water into the pan so that it doesn't.
6. Meanwhile, saute the peppers and onions on medium high in the oil in a nonstick skillet until soft and just beginning to brown.
7. Add the garlic, saute another minute, and then turn heat down to medium low and add the paprika. Saute another minute or so.
8. Add the tomato sauce and barbeque sauce, bring to a boil, turn heat down and simmer about 5 minutes.  Set aside until the turkey is done.
9. Check the turkey to see if it is tender and the meat pulls easily from the bones. Otherwise, cook about 10 minutes longer.  Remove from the oven and set aside for about 10-15 minutes until cool enough to handle.  Removed the skin, scrape off the garlic cloves, mash them and mix into the sauce.  Set the skin aside for other uses. (See below)
10. Pour off the juices from the turkey roasting pan and skim off the fat.  The easiest way to do this is to pour them into a Pyrex measuring cup and put it in the refrigerator or freezer until the fat rises to the top and can be removed more easily with a spoon.  If you can wait long enough, it will solidify. Discard the fat.  Unlike other rendered poultry fats, turkey fat is of little gastromic interest.   Add the juices to the sauce.
11. Deglaze the turkey pan.  If it is heatproof, add a little water to it and bring to the boil, scrapping up the juices that have stuck to the pan.  (If the dish is not heatproof, you can do this in the microwave.)
12. Shred the turkey.  This is ideally done by hand, which I consider to be kind of fun.  Cut the meat off the bones with a knife, which will allow it to cool more rapidly.  Separate it according to the musculature, and then pull the meat into long shreds with the grain.  As an alternative, you can hold the thighs down with a  fork, and to shred off the meat with another fork.  It works best it you use large sturdy serving forks here.   Don't be tempted to just cut it with a knife.  Proper shredding is one of the keys to success. 
13. Add the turkey to the sauce, and reheat either on top of the stove, or in an ovenproof serving dish.  You can either heat it on 350, or go for the long haul and leave it in a slow oven.  One of the beauty of poultry thighs is that their flesh stays moist long after the point where breasts would be like so much sawdust. 
14. Serves 4 generously.  Goes well with coleslaw, cornbread (I may post a pareve corn bread recipe soon) or garlic bread, and baked beans.  Serve with a variety of hot sauces. It can also be served on Kaiser rolls or hamburger buns as a sandwhich. 

What to do with the turkey skin?  Just eat it.  It will come out of the oven crisp, spicy and wonderul, but it won't be so appetizing for long.  So, after you scrape off the garlic for the sauce, eat as many skins as you want while they are still warm and crisp, and share the rest with people who you like if they are around.

Knife-peeled Chinese noodles

"I would like some noodles."  So read my niece (Amy's brother's daughter) Sarah's facebook page on Wednesday.  She was coming to dinner on Friday and even  provided a helpful link to last week's NY Times article  discussing the noodle resurgence in NY's Chinatown and its spread beyond to places like Hung Ry in the East Village.  So I took the bait.  Though I generally don't bake or make my own noodles or pasta, I was intrigued.  While I, and every other person who saw the video posted on the Times website probably wanted to make the hand-pulled noodles, I realized that it was post-graduate noodle making and I wasn't yet in middle school.  So I thought that it would be easy to do what are called knife peeled noodles.  This are noodles scraped off a hunk of dough into boiling water, a bit like spaetzle but more noodle-y.  I have had these in Chinatown, but the best version I have had was at the snack bar of the airport in Guilin in China.  The noodles are irregular in shape and tender and chewy at the same time.

I found that this was not as easy to execute as it sounds. I made the dough and got a fine coating of flour all over the kitchen kneading, slapping and generally abusing it into resilience.  This was kind of fun since it made it easy to slide around on the floor and I don't thing that Amy has noticed.  I sharpened a variety of  knives well to help me scrape off the dough.  They didn't do much good, and I found that the noodle strip invariably stuck to the dough and didn't fly into the boiling water as it was supposed to.  However, the picture above from the Times shows the cook using some specific implement, which definitely looks like it is worth a run down to Chinatown.  But, I look at this as the beginning of a long journey.   Expect more posts on this in the future.

I served the noodles with squash and ginger broth with roasted vegetables, adapted from Hung Ry and also published in the Times. Sarah was very happy. They would also be quite wonderful with the Uighur lamb stew which I blogged about a few months ago.  I made some significant changes in the recipe:  I roasted the squash that was used to make the broth rather than just simmering it with ginger.  For vegetables, I used oven-roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, pan-roasted butternut and kabocha squash, and pan-seared cremini mushrooms.  When you roast the vegetables for this recipe, however, do not use salt and use a vegetable or peanut oil or spray instead of olive oil. It may have just been the particular squashes (each squash, like each cheese is an individual), but we all found that the butternut added much more flavor than the kabocha.  (I could do the whole recipe here with my modifications, but this post is getting long enough already.)

I cobbled the noodle dough together from a variety of places on the web and some cookbooks.  This recipe serves 4-8 people, depending on their appetites. I may try it next time with bread or semolina flour, and keep you all posted.  This is the beginning of a long journey:


Knife-peeled noodles, cut 1

Ingredients

• 4 cups flour  (I used all purpose, next time I will try bread or semolina flour, though that latter would be very inauthentic.)
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 12 oz water
• up to 2 cups additional flour for kneading

Method

1. Put the 4 cups of flour in a large mixing bowl and mix in the cornstarch and the salt.  Slowly mix in the water until it starts to adhere into a sticky dough. 
2. Turn the dough out on to a floured surface.(I used a cutting board but could just as well have used the counter since flour got everywhere anyway.)
3. Dust your hands with flour and knead for 15-20 minutes.   This should be good exercise.  Don't be afraid to be rough with the dough.  You won't hurt it.  In addition to folding it over and pressing it with your heel, ever few minute slap the dough down hard on the board.  I don't know if this actually does any good, but it feels great and seems to relax the gluten  in the dough. You will knead to dust your hands, the dough and the work surface with flour several times.  I found I used well over a cup of additional flour during kneading.
4. When is the dough done?  Is Batman a transvestite?  The answer to both questions is "Who knows?"  But, when it feels both elastic and supple, you can stop kneading.  (Who knows still seems more accurate.)
5. Flour the dough, and wrap in in wax paper and let it rest for 15 minutes to a few hours. 
6. Bring at least 4 cups of water to the boil and add salt.
7. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 blobs, put on a board or hold in your hand, and shave off pieces of dough into the boiling water.  Think scraping gyros or shawarma but horizontally.  If this doesn't work, you can sort of cut thinish pieces of dough on the board and scrape them into the pot, but only do a few pieces at a time since they tend to stick together before they are in the boiling water.
8. Once you have shaved in all the dough, cook for 3-5 minutes.  Check the noodles.  They should range from tender to chewy but not be raw and floury.
9. Either scoop out the noodles with a strainer or drain in a colander.  If you are not serving immediately in soup, you can oil them lightly, leave them at room temperature and reheat them briefly in either boiling water or the soup.

