Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  There exists a longtime Jewish custom of responding to a particularly evil person by uttering the phrase y'mahk shemo (Hebrew meaning "may his name be erased"). However, singular scorn and derision was directed toward Haman, perhaps because Jews in the Diaspora identified him with their contemporary problems and oppressors. In one of the oldest Purim customs, the Jews of Persia and Babylonia burned Haman in effigy in bonfires. In medieval Europe, the custom developed of blotting out Haman's name. During the Megillah reading, some people wrote Haman on the soles of their shoes and stomped, while others wrote his name on an object and bashed it against another. The most widespread Ashkenazic custom became, upon hearing Haman's name during the Megillah reading, to good-naturedly stomp one's feet and sound groggers (noisemakers). So eating a pastry bearing the name of the archfiend or formed to represent part of Haman's clothing or anatomy—most notably his pocket, hat, foot, or ear—thereby symbolically eliminating some part of Haman and erasing his name, contributed to the enjoyment and theme of the holiday.

  When the name of the Spanish dish evolved from "ears" to "Haman's ears" for Purim is uncertain. The first record of the term oznei Haman was in 1550 in an Italian Jewish comedy Tzachut Bedichuta de-Kiddushin (An Eloquent Marriage Farce) written in Hebrew by Judah Leone Ben Isaac Sommo (1527—1592) of Mantua. It is the oldest extant Jewish play, drawing from the Midrash and Italian comedy, and was originally produced for a Purim carnival. In an exchange between two characters, one man asks, "Behold it is written in the Scroll of Purim 'and they hung Haman,' and in the portion of Balak it is written in explanation 'and the Children of Israel ate ha'mahn [the manna].' How could the Jews, who keep themselves from every wicked thing [Deuteronomy 23:10], eat the carcass of the one that was hung, but to the dog you shall cast it?"

  His friend provides an answer: "For what the Torah says 'and they ate ha'mahn' it is a warning and commandment to us that we eat during these days of Purim from oznei Haman [Haman's ears]—they are the thin wafers made from fine semolina flour mingled with olive oil [based on Exodus 29:2], and thus it says afterward 'and their taste was like wafers with honey [Exodus 16:31].' "

  This custom of enjoying oznei Haman, fried strips of dough in honey, soon spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe. As with many Jewish food traditions and names, after Haman's ears pastries appeared, reasons were retroactively attached to them. A Midrash related that the ears of Haman were "oznayim mekutafot." The Roman scholar and poet Immanuel ben Solomon (c. 1261—1328) translated this phrase as "clipped ears," contending that Haman's ears were cut off after his hanging, a misinterpretation arising from the medieval Italian custom of cutting off a criminal's ear before execution. The phrase more precisely means "twisted ears," denoting either that someone wrenched his ears or they were deformed or twisted or triangular in shape, like those of a donkey.

  The characteristic Jewish way to deal with the precarious nature of life in the Diaspora was by fasting in the face of potential danger, then feasting and reveling in response to a positive outcome, a philosophy evidenced in the modern Jewish joke, "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." The Jewish sense of humor, forged by life in exile and a vital element in dealing with it, particularly manifests itself on Purim, a time when joking and frivolity are encouraged.

  Haman's Ears (Oznei Haman)

  about 36 pastries

  [PAREVE]

  3 large eggs, or 2 large eggs and 2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

  3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

  3 tablespoons sugar

  2 tablespoons brandy, rum, orange juice, orange-blossom water, or water

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest or orange zest, or 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)

  ¼ cup finely ground blanched almonds or walnuts (optional)

  About 2½ cups (12.5 ounces) all-purpose flour, or 1½ cups flour and 1 cup fine semolina

  Vegetable, sunflower, or peanut oil for deep-frying

  About 1 cup confectioners' sugar or cinnamon-sugar for dusting or 2 cups warm atar (Middle Eastern Sugar Syrup (Atar/Shira))

  1. In a large bowl, blend together the eggs, oil, sugar, brandy, salt, and, if using, zest and/or nuts.Gradually stir in enough of the flour to make a soft dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead until smooth, 5 to 10 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let stand at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.

