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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My brisket butcher

March 21, 2010 - 10:23 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: coexistence, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

I’m in the midst of a cleaning frenzy and a brisket study. It’s the pre-Passover phase and while some are sunning in Sinai, touring Italy (friends of mine) or skiing in Switzerland (another friend) during the Passover school vacation that began today (teachers have to clean their houses too), I’m completely caught up in the spring cleaning version of cleaning for Passover and planning our seder menu.

For me, this is the fun part of hosting the seder this year, getting to plan a menu that involves checking out the various recipes out there, consulting with my friend Adeena, a food writer in New York, and thumbing through my collection of cookbooks to see what I may have missed over the years. I’m confirming that we are having brisket, the question is, which recipe?

As a dry run, we made a brisket this past weekend, buying our hunk of meat at one of the local supermarkets. That’s where the story comes in. Daniel went to buy the brisket, and as he likes to do, asked the advice of the meat counter butcher. He’d gone in with his Hebrew word for brisket all prepared, ‘chazeh’, which is also used for chicken breast meat, but the butcher convinced him that what Daniel meant and what he, the butcher, wanted to give him, were two different things.

“How do you want to cook it?” asked the butcher, an Arab guy.
“In the oven, for about two or three hours,” answered Daniel.
“It’s for Shabbat?” asked the butcher.
[This conversation was taking place on Thursday morning.]
“Yes, it’s for Shabbat, but we’re cooking it tonight,” said Daniel.
“That’s good, because once you cook this, it can be frozen and still taste good in 40 years,” said the butcher.

Who knew? He then proceeded to make small cuts in the meat, telling Daniel to stick cloves of garlic inside. The rest of the recipe including braising it, adding water, and then baking it for another hour at the most, with vegetables and onions. I modified his recipe slightly, braising it in oil, removing it and then sauteing onions, carrots and celery in the same pot, adding crushed tomatoes at the end, and then baking the whole lot for at least an hour and a half.

I have to say, it was stupendous, particularly when you were lucky enough to get a slice with pieces of the slow-cooked garlic inside. I’m debating between this recipe and a wine-based brisket for the seder. But we will definitely be returning to our Arab butcher and his patient, garlic-loving hands.

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Burn baby burn – getting ready for Pessah

April 8, 2009 - 9:33 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Religion 

The aftermath of the purging of the hametz (Photo: Matan Brinn)

The aftermath of the purging of the hametz (Photo: Matan Brinn)

Ah, it’s the morning of the Pessah Seder here. And there’s probably no more special time in Israel – rivaling Yom Kippur and the ritual riding of bicycles down the middle of the streets.

Beginning before 8 am and continuing through to mid-morning, people start bringing their left-over hametz – bread, cookies and anything made with leavening that are deemed to be off limits for Pessah – and start building bonfires.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re religiously observant or not – seems like the whole neighborhood comes out for the prayer for the burning of the hametz. It basically says that if we didn’t find every last drop of hametz in our homes in the cleaning leading up to Pessah, we won’t be struck by divine lightning.

But the main thing for the neighborhood kids is the fire – there’s another one every few feet in the undeveloped path behind our home. And those that are unsupervised by parents attempt to throw every possible item onto the blaze, including plastic bags, bottles and items that have been discarded during the pre-Pessas cleaning blitz, like Persian carpets and other environmentally unsound items that weren’t meant for burning.

Once the purge is over, Pessah afternoon takes on a tranquil quality, as families around the country get ready for their Seder. It’s the Thanksgiving of Israel, a staunch family time with extended families travelling for reunions at their parents’ homes. According to surveys, an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis attend a Seder – way more than the percentage of Israelis that consider themselves observant.

Most Seders last well into the night, often into the next day, with the melodies of “Echad Mi Yodaya” and “Had Gadya” wafting out of the windows. It’s times like that when the feeling exists that Israelis are really ‘am echad’ – one people.

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Israeli wine buying season – even on a budget

March 24, 2009 - 11:04 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, Food, History and Culture 

Zion winery's cabThe weeks leading up to Passover represent the lion’s share of the kosher wine industry’s annual sales. Just like December is the peak season for general retail revenues every year, post-Purim early spring is where it’s at for kosher wine transaction volume. Young wines from the fall harvest are starting to be bottled and marketed at this time, and those handling the wine buying for a Seder must procure enough for the proverbial four cups consumed by each participant as part of the Haggadah’s rituals, meaning around one full bottle per person – plus whatever’s consumed separately during the meal.

And just as consumer retail columnists formulated analyses and advice columns this past December, focusing on how to make solstice holiday purchases where one garners maximum bang for one’s buck in today’s tough economic climate, Ha’aretz‘s renowned wine critic Daniel Rogov recently released a highly practical guide to affordable spring 2009 kosher Israeli wines:

For several years, knowledgeable wine drinkers have known that the best buys in the country were the Tabor, Galil Mountain and Dalton wineries as well as in the Gamla series of the Golan Heights Winery. Those wines are now being joined by wines from the Zion winery and, while those may not make for the most sophisticated drinking, they do offer excellent value.

He goes on to rate nine kosher Zion winery (their Hebrew-only official site) products, all of which falling well within his “good to very good” stratum of scoring.

Rogov is getting out there more and more nowadays, serving as a formidable advocate of Israeli oenophilia. I’ve written about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV before, and the enthusiastic eccentric personality also seemingly has Passover fever nowadays, having welcomed Rogov himself recently on the program (check out the fascinating 38-minute episode here). The banter-laden rapport between the two alone makes the video worth watching.

To Israeli wine lovers like you and me, this is not all big news (the fact that kosher wine no longer exclusively resembles cough syrup, and the fact that great Israeli wine is not exclusively kosher – we’ve known these things for years), but it’s great to see more and more mainstream wine-oriented media channels recognizing the quality coming out of this part of the world.

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