Potato Kugel

- Elspeth Leave a comment

My family is a strange mix of Catholic, Jewish, Atheist, and some form of Protestant. This Easter we decided to abandon the Jesus worship and hit up the Old Testament with a good old-fashioned Seder.


Don’t get me wrong; I love a good Cadbury egg as much as the next Anglican (I still packed these away with gusto, never fear). But every now and then we all appreciate the guttural tones of Hebrew chanting before we dive into strange dishes like Gefilte fish and potato kugel.

The question on every Gentile’s mind: what is Gefilte Fish?

I embrace my ignorance on this front and gladly pass this jar to my neighbor. Does anyone really know the answer? Does anyone really want to know the answer? Does anyone want to just, you know, toss it casually into the dumpster?

Why, yes. Yes I do. And what the hey is jellied broth?
Don’t tell me; it was a hypothetical-ish question.

I’m going to focus on my sister’s deeeeelighful rendition of “Off the Broiler’s” Potato Kugel, since it was not only tasty but completely without balled-up fish of any kind. So put on your pray shawls and adjust your yamulke; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

This little lady has been trying to overthrow my position as the culinary sister, so maybe you can help me out by letting her know it’s never going to happen. Or maybe I should just throw her one of these and assume she’ll back off:

What a mug! She sure is fearsome in her fleece coat with lots of drool hanging down in ropes from her over-sized yapper.

The full recipe from the Broiler folks can be found here, and this is what you’ll need:

1/2 cup Parsley Leaves
4 medium yellow onions
1/2 cup Schmaltz (mmm chicken fat; we just used butter)
7 Eggs
2 tsp Salt
3/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 cup Carrots, peeled and shredded
4 lbs yukon gold potatoes
2/3 cup Matzo Meal
1/2 tsp baking powder

Put the slicing blade on the food processor and process 3 of the onions. Caramelize them over medium heat using half of the butter.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs in a large bowl.

Mince the parsley in the food processor with the regular blade. Add one of the onions and pulse until thoroughly demolished. Add this to the eggs and mix.

Rinse, scrub, and quarter your potatoes. Place them in a bowl of cold water until the onions are caramelized so they do not brown.

Shred the carrots and add them to the egg mixture, along with your Matzo crumbs, baking powder, salt and pepper.

If the onions are close to being all brown and lovely, you can go ahead and shred the potatoes. Please use the Cuisinart for this, unless you have some weird need to hate life by the end of this Seder.

See how happy she is using that wonderful machine? Don’t you want to be that ecstatic about potatoes? Now, mix everything together!

Grease up a 13’x9′ pan and add some butter, just for the heck of it:

Express skepticism:

“That’s not how my grandmother made it.”
Now you can bake this puppy at 375 for about 60-90 minutes, depending on your oven and how brown you want it.

The entire menu was composed of lamb roast, matzoh ball soup, lots and lots of wine, almond torte, roasted cauliflower and beans, and this lovely kugel. And there I was thinking Jewish food was a hair shy of tasty!
*Nom*

Blue Cheese Crackers

- Elspeth Leave a comment

I was looking for cupcake recipes this past weekend (Seth and Mia’s wedding is coming up! Cupcakes for all!) and stumbled upon dear Nigella’s Irish Blue Cheese Crackers.

Dear Nigella does seem to have a tiny issue with being a little, ah, forthcoming. But by gum the lady does know how to make a mean cracker.

I thought this would be a nice treat for my coworkers, who just spent a week training strange East Coast people in D.C. Poor souls need something comforting to help them forget the bad weather and flirty females!

You will need:
3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (I used Irish Cashel)
1 stick butter
1 egg yolk
3/4 c flour
1/4 c cornmeal (Nigella calls for blue cornmeal, but the only way that would happen in my house is if the yellow kind grew mold)
Pinch salt

Cut up the butter and let it soften to a seriously mold-able substance.

Add the blue, erring on the side of more.