Lamb shank ragu and the umami problem

In my move toward kashrut, one of the things that I miss more than anything else is the umami hit that you get when a good Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano meets a strong meat flavor.  For those of you not familiar with umami, it is the savoriness  associated with the amino acid glutamate, and with ingredients like mushrooms, meat broth, anchovies, and fermented foods like cheeses, cured meats, soy sauce and fish sauce.  I particularly miss putting cheese on a lamb shank ragu that I make, and I have been trying for several years to come up with a substitute.  I fancy that it is lamb ragu in the style of the Abruzzi region of Italy, but this is fancy and not fact.  It is just good, especially with plenty of grated cheese on top. (If you are used to eating ground meat sauces, the flavor and texture of a sauce made from meat shredded after having been cooked will be a revelation.)  But try as I might to develop an acceptable substitute,the closest I got was to use a duxelles-like crumble of fresh and dried mushrooms sauteed with shallots, anchovies and bread crumbs. However while tasty, it didn't add that much to the experience.

So, I wrote an email to the Splendid Table to see if I could pose my question to Lynne Rossetto Kasper.  If you aren't familiar with this radio show, you should be.  It beats much of the food shows on TV by far, and has a wonderful website as well. (One of their recipes for macaroni and cheese is my favorite.)   Much of second half of the show is devoted to readers questions, so I emailed mine in, figuring that Kasper, whose core expertise in is Italian food, would be the person to ask.  Somewhat to my surprise, I got a response from the show a few weeks later to see if I would talk to Lynne during the show.  They aired my question and her answer towards the end of the January 15 episode.  My question comes in the section "More calls" right after a trivia question about telling the future from cheese (not to be missed).

Lynne's opinion was that I was on the right track with the flavors that I was using in my mushroom-based topping, but that it is basically pointless to try to imitate the effects of grated cheese.  So she suggested incorporating umami flavors in the dish, particularly in the form of dried mushrooms (I also added a bit of anchovy), and topping it with toasted bread crumbs, which are actually a traditional pasta topping in Italy for those who cannot afford the cheese.  I tried it and she was right -- it is very different than cheese, but the flavors are intense, almost breathtaking,  and wonderful.  So, here is, with several variations:

Lamb Shank:  Ragu and two other ways

Basic recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 lamb shanks
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• handful of dried porcini mushrooms (about 1/2 ounce, pieces are ok)
• 2-4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 chili pepper (I use the medium hot long kind:  make sure it is whole and it will add flavor but not much heat to the sauce)
• 1 or 2 3-inch long sprigs of fresh rosemary, or 1 teaspoon dried
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 medium onion, chopped very finely
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• salt and black pepper
• 1-4 anchovy fillets (1 will add depth to the sauce, at 4 you will taste the anchovy;  my own inclination would be to use 2-3 but Amy can be anchovy averse, so I only used 1. See below for a discussion of the kashruth of fish and meat)
• 1/2 to one cup full-bodied wine  (not having anything Italian in the house, we cooked with and drank a spicy Catalonian wine, Claraval, which was an excellent pairing)
• 14 ounce can diced tomatoes (sorry to sound like a shil, but Muir Glen fire-roasted are great here)

If serving as ragu with pasta,

• 1/2 pound to one pound good quality tubular macaroni pasta or pasta with cavities (see below), depending on your carb limits
• toasted bread crumbs:  2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 cloves smashed and peeled garlic, and 1/2 cup bread crumbs, ideally homemade but any unseasoned variety is fine (see below)

Method

1. Heat oil on high in a large skillet with a cover or a casserole, dry shanks, add to the skillet, and brown well, turning to brown on all surfaces.  It will take between 15 and 20 minutes.  Turn the heat down if it starts to smoke.
2. Meanwhile, reconstitute the mushrooms.  Cover them with about 1 cup of water in a microwave safe container, cover, and microwave on 30% power for 3 minutes. Check the mushrooms to see if they are soft, and if not, microwave for another minute.  You can also pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms and leave them to soak for about an hour.
3. Rinse the mushrooms well in a sieve to remove all grit and chop finely.
4. Pour the mushroom liquid through a sieve lined with a coffee filter and set aside.  You may need to stir to help it go through.
5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
6. Pour the fat out of the skillet, add the olive oil, and heat on medium.  Add the chili, fresh rosemary and bay leaf, and when they start to color, add the onion and salt lightly.
7. Cook until the onion is soft and golden, and add the chopped mushrooms.  Cook on high until the onions and mushrooms brown.  They should be well-caramelized but not burnt. 
8. Add the garlic and cook on medium until the raw smell goes away.  Add the dried rosemary now if you are using it.
9. Turn heat down to low and add the anchovy fillets. Mash them into the onions garlic and mushrooms until they dissolve.  Keep the heat gentle or they will get bitter and fishy.
10. Add wine to the skillet and boil until reduced by at least half, scrapping up the glaze from the skillet if there is any.
11. Add mushroom liquid and boil down until reduced by about half.  
12. Add the tomatoes and bring to the boil.  Cook for a few minutes, then return the shanks to the skillet.
13. Spoon sauce over the shanks.  If the sauce does not come up to the bones, add some boiling water.  Add a few grindings of pepper and a little salt, cover, and place in the oven.
14. Bake for two and a half hours, turning halfway through.  If not extremely tender, return to the oven to cook for another 30 minutes to an hour.  You can also cook it on top of the stove on low heat. Make sure that the sauce barely simmers but does not boil.
15. Remove shanks and boil the sauce down until thick to taste. Taste and correct for salt and pepper, and spoon off some of the fat if you must.  See below for serving options.

Option #1: Plain braised lamb shanks.  Just serve the damn things, with a baguette to mop up the juices.  It only serves two this way, since  there is not good way to share a lamb shank.  You might want to sprinkle some chopped flat-leaf parsley on top.

