Encyclopedia of Jewish Food

by Gil Marks

  Hungarian Apple Tart (Almás Pite)

  about 24 servings

  [DAIRY]

  Pastry:

  3 cups (15 ounces) all-purpose flour, sifted

  ½ cup (3.5 ounces) sugar

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 cup unsalted butter or shortening, chilled

  4 large egg yolks

  3 tablespoons sour cream

  2 tablespoons lemon or orange juice

  Filling (Toltelek):

  3¼ pounds (10 medium) cooking apples, peeled, cored, and diced

  1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

  ¾ cup (3 ounces) chopped walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds

  ½ cup sugar

  3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  ¼ cup fresh bread crumbs

  Egg wash (1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water)

  1. To make the pastry: In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter to make a mixture that resembles coarse crumbs. In a small bowl, combine the egg yolks, sour cream, and lemon juice. Stir into the flour mixture to make a soft dough. Divide the dough, with one part slightly larger than the other. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 15½-by- 10½-inch jelly roll pan.

  3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the larger dough piece to fit the prepared pan and arrange in the bottom and up the sides of the pan.

  4. To make the filling: In a large bowl, toss the apples with the lemon juice. Stir in the nuts, sugar, flour, zest, and cinnamon.

  5. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the bottom pastry and spread with the apple mixture.

  6. Roll out the remaining dough. Cut into strips and arrange in a lattice pattern over the filling. Or simply cut into a second dough rectangle, place over the top, and cut several slits to vent the steam. Brush the pastry with the egg wash.

  7. Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 300°F and bake until the crust is golden and the liquid in the filling bubbles, about 30 additional minutes. Place the pan on a wire rack and let cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store at room temperature for up to 1 day.

  Pizzarelle

  Pizzarelle is a fritter, primarily made during Passover.

  Origin: Italy

  Roman Jews enjoy a number of fritters, all fried in olive oil, including pizzarelle. They are most commonly made from rice (pizzarelle di riso), chestnut flour (pizzarelle di farina castagna), and matza (pizzarelle di azzima), all items used by Italians on Passover. There is also a variation incorporating cheese (pizzarelle di ricotta), which many Italians refrain from eating during Passover. Matza fritters are a traditional dessert at la festa di Pèsach (the Passover Seder), typically following chicken soup with rice and peas, artichokes, and a main course of roasted lamb or goat. Many cooks mix any leftover charoset into the matza batter for extra flavor. Some modern versions include a little chopped chocolate. Nuts can be added to the batter or sprinkled over the warm fritters. Versions without matza are ideal for Hanukkah. When served with a sugar syrup, it is called pizzarelle con giulebbe and when drizzled with honey, pizzarelle con miele. Pizzarelle can also be accompanied with whipped cream or simply sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar or confectioners' sugar.

  Matza fritters, called pizzarelli, have long been a Passover specialty in Italy. Chestnut flour and rice are also used in place of the matza.

  Roman Matza Fritters (Pizzarelle di Azzima)

  about 20 fritters

  [PAREVE]

  4 (6-inch square) matzas, crumbled (3 cups)

  2 cups boiling water

  3 large eggs, separated

  About ¼ cup sugar

  About ½ cup raisins or leftover charoset

  About ½ cup slivered almonds or pine nuts (Romans tend to use pine nuts)

  2 teaspoons grated lemon or orange zest, or 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  About ¼ teaspoon table salt or ½ teaspoon kosher salt

  Olive or vegetable oil for deep-frying

  1. Soak the matza pieces in the water until softened but not mushy, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain and squeeze out the excess moisture. Transfer to a large bowl and add the egg yolks, sugar, raisins, nuts, zest, and salt.

  2. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold one-quarter of the whites into the matza mixture, then fold in the remaining whites.

  3. In a large, heavy pot, heat at least 2 inches oil over medium heat to 365°F.

  4. In batches, without crowding the pan, drop heaping tablespoonfuls of the batter and deep-fry, turning, until golden brown on all sides, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Serve warm or at room temperature.

  Variation

  Italian Rice Fritters (Pizzarelle Di Riso):

  Substitute 3 cups cooked and cooled rice, preferably arborio, for the matzas and boiling water.

