Celery Slaw

I hate wasting food. Hate throwing out ingredients I didn’t use, that got too old, withered and unappealing.

I was thinking about this more recently as I was working on an article about buttermilk (it will appear in the Hearst newspapers in a couple of weeks and I’ll send it out on my Twitter account). People tell me they don’t buy buttermilk because they’re afraid they won’t use it all and so it isn’t worth the cost of buying a quart.

Well, this is one ingredient I never have leftover. I use it for dozens and dozens of recipes. But more on that some other day.

But I did wonder about stuff I buy because I need a small amount of it and the rest goes to waste.

Like celery. I frequently throw out celery. I buy a bunch for soup. Then we snack on a stalk or two and the rest of it gets yellowed and withered and disgusting and then It ends up in the garbage.

And I feel guilty about it. I grew up in the generation whose parents said “think about the poor starving children in Europe” (this was post World War II) when we didn’t want to eat everything on the plate.

But I have wasted a lot of celery in my day. So I started to imagine ways to use more of it. 

In the past I’ve used celery for snacks — stuffed with peanut butter or cottage cheese or cream cheese (in which I mixed in fresh herbs and chopped up celery leaves). I’ve made braised celery, which is delicious with some of the heavier meats like steak or roast beef. I’ve even made celery soup, seasoned with parsley and caraway, which is light, not too fattening and a good choice for spring or summer dinners.

But now that the weather is so much warmer and the sun is shining, the trees are flowering, the grass is actually green and I am beginning to hope that I can finally use the outdoor grill and make summer food, I am thinking “Cole Slaw.” 

I came up with this tasty way to make slaw and at the same time not waste the celery that’s sitting in my fridge thinking that it will soon be keeping company with the coffee grinds and carrot peels:

Celery Slaw

6 tablespoons dairy sour cream or plain Greek-style yogurt

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste

1/4 teaspoon paprika

freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

7 medium stalks celery, peeled and thinly sliced

1/2 cup chredded snow peas

2 shredded carrots

In a bowl, mix the sour cream, sugar, salt, paprika, pepper, vegetable oil and wine vinegar until thoroughly combined. Place the sliced celery and shredded snow peas and carrots in a large bowl. Toss to distribute the ingredients evenly. Pour the dressing on top and toss ingredients to coat them all with the dressing. Let rest for at least 30 minutes before serving. Makes 6-8 servings

Dagstani Jams

My daily yogurt breakfast will never be the same now that I’ve discovered the preserves from Dagstani & Sons, A Very Fine Fruit Company. My husband Ed and I subscribed to their “Jam Sessions” which is one of the ways to get their jams, marmalades and preserves delivered to your door. 

Dagstani & Sons is not your ordinary jam. Comparing it to, say, Smuckers, is like comparing a Rolls-Royce to a Yugo.

Can’t do it.

Raj Dagstani, pictured above with his sons Emile (age 10) and Sebastian (age 5), was the general manager at New York’s famed Per Se restaurant for several years. He knows about quality and about the work, dedication and ingredients needed to produce food that is extraordinary, not just good, not simply satisfactory. He and his boys craft small-batch preserves every day from whole fruit, which they hand-cut, pare and peel. Most of the fruit comes from local sources and is organic, much of it wild-grown.

The first bite of Three Fruit Marmalade was one of those moments you remember when someone asks “what was the best … (whatever) … you ever ate?”

This was the best marmalade I ever ate.

I felt a rush of fresh citrus, a flash of sugar in my mouth. It was in perfect harmony to the very plain nonfat Chobani yogurt I always eat. The jam flowed over the yogurt, there was no weak, liquid-y trickle, nor did it have to be shaken off the spoon in a gloppy lump like most over-sugared or over-pectined stuff.

The flavors are creative and thoughtful — for example, these: Asian Pear and Star Anise, Meyer Lemon and Madagascar Vanilla Bean, Rhubarb and Red Hot Ginger (ohmyohmyohmy!!!!), Oranges and Earl Grey (SIGH).

You can’t get these anywhere else and they probably wouldn’t taste as good anyway.

Yes, these jams cost more than supermarket varieties, as they should. You don’t put this stuff on your kid’s PBJ sandwich. Dagstani preserves are for discriminating tastes, usually grown up.

Take a look at the site here. But do yourself a favor. If you like jam at all, try one. As I said, my breakfast yogurt will never be the same and neither will plain scones, English muffins, baguettes or homemade bread. I can’t wait to see what’s in our next order.

Friday Reads: The Known World

fridayreads:

It’s officially Friday in parts of the world! Reblog and tell us what you are reading to participate in the weekly global reading event Friday Reads! Not only to you get to share what you are reading with the world, but you will be entered into a giveaway for MJ Rose’s new novel THE HYPNOTIST. 