  2. Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece of dough into a 1/8-inch-thick rectangle. With a pastry cutter or sharp knife, cut into strips 1 inch wide and 4 to 6 inches long. Pinch each strip in the center and twist the ends.

  3. In a deep pot, heat at least 2 inches oil over medium heat to 375°F.

  4. In batches, fry the strips, turning once, until golden brown on both sides, about 1 minute per side. Remove with a wire-mesh skimmer or tongs and drain on a wire rack. Sprinkle generously with confectioners' sugar or dip the cooled pastries into the atar. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.

  Hamantasch

  Hamantasch is a filled pastry shaped in a triangle.

  Origin: Germany

  Among the medieval Teutonic pastries was a triangular-shaped treat filled with jam, curd cheese, and various sweets called maultasche (mouth pocket/pouch) and, when stuffed with poppy seeds, mohntasche (poppy seed pocket). The Middle High German word tasche—which also gives rise to the English words task and tax, where the money was put—means "pocket" or "pouch." Around the late sixteenth century, influenced by an Italian custom and by the similarity of the word mohn to Haman (his name is Hamohn in Hebrew), German Jews renamed this Teutonic cookie as hamantasch or hamantash (hamantaschen plural), meaning "Haman's pocket."

  Subsequently, various symbolic meanings were ascribed to the hamantasch. The triangular shape came to represent either Haman's pockets, alluding to the bribes the prime minister took, or his tricornered hat, connoting his execution. Persians, however, never wore tricornered hats; such headwear and subsequently this symbolism became popular in Europe around 1690. According to the mystics, the three corners symbolize the three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—whose merit saved their descendants from Haman's plot. The filling veiled inside the dough alludes to the hidden presence of God in the Purim story; God is never mentioned in the Megillah. The poppy seeds symbolize the vegetarian diet maintained by Queen Esther while living in the palace.

  Beginning in the fourteenth century, when masses of Jews from the Rhineland and western Germany moved eastward, they brought the mohntasche with them and it became the preeminent Ashkenazic Purim pastry in eastern Europe. In Poland, some people began calling these pastries pireshkes, from the Slavic word for "feast," when they were made at times other than Purim. However, the pastries lost favor among German, Alsatian, and Dutch Jews, who favored gingerbread men for Purim, as eating them was a way of hanging Haman in effigy. Nevertheless, by force of sheer numbers, in the nineteenth century eastern Europeans and their foods came to dominate the Ashkenazic world and hamantaschen emerged as the quintessential Ashkenazic Purim treat.

  The tri-cornered hamantasch literally means "Haman's pouch," but to Ashkenazim it is the iconic Purim food.

  The original hamantaschen were made from pieces of kuchen, a rich yeast dough. In the twentieth century, cookie doughs, due to their ease of preparation and keeping abilities, became more widespread. Yeast dough hamantaschen tend to be larger than the cookie dough types. Over the course of centuries, fillings changed as well. In eastern Europe, ground nuts, which were relatively inexpensive and plentiful, became a common substitute for poppy seeds. Almonds paste and dates were also popular fillings in some areas.

  Prune and plum jams emerged as a traditional hamantaschen filling in 1731 when a Bohemian merchant, David Brandeis, was accused of selling poisoned povidl, prune and plum preserves, which Americans now call lekvar. After the charge was proven false, he was freed from prison four days bef
ore the holiday of Purim. The entire city of Jungbunzlau, Bohemia, celebrated his release and, from that day forward, his family honored that day as a special holiday, the Povidl Purim. Historically, prunes ranked second in popularity to poppy seeds as a hamantaschen filling. However, these original fillings have recently lost favor, and are being replaced by apricot, cherry, raspberry, strawberry, caramel, chocolate, and even s'mores (chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and marshmallows).