  Pkhali

  Pkhali is a finely chopped cooked vegetable mixed with a spicy walnut sauce.

  Origin: Georgia

  Other names: mkhali.

  Pkhali, which can now be found throughout the former Soviet Union, is a cross between a salad and a dip made from a single type of vegetable. There is a wide variety of produce that can be used to make this dish, but all pkhali have the common denominator of a pureed walnut sauce (bazha), which imparts a creamy consistency without dairy and without a walnut flavor. Vinegar adds a tart element; spices and garlic contribute a piquant touch. Spinach (isanakhi) and beet (charkhalis) are the favorite types of pkhali, but eggplant (badrijani), cabbage (kombosta), red bean (lobio), and green bean (mtsvani lobio) are common and almost any vegetable works. Georgians insist that pkhali should be mixed by hand, literally, and never with a machine or even a spoon. The secret to pkhali is allowing it to stand a sufficient amount of time, at least six hours or overnight, for the flavors to meld.

  At a special home dinner, such as the Sabbath or a festival, Georgians typically serve one or more pkhali. At a supra (feast), in addition to shashlik (shish kebab) and other hot fare, there are always at least three or four kinds of pkhali, a splendor of colors and flavors. They are slightly mounded in a large platter and scored on top in a crisscross fashion, or piled into small bowls, and frequently garnished with pomegranate seeds or red onion slices. Pkhali is eaten on its own with a fork, or served with mchadi (Georgian corn cakes) or deda's puri (flatbread), frequently alongside cheese and fresh herbs.

  Georgian Vegetable Pâté (Pkhali)

  4 to 6 servings

  [PAREVE]

  About 3 cups chopped cooked vegetable, such as red beans, green beans, beets, beet greens, cabbage, eggplant, leeks, or spinach

  1 cup bazha (Georgian Walnut Sauce (Bazha))

  In a large bowl, combine the vegetable and bazha. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. To serve, spread the pkhali over a plate.

  Pletzl

  Pletzl is an onion-topped flatbread.

  Origin: Eastern Europe

  Other names: kuchelach, pletsl, pletzel, zemel pampalik.

  "Anshel kept his boots well polished and did not drop his eyes in the presence of the women. Stopping in at Beila the Baker's to buy a pletzl, he joked with them in such a worldly fashion that they marveled." (From "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.)

  Pletzl denotes an eastern European candy. Matza pletzl is a synonym for matza brei, soaked matza mixed with eggs and fried like a pancake. But pletzl is also the name of a foccacia-like bread once widespread among Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Jews; it is linguistically related to the German plätzchen (crackers). In English, it is sometimes called a board, as the Yiddish bretl (little board) sounds similar to pletzl and the flat loaves were formed on a broit bretl or lokshen bretl. Pletzl (Yiddish meaning "little place/little space") is also the name of the historic Jewish quarter in Paris, located on the right bank.

  Until
relatively recently, black bread was the predominant loaf of the central and eastern European diet. From the sixteenth until the eighteenth century, rye was the most commonly grown crop in Russia. However, in the nineteenth century, as milling and agricultural techniques improved, flatbreads and other lighter wheat loaves gained popularity. There are at least eighteen or so varieties of pletzl. The most famous one is topped with the principal Ashkenazic seasoning, onions (tzibele); it is known as tzibele pletzl, tzibele zemmel, tzibele pampalik, and simply pletzl.

  There is no standard dough for pletzl, although some versions are made from an eggless dough with a little oil. However, many eastern European housewives would take part of their Friday egg challah dough to make a few small onion-topped loaves for a special Friday treat for the children. Many versions add poppy seeds to the onion topping. There is also a slightly sweet variety of pletzl; it is sometimes sprinkled with poppy seeds, but the onions are omitted. A pletzl can be shaped into a long plank, then cut into slices for serving; or it can be formed into smaller individual loaves. In either case, these breads are thinner in the center and thicker on the edges, so the teeth experience the crispness of the crust before reaching the smaller amount of the softer chewy interior. If more onions are placed on top, the crust underneath will be softer; if fewer onions are scattered on top, the crust will be crunchier. Some pletzls are so crisp that they resemble their German namesake, the cracker.

