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.

*Alternative is to just make a gluten free mushroom sauce for plain old schnitzel and not bake it.

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.

* Gluten free sauce: Saute 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms in a good slug of olive oil until soft. 
Take 3/4 c. wine or so, and add 1/4 c water. Add 1-2 t. bullion powder and 1 T of cornstarch, and stir til the cornstarch dissolves.

Cook with mushrooms over medium heat. It keeps thickening. If you turn off the burner and let is sit, it will congeal but still tastes great. 

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.

Iced Ricotta Cookies

My mouth waters just thinking about these cookies - the recipe is from an old Family Circle magazine.  I have tweaked it a bit, and only bake a half recipe, which is still a generous amount.
I like to make them for teas, since they are not super sweet and look colorful, and also for Hanukkah, with a dusting of goofy blue sprinkles.  This makes about 3 dozen.  Note the recipe suggests refrigerating the dough for a few hours, so plan ahead.

Cookie Dough

¼ c (= half stick) butter, softened

5/8 c. sugar

1 egg

1 t. vanilla

1 c part-skim ricotta (7-8 oz) - this is ~half a 13 oz container

2 c. flour (as you know by now, I usually put in ~ ¼ whole wheat)
1 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t salt

Cookie Glaze
1 c. confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 to 1½ T orange juice or eggnog.  GO EASY ON THE LIQUID.  It's easier to add more than to work with runny icing.  I make this mistake most every time.

In large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar on medium speed - I have always just used a  handmixer. Beat about 3 minutes until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, vanilla and ricotta until well blended.

In a second medium sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Stir flour mixture into wet ingredients until well-blended.  Cover and refrigerate and hour or two for easier shaping.

To bake:  heat oven to 350.  Spray baking tins or mini-muffin trays.  If you use trays, shape level tablespoons of dough about 1" apart.  You could do a combination of both.

Bake about 10 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly browned.

In the meantime, prepare the icing.  Stir the confectioners sugar with the liquid until smooth, adding the liquid very sparingly and incorporating it before adding more.  Add just a drop at a time.  Really!

When the cookies are slightly cooled,  pick up each cookie/mini-scone and dip it in the icing, and then the sprinkles, orange zest, lavendar, or slivered almonds.

The icing hardens - what a treat, and so pretty, too!

Other ideas for color on the icing: lavender, or tiny orange zest peels from a microplane zester.

Weeknight Gnocchi w Brown Butter Sage

Gnocchi Waiting for Tomato Sauce and Grated Cheese!

This gnocchi (pronounced "no-kee") recipe's shortcut, using dehydrated potato flakes, is not for a purist.  But they are fun to make,  less work - and quite delicious.
Any kind of good tomato sauce would work. Or how about pesto. You need good parmesan cheese to grate over it, and parsley offsets the bland color of the gnocchi. Capers are an extra add-on, very tasty. The ridges in the gnocchi hold the sauce.

We conclude that smaller gnocchi are better!

Fill a 3 quart pot with water, cover, and if you have an induction cooktop, put it on a minute or two before you're ready to drop the gnocchi in. If it's a conventional stove, start the boiling before the dough. 

1 c. very hot water
1 c. potato flakes
1 c. flour

1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 egg
1 T oil
1/2 t salt 

fresh pepper

15 or so leaves sage

Butter
Red Sauce or Pesto
Grated Parmesan
Minced parsely if you have it
Capers (optional)

Lemon zest and juice (optional)

In a medium mixing bowl combine the very hot water (hottest tap water, or instant hot, or microwaved to near boil) with the potato flakes.  Dump in the flours and mix. Add the egg, oil, and salt  and mix until it's a smooth dough. This is easiest to do by hand. The dough doesn't need much attention, just squeeze/knead until the flour is all incorporated.

Divide into four.  On a large board, roll into four long coil about 1" wide and flatten.  Use a sharp knife and slice the coil into 1/2" pieces, wetting the knife if necessary. If you want to be more efficient, you can line them up and slice across all four coils at once. Keep these small. (The gnocchi expand when cooking.) You could also cut them, and then pinch off half, making two. That nice small size is more effort but they're good.

You can roll them against the tines of the fork, horizontally. The flick of a finger is enough, the ridges don't need to be deep. Or use a ridged gnocchi board.  I just bought one, and it's really fun  Will show you next time you're around.  Take a pinch of dough, press it into the grooved board, and coil it so it has a hollow center.

By now the water is likely boiling.

Dump the first gnoccho [I looked up the singular of gnocchi] into the boiling water.  They quickly float to the top, like matzah balls - fun to watch.  While they're cooking, repeat the process.  When the next 1/4 are ready, use a slotted spoon remove the floating gnocchi from the boiling water and set them in a bowl or plate which you can cover to keep them warm.  This makes enough for 2-3-4 people, depending on how much else you serve.

To make the sage brown butter gnocchi, use a cooling rack over a tray to let the gnocchi dry after removing.

In  a large frying pan, toss in torn sage and about 2 T butter. Fry the gnocchi and sage until browned, turning the gnocchi as needed.

Salt and fresh pepper it. 

Serve with some red sauce on the side. With a little parmesan, I don't think it needs sauce, but DAT always likes some.

The sage came from Zach and Becca's. Yum! Sender and Shula are here at Allens Lane and Circus Camp, along with Zach. Summer 2023.

Walnut Cheese Loaf with Mushroom Sauce

This recipe is from the Jewish Exponent (which, as you know, I dubbed The Backward, as opposed to The Forward.)  
This is kind of a meat loaf substitute - it has platter presence for a vegetarian meal, especially if you're accustomed to serving meat in a starring roll.  Served this when the Bank/Rosenzweigs joined us for a stratospherically wonderful Shabbat dinner.

Notes:  you need to cook the rice in advance.  Also, you need to grease the pan super well.  Spraying is not enough.  Add a layer of butter or margarine so it comes out more easily.
Also: make a double recipe and freeze half.  Or even make 1.5 times the recipe and make two nice sized loaves.  If you don't have a second loaf pan, just freeze in a ziplock.

Loaf
4 eggs, beaten
6 oz. Cheddar or other hard cheese, grated
1 1/2 c. walnuts, chopped
1 c. cooked brown rice
1/2 c. oats 
8 oz chopped mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped fine  (you could also add chopped celery)
1 clove minced garlic
salt & pepper to taste

1 T butter or olive oil

Sauté mushrooms and onions in butter or olive oil until soft.

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.  Pack into well-oiled au gratin or loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes until set.  Let stand ~ 10 minutes..  Unmold onto serving platter.

Mushroom Sauce

(You could use any sauce or gravy, but this is the recipe.)

1/3 c. butter
8 oz sliced mushrooms
3 T flour
1 1/2 c. milk

1 t. Osem or Telma vegetarian bullion powder 
salt, cayenne pepper to taste

• In saucepan, melt butter over low temperature.
• Saute sliced mushrooms until soft.
• Stir in flour through a small sieve or strainer, and incorporate. Add salt, bullion, and cayenne and gradually add milk.
• Cook until thick, without boiling.  On the induction, #4 setting works well.

Pour about half the mushroom sauce on the loaf, and the rest on the side.