Plan your menu ahead to ensure a gala seder
Right before holidays I start getting calls and emails. The most frequently asked question: “Can I cook ahead and freeze….” You fill in the blank. With very rare exceptions the answer is a resounding YES! Not only can you, you should!
With Passover on the horizon, my best advice for those hosting a gala Seder is to cook smart. And that means, plan your menu, like NOW, folks, and start cooking and freezing. You want to be a guest at your own party—right?—not some wilted servant-look-alike wishing everyone would just go home so you can soak your feet.
In my case, with Passover just a month away, I’ve already started to cook and freeze recipes from the Passover chapter of my cookbook, “Cooking Jewish” (Workman Publishing, $29.95). My grandchildren will be visiting before the festivities, so I plan to have practically the entire menu tucked away in my freezer. Then I can spend my time enjoying them as well as the Seder to come.
I have warbled endlessly in this column about my mother’s chicken soup, but it bears repetition. I don’t care what your mother or grandmother did, trust me, they never created a soup like this. (For the recipe search JLife 1/29/22.) No Jewish holiday is complete without chicken soup, and mine is already in the freezer. So are my matzo balls, both plain and shiitake mushroom. I freeze them on a cookie sheet, then put them all in zip-locks and freeze.
I like to select do-ahead, braised dishes that can not only be frozen, but actually benefit from a day or two of “relaxation” in the frig while soaking up all those succulent flavors. A word or two about marketing, and I’m not talking about shopping. By “marketing” I mean how you sell your dish. Mr. Shakespeare and his rose by any other name smelling as sweet aside, if I tell my kids my salmon gefilte fish is gefilte fish, it doesn’t have the same ring to it as my calling the dish salmon timbales. You’ll find my salmon timbales (wink, wink) recipe as well as Uncle Lou Bower’s homemade horseradish at JLife 1/2/22.
This week I will bake and freeze my Apple-Apricot Schalat, my family’s favorite kugel. A kugel is a baked pudding, made for Passover with matzo instead of noodles. The word schalat derives from cholent and has nothing to do with the “charlotte” pudding of French cuisine. This pareve kugel is topped with a lovely fruit display of pineapple rings, strawberries, blueberries and Mandarin oranges. Traditionally made in a 9X12 pan, for a knock-their-socks- off presentation, try using a springform pan with the fruit facing outward all around the sides. For the recipe, go to gourmania.com.
All the desserts will be frozen as well. No bread or flour for a week? No problem! We Jews sure love a challenge, and imaginative Jewish cooks through the ages, like a million Iron Chefs all working with the same surprise ingredient, have molded, crumbled, whipped, layered, fried, baked, infused and combined matzo with an astonishing variety of other ingredients to produce a tempting feast.
My cousin Vicki Miller got her now legendary flourless chocolate cake from her sister-in-law, Allison Miller Solomon, a chef and caterer, who found it in Lora Brody’s first book, “Growing Up on The Chocolate Diet.” Bête Noire means “black beast” in French—but how did this creamy, truffle-like slice of chocoholic heaven come by such an ominous name? When I contacted Lora for permission to use the recipe in my cookbook, she explained that it took her hundreds of tries until she perfected it. (Her son, who serves it in his restaurant, The Night Kitchen, in Montague, Massachusetts, calls it The Heart of Darkness!) With all due respect to Conrad, although Lora had a beast of a time testing it, this super-easy recipe certainly is no beast for us to prepare. (It is a beast to walk off, however.)
No matter how many other desserts I’m serving, I’ve got to make Matzoh Toffee. Sometimes the easiest is the best. You just heat butter and brown sugar, pour it over matzoh, and bake, then melt chocolate over the whole shebang. My daughter-in-law Shelly tells me her Grandma Ilo used to make the same thing on the farm, using saltines or graham crackers.
Farfel Nut Thins
Yield: 2 dozen
3/4 cup sliced or slivered almonds
1 tablespoon matzoh cake meal
1 cup matzoh farfel
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine, melted
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. Position racks in middle and upper thirds of oven; preheat to 325°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Grind 1/2 cup of the almonds with matzoh cake meal in food processor.
3. Mix matzoh farfel, sugar, and salt in medium mixing bowl. Pour melted margarine over farfel mixture, and blend until sugar dissolves. Stir in egg and vanilla, followed by ground and sliced almonds. Mix well.
4. Drop tablespoonfuls of mixture onto prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 4 inches apart. These really spread. Bake until golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating pans top and bottom and front to back after 5 minutes. To reuse sheets immediately, slide or lift parchment off sheets, and let cookies cool completely. Otherwise allow cookies to cool on sheets set on wire rack. When completely cooled, lift them from parchment. Store cookies, layered with waxed or parchment paper, in airtight plastic container at room temperature up to 5 days.
Chocolate-Covered Matzoh Toffee
Yield: Not enough!
About 4 boards matzo
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter or nondairy margarine
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnut pieces, toasted and chopped (optional)
1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Line a 17-inch baking pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper.
2. Arrange matzo in prepared pan, breaking them, if necessary, to fill all spaces.
3. Bring butter and brown sugar to a boil in small saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook until thick and syrupy, 3 minutes. Pour toffee mixture over matzo and spread out evenly. Bake until bubbly, 4 minutes.
4. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chips over toffee. Bake 1 minute more. Remove pan from oven and set aside until chocolate has melted, about 5 minutes. Spread melted chocolate out evenly. Sprinkle with walnuts, if using. Refrigerate until chocolate is firm, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Cut or break into pieces. And don’t throw away leftover crumbs. My friend Joanne suggests sprinkling them over ice cream.
Source: “Cooking Jewish” (Workman)
by Judy Bart Kancigor
Too Good to Call Passover Cake Bête Noire (Flourless Chocolate Cake)
Yield: 8 servings
8 ounces unsweetened chocolate, very coarsely chopped
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, very coarsely chopped
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into small pieces
5 extra-large eggs.
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 9-inch round cake pan (not a springform), line it with round of parchment paper, and butter paper.
2. Place both chocolates in food processor and process until chopped.
3. Combine sugar and 1/2 cup water in a saucepan and bring to a rolling boil. Stir to dissolve sugar. With processor on, add boiling sugar syrup to chocolate through feed tube. Add butter, piece by piece, followed by eggs. Process only until very smooth.
4. Pour mixture into prepared cake pan. Set pan in larger baking pan, and fill larger pan with warm water to reach halfway up side of cake pan. Carefully transfer pan to oven, and bake on center oven rack until a sharp knife inserted in center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
5. Remove cake pan from larger pan and transfer to wire rack to cool for 10 minutes.
6. Run sharp knife around edges of pan. Cover pan with plastic wrap, and invert onto baking sheet. Lift off pan and peel off parchment paper. Invert cake plate over cake, and invert plate and baking sheet together, so cake is now upright. Remove plastic wrap. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.
Jlife Food Editor Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” (Workman) and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook” (an e-book short from Workman), a columnist and feature writer for the Orange County Register and other publications and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com.