Matzah Toffee

Uncharacteristically, the two passover recipes that I have posted so far are for desserts, and Amy usually makes them rather then me. Why am I posting them? Because they're good notwithstanding that some of the ingredients are truly gross. Kosher for Passover margarine is not much better than Crisco with motor oil overtones (I am paraphrasing a friend here) and I would be surprised if the Passover chocolate chips contain more than 10% cacao. But who cares? Everyone seems to love it and some years Amy seems to make a batch every day of the holiday. If you try it, you will certainly find yourself making more than one batch. Most people seem to know about this recipe already, but some don't and I consider posting it on my blog to be a public service. I would give credit for it, but its provenance has been lost with time.

Ingredients

• Matzah, to fit pan (about 6 pieces)
• 1 cup kosher for Passover margarine
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 12 ounces (2 cups) pareve kosher for Passover semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and line a 15 x 10 inch shallow pan (a nonstick jellyroll pan is ideal) , with matzah boards. Fit them to cover the bottom evenly, without overlapping; you may need to break them to do so.
2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the margarine and brown sugar together and bring them to a slow boil. Maintain a gently boil without stirring for 3 - 5 minutes, until the mixture becomes thick enough to coat a spoon. Pour the sugar mixture over the matzah and spread evenly. Bake in the oven for 4-5 minutes or so. (You want to see the brown sugar and margarine mixture bubbling but be careful that it doesn’t burn, especially if you think your oven runs hot.)
3. Immediately sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the matzah, and as they start melting, gently spread the melted chocolate so that it covers the top as completely as possible.
4. It is sometimes easier to remove later if you cut the toffee into pieces when it is still warm, but there are so many variables (esp the pan you use) that this is not always necessary.
   
5. Let the matzah toffee cool at room temperature until it has completely solidified. You can speed this process by putting it in the fridge or freezer, or, this year, leaving it by an open window.
6. Break into pieces, and store in an airtight container. Cleaning the pans is no fun.
7. Makes about 2 pounds of candy.
   

Ingredients: You could make this with butter for a dairy version, and, frankly, it is good enough that it would be worth making after the holiday with butter and real chocolate chips. Amy has been talking about chopping up real chocolate for it (you can buy K for P chocolate that is 75% cacao but it is 4 times more expensive than the chips) but no one has ever complained when we served this toffee to them so I convinced her that it was worth neither the effort nor the expense. If you don't need a treat, your kids do, so make it now, even with the gross stuff. Besides, it is a lot better and less expensive than most of the Passover desserts that you would buy.

Nuts? We argue about this every year. Amy likes to add slivered almonds, but I don't think they add anything. Besides, her brother is allergic to nuts and sometimes gets insulted when people serve them. This year we may top some with chopped pistachios. It's worth trying both ways, but I would keep the preponderance plain. (Post Seder update: even though last year's almond slivers sort of left me cold, the chopped pistachios rock. Apologies to my wife.)

Crumbly leftovers: You will find chocolate toffee crumbs at the bottom of the storage container. Don't throw them out. They are great as a topping for ice cream during the year.

Tishpishti: Orange walnut cake for Passover from Turkey

People have asked me why I haven't posted anything for Pesach yet, but who has the time, so I am offering this easy and wonderful cake without much commentary. My friend Barbara brought this to our house for Seder a few years ago. She got the recipe from her friend Karen and it was a big hit so she shared the recipe with us. It is simplicity itself, light and delicious. There are other versions but they are all more complicated. Harry, our son who occasionally has the misfortune to have his birthday fall during Pesach, liked it so much that he requested it for his birthday cake. If it is good enough for a 15 year old (now almost 18), it should be good enough for you too.

Ingredients

• 5 eggs lightly beaten
• 1¼ cups walnuts chopped
• 3/4 cup ground almonds
• 1 cup sugar
• juice and grated zest (skin) of 1 orange
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix all the ingredients well.
3. Line bottom of 9 inch square cake pan with foil or parchment paper (I think parchment works better.)
4. Brush paper and sides of the pan well with oil.
5. Bake for 1 hour until browned.
6. Turn out upside down immediately and peel off the paper . If it looks like it is going to stick, put the pan back over it and just serve it from the pan.
7. Cool and serve cut into one inch squares.
   

Apple Mess

A few months ago, Amy made a baked apple dish that she got somewhere off the internet. It was for baked apples stuffed with dates and pecans, and it was a disaster. There was too much filling, it oozed out of the apples, and turned into a sloppy mess at the bottom of the pan. The thing is, it was delicious. It tasted like pecan pie with apples, only better. She tried the recipe a few weeks later the right way, and it was picture perfect with the filling staying nicely in the cored apples, but nowhere near as tasty.

So, this Friday, Amy didn't want to make dessert and I was on my own. Dedicated readers of this blog will note that I have few dessert recipes, so this is not really my field. I didn't want to make a fruit crisp, our meat meal (Uighur lamb stew) default. It thought that I would try to reproduce the baked apple dish the time she got it all wrong. I didn't even try to keep the apples whole and just sort of tossed everything together. It was a big hit and VERY easy.