To avoid getting blue cheese all over your fingers, flake it off the main hunk with a paring knife:

Slap the yolk into the bowl, but reserve the white for brushing later. The crackers, not your hair.

Here’s where I ran into trouble, because I lack a certain amount of patience and didn’t feel like letting the butter soften. I had no choice but to crank up “Money Maker” on the old iPod and really put some serious effort into crafting a homogenous mixture out of what felt like hardened cement. All worth it, in the end!

Add the flour, cornmeal, and salt and mix together.

Don’t bother using a spoon; just go at it with your hands, like some sort of animal. Doubtful that an animal would embark on a cracker-making extravaganza, but oh well.

Lump o’ dough. Flatten into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

When it’s ready, preheat your oven and dust work surface with flour.

Roll the dough out to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. It will be fairly crumbly, so just mash any stray bits back into the dough.

Using your favorite cookie cutter or the top of a glass, cut out all the dough. It should fill one baking sheet because they do not have to be far apart.

Brush the tops with the remaining egg white and bake for 10-15 minutes.

They will bubble from the butter and egg white. When they are toasty brown, take them out and CHOMP!

I thought they were very tasty, but am thinking of experimenting with soaking the cornmeal before hand. For my taste, it came out a little too noticeable. Perhaps cutting it back a couple of tablespoons and subbing a bit more flour would do the trick.

They are flaky and chewy, with the perfect hit of blue cheese. I saw Nigella recommending to smear them with more cheese, but I feel that would be overkill.

Nom..nom..NOM!

Unchartered Territory: Vegan Doughnuts

- Elspeth 1 Comment

Sounds like a damn horrible idea, right? Let’s be honest, most of our ideas about vegan food include the word horrible and often hit the metaphorical nail right on it’s head.

No eggs? Ridiculous.

No dairy? Blasphemous.

No animal, no FUN.

Prepare to be proven wrong, my flesh-eating readers. Enter stage right: Coconut doughnut delight, completely vegan and completely delicious.

When I was a small child, my aunt would go to this wonderful, amazing, over-the-top fabulous doughnut place called Meche’s.

It. Is. Amazing. Warm, soft, squishy, with the perfect amount of glaze and some sort of addictive substance that always keeps you coming back for more. I would power through about 4 of those bad boys and then start coveting my cousin’s remaining bites. Not being the pushy, confrontational type, I would distract her with some sort of toy apparatus and voila! More doughnut for me.

The point is, this place sets the bar extremely high. Krispy Kreme tastes like dust in comparison.

Suffices to say that I did not walk into Subrosa Cafe with high expectations, but my vegan friend Lindsey and I were hankering for this sweet treat and made the plunge.

We selected the most delicious items:

Coconut and cinnamon-sugar doughnuts, apple scone, and soy lattes.

The coffee was delicious because the barista actually took a little time to make it. I could feel the love she put into it, even though smiling was not her forte. Soy lattes always taste better to me than ones made with regular milk, because cafes almost always use full-fat vanilla soy. What’s better then a lot of fat and sugar? Um, nothing.

Subrosa itself is a tiny, tiny cafe that has enough room for about 4 moderately-sized people and some hanging plants. There are some tables and chairs outside, conveniently located next to a toilet store. You never know when you’ll be in the market for a new porcelain throne, so it’s good to map these things out.

It was a very pleasant sidewalk breakfast spot for a Sunday morning. We even got some nice spring flowers to keep us company:

The donuts were amazing, but don’t expect a glazed, fluffy doughnut here. These are basically cake donuts and they are fantastic. I would definitely recommend the coconut, it was sweet and had a very good crumb with a lovely crust of glaze one top. The cinnamon-sugar was a very close second, with big chunks of sugar brushed on top and just a hint of cinnamon. Noms.

The scone, in my humble opinion, was crap. Lindsey loved it, but that’s because she’s crazy. So we won’t listen to her in this case. Sorry, Lindsey.

Anywho, definitely give vegan donuts a try for a tasty treat. These particular cakey-delights were made by Pepples, a Bay-area establishment that delivers all over the place.

Major noms!