Passover (Pesach) starts this Wednesday, and for once I thought I'd get you a recipe ahead of time. And there is, of course, no recipe more central to Pesach than matzoh ball soup. I've been making matzoh ball soup since I moved away from home. I started with my mother's recipe, only changing it to make it vegetarian. After years of making it myself, though, I've made a few improvements on the recipe, inspired by Serious Eats and Katchka.

First, the matzoh balls. We love the recipe from my mother, who flavors the matzoh balls with parsley, cumin, and garlic, making them more like spiced meatballs or falafel than the bland Eastern European bread dumplings that matzoh balls descended from. But mom's balls tend to be sinkers, rather dense and chewy. I wanted something lighter and softer. Then Serious Eats published an article showing how to vary matzoh ball texture based on the amount of fat, baking powder, and seltzer in the recipe.

I wanted balls that were a "7" on a scale of rock-to-cloud. After trying a couple of variations, I found that the one thing I needed to change was the amount, and type, of fat in the recipe. To the existing 3 Tbs of vegetable oil, I added another 3 Tbs of butter. Not only does the additional fat make the balls more tender, the solid fat of the butter stays in them and moistens them better than just adding more oil would. I did try going all-butter, but it was too much. If you're non-vegetarian and/or making these to go with a meat meal, use schmaltz instead of butter.

The second improvement comes from Bonnie Morales' cookbook Katchka. In it, she gives her grandmother's recipe for a super-simple vegetarian stock: garlic broth. After using this for a couple other soups, I made it the base of my new stock for matzoh ball soup. So, read on for Improved Matzoh Ball Soup.

Because these things go full circle, though, Mom is now using my improved recipe for the matzoh balls. And, so that you don't need to look at my older article, I'm going to do the full step-by-step below, with an eye towards doing this for a multi-course Passover meal. This recipe enough for 4-6 people, but the photos were taken when making 1 and a half recipes.

If you already know the basics of making it, you can skip to the recipe at the very bottom.

Making the Stock

As a very simple soup, matzoh ball soup depends heavily on having a good, homemade stock base. Stock-in-a-box simply won't cut it here. The standard recipe uses homemade chicken stock, so for a vegetarian version we need to put some extra effort into it. We're going to make Morales' garlic broth, and then boost it with some of the same vegetables (and trimmings from those vegetables) that will go into the final soup, later.

Soup-making tip: you can save a lot of time making stock and soup if you preheat any water you add in a kettle.

Take the two heads of garlic and cut them in half sideways, trying to go about midway through each clove, so that both halves of each head hold together (if possible). Put a large stockpot on the stove, with enough vegetable oil to slick the bottom (around 2 Tbs) and heat over medium heat until hot. Place all four garlic head halves cut-side down in the oil. Fry until the exposed clove halves are dark brown (but not black), 5-8 minutes.

Pour in 2 quarts of hot water and bring to a simmer. Turn down, and simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes. If you simply simmer this for 45 minutes it actually makes a good broth for varniki or pelmeni, but we're making vegetable stock instead.

Next we're going to add the stock vegetables. Importantly, this includes the skins of the brown onions, which you need to give the stock some color. Other veggies, most notably the celery and parsley, can be the trimmings and stems you're not using in the final soup, if you have enough of them. You're also going to add some salt and spices here. As usual, start with the smallest amount of salt recommended and taste after the stock has cooked for a while. The cinnamon stick may seem strange, but try it -- it gives the stock a bit of an "exotic" flavor.

Add another quart of hot water and simmer for another 30-40 minutes. Strain into another pot, or back into the same pot, for making the soup. While the stock simmers, make the matzoh balls.

Making the Balls

This matzoh ball dough is meant to be spicy and flavorful. I know there's folks out there who like theirs delicate and tasting only of the soup, but when going vegetarian, it's far better to have something robust since you don't have any chicken to compliment it. The flavor profile here is something that's a crossover between Middle Eastern flavors and Eastern European ones.

Dump the matzoh meal in a medium-large bowl. Add the baking powder, salt, spices, and minced parsley and mix. Grate the onions and grate or press the garlic into the bowl, follow with the beaten eggs and melted butter, and mix. Finally, add the seltzer water, starting with just 1/4 cup, and gently mix. The dough should have the texture of a thick cake or brownie batter at this point. If it's still stiff, then add the other 1/4 cup of seltzer to loosen it up. If it's soupy, add 2-3 Tbs additional matzoh meal. Make sure the dough is 100% mixed down to the bottom of the bowl.

Cover in plastic and let rest for at least 1/2 hour, ideally in the fridge. Do not skip this resting step, which you need for the dough to work. While it rests, it will transform from a loose, sticky batter to a workable but still sticky dough. You can leave it for several hours, or overnight in the fridge.

Once they are rested, it's time to shape the balls. The ideal way to do this is with a cookie scoop; I use one that's 1.5" in diameter. Since the dough is quite sticky, have a bowl of warm water for dipping the scoop and wetting your hands. Scoop all the dough into 13-18 balls onto a wax-paper or parchment-lined sheet pan or tray, and then roll each ball with damp hands in order to make it nice and smooth. These balls will look quite small, but don't worry, they expand a lot.

At this point, you could cover the balls in plastic and keep them in the fridge up to a day. Don't freeze them, simply because they're hard to defrost. Once you start cooking them, though, you're committed to finishing the soup within hours.

The balls cannot be cooked in the soup itself, because they need to be cooked at a boil, or like other dumplings they will fall apart. However, to avoid flavor loss to the water, it's a good idea to cook them in stock. Since you don't want to waste the nice garlic broth on this, your options are to use some stock-in-a-box, water with bouillon cubes, or to use lightly salted water with bay leaf and a couple whole garlic cloves. Put this liquid in the largest, widest deep pot you have that has a well-fitting lid, ideally a 12" to 14" diameter soup pot or Dutch oven. Bring it to a boil.