I would call this a crisp, but it wasn't crisp at all. I am not sure what to call it, so I welcome your suggestions in the comments (this is a not so subtle way to encourage someone other than my niece to comment on my blog). Here it is:

Apple Mess

Ingredients

• 4 large baking apples (I used Rome)
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (light or dark, whatever you have)
• 1/2 cup chopped dried dates (pitted of course)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon Calvados or applejack (optional)
• 4 tablespoons unsalted pareve margerine or butter, melted
• 3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• a pinch of salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Peel the apples, quarter them, remove the cores, and cut into lengthwise slices. Put into a lightly greased baking dish that will hold all the apples with some room for the goop. A 7x10 inch pyrex dish worked nicely.
3. Mix the other ingredients. Pour over the apples. It will all sink to the bottom.
   
4. Bake 15 minutes and then mix the apples well to coat with the goop.
5. Bake another 15 minutes and mix the apples well to coat with the goop.
6. Bake another half hour.
7. Best served hot or warm, and keeps well for a while in a low oven. Serve with coconut sorbet or vanilla ice cream. Also nice drizzled with a little more Calvados or applejack.
   
8. Serves 6 nicely.

Why the peculiar method? When you pour in the liquid mixture it will all sink to the bottom, except for a few piece of dates and pecans. Unless you mix it, the apples on top will cook without flavoring, and the nuts and dates on top will scorch. I found that mixing twice in the first half hour redistributes both apples and goop so that the apples glaze nicely and nothing is left on the top to burn. The goop becomes sort of custardy and isn't all left on the bottom.

Why coconut sorbet and pareve margerine? This is for Andrew who wanted to know about the Jewish holiday called shiva where people sit around in the morning. If you are separating milk and meat, you don't want to make a dessert with butter or serve it with ice cream. Pareve products contain no meat or dairy and are fine after a meat meal. The problem is that most really good desserts are dairy. You could just as easily make this with butter and serve it with real ice cream, but frankly, there are so many good dairy desserts around that why would you want to? The nice thing about fruit crisps and this apple mess is that you won't miss the butter and ice cream and can eat it happily after a meat meal.

More fake meat: chickpeas with vegetarian chorizo 2 ways

I know that this may sound gross, but it isn't. As I explained in an earlier posting on vegetarian chili, I have become out of both choice and necessity a devote of fake meat.

My niece was coming over for Friday night dinner, and made a special request of a recipe that had just appeared in Mark Bittman's minimalist column: fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach. For the original recipe, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/dining/24minirex.html?ref=dining . But, since she is a vegetarian, and I don't eat pork anymore, some experimentation was called for. Since the vegetarian sausage is lacking in both spice and fat and therefore much flavor, some further doctoring was needed in the form of smoked Spanish paprika (pimenton), black pepper and garlic, which made up for some of the flavors that would be found in the original chorizo. Here is what we did with it:

Chickpeas with vegetarian chorizo

Ingredients

* olive oil

* 2 vegetarian chorizos (I used Lifetime brand)

* 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possible (about half a pound cooked, or the contents of a 28 ounce can)

* 5 cloves chopped garlic

* 1 chopped shallot or 1/4 cup chopped onion

* 1 tablespoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika

* Salt and black pepper

* 1/2 pound spinach

* 1/4 cup sherry

* 1 to 2 cups bread crumbs.

Method

1. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large nonstick skillet. Quarter, then slice the chorizo and fry on medium heat until crisp. This takes 5 or 10 minutes depending on how crisp you like it. Remove to a plate.

2. Add 2-3 more tablespoons of oil to the skillet, and the chickpeas, dried well, and fry over medium high heat until they are brown and crisp a bit, about 10 minutes.

3. Push the chickpeas to the side, add a bit of oil, and 3cloves of chopped garlic and the onion or shallot. When they are soft, add the smoked paprika and about 10 grinds of black pepper. Cook on low until the paprika loses some of its raw aroma, and then incorporate into the chickpeas. Mix in the chorizo.

4. Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan then add the garlic and saute on medium for under a minute.

5. Add spinach and sherry and stir fry until wilted.

6. Remove the spinach to a cutting board and chop coarsely (much easier than wrestling with it when it is raw).

7. Combine chick peas, chorizo, and spinach in a thin layer in a baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and drizzle with some more olive oil or spray with some olive oil spray.

8. Put the dish under the broiler for about 5 minutes to brown.

Since I cooked my own chickpeas, and I had some chorizo left over as well, I made the following dish for lunch during the week. The ingredients are very similar but the effect is completely different. Much easier and less elegant, but no less delicious.

Chickpea stew with vegetarian chorizos and tomato sauce

Ingredients

* olive oil

* 2 vegetarian chorizos (I used Lifetime brand)

* 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, as dry as possibe (about half a pound cooked, or the contents of a 28 ounce can)

* 5 cloves chopped garlic

* 1 chopped shallot or 1/4 cup chopped onion

* 1 tablespoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika

* Salt and black pepper

* 15 ounce can chopped or crushed tomatoes (I like del Valle from Italian cherry tomatoes, but Muir Glen fire roasted would accentuate the smokiness of the paprika).

Method

1. Slice or dice the chorizo and saute on medium heat in one tablespoon olive oil in a nonstick skillet for about 5 or 10 minutes. Remove to a plate.

