Hot, Hot, Hot

The weather is getting really hot and sticky here, and by that I mean that it's getting inappropriate and taking off all its clothes. Time to break out the ice cream maker and the spicy peppers.

When my increasingly frequent partner-in-crime demanded that we make ice cream with his stash of extra- spicy habañeros, I grabbed David Lebovitz's excellent cookbook and did a quick google search. We couldn't find a recipe that did exactly what we wanted, but it seemed well within our comfort zone of slightly odd but totally edible and maybe even tasty cooking projects.

We were wrong. This ice cream went above and beyond tasty. The only think I would change is the quantities. More of everything.

Especially more habañeros. We candied them for about an hour, which gave them a lovely texture and flavor, with a mild - but still present - spiciness. They were perfect, but due to concerns about the spiciness, we only processed three chilis. Next time I'd do everything exactly the same, but up the number of habañeros used.

The candied chili peppers were subtle enough that we needed a low-key ice cream to accentuate their flavors. David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream recipe did not disappoint. The smooth, rich vanilla made an excellent showcase.

This is one of those recipes that I plan on coming back to, and I'm so happy to have discovered it in the first week of this hot Philadelphia summer.

The only problem is what to do with the intensely spicy simple syrup left over after the candying process. We've bandied around a few ideas - put a few drops in drinks, use it to candy bacon, put some in the actual ice cream - but for now it's in the freezer, with a warning sign in large lettering. Suggestions welcome!

Vanilla-Habañero Ice cream

Wash well:

6-10 habañero chili peppers

De-seed peppers, and slice into small pieces. Don't touch your eyes or your face or any material objects. You are now covered in spicy.

Boil together:

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

Add chili pepper pieces and simmer for an hour. Strain out chilis, reserving syrup for another use (if we can figure one out...). Dry overnight, then place in a freezer.

Make David Lebovitz's easy, delicious:

vanilla ice cream

Once the ice cream has churned, stir in the frozen habañero pieces. Freeze until stiff, serve.

This was particularly excellent after we ate Matt's spicy chorizo as part of his monthly Charcutepalooza challenge. That recipe, although we made a few variations (mostly on amount and type of chili pepper) can be found here.

This is how Californians deal with East Coast summers.

Pass Over the Pepper

The most important holiday in my West Coast liberal Jewish/WASP/Buddhist-influenced family of choice is Passover. Our seder, always held on the convenient weekend instead of the official first day, has for years provided a casual, cozy place for my family's circle of vaguely Jewy friends who, in avoiding the stressful family dynamics that such holidays usually provide, have managed to create an intimate group of families and friends who loudly joke, cook, bicker, and drink their way through the proceedings.

Turns out that relatives are relative. 

The menu has, over the years, developed into a routine despite my mother's best efforts. Along with a few of her close friends - all loud, opinionated Jewish(y) women with what you might politely call "strong personalities" - certain recipes have become canon, with people threatening to not attend if my mother doesn't make her lamb recipe or Karen comes without her passover cake and so on. Often the people making the demands of these women are each other. And their children. Because, although I can imagine a seder without these things, it isn't one I can feign much excitement about. 

And so when I moved across the country for graduate school and could no longer afford to come home for my parents' seder, there were a few recipes I took with me.

It took me three years to get Karen's secret family recipe for her Passover cake, and I only got access to it by arguing that I was a legitimate family member, so that remains a secret. And because the cake is out of this world, even for someone like me who isn't much into cake, I apologize for your inferior life experience. You will just have to experiment with nut flour, egg whites, and whipped cream in hopes of creating a vague shadow of the epic deliciousness that is this cake.

I will give you my mother's lamb recipe, which has converted goys, lamb-haters, and vegetarians to this once-a-year, Jewish, lamb-filled, unapologetically pink and juicy meat bonanza. It isn't really hers, so much as it's straight out of the Silver Palate Cookbook, but it has all the nostalgia, taste, and notoriety of a traditional family recipe. It took almost as much badgering to get as the cake recipe, but for different reasons. My mother's original description of the recipe was "Oh, I just put the lamb in the oven and cook it for awhile." Eight hours of marination, over half a dozen ingredients, and a whole lot of phone calls about cooking techniques later, I finally got the whole thing out of her.

I had a (somewhat) irrational fear of running out of food, so for a crowd of fourteen underfed students I bought a 8 lb leg of lamb and a 5 lb shoulder, both bone-in. The best combination of cheap and quality lamb was found at one of my local Italian Market butchers - I visited and called around at some of the local supermarkets and they either had small, sad-looking cuts for a dollar cheaper (Acme, Superfresh type places) or large, prewrapped legs of lamb for several dollars more (Wegman's). The butcher at Cannuli's deboned the lamb (although was slightly confused by my request to keep one of the shank bones whole for the seder plate!) and wrapped it up for me. As you can see from the bag, it isn't exactly a kosher establishment, but I was pretty thrilled with my purchase.

Because this recipe calls for extensive marination, it doesn't have to be the most tender or quality cut. I bought my lamb on the Thursday before my Saturday seder, which meant it had over 24 hours to marinate. The shoulder made for less beautiful slices, but still tasted wonderful, so it's easy to save a few dollars by getting the less quality cut. 

The marinade is a potent mixture of soy sauce, wine, vinegar, dried spices, and fresh mint and rosemary. After cooking, the leftover drippings make a mean gravy.

Rolling the roasts was sort of an experience, as I hadn't ever tied a shoulder together before - it was a little more difficult and less intuitive than the leg. 

There's probably a fast, easy, standard way to do this, but I don't know what it is. I just tried to wrap it evenly, and tied it tightly. It worked out.

It wasn't until several hours after the meal (and quite a few glasses of wine) that I saw the unopened bottle of mustard on the kitchen table and realized that I'd forgotten to cover the lamb in a mustard-peppercorn crust. It adds a lovely, crispy, spicy touch to the lamb and, although my mother used to leave it off when there were a lot of small children at the table who couldn't handle the spicy pepper, it's one of the defining traits to this recipe. Despite that, I didn't realize it was missing until I'd eaten my share of the meat (neither did anyone else), and so it is optional. But it's also better.

Passover Lamb

From The Silver Palate Cookbook by way of my mother

Wash and pat dry:

5 lb leg of lamb

[unrolled and de-boned]

Combine:

1 tb peppercorn

1 tb fresh rosemary [I usually use more]

one bunch mint leaves

5 cloves, crushed

1/2 cup sweet vinegar [the original recipe calls for raspberry, I used balsamic.]

1/4 soy sauce

1/2 cup dry red wine 

Pour marinade over the lamb and refrigerate, turning the meat every so often, for at least 8 hours and up to a couple of days.

Take the lamb out of the fridge a few hours before cooking to bring to room temperature.

Roll the lamb with cooking twine and cover with:

2 tb Dijon

2-5 tb peppercorns

Put lamb on meat rack in a baking dish and pour the marinade around the lamb. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F for about an hour and a half (18 minutes a pound). Let roast stand for 20 minutes before slicing and serving. Retain cooking juices for gravy. 

 

Happy Passover, holiday of your choice, or unattached lamb-filled feast!

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!

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.)

Life's been a little weird lately.