The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home
Page 22
A harbinger of spring, rhubarb is invariably the first local fruit to be found at early season farmers’ markets. A few weeks later, spring sun permitting, come the first-of-the-year strawberries. These seasonal rugelach take full advantage of both early spring fruit flavors.
1 rhubarb stalk, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)
8 ounces strawberries, sliced (about 2 cups)
½ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Place the rhubarb, half the strawberries, the sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cover and cook until the sugar is dissolved and the fruit is very soft and swimming in simmering liquid, about 10 minutes.
Combine the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl, stirring to remove all lumps. Pour the slurry into the saucepan and mix with the fruit until thoroughly combined. Add the remaining strawberries and bring the contents to a simmer. Continue to cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly to prevent lumps or scorching, until the sauce thickens to a pudding-like consistency. Remove from the heat and fully cool in the refrigerator before using.
Fill and top the rugelach as directed in the main recipe. The baking time for these rugelach may increase by 5 to 10 minutes due to the increased moisture of the filling.
Summer: Nectarine-Almond Filling
Makes enough filling for 16 rugelach
For optimum results, use only the very ripest nectarines, preferably ones you pick yourself at their absolute summer peak. Nick insists that even farmers’ market and farm-stand fruit runs a distant second behind fresh-picked. You may substitute peaches for the nectarines. Additional sugar, up to double the amount, may be added if the fruit is not fully sweet.
4 cups chopped nectarines
¼ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup slivered almonds
Place the fruit, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cover and cook until the sugar is dissolved and the fruit is soft and swimming in simmering liquid, about 10 minutes. It may be necessary to mash the fruit, but the liquid should remain somewhat chunky for best results.
Combine the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl, stirring to remove all lumps. Pour the slurry into the saucepan and mix with the fruit until thoroughly combined. Bring the contents to a simmer. Continue to cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly to prevent lumps or scorching, until the sauce thickens to a pudding consistency. Stir in the vanilla, remove from the heat, and fully cool in the refrigerator before using.
After spreading the fruit filling on the rugelach dough, evenly sprinkle ½ cup of slivered almonds per sheet of dough before slicing and rolling up into pinwheels. Top as directed in the main recipe.
The baking time for these rugelach may increase by 5 to 10 minutes due to the increased moisture of the filling.
Fall: Huckleberry-Cinnamon Filling
Makes enough filling for 16 rugelach
For a glorious few weeks in early fall, huckleberries carpet the forest floors in the mountain foothills of the Pacific Northwest. During their brief season, they can also be purchased at area farmers’ markets. And they freeze well for later use. If huckleberries are unavailable, substitute fresh or thawed frozen blueberries.
Filling
4 cups huckleberries
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (see Sources and Resources)
Pinch of kosher salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Topping
¼ cup turbinado sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
To make the filling, place the berries, granulated sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cover and cook until the sugar is dissolved and the fruit is soft and swimming in simmering liquid, about 10 minutes. It may be necessary to mash the berries, but the liquid should remain somewhat chunky for best results.
Combine the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl, stirring to remove all lumps. Pour the slurry into the saucepan and mix with the fruit until thoroughly combined. Bring the contents to a simmer. Continue to cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly in order to prevent lumps or scorching, until the sauce thickens to a pudding-like consistency. Remove from the heat and fully cool in the refrigerator before using.
To make the topping, which will highlight the cinnamon flavor in the filling, mix together the turbinado sugar and the cinnamon. Use this mixture instead of the turbinado sugar alone used in the main recipe. The baking time for these rugelach may increase by 5 to 10 minutes due to the increased moisture of the filling.
Winter: Chocolate-Fig Filling
Makes enough filling for 16 rugelach
Alan Lake, a friend of Nick’s who is also Jewish and a Chicago chef, helped with this filling. He suggested blending chocolate with dried fruit to avoid chocolate’s tendency to turn crumbly or burn when baked into the cookies. It worked using dried figs, and the combination of flavors is brilliant. A tart Madagascar chocolate, like those from top U.S. chocolate makers Patric, Amano, or Rogue Chocolatier (see Sources and Resources), works especially well.
1 cup dried Mission figs, stemmed
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
½ cup granulated sugar
Place the figs and chocolate chips in the bowl of a food processor and process to make a thick paste. Add the sugar and pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Fill and top the rugelach as directed in the main recipe and then bake according to the main recipe.