2. Add garlic and onions to the skillet with 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil and saute until soft but not burned. Add paprika, salt and pepper and saute a bit longer to remove the raw smell.

3. Add the tomatoes and cook on high for 5 to 10 minutes until the oil begins to separate.

4. Mix in the chickpeas and chorizo and cook 5 more minutes until heated through. If it looks to dry, add water or chickpea cooking liquid (only if you make your own, not from the can).

5. Serve over rice.

Canned or dried chickpeas: There is really no comparison, and cooking your own chickpeas takes minimal effort. Wash them, soak them over night (or for at least 8 hours at any time of day; as I have said before they are legumes and not phantoms and there is nothing magical about soaking them at night), then rinse and simmer in fresh water until tender to your taste, about 35-50 minutes, depending on the age of the legumes and on your taste. Salt the water about 5 minutes before they are done. You can actually use the water you cook the chickpeas in, unlike the gross slimy liquid from the can. However, life is short, planning in advance doesn't always work, and canned chickpeas are a real convenience, even if my daughter won't eat them.

Menu ideas: either of these dishes, especially the second one, would make a great component of a vegetarian Spanish meal. Try it with spinach or other greens sauteed with pine nuts and raisins, tortilla espagnole (a frittatta like omelet with potatoes) and a tossed salad. Gazpacho or a hot garlic soup with bread and poached eggs would be a good first course.

Chicken with sumac : one of the world's best chicken dishes

Penny for penny, minute of effort for minute of effort, chicken with sumac is probably the best dish in the world. It takes almost no time to prepare, bakes in less than an hour, and uses simple, easy to find ingredients (provided you have a source for sumac).

For some, sumac is a stumbling block. Even hearing the name of the dish gives some people a rash in their throat, but be assured that the spice sumac is a completely different species from poison sumac. It is an essential spice in the Middle east, at least from the Levant through Iran, and adds a rich lemony acidity but is not quite as sour. The color is also beautiful. There is also a traditional American use. American non-poisonous sumac I think is related. Have you ever had pink lemonade? Why would anyone dye lemonade pink? The reason is that in previous centuries, when lemons were scarce to unobtainable, a sweet and sour drink was made with red sumac berries and a sweetener, either sugar or honey: sumac lemonade. My guess is that people were in the habit of drinking a pink lemonade-like concoction, and when real lemons were more readily available, were in the habit of coloring the drink pink. Don't pick your own sumac berries for this dish, though.

The recipe I offer is very slightly adapated from Mary Laird Hamady's luminous Lebanese Mountain Cookery, one of the great books devoted to a micro-cuisine, rural, Druze cooking from Lebanon, and its transmutations in Michigan. It is out-of-print, but still around and worth looking for. You know that you are dealing with the real thing when there is a chapter lovingly devoted to dehen (rendered lamb tail fat), along with adaptations for the American kitchen. This fat is specifically forbidden in Leviticus as an act of asceticism. Remember, our ancestors come from a part of the world where much erotic poetry revolves around the image of the fat tailed sheep and giving it up must have been quite a sacrifice. (Sabbetai Zevi shocked many of his contemporaries by consuming lamb kidney fat, also forbidden, and suggested by Hamady as a substitute for the tail.)

Many of the recipes in the book are worth making (appetizers, pastries, fish, stews, meatballs), but this is our favorite. You will note it is much shorter than most of my recipes, since there is not way to make it longer. I made up for it with excessive commentary:

Ingredients

• olive oil
• 4-6 loaves pita bread, stale ok, white or whole wheat ok
• 1 large spanish onion, peeled, halved, and cut into thin slices
• 4-5 tablespoons ground sumac
• 3 1/2 pound chicken, cut into 10 pieces (halve the breasts which tend to be very large)
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Lightly oil a large baking dish that is 1 or two inches deep.
3. Split the pitas, rip into large pieces, and place in the baking dish. Top with the onions.
4. Season with salt, fresh pepper, and 2-3 tablespoons of sumac. Mix lightly if you are not lazy, but this is not absolutely necessary.
5. Top with the chicken, which ideally should cover all the bread.
6. Season the chicken with salt, pepper and 2 more tablespoons of sumac. It looks nicer if the sumac is spread evenly, so you may sprinkle it on through a sieve.
7. If the chicken looks like is doesn't have enough skin and fat, drizzle with a little olive oil (or actually as much as you feel like).
8. Bake 50 minutes to one hour. That's it. Serves 4 - 6 people.

Finding sumac: It is actually not that hard. Any store that stocks middle eastern groceries should have it. Fairway even carries it now. It is also available mail order from Penzey's spices. You can even follow Paula Wolfert's suggestion and call a local Lebanese or Syrian church and ask the priest where the women in his congregation do their shopping. Don't make excuses, you will regret it. It keeps nearly forever in your freezer. Don't keep it, or any other spices, on a rack near your stove. Sumac is also very nice in a chopped salad or fattoush, and can also be rubbed on a plain roasted or broiled chicken.

