by Gil Marks
2. To make the stuffing: Combine all the stuffing ingredients.
3. Place about ¼ cup stuffing on each large cabbage leaf, arranging it a little off center. Use 1 to 2 tablespoons for smaller leaves. Fold the sides of the leaf over the stuffing, fold over the rib end, and roll up. Arrange the cabbage rolls, seam side down, in the prepared pot.
4. To make the sauce: Combine all the sauce ingredients. Pour over the cabbage rolls. If the sauce does not cover the cabbage rolls, add enough water to cover.
5. Cover and simmer over low heat until tender, about 1½ hours. Or bake, covered, in a 350°F oven for about 1½ hours, then uncover and bake until the sauce is thickened and the cabbage rolls are lightly browned, 30 to 60 minutes. Serve warm. Stuffed cabbage is tasty reheated and freezes well too.
Calsones
Calsones is a filled egg pasta frequently served mixed with noodles.
Origin: Syria
Other names: calsones b'rishta, kalsonnes, kelsonnes.
Calsones is the Syrian version of stuffed pasta. It can be formed into rounds, half-moons, or triangles, and is typically thicker and chewier than Italian ravioli. Cheese is the most common filling, but sometimes spinach is substituted.
The dish and its name resulted from the arrival in Syria of refugees from the kingdom of Naples in southern Italy, then under Spanish rule, after their expulsion in 1533. The original dish in Naples consisted of a slice of sausage enwrapped in lean yeast dough and deep-fried. The fritters were served warm or cooled. For a dairy version, Jews substituted cheese for the meat. Italians named the ragged fried pastries after the baggy long underpants (calzones) worn by the men of Naples. In Crete, another area where olive oil was plentiful and inexpensive, Jews continued to deep-fry calsones. In Syria, however, oil was less abundant and deep-frying less common. Consequently, Syrians transformed calsones into boiled pasta.
In Syria, calsones became primarily dairy fare. After boiling, the calsones were fried in a little butter or simply tossed with butter and baked. In Aleppo, cooks took any leftover dough from making the filled pasta, cut out wide noodles, and mixed them with the filled pasta (calsones b'rishta) for a more substantial dish. With the advent of kosher commercial cheese tortellini and egg noodles, some cooks cheat and use the store-brought products.
In Syrian households, the standard Thursday dinner is a dairy meal before the Sabbath. For generations, calsones b'rishta with a cheese filling provided the main course, typically accompanied with yogurt and a green salad. A cheese filling also became a popular Shavuot treat, while spinach is traditional for Purim. Some cooks insist that the best filling is made with mizithra/anthotiro (fresh sheep's milk cheese), imparting a slightly nutty flavor, while others maintain that mild Muenster, is more appropriate. Today, a combination of Parmesan and ricotta or farmer cheese has become common. Calsones remains a Syrian comfort food.
Caper
The caper is a perennial shrub that grows wild throughout the mountainous areas of the eastern Mediterranean. Its long roots draw nourishment from poor soil, arid land, or even cracks in a rock. In July and August, the plant produces tiny buds also known as capers. The buds blossom in the morning when exposed to light and last for only a few hours before wilting. Each day, during this period, new buds appear. They range in size from that of a green peppercorn (called nonpareil) to slightly larger than half an inch (known as capote), and the larger buds are softer and more intensely flavored. Some buds are allowed to blossom and grow into a succulent, teardrop-shaped, semimature fruit called caperberries. The flavor is similar to that of the buds, but more intense and sour.
Remains of wild caperberries and seeds have been found in prehistoric sites in Iraq, while the first record of capers was in the forty-seven-hundred-year-old Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Capers were used as a condiment and medicine in ancient Greece and Rome.
Capers have a long standing in Jewish tradition. The caper is one of the few plants found in the Judean Desert between the Judean Hills and south to Masada and the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth. Because the caper tenaciously regenerates after being cut back or burned, and so determinedly thrives in difficult locales—even growing on the Western Wall in Jerusalem—the Talmud compares it to "Israel among the nations." The name of the biblical figure Tzlafchad means "sharp caper." The Mishnah considered capers, known as kahfars and tzalaf, as a type of "budding fruit" and tithable crop, connoting its usage as an important cultivated food in Judea two thousand years ago. In Talmudic times, caperberries were also fermented into a wine (yein kafrisin), the strongest fruit wine, which was used to soak one of the ingredients incorporated into the Temple incense. In Ecclesiastes, the caperberry symbolizes the brevity of human life, "and the ahvi'onah [caperberry] shall fail."