Happy Friday!

I am reading a fascinating book: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. It takes place in Virginia, about 2 dozen years before the Civil War, and is about a former black slave whose parents freed themselves, then bought his freedom, but then he himself becomes a slave owner. The writing is complex and beautiful. It isn’t a fast read. You have to consider each page carefully. Beautifully done so far, though I’m only about 30% through.

Joy and Cake

William and Kate appear to be nice people. They make a cute couple and seem almost modest, at least when you compare them with other royals.

But I’m really not so interested in the wedding, other than to wish them happy lives.

(Didn’t we spend 8 years, thousands of lives and millions of dollars trying to get out from under this particular monarchy?)

But I do confess I was really interested in the wedding cake. Two cakes actually. One is the traditional English fruit-filled cake with lots of raisins and dried fruits, citrus peel, nuts and a ton of brandy. The second cake, made at William’s request, will be based on chocolate ganache and tea biscuits. Traditional for the Windsor family.

When I got married, back in the Mesozoic Era, EVERYONE’s wedding cake had white-cake layers and white buttercream frosting. The cake had to be white or there might be a scandal. Ed and I were considered daring because we ordered a chocolate cake.

Today, in this country, anything goes as far as wedding cake is concerned. Take a look at this site, for example: http://www.joyandcakenj.com/

Joy & Cake makes a plain old vanilla layer cake for your wedding (or any other occasion), but if you want you can have a red velvet wedding cake or chocolate of course or pecan spice, pumpkin and even a flavor called French Toast!

Want marshmallow filling? You can have that. Or peanut butter or chocolate ganache or chocolate hazelnut crunch (and more). 

Icings? Anything that goes with the cake and filling, with gorgeous flowers or about anything decorative you can think of. Elyse Hudacsko Rosati, proprietor and baker-in-chief recently made a Yoda cake.

If you want she’ll bake you a vegan cake or one that’s peanut-free or gluten-free.

The designs are incredible. Elyse came to baking by a rather uncommon route, but one that makes good sense when you think about it: she is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Engineering (later she graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York and Ritz Escoffier in Paris). She’s a marvel at crafts, exceptionally talented — check out her blog, where you can actually see a photo and how-to-make gumpaste flipflops!! here: http://www.bylittlehands.com/

and check out her pre-schooler’s craft book: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Hands-Elyse-Rosati/dp/1425186025/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303870192&sr=1-1

But it’s the cakes that she bakes that awe. If you need one for a wedding in the New York Metropolitan area, you should check out Joy & Cake before you spend fortunes at one of the more well-known veterans of the wedding cake trade. You’ll get a taste too. Yum.

Roasted Pistachio Crusted Salmon

Wow, I just read that pistachio nuts are “the ideal snack to aid in weight loss.” They aren’t as caloric as people once thought because apparently the human body doesn’t absorb all the fats in these nuts. Also, pistachios have good fats as well as antioxidants and minerals. (You can read the entire article here:  http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/137424/20110423/new-study-dubs-pistachios-the-skinny-nut-research-studies-weight-loss.htm)

I wonder if you can lose weight eating the amount of pistachio nuts I eat?

If there is one snack in life that I have absolutely loved since as long as I can remember, it’s pistachio nuts. I order them by the 5-pound bagful from NutsontheNet, because they sell great Turkish pistachios, which are the best kind.

Actually, Iranian pistachio nuts are the best but you can’t get them anywhere.

California pistachio nuts are absolutely horrible. They are dry and tasteless and most of the time they taste stale, even when they’re fresh.

I mean it. I am an expert on this subject. When I was a a youngster my brother Jeffrey and cousin Leslie and I would get pistachio nuts as a big treat from our parents or our Great Uncle, whom we called Feta. Jeffrey was the oldest so he doled the nuts out to the two of us little girls. Somehow he always doled out more for himself. Which wasn’t okay then and we would always fight about it but is okay now because I still tease him about it.

Anyway, I am a pistachio nut maven and I am telling you the Californias can’t compare to the Turkish ones, which are smaller and have a more intense flavor.

I eat pistachio nuts as a snack every night, so I am wondering why I am not shedding all those pounds??!!

I also use pistachio nuts for cooking. For example, on top of roasted salmon or pumpkin muffins or as a coating, along with bread crumbs, for fried fish. And lots of other things. A sprinkle here and there.