The key to success: is the right balance between chicken and bread. Be sure the chicken covers the bread, and add olive oil if necessary. Some people think that in this dish the chicken is beside the point and it is all about the bread, onions and sumac. They are right, but don't be tempted to just put in more bread, since there won't be enough chicken fat to moisten it. The best solution if you want more bread is to get a package of chicken backs and increase the seasonings. They will add plenty of fat, and to my taste, more of the best meat on the chicken. Another key to success is salt, and kosher chickens are really good at keeping the sodium levels up. We have friends who live in a low-sodium household (not that any of them have particularly high blood pressure). We on the other hand eat more salt than we do rice, especially since Amy is on her current low-carb regime. Whenever we make this dish for these friends they remark on how much better our version is than their's. It's because we use salt, and aren't shy about it.

How long does it cook? How many does it serve? These are the eternal questions for which there is really no answer, only, in the Jewish style, questions. How hot is your oven? How tightly is the chicken placed? Was the chicken cold or at room temperature when you put it in? How big is the chicken? How big are the pieces (I find that breasts can run so large that they take longer to cook now than the nearly vestigial legs and thighs of our poor chickens, so I then to cut the breasts up)? How hungry is everyone? What else are you serving? Just bake it for an hour and don't worry about it. There will be plenty for at least 4 people.

Chicken with sumac and mussakhan: There is a similar, more elaborate, and more difficult Palestinian dish called mussakhan. To my taste, it's not worth the time and effort -- you get more bang for your precious time with this version of chicken with sumac, which has all the flavor elements and is easy enough to be a weeknight dinner.

Copyright and recipes: One day, as I have long promised, I will write about intellectual property and recipes. My version makes some slight changes from Hamady's (she puts bread on top which just burns) , but I really justify my publicizing her recipe as a way of making her wonderful cookbook better known. Look for it and buy it if you can.

Cauliflower, mushrooms and tomatoes, North-Indian style

OK, another dish based on roasted cauliflower. What can I say? But so did everyone else I served it to. And this one has a few twists.

Cauliflower, mushrooms and tomatoes, North-Indian style

Ingredients

• 1 medium cauliflower
• vegetable-oil spray
• 1-3 tablespoons oil (we have been using canola which is said to be high in Omega-3's and it came out fine
• 1 tablespoon whole cumin seed (my wife informed me after finishing the leftovers that she's not sure how she feels about cumin, so I will probably cut it back to a teaspoon next time, which is probably a more "authentic" amount in any case)
  
• 1 medium onion, quartered and sliced thin
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 hot green pepper, chopped; seed it if you don't want the dish so spicy
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
• salt
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms (or more if you want)
• 1 small can whole Italian cherry tomatoes (I used the del Valle brand) or 1 cup fresh; if you use fresh, halve them before adding.
  
• about 1/4 teaspoon garam masala or roasted grown cumin seed
• small handful of chopped fresh coriander (if you remember, I forgot)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Cut the cauliflower into medium florets. Be sure to trim the stem of tough parts and use that two. Take the larger leaves strip off the greens, wash very well, and cut the cores of the leaves into 1 inch pieces.
3. Spray a foil lined baking sheet with vegetable spray, put the cauliflower on it, and spray again. Roast about 15 minutes. Then broil on high in the middle of the oven for about 5-10 more minutes until brown, being careful not to overcook. Take it out of the oven and set aside.
4. While this is going on, clean the mushrooms. Don't listen to people who tell you that you need to wipe them clean with a damp paper towel. It's a waste of time. Dump them into a large bowl of water and swish around a bit. This removes almost all the dirt very quickly. Then take them out, and cut the large ones in quarters and the small ones in half, wiping off any dirt that remains. Set aside.
5. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet on high until hot.
6. Add cumin seeds and fry about one minute, being careful not to burn.
7. Add onion, salt, and continue to cook on high until it starts to brown at the edges.
8. Add ginger, garlic and chili and saute another minute. Add turmeric stir a few seconds, and then add coriander. Turn the heat down and cook a minute or two to remove the raw aromas, being careful not to burn.
9. Add mushrooms and more salt. Turn heat up to high, and stir-fry until mushrooms are brown. (They will throw off their liquid, and brown after it evaporates. The bigger the skillet and the higher the heat, the quicker it will go.
10. Add the can of tomatoes with their liquid, and cook on high about 5-10 minutes.
11. Add the cauliflower and cook until it is done to your taste.
    
12. Correct for salt, sprinkle with garam masala, and serve garnished with fresh coriander, if you remember.

Serves 4-8, depending on what else you are serving.

Cauliflower leaves???: You are paying for them, why not use them? When cooked, this way, the cores of the leaves have a nice, juicy-crunchy texture. If you are not roasting, you can leave the greens on too. If you buy a cauliflower in high season at a farmers market, there may be more leaves than you want in the dish, but if you use a supermarket cauliflower you will get about the right amount.

Chicken Fat and Coping with Citizen's United vs FEC

In last night's State of the Union message, as a scowling Justice Alito mouthed "not true," President Obama called on legislators of both parties to take action in response to the Supreme Court's overturning of a century of precedent and legislation in Citizen's United vs the FEC, but was not specific as to what response was necessary. This atrocious decision, based ultimately in the long Anglo-American legal doctrine treating corporations, in matters if business and commerce, as "fictive people" (note however business, commerce, and "fictive") will have ramifications for our political system that we cannot even imagine. In aiming a nuclear weapon at a case the called for a scalpel, the Roberts' court proved themselves to be true judicial activists, and gave lie to any claim to judicial restraint or respect for the original intent.

