Matzah Crack Toffee

These are pretty much the best Passover treats I've ever made. A good way to use up matzah, and hey - this version is even vegan.  Becca calls is Matza Crack, which gets to their addictive quality.  [ As far as the Passover variety, check out Smitten Kitchen who references David Liebowitz who references Marcy Goldman - very Talmudic.]   
There are many versions of this, including one with saltines.  You can use butter, brown sugar, add salt on top, all kinds of interesting nuts (pistachios are pretty), but here is the basic, basic version.  Double it for a jelly roll size pan.







2 to 3 matzahs (whole wheat is fine, believe it or not!)
1 stick margarine (if you want it to be parve) or butter
1/2 c. sugar (brown sugar if you can find it)
1 c. chocolate chips
a few ounces grated nuts


Heat oven to 375°.

Lay sheets of matzah in a flat pan, breaking them so the fit.

In a small sauce pan, melt one stick of margarine and stir in the sugar.  It starts out as a paste and quickly becomes a syrup; stir continually, making sure the sugar has completely dissolved.  Bring to a boil and boil 3 minutes without stirring.
Pour the syrup over the matzahs.  Use a spatula to make sure that all the surfaces are coated.  Don't worry about it flowing under the cracks.

Bake for 10 minutes.  Watch to make sure it doesn't burn; if so, lower the temperature. When you take it out, the syrup will be bubbling. Pour the chocolate chips over the surfaces.
After about 5 minutes, take a few handfuls of grated nuts and sprinkle over the surface, as well.  Use a flat spatula or the back of a spoon to spread the melted chocolate chips to cover, integrating the chopped nuts.  Sprinkle more grated nuts on the top.
Let it sit.  Some people put it in the refrige or freezer til the chocolate hardens.
When the chocolate it set, just pry up the pieces and break them off, and voila!  The best Passover dessert ever!  If some of the chocolate breaks off (which it will if it's cold), the matzah pieces themselves are really good, so don't worry.

Cranberry Relish, from Sharon Strassfeld + Plain Old Cranberry Sauce

This is a recipe I've long loved, passed along by Sharon when I enjoyed it at her house on 101st street when we were neighbors.  I think of it as cranberry charoset.
It's not so much a recipe as a series of steps.

1 bag fresh cranberries
1 orange
walnuts (1/2 c?  I've never measured)
1/2 c. sugar or more, for less tartness

Slice the orange into small pieces and put half of it, along with about half the cranberries and walnuts into a food processor.  If you have a full size food processor, you can put it all in at once, until it's ground.

That's it!

You can freeze the cranberries - this year I threw a bag in and when I hadn't used it by March, I saved it for Passover, when we usually serve turkey.  It's such a gorgeous color.


Plain old cranberry sauce is so easy, no need to buy the canned. Though you need to make it ahead of time.
1 bag cranberries = 2 cups
1 c. water (you can do part OJ)
1 c. sugar
optional: ginger, cinammon, orange rind

Put everything in a 2 quart sauce pan (or 1.5 if you have one) and boil. Lower the heat and cook about 10 minutes until the berries have popped.

Cool. As it cools, it thickens.

Fritzie's Matzah Kugel

Being a Jewish homemaker in the 50's & 60's in Fargo meant buying from a small selection of Passover food when it came in special order at the Red Owl, 

the neighborhood supermarket.  (Supermarkets were an innovation in my childhood - before then, we shopped at the neighborhood store, The Economy Grocery, which was a half block from our house.  I was permitted to walk there myself and buy a Popsicle for 5¢, very exciting back in the day.)

Passover food was limited to five-pound packages of matzah (5 individual pounds packed together), bottled gefilte fish, matzah and cake meal, potato starch, Barton's almond kisses and canned macaroons. Maybe we had egg matzah.  Such staples as whole wheat matzah, quinoa, and pasta sauce had not yet made it forth, at least not to Fargo.  Of course we weren't all that strict about Passover, but we did substitute matzah for any bread products and had two seders, with lots of traditional Ashkenazic foods.  Bringing matzah to school was always embarrassing.  Mom baked a lot during Passover.  Passover Brownies were one of her specialties.  I just realized she didn't bake brownies during the rest of the year, so that made them special. And airy sponge cakes, with attendant drama. "Don't slam the door or the cake will fall!" We didn't routinely slam doors, but this really got our attention.
I've had this recipe of my mother's for 37 years, but this is the first year I made it - wow, it's wonderful! If dairy, really good with butter. She made it during the rest of the year, too, for Friday night dinner.  We didn't call it shabbat dinner, but we lit the candles and made kiddush, so that's what it was, of course.  (No challah that I recall).  This kugel is good enough to make when it's not Passover, a high compliment indeed!  The timing is tricky, since it's puffiest right when you take it out of the oven. However, it's still good when it's settled and flattened a bit. Really doesn't taste like matzah...

oil for spray
3 whole wheat matzot (or regular)
6 eggs
1/2 c. sugar
Grated rind of one orange or clementine (Easy: instead of grating it, chop the peels through a food processor)
1 t. lemon juice
1 t. cinnamon

