Hamentaschen

When I was 10 or 11, I had my first introduction to Purim. When my sister and I came downstairs that morning, my mom had out The Children's Book of Bible Stories. We read the story of Esther and how she saved the Jewish people from Haman. My mom then presented us with poppy seed Hamentaschen, the special pastry made for Purim. If I remember correctly, the pastries resemble the hat that Haman wore.

It may or may not be important to note that we are not Jewish. I'm not sure exactly why my mom decided to celebrate Purim that year, but I suspect it had everything to do with the fact that it's a holiday that celebrates a woman. And there aren't a lot of those. And she was a smart woman. A woman who was able to save her people from death. That's no small feat.

We didn't mark the occasion after that, but I've always had a special place in my heart for the holiday because of the one year that we did.

Many years later, while in the grocery store around the time of Purim, I saw some poppy seed hamentaschen. I was excited, because I remembered how good the ones were that we had that morning so long ago. Sadly, these hamentaschen were a big disappointment. I think I may have tried them one other time after that, with the same disappointing results. I gave up on the idea of finding good poppy seed hamentaschen and suspected that, someday, I would probably need to make my own. (In retrospect, if I had gotten my hamentaschen from a good bakery, I might have had different results, but then I wouldn't be here now, telling you about my own hamentaschen-making experience. And in my defense, the grocery store does make a very tasty rugalach.)

Over the years, Purim has snuck up on me repeatedly. I miss it every year. I'm guessing this is because I'm not Jewish, so it's not like I have any seasonal or annual reminders, or any Jewish relatives to remind me or with whom to celebrate. So, I'd keep missing my opportunity to try my hand at making hamentaschen--not that I had a recipe with which to work.

This past summer, at the annual reunion we have with my folks' college friends, I was speaking with one of our old family friends and I brought up how I always miss Purim and wanted to make my own hamentaschen (not that I remembered the name of the pastry) and she said that she had a recipe for it. Yay! Here was my in.

Fast forward to February 10th of this year. Determined to not miss Purim again, and thinking it was sometime in March, I put out a request on FB asking my Jewish friends to remind me when it was happening this year. I also specifically asked the daughters of the previously mentioned old family friend if they could get me their mom's hamentaschen recipe. Turns out, Purim falls on the last weekend of February. So, good thing I asked when I did.

The eldest of the sisters, Jennifer, was able to procure her mom's recipe for me. Not only that, but it's a scan of the original, so I get the illustrations and some very helpful additional notes written at the bottom. But it's only for the dough, not any fillings. This is not a problem; however, because I have access to the internet! I find a couple of hamentaschen poppy seed filling recipes online, and identify one as looking most promising (but printed out a second, just in case).

So, Purim weekend rolls around and I go to the local natural food store on Saturday to buy the ingredients I don't have, with fingers crossed that they have enough bulk poppy seeds (I need a 1/2 pound). On the way, I stop at the winter farmers' market (yes, I am very lucky to live in a town with one of these) to pick up another jar of honey (both the dough and the filling call for it). I'm super happy to find everything I need, except eggs. So, I make a second stop at a local grocery and get (relatively) local eggs.

The process starts Saturday night with pouring boiling water over the poppy seeds, so that they can soak overnight. On Sunday morning, as I wait for the Main Squeeze to get ready for a trip to the mall (ugh, the mall), I make the dough--it needs to chill before being rolled out. I have already decided to make a change to the recipe, which calls for shortening. I am wary of shortening--unless you're making a pie crust, and I don't make pies. So I opt for butter instead (mmm, butter). The other ingredients include: flour, honey, eggs, baking soda, and salt.

The original recipe calls for mixing the dough by hand, and since I'm going for the full homemade treatment, I'm going with it. (The old family friend, Judy, now makes hers in her Cuisinart, as I learned from the hand-written note at the bottom of the recipe.) Besides, I don't have any other recipes in my repertoire that call for mixing the ingredients with my hands, so I think this will be fun. It was. But Judy's warning from the summer, that the dough is really sticky, turns out to be quite true. It takes me awhile to extract the dough from my hands and vice versa. But eventually, I am mostly free. And the dough goes into the fridge to chill.

