3/31/11

The sweet deliciousness of mass murder


Jews are notorious for kvetching about the trials and tribulations of being Jewish. Everyone is always ostracizing them, banishing them, trying to obliterate them from the face of the earth - it's a rough legacy. Most of the well-known Jewish holidays celebrate situations where one of these scenarios was narrowly avoided - rather solemn occasions that extol the extraordinary survival abilities of the Chosen People.


So it makes sense that a holiday where no Jewish people were harmed in any way is a little less formal. That a holiday where the Jews not only saved themselves from their oppressor, but got to exact revenge as well is a cause for joyous, raucous celebration. That a holiday where the Jews got to turn mass murder around and slaughter someone else for a change demands lots of noise, hundreds of cookies, and copious alcohol consumption. And the Torah itself demands generations of joy and celebration, so much that even most rabbis - even Orthodox rabbis - will allow congregants to dress in drag for one day out of the year.


That day is Purim, and I may have gone a bit overboard on the cookies this year.


When I called my friend Julia to discuss hamantaschen dough, we both managed to recommend the same recipe to each other - one that we'd both made and discussed the year before. We like it because of the butter (many hamantaschen recipes, on account of being kosher, are made with oil which is probably why so many Jews don't like hamantaschen) and also because of the funny little drawing of Haman with the hamantaschen hat. It's unclear how many cookies the dough recipe makes, since they can be different sizes, but I multiplied it by six (the photo below) and then made another double batch, and it made approximately a million cookies.


We made two different sizes of cookies, and forgot to count, so I don't have a very clear estimate. But I had about 17 or 18 people who all ate quite a few cookies, and managed to get through maybe half of them. Maybe. Next time, for the same number of people, I'd quadruple the dough recipe and count on some leftovers.


The cookies are filled - traditionally with fruit or poppy seeds - and there's a lot of lovely recipes floating around. Variety is always good, so we made quite a few.


This prune recipe is filled with additions, making it less like something your grandma might eat to stay regular and more like something delicious.


I used this apricot recipe as a base, and added some raisins and candied ginger (about half a cup of each) for a little kick. Next time I'd skip the raisins and add more ginger, although as someone inclined to eat large chunks of candied ginger on a regular basis, that could be a personal preference.


A lot of people really like chocolate, and if you're someone who finds that a little dull and also has something of a ginger fixation, it's quite easy to add some pieces of candied ginger to this basic chocolate recipe. Or just dip some ginger in the chocolate and eat it without the cookie. That's okay too.


I also cut some apples into slices, covered them in sugar and cinnamon, and then cooked them in a pan. Cut into small pieces (not puréed) they made a nice turn-over sort of cookie


You can also use any sort of premade jam - the apple-beet hamantaschen were surprisingly sweet and delicious. And the lemon curd was my favorite store-bought flavor. 


But perhaps my biggest stroke of genius was picking up a container of dates and a few blood oranges at the store. I didn't have any specific plans for them, but cooked together with a little orange juice and some sugar, they made by far my favorite flavor of the day.


I didn't pay much attention to amounts, but I think it would be hard to go wrong with this combination. The orange balances the sweet of the dates, the juice adds enough liquid to soften everything before it goes in the food processor, and the sugar - well, it may not have even been necessary. Depends on your blood orange. Mine was a little sour, so I added a little sugar.


Cooked together for ten minutes or so, and then puréed, this one almost didn't get turned into cookies. It's one of those flavors that makes you lose track of the world for a second as it hits your tongue - just enough kick to shock your taste buds into action, not enough tart to ever stop eating it.


It's also real pretty.


And then all that's left is to fold the cookies into little triangles (really mash down those tips too - they like to come undone in the oven), bake them until their edges are golden, and eat all your mistakes (and most of the blood orange-date filled ones) to hide the evidence.


Make sure to coerce some friends into helping you fold - particularly if you've vastly overestimated how many cookies you need. Remember to feed them before the party starts. And after forcing 24 cups of flour into the standing mixer, you may need to change your shirt.


Then have a drink and retell the glorious story of Esther, how the Torah asks us to remember with joy and celebration the time the Jewish people triumphed over evil by using the tools of mass murder and sexual coercion, and how an evil man's hat inspired fruit-filled deliciousness for generations and generations of drunken, costumed Jews and their slightly confused goy friends.


There may have been some goyim this year who went home with the idea that Mordecai ordered Esther to organize a ménage â trois with Haman and the king in order to save her people, which isn't quite canon, but these things happen when the Torah tells you to drink yourself to confusion.

Happy Purim!

3/21/11

Good things come in little boxes that have my name on them.


A combination of thesis writing, thinking about credential programs, and trying to generally figure life out as I near the end of my time in Philadelphia has made for an inclination towards some difficult moments. Mostly they consist of trying to plow through books and ideas and writing through the thick fog that envelops my mind whenever I try to think about too many things at once.


So, on the occasional Monday where the workload seems a little overwhelming, and the sharp, witty, knowledgeable, intelligent self seems conspicuously absent, getting little boxes carefully wrapped in brown paper in the mail is unbelievably exciting.


When those little boxes are from a dear friend and filled with aromatic dried petals and spices and a tea recipe, they seem spectacularly well-timed.


When you realize that you have another little box, delivered by another dear friend over the weekend, that contains a single, brightly colored, lidded teacup from her mother, then life seems, for an instant, in perfect alignment. 


And the day seems like an optimistic start to a week that will contain many hopeful cups of warm, spicy tea.


Persian Spice Tea with Rose Petals and Cardamom
from Lea
Boil 
2 1/4 cups of water
Reduce heat to a simmer, and add
1/2 ts ground cardamom
1/4 ts ground cinnamon
1 tb dried rose petals (or 2 ts rose water)
5 whole cloves
Turn off the heat and let the tea steep, covered, for 5 minutes. Strain through a coffee filter into a nice cup. 

[As you can tell from the photos, I put the ingredients in a teabag, which also worked, although it makes a slightly weaker tea.]


(We just celebrated Purim this past weekend, and I'd like to tell you all about it, but you have to wait until I'm able to look at a hamantaschen again. Or even a photograph of one.)

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