1 t salt
1/2 c. raisins 
1 large apple, peeled, seeded, and chopped (or try a small can of crushed pineapple)
1/4 c. butter (or parve margarine)
cinnamon & sugar for top

Heat oven to 350°.
Spray a large (2 quart) casserole which has a lid (or devise one from your Passover collection of pots et al)
Crumple matzot and soak in water to cover.
In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar with a hand mixer until THICK, about 3-4 minutes on high.
Drain the matzot and add them along with raisins, cinnamon, chopped apple, lemon juice & grated orange peel.  Pour into greased casserole.
Dot with the butter, cutting it into smaller pieces. Sprinkle with a little extra cinnamon and sugar.
Bake for 1- 1½ hours. It will puff up, with a delicious crunchy topping.

Serves 6-8, depending on how much else is served.

Note from 2023: it's good cold.

From Nadav Lev Teutsch: "Gwandma, what do you call that apple and raisin thingy?"

Gwandma: "You mean matzah kugel?"

Nadav: "Ya! I want you make it every night during Passover, Gwandma!"

Mushroom Walnut Dill Paté

This is just plain good, and happens to be kosher for passover - an excellent recipe for using any dill and parsley you just ***might*** have in your refrigerator crisper drawer.  Ditto with the hardboiled egg.  It's a very forgiving recipe.

1 hard-boiled egg
1 to 2 onions, chopped fine
12 oz or so of walnuts
1/2 lb (or more) sliced mushrooms
olive oil (or vegetable oil)
dill, parsley - the amount is flexible.
salt/pepper to taste

Saute the mushroom and onion over medium heat in oil in a large frying pan until soft and browned.  Put the browned onion & mushroom in a food processor with the walnuts, dill, parsley, and egg (cut into a few pieces).  (If you have a small food processor like I do, you need to do this in two batches.) Process until smooth.  Season to taste.

Some call this mock chopped liver.  Since actual chopped liver is not on my list, this doesn't feel like mock anything, it feels like really wonderful walnut mushroom paté.

It's a nice appetizer, served on lettuce with some crudites and crackers.  Or a great dip for hors d'oeuvres.

Passover Muffins, and A Year of Recipes

Last year I started collecting recipes here for you, on Passover, and here I am again - one of the magical things about this holiday.  A funny island in time.  This year we're packing up to go to the Rosens so it even feels like a camping trip.
The Passover Muffins are a modification of a recipe from another Grand Forks balabusta, Esther Burke.  She was a high-powered, Orthodox mother of five in Grand Forks, ND.  Kind of a fish out of water but she handled it well. I have made these every year; my splurge on a Pesadik muffin tin allowed them to morph from bagels to muffins.

Tasha, when they came in 2022, makes a version with cakemeal that is puffier - popovers for Passover. Fun to say.

Heat oven to 375 °

1/2 c. oil
1 ½ c. hot water
2 c. matzah meal
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
4 eggs
cinnamon (optional)

In a 2 or 3 quart sauce pan, boil water and oil.  Add the dry ingredients and stir quickly until all the matzah meal is incorporated and the mixture leaves the sides of the pan.

Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, breaking them into a small cup first if you're fastidious about blood spots.  (they're very rare these days.)  Stir and incorporate each egg before adding the next.  A long-handled plastic spoon seems to work well - you need a lot of leverage as the dough is very stiff.

Spray a 12-muffin tin well with oil.  Spoon in the batter, dividing it evenly; the batter should come just to the top of each tin. Bake for about 45 - 50 minutes until golden brown.  If you don't have a muffin tin, you can lay them flat on a baking tin and shape them round.You can easily double this recipe - this year I splurged and bought a second muffin tin!  The batch pictured above is a double recipe in a 3 quart sauce pan.

These were very popular at 629 West Cliveden Street - I always tried to throw a batch together so they'd be around for Chag, hard to pull off when you're also making a seder!  Good especially if you need to travel somewhere and bring food.

Chicken with Wine & Mushrooms / Coq au Vin

This is a really delicious chicken dish, basically schnitzel baked in a wine mushroom sauce.
It's from the SSDS cookbook, from Ivy Cohen.  Do you remember her?

It's enough sauce for 3 lbs of chicken schnitzel.  You need a large casserole to bake it all.

3 lbs. chicken breast prepared as schnitzel.

Prepare sauce:
1 c. water
1 c. white wine
3 T. flour
3 T. oil
2 T. Israeli parve bouillon powder [you can buy an MSG-free version online]
1/2 lb sliced mushrooms
Salt, pepper to taste

In 2 quart sauce pan, bring all ingredients except the mushrooms to boil.  Simmer 5 minutes and add the mushrooms.  Sauce will thicken.
Place the schnitzel in a large casserole and cover with the sauce. Cover and bake at 350° for 30 minutes, uncovering for the last few minutes.  If you have an electric oven with a delayed bake setting, this is an ideal dish to leave for a few hours (while at shul) and come home to a delicious dish.
This is a pretty forgiving prep.  It will stay moist in the oven, handy for holiday meals when you set your oven on timebake.