Option #2:  Lamb ragu: When you remove the shanks from the sauce, and reduce the sauce. If you wanted to be authentically Italian, you would probably serve the sauce with pasta as a first course and then the shanks as a second course.  I am not so into authenticity, especially with this recipe, so I take the meat of the bones.  If it doesn't come right off, they shanks aren't tender enough and should cook some more. With two forks, shred lengthwise with the grain.  Return the meat to the sauce. Scoop the marrow out of the larger bones if you can and add to the sauce.  Boil pasta until just barely al dente.  Toss with a bit of pareve margarine (or butter if you don't separate milk and meat) and serve sprinkled lightly with toasted breadcrumbs (see below) or, depending on your practice, freshly grated cheese.  Since the whole purpose of this exercise was to find a way to get the umami satisfaction without the cheese, do me a favor and try it once with the breadcrumbs and without the butter.  By the peculiar math of boning meat, this will serve 4.   The ragu can also be made with lamb neck, which is a lot cheaper but not quite as good and much more difficult to handle in the browning and boning. 

Option #3: Lamb with beans:  When then lamb has cooked for about 2 hours, add about 2 cups slightly undercooked (1 cup raw)  cannelini, navy or great northern beans to the pot.  Cook until beans and lamb are tender.  You might want to increase the rosemary for this.   Serve this to two extremely hungry people.  If you want to be really fancy, top with some untoasted bread crumbs mixed with a bit of olive oil  and place the skillet or pot under the broiler for a few minutes to develop a light crust.  Be very careful not to burn. 

Fish and meat and kashrut:  As if there aren't already enough rules in Judaism, the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch maintain that there are health issues with eating fish and meat together.  This makes life even more difficult than it needs to be.  It can even cause problems with using Worcestershire sauce, because it is anchovy-based.  However, I discussed this matter with Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, a true talmid chacham and a mensch who could make much better use of social media.  He said that the halachic source is originally a prohibition of eating fish and meat on the same plate, lest a fish bone get mixed in with the meat which could be a choking risk. Because this combination of fish and meat was potentially hazardous and was declared unhealthy, the belief that eating fish and meat together is unhealthy spread as well.  Some of the people who care about these things have a way of producing additional stringencies on top of the original prohibitions.  At this particular stage of my spiritual development, I am not concerned about this, and doubt that I ever will be so machmir (stringent) as to care.  However, if you are, you could always use a teaspoon or less of fish-less Worcestershire sauce or Bragg's aminos, though these would add tamarind and soy notes that would be alien to the spirit of this dish. 

The bread crumbs:  These are simplicity itself, and nice not only on this ragu, but also on other pastas (for example, broccoli or cauliflower boiled or roasted and then sauteed with garlic and anchovy and served with orecchiette or penne).  If kashrut matters to you it is a very nice way of fitting a pasta into a multi-course meat meal.  If it doesn't it is just good and very traditional in the south.  Heat a few spoons of olive oil on medium in a small skillet.  Add 2 cloves of garlic, smashed and peeled, and saute until aromatic and just beginning to color.  Remove the garlic and add 1/2 cup bread crumbs, ideally coarse homemade ones, but unflavored store bought are fine (that is what I used).  Panko would even work here and would add a nice texture.   Toast the crumbs, stirring frequently, until a medium brown and remove from the heat. It should take around 5 minutes, depending on heat and the type of skillet you use.  Be very careful not to burn them. They will smell wonderful when you remove them from the heat.  Resist the temptation to taste them until they are cool.  They smelled so good that I put a spoon in and as I brought it to my mouth, I thought to myself, "This is really dumb."  I popped them in and heard my mouth sizzle.  I put an ice cube in my mouth as soon as I realized what was happening, but the whole inside of my mouth turned into a large blister.  But boy, were they good.  Use these sparingly though.  You want them to add texture and flavor, but you want to taste the sauce not the breadcrumbs.

The pasta:  This is the place to use hard wheat macaroni pasta, not soft egg pasta.  You should never apologize for using good dried pasta.  Good shapes would be those with crevices to trap bits of the sauce:  rigatoni, orecchiette, penne, cavatelli.  I actually used Trader Joe's organic penne, which are quite good.  Don't use spaghetti here.  Of course, pasta can represent a problem for a Friday dinner, if you are committed to both al dente pasta and to not cooking after sundown. Once again, I am not there yet (but one day might be, unless my wife has something to say about it) but I couldn't resist the temptation to try.  So, I undercooked the pasta (about 4 minutes after it came to the boil when the package called for 9) tossed it with the sauce and the margarine, put it in a serving dish and left it in a 200 degree oven covered with foil for a few hours.  When we ate, the pasta was cooked through, but still firm.

Making it in advance:  Of course you can, with any variation.  It also makes it easier to degrease.  If you are doing ragu, just mix with the pasta the day you are serving, right before serving if gastronomic considerations are paramount.

Veal, cauliflower and tahini stew, and how memory works, and doesn't

Multitasking becomes difficult as one ages, and this can lead to culinary disasters, as I have noted in reporting on nearly causing a house fire when making kadaif.  One of the nice things about stews is that they are made for multitasking.  You can leave them simmer while you do other things, something very useful for those of us who work at home.  However, it is a mistake to try browning while multitasking.

The other day, I made this veal stew while working at home on a project that involved comparing several proposals and therefore a lot of attention to detail.  You have to brown the veal well, best done in a few batches so as not to crowd the pan and cause the meat to steam. The first batch of meat came out beautifully, and I got a bit complacent with the second batch and returned to my proposals while I left the veal to brown. I could smell the veal browning nicely from where I was sitting and then forgot about it as I was involved in work. Our friendly fire alarm screaming "Fire! Fire!" reminded me that this was not a good idea.    I removed the meat, which was slightly scorched but not burnt, though the meat glaze in the skillet was to far gone to use.  (The hard gunk that coats a pan after you brown meat is really heavily reduced and caramelized meat broth, and deglazing is the process of dissolving this with liquids to add lots of flavor to your dish.) Even though I couldn't use the meat glaze, and transferred the veal to a new pan while I soaked the skillet, the dish was still pretty good. 

What is funny is that even though I forgot  about my browning meat, this recipe is inspired by I dish that I had some time around 1975.  It was a veal with tahini served by a restaurant called Kineret that I think was located on 7th Avenue and Barrow Street in the Village.  I went with two friends who didn't really get along (I haven't seen either one in nearly 20 years) so it was not a particularly pleasant evening.  But the food was, and I remember it over three decades later.  I just couldn't remember that I had started browning meat in the other room a few minutes before.  Go figure.