There are a number of movements beginning, such as Free Speech for People whose proposed solutions I find as vague as that of the president's in last night's address, i.e. a constitutional amendment to "restore the first amendment and fair elections to the people," whatever that means. It will take time for the political system to absorb this decision, which strikes down many state and federal laws. It may have unintended and unforeseen consequences. Will some be positive? Will nonprofits and foundations, also corporations, be allowed to spend money for candidates and engage in lobbying? Both kinds of organizations are corporations. Most I fear will be negative, but it will take a a while to sort this out and longer to formulate an effective response. Given that no one has shown much specificity or direction in how to respond to Citizen's United, I don't think that anyone will be surprised or find it objectionable that my own personal response to this travesty of justice was to make myself a dish a broccoli with schmaltz (rendered chicken fat).

I have been hearing about this recipe for years. It is made regularly by the father of one of Harry's friends. Once I almost tasted it. They had come to our house for Pesach to make it thinking we had schmaltz on hand (doesn't everybody?) and since we didn't we had to have plain old broccoli with olive oil. But this time I was prepared. Having made some schmaltz earlier in the week (to make hubagrits soup for the comfort that I needed after the Massachusetts senatorial election) I was ready when the Supreme Court handed down its decision with both broccoli and schmaltz. Here is how you do it:

Broccoli with schmaltz and garlic in the style of John Pittman

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons schmaltz
• 1 tablespoon or less of olive or vegetable oil
• 3 cups broccoli florets (from about one bunch)
• 4-6 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled and chopped or thinly sliced
• a tablespoon or so of water
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Heat schmaltz and oil on medium high-heat in a non-stick or impeccably seasoned cast iron skillet just large enough to hold the broccoli.
2. Add broccoli and cook 2-3 minutes, tossing or stirring, until it starts to glisten. Add salt and pepper.
3. Push the broccoli aside a bit and add the garlic, making sure that it gets into the fat in the bottom of the pan. Cook this for a minute or two, to take away the raw flavor of the garlic, and the mix it in well with the broccoli, cook, stirring or tossing, for another minute.
4. Add the water -- I just wet my hands and sprinkle it over the skillet. Cover and steam for another 1-3 minutes until the broccoli is done to your taste. The stems should be crunchy, the flower part a bit softer, neither raw or overdone. Add more salt and pepper if you want.
5. This would make a nice side for 4, but I had it by myself for lunch. I felt that I, and the rest of us, deserved it.

Notes

Schmaltz: is both Yiddish and German for any rendered fat. I was shocked that in Germany, it just means lard, which they even spread of bread. For Jews in Eastern Europe (and possibly in Israel today in part as a bi-product of their foie gras industry) it generally meant goose fat. But the US when used without modifiers it generally means rendered chicken fat. You can buy it kosher markets and many supermarkets, at least in the NY area (Empire may be the most common brand) , but if you can't, or if you want its main by product (gribenes, aka chicken cracklings aka brown gold) make it yourself. which is not all that hard. Whenever you make chicken or skin a chicken, save the fat or skin in a container in the freezer. The fat that you pull out of a chicken before roasting it is ideal, but kosher chickens don't always have this because they have already pulled it out to make schmaltz. I make a lot of stewed chicken thighs Indian-style and it is very easy to pull off their skin which adds nothing to the stew in any case. Chop up the skin and fat, which is easier if it is frozen, put it in a pot, and barely cover it with water. Boil it on high heat to get the rendering going. When most of the water has cooked away, add one small sliced quartered onion for every two cups of fat and skin. Turn the heat down to very low, and cook until the cracklings and onions are browned but not burned, stirring the pan from the bottom so they don't stick and burn. Strain out the fat and store in the fridge. (Barbara Kafka also suggests rendering 2.5 cups of fat in a 2 1/2 quart microwave safe casserole, covered with papers towel, for 25 minutes. Given today's more powerful microwaves, I would check after 15 minutes and continue in 2-5 minute increments if it needs more time. ) Don't worry too much about the health consequences. You won't consume all that much schmaltz, and in The Cooking of South-West France, Paula Wolfert assures us that rendered poultry fat has less than half the saturated fat of butter. It doesn't burn as easily, either, especially when mixed with a bit of oil. How do you use it? Spread it on bread, salt it and top with gribenes, especially the sour-rye known as "corn bread." In Pruzhane, they used to eat this bread topped with goose schmaltz, fresh sauerkraut, gribenes and sugar! Make chopped liver with it and you may never use oil again. Use it in mashed potatoes or a baked potato instead of butter. Drizzle it on steamed vegetables like spinach or cabbage. Best of all, use it for frying chicken cutlets or especially veal shoulder chops breaded with matzo meal. I have a friend who has never had a good word for his mother, but who gets all misty eyed when he talks about her veal chops.

Gribenes: Salt the cracklings, better known as gribenes, and eat like popcorn but be prepared for the consequences. They are better warmed up a bit. They also go well in mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, chopped liver, in salad instead of croutons (use some warmed schmaltz and gribenes instead of bacon in a wilted spinach salad) and best of all, to stuff chremslach (mashed potato fritters fried in schmaltz) a Pesach specialty of my grandmother's).