Since they grow wild, capers were used throughout history by the poor and wealthy alike. While very occasionally used fresh, capers are more often pickled in vinegar or salt. Caperberries are also pickled and used to add piquancy to various dishes. Capers have a spicy aroma and a slightly bitter flavor—a combination of mustard and black pepper—that complements other Mediterranean seasonings, most notably basil, chervil, oregano, garlic, and olives. The acidic, salty caper provides flavor and textural contrast. Capers are used with fish and poultry and in a number of salads (e.g., the Middle Eastern cucumber and feta salad, michoteta), dips, relishes (such as caponata), stews, and sauces (most notably lemon-wine sauces and tartar sauce). Since intense heat destroys their aroma, capers are generally added to sauces near the end of cooking. Among Ashkenazim, more recently, capers are paired with lox and cream cheese.
Caponata
Caponata is a cooked sweet-and-sour eggplant relish.
Origin: Sicily
Sicilian Jews, who lived on the island since Roman times, developed various salads that could be prepared a day or more ahead of the Sabbath and, before the advent of refrigeration, be served at room temperature for Sabbath lunch. Vinegar was added as a preservative and sugar or honey to tame the potency of the acid. Thus cappone, a venerable Latin term for sweet-and-sour dishes—related to the similar term in Catalan, caponada, from a word meaning "tied together"—became an integral component of Sicilian Jewish cookery.
In addition to vinegar and sugar, these dishes commonly contained other local favorites—capers, olives, and raisins or dried plums. The Arabs controlled parts or all of Sicily from 827 to 1061 and during this time they introduced their favorite foods, including the eggplant. Except for Arabs and Jews, most Europeans ignored eggplant, a member of the nightshade family, until well into the sixteenth century. Sicilian Jews, on the other hand, quickly embraced eggplant, developing various dishes featuring it, including caponata.
Sicily fell under the rule of Spain in 1377. In 1493, the Spanish edict of expulsion was applied to the nearly forty thousand Jews of Sicily. Although this ancient Jewish community disappeared from the island of Sicily, they left behind one of the area's most famous dishes. Most Sicilian Jews resettled in central and northern Italy or the Ottoman Empire, bringing with them their foods, including caponata.
In Italy, caponata is commonly designated alla giudia (the name of the Roman Ghetto), denoting its longtime ubiquity among Italian Jews. Eventually, it was further refined with the addition of another questionable member of the nightshade family, tomatoes. Today, there are almost as many versions of caponta in Italy as there are cooks who make it. Caponata is served as an appetizer, side dish, and a pasta topping, as well as a bed for chicken or fish.
Caraway
Caraway is a small, brown, ridged, crescent-shaped fruit that is used as a spice, most often whole. Caraway, a close relative of parsley, is one of the oldest known spices. It imparts a slightly bitter anise-like flavor with a trace of lemon. It is often confused with the similar-looking cumin seed, although the two spices possess very different flavors. Jews were highly involved in the spice business, as Kemmoun and Kemoun (Arabic for caraway) became a Jewish surname in the Arab world, while Kimmel (Yiddish for ca
raway) and Kimmelman paralled it among Ashkenazim.
Caraway is one of the primary seasonings of central Europe and Scandinavia and it is occasionally used in Yemen and the Maghreb. Its assertive flavor does not blend well with most other spices and it is typically featured solo, along with garlic and onion. It is used to make kummelsuppe (caraway soup), a Jewish mother's traditional remedy for an upset stomach. Caraway is added to vegetable dishes, especially sauerkraut, coleslaw, and braised cabbage. It flavors cheese as well as dishes made with cheese and is used in potato soups, stews, roasts, meat loaf, savory dumplings, and in "Jewish" rye breads.