Kenny & Zuke’s: An Artisan Deli to Brighten Gray Portland Skies
Kenny & Zuke’s founders, Ken Gordon and Nick Zukin, were unprepared for the crowds that swept in when the deli’s doors first swung open in the fall of 2007. Employees sought to keep up with the pent-up demand for pastrami and corned beef, which sold out before the dinner hour. Even in a trend-setting city known for quirky establishments offering hand-prepared dishes and small-batch specialties, Kenny & Zuke’s set a new standard for detail-driven fare.
The brains behind Kenny & Zuke’s make an interesting yin-yang of personalities and backgrounds. Ken Gordon is a New Yorker by birth but a classically trained French chef who has lived and cooked in Portland for more than 20 years. Nick Zukin is a notorious local food-obsessive and blogger. Gordon is brash and confident; Zukin is more introspective and analytical. Despite their differences, they came together over the pastrami that they first sold at farmers’ markets and Gordon’s previous restaurant before hatching the idea of a full-service Jewish delicatessen.
Their ability to advance Jewish deli culture—or more accurately, to circle back to the delicatessen’s pre-industrial roots—is due to the full-size basement beneath the restaurant that allows for on-premises preparation of almost every item served upstairs. Curious visitors may witness pastrami in its preparatory stages: brining, rubbing with a coriander and black pepper–rich spice mixture, and smoking for ten hours. Nearby, bakers spend their days hand-forming bagels, rolling rugelach, braiding challah, and crafting large, sandwich-ready loaves of rye bread. Suffice it to say, the downstairs ovens are rarely at rest.
Other Kenny & Zuke’s specialties are likewise birthed in the basement: from traditional potato knishes, whitefish salad, and chopped liver to modern-leaning bagel dogs and pastrami gravy. Upstairs, pastrami-centered creations such as the pastrami burger (a beef patty joined on a bun by pastrami, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing), pastrami cheese fries, and the hollandaise-topped pastrami Benedict are created. Craft-produced bottled sodas and local microbrews are available, too.
By Portland standards, Kenny & Zuke’s is large, with seating for seventy. A core group of original employees still works the floor, though the servers are all too young to sport blue-washed hair or call you “Hon.�
� The crazy crowds and production problems of the early days have given way to a more metered madness, with a predictable weekday lunch rush and standing-room-only crowds that fill weekend brunch seats for hours.
How to explain the Kenny & Zuke’s phenomenon? Gordon tried: “We knew Portland was a fertile place to create the kind of artisanal framework we saw the deli fitting into—it was happening all around us with bakers, butchers, cheese makers and winemakers, charcutiers, and pizza makers. We thought customers would respond positively, but we really had no sense of the avalanche that we opened to. We seemed to have touched something in the community, and among food lovers. We provoked responses in people who hadn’t tasted the real thing since they were younger and who found something familiar and comforting in what we were doing. It turned us into an institution after a very short time.”
Hamantaschen
Makes about 24 cookies
It’s not often that the bad guy in a story ends up with all the glory. But somehow the evil Haman, villain in the Old Testament Book of Esther, was the one with a cookie named after him, while good King Ahasuerus and the lovely Queen Esther got bubkes—Yiddish for nothing. Hamantaschen are triangular cookies, most commonly filled with either a honey-sweetened prune or poppy seed mixture. They are traditionally made during the festival of Purim, the Jewish holiday that celebrates Esther’s triumph over Haman. Their shape is modeled after the three-sided hat that Haman wore. Michael admits he’s a fan of neither Haman nor his eponymous cookie. But the mainstream popularity of hamantaschen bespeaks a strong contrary sentiment.
Dough
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 large egg
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2⅓ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
Poppy seed filling
1 cup poppy seeds
½ cup heavy whipping cream
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Prune filling
¾ cup dried prunes
¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
⅛ teaspoon kosher salt
1½ tablespoons honey
1 egg white, beaten with 1 teaspoon milk
To make the dough, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and salt on medium speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Stop once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the egg, orange juice, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture and mix on medium-low speed until it is incorporated. Add the remaining 1⅓ cups of flour mixture and mix just until the dough is moistened and clumpy. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and form it into a flat disk. Wrap the disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate it to chill for at least 1 hour.
To make the poppy seed filling, stir together the poppy seeds, cream, honey, butter, vanilla, and salt in a small saucepan and bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Decrease the heat to medium-low and simmer until the mixture thickens and clumps together, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set it aside to cool.
To make the prune filling, combine the prunes, ¼ cup water, the orange juice, and salt in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer until the liquid reduces by about two-thirds and the prunes are softened, 7 to 10 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a food processor and add the honey. Process it into a smooth puree. Transfer the filling to a small bowl and set aside to cool.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. If it is too cold and firm to roll, allow it to warm up slightly, about 15 minutes.
