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Food Talk with Jayne

PASSOVER MATZOH BRIE CONTEST WINNER

Rabbi Phyllis Sommer's scrumptious Mexican matzoh brie, rich with cheese, guacamole, and sour cream spiked with pico de gallo and salsa, wins this year's contest. Here's what Phyllis wrote in: "I have been blogging about my matzah brei and someone sent me your link. Each year, our congregation holds a Matzah Brei 'Cookoff' on the first morning of Pesach (it's our gimmick to get people to come to Festival Morning Services)...I compete with the other rabbi and the cantor, and it's all in great fun. This year I made a Mexican variety...I soak the matzah in warmish water, drain well, add the eggs and s & p, then cook it, scrambled style, until almost done. For the last few minutes of cooking, I added a container of pico de gallo and a few handfuls of mexican shredded cheese. Served with guacamole, sour cream, and salsa. It was a huge hit!" Check out Phyllis's blog at: http://imabima.blogspot.com

For an intriguing discussion of real Passover lasagne and recipes, using homemade pasta made from matzoh cake meal rolled through a pasta machine, be sure to check out Chef Barry Garber's blog: http://passoverlasagna.blogspot.com. Then practice up for Lucullan pasta feasts next Passover!

Matzoh brie can transform the lowly bread of affliction into a sensuous holiday treat. "Can" is the operative word here, because when prepared slap-dash or without sufficient rich ingredients (eggs, butter or a fine-tasting oil) to flatter it, it can taste like poor scrambled eggs tricked out with cardboard pieces to make it go further.

When we get to the many possible matzoh brie methods, I'm always reminded of the old joke that goes something like: If two Jews are stuck on a desert island, how many synagogues would they need? Answer: Three--one for each to attend, and one neither would set foot in. Because there is not only the sweet/savory matzoh brie fault line, but also differences in technique: do you make it like a frittata, French toast, pancakes, or a jumble of crisp and soft--usually referred to as "scrambled-egg-style"? And many matzoh brie aficionados turn up their noses at whatever kinds were not written in their food DNA.

Our family is pretty ecumenical--we eat it many ways. A savory artichoke matzoh brie might end up like a frittata, a lovely unbroken matzoh cake served for a brunch or side dish. Or we might enjoy a sweet, homey one made scrambled-egg-style, and mixed with sauteed apples, pears, and pecans, topped off with warm vanilla-maple syrup at a leisurely breakfast.

Click on RECIPES for details on preparing matzoh brie, classic recipes and delicious variations.

Sephardis look at sheets of matzoh and see soft crusts for savory pies or lasagne-like stand-ins to be filled with delectable layers of vegetables and meat or cheese--generally known as minas. Thick matzoh are often called for in foreign Jewish cookbooks, and when I first tasted the puffy, lace-like ones common in France and Italy, I could see why: when dampened with water or a more flavorful liquid, like broth, then patted dry, these matzoh hold their shape fairly well. So substituting them for pasta in a lasagne is easier.

When using regular, thin matzoh, I find it easiest to lay the matzoh out in a single layer on sheets of plastic wrap, wax paper, cloth dish towels, or several thicknesses of paper towels. Moisten the matzoh with liquid (if using plain water, do season it with salt at least, since it is so difficult to breathe flavor into the blandness, and pat dry. Then lift the matzoh individually, using the plastic wrap, wax paper, cloth, or paper towels underneath them, to help so they don't fall apart, and place them in your prepared baking dish.

For easy savory lamb and chicken minas from Turkey without the layering (more like meat matzoh brie), click on RECIPES.

I'm throwing down the matzoh brie/mina gauntlet for our Passover contest. Please send in your favorite matzoh brie ideas or mina recipes. I'll send a copy of Jewish Holiday Cooking to the contest winner. Just click on the Contact Button and send your recipes, comments, or anything you'd like to talk about.

Hag Someah and Happy Eating!

For many of us, holiday foods are linked to family and friends now gone, and every year our recipes keep those we miss alive for us. Sheri Green's recipes tell the beautiful stories of her family: "My dad lost his parents at a young age, and one of his memories was making hamentaschen with his mom. My mother decided to continue the tradition, and managed to recreate some of her filling recipes. Every year we would bake the hamentaschen together and it was an all day project. Our favorites were a honey/walnut/cinnamon filling and a honey/coconut filling. I lost my mom a few years ago, but the hamentaschen live on as I continue to prepare them with my own children."

I didn't have Sheri's exact recipes, so I just mixed amounts to taste, and particularly loved the walnut one, using chopped toasted walnuts, a light wild blackberry honey, cinnamon, and a generous pinch of salt.

Allison Kaufman's puree of pecans and raspberry jam was so simple, but turned out to be really scrumptious. I find plain jam plain boring, but the pecans were a perfect foil to the sweetness and provided great texture too. (I don't know if Allison adds salt, but I added a little here too in testing.)

Since this is my first contest on the site, both Sheri and Allison will win a copy of my book for their entries. I promise to limit myself to one winner in future contests!

Thanks to everyone who entered. Coming up next will be a matzoh brie contest for Passover. Details will be posted next week, so check back here then.

And please drop me a line if there's any food talk you'd like to share about Jewish holiday cooking!

Like muffins, bagels, and baseball players, hamantaschen have been pumped up to alarming proportions for some time now. A single bakery hamantasch these days might replicate the area of a modest paperback book, save only the fourth corner that the triangular pastry lacks. Super-size sweets and other mega-pastries so often go unfinished by kids; notwithstanding the gaudy appeal of Magnolia Bakery and its like, how many half-licked and partially nibbled cupcakes have you thrown away at children’s parties?

But it’s not just kids. Many adults, myself included, simply get bored. After a few bites, most Big Cookies—crumbly or crisp—taste pallid and dry. Adding more filling to a hamantasch doesn’t solve the problem: hamantaschen are best when the wonderful interplay between bites of cookie crust and luscious filling is immediate.

So I make my hamantaschen small, but in large batches. We’re not talking here about limiting intake, after all—you can always eat more of these delicate pastries. Shaping small pieces of the buttery dough can be tricky though—the warmth of my fingertips can make the pastry difficult to work with. So I keep the dough refrigerated when I’m not working on it, and I shape the pastry through a sheet of plastic wrap (see Hamantaschen Pastry in RECIPES).

In addition to fresh apple, I make fillings of dried fruit and nuts or almond paste studded with dried cranberries. Others I think would be fun to try are a pecan-pie-type filling, a rich, sweet cheese one (like the lush inside of a perfect cheese danish), and perhaps a sweet-savory filling.

Looking forward to reading and posting your hamantaschen ideas (or your recipes for my suggested fillings). I’ll send a copy of my book, Jewish Holiday Cooking, to the reader who sends in the best recipe.

To send recipes or comments, please click on the Contact Button and enter the information there.

CONTEST UPDATE (March 19, 2008):

Purim begins tomorrow, Thursday, at sunset and some last-minute bakers are still busy filling their hamantaschen. So, to give everyone time to send in recipes made over the holiday, final entries can be mailed until Sunday night, March 23rd. Winner and honorable mentions will be announced on Wednesday, March 26th.

Meanwhile, if you want inspiration for your last batches, here's a sample of some of the luscious entries so far.

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate: alone, mixed with peanut butter or with various jams

Nutella

Nuts: walnuts, honey and cinnamon or pecans pureed with raspberry jam

Dried fruit: prunes, apricots and raisins, combined with fresh orange, jam and honey; honey also teamed with coconut; and there's goat cheese studded with dried apricot

And last, we have a savory feta hamantasch filling

HAPPY PURIM! HAPPY EATING!