The skillet: I made the broccoli in a nonstick skillet, which was good, thought it probably would have been even better in cast iron. The problem is maintaining an impeccably seasoned cast iron skillet. Last night we had steak and mushrooms, pan broiled in cast iron, the only real option in most city kitchens. Halfway through dinner, Harry was complaining about how smokey the house was, and opened the windows. A few minutes later, we went into the kitchen and saw that the heat was still on high under the skillet, which was no longer impeccably seasoned. I am not looking forward the the scouring and seasoning that awaits me today, nor to the weeks it will take to restore the skillet's patina. So I tend not to use my cast iron's unless I really have to.

The broccoli: John's recipe called for florets only, and this is a lot easier. However, the stems would be good as well. They just need to be peeled, and added to the skillet for about two minutes before the florets. There was a time when Harry would only eat the broccoli stems, but we are fortunately beyond that. He will now eat the florets, provided they are piping hot.

Comfort food: Krupnik (Hubagrits suppe) , in the style of Pruzhane

I was really bummed by the election in Massachusetts last night. It was like a mini-1994. Tomorrow is the time for action, whatever that might be. Today called for comfort food so I tried to reconstruct my grandmother's recipe for krupnik aka hubagrits suppe, or soup made with steel cut oats. Krupnik I believe is used to denote a liquid-y grain preparation and can be used for soups, porridges and even liquor.  This krupnik is similar to a beef barley soup, but steel cut oats (NOT rolled oats, the conventional oatmeal) are used as the grain and thickener. I haven't had it for about 30 years, but for me, it was comfort food par excellence.

There was a very lengthy discussion about the use of steel-cut oats in savory dishes on Elisheva Urbas' facebook page a few weeks ago, and I posted a suggested method for this soup. I couldn't find a recipe but one Anglo-Jewish cookbook had something that provided a starting point, and my father and others in his generation (70s-80s, sorry dad) described it to me in more detail than I remembered. Cooking, smelling and eating it, I felt myself back in my grandmother's immaculate (as in "Since I turned 85 I can't clean like I used to. I only pull out the stove to clean behind it once a week.") kitchen on Barnes Ave. in the Bronx, eating hot soup at her table with its plastic tablecloth. Just what the doctor ordered. Unfortunately, Amy is on a low-carb regime, Maya is a vegetarian and Harry seems to think that soup violates the inherent order of the cosmos (it is sort of his "tohu v'vohu") so I was the only who ate it. Their loss, but I think our guests on Friday evening will enjoy it.

My father's side of the family came from Pruzhane (we are of course Litvaks) in Belarus, and the other relatives remembered it in a similar manner, so here is:

Krupnik like in Pruzhane

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound small dried white lima beans
• 1 pound beef soup meat (I used kalechel, which is boneless chuck meat, which I cut into 1 inch slices)
• 1 pound beef soup bones with some meat on them
  
• 2 quarts water
• 1 bay leaf
• 1-3 tablespoons schmaltz, or if you must, oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 6 tablespoons steel cut oats (like McCann's not quick cooking kind)
• 1 carrot, finely diced
• 1 parsnip, finely diced
• 2 stalks celery, stringed and finely diced
• 5 sprigs parsley
• 1 large russet potato, like an Idaho
  
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. The night before, pick over the limas for stones, rinse them, and soak overnight. (As I think Barbara Kafka points out, beans are legumes and not phantoms. It doesn't have to be overnight, just 6 to 8 hours depending on their age. You can also use the quick-soak method. Cover the beans with water in a pot and bring to the boil. Boil vigorously for a minute, cover tightly and then leave to soak for an hour.) Drain and rinse before using.
2. Put the meat and bones in a medium pot with the water and bay leaf and bring to the boil.
3. Turn heat down and skim off the scum as it rises.
4. Meanwhile saute the onion in the schmaltz in a skillet until soft but not brown. Add garlic and saute a few minutes more, and add to the pot. (Swish around some of the broth in the skillet and add liquid to the pot to get all the flavor.)
5. Simmer slowly for one hour.
6. Add 4 tablespoons of the oats, and simmer slowly for another hour.
7. Add the lima beans, carrot, parsnip and celery and the remaining two tablespoons of oats and simmer slowly for about 45 minutes.
8. Peel the potato and cut into medium chunks, about half an inch. Taste the soup for salt and add salt and pepper to taste. (Be careful if you are using kosher meat since it is often already quite salty.) Simmer slowly 45 minutes more until creamy and delicious.
9. If you wish, remove the meat from the bones, cut the large chunks of meat into bite size pieces, return to the soup, heat through and serve.

Notes:

The meat: Since Jews were not peasants (my family lived in a shtetl, or small city), this is not peasant food. But it is the food of the poor, or at least the very frugal. Who else would make a soup out of a grain used primarily as animal feed? My grandmother made this with flanken which is the logical choice for any dish like this. But at $14 a pound minimum for kosher flanken (boneless -- with the bones it was $15 -- figure that one out!) there was no way I could derive the comfort that I needed from making the soup with it. So I used kalechel (about $9 boneless) and meaty soup bones (about $3 per pound). The ideal cut would be shank if you can find it. The results were great and I felt duly comforted. The important thing is to use a tough meat with lots of gelatin that will dissolve in the long slow cooking along with some bones. If I made the soup with flanken, I would probably leave the pieces whole, use 3 pounds, and serve it as a separate course afterward with horseradish, which is often what my grandmother often did. But not at these prices. Flanken has become so expensive in the past few years as chefs have discovered short ribs which is the same meat, just cut differently.