Here’s an easy dinner recipe for salmon (you could also use Arctic Char, but cook it for less time). You can find it in my book Hip Kosher, but for those who don’t have the book and want a delicious, easy, quick and healthy dinner, here it is:

Roasted Pistachio Crusted Salmon

4 salmon filets, each about 6 ounces, about 1-1/4 inches thick

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon peel

freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons crushed pistachio nuts

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Place the salmon in a baking dish. Mix the olive oil, mustard and lemon peel and spread this mixture evenly over the surface of the fish. Sprinkle with pepper and scatter the nuts evenly on top. Roast for about 15 minutes, depending on thickness, or until nearly cooked through but still darker in the center. Makes 4 servings

Linda Gratt’s Gefilte Fish

Gefilte fish was never one of my must-have foods. Maybe it’s because the only kind I had growing up was the jarred kind and, like most foods, jarred, canned or otherwise, packaged stuff is not generally the best example of kind. My mother never made fresh gefilte fish and neither did my grandma. Maybe it had something to do with where my ancestors were from.

Or not.

My mother always did say that my other grandmother — my father’s mother — was a terrible cook, except for her gefilte fish and challah, neither of which I remember ever tasting because I don’t remember ever eating in that grandmother’s house.

But I actually made gefilte fish once, many years ago, when I was doing some catering and a client wanted a batch. That’s when I realized that gefilte fish, properly made and called by another name — say, fish quenelles — could be tender, delicate and fabulously tasty, which they were. I also decorated them with tiny carrot-and-leek tulips. They took forever to make, hours of work and I swore I would never make them again. Which I didn’t. Which is fine in our house because my daughter Gillian is allergic to fish and we never have gefilte fish at our Seders or any other family dinner.

But my friend Linda decided to make some this year using her Grandma Kate’s recipe. She got the fish from New Wave, a shop in Stamford, CT., and told me it got to the store just hours before she picked it up and “was so fresh that it could have jumped into the pot itself….wasn’t the least bit fishy smelling..as a matter of fact, there was no odor at all.” 

She told me that “word from the assemblage was that the gefilte fish was the right texture. My sister Gail thought there should be less onion and Susan thought more salt and pepper.”

She used her Cusinart to grind the fish a bit (3 pulses) but never let it puree, which would have made the texture mushy. She finished it to the right texture the old fashioned way, using a bowl and chopper.

She said the fish was light, sweet and tender and concluded “it was delicious……I don’t know if I can go back to the stuff in the jar!”  

As for the time consuming process, she said that although “it was a great adventure,” next year she will have the fish filleted so she doesn’t have to do that herself. 

Wish I could taste a piece right now. It looks looks so delicious. Here’s her recipe:

Linda Gratt’s Gefilte Fish (from her Grandmother Kate) (adapted instructions)

2-1/2 pounds white fish

1-1/2 pounds yellow pike

3 big onions, chopped

1 tablespoon sugar

salt and pepper

2 large eggs

1 cooking spoonful matzo meal (about 3 tablespoons)

3/4 cup cold water

1 carrot, cleaned and sliced

1 additional onion, sliced

Filet the fish, but save the bones and skin. Slice the fish, then chop it using a meat grinder or bowl and chopper (or pulse a few times in a food processor, then finish it to a small grind using a chef’s knife and cutting board. Place the fish in a mixing bowl. Add the chopped onions, sugar, salt and pepper and eggs and mix thoroughly, continuing to chop the ingredients while working them in to the mixture. Add the matzo meal and water and mix in thoroughly. Line the bottom of a large pot with the fish bones, the sliced carrot and onion. Form the fish mixture into ovals the size of a “healthy hamburger.” Take a piece of the fish skin and wind it around each oval (wet your hands with cold water to make this part less messy). Place the fish inside the pot. Continue, using all the fish mixture. Fill the pot with water, pouring the liquid down the side so as not to injure the ovals. Bring to a simmer, cover the pan partially and cook for 2-1/2 hours. Let cool. Remove the ovals, without the skin, to a platter. Garnish with the carrot pieces. Refrigerate until cold. Strain the broth (it will gel when cold). Serve the fish with some of the gel and some horseradish if desired. 

Passover Birthday Cake

Passover Birthday Cake

My daughter Meredith’s birthday sometimes falls during Passover, which means that in certain years she isn’t able to have a “traditional” birthday cake.

Which didn’t bother her one bit when she was a kid because she absolutely loved the flourless chocolate jelly roll cake I made for her and for years this is what she asked me to bake even when it wasn’t Passover. I always thought it was an interesting and glamorous choice considering her age.

Guess it all comes down to how it tastes. Mer was never one to pick something just because it was “the thing” or because someone else liked or wanted it. She liked how this chocolate roll tasted and I don’t blame her. It’s de-lish. Passover-friendly too. But you can make this any old time.

Here’s the recipe.

Flourless Chocolate Jelly Roll Cake

6 ounces semisweet chocolate

3 tablespoons cooled coffee (or brandy or rum)

5 large eggs 

1 cup sugar

1-1/2 cups heavy cream

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 pint strawberries, sliced

cocoa powder or (Passover) confectioner’s sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 15-1/2”x10-1/2” jelly roll pan. Line the pan with parchment paper, leaving several inches hanging over each of the short edges. Butter the portion of the paper that fits inside the pan. 