Veal, cauliflower and tahini stew

Ingredients

• 2 pounds stewing veal, ideally from the shoulder, cut in 1 inch cubes
• olive oil
• 1 medium onion, very finely chopped
• salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1 head cauliflower
• olive oil spray
• tahini sauce:  1 tablespoon to 1/4 cup tahini, 1 clove garlic, coarse salt, the juice of one lemon, and some water

Method

1. Heat a large skillet (ideally not nonstick, since it produces better browning and glaze) on high and add 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
2. Add half of the veal, drying the pieces as you put them in.  Turn with tongs to brown on all sides.  Remove the veal to a bowl and add the rest, adding a little more oil if necessary.  Don't leave the room while browning.  Bring a book if you get bored.  Remove the veal to the bowl with the rest and season it all lightly with salt and pepper.
3. Add a bit more oil to the skillet, and add the onion and a bit of salt and saute until it is just starting to brown.
4. Add the allspice, Aleppo pepper, and about 10 grinds of a pepper mill.  Saute a minute.
5. Add the crushed garlic to the skillet and saute another minute.
6. Return the meat to the skillet, cover, turn heat down to low and stew gently for about an hour. The meat should cook in its own juices, but check it occasionally to stir and if it dries out, add a few spoons of boiling water.  Check it after an hour to see if it is tender and succulent.  It should take between and hour and 90 minutes to get tender.
7. While the veal is cooking, roast the cauliflower.  Preheat oven to 425, separate florets, put on a large baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed with olive oil spray, spray again, and bake 20 minutes.  Broil until nicely browned but not burnt.  (Again, it is a good idea to stay in the kitchen while you are broiling the cauliflower.
8. Make the tahini sauce: smash the garlic with coarse salt to make a puree, and stir in the tahini.  Stir in the lemon juice.  The tahini will become very stiff.  Dribble in the water, a few drops at the time.  The sauce will stiffen some more, and then loosen to the texture of a thick cream. It is hard to tell exactly how much water you will use, but it is usually approximately equal to the amount of tahini, or a little more.  The quantity of tahini you will use is up to you.  A sauce based on 1 tablespoon of tahini will add a certain je ne sais quoi to the stew, but it will not be a noticeable tahini sauce.  The larger quantity will.  Both are good, and it is up to you.
9. When the veal is tender, Add the cauliflower and tahini sauce and cook for 10 minutes more.  Taste and correct for salt.
10. Serves 4 generously.  This is very good with roasted squash, rice, and pita or Uzbek bread.

Make ahead note:  If you want to make this dish in advance, it is a good idea to prepare the components separately. All can be prepared  a day or more in advance.  Combine veal, cauliflower and tahini when you reheat.

Variation with leftovers:  If you have some leftovers, you can try this variation.  Take 1/2 pound of cremini mushrooms, wash and slice.  (To wash mushrooms forget about washing them individually with a damp paper towel.  Just dump them in a bowl of water, swish them around, and when you take them out, dry them with the paper towel.  It is both faster and more effective than the other method.)  Saute the mushrooms on high until well browned in a nonstick skillet with a little olive oil.  Add the leftover stew, cover, and heat until warm.  The dish will have an entirely different character.  

Khachapuri: Georgian cheese bread

Back in June I was delegated with cooking a Father's Day dinner, and I made this cheese bread, sort of a flat Georgian (as in Tiblisi, not Atlanta) calzone.  I ran into Naomi on the street and was bragging/complaining about having to cook my own dinner that day and I told her what I was making.  She said that I had to send her the recipe for the khachapuri.  I said I would soon, five months have passed, and since today is her birthday, I thought I should finally get around to posting it.

This is lightly adapted from the recipe in Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, which consists mostly of recipes from Greece and Macedonia, Syria, Southeastern Turkey (especially Gaziantep), and Georgia.  Many of Wolfert's later books have been justly criticized for being a pastiche of recipes from magazine articles, and Georgia doesn't really qualify as Mediterranean, but most of the recipes in this book are REALLY good, so who cares.  Believe it or not, I have tried a lot of khachapuri recipes in my day, and this one works the best.  I have modified it by making the crust a bit softer, and the filling a tangier, cheesier (American cheese consumption has tripled since 1970 so this would seem to be consonant with contemporary tastes) and more custardy.

So happy birthday Naomi -- maybe Tabitha will like this.  Most people do:

Kachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup plain yogurt (lowfat is ok, nonfat isn't, nor is the thick Greek yogurt)
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• large pinch salt
• 6 ounces pound Greek or Bulgarian feta, or a bit more if you want, crumbled
• 8 ounces fresh salted mozzarella
• Salt and pepper to season
• 3 eggs, beaten well
• 1 tablespoon or a bit more of butter or oil to cook

Method

1. Set aside 1/4 cup of flour for dusting when you roll out the dough (you may need more). Put another 1/4 cup of flour in a mixing bowl,  blend in the oil and then the yogurt, stirring in the same direction. 
2. With a fork, mix the remainder of the flour with the cornstarch, baking soda and salt.  Add to the mixture in the other bowl a bit at a time, continuing to stir in the same direction.  When the dough being to adhere, dust with the flour that you set aside cover with a towel and set aside for 2 hours.  You can also put the dough in a plastic bag in the fridge overnight at this point.
3. Mix the cheeses, salt and pepper (I like it peppery, about 15 turns of the grinder) and the eggs.
4. Divide the dough in 2 even pieces, and pat one into a flat dish on a floured surface where you can roll it out.  Roll the dough to a circle about 10 inches, flouring the dough and the rolling pin and being careful not to break it.  If you can't get it quite this big, that is OK, just plan on using a bit less of the cheese filling.  
5. Put half the cheese filling in a disk in the center, leaving a large border around, about 5 inches.  
6. Bring the four edges of the dough together like an envelope to cover the filling and pinch with your fingers.  Pat into a 7 inch disk. Don't worry if it is not perfectly round. 
7. Repeat with the remaining dough and cheese.
8. Heat the butter on low in two 8 or 9 inch nonstick or cast iron skillets and transfer the pies to them, flat bottom side down. 
9. Cover and cook the pies about 15 minutes,  flip, cover and cook 15 minutes more.  By cooking the seamless side down first the top side will cook lightly, making it less likely that the cheese will leak.  Even if it does when you flip it, don't worry, it will just turn into tasty crusty cheese.
10. Ideally, these should be served at once, piping hot, but they can also be made in advance, wrapped in foil, and reheated in the oven.  They will even last for a few days in the fridge.  I have never tried freezing them.  
11. They are traditionally served with tkemali, a Georgian sour plum sauce.  Since this is not readily available, I have served it with prune or rhubarb sauce or a sour Indian chutney out of a jar. It is also just fine by itself. See the recipes below.