Cardamom
Cardamom, a member of the ginger family, is the most fragrant of spices. Inside the brittle oblate pods are clusters of intensely flavored tiny black seeds. The pods are green or, after bleaching, white. Both pods and seeds (whole or ground together) are used in cooking. Cardamom's distinctive aroma fades rather quickly, so Indians primarily purchase it in pod form. The pods are usually bruised or steeped in liquid first to release their flavor. Green pods are preferred in India and the Middle East. They have more flavor and aroma—with notes of black pepper, eucalyptus, lemon, and mint—than the white pods. Cardamom follows only saffron and vanilla among spices in expense, but a little goes a long way.
Black cardamom, also called brown cardamom, is not a true cardamom. It has larger, darker pods, a smoky, nut-like flavor, and a more pronounced camphor odor. Black pods are a staple of African cooking, but are rarely used among the Jews of India or in Middle Eastern cooking. However, these wild and cultivated relatives of cardamom are sometimes used to adulterate ground forms of the real thing. Green and white pods can usually be substituted for each other, but never black ones.
Cardamom is an essential spice not only in Southeast Asia, but also in the Middle East, North Africa, and Scandinavia. Indians add whole pods to stews, vegetable dishes, puddings, and rice dishes, and use ground cardamom in curries and confections. In Scandinavia, ground white pods are used to flavor baked goods. In the Middle East, cardamom provides flavor in fruit compotes, pilafs, rice puddings, and a coffee drink called gahwa, and sometimes it is brewed in tea. Iraqis add it to numerous dishes, including an apple compote for Rosh Hashanah and cookies called hadgi badah. Many Middle Eastern spice mixtures contain this spice, including the Turkish baharat, Ethiopian berbere, Libyan bzar, Moroccan ras-el-hanout, and Yemenite hawaij.
Cardoon
The cardoon is a relative of and possibily the ancestor of the globe artichoke. Unlike artichokes, which are prized for the flower buds, cardoons are raised for their edible succulent petioles (leafstalks), which reach two feet or more in length upon maturity. The name cardoon comes from the French chardon ("thistle," from the Latin carduus, "thistle"). This member of the thistle family grows in bunches somewhat like ridged celery, the ridges housing razor-sharp spines. The cardoon is little known in much of the world, which is a shame. It is a tasty and interesting vegetable with a long history.
The Talmud reveals that although the plant referred to as akavit (from akav, meaning "hooked" and "to be curved"), the Talmudic-era name for cardoon, was a wild vegetable, it was for human consumption. Jewish tradition relates the cardoon to the biblical kotz (thorn) of post-Eden, with cardoons and artichokes—and grain (bread)—exemplifying tasty plants that require preparation, and thus human creativity, to be edible.
The Greek philosopher Theophrastus (372—287 BCE) mentioned that cardoon was a great delicacy. The cardoon, imported from Sicily and North Africa, was much beloved in ancient Rome and, according to Pliny, it commanded a higher price than any other vegetable. Medieval Arabs spread cultivated cardoons and artichokes throughout North Africa and into Spain. During his visit to Egypt around 1170, Benjamin of Tudela observed that cardoons were among the vegetables used by Egyptian Jews.
Cardoons grow aggressively and a single plant can spread over an area six feet in diameter, dominating other vegetation and basically spreading like weeds. Animals will not eat them, due to their bitterness and prickles, so they were once commonly used as borders in vegetable and ornamental gardens. More than two millennia ago, someone discovered that cooking this tough, monstrous-looking plant for an extended time tenderized it, yielding an intriguing and complex bittersweet flavor reminiscent of artichoke hearts. The flavor, however, is more subtle and the texture firmer than those of artichokes.
Cardoons are a cold-weather crop; the height of their season is during the autumn and winter, and they turn very bitter and woody as the weather warms. There are two types of cardoon, growing differently depending on the cultivation practices: lunghi and gobbi. Lungi is the natural form with straight stalks. Gobbi (hunchback) has curved stalks produced by bending the plants when very young and covering them with dirt, yielding a curved, lighter-colored, more tender, and less bitter stalk. Wild cardoons and lungi have to be cooked to be edible, but some cultivated gobbi types can be enjoyed raw when young and tender.
Cardoon stalks vary greatly in flavor and texture, even within a single plant—the inner stalks are generally more tender than the outer ones, which are typically discarded. The flower heads produce an extract used as a vegetable substitute for rennet in cheese making, yielding a creamier texture and a slight tang, once important for kosher cheese.