Then, drop in the balls. With a 12" or greater pot, you should be able to fit all 13-18 of them, but with a narrower pot you'll need to do batches. You do not want to crowd them since they will all be doubling in size. The balls will sink to the bottom at first, but should start bobbing to the surface as the pot comes back to a boil. Cover, turn the heat down, and keep it at a gentle simmer for 35-45 minutes, until they are doubled in size and tender.

Contrary to some folk wisdom, you can periodically peek at the cooking matzoh balls. However, you don't want to lift the lid too often (more than, say, 2-4 times during cooking) lest they lose heat and fail to expand properly.

When the balls are done, keep them in the hot stock until ready to use. If that's going to be a while, put some very low heat on under the stock so that it doesn't cool off.

Putting It All Together

For final assembly, you're going to make a basic soup of well-cooked vegetables and then add the matzoh balls to it at serving time. Add the vegetables except for the parsley and green onions to the strained stock. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 25-30 minutes, until both the potatoes and carrots are quite tender, but not falling apart. At this point, the soup can be held, off-heat, for up to a couple of hours. If holding, re-heat it just before serving.

Grab several wide, deep bowls of at least 20oz capacity. Add two matzoh balls to each bowl. Fill the rest of the way with hot vegetable soup. Put some parsley sprigs and the sliced green onions or chives in each bowl. Serve.

Recipe

short version

Equipment

Large stock pot, at least 6qt, preferably with lid
Deep, wide soup pot, preferably 12" or more in diameter, but at least 4" deep, with tight-fitting lid
1.5" cookie scoop (optional, but really helpful)
Large tray or cookie sheet
Large mixing bowl
Fine-holed grater
Garlic press (optional)
The usual knives, peeler, and cutting board

Garlic Broth With Vegetables

2 Tbs Vegetable oil
2 large heads garlic
3qt water
Salt
2 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
3/4 cup parsley stems, or just parsley
1 brown onion, with skin, cut into 4-8 large pieces
2-3 brown onion skins from the onions for the soup
2 waxy potatoes
3 stalks celery
2 bay leaves
Large sprig/branch thyme (optional)
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
6-10 peppercorns

Cut the garlic heads across their equators. Heat a large pot coated with oil at the bottom. Add the garlic, cut side down, and fry for 3 minutes, stirring occasionaly, until the garlic has browned and is very aromatic. Pour in the water and a little salt. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Add all of the vegetables above and simmer them for 40 min. Strain and reserve.

Improved Matzoh Balls

1 cup matzoh meal (plus 0-3 Tbs)
4 eggs
1/4 cup seltzer water
2 tbs melted butter (or schmaltz)
2 tbs vegetable oil
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh-ground pepper
2 large garlic cloves, pressed or grated
1/2 large onion, grated fine, about 1/2 cup
2 Tbs finely minced parsley
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp paprika (or other mild-medium chili powder)
2-4 quarts cheap stock for cooking (see above).

Mix all ingredients. Let sit for at least 1/2 hour (to overnight in fridge). Make 13-18 matzoh balls. Put them in the pot with the boiling cheap stock, and simmer, covered, for 35-45 minutes. Keep warm in the stock until ready to combine with the soup.

Soup

1 recipe garlic stock (above)
3-4 stalks celery, with leaves if possible, cut into 1" segments
1.5 to 2 lbs waxy potatoes, such as new potatoes, cut into 1-2" pieces
3-4 large carrots, around 3/4 lbs, peeled and cut into 1/2" slices
2 medium-large brown onions, cut into large pieces, like 8-10 per onion
Small bunch parsley, separated into bite-sized sprigs
3-4 green onions or a handful of chives, green parts sliced thin (optional)

Simmer the celery, potatoes, and carrots in the stock for 25-30 minutes, until tender. Add a little parsley and green onion to each bowl when serving.

This year's non-traditional Thanksgiving was back to Mexican, because there's no American like Mesoamerican. Last time (2010) was based on Roberto Santabanez's Truly Mexican; this time, we made a menu of the recipes of Pati Jinich. I now have three of Jinich's cookbooks, and we've been watching our way through her PBS series (we're on Season 8: Sinaloa), and between those it was easy to put together a full menu for our small family gathering. Still just the few of us thanks to The Plague.

We always do no-turkey Thanksgiving meals, since none of us like it. Well, not really no-turkey; turkeys were present, it's just that they were eating instead of being eaten.

Since enchiladas were on the menu, and there's a nice little market where I can buy fresh masa, I decided to make my own tortillas. It's not particularly hard, or even time-consuming if you have the right equipment: a tortilla press and a large griddle or comal. I think it took me around 70 minutes to make 3 dozen tortillas. I made some mini-tortillas for making mini-tostadas later.

By coincidence, all three savory dishes featured corn in some form. Well, that's Mexican food for you. It's also coincidentally gluten-free.

Our first course was Jinich's Avocado/Panela Salad. I made some small changes to it, though: I fried the panela cheese, which I strongly recommend for this; and because some people in my family are capsicum wimps, I replaced the pickled jalapeños with pickled banana peppers. These changes worked and the salad was still delicious.

I fried up those mini-tortillas so I could make the mini-tostadas (tostaditas?), putting a spoonful of avocado salad on top. These were big winners.

In keeping with the theme, instead of wine we drank 54'40" Brewing's 1862, a tasty, light Mexican-style lager.