When we get back from the mall (a relatively painless trip, but still, ugh, the mall) and after having lunch, it was time to make the filling. The first step was to drain the poppy seeds. Good thing we have a cheese cloth on hand. The second step is to grind the poppy seeds. They recommend a special poppy seed grinder, but say a coffee grinder will do the trick. I dig ours out of the pantry, and start grinding. Guess what? They just swirl around. Poppy seeds are tiny! They aren't about to be ground by a coffee grinder. So, I decide this is a silly step and move on. (Besides, the poppy seeds in the hamentaschen I've had have been whole, anyway.) Along with the poppy seeds goes in honey, butter, coarsely ground walnuts, golden raisins, a little cream and orange zest. (At least that's what I remember from off the top of my head.) Then the filling went into the fridge to chill as well.

And that's where my plan to have these made for Purim went off the rails. Because now it was time to make dinner. (It didn't help that I had had to make an emergency trip to the hardware store in the middle of the filling making to get something for the Main Squeeze.) And once dinner was over, it was far too late to tackle rolling out dough and forming the hamentaschen and baking them and all that. So, I resigned myself to being a day late and finishing them on Monday.

Monday evening, after dinner, and dinner clean up, I get the dough and the filling out. More flour is added to the dough so it can be handled, the counter is thoroughly floured, as is the rolling pin. I get out a wide-mouth glass and get to rolling, and cutting out circles, and plopping down heaping tablespoons of filling, and folding up the edges in a triangular pattern, and putting them on cookie sheets. They look like hamentaschen. I'm getting excited.

I got at least the three dozen Judy said I would (and I have about 2 cups of leftover filling--note for next year, halve the recipe). They come out of the oven perfectly golden brown. I barely wait for one to cool before testing it. And... Heaven. They are as good as I remember the first hamentaschen I had! SUCCESS!

When the Main Squeeze got home, he loved them too.

So clearly, I will be making my own hamentaschen for all future Purims. And I'm well on my way to being a Jewish grandmother. Except for the Jewish and the grandmother parts.

Bundt Cake Season - The Beginning

I'm not sure exactly why it came up, but a couple of years ago, while visiting with the Main Squeeze's relatives, it was mentioned how, years ago (I think it was about 30) the Main Squeeze's uncle was aghast at the cost of his wife's recent purchase: a bundt pan. But over time, he had come to see the error of his ways, because he had enjoyed so many delicious cakes from that very pan. It turned out to be money well spent.

This conversation got me to thinking. You see, I do not have a particularly strong sweet tooth. ( I don't dislike sweet things, but they are not my weakness.) I did not grow up in a home where we had dessert regularly, nor were baked goods usually to be found. They were an occasional item, and therefore a special treat. And I have, in the past, found iced cakes to be too sweet. Now, that could very well be due to too many grocery store bakery cakes, which I find too sweet--the icing is so sweet, it makes the roof of my mouth itch-- and too boring and so not worth the calories. (I might have even said, on occasion, that I didn't really like cake.) But bundt cakes, on the other hand, are usually not cloyingly sweet. So the mention of the bundt pan set off this light bulb, "Hey, I like bundt cakes. They're not too sweet. And they're kind of retro. I should get a bundt pan." What made this idea especially perfect, is that I had some graduation money from the aforementioned aunt and uncle and I had been waiting for the right thing to spend it on, and a bundt pan would definitely fit that bill.

I had actually seen the bundt pan I wanted at the fancy kitchen store in town probably a year before I bought it. It caught my eye because it was so lovely. Initially, I couldn't rationalize buying an expensive bundt pan, since I'm not a big baker (this was before the aunt-uncle-bundt-pan-light-bulb moment.) Then, after I decided getting a bundt pan was a good idea, I wavered on getting the specific one that I wanted, because it's a ten-cup pan, and most recipes are for a twelve-cup pan. Eventually, I just said screw it, I'm getting the fancy bundt pan that I want and we'll see how the cakes work out.

So, two Novembers ago, graduation cash in hand, I went to the fancy kitchen store and bought the fancy bundt pan I had been coveting. (This is it, in case you are wondering. I had forgotten it's the Bavarian Bundt Pan, which is hilarious and fitting, since my heritage is predominately German.)