Lightly dust your work surface with flour. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out to a ⅛-inch thickness, dusting the top of the dough and the rolling pin with flour as needed. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter, cut circles out of the dough and place them a few inches apart on the prepared sheets. Gather the scraps of dough and form them back into a flat disk, wrap it in the plastic, and refrigerate it to chill. When it is chilled but still pliable, roll out the disk to a ⅛-inch thickness and cut more circles of dough. You should end up with a total of 24 circles.
Fill each circle of dough with about 1 tablespoon of filling. (There should be enough of each type of filling for a dozen circles.) Working with one circle at a time, brush the edge of the circles with the egg wash. Fold up the edges to form a triangle that surrounds the filling and slightly covers it. Pinch together the tips of the triangles. Brush the tops and outside edges of the dough with the egg wash.
Bake the hamantaschen until they are golden brown at the tips, 18 to 22 minutes, rotating the pans in the oven halfway through the baking time. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and allow them to cool before serving.
Store hamantaschen at room temperature in an airtight container, layered between sheets of waxed paper, for up to 5 days.
Passover Honey Cake
Makes one 9-inch cake
The special dietary rules that prevail during Passover—prohibiting the use of wheat flour, among other items—create a major challenge for pastry bakers. How are you supposed to follow the rules and still bake a cake that tastes good and doesn’t have the density of a brick? The key is matzo cake meal, matzo that has been ground to an extremely fine, flour-like powder. Look for it around Passover time at major grocery stores in communities with a substantial Jewish population, or search online. If that doesn’t work, sift regular matzo meal into a small bowl or measuring cup to obtain the needed quantity, discarding the larger pieces that collect in the sifter.
1 cup honey
½ cup freshly brewed hot coffee
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 cup matzo cake meal
1 cup potato starch, sifted
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch springform pan.
In a small bowl, stir the honey into the hot coffee to dissolve. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, then stir in the oil and brown sugar. In a separate large bowl, mix together the matzo cake meal, potato starch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. Alternatively add the dry mixture and the honey mixture to the egg mixture in 3 batches each, stirring to combine after each addition.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and place the pan on a rimmed baking sheet (in case it leaks). Bake the cake until it is set in the center and the top is deeply browned, 55 to 60 minutes. Allow the cake to cool before removing the springform. Slice and serve the cake once it reaches room temperature.
The cake will keep at room temperature, covered, for up to 4 days.
Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons
Makes about 2 dozen cookies
The connection between the coconut, a tropical fruit, and Ashkenazic cooking in Slavic Central and Eastern Europe is elusive. What little is known is that sweets using coconut were featured in an English-Jewish cookbook in 1846 and that a recipe for the coconut macaroon is given in Mrs. Esther Levy’s Jewish Cookery Book (also known as The First Jewish-American Cookbook), published in Philadelphia in 1871. Shredded coconut and coconut oil were in use in Ashkenazic baking in
the mid-nineteenth century, and coconut replaced more traditional almonds in Passover macaroon recipes during this time. How exactly the coconut migrated north in the first place remains mysterious, though speculation centers on Italian Jews as the link. Regardless of origin, coconut macaroons, including chocolate-dipped varieties such as these, have become an easy-to-make Jewish deli dessert classic.
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3¾ cups unsweetened shredded coconut
3 large egg whites
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of kosher salt
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips or buttons
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine the sugar, coconut, egg whites, vanilla, and salt. Mix well, preferably using your hands, until all of the shredded coconut is moistened by the egg whites.
Form 2 lightly packed heaping tablespoons of the mixture into a haystack shape on the lined baking sheet or, to make the task quicker and easier, take a single scoop of the mixture with a #30 ice-cream scoop (available at most kitchen and restaurant supply stores). Use the backs of your fingers to gently pat and tighten the base of the haystacks and make an even, crack-free dome on the tops. Repeat with the remaining coconut mixture, placing the macaroons at least ½ inch apart.
Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and allow the cookies to cool to room temperature. If you try to remove them before they are cooled, the bottom may stick, leaving part of the cookie on the sheet.
After the macaroons are cooled, mix together the chocolate chips and vegetable oil in a small microwave-safe bowl. Slowly melt the chocolate in the microwave on low power, stirring about every 30 seconds, until the chips are just melted, about 2 minutes.
Dip the bottom of each macaroon in the melted chocolate so that ¼ inch of the sides are coated, scraping the excess chocolate from the bottom of the macaroons before setting them back on the parchment. Use a spoon to drizzle the remaining chocolate in thin streaks over the tops of the macaroons. Let the macaroons sit until the chocolate is set, about 2 hours. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.