Half the main course was a Thanksgiving standard, green beans. Only these were the Green Beans with Corn Sauce and Pepitas from Treasures of the Mexican Table. This was a surprisingly complicated recipe for a vegetable side dish, requiring a pan, pot, and a blender, but it was completely worth it. These were absolutely delicious and could have easily been a vegan centerpiece on their own.

The other main dish was far from vegan: Crab and Pea Enchiladas in Sour Cream Sauce, this time from Mexican Today. This was another success, rich, decadent and delicious, despite actually being faster to make than the green beans (if you don't make your own tortillas, that is). These are very rich; you really won't need more than two per person. Def a holiday dish. Like the other dishes, I toned down the heat by swapping in milder peppers.

This may look like a light meal but we were stuffed by the time we finished the main course. So we took a two-hour break before re-convening for dessert, prepared by my sweetie. This was hot chocolate and a cajeta custard, this time a Jinich online recipe. Sublime but light and small, which we appreciated at that point in the evening. Tip, though: use a torch to caramelize the sugar for the custards just before service.

So, that's our no-turkey Thanksgiving for 2022. What was yours?

(No recipe in this article; you can find two of the Jinich recipes in the links)

I will once again be selling my pottery at Leikam Brewing's Holiday Craft Fair, on November 27th. Not only will you be able to get mugs & slugs & bowls & birds from me, but this year there will be two other ceramic artists. So visit Leikam and fulfill your holiday gift-giving needs with some local Portland handicrafts.

This is one of the few art/craft shows where you can drink tasty local microbrews while you shop. And it's the only one where you can drink kosher beers while you shop for Hanukkah gifts. So drop by!

November 27th
3pm to 7pm
Leikam Brewing
5812 E Burnside St
Portland, OR

Looks like I am selling my pottery in person this year! Leikam Brewing in Portland -- our town's only kosher beer brewer -- will be hosting craft fairs for both Hanukkah and for Christmas. The first of these is on November 21st, in time for Hanukkah starting on Nov. 28th. The second fair will be on December 12th.

I'll have all of the items from my store and more with me, so it's a great time to pick up a handmade gift without paying shipping. I was hoping to have more Judaica to sell, but looks like a lot of that will be stuck in the kiln until after the sale.

See you on the 21st!

Hanukkah Craft Fair
Leikam Brewing
5812 East Burnside, Portland, OR
November 12, 1pm to 5pm

For the recent Cake Night Cookie Fight event, I made a "ReplicaSet" of pressed cookies decorated with the Kubernetes wheel. While I only placed 2nd thanks to Rin's amazing prowess with cake, they were super-tasty and I figured folks would want the recipe anyway.

The first step is to make yourself a cookie press. I made a design using TinkerCAD and 3D printed it the day before. The mold comes in two pieces, you superglue the handle to the press. And then you need to spray the inside of the mold with food grade silicone spray (or it will not release your pressed cookies) and leave it overnight to dry.

After that, you can make a fairly simple shortbread and press it into the molds. To make it more exciting -- and to go better with bourbon -- I made a garam masala seasoned shortbread.

garam masala shortbread

Dough:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 2 1/4 cups AP flour
• 2 to 6 tsp cold water

Sugar coating:

• 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp garam masala

Colored icing:

• 3 tsp milk
• 2 Tbs, or more, powdered sugar
• 3 drops liquid blue food coloring

First, two hours before making the cookies, take the butter out of the fridge so that it can soften completely.

Cut the butter into chunks, and cream it in a mixer on low, or with a spatula and a lot of elbow grease. When completely smooshed, add the brown sugar. Cream until the sugar completely dissolves into the butter.

Sift the flour and the garam masala together, and then add to the butter, one third at a time, stopping when no more dry flour is visible. Now, judge how crumbly it is; it should be somewhat crumbly, but easily hold together if you pinch a small amount of it. If it's doing fairly well, add just 2 tsp water and mix it one last time. If it seems dry and won't hold, add more water, all the way up to 2 Tbs, if required. You don't want it sticky though, you want it to just barely hold together.

Cover and place in the fridge for 25 to 45 minutes. Do not press it into a ball or anything; you want a bowl full of loose crumbles of dough. You also do not want to leave it overnight; if you need to leave it for more than 45min, then you'll want to let it warm on the counter for a bit before using.

While it's in there, put the white sugar and the second 1.5 tsp of garam masala into a small flat bowl and mix them together. Then, make the icing by putting the milk in a small bowl, and mixing in enough sifted powdered sugar until it has a thick, gluey texture ... probably around 2Tbs. Add the 3 drops of food coloring and mix until fully blended. Finally, put a little flour in another small flat bowl for coating the cookie press.

Turn the oven on to 350F to heat, and arrange the oven racks so that you can put two cookie sheets in.

Take the dough out of the fridge, and start pressing cookies. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone. Flour the cookie press. Take around 1.5 Tbs of dough out of the bowl and roll it into a ball; it should be between 1" and 1.25" in diameter. Drop the ball into the granulated sugar mixture, and flatten it into a small disk, turning it so that it's coated on all sides.

Place the small disk of dough on the corner of the cookie sheet, and press the cookie press down on it. Carefully lift it off, starting from one side, and be prepared to pry the cookie out gently if required. Repeat this until the cookie sheet is full; this will take a fair while.

When one cookie sheet is full, put it in the oven and set a timer for 6 minutes. Start on the second cookie sheet.

After it's been baking for 6 minutes, turn the sheet around for even cooking. Set a timer for 4 more minutes. After that time, check the cookies. If they are showing a thin rim of dark brown on the bottom edges, they're done, take them out. Otherwise bake them for 1-3 minutes longer, until they do.

Place cookies on a rack to cool. Put the 2nd sheet of cookies in the oven, and repeat.