One large pie: You can also make a single large pie by rolling the dough into a 14 inch circle and using a large 12-inch skillet to cook it. You will have a pie about 10 inches round. It will look much more impressive, but also be more difficult to  handle, so you are better off making the two pies the first time you try it.

Sauces:  Saute about 3 cloves of sliced garlic in oil until soft but not brown.  Add a sliced fresh red or green chili with the seeds, or 1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes.  Add a cup or two of sliced rhubarb (in the spring) or pitted sliced Italian prune plums (in the fall) , 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and if you want it a bit sweet, 1 tablespoon of brown or white sugar.  Cook for about 10 minutes until it becomes a sauce.  Add a handful of chopped fresh coriander and cook a few minutes more.  This chutney also goes nicely with roast chicken. I have never tried it with cranberries in the late fall or winter, but I don't see why it wouldn't work, though I would add more sugar.

Tofu makhani

I have been meditating for almost two years, generally using a mindfulness practice.  One focuses on the breath, letting sensations and thoughts arise as they come up, noticing them, and letting them pass without attachment.  The biggest challenge that I face in mindfulness is letting go of my planning thoughts, especially planning meals.  Much of my time in meditation is spent desperately trying to let go of the plans for my next dinner or Shabbat meal.  This generally takes the form of menu planning, but on occasion focuses on specific dishes. Sometimes it is even productive, if not mindful, and leads to a successful meal or a new dish.  Last Friday morning I was sitting at home, and spent much of my time worrying about what to serve with a meal of vegetarian hot borscht, basmati rice with mung beans, Kashmiri collards and Sri Lankan sweet potatoes, a very low protein meal.  My attention shifted to tofu, and then a dish that I will call tofu makhani emerged in my consciousness. (Do you think I am kidding?)  This is vegetarian version of murgh makhani, a dish of tandoori chicken or chicken tikka served in a spiced tomato sauce with butter and cream.  It was probably one of those treatments of leftovers that took the already delicious leftovers to a whole new level of deliciousness.

Lord help me, but I never thought that I would prepare a dish like this, which is based on tofu marinated in tandoori spices with fake pareve chicken broth powder, then baked and broiled, and served in a sauce.  The components are like independent modules.  The tofu, inspired by the method of abusing tofu used at The Cheese Factory in Wisconsin Dells, can be used with other sauces or none at all.  The marinade and the sauce are inspired by various recipes of Madhur Jaffrey's.  The sauce could be used for all sorts of other things.  It is one of those sauces that would even make floor tiles edible. (Another is raw cashew chutney, about which I will post shortly.)  My current state of spiritual development precludes me from using it as originally intended, with tandoori chicken, however, it would be good with grilled or fried paneer cheese, many roasted vegetables (especially cauliflower), fish (saute it first or it will make the sauce watery), and if you want to get elaborate, vegetarian kofta (meatballs).

This dish is much easier than it sounds.  It helps to demonstrate, if anyone needs the proof, that tofu or vegetarian food need not be health food. Here is how you make it:


Tofu makhani

Ingredients

For tofu:

• 2 pounds extra firm tofu, each cut into 6 "cutlets"
• 10 cloves of garlic (I use one package of the pre-peeled garlic)
• 2 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon mace
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 2 tablespoons Osem pareve chicken soup powder, optional (forgive me)
• juice of 2 limes
• 2-4 tablespoons vegetable oil
• salt (use more if you don't use the soup powder)
• 1/4 cup water or more to make an easily spreadable paste and help dissolve the soup powder
• Vegetable oil spray

For sauce and to serve:

• 10-20 cloves garlic
• 1 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1-4  tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 sticks cinnamon (regular cinnamon, i.e. cassia, preferred here)
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cloves
• 12 black peppercorns
• 8 green cardamom pods
• 2 whole dried red chilies, or to taste
• 3 cups tomato puree
• salt
• 1-2 cups heavy cream, to taste and depending on your cardiologists advice
• 1-4 tablespoons sweet butter cut into pats and softened at room temperature
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh coriander

Method

1. To make the marinade, chop the garlic and ginger in a food processor or blender.  Add the spices and the other ingredients through the salt, and puree until a paste.  Add water as desired to make it a loose paste.
2. Smear the paste over the tofu and put in a container in the refrigerator.  Let marinate for at least 2 hours, or as long as 24.
3. When ready to cook,preheat the oven to 450, and remove the tofu from the refrigerator.
4. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil, and spray liberally with the oil spray.
5. Remove the tofu from the marinade, scrape off most of the excess, and put on the baking sheet.  Spray the top liberally with the oil spray.
6. Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes.
7. Broil on high for 5 minutes, to brown the top lightly, being careful not to burn.
8. Meanwhile, start the sauce.  Take the butter out to soften now so you don't forget. 
9. Puree the onions, garlic and ginger in a processor or blender.
10. Heat the oil on high in a very large skillet, nonstick if you are using less oil.
11. Add the whole spices and cook until they puff and begin to change color, but be careful not to burn.
12. Add the paste from the blender (averting your face) and cook on high for about 3 minutes stirring constantly, or until it looses its raw aroma.  Be careful not to brown.
13. Add the tomato puree, about 1 teaspoon of salt or to taste, and cook on high, stirring occasionally, or until the oil begins to separate and it turns into a sauce, about 10-15 minutes.  Be careful not to scorch, especially if you use a regular skillet. Add a bit of water if it reduces too quickly.
14. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the cream.  Stir well to incorporate and cook about 10 minutes or more to reduce and thicken.  Taste for salt and correct seasonings.
15. Add tofu to the sauce and reheat on low.  Add the butter and stir in carefully so as not to break the tofu, and heat until it melts in.
16. Remove tofu to a serving dish, pour the sauce over, garnish with chopped fresh coriander, and serve.
17. Serves 6.

Make ahead tips:  If you don't plan to serve this right away, prepare slightly differently.  Put the broiled tofu in a baking dish, pour the warm sauce over, and dot with the butter.  Cover and leave in a 200-225 degree oven for up to 2 or even 3 hours until ready to serve.  Garnish with coriander.