Melt the chocolate and coffee together in the top part of a double boiler set over barely simmering water. Mix the ingredients well and remove the top part of the pan from the heat. Let cool. In the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium speed (or use a hand mixer), beat the egg yolks and all but 2 teaspoons of the sugar together for 3-4 minutes or until thick and pale. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and blend it in thoroughly. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they stand in stiff peaks. Mix about 1/4 of the beaten whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold the remaining whites into the chocolate mixture. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it to make it even. Bake for about 10 minutes or until “set.” Remove the cake from the oven. Cover it with a slightly dampened kitchen towel. Let cool.

Loosen the cake by pulling the overlapping ends of parchment paper. Invert the cake onto a clean sheet of parchment paper or kitchen towel and roll it up starting with one of the long sides. Set aside. 

Whip the cream and remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and vanilla extract until thick (use an electric mixer or hand mixer). Unroll the cake and spread the whipped cream on top of the cake, leaving about 1-inch at the edges. Top with the strawberries. Roll the cake starting on the long side. Place on a serving platter, seam side down. Dust (using a strainer) with cocoa or confectioner’s sugar.

Makes 10-12 servings

Iman Bayeldi

Liked your Iman Bayeldi.  I added sliced pitted black olives. Added to eye appeal and delicious.  I am vegetarian and always looking for new ideas.  Thanks.

submitted by: jackalex@optonline.net

Wow, what a great idea to add olives! Thanks — will try that next time. Ronnie

Crunchy Matzo Brei

Crunchy or soft? What’s the right way to eat matzo brei?

In my last blog post I said that my husband thought it was weird that I ate matzo brei with yogurt, not maple syrup. His mother had served it with maple syrup, or, more likely, with “table syrup” like Log Cabin.

Well that’s not the only point of disagreement we have on the subject. The other one has to do with texture. Sometimes food can taste terrific but the texture isn’t right.

Right?

When I made made matzo brei for him the first time he said it wasn’t at all what he expected. My version is soft and tender, the way my mother made it and the way my grandmother made it.

His mother made it crunchy. She hardly soaked the matzo, so matzo brei in the Fein household was more like an eggs and matzo flat omelet. It tastes fine. But I prefer the soft, tender kind. But I realize that good people can have different opinions on this, so here’s how to make Crunchy Matzo Brei:

Crunchy Matzo Brei

1-1/2 matzos

warm water

1 large egg

salt to taste

butter

Break the matzos into small pieces into a bowl. Cover with warm water and let it soak for 20 seconds. Drain any non-absorbed water, then squeeze the pieces to extract as much excess water as possible. Add the egg and mix the ingredients. Sprinkle to taste with salt. Heat the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the egg-matzo mixture. Cook for 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown and crispy. Makes one serving (but you can double, triple or even quadruple the recipe and use a bigger pan)

Soft Matzo Brei

“There’s no French Toast during Passover.” That’s what I told my grandkids when they were here for a few days for Seders and sleepovers. They’re used to French Toast when they come to grandma’s house because I always have a spare challah in the freezer, or we make one and then have leftovers, and everyone on earth knows that the best French Toast is made with challah.

But never mind that. “Israeli Toast” is on the menu, is what I told them.

You know. Matzo Brei. It’s the same thing as French Toast but instead of using bread, you use matzo.

But here’s a dilemma. Topping for French Toast is easy: either maple syrup, cinnamon sugar or jelly. A lot of people do the same for Matzo Brei. But when I was a little girl my grandma served Matzo Brei sprinkled with salt and topped with a big blob of sour cream. Sometimes applesauce.

My husband Ed always thought this was weird. But it’s how I served it to my own daughters too, who think it’s weird to drizzle matzo brei with anything as sweet as maple syrup. If I had sour cream in the fridge, that’s what they would choose. But we’ve switched to fat-free Greek yogurt instead.

“Israeli Toast” or Matzo Brei is so easy to make. And a delicious switch from every other cereal-based breakfast. So if you want to give it a try, here’s my recipe:

Matzo Brei

• 3 pieces of matzo

• hot water

• 2 large eggs

• salt

• butter

• sour cream or plain Greek style yogurt

Break the matzot into small pieces into a bowl. Cover with hot water and let it soak until the pieces are soft. Drain any non-absorbed water, then squeeze the pieces to extract as much excess water as possible. Add the eggs to the soft matzo pieces and mix until the matzo and egg are well combined. Sprinkle to taste with salt. Heat the butter in a saute pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the egg-matzo mixture. Cook for 2-3 minutes per side or until golden brown and crispy. Serve with sour cream or plain yogurt, or, if you must, with maple syrup.

Makes 2-3 servings