After 20 minutes or so, when all cookies are cool, paint the raised design with the blue icing using a small paintbrush. The icing will take another 15 minutes to dry. Serve, or put in a sealed container and store at room temperature. Makes around 32 cookies.

continued from part 1

Having finished our salads, everone took a break while I finished cooking the main course. This took about 1/2 hour, giving everyone some time to digest.

Instead of rolls this meal, we had Karelian pies, a traditional Finnish snack that my sweetie first tasted when she went to Tampere to sing with the Finnish National Orchestra. I'm pretty sure that the reason why she wanted to do Skandinavian this year was so she could make these again. She made them using the Beatrice Ojakangas recipe.

This traditional recipe is enough work to really make them a holiday food. It's also got to be holiday food considering the amount of milk and butter, and that you top them with mashed egg butter. They worked well for the low-salt diet we had to cook to, but would not have suited a low-cholesterol diet!

For the main course, I chose a recipe from Lagom that would make discrete servings (so as not to create leftovers), but would look dramatic and festive. And taste great, of course. What I settled on was this dish of cod with brown butter shimp. The stacking makes it look very restauranty, but shrimp and cod is a pretty standard Swedish combination.

In keeping with American traditions, the base is garlic mashed potatoes. On top of that is cod baked with lemon and dill, and that's topped with shrimp fried in browned butter with sage. The layered flavors of butter, sage, dill, and garlic really created a palate-pleaser, even though I made the whole thing low-salt.

Finally, dessert. My sweetie combined a German apple cake recipe with the rosemary apple cake from Lagom. The result was amazing; you wouldn't think that rosemary would work with apples and cinnamon, but it really does. Since there were only the four of us, she made a half-recipe in a 6" baking pan, which meant one slice each.

So that was this year's non-traditional Thanksgiving. How was yours? Did you get creative, given this year's restrictions?

Petite Apple Cake with Cardamom and Rosemary

(based on Luisa Weiss’s Versunkener Apfelkuchen from Classic German Baking and Steffi Knowles-Dellner’s Apple Cake from Lagom)

1-1/2 medium apples (a good sweet-tart apple is best, or use a mix of sweet and tart)
Zest and juice of ¼ lemon (approximately)
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
¼ teaspoon vanilla 1-1/2 eggs (crack one egg into a bowl and beat it, then use about 2 tablespoons)
¾ c. flour 1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoons salt
Heaping ¼ teaspoon cardamom
1 rosemary sprig, smallish, leaves stripped and chopped
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 2 tablespoons dark brown or demerara sugar

Heat your oven to 350 degrees, and line the bottom of a 6-inch cake pan with parchment paper, preferably one with “handles”—if you don’t have that kind of parchment, use a 6-inch springform pan.

Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Thinly slice each quarter lengthwise, but don’t cut all the way through, leaving the slices hinged together like a fan. Place them on a plate (keep the slices together) and set aside.

Zest the ¼ lemon into a mixing bowl, and squeeze the juice out into a small bowl and set aside.

Add the sugar and butter to the lemon zest in the bowl and beat either with a mixer or with a wooden spoon until fluffy and pale. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the vanilla; beat until incorporated. Add the whole egg and beat until combined, then add the ½ egg and beat again; scrape down the sides of the bowl and make sure it’s well mixed.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom. Beat the flour into the butter mixture in two additions just until combined, then beat in the reserved lemon juice.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle the apple slices with the rosemary and cinnamon, then place decoratively over the batter. Sprinkle with the sugar, and then with the pine nuts.

Bake for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, and continue baking until the cake is golden-brown and a tester inserted in the cake (not an apple) comes out clean, about another 10-15 minutes.

Place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes; run a thin knife around the edge of the cake, then use the parchment “handles” to remove the cake from the pan (if you’ve used a springform pan, remove the ring of the springform). Let cool to room temperature.

Serve with whipped cream, if desired. Makes one six-inch cake, serving 4 generously, or 6 in small portions.

We never do traditional American Thanksgiving at our place, but this year particularly called for something a little different. With only the four of us, we really didn't want to have a lot of leftovers, so we wanted a cuisine that encouraged restraint. That's why my sweetie suggested Scandanavian. We hadn't done that before, so I said yes.

Many of the recipes used in this meal came from the cookbook Lagom which was an excellent source for lighter, Swedish-themed dishes. We also relied on The Finnish Cookbook.

To pace ourselves, we divided the meal into 4 courses, starting with some storebought Finnish crispbread and snack foods. The little tastes were herring pickled in wine (of course!), chantrelle mushrooms marinated in oil and herbs, gietost cheese, and lingonberry jam. If you can, I recommend doing this: a taster course while you prepare the later courses of the meal will get folks settled at the table, without making you finish the entrees at 4pm.

The standard libation to go with these kinds of snacks would be aquavit, but with only two of us drinking alcohol, that didn't seem worth the expense. Instead, we washed down the meal with Scandanavian-themed Oregon beers, such as Little Beast's Folkvangr, a very drinkable "dark Norweigan" ale.

The real standout of the evening was this kale salad. Yes, really. Not only was it delicious, it was perhaps the quinessential fall dish, with kale, hazelnuts, cranberries, and apples. The recipe is from Lagom; below is my version with some small variations.

kale-hazelnut-apple salad

based on a recipe from Lagom

1/2 cup pearled spelt (farro) (subs. pearled barley)
10-12 oz kale leaves, stems removed and roughly chopped, around 2 quarts volume, ideally both red and green curly kale
1 lime (about 2 Tbs juice)
1 cup/5oz toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
2/3 cup dried cranberries
1 tart apple
1/2 cup mild olive oil
1 Tbs cider vinegar
pinch each of salt and pepper
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1/2 tsp dried
Equipment: pot, large bowl, blender

Boil 1 quart water with a pinch of salt. Put the spelt/farro into it and simmer for 20-24 minutes, until the grain is tender by still chewy. Drain and let cool.