The marinade:  There was a lot of discussion at the table when we served this as to how much difference the marinade made to the final results.  While I thought that the marinade could be simplified drastically, everyone else seemed to think it was essential and said to leave it alone.  Next time I will try it with just onions, garlic, lime juice, salt and garam masala. 

Variations:  You could serve the tofu in many other kinds of sauces.  Any Indian style tomato sauce would work well, even without the cream.  You could also try some of those jarred Indian sauces that they have in the market now, though I never would.  You can vary the marinade to something more European (say onion, garlic, salt, soup powder, water and some herbs) and serve it in a mushroom and marsala sauce or a mushrooms and sour cream sauce.  Go wild! It's only tofu.

Mexican Brisket in the Style of Syrian Jews

I am not a competitive person.  Last year, one of my birthday dinners was prepared by my friend Jay and it was the Mexican brisket recipe that I blogged on last November.  So, when they came for a birthday Shabbat dinner last Friday (his wife's birthday is the same week as mine), I had to prepare a better Mexican-style brisket.

This recipe is 100% inauthentic.  It was inspired by a broadcast in March 27, 2010 of the Splendid Table, when  Lynne Rossetto Kasper interviewed Patty Jinich about the Jewish cooking of Mexico.  Amongst other things, they discussed the happy marriage of Mexican and Jewish cooking, especially the cooking of Jews from Syria.  Mexico City has a significant Syrian Jewish community,  and I thought that it would be fun to try a brisket in this style.  So, I used tamarind, apricots and allspice, very typical of Syrian food, along with ancho and mulato chilies and other Mexican herbs and spices. The recipes in the back of my mind when I prepared this were Jennifer Abadi's Chicken with Apricots from A Fistful of Lentils, and Diane Kennedy's Pollo Enchilado from her Mexican Regional Cooking.  I don't think that cooking and serving a whole brisket is typical of either Mexican cooking or Syrian Jewish food, but it works well here and the long cooking allows the meat to absorb all the flavors. Modesty aside (blogs are not the place for modesty), it was magnificent.  Jay said that this was better than his. But then, I'm not competitive.

If anyone is actually familiar with the cooking of Mexican and/or Syrian Jews, I would love to hear your reaction. 

Mexican Brisket in the Style of Syrian Jews

Ingredients

• 3-4 pound brisket, top-of-rib roast or similar cut (fatty second cut brisket is probably best -- this is soul food, not health food)
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 6 dried chiles, a combination of ancho and mulato
• 25 almonds with the skin on
• 4 cloves
• 8 black peppercorns
• 1 stick Mexican cinnamon (see below)
• 1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped
• salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (if unavailable, substitute a teaspoon of paprika and a pinch of cayenne)
• 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes (I use Muir Glen fire roasted)
• 3/4 cup tamarind paste (or substitute 1-2 tablespoons concentrate -- see below)
• 1-2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup dried apricots
• 6-8 whole medium potatoes, peeled (medium starchy rather than waxy or russet is what I used)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet or roasting pan, and brown the meat on high.  Since the shape will be irregular, it will not become uniformly brown.  Don't sweat it.
3. Meanwhile, toast the chilies lightly on a cast iron skillet.  Snip them open with kitchen scissors and remove as many of the seeds and veins as you can.  
4. Remove the meat from the skillet to a roasting pan or a plate, and saute the chilies in the fat remaining on medium heat.  They will become slightly crisp.  Be careful not to burn or they will become bitter. Remove to a blender.  
5. Add the almond, cloves, peppercorns and cinnamon to the skillet and saute gently until they swell and the spices become aromatic.  Add to the blender.
6. Add the onions to the skillet, salt lightly and saute until soft but not brown. Add the allspice, oregano, thyme and Aleppo pepper and saute a few minutes until aromatic.
7. Add the tomatoes, tamarind, brown sugar, Worcestershire and a teaspoon of salt and simmer about 3 minutes to combine.  Taste the sauce which should be balanced between sweet, sour and salty, with the sour notes dominating since the apricots and chilies will add additional sweetness.  Correct seasonings with more tamarind, salt, brown sugar or Worcestershire to taste.  Add to the blender.
8. Blend until well pureed.  It may take a few minutes and  need a little coaxing, but you should do OK if you work your way up from a slow to high speed.  I find that a good blender does a much better job than a food processor at breaking down the chilies and cinnamon stick.
9. Put a little sauce on the bottom of a large flattish roasting pan.  Put the meat on top and the potatoes around.  Top with the apricots and pour the rest of the sauce over it.  Cover the dish with foil or a cover if it comes with one.
10. Put the dish in the oven, turn the heat down to 325, and bake for 3-4 hours until the meat is very tender.  Check about an hour before done and add a bit of boiling water if the sauce looks like it is starting to scorch.
11. Slice meat against the grain and on an angle, and  return to the sauce, and keep warm until you serve.  This is nice served with just challah and the potatoes which absorb lots of flavor from the sauce.  If you don't make it on Shabbat, corn tortillas would be very welcome.  It would also go well with rice or with sliced grilled polenta.  This quantity will serve 6 people generously.

Caution:  The sauce is delicious but dangerous to all kinds of fabrics.  It is similar to a class of moles called manchamanteles which  are made with chilies and fruit and translates literally as "table cloth stainers."  Believe it. My wife and I honeymooned in Mexico (Mexico City, Oaxaca and San Miguel D'Allende) and we ruined an article of clothing every day of our trip because of the chili sauces.  Perhaps the future of indelible inks lies in the combination of chilies and lipids.

Make ahead notes:  Unless you want to spend all day in the kitchen, this dish is best made in advance. Add a bit of boiling water before you reheat it to thin the sauce a bit and prevent scorching. Leave the meat whole.  I find that when people prepare a brisket in advance and slice it before letting it sit and reheating it, it tastes like leftovers and is a waste of effort.  You can also cook it for 2 hours the first day and another two the day you plan to serve it. However, it takes a long time for the meat to come up to cooking temperature if it has spent the night in the refrigerator.    The leftovers are great with soft corn tortillas.

Cinnamon: Mexicans are very particular about their cinnamon, which they call canela and is also known as true cinnamon or Ceylon cinnamon.  What we generally call cinnamon is actually cassia.   (Who knew?) True cinnamon is milder, sweeter, and much softer.  Cassia is harder and sharper.  Almost all ground cinnamon sold in American groceries is cassia, unless it is labeled otherwise.  If you cannot find true cinnamon, I would use 1 teaspoon of ground regular cinnamon (cassia) and add it with the other ground spices to the sauteed onions.

