Pesach leftovers

April 21, 2011 - 6:44 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Food, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life 

You know that very satisfying feeling when you take some heading-on-old veggies from the fridge or aging leftovers and do something tasty with them before they’re completely dead?

Mine did not look as perfect as these, but still tasted good

Have been having that experience this week as we tend to the many leftovers from our for-25 seder the other night — the leftovers are our fault, I’m catching the disease of my husband’s family who are over-abundant in their amounts. But it wasn’t completely due to over-abundance. For example, we had bought scallions/green onions for the seder, in order to bop them over each others’ heads in Sephardic tradition. The custom was well-received, and the scallions were beauties, long and thick with lots of green for good bopping. But then what to do with the 25 scallions left over? I hate leaving them to rot in the fridge, just to throw them out after using them in a few salads.

So, scallion matzah meal pancakes for the women’s seder I attended last night; diced scallions and yogurt in our morning potato starch pancakes for a savory treat; and some sliced scallions in the sauteed swiss chard/garlic and sliced carrots (from another seder side dish) for dinner tonight.

Recipes follow, and they’re all great ways of using up that matzah meal and potato starch sitting on your counters. Enjoy!

Pesach Pancakes by Ruth Sirkis
3 eggs
1 1/3 cups water
6 tblspn potato starch
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp oil

1. Mix eggs, water, potato starch, salt and oil thoroughly. Mixture should look like heavy cream.
2. Heat a skillet; sprinkle with a little oil and brush pan with oil. Continue heating until a drop of water will dance on skillet.
3. Put 2 tablespoons batter (if using small skillet; if larger pan, use a 1/4 cup or so) into pan, tilt so batter spreads evenly but thinly on surface. When batter looks completely dry, turn over and fry on other side. Each pancake will be pale gold.

We like these spread with yogurt, jam, cottage cheese, peanut butter and chocolate spread (very delish), and, as I mentioned above, a more savory version with yogurt and sauteed scallions.

Swiss Chard Saute
1 bunch swiss chard
couple cloves garlic
Olive oil

1. Chop up the swiss chard, as well as the garlic.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil, and saute the garlic. Add the swiss chard, and the water clinging to the swiss chard should be enough to let it wilt and cook in the pan.

OJ/Ginger Carrots by Adeena Sussman

1 lb. carrots
Chunk ginger
Pumpkin seeds, roasted in oven or stovetop pan.
Orange juice

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Par-simmer whole carrots in OJ and ginger. Then roast on high till caramelized.
Serve room temperature with diced avocado, toasted pumpkin seeds and an orange-lemon vinaigrette.

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Spring has sprung

April 17, 2011 - 10:48 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Spring seems to be here, judging from the birds’ chatter in the morning and the buds springing up on the trees — not counting the hateful sharav weather that has been weighing us down as we ‘slave’ over hot stoves for Pesach. More importantly, I happened to notice out my back windows that green, not-yet-ripe peaches are emerging on the peach tree — good news, as I feared the passionfruit vine had choked it to death, that my spring annuals were also blooming and emerging, and most exciting, my wisteria vine has finally bloomed, five years after it was planted.

Of course, spring has meant both Purim and Pesach, two major holidays that required and require a significant amount of preparation. But I’m trying not to focus on those aspects of spring, and rather on the sense of rebirth, blue skies, fewer layers and getting outside again, and, those purple blooms just outside the window, signaling that shorts and tee-shirts, barbecues and lazy evenings, summertime and sort-of vacation are just around the corner.

A happy Passover to everyone out there.

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A new kind of haggadah

April 13, 2011 - 6:58 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, design, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Religion 

Pesach is less than a week away — I know, I know — so this is a tad on the late side, but worth hearing about. One of the new haggadot out there this year is A Happy Passover Haggadah – for the Entire Family, with bright, visual graphics by Israeli artist Monicka Clio Rafaeli, classic Ashkenazic and Sephardic texts and an English translation by Rabbi Marc Angel.

For Rafaeli, this Haggadah fulfills a long-time dream, from when she was a nine-year-old growing up in Greece, her birthplace, and her grandmother bought her Viewmaster reels. One of them was the story of Moses, and it’s a story that she’s always wanted to tell, in her way. Fast forward through the years, including moving to Israel at 14 with her family and spending five years in New York. Rafaeli was newly married and pregnant when she started working on this Haggadah here in Israel, creating a wildly colorful version as she’d always imagined. It took three years, and now that moment has finally arrived.

“I wanted to bring a fresh look to the table,” she says. “To show that Judaism and the seder are not only an ancient thing, they can be exciting, offer a new flavor.”

The haggadah is fully bilingual and transliterated in parts as well, and given its colorful illustrations and graphics, offers something to the non-reading set as well. It can still — well, maybe — be ordered off Amazon, and is available at Jewish bookstores.

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Matzomeletes

April 2, 2010 - 12:46 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Food, Holidays 

Let me start off by saying that cooking has never been my forte. Growing up, my mother wouldn’t even let my brother and me into the kitchen. That was great as a kid, with all these wonderful meals magically appearing and us having virtually no idea how they came into being. But as an adult it has left me with certain limitations.

Before Jody and I were married, I ate out a lot. Between falafel and burgers and the occasional salad, I probably spent more on food than rent. There was a brief period where I bought a wok and actually got pretty good with stir frying veggies.