Place the dried, chopped kale in a large bowl and squeeze the juice out of the lime over it. Massage the juice into the kale but squeezing and turning it with your hands, until it softens. This takes 2-3 minutes, but you'll feel the change in texture.

Split the kale between 4-6 plates. Sprinkle over the spelt, then the hazelnuts, and the cranberries, distributing uniformly.

Now, make the dressing: cut the apple into chunks and put it into a blender or food processor. Pour over the oil and cider vinegar, and add the thyme, salt, and pepper. Puree until smooth.

Drizzle each salad evenly with the dressing. Serve within 20 minutes of making it.

In the before-times, I had the pleasure of making Christmas Eve dinner both for someone who can't eat fish and for a celiac sufferer. I say pleasure because I actually enjoy these kinds of cooking challenges; it's more fun than just following a recipe. But if you don't enjoy them, then here's my recipe for you to follow.

Carbonnade Flamande is probably the ultimate beef stew. Arguably Flanders' national dish, it's a slow-cooked pot of large beef cubes simmered in Belgian beer and spices. Which you might think would make it out of the question for anyone on a gluten-free diet. But, you've reckoned without the creativity of the modern craft beer movement:

This is what you're going to have to locate first: gluten-free Belgian-style beer. I highly recommend this one from Bierly, if you can get it; not only did it work a treat in this dish, but it was just good beer period. In a blind tasting, I'd have identified it as a dubbel, but not even known that it was gluten-free. If you're in Europe, there's Green's.

Then, equipped with a recipe from the delightful cookbook Everybody Eats Well In Belgium plus 4lbs of large pieces of stew beef, I was ready to proceed.

Normally carbonnade flamande starts by coating the beef in flour before frying it in butter until the outside is browned. For this version, I used 1/3 cup mixture of 50% rice flour with 50% tapioca starch. This worked great.

The rest of the recipe was more-or-less as written, so I'll give you the full instructions:

carbonnade flamande sans gluten

4lbs stew beef (like chuck) cut into 2-inch cubes
salt & pepper
1/3 cup 50/50 mix of rice and tapioca flour
6-7 Tbs butter
2-3 large onions, sliced, about 4 cups
2x19oz bottles of gluten-free Belgian-style beer
2 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
2 Tbs tart jelly, ideally redcurrant
1 Tbs grainy or dijon mustard (GF)
equipment: cutting board & large knife, large bowl, stock pot or dutch oven, 6-10qt

Cube the beef. Lightly season it with salt and pepper. Toss it in a bowl with the flour, until all of the pieces are lightly coated.

Heat 4 Tbs of the butter in the pot until foamy. Drop in the beef. Fry it, letting it sit for 30-40 seconds in each spot to brown, then stirring it, until most pieces are browned on at least 3 sides. Put the beef back in the bowl.

Add the additional 2 Tbs of butter and put the onions in the pot. Turn it down to medium, and cook the onions, stirring once a minute or so, until they are completely soft and brown, 10-14 minutes.

Deglaze the pot with the beer. Add the beef back in, and the thyme and bay leaf, along with around 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a bare simmer, then cover and turn down to low. Simmer for 2 hours, until the beef is very tender.

Uncover, and add the jelly and mustard, and stir in. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Check to see if it needs more salt (likely), and if so add it.

Serve, together with frites and more gluten-free beer. Serves 6 to 8 people.

Notes: If you're not on a GF diet, then the ideal beer to use is a Flemish Red or Sour ale. It's also customary to finish the stew with pieces of bread coated in jam or mustard that dissolve into it, but that seemed risky with GF bread. For the jelly, I used a fairly tart plum jelly; anything with a very acidic fruit will do.

Having finished the appetizers and salad course we moved on to our main course. Now, the super-traditional Christmas eve dinner for Cuban-Americans is Lechon Asado (roast pork shoudler), with rice and black beans, and I had to have all of those things, and you'll see them in a minute.

What you're seeing above, though, is the fish dish, because I may cook pork, but I haven't started eating it, so I wanted some fish for me at least. Now, the recipe I had was for baked grouper with peppers, green onions and cilantro, but grouper isn't a fish you can get on the West Coast so I used sole instead.

Now, I did say beans and rice, didn't I? Yes I did. And in my opinion, there is no better way to eat black beans and rice than to combine them in the form of moros y christianos where the rice and beans are cooked together. Yes, this dish does have the rather insensitive name of "Moors and Christians". It's traditional, deal with it. It's also tasty, and almost a meal in itself.

However, there's still the pork. The pork I spent two and a half days making. You ready?

Now, as you know I don't exactly cook a lot of pork. Heck, I don't cook any, since I don't eat it. So I turned to my Cuban friend Alina for advice, and she helped me out with a recipe for Lechon Asado, the traditional Cuban pork roast.

Alina's recipe lays out for you how to make proper Lechon Asado, so I'm just going to give you my tips and modifications.

First, I only used 5lbs of pork, because that's still a ton of pork and it was more than too much for 8 people. Second, I used a lot more garlic, like two whole heads, so that I could poke 30-40 half-cloves deep into the meat. I had two thoughts here; one was that, well, I like garlic, and the other was that more holes in the pork would help the marinade reach more of the meat.

Now, the traditional marinade that Alina gives you is made from sour orange juice (naranja agria), and while folks offer various substitutes for this, you really don't want to swap it out. Order it online if you don't have a good Latin market in your area. Since the Badia sour orange is a bottled product, it lacked acidity so I added a bit of lemon juice to it. I also used the sour orange juice in the mojo de ajo sauce I made to go with some of the other dishes.