  Hamantaschen were unknown in America until the arrival of eastern Europeans toward the end of the nineteenth century. The word was first recorded in America in The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1903): "The Haman Tash, a kind of a turnover filled with honey and black poppy-seed, is eaten on the Feast of Purim, but probably has no special meaning." It took seven decades, however, for hamantaschen to spread beyond the Jewish community and nearby environs. Ranking behind only rugelach and perhaps mandelbrot among Ashkenazic pastries known to mainstream Americans, this venerable Purim treat can now be found year-round on the shelves of many non-Jewish American bakeries and gourmet stores. In New England, hamantaschen are sometimes renamed "patriot hats" in some non-Jewish bakeries. In modern Israel, some people, particularly Sephardim and Mizrachim, refer to hamantaschen as oznei Haman (Haman's ears), an inappropriate usage it never held previously.

  (See also Haman's Ear (Oznei Haman) and Purim)

  Hamantaschen

  about 42 small pastries

  [DAIRY or PAREVE]

  11 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) unsalted butter or margarine, softened

  ½ cup sugar

  1 large egg or 3 large egg yolks

  3 tablespoons orange juice, sour cream, milk, white wine, or water; or 2 tablespoons water and 1 tablespoon lemon juice or cognac

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  About 2¾ cups (13.75 ounces) all-purpose flour

  About 2 cups mohnfullung (Ashkenazic Poppy Seed Filling (Mohnfullung)), lekvar (prune jam), or any Ashkenazic sweet filling

  1. In a large bowl, beat the butter until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, 5 to 10 minutes. Beat in the egg. Blend in the orange juice, vanilla, and salt. Stir in enough flour to make a soft dough. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours. Let stand at room temperature for several minutes until malleable but not soft.

  2. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Have 2 large baking sheets ready. Do not grease the baking sheets, but it's preferable to line them with parchment paper.

  3. For easy handling, divide the dough into 2 to 4 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece 1/8 inch thick. Using a 3-inch cookie cutter or drinking glass, cut out rounds. Reroll and cut out the scraps until all the dough is used.

  4. Place 1 teaspoon filling in the center of each round. Bring the edge of the lower section of the dough round up and pinch the 2 sides together at the corner where they meet. Press together the other 2 sides to form a triangle, leaving some filling exposed in the center.

  5. Place the hamantaschen 1 inch apart on the baking sheets. Bake until golden, about 13 minutes. Transfer the hamantaschen to a wire rack and let cool.

  Variation

  Yeast Dough Hamantaschen:

  Substitute Ashkenazic Yeast Pastry (Hefeteig) for the cookie dough. Cut out 3- to 4-inch rounds and place 1 tablespoon filling in the center. Bake at 350°F until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.

  Hamin

  Hamin is a stew cooked over a low heat or in a low oven to serve hot for Sabbath lunch.

  Origin: Spain

  Other names: Algeria and Tunisia: dfina, tfina; Italian: hamin, hammin; Kurdistan: matphoni; Morocco: adafina, dafina, skhina, shachina; Persian: chalebibi.

  Among the early Middle Eastern Sabbath dishes was harisa, cracked durum wheat berries, lamb, and some chopped onion slow-simmered overnight in a sealed earthenware pot. Some Sephardim, principally in northern Spain, began referring to harisa by the Mishnaic name hamin di trigo (warm of grain) or simply hamin. Around this time, many cooks, perhaps first in Iberia, began adding chickpeas or fava beans and more water to harisa and creating a more liquidy Sabbath stew. People eventually began to differentiate the Sabbath bean stews from the harisa. The bean stew made its way to France and Germany, becoming the Ashkenazic cholent.

  Whatever the name, the basic ingredients of Sephardic Sabbath stews consisted of a whole grain, chickpeas or beans, cubes of meat, onion, and cumin although the exact recipe varied from place to place and even according to the season of the year. Following the expulsion, hamin sometimes took on new qualities when adapted to local ingredients, cooking styles, and popular local seasonings and spice combinations, including cinnamon, paprika, saffron, and turmeric. The arrival of South American produce in the sixteenth century led to white beans becoming a prominent substitute for fava beans; white potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and red chilies were sometimes added, contributing new notes of texture and flavor.