Making it in advance: Your mother should have taught you never to freeze cooked potatoes, especially when they are boiled. Their texture will be ruined completely. If you want to make a larger quantity of the soup, set aside some and freeze it before adding the potatoes, and then add them and cook until tender the day you serve. You can refrigerate this soup for a few days, but add a little boiling water and reheat it very slowly or it may scorch.

A very easy vegetable: zucchini and red peppers

I believe in eating with the seasons, but I also believe in eating things other than cruciferous (cabbage family) and root vegetables in the winter. So, as a special reward for those who put up with my blog and read through the excessively long (but also excessively good) recipe for vegetarian chili, here is a very easy vegetable dish. We actually had it for Shabbat dinner on Christmas day, and with its red and green colors, those of you who swing that way could serve it for a Christmas meal.

Zucchini with red peppers and mustard seeds:

1. Soak 2 or 3 medium zucchini squash in water for about 10 minutes while you prepare the peppers.
2. Clean 2 large or 4 small sweet red peppers and cut into batons about 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. (I used 4 small sweet peppers in a bag imported from G-d knows where -- talk about not eating locally.)
3. Rinse the zucchini and check for sand. Scrape or peel off all the sandy parts, and cut into similar size pieces as the peppers.
4. Heat oil (mustard, light sesame, peanut or canola will all be good, and will give slightly different results) on high in a medium skillet. If you use non stick, 1 tablespoon is more than enough. Otherwise, use about 3 tablespoons.
5. Heat 1 tablespoon brown mustard seeds in the oil. After they start to pop (they will go all over the place) turn the heat down, and when they have all popped and turned gray, add the peppers.
6. Stir fry the peppers about 3-5 minutes.
7. Add zucchini, salt well, and saute, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes until brown in spots and done to your taste.
8. This is good hot or at room temperature.

Variation: Add about 15 curry leaves after the mustard seeds pop, and before the peppers. After the curry leaves, you could also add a pinch of asafoetida (hing), a bit of turmeric and some chili pepper, but this seemed far too complicated for the occasion, and the flavors would have clashed with the Greek chicken with pasta we were having. Although popped mustard seeds are distinctly Indian, their nutty flavor fits well with many cuisines in ways that more complicated spice combinations might not. A squeeze of lemon would never hurt, though.

Fake Meat: the Best Vegetarian Chili

If you don't want to deal with my long intro, skip down a ways to the recipe for vegetarian chili. But it will be your loss.

After we dropped Maya off at Beloit College in Wisconsin in August 2005, we headed for the Wisconsin Dells. This is a beautiful natural area that in recent decades has become the indoor-outdoor all-season water park capital of North America, and one of the schlockiest resorts anywhere. Think Lake George, only many times more so. We did this in part out of a sense of parental obligation. The time before she left for college (ok, let's say the previous 18 years) were very intensively about Maya. So we thought that at least some of the summer vacation should be about Harry too, and the Dells seemed like a dream come true for a 13-year old.

This is not to say that the Dells do not have their virtues. The water parks are fun and doubly so if you are stuck in the Upper Midwest in January and can splash around indoors. And there is the Hades roller coaster at the Mount Olympus water and theme park. (The theme is sort of Greek as in diner, rather than as in mythology.) But Hades was amazing. It is an old-fashioned wooden coaster and the first, incredibly high and steep drop is into the gaping mouth of hell, after which you find yourself racing and turning around in the dark, under the parking lot -- sheer terror and pure fun. However, this is not the kind of resort you expect to go to for the food, most of which consists of the usual chains and fast food restaurants (not that there is anything wrong with Culver's custard and fried cheese curds, as separate courses, but that is another matter).

However, we did happen on an excellent vegetarian restaurant called The Cheese Factory which was as out of place in this town as a Cossack in a Sukkah. It was right down the road from our resort hotel, the Kalahari (a desert themed water park?), so we tried it . Usually the vegetarian food that we go for is of the ethnic or locavore vegetable variety, but this place is nothing of the sort. It specialized in fake meat : omelets with vegetarian ham and pancakes with soy bacon for breakfast; vegetarian Reuben sandwiches (with seitan pastrami) and things like that for lunch; and tofu strogonoff, textured soy protein meatballs, and seitan chicken parmiggiano for dinner. It seemed to be run by some kind of Christian cult (growing up Jewish in Queens, any form of Christianity other than Catholicism was some sort of cult, but this was on a whole other level). The waitresses dressed "prairie-style" like Nicky and the polygamous sister wives from the compound on Big Love, and they smiled all the time all had names like Patience, Purity and Charity. It all sounds revolting, but the food was good and it converted me into of a devote of fake-meat. At this stage in my gastro-spiritual development, it is very convenient to be able to enjoy soy bacon on a grilled cheese sandwich, "fake-jitas" (fajitas made of soy or wheat gluten beef strips) that you can have with sour cream and cheese, and not to mention vegetarian chili with all the fixings including cheese and sour cream.