Next, I marinated the pork in a giant plastic bag, which was much easier than trying to fit a roasting pan into the already crowded-fridge, and made it easy to flip the meat over for even marination. Since this was a smaller pork roast, I "only" marinated it for a day and a half. You really need at least a day for this recipe to work, and up to three days is better.

Then roast for 4 hours, let rest, slice, and broil. The guests told me it was fantastic; I had to take their word for it.

Dessert, of course, was proper flan. Because what else would you make with a Cuban meal? We did have a bit of a start because the caramel in the bottom of the flan cups crystallized, but that actually turned out not to matter at all. It re-caramelized in the oven.

So that was last year's Cuban Christmas eve. Hopefully it inspired you to try something a bit more adventurous for your own holiday meals.

As for this year ... I'm doing Belgian food. Watch this feed for that!

In the last few years, it's become my responsibility to feed family and Southern Oregon friends Christmas Eve dinner, and then we go to a friend's house for Christmas day.

Yes, Christmas. My sweetie's family isn't Jewish, and I'm fine cooking for the holiday because, after all, my real religion is Feastitarianism*. There's also gonna be pork in this blog post, so be prepared.

Anyway, we have a couple special diets in the group, including one person who is allergic to fish and another one who has celiac. This has meant being fairly creative, especially since I still prefer doing ethnically themed meals. So last year, I chose Cuban food, and I'm posting this before Christmas in case you want a Cuban Christmas too. And you should! It's so colorful, and so tasty!

First course was appetizers, and if it's Cuban or Puerto Rican food you know we're going to have tostones. These are a delicious fritter made with green plantains, bought when they're hard and starchy and you have to peel them with a knife.

tostones

• 2-4 green plantains
• 2 cups peanut oil
• salt

Peel the plantains, then cut them into 2-3" chunks (for large tostones) or 1-2" pieces (for small ones). Heat half the peanut oil in a large, deep pan to low frying heat (300-325F) and shallow-fry them, turning them with tongs, until the chunks are brown on all sides. This will take around 10-12 minutes per batch; cook multiple batches rather than crowding them.

Drain the fried plantain and let it cool to room temperature. Then mash them flat, thin as you can make them (I use a tortilla press). Turn up the heat on the oil (350-380F) and fry them in batches until crisp drain them, blot dry, and salt them while they're still hot.

Of course, with the tostones I had to serve some sauces: mojo de ajo sauce and banana ketchup.

Now, I mentioned the gluten-free nature of the dinner, which led to some experiments -- such as these cheese empanadas, made with cassava flour dough. These are technically Dominican cuisine rather than Cuban, but they were perfect for the meal.

I experimented both with frozen cassava pulp, and with flour, and found the flour much easier to work with, so that's what I recommend. They fried up beautifully, and the cassava dough was light and airy, almost like some kind of puff instead of dough. I'd make these again even if I wasn't serving a gluten-free meal.

Now, on to the salad course:

Every year my dad, who lives in South Texas, sends me a box of the amazing ruby-red grapefruit they grow there for Hanukkah. So of course I needed to make a grapefruit salad! This one has butter lettuce, sweet onions, and cucumbers.

Now, as far as my sweetie is concerned one of the main reasons to eat Cuban is to have an avocado salad. This is a classic one, with sliced avocados, hothouse tomatoes, and a garlic, olive oil, and fresh oregano dressing.

That's enough for today. Tommorrow we'll get into the main course, and The Pork That Cooked For Two Days.

(* Feastitarianism: you belong to whatever religion is currently having a feast day, today)

There aren't a lot of foods specific to Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), but one of the critical ones is a big round challah bread. Of course, I planned to bake. Between one thing and another, though, we ended up getting home on erev Rosh Hashana at 4pm. Could I get a challah on the table for a 6:30 dinner starting at 4:15?

My first thought was to run out and buy, but as you can imagine by 4pm everyone was sold out. So baking it is. But our family challah recipe takes 1 1/2 hours just for the first rising. We were looking at a challahless Yom Tov.

Then I remembered a recipe which my sweetie had made, for lagniappe rolls which due to editing errors had much too much yeast (2 Tbs instead of 2 tsp). Those rolls rose really fast, in like 20 minutes, and actually still tasted OK. Could I do something similar, maybe more controlled, with the challah recipe?

My first step was to double the usual amount of yeast, from 2 tsp to 4 tsp. I use high-quality active dry yeast, refrigerated, from Red Star, so it's more potent than supermarket yeast in any case; if you're using Fleishmann's, you may need to triple it. I then dissolved 3 1/2 Tbs honey in a cup of 95F water, and then proofed the yeast in it while I mixed the dry ingredients, really getting it going.

Once the dough was together, I put it in a plastic dough bucket (for some reason, dough rises faster in plastic than metal). I heated the oven, turning it off when it reached 120F and put the dough bucket inside. This cut the initial rising to 25 minutes.

With the shorter rises, I was able to make the 6:30 dinnertime with five minutes to spare. 20 minutes mixing, 25 for first rise, 10 minutes braiding, 15 for second rise, 30 minutes baking, and 15 to cool. Surprisingly, the challah didn't even taste yeasty. Rosh Hashana dinner was saved!

Berkus Family Challah (fast rise version)

• 1 cup water at 90F to 100F
• 3 ½ tablespoons honey
• 4 generous teaspoons active dry yeast (2+ packets)
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons salt (1 if using salted butter)
• ¼ cup melted butter (or margarine)
• 2 large eggs + 1 yolk, beaten
• Oil sprayer
• 1 egg white beaten with 2 tbs water or milk for an egg wash
• Large bowl, dough rising bucket, dough scraper, bread board, cookie sheet, baking parchment, plastic wrap pastry brush.