  During the Spanish Inquisition, the most incriminating dish connoting a retention of Judaism was hamin/adafina. Some Conversos, who wanted to enjoy their Sabbath stew without risking arrest and even death, replaced the customary mutton with pork. Thus were born two of Spain's classic dishes: a slow-simmered chickpea and meat stew called cocida madrileno (literally "boiled from Madrid"), now the national dish of Spain; and olla poderida (powerful pot).

  Syrians, as well as those who later went to India, retained the name hamin, while many Sephardim in the Balkans and Turkey adopted newer terminology. Italians generally made hamin with fava beans, meat (beef brisket, flank steaks, or breast of lamb), meatballs (from chicken or beef), and frequently beet greens or chard. Italians might enhance their stew with a little sage. Romaniote Greeks made a simple hamin using large cuts of beef, onions, and pligouri (a type of cracked wheat). In Jerusalem, cooks typically added potatoes and rice to the beans. Indians developed a rice hamin seasoned with garam masala and fresh ginger. When the Sephardim arrived in northwest Africa, they merged their Sabbath stew with the native tagines to create a host of variations—most containing a calf's foot or a kouclas (dumpling)—that were commonly served for Sabbath lunch with couscous left over from Friday dinner. Cinnamon and nutmeg or ground ginger were common in many Moroccan versions, in which dates, honey, or quince preserves imparted an interesting depth of flavor. In the Sephardic tradition, all these stews contained that distinctive Sephardic food, huevos haminados, whole eggs in the shell simmered in the stew to develop a brown color and creamy consistency during the extended cooking.

  On Shabbat Beraisheet (the Sabbath after Sukkot), some communities prepare a special seven-layered hamin, one layer for each day of Creation, with rice in between each layer. For the Sabbath before Tu b'Shevat, quinces, dates, prunes, and raisins may be added. In the early fall, hamin was sometimes made with little pumpkins, while spinach and grape leaves were popular additions in the spring.

  For more than a millennium in Spain, on Friday afternoons, the husband, an older child, a maid, or an errand boy would haul the family's special earthenware olla (stew pot), the lid secured with wire latches or a flour and water paste, to the massive public oven. When all the pots were assembled, the oven door was closed and sealed with clay, and the collection was left undisturbed overnight in the fading heat. During the long, slow cooking process, the ingredients melded and permeated the dish, developing a distinctive complex flavor and a rich, creamy texture. On Saturday morning following synagogue services, the oven would be unlocked, the pots would be reclaimed by their owners, and the cherished stew would be rushed home for the Sabbath table. Similar scenes were played out in the Islamic world where hamin pots were crowded into the town's public bakery or sometimes into the furnaces of the hammam (public steam baths). Later, with the advent of the kanoun (brazier) in the Middle East, an increasing number of Jews cooked their hamin at home over coals and covered the pots with special bulky blankets for insulation. For the masses, however, the bakery ove
n prevailed well into the twentieth century.

  Today, the pots are no longer "buried" in ashes or baked in public facilities, but instead commonly placed in a home oven set to low or on a thin sheet of metal placed over the range top over very low heat, to cook overnight. In Israel, hamin is generally left on a large hot plate called a platta and covered with an insulating cloth. Otherwise, these stews are nearly identical to those prepared weekly for centuries by almost every Jewish community from the large cities of Istanbul and Cairo to the secluded mountain towns of the Maghreb.

  At present, in parts of Spain as well as parts of Central and South America and the American Southwest, places where there were no overt Jews, some home cooks, many of them practicing Catholics, still prepare a bean and meat stew on Friday and let the dish cook overnight, a residual effect of the Inquisition's pursuit of Conversos into the New World. It is probable that the classic Tex-Mex chili con carne, which developed in the hinterlands north of the Rio Grande (away from the Inquisition) and contained the basic ingredients of hamin—slow-simmered meat cubes, beans, onions, and cumin—with the addition of American chilies, derived from the Sabbath stews of Conversos.

  (See also Adafina, Cholent/Schalet, Haminado/Huevos Haminados, Sabbath/Shabbat, Shkanah, Tabyeet, and T'fina)