Tamarind:  Syrian Jews would generally use a sauce of tamarind and sugar that you prepare yourself or buy in a few stores in Brooklyn or Mexico City.  You can also use prepared tamarind paste, which is even available heckshered now, or make your own which is not that hard.  Take a block of tamarind (available in Indian and Southeast Asian groceries) about the size of an egg and put in in a container with 1 cup of water, cover and zap in the microwave for 5 minutes.  Let it sit until cool, and the press the liquid and paste though a wire strainer, leaving the seeds and other debris behind.  This doesn't take long and is rather therapeutic, and should give you the right amount for this recipe.  You can always add more Worcestershire, which is tamarind based.  A concentrate like Tamcom would be a last resort for me.

The absolute best latke recipe

Hanukah starts tomorrow, so nobody should miss out on what I think is the absolute best latke recipe in the world, which is based on one that comes from, of all places, Reform Judaism magazine. (I may have some problems with the movement, but they do publish a good magazine, not like the dreck that United Synagogue produces for the Conservative movement.) The original recipe is by Tina Wasserman, and my version is fartaytscht und farbessert in some significant ways, but she deserves a lot of credit for making her method known to the world.

This is the only really good recipe that I have found using a food processor rather than a hand grater. Even most of today's hand graters don't work all that well -- the holes are too coarse or too fine. My grandmother used to use something that looked like a piece of wire fence, though I haven't seen anything like it in years. So save your knuckles, and try these.  Be aware that latkes, like pizza, bagels and chopped liver, are very personal foods.  They have to be just right (how your better-cook grandmother made them) or they won't quite do.  Some people like only coarse shreds so the latkes practically fall apart.  I think that they are crazy but who am I to argue.  Others like it much more onion-y.  I have even been told that my latkes lack tam (flavor).  Again, though I generally go for strongly flavored foods, I like my latkes with a whiff of onion and would prefer not to taste it all
night.  But if you swing differently, by all means use two onions instead of one. 

I recently made a double batch of these latkes  with six pounds of potatoes to freeze for a party.  It yielded about 60  latkes and took 90 minutes including cleanup.  Plan accordingly.


Latkes

1. Peel 6 large Yukon Gold potatoes, about 3 pounds. Put in cold water.
2. Grate the potatoes in a food processor on the shredding blade. Immediately run under cold water and squeeze dry.
3. Change the blade on the processor to the usual grinding blade and grind an onion to a coarse puree. Add about 1/4 of the grated potatoes and puree these as well. Add salt (lots, about a tablespoon of kosher salt) some pepper, and 2-3 eggs, and mix briefly.
4. Stir all of this into the rest of the grated potatoes.
5. Mix in about 1/4 cup of flour, though you will need more later. (Most recipes call for matzah meal, but after much experimentation, I think that flour works best here.)
6. Heat fat in a skillet. We usually haul down my mother-in-law's old electric skillet for this one. Stainless or cast iron would also work, but non-stick is a waste here. For the fat, we usually use Crisco. You're frying latkes and you're going to worry about transfats? It should be at least 3/4 inch deep. The more fat, the less it cools when you put the latkes in, the crisper and less greasy they will be.
7. If using an electric skillet, heat it to 375; otherwise, heat it on medium high and test the fat with a piece of bread. If it bubbles, it is ready. Use a frying thermometer if you have one.
8. Put large tablespoons of the potato batter in the fat, but don't press them down. Fry about 3 minutes on a side. The later batches tend to cook quicker than the earlier ones. Try one latke first. If it looks to liquid (you will know that it is if it disintegrates in the skillet) add more flour. If it just spreads out into a pancake and holds together, you are good to go.
9. Drain the latkes on crumpled paper towel on top of a paper bag. Serve as hot and as fresh as you can.
10. As the batter sits, some of the juices will separate. Drain them out, and add about a tablespoon more flour at a time until the batter isn't liquidy. Also, you will probably need to skim out some of the solids so they don't burn and add more fat to the pan.  Just be sure to bring it back up to cooking temperature before adding more batter. 

Accompaniments? Some people like applesauce. (I think homemade is wasted here, but I am willing to be proven wrong.) I like sour cream, especially with a little smoked salmon on top. I think my mother-in-law said that when she was young, they would just sprinkle them with sugar. Before he had to worry about hypertension, my father liked them plain with some coarse salt.

How many does it serve?  Who knows?  The three pounds of potatoes will make about 25-30 latkes, which I would say serves 4-6 as the main event of the dinner.  But, a lot depends on what else you are serving.  With brisket?  Figure 2 each.  With sour cream and applesauce, maybe following a mushroom barley soup or tuna salad?   Figure 5 each.  Now that everyone is watching their carbs, it may go further.  If there are teen boys present, all bets are off.

Can I make them in advance? No, not really. But if you have a life and a large number of guests, say anything more than 3, you may want to. You can make them earlier in the day, drain them on toweling, and then leave them at room temperature for a few hours. Reheat in a 350 oven in a single layer on baking sheets. You can also freeze them, on sheets in a single layer, and then store them once frozen in a bag. Reheat them the same way, just a bit longer. For some reason, they tend to get gluey if refrigerated.

Why are these the absolute best latkes in the world? Coarsely shredded potato latkes fall apart and get too greasy. Latkes made from processed, pureed potatoes are just boring. This recipe gives you the texture of the shredding, the body of the ground potato and no bloody knuckles. Beyond this, there are many keys to latke success:  salting well, plenty of fat, frying soon after the mixture is prepared and adding flour or draining water as the mixture sits. Several factors keep the latkes from discoloring: rinsing and draining potatoes and shreds, working relatively fast so that the batter doesn't discolor, and using a light colored potato. There are few things as unappetizing as a gray latke.

To peel or not to peel? This is very controversial. If you use a light skinned potato and rinse quickly and properly, you should be OK. Don't even dream of trying this with russets (baking potatoes). Some people swear that the skins give incomparable texture and flavor. However, I think that the real reason that I peel is to make Bengali potato skins (potato skins sauteed in mustard oil with white poppy seeds, chick pea flour, and a touch of chili). Peeling potatoes for latkes makes Hanukah a great time to accumulate enough skins to make this dish, which is probably my daughter's favorite. She is coming home this weekend, so we will be prepared.