Mix the honey into the warm water. Add the yeast.

While the yeast proofs, mix the salt and flour in a large bowl. Melt the butter, and beat the eggs plus yolk, reserving the white.

Turn your oven on to its lowest temperature setting. You're going to turn it off when it reaches between 100F and 120F, so if you can't set that, keep an eye on it.

Pour first the yeast mixture, then the butter, then the eggs, into the flour bowl. Mix until everything is incorporated into a sticky mass. Knead briefly (maybe 3 minutes); kneading in the bowl is fine. Shape into a large ball.

Spray the sides and bottom of the dough bucket with oil. Put the dough in, spray it, and then put the lid on the bucket. Put the bucket in the oven and close the door. Let rise until more than doubled in size, 20 to 30 minutes.

Dump the dough out on a bread board. Cut into 3 to 6 portions depending on what kind of challah you're making. Braid. Place on parchment on the cookie sheet, and cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap. Put in a warm, draft-free place for a 2nd rise, 15-20 minutes. While it's rising, heat the oven to 375F.

Remove the plastic wrap. Whisk the reserved egg white with water and paint the egg wash on the top of the challah with a pastry brush. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes. You'll know it's done when the tops of the braids are dark brown, the bottom is light brown, and the cracks between braids are no longer "doughy".

Cool 10-15 minutes, then serve. With apples and honey, of course!

Makes a 2lbs loaf.

L'shana Tovah!

It's Passover time! The best Jewish holiday, as far as I'm concerned, because it's all about food. Yes, a lot of that food consists of matzoh, but The Tribe gets pretty inventive with it. Such as, for example, the classic Pesach bruch food: matzoh brei.

Usually, matzoh brei is sort of Jewish migas, but the version below is more of a matzoh frittata. I based the recipe on Golda Meir's Matzoh Brie from the Betty's Diner Pancake Handbook (you need this book), but wanted to make it more complex and savory. I also have some variations on it below.

cheddar and green onion matzoh brei

• 5 sheets plain unsalted matzoh (or whole wheat matzoh)
• 2 cups boiling water
• 5 eggs, beaten (or 2 whole eggs and 6 egg whites)
• 1 bunch green onions or spring onions
• 1/2 tsp salt
• black pepper
• 2-3 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• 1-2 tbs vegetable oil or butter
• Two bowls, strainer, large oven-proof nonstick pan, silicone spatula, large platter.

Heat the oven to 375F. Put the kettle on to boil the water. Break up the matzoh in a large bowl; you want pieces which are 1" to 2" square.

Beat the eggs with the salt and set aside. Slice the onions; for this recipe we want just the green and tender green parts, not the white parts which you can reserve for other dishes. You want about one cup of thinly-sliced green onion tops.

When the water boils, pour it over the matzoh and swirl it around a bit, for around 15 seconds. Then use the strainer to pour out the water, shaking it to get most of the drips out. Mix the onions, cheese, eggs, and some fresh-ground pepper into this.

Heat the vegetable oil in the pan over high heat, until it's hot enough that an onion piece dropped in sizzles instantly. Dump in the matzoh mixture, let it cook for 30 seconds or so, then stir it, turning bits over using the spatula. Then press it into a firm cake, and turn the heat down to medium. Cook on the stovetop for 5-7 minutes, or until the edges start to brown slightly.

Put the pan in the oven. Cook for another 10-15 minutes, or until the center is firm and shows no sign of raw egg. Loosen the brei with the spatula, then put the platter over the top of the pan and flip it out. Cut into wedges and serve.

Serves three people as a main course, or five with several other brunch items.

feta and organo matzoh brei

Make the cheddar and onion matzoh brei, as above, only swap out the cheddar cheese for 4oz crumbled feta, and the green onions for 1/4 cup chopped fresh oregano leaves.

Tuscan brei

Replace the cheddar cheese with grated dry mozzarella, plus 2 tbs grated parmigiano. Replace the green onions with 1/2 cup shredded fresh basil. Use olive oil instead of vegetable oil. When the brei is done and turned out onto the platter, paint the top of it with around 1 Tbs of balsamic vinegar.

matzoh migas

As the recipe above. Add one additional egg. Take the cheddar out of the recipe and replace with Mexican cheese, such as asadero, "queso quesadilla", or monterrey jack. Reduce sliced green onions to 1/2 cup. Add 1 cup diced hot peppers, depending on how hot you like things:

• medium: 1 poblano pepper and 1 anaheim pepper
• hot: 1 poblano pepper, 1 jalapeño and 1 serrano peppers
• chipotle: 3-4 chipotle peppers in adobo (or rehydrated), minced.

Also add: 2 seeded and diced roma tomatoes, 1/2 tsp ground cumin, and 1 tsp dried oregano.

One of the biggest reasons to eat Georgian food is khachipuri, known as "the pizza of Eastern Europe". Like pizza, khachipuri is more of a whole category than a specific recipe; I think there are as many recipes are there are Georgian surnames. This year's khachipuri was based on an Ossetian recipe, incorporating beet greens since I had a lovely bunch of them from the beets I used for the pkhali. This was excellent; while somewhat less cheesy than other ones I've made, it was flavorful and did well as leftovers.

Speaking of cheese: the traditional cheeses for khachipuri are Imeretian or Sulguni. You can't get these in the USA, except maybe in New York, so substitute a 50/50 mix of block feta and dry mozzarella, and add a couple tablespoons of Greek yogurt. I've also seen American meunster cheese recommended as a substitution.

As always, I used a number of references for this year's holiday meal. In addition to georgianrecipes.net, I also used The Georgian Feast, The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Flatbreads and Flavors.