Bobbi Breitman loves this dish. When she was sick, and I signed up for bringing a Shabbat dinner, I asked her what she wanted. She didn't miss a beat: this schnitzel with wine mushroom sauce.

I presume this sauce would also be good with vegie schnitzel but you can't bake vegie schnitzel very long.

Schnitzel

When Abba went on a low fat diet in his 40's, he wouldn't eat any chicken skin or dark meat, so schnitzel became the chicken prep of choice. The thinner the chicken breast, the better. You can buy them thinly sliced at House of Kosher, or slice thick chicken breasts into thinner slabs. They cook faster, and the portions are smaller. When we have company, I have learned that people will take a big chunk and leave a lot of it, so smaller portions seem to help people take what they can eat. Partially frozen chicken is easier to slice, by the way.

There's no recipe for schnitzel, it's really just a technique. One egg is about right for 1½ lbs of chicken, but chicken breast usually don't come in that amount, so you generally are short on eggs. These freeze well, so it's handy to make extra.

For Passover, you can use matzah meal seasoned with whatever you have.  You can use matzah meal during the rest of the year, too, obviously.

1 to 2 lbs. chicken breast - I prefer thin-sliced if you can find them.
Olive oil
Egg
Dijon mustard*
Flavored (parve) bread crumbs (or matzah meal)
Lemon and parsley for garnish

• In a large flat non-stick fry pan, add ~ one T of olive oil and heat over medium.
• Take 2 flat bowls.  Break an egg in one and beat lightly.
• Fill the bottom of the other with a small mound of bread crumbs.
• Put the package of chicken breast (chicken is grown in packages, right?) on a large plate, with the egg dish closer to the chicken.  
• Dip each cutlet in the egg, covering both sides.  
• Then drop it in the breading, turning it over, so the crumbs cover both sides.  

*One beaten egg is often a little scant for 2+ lbs of chicken breast. I recently read an odd book called "Recipes of Holocaust Survivors" and one of them adds Dijon mustard to the egg. This works well. Less than a teaspoon.

Set it in the hot frying pan.  It cooks fastest in the center, so start by putting the cutlets around the perimeter.  Depending on the size of your pan and the amount of chicken you may need a second pan. I didn't buy a second pan until I was about 50 years old, so hope you catch on quicker.
Fill the pan and brown the schnitzel.  The first side takes longer. They absorb a lot of oil, so you may need to add more to the pan before you flip them.  If you make them smaller, you have chicken nuggets, more or less, much less junky than the packaged kind.

Miriam Leventhal, Doda Rochelle's mother and truly one of the worlds tsadikot, taught me a trick when she visited us once in New York.  If you have extra egg and extra breading, you can combine them and make a little pancake, which she called a latkelah.  Just fry it along with the schnitzel. Make like it's a treat, some kid will eat it!

But lately I tried an experiment - I toasted the leftover breading in the 2nd frying pan, tossing the cooked schnitzel together in fry pan #1.  You don't need even keep the burner on. The breading absorbs the oil left in the pan, and just toss it evenly and let it cook.  I froze a small jar of browned breading and just added it to rice to get rid of it. It was great! It adds a crunch to the rice.

Lemon slices are a nice touch, but it doesn't seem like people actually use them, so don't worry if you don't have them!

When it's just David and me, I almost always make us chicken schnitzel. We have had them 100s of times and never get tired of them. They are great cold, for shabbat meals.

Rose Beloff's Sesame Cookies

These cookies are shaped, not dropped. Crunchy, not very sweet, and high-protein, they are the perfect accompaniment for coffee or tea, and not too guilt-inducing.
Rose Beloff lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where I would travel to visit Debi Osnowitz who moved there when we were about 10. It was an hour and a half bus ride and I was allowed to travel alone, which passed for exciting in my childhood.
This recipe is from the Grand Forks Sisterhood Cookbook.  Fargo Jews were more modern and GF Jews were more traditional.  It turns out they had more refugees and immigrants, being closer to Canada, but I didn't know that at the time.  We just thought they were weird.

6 T. oil
6 T. sugar
6 T. flour (can be part whole wheat)
3 eggs
2 1/2 C. sesame seeds. This is about 12-13 oz. You can substitute ground almonds for up to 1/4

1/2 t. salt

Mix ingredients. Let stand for a few hours until thoroughly chilled, to make the paste easier to shape.

• Heat oven to 325°.
• Spray cookie tins well.
• Fill a flat dish with water to dip your hands and/or utensils - the mixture is very messy.
• Wet a spoon and drop tight spoonfuls of sesame mixture onto the tin. With wet hands, shape into crescents. They don't expand much in baking, so they can be quite close together on the tin.  You need to keep wetting your hands.  After shaping the cookies (this is two tins' worth), there will be sesame mixture all over the tins, so wet your hands some more and just kind of sweep them these crumbs into the closest cookies.  When they bake, they hold together.

Bake 20-30 minutes until nicely browned.