Italians have a particular fondness for the vegetable, preparing it stewed, baked, and fried. In northern Italy, cardoon soup is claimed to keep away colds in the winter. Tunisians and Moroccans make a beloved Passover soup with a mixture of cardoons, carrots, and kohlrabi combined with crumbled matza, and use cardoons in stews to top couscous. Persians, among the world's staunchest cardoon lovers, smother the stalks in a garlicky yogurt sauce and cook it in soups.
(See also Artichoke)
Carob
Carob, a legume, is the pod of a large evergreen shrub indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean. Carob trees take longer than most trees to bear, and only the females produce pods, but by the twelfth year a single tree can yield one hundred pounds of fruit and is capable of producing for more than a century. Each pod encases a sweet pale brown pulp and ten to twelve very hard seeds. The carob is a hardy tree, resistant to disease and insects. Thus in Jewish tradition, it represents tenacity, long-term success, delayed gratification, and fertility. After the founding of the state of Israel, the government planted carobs near many settlements to provide a source of income and fodder for animals.
Carob cultivation is quite ancient; the seeds have been found in Egyptian tombs dating from the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1970 BCE). The ancient Egyptians used the image of a carob pod as the hieroglyph for "sweet."
Carob is never mentioned in the Bible, an absence particularly mysterious as many people believe the carob, which grows wild in Israel, may be a native of the Levant. Carob seeds dating from the Neolithic period have been found in archeological sites from Jericho and Haifa. In addition, other languages took their name for carob from the Hebrew name charuv. Some contend that the Hebrew name comes from carob's similarity in shape to a sword (cherev), while others theorize it derives from the way the fruit becomes dry (cherev).
Although the carob is not mentioned in the Bible, its seeds are. In the book of Exodus, they serve as a measure of weight—a shekel is said to weigh twenty gera (gerot plural). Gerot was later pronounced kirat in Arabic, which became the Greek keration, ultimately the source of the English measure of gemstone weight and gold purity, karat.
Although the carob was overshadowed by the fruit of other Israeli trees, especially dates and figs, and relegated to a minor status among Jews, it does play an important role in subsequent Jewish tradition, as recorded in numerous Talmudic incidents. Among Ashkenazim, carob, bokser in Yiddish, is the fruit most associated with the arbor holiday of Tu b'Shevat. In the days before quick transport and refrigeration, the carob's hard, dry texture made it one of the few fruits grown in the land of Israel capable of withstanding long-distance shipping without spoilage and, therefore, was available to Ashkenazim. Unfo
rtunately, often it was too hard and dry. Carob is also traditional on the minor holiday of Lag b'Omer, purported to be the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, a central figure in Jewish mysticism. Rabbi Shimon, who along with his son spent much of his career in hiding in a cave from the Roman authorities, were said to have subsisted on carob.
For millennia, carob was an important food in the Middle East consumed in pod form and, when ground and boiled with water, a source of fruit honey (dibs kharoob in Arabic) After the advent of sugarcane in the region, however, the importance of carob faded and it was subsequently called upon primarily in times of famine. Today, many of the world's carob pods are given to animals for fodder or found in a powder, which is substituted for cocoa powder. The tastes are not the same, although carob powder imparts a sweet flavor, brown color, and velvety texture to baked goods. It is available both raw (actually it is cooked for a short time) and roasted; the roasted type possesses more intensity. The seeds yield locust bean gum, used as a stabilizer and thickener in commercial baked goods, ice cream, and liquids. In parts of the Middle East, people enjoy fresh carob as a snack, spitting out the seeds in between chewing. Dibs kharoob is still used—mixed with cold water it becomes a refreshing beverage. A tasty dip for bread, dibs wa taniha, is made by mixing the syrup with sesame paste. The syrup is sometimes used in pastries, such as a variation of the Lebanese sfoff (semolina cake).
Carp
Carp refers to a number of species of large freshwater fish native to China and, in particular, to the common carp, which was cultivated there more than twenty-five hundred years ago. Because they can survive for extended periods in small crowded containers, domesticated carp could be transported throughout Asia and Europe. By the eleventh century, and perhaps as early as the seventh century, Jewish merchants conducting trade along the Silk Road had brought carp—probably several times—by way of Turkey, to southern Europe, where Ashkenazim by and large took over its cultivation.