  Pletzls are not designed to be split for sandwiches; instead, at dairy meals they are schmeared on top, not inside, with plenty of butter, Litvak cheese (a creamy pot cheese), or cream cheese, and at meat meals with schmaltz, chopped liver, or egg salad, or they are served with soups or pot roasts to sop up the gravy. The bialy, with which the pletzl is frequently confused, is a smaller, softer relative from the northeastern Polish city of Bialystok.

  In Poland and Ukraine, onion pletzls were sold not only at bakeries but also from pushcarts on the street. They were a weekday bread, a workman or student's meal. The pletzl never made much of an impact in Israel, a land populated with many flavored flatbreads. On the other hand, in America, the onion pletzl, also called onion board and onion flat, was once commonplace at Jewish bakeries and dairy cafeterias. However, as most of those old-fashioned establishments disappeared toward the end of the twentieth century, so largely did the pletzl, although it is still available at some Jewish bakeries.

  Ashkenazic Onion Flatbread (Tzibele Pletzl)

  10 medium or 2 large breads

  [PAREVE]

  Dough:

  1 package (2¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast or 1 (0.6-ounce) cake fresh yeast

  1¼ cups warm water (105°F to 115°F for dry yeast; 80°F to 85°F for fresh yeast), or 1 cup warm water and 1 large egg

  2 tablespoons sugar

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  2 teaspoons table salt or 4 teaspoons kosher salt

  About 4 cups (20 ounces) bread or unbleached all-purpose flour

  Topping:

  3 tablespoons vegetable oil

  2 cups (2 medium) chopped onions

  Egg wash (1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water) or water

  2 tablespoons poppy seeds for sprinkling

  2 tablespoons kosher salt for sprinkling

  1. To make the dough: Dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup water. Stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and let stand until foamy, 5 to 10 minutes. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture, remaining water, remaining sugar, oil, salt, and 2 cups flour. Gradually add enough of the remaining flour to make a mixture that holds together.

  2. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic, 10 to 15 minutes. Place in an oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1½ hours.

  3. To make the topping: In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until soft and translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Let cool.

  4. Punch down the dough, knead briefly, divide into about 10 equal pieces or in half, cover, and let stand for 15 minutes.

  5. Line 2 or 3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or sprinkle with cornmeal. Roll each dough tenth into a ¼- to ½-inch-thick oval or each half into a ¼- to ½-inch thick large oval. The thinner the dough, the crisper the bread. Place on the prepared baking sheets. Press down the center and pierce the center all over with the tines of a fork. Brush the dough with the egg wash. Lightly scatter the onions over the top, leaving a ½-inch border. Sprinkle with the poppy seeds and salt. Let stand, uncovered, until puffy, about 20 minutes.

  6. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes for small breads, or 30 minutes for large ones. If the onions are not sufficiently browned, you can place the pletzl under a broiler for about 1 minute. Transfer the pletzl to a wire rack.

  Pletzlach

  Pletzlach are flat honey candies, often with nuts or poppy seeds.

  Origin: Eastern Europe

  Early medieval Persians and Arabs boiled honey and sugar to create a basic syrup candy, such as the Persian sohan asali, a honey-nut brittle. This technique spread to the Turks, who in turn introduced it to the Balkans. Around the early seventeenth century, it reached eastern Europe, where it became the foundation for Ashkenazic candies. Throughout the medieval period, honey was the basis for Ashkenazic baked goods and confections. Even after sugar became accessible and inexpensive in the mid-nineteenth century, with the advent of sugar beet factories, the predominant sweetener in eastern European confections was honey. However, when honey was too expensive or otherwise unavailable, sugar was substituted. Honey candies remained popular among eastern European Jews, especially on Passover, Purim, and Hanukkah, and for weddings. These delicacies were typically served with tea.

  Plain candy and candy with a small amount of nuts are technically pletzlach, from the Yiddish word meaning "little place/little space," so named because the candy is spread into a thin layer and, when cooled, broken into little pieces. The flavor of this candy varies depending on the floral source of the honey. Lighter-colored honeys, such as clover, acacia, and orange blossom, are milder in flavor than darker-colored ones, such as buckwheat, blueberry, and heather.