The following recipe is very liberally adapted from The Cheese Factory Restaurant Cookbook, on sale at the restaurant. It marks a departure for me in a few ways. It is much less stream of consciousness than my other recipes. As I made it this afternoon (special request of Maya, Andrew, Sarah and Helen), I wrote down the ingredients and what I did with them at every stage. Also, I am presenting this in more conventional style, with the ingredients first and then the procedure. It makes an enormous quantity. I suggest you set aside half without the beans and final seasonings and freeze it. Then add the beans and seasonings to what is left in the pot, which will serve 8-10 in any case. It is the kind of dish that it pays to make in quantity. For those to whom this matters, it is pareve (without the accompaniments of course) so you can use it in lots of interesting ways.

Vegetarian Chili

Ingredients

• 4 cups Textured Soy Protein (TSP) or Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), about 1 pound
• 3 cups bullion (2 Telma pareve beef cubes dissolved in 3 cups boiling water)
• 4 tablespoons oil (I use canola)
• 3 medium onions, chopped (about 1 quart)
• 3 carrots, trimmed, peeled and chopped
• 4 stalks celery, trimmed and chopped
• 10 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 large green pepper, stemmed, seeded and diced
• 1 large red sweet pepper, stemmed, seeded and diced.
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper (about 45 turns of the grinder -- I counted)
• 2 teaspoons thyme
• 2 teaspoons "Ceylon" cinnamon (or 1/2 to 1 teaspoon regular -- see note)
• 2 tablespoons paprika (preferably smoked sweet Spanish pimenton)
• 1-2 tablespoons ground chipotle pepper
• 4-6 tablespoons ground Ancho pepper (you can substitute a little ground pasilla or mulato and cut down on the chipotle if you can find them)
• 2 28 ounce cans crushed or diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen fire roasted)
• 6 ounces tomato paste
• 1-2 tablespoons of salt
• 4 cups water
• 28 ounce can red beans (I prefer small red beans to kidney beans)
• 28 ounce can black beans
• 2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 4 teaspoons roasted ground cumin (you can probably substitute garam masala here, but I would cut the quantity to 2 teaspoons)

Accompaniments (any or all)

• sour cream
• chopped white onion
• chopped cilantro
• chopped green chili
• white or brown rice or elbow macaroni
• corn bread
• shredded cheddar cheese
• hot sauces
• avocado cubes
• toasted tortilla strips (take 12 tortillas, cut in half, cut into 1/4 inch ribbons, put on a baking sheet sprayed with vegetable oil spray, spray a little more, and bake in a 300 degree oven for 30 -45 minutes. They should be crisp but not burned. Guard these well until you serve them.)

Procedure

1. Put 1 tablespoon oil in a very large non stick skillet. Add the TVP or TSP and toast on medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until it turns several shades darker. I aim for the shade of caramel, you can try to darker but be careful not to burn.
2. Add the bullion, stir, and set aside until ready.
3. In a large (5-6 quart) pot, heat the remaining oil, add the onion, salt lightly, and saute on medium until soft but not brown.
4. Add the carrots, celery, garlic, and peppers. You can prepare these while you are sauteing and add each to the pot when done. Saute until soft.
5. Add all the spices (coriander through Ancho), and saute a few minutes on low until fragrant being careful not to burn them.
6. Add the tomatoes, paste, and salt. Stir well and simmer about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
7. Add the soaked TVP/TSP stir well, and add up to 4 cups additional water.
8. Simmer for about 1/2 hour stirring occasionally and being careful not to burn it.
9. Take half of the chili, and set aside to freeze.
10. Drain the beans, rinse very well, and add to the chili and cook another 15 minutes or more until well heated through.
11. Add the cocoa and roasted cumin and serve with any accompaniments you would like.

Notes

• The recipe sounds longer and harder than it is. It probably takes a 90 minutes beginning to end, not all of it active, and it is well worth the effort. Besides, you will have lots of dinners in the freezer.
• Ceylon Cinnamon is true cinnamon and is used in Mexican cooking and available in good spice stores and as canela where Mexican ingredients are sold. What we generally call cinnamon is really cassia, which has a different flavor and should be used much more sparingly.
• It doesn't matter whether you use Textured Soy Protein or Textured Vegetable Protein, either form of fake meat will do. They are yellowish tan in color and look sort of like a cross between coarse bread crumbs, corn flakes, and some kind of animal feed. Since most ground beef makes no noticeable contribution to the flavor of the dishes in which it is used, and since this is so vigorously seasoned, you can use TSP or TVP in confidence. They are healthier and more economical than ground meat, and pareve. Especially when seasoned with pareve bullion, it adds a meaty texture and flavor missing from bean or vegetable based vegetarian chili. I use Bob's Red Mill brand, which also happens to be heckshered.
• Because I usually make this in large quantities, and for crowds I tend to make it on the mild side, and people can add chopped chile or hot sauce if they want. I usually use the minimum amount of chile powder in the recipe, but you can use the max or even more if you know who will be eating it.
• It you tire of chile by itself, try chile dogs, chili veggie burgers, or chili cheese omelets.