If khachipuri and pkhali are two of the food groups of Georgia, surely lobio is the other. The word "lobio" refers to beans, whether dried red beans or green beans. So we had to have lobio, and this turned out to be the runaway success of the evening. Our guests raved about these, and they were probably the easiest thing in the whole meal. The recipe below is loosely based on a recipe from Flatbreads and Flavors.

Georgian Herbed Green Beans

2 lbs fresh green beans
Salt, large pot, large bowl

Dressing:
1/2 cup walnut oil
1 Tbs olive oil, plus more
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp salt, plus more
1/3 cup minced fresh mint
1/3 cup finely chopped dill
1/3 cup minced parsley or cilantro
1-2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 tsp sugar, plus more

Mix all ingredients for the dressing. Taste; it will probably be somewhat sharp. Add small amounts of salt, sugar, and olive oil until the flavor is balanced.

Heat a large pot of salted water, large enough for all the green beans, until simmering. Trim the grean beans and snap into 1-2" pieces. Fill the large bowl with cold water and a few ice cubes. Blanch the beans for 5 minutes. Immediately strain them out and shock them in the bowl of cold water, until completely cool. Drain and dry the beans.

Just before serving, toss the beans with the dressing. Serve at room temperature. Do not allow them to sit for long before serving, as the beans may turn an unattractive putty color.

Note: if you can get them, Romano beans are better than regular green beans for lobio.

"When life hands you plums, make tkemali."

A year and a half ago friends in Southern Oregon had a preposterous bounty of plums, so many they were breaking branches on the trees. So many, in fact, that my relatives still have frozen quarts of plum juice and pulp. So when it came time to make Christmas eve dinner for those same friends, I thought of Georgian sour plum sauce, or tkemali. I could serve it with salmon for me, and chicken for the folks who don't eat fish. This lead to a whole Georgian-style holiday meal.

I encountered Georgian food three years ago when I went to Moscow for a technical conference. Georgia is regarded as sort of the France of Eastern Europe: the country with deep cuisine history where all the good cooks come from. Even during war between Georgia and Russia, the Georgian restaurants in Moscow did not close down. The food is that good.

The meal started out with pkhali, a paste made with beets, walnuts and garlic (pictured above). Pkhali is a kind of "Georgian hummus", and is actually made with a variety of vegetables, depending; beets are common, but so are leeks, spinach, or eggplants. What's constant is the walnuts, garlic and vinegar.

Since it's served cold, we had this out as an appetizer course, together with Butte Creek Mill's beer batter bread. Originally, I'd put the pkhali in little jello molds with the idea of unmolding them as amusing shapes, but for some reason it didn't stiffen up in the fridge this time, and wouldn't come out of the molds. A quick save with the cookie scoop, and you have the little pyramids you see here.

It's traditional to top pkhali with onions and pomegranate seeds, and also made a terrific Christmas color combination.

Beet Pkhali

2 lbs large beets
1 1/2 cups walnut halves
1 small-medium head garlic (or 1/2 large head)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt, plus more
2 Tbs red wine vinegar, plus more
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley and/or cilantro

Cook the beets: wash and trim them, leaving a little bit of stem. Wrap them up in heavy foil in bunches of 3-4, stem sides down. Cook at 300F for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, depeding on the size of the individual beets. Allow to cool until just warm enough to handle, and rub off the peels and trim. Dice large.

Roast the garlic with the beets: when the beets are 40 minutes from being done, trim the end off the head of garlic exposing the tips of the cloves, and wrap it in foil, cut side up. Cook it alongside the beets and take it out of the oven at the same time.

Put the walnuts, parsley and salt into a food processor or food grinder. Pulse until finely minced. Add the beet dice, coriander, and red wine vinegar. Squeeze the roasted cloves out of the head of garlic into the mix. Pulse until reduced to a rough puree. Taste; add additional salt and vinegar if necessary; the phkali should be slightly acid.

Serve with marinated red onions and pomegranate seeds on top.

Marinated Red Onion

1 large red onion
1 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt

Trim and peel the whole onion. Slice it into thin rings, about 1/8" inch thick (3-4mm). Separate the layers.

Toss the onion rings with the vinegar and salt. Put in a nonreactive container, cover and seal, and refrigerate overnight or up to 1 week. Drain and blot dry before using.

This may be a little late, but if you're looking for more interesting side dishes/condiments for TY Day tommorrow: this is definitely not Betty Crocker's cranberry sauce. It's spicy, savory and tart. I'm making it to go with the Moroccan theme for our Thanksgiving meal.

Cranberry Harissa

• 3-4 whole dried guajillo or New Mexico peppers
• 1 large red bell pepper, sliced, about 1 1/2 cups
• 1 cup fresh cranberries
• 4-6 cloves peeled garlic
• 2 tsp whole caraway seeds
• 1 tsp whole cumin seeds
• salt
• olive oil

Slice each dried pepper into 4-6 pieces and discard the stem and most of the seeds. Soak in about 1 cup of hot water for 15-20 minutes. When the peppers are done soaking, you'll drain them but save the soaking water.

In a small saucepan, toast the cumin and caraway seeds until fragrant, around 3-4 minutes on medium heat. Set aside. You can skip the toasting if you're in a hurry.

Stem, seed and roughly chop the bell pepper.

Put garlic, seeds, both kinds of peppers, cranberries, and 1 tsp salt into a food grinder, Vitamix or food processor. Add 1/2 cup of the pepper soaking liquid. Puree, adding more soaking water if necessary to get the harissa to grind up.

Pour the puree into the saucepan. Taste and add salt if required. Cook over low heat until brick-red and reduced by 1/3 to 1/2, 30 to 40 minutes.

Cool. Put in jars for keeping, or bowls for serving, covered with a thin layer of olive oil. Makes 1.5 to 2 cups.