  This basic candy was commonly enhanced and extended with accessible items, such as nuts, seeds, matza, and even certain vegetables. Candy made from the latter is a relative of eingemachts (vegetable preserves), but much firmer. When a large amount of nuts is added, the candy becomes noent or nunt (from the Latin for "nut"), related to an early form of nougat. Adding poppy seeds, especially for Purim, gave rise to mohn pletzlach or mohnlach. A recipe for "Mohn Candy" was even included in the best-selling Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook (New Hope, PA,1955), an offshoot of the television show, although the author did not mention grinding the poppy seeds, which is necessary to prevent a gritty texture and release the full flavor.

  When ground ginger (ingber in Yiddish) is added to the pletzlach, it becomes an ingberlach, sometimes pronounced imberlach. The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1903) included it among "home-made" candies and explained, "The ingberlach are ginger candies made into either small sticks or rectangles." A basic ingberlach was frequently flavored and extended like the pletzlach, in particular with carrots. Novelist Zelda Popkin (née Feinberg), in Open Every Door (New York, 1956), her autobiography describing her childhood in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in the early 1900s, recounted, "Papa went to New York and brought back cones of sugar, wrapped in black paper and hard as a rock. It had to be chipped off and pulverized in our brass mortar and pestle. With it Mama made ingberlach, a concoction of carrots and ginger which burned the tongue and palate."

  As commercial candy in general and kosher candy in particular grew more prevalent in the twentieth century, homemade confections like pletzlach became a rarity and only a few households able to enjoy this taste of the Ashkenazic past.

  Ashkenazic Honey Candy (Pletzlach)

  about 45 pieces

  [PAREVE]

  2 cups (14
ounces) sugar

  1 1/3 cups (1 pound) honey

  1 cup water

  2 to 3 teaspoons lemon juice (optional)

  1 pound (about 3 cups) ground poppy seeds; 1½ pounds grated raw carrots and 2 teaspoons ground ginger; 1 to 1½ pounds (3 to 4 cups) finely or coarsely chopped almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, or walnuts; or 2 cups (4 ounces) crumbled matza and 1 cup coarsely chopped almonds or walnuts (optional)

  1. In a medium, heavy saucepan, stir the sugar, honey, water, and, if using, lemon juice over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Stop stirring, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil. If using the poppy seeds or carrots and ginger, stir them in at this point.

  2. Cover and cook for about 30 seconds to dissolve any sugar crystals. Uncover and boil gently, without stirring, over medium-high heat. For chewy candy, cook until the syrup reaches the soft-crack stage or 270°F on a candy thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. For brittle candy, cook until the syrup reaches the hard-crack stage or 300°F.

  3. If using the nuts or matza, stir them in. Pour onto an oiled baking sheet or marble slab, spreading to a ¼- to ½-inch thickness. Let stand for several minutes, then score into 2-by-½-inch bars or 1-inch squares or diamonds. Let cool, then cut along the scores to separate the candies. Wrap pieces in wax paper or plastic wrap and store in a cool, dry place for up to 1 month.

  Plov

  Plov is a rice pilaf with meat.

  Origin: Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan

  Other names: osh plov oshsabo, osh sabo, oshi sabo, palov, p'lav.

  The Indian pulav traveled along the Silk Road to central Asia, where it became plov. Special long-cooked versions for the Sabbath are known as oshi sabo.

  Bukharans are extremely proud of their plov and visitors in Uzbekistan are constantly asked, "Have you tried the plov yet?" At a special occasion, the plov, usually an elaborate version, is offered at the end of the meal. When guests are honored in an Uzbeki home or even for a simple gathering of friends, plov is customarily the center of the local hospitality ritual, called dastarkhan (literally "tablecloth"), and accompanied by hot green tea, which is sipped from a piala (special cup). Plov is traditionally eaten using the fingers of the right hand to fully appreciate its sensual nature. To refuse to partake of a plov, no matter how full you are from the preceding large meal, is to gravely insult the host.