My first bundt cake was made for Thanksgiving, which we were celebrating with the Main Squeeze's family that year. (A funny aside, the Main Squeeze was not terribly pleased that I was bringing this bundt cake to Thanksgiving, because "Thanksgiving is pie's holiday," and this cake was clearly encroaching on pie's big day.) I wanted to show the Main Squeeze's aunt and uncle what I had used the graduation money for, so in spite of a certain person's protestations, I brought a bundt cake to Thanksgiving.

And thus began, what would turn out to be, the first Bundt Cake Season.

Vegetarian Scrapple

If you are from the Mid-Atlantic region, you should be familiar with Scrapple. For the uninitiated, scapple is simply leftover pork bits combined with cornmeal and seasonings. It's formed into a block and then sliced and pan fried until crispy and brown on the outside. It's delicious. But for those who did not grow up eating it, I guess it can be kind of scary. Personally, I think that if you eat sausage, you have no business being skeeved out by scrapple.

Anyway, I'm originally from Maryland and grew up eating and loving scrapple. The thing is, I became a vegetarian* about 20 years ago, so no more scrapple for me. I became a vegetarian, because I could no longer rationalize eating animals (I'm a huge sap), not because I didn't think they were tasty. So, I'm one of those vegs who is happy to try out fake meat products. I love Morning Star Farm's veggie links, patties and bacon. They are a key part of my weekend breakfasts.

I will also be the first one to tell you that it helps to have distance from the real deal to appreciate the fake versions. If you can clearly remember what bacon tasted like, then the fake stuff is so not going to cut it. (That being said, fake sausages can fly for meat eaters, because it's often about the seasonings, rather than the actual meat ingredients).

Anyway, a few years ago, the Main Squeeze got me a cookbook, Ethnic Vegetarian, for Christmas. The focus of the book is recipes (traditional and modern) from Africa, America, and the Caribbean. It's divided up into sections: African recipes, Caribbean recipes, African-American recipes, and Southern recipes. As soon as I saw the recipe for vegetarian scrapple, I was intrigued and have been meaning to make it ever since. The thing is, it's one of those recipes which you have to make a day in advance, and well, for me, that's often too much planning.

Finally, this past weekend, I decided to go for it. On Sunday, I bought the ingredients we didn't already have and then whipped it up. As I mentioned, it's been awhile since I've had scrapple, so the ingredient list did not raise any red flags--especially because you never know how separate ingredients may come together to form an entirely different whole. The ingredients for the veggie scrapple (as best as I can remember them) are: onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, black-eyed peas, corn meal, oatmeal, salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder and vegetable stock.

Some things that should have tipped me off that this recipe was not really going to resemble the original in flavor: A) bell pepper, B) cayenne pepper, C) the fact that she recommends it as part of supper (um, scrapple is definitely a breakfast/brunch kind of food), and D) the fact that this recipe was in her Southern food section. Scrapple is not a southern food. It may be found there--I don't know, I haven't spent much time in the South--but it originated in Pennsylvania and it was created by German immigrants there. (There is debate over whether it started with Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) or just regular German immigrants.)

The veggies and spices are sauteed until the vegetables are soft, then the beans & spices are added and cooked for five minutes, and then the other ingredients are added Finally, everything is poured into a buttered loaf pan. The scrapple is baked for 45 minutes--which gives the corn meal and oatmeal a chance to absorb the broth. You refrigerate it for four hours or overnight (I did overnight) and then slice it and pan fry it.

I'm not sure if it's because I used steel-cut, Irish style oats (rather than the traditional rolled kind)--I doubt it--but the cornmeal/oatmeal portion settled on the bottom, while the veggies were mostly on the top. The cornmeal part did have the right consistency, but the flavor was totally off. This scrapple was far too savory--the cayenne and red peppers were all wrong. I could see how the celery might blend in a different context, and if you don't have meat, then onion and garlic could be important for flavor. But yeah, this combination was never going to have that special scrapple flavor.

All in all, I'd have to rate this as a disappointment. The "scrapple" was tasty, as long as you weren't actually expecting it to taste anything like scrapple!

I may or may not try out other veggie scrapple recipes, but I am very interested to try Vrapple a vegetarian version that won second place at ScrappleFest 2009. I may just overlook the fact that it costs $10. A girl's gotta get her scrapple fix somehow.

*And by vegetarian, I mean that I sometimes eat seafood. Don't you judge me!