Sweet, sweet, (and slightly alcoholic) slavery.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the holiday where Jews forgo leavened foods for a week in memory of our ancestors' flight from slavery and the Pharaoh. Despite the prohibition of bread, it's actually quite a foodie holiday, with several different symbolic foods (and drink - it's a Jewish holiday after all) required at the table for the Seder.

One of these is charoset (pronounced with a guttural "h" sound, not a hard "ch") which symbolizes the brick mortar of slavery, from the Jews' time in Egypt making pyramids. Ironically, although it represents the hard labor the Hews were required to perform, the purpose of the charoset in the Passover meal is to sweeten the bitter taste of slavery, which is usually played by a dose of fresh horseradish. And during the week of matzo-eating, charoset is just about the only thing that makes that dry, brittle cracker taste any good at all. (Don't talk to me about matzo brie or matzo pizza or any of that nonsense. Sure, covering up all taste and texture of the matzo whatsoever makes it taste okay. But is it still the bread of affliction when it's been turned into french toast?)

The ancient, tedious, high-maintenance, carefully guarded family recipe for charoset (now with food processor) is as follows: Grind up a bunch of nuts (any kind, although we tend toward walnuts or hazelnuts or, as shown, a mixture). Then add a lot of chopped apples (same principle applies - whatever floats your boat) and grind some more. Then add wine.

If it seems too dry, more apple. If it seems too wet, more nuts. The key principle, again, is that it ought to resemble brick mortar.

Chag Sameach! (Sounds like "hog sammy ack")

Crunchy Granola People

This recipe for a savory, crunchy granola went around my little corner of the internet a while back. 

I'm not a big fan of granola's chewy, sweet, stickiness, but I like all of its components, and this recipe was billed for non-granola lovers.

And we've had all this oatmeal lying around ever since my dad passed away. 

And we were about to go to the Anza-Borrego Desert, so I cut some of the sugar, added hazelnuts for my hermanita and dried cranberries for my mum, and off we went. 

We had some interesting breakfast company.

And the granola was crisp, the indigo bushes were blooming, and both went well with the morning air.  

And we had a wonderful, beautiful time.

 But I'm still not a granola fan.

Nonsense Cake

California is a pretty dry place, and though we've come out of our latest drought rather spectacularly, with heavy rainstorms and fog and wet well into the summer, the weather is still rather mild compared to, for instance, Philadelphia. Which is where I was this year as Californians complained about their dreary storm clouds, sopping rain puddles, and thick, lovely snowcaps. Happy as I was to miss the excitement and return to a much better watered state then when I left, I haven't completely avoided the unpleasant side-effects of our return to more sustainable waterways. Because, you see, our delicate agriculture that California so lovingly cultivates was affected by the unusual bounty of rain. Our more sensitive fruits – tomatoes, peaches, strawberries, cherries – have not only been late this year, but less intensely flavorful, less ripe, and far less plentiful. Except the plums.

The plums have been pretty fantastic.

And my mum, who 99% of the time would prefer a fresh piece of fruit over any confection that even the very best local, organic, unionized, free-range bakers might produce, has a deep, uncharacteristic love of zwetsche kuchen, a sort of German breakfast cake where a soft, sweet, spongy dough is generously covered in plums and baked until each plum piece is surrounded by a puffy golden pastry. And my mother is a damn good cook, so when plum season comes around, my mother stocks up on the little purple-green prune plums in the hopes that she'll end up with too many and be forced to bake them.

The recipe is from my great aunt Eva who, despite our family's legacy in the kitchen, was a fantastic cook in her day. My mother, as a child, tried to request Eva's zwetsche kuchen in her informal, phonetic German, and instead asked for schwatzen kuchen – nonsense cake – sending her aunt into hysterics, and providing one of the few family anecdotes about food that actually results in something delicious.

Eva calls for three to four pounds of fresh prune plums, which is about as many as you can possibly fit into your pie pan, plus a few more.

Unlike many German desserts, this cake is primarily about the fruit, not dark spices or rich pastry. It's a summer cake, and the plums should be nearly stacked on top of each other so that even when they shrink in the oven there will be hardly any room for the pastry to puff up around them.

But it is still a German cake, so the plums are lightly sprinkled with sugar and breadcrumbs – or, in our case, leftover ground hazelnuts – before they go in the oven.

In the oven the cake expands, turning golden and crispy around the edges, and the plums become soft and dark. Served hot, the crumbly warm cake sets off each bite of wet, thick plum. Left to itself for awhile, the flavors deepen and the plums imbue the cake with their juices.

My personal preference is to eat it hot right out of the oven it for dessert, and then, after it has sat overnight, again for breakfast the next morning.

Zwetsche Kuchen

adapted from a recipe by Eva Wertheimer

In a bowl, combine 

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

With hands, work in

4 tablespoons butter

Chill dough for 30 minutes. 

Roll or pat dough into a 9" pie plate (or any approximate alternative). 

Pit and halve

3-4 pounds fresh prune plums (or one 9" pie plate full, plus a few)

Place plum halves overlapping on top of the dough. Sprinkle with

3 tablespoons breadcrumbs or ground nuts

1-3 tablespoons white or brown sugar

Bake at 375° for 45 minutes. Cool slightly before serving. 

An unexpected love affair with Filbert.

The recipe sounded, felt, smelled, looked, tasted like poetry.

Warm, roasted hazelnuts rolling free of their skins in a clean kitchen towel, milk chocolate flakes melted by hot cream, sweet, nutty milk stirred into a custard, every step was a beautiful, satisfying aroma of things to come.

Engaging in some light reading with The Perfect Scoop, my dad bookmarked the recipe for gianduja gelato.

I might have passed over it, favoring fruit flavors in this late summer season, and preferring bitter dark chocolates to the creamy milks.

It may be the best ice cream I've ever eaten.

But please, disregard the instruction to "discard the hazelnuts" after infusing the milk with the roasted, ground nuts. They can be put back in the oven, covered with the milky, sugary residue, and roasted until they become the perfect crispy topping to sprinkle over the thick, rich, smooth gianduja gelato.