Outside the Box

I usually have a Passover seder with my family (with the exception of two years ago when we had a rather unusual seder in Mexico). But this year, due to a variety of reasons, we were on our own.

I can't say that we had an actual seder (although we briefly considered downloading this). We ate many of the traditional foods, however the meal didn't quite come together without a hitch.

A lot of the food, I must admit, came from a box, including matzos, macaroons, and matzo ball soup. While this isn't the worst thing in the world, we had some minor mishaps too. As the eggs hard boiled, several cracked in the roiling water causing poofy whiteness to burst out of the shell. No big deal. The chicken burned too, just a little.

But the one item that I feel like I truly made from scratch and turned out to be the best part of the meal, I thought, was charoset. This is a sweet mix of apples, honey, cinnamon, nuts, and wine. Despite how good it tastes, scooped on a piece of matzo, charoset has a somewhat darker meaning. It symbolizes the mortar that the Jews used while they were slaves in Egypt.

I followed my mom's recipe, only she had no measurements, just ingredients. Keep mixing them together until it tastes right, she said. So that's what I did.

Mom's Charoset Recipe

Chop apples and walnuts* in the food processor.

Add cinnamon, honey, sweet red wine**, and golden raisins to taste.

Mix.

*We used almonds

**We used white riesling

A Moroccan Meal

We try to keep the kitchen uncluttered with gadgets. But for Ryan, the holidays bring out a certain interest in international ceramic dishware. Over the past two years, he has gifted me with a few items that one might not find in most American kitchens.

Last year, he shopped at the Christkindlmart in Daley Plaza and bought me a zwiebeln jar, which means onions in German. This year, he followed up with a smaller knoblauch jar for garlic. Considering the amount of onions and garlic that come in the CSA, and how I use these indispensible ingredients in more recipes than I can count, I treasure these jars. There is the kitsch factor to appreciate too.

He also bought me another item that we had been contemplating - a tajine. The conical clay pots are used in Morocco to slow cook meat, veggies, fruit, and spices. The pointy top collects the steam and returns the condensation to cook the food in the dish. Lovely aromas ensue.

There are many different combinations that can go in the tajine, but commonly used foods include chicken, lamb, pork, fish, onions, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, apples, pears, prunes, raisins, dates, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, cumin, paprika, and saffron. Lemons and olives are frequently used ingredients.

Our came from a local giftshop that sells stuff like mood crystals and smells powerfully of patchouli. Unfortunately this odor had seeped into the tajine and failed to go away no matter how much we washed it. Finally we crossed our fingers that the food would taste okay.

The tajine came with a simple chicken recipe. It called for dried apricots, which always remind me of my grandmother, who passed away when I was a teenager.

I have this memory of us taking one of those tiny airplanes with an aisle you need to sidestep through and an overhead compartment that fits nothing but a jacket. It was a bumpy flight through the mountains so to calm our nerves from the turbulence, she took out a bag of apricots and handed them across the aisle one by one.

Each holiday season, my grandfather sends a bucket of trail mix. For some reason, he sent apricots this time. We mixed them with the other ingredients in the dish, put the whole deal in the oven, and passed the time with a Bollywood movie called Uriya.

Two hours later the oven buzzed. We were still watching this very long movie but paused to see how it turned out. The chicken was succulent and infused with flavor. There was no hint of patchouli although it was a bit too sweet - next time I would go easy on the honey. But the meal was one of the easiest to make and most delicious that I've eaten in a long time.

We then watched the end of the movie in which (spoiler warning!) the male lead, in trying to prevent his lady love from committing the terrorist act of detonating a bomb at India's Independence Day parade, begged her to blow them up together instead. And she did.

I suppose there is something to say about the different ways that people show love for one another, but I will leave it at that.

Holman Pottery* Tajine Recipe
4 chicken breasts, skinned

1/4 cup honey

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 sticks cinnamon

Juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons turmeric

1/2 cup dried apricot quarters

Preheat oven to 350. Arrange chicken breasts in bottom of tajine. Pour honey over chicken; sprinkle with onion and then with minced garlic. Add cinnamon sticks and sprinkle with lemon juice and turmeric. Top with apricot quarters, cover. Bake for about 2 hours or until fork can be inserted in chicken with ease. Remove cinnamon sticks from chicken mixture and serve with rice or couscous. Makes 4 servings.

* Makers of our tajine.

Happy New Year!

Fall is suddenly here! The air is chilly and crisp. I even bundled up in a heavy jacket today, and my feet crunched over some leaves on my way to work.

This is my favorite time of year. It's that back to school, football game weather. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to bake something, anything, just so you can turn on the oven to warm up the kitchen.

And last night, I did. In honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, I made some traditional foods for dinner, including potato kugel and honey mustard chicken.

The honey is eaten to celebrate a sweet new year.

Somehow, we have three bottles of honey in the cupboard. One is from the CSA, the second came back with us from our trip to Mexico, and the third we bought from a small canoe livery in the middle of Ohio (random, but true).

Because of our extensive honey collection, we were pretty happy to usher in Rosh Hashanah. Tonight, I'll dip some apples into the honey (and probably tomorrow night, and the next night too).

L'Shana Tovah!

Potato Kugel (from kosherfood.about.com)

8 medium potatoes
2 onions
6 eggs
1/2 cup oil
4 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 heaping Tbsp. salt
1/2-1 tsp. pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400° Fahrenheit (200° Celcius).
2. In a large bowl, mix eggs, oil, flour, salt and pepper. Set aside.
3. Coarsely grate the potatoes and onion by hand or food processor. Let stand 3-5 minutes. Squeeze out excess liquid. Add grated potatoes to the egg-flour mixture. Mix by hand only until smooth.
4. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch baking dish.
5. Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour or until golden brown on top and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
YIELD: 12-14 servings.


Chicken in Honey Mustard Sauce (from judaism.about.com)

4 pounds chicken pieces
1/2 cup flour
4 Tbs. pareve margarine
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup chicken bouillon
blanched roasted almonds for garnish

1. Coat each piece of chicken with flour, and brown the chicken in the melted margarine.
2. Arrange the chicken in a greased pan.
3. Mix the honey, mustard and bouillon and pour this over the chicken pieces.
4. Cover and bake in preheated 375 degrees Fahrenheit oven for 45 minutes.
5. Garnish with the roasted almonds. Serve over a bed of white rice.