Why Crisco? I don't know. This is what my mother-in-law used so it is what I use. My grandfather said that in Pruzhane they would fry them in goose fat. I wonder if the fat could have gotten hot enough to crisp them, but they must have tasted delicious. There must be something about the crystalline structure of solid fats that contributes to the texture. And there is a certain visual poetry generally denied to Jews who don't cook with lard of seeing a vast amount of Crisco melt in a skillet. But use oil if you must.

Sweet potato and pecan pancakes for Thanksgiving morning breakfast

I usually post recipes soon after I make them, so that any of the latest tweaks and improvements can be included. I haven't made this recipe for a few years, but I am posting it tonight since as soon as I make it tomorrow morning , we have to clean up and leave for Worcester, Massachusetts for an intimate Thanksgiving dinner with 50 of our favorite people. My daughter is home, however briefly, for Thanksgiving and I promised her I would make these pancakes, in part as an incentive to get her up and us on the road early. It worked as well for Harry and for Andrew and Bruce, friends who were staying with us. Besides, they are fabulous and worth making even if you don't have a long awaited guest to feed, and they will hold you to the main meal later.

Sweet potato and pecan pancakes

1. Bake a large sweet potato at 350 degrees for about 1 ½ hours or until very tender. Cool, peel and mash. You will need about 1 ¼ cups for the pancakes. This is best done the night before. (Any leftover sweet potato is fine as long as it dosen’t have too much seasoning.
2. Sift together 1 ½ cups flour (you may include up to ½ cup whole wheat if you want, but don’t overdo it along with 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.
3. Put the sweet potato puree in a separate bowl. Add ¼ cup melted butter (ideally) or vegetable oil, 2 beaten eggs, and 1 ½ cups milk. Stir until you have a smooth puree.
4. Stir the moist ingredients to the dry ingredients, about 1 cup at a time. Don’t over mix or over beat. The secret to good pancakes is that the batter should be lumpy rather than smooth. If it looks to wet, as a bit more flour.
5. Stir in about ½ cup of chopped toasted pecans, and a few gratings of fresh nutmeg. Let the batter sit a bit while you heat your griddle on medium heat. I find nonstick or impeccably seasoned cast iron works best, though I use nonstick since I can never keep my cast iron seasoned impeccably.
6. When the griddle is hot, grease it very lightly (remember, these are cakes and they are baked, not fried, even if it is on top of the stove) with butter or oil.
7. Drop tablespoons of batter on the griddle. Bake until bubbles begin to appear and it looks a little dry around the edges.
8. Flip the pancakes and cook on the other side until done.
9. Serve hot with butter and maple syrup.

My wife claims that her mother used to warm maple syrup and butter together for her brother. My mother in law disputed this until they day she died. (She said that she did it for both of them.) I think that melting the butter in the syrup is excessive -- better let each person to put each on in the proportion they want. However, warming the syrup is a nice touch, and if the butter is at room temperature, it won't cool down the pancakes too much.

You can also make this with sliced slightly underripe bananas, but add a bit more flour because they are a bit moister. I frankly like it better without.

Zucchini salad and the water problem

The surprise hit at our Erev Rosh Hashanah dinner was a zucchini and tomato salad. My wife generally dislikes zucchini, especially when it is boiled, and I have made a number of salads in the past that have left her completely cold. No amount of harissa, garlic and caraway in a Tunisian style zucchini salad could make up for the water that the vegetable kept exuding after it was mashed, no matter how long and how well we tried to drain it.

One of Claudia Roden's more recent cookbooks, Arabesque, contains an intriguing sounding Moroccan recipe for a salad of zucchini and tomatoes, but it called for the zucchini to be boiled and I knew that it would not go over too well. So, I adapted it with grated, salted and drained and sauteed squash: the process concentrated the flavors, kept the zucchini from oozing water, and ended being the most popular dish at the table. (It does require quite a bit of salt, which is a major staple in our house, so one of our guests was not able to eat it, but we were able to set aside some low-sodium versions of the other salads for him.) The recipe:

Moroccan Zucchini and Tomato Salad:

1. Wash 1 to 1.5 pounds of zucchini well. (To get out the grit I use Marcella Hazan's method: soak them in water about 10 minutes, rinse, and use your fingernail to scrape off any grit that remains.)
2. Grate the zucchini and salt well -- use about 1 teaspoon. Leave for 30 minutes to an hour to sweat. It will give off lots of water.
3. Put the grated zucchini in a colander to drain off the salty water, rinse and drain again, and squeeze out as much moisture as you can with your hands. (Believe me, plenty of salt will still remain.)
4. Saute the zucchini in about 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a nonstick skillet on medium heat for 10-15 minutes until tender. When almost done, add a mashed clove of garlic, cook a bit more, and set aside.
5. Halve about 12 ounces of large cherry tomatoes.
6. Heat 2-3 tablespoons olive oil in a nonstick or impeccably well-seasoned cast iron skillet (mine never seem to achieve the requisite impeccability of seasoning). Place the tomatoes cut side down in the skillet, and cook on medium high heat until they soften and the undersides begin to caramelize. (You have to peek).
7. Turn down the heat to low and add 4-6 cloves of slice garlic, and saute until the garlic is cooked but not browned, which should take 5 minutes of less. Watch it carefully at this stage.
8. Combine the zucchini and the tomato and garlic mixture, add a little pepper and taste for salt, just in case.
9. Serve warm, at room temperature, or cold with bread. You could garnish it with chopped parsley or cilantro, but we forgot to and nobody complained. They were too busy trying to wipe every last bit of the oil out of the serving dish with their challah.
10. Without the cilantro, which I forgot anyway, there is nothing about the flavors that would prevent you from serving it hot with pasta, perhaps with some chopped fresh basil. Try it and let me know how it turns out.

The water problem:
Just a little food for thought, which applies not only to zucchini but to other foods as well. I maintain, based on no particular scientific evidence, that many flavors are fat soluble rather than water soluble. Spices generally taste better after being sauteed in fat. And, while steamed and boiled veggies have their place, I am not always sure what it is, and there are few, that too my taste, are not better when sauteed or roasted, even using minimal low-fat cooking spray. The fat and dry heat concentrate the flavors, while the water carries them away. The sauteed grated zucchini in this recipe makes a far better side dish than steamed or boiled zucchini, no matter how much butter you put on the latter.
This works for meats as well. In general, a boiled chicken tastes less juicy than a roasted or sauteed one. I think that it is Harold McGee, in his first book, who writes that the sensation of juiciness comes when the fat (or salt or sugar) in food causes us to salivate, and not necessarily from the moisture content of the food itself.