I don’t know where that wok is now, though. And in any case, it’s not kosher for Passover. Which leads us to the dilemma of the day.

Earlier this week, during chol hamoed Pesach – the intermediary days of Passover – when matza is still high on the food chain, Jody had to go out and the kids hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Not a good combination.

No sooner had Jody left when our oldest son Amir asked “What’s for dinner?”

“I’m hungry!” daughter Merav demanded.

Eight-year-old Aviv was upstairs watching TV but grunted his concurrence..

Usually during Pesach week, we feast on a whole lot of matza: chicken salad on matza, matza with tuna, matza with butter and salt, matza bagels, and matza mousse for dessert.

“Let’s check what we’ve got,” I suggested, putting on an expression of “exaggerated enthusiasm” as I had once learned in a Dale Carnegie class.

We had gone out for Seder this year, so there were no serious leftovers. The cupboard wasn’t exactly bare, but it wasn’t overflowing either. All that we had on hand were a dozen eggs, three squares of butter and the aforementioned matza.

“Matza Brie!” I declared with all the passion of a yet-to-be-televised naked chef.

“Do you know how to make matza brie?” Merav asked, with more than a touch of cynicism in her voice.

“No,” I responded, “but how hard can it be? It’s just eggs and matza, right?”

I cracked five eggs into a bowl, whisked them together, poured them into a frying pan and then crumbled a single piece of matza into the mix.

“Abba, aren’t you supposed to use, like, five pieces of matza?” Merav commented.

“And I think you’re supposed to soak the matza before you put it in the pan,” Amir instructed with alarm.

“It will be fine,” I shot back. “Don’t worry.”

“Matza Brie is supposed to be like French Toast,” Merav added.

“This isn’t Matza Brie as you know it,” I said, thinking on my feet. “It’s a…a…matzomelete.

“Yes,” I continued, ”it’s the perfect food for a country constantly suffering from a matzav” (that ubiquitous Hebrew term for “the situation”).

“When friends call from the States and ask how the matzav is, we can say – it’s just fine, because we’re having matzomeletes.”

I looked down from my reverie. The matzomelete was starting to stick to the pan. The moment of truth was at hand. The kids eyed the concoction suspiciously. I still hadn’t gained their trust. As I spatula’d it onto their plates.

They took a bite.

“Not bad,” declared Amir.

“Pretty tasty,” said Merav.

“Got any ketchup?” asked Amir.

I had done it!

Later that evening, when Jody came home, I told her the story.

“Matzomeletes instead of matza brie, huh? See, I knew you could handle the kids. But I’ve got an even better idea.”

And then with a wink she said: “Let’s go upstairs. I bet we can cook up a little Matza Brian of our own.”

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Nostalgia Sunday – Pre-state Passover

March 28, 2010 - 3:37 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel 

Rishon Le-Zion is a fast-growing metropolis and Israel’s fourth-largest city. As home to a newly-opened IKEA — the largest in the Middle East – as well as a dizzying array of malls, mega-markets and movie multiplexes, we sometimes forget the important role Rishon Le-Zion plays in our country’s history as the second Jewish farming settlement.

Fortunately, the municipality of Rishon Le-Zion does remember. It has restored and preserved some of the scenery of its past in a unique open-air museum. Located in some of the oldest buildings of the settlement (the moshava), the exhibits retell the story of the city’s pioneer past and the beginnings of modern Zionism

One permanent exhibit, “Jewish Holidays in the Moshava” is a lovely presentation of domestic life in pre-State Eretz Israel. Many of the first families came from Eastern Europe with fine porcelain place-ware and tea sets. These were not used every day, but were reserved for special occasions and holidays, and handed down from generation to generation.

“Despite difficult living and economic conditions, most [settlers] did not abandon the household customs considered acceptable in their countries of origin,” writes curator Yona Shapira.

Afternoon tea was one such custom. Michael Pohachevsky, who arrived to Rishon in 1886, described being hosted at the home of Berta and Yosef Feinberg (the family is pictured left): “The tea was set in European style, in every detail and feature, and for a moment, it was possible to forget that you were in a young colony just being established in an ancient land.”

In 1890, Haim Hissin described a holiday meal at the Drubin household: “[the table] was set not at all in country style and was set with separate plates, forks and spoons, napkins, wine-glasses, pitchers of water and wine. The courses were, naturally, simple and few but prepared well and served in good taste.”

The exhibit also includes three monogrammed pieces from a set belonging to the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, patron of Rishon Le-Zion and other early settlements.

By the way, the connection between the Passover holiday and Rishon Le-Zion is long-standing as it was for over a century the home of Matzot Rishon Le-Zion. In 2008, in a grand upset for the bread-of-our-affliction sector, the veteran company was purchased by Matzot Yerushalayim.

Although one major industry might have been lost, the city can take heart in the fact that it still headquarters Carmel Wineries, long-time producer of crap sweet wine (what we in Israel call yayin patishim or “hammer wine” because of its effect both on the palate and the brain). And Carmel can take heart in the fact that in the past few years it has shaped up and begun producing some very decent fine wines.

Rishon Le-Zion itself continues to be forward thinking. Take, for example, this video clip produced by the College of Management R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems, where even the machinery celebrate in style. Here’s wishing a chag sameach to them — and have a happy and kosher one yourselves!

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