Bad Home Cooking

Matzo-brei five ways

The first time I'd ever heard of Matzo-brei I was in Dallas, Texas. I was there visiting a friend from the magazine I then worked for in New York City, and it was Passover. With no family nearby and no seder invitations, we decided we were on our own when it came to dining. So instead of the customary morning bagel and coffee, he showed me how his grandmother made matzo-brei. It was a revelation, and to this day, some 15 years later, I still make it every Passover. Thank G*d my kids love it.

Come to find out every family has its own tradition about how to make matzo-brei. Some like it all cooked together like an omelet. Others like it in eggy chunks. But they're all variations on a basic theme. Here's the way I learned: 

Run tap water over a square of matzo until it's softened but not soggy. Press out the extra water in a colander, put it in a bowl, then beat a couple of eggs, some salt and pepper, maybe a dash of milk, over it. Fry it up until the eggs are cooked and the matzo starts to brown. I serve it with jam and a giant cup of coffee. Mmmm-MMMM. That's good eatin'. Especially when being deprived of all other baked goods, as is the custom during Passover.

Hardly cooking? Maybe. But I have to point out that uber-foodie Ruth Reichl, author and editor of Gourmet Magazine, embraces the same recipe.

And here Marc Meyer's shows you how it's done.

Wanna spice it up? Here's a recipe for "Jewish chilaquilies" that sounds yummy. Same idea, different spices.

The Perfect Pantry has a recipe that looks more like a fritatta, and is served up with maple syrup.

Ed Levine over at Serious Eats tells us how to make matzo-brei using Streit's "Moonstrips," onion and poppy-seed flavored matzo.

And finally, the New York Times has a recipe for asparagus matzo-brei, when you need to tart this home-style dish up for a fancier brunch.

Holiday Hell: When cute gifts go bad

I'm not above admitting that I thrill to the details of other people's ruinous kitchen experiments. Especially so when the people in question are known to be much more skilled and in the know than me. It's in this spirit that I offer you this cautionary tale.

My friend Christy, a talented designer currently doing the mommy thing, decided to make her Christmas gift-giving a little easier and create a cookies-in-a-jar gift for all those on her C-list. You know the C-list; people who are important enough in your life to acknowledge but too numerous to spend more than a few dollars on cumulatively.

Enter the cookies-in-a-jar idea. Cute. Crafty. Colorful and sweet. And for those women who can do this sort of thing well, they really do make a charming gift. Just look at the photo here, which was featured with the recipe. It's sort of a no-brainer. Christy is nothing if not stylish and crafty. And she's been known to make a killer baked good.

She also makes the assumption that because this appeared in Family Circle Magazine, what you see is what you'll get. One doesn't need to know the magazine business to assume that the Family Circle editorial offices feature a test kitchen and a group of seasoned gals to test and retest every recipe and crafty food project it offers in its esteemed pages. After all, it's spent nearly 80 years building its brand as a leading women's magazine. Christy decides to make up a dozen of these bad boys to give out on the last day of school before winter break.

Here's the recipe. Very straightforward, for the most part.

     2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
     1  tsp baking powder
    1/2  tsp baking soda
     1/4  tspn salt
     1/2  cup unsweetened cocoa powder
     1/4  teaspoon ground cinnamon
     3/4  cup granulated sugar
     3/4  cup brownulated sugar
     3/4  cup swirled chocolate chips

In a medium-size bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Spoon 1 cup of the flour mixture into a second bowl and add cocoa powder and cinnamon. Whisk to mix thoroughly.

In a clean 1-quart plastic or glass container:

Spoon about half the flour mixture into bottom of jar. Use a small spice jar to lightly compress. Spoon in half the cocoa mixture; compress. Spoon in remaining flour mixture and cocoa mixture, compressing each layer.

Top second cocoa layer with granulated sugar and brownulated sugar, compressing each slightly. Pour chips over sugar and seal jar.

Write baking instructions on a tag (or print out); secure to jar with ribbon.

Sounds great, and with the Family Circle name behind it, you'd think this would work out nicely. Little did Christy realize that she was entering the Bad Home Cook version of Holiday Hell.

She bought a dozen 1-quart mason jars at Wal-Mart. She bought enough flour, sugar, swirly chocolate chips and cocoa powder to make 12 recipes.

Problem is, she's never heard of "brownulated" sugar. What is it? No neophyte to baking, she's never heard of it. According to this site, it's a type of brown sugar that is lest moist than regular brown sugar and doesn't harden as quickly. Domino's, the sugar maker, reportedly makes it.

But visits to Ralph's, Von's, Wal-Mart, Target, CostCo and even a gourmet baking shop turn up nothing. She can't find this ingredient. Not one to stop midstream, she goes to the Domino's website and plugs in her zip code, looking for shops that sell this product. According to this search, there are no stores within 20 miles of her house that sell it. She tries 50 miles. Then she gets annoyed. She tries 100 miles. Apparently, according to Domino's own site, there are no stores within 150 miles of her home in Los Angeles County, California, that carry "brownulated" sugar.

So she decides to use regular brown sugar, which is readily available in the outbacks of Southern California. But very quickly she comes to realize that the ingredients she needs to make the recipe don't fit into a 1-quart jar. Not by a long shot. She goes to the Family Circle site and reads the comments. Some people have had luck by packing it in tightly. She tries it. No way is it going to fit.

At this point the clock is ticking. She's got to give something to her kids' teachers and fellow PTA staffers. She runs out and buys another dozen mason jars, these ones with extra wide mouths. She then spends half an hour on each one, "packing the sh*t" out of the ingredients, trying to get them all to fit. In the end, there was room for only a few chocolate chips on top, compelling her to make little bags for the rest to tie onto the side. "By the time I got the ribbon on there you couldn't even see the chips."

She handed them out in a most un-holiday mood. That's when I ran into her and asked her what was up. She's normally quite cheery.

And normally this sort of thing happens to me.

Intrigued, I went to the site she referred me to and read the comments. Most of the readers trying the gift project were coming up short and were complaining bitterly. Being a magazine writer (and former editor) who these day also writes and edits blogs for a living, I thought it odd that the editors didn't quickly jump in to clarify or correct. That's the beauty of online media: instant corrections and addendums are the rule. Also, you can interact with your readers online in ways you never could in print.

Then, two days before Christmas, an editor jumped in with a weakly-worded apology. The complaints must have reached critical mass. "The photo is misleading," she wrote, "as that jar is larger than a quart, and you will not have that much room at the top in a canning jar. Unfortunately, we have no control over what happens when the recipe leaves our hands and goes to the stylists at the photo studio. Happy Holidays."

"Happy holidays," snorted Christy. "I almost wrote in and told her what she could do with her happy holidays." I didn't bother to tell her that yes, editorial should have control over what happens when a recipe gets into the hands of stylists and photogs. Especially when your brand is all about recipes and crafts.

No word on what the cookies actually tasted. I think Christy was way too soured on the whole experience by this time, and put her energy into concocting herself a stiff drink instead. But for those who want to give it a whirl, here's the recipe. Don't bother with a jar.

And happier holidays to you and yours!

Family Circle Cookies-that-don't-fit-into-a-1-quart-jar:

Baking Instructions: In a large bowl, combine 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) melted and cooled unsalted butter with 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Stir in contents of jar. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto baking sheets. Bake at 350°F for 13 to 14 minutes. Cool on sheets for 1 minute; transfer to rack.

There will be latkes...

I had it all. The russet potatoes, the onion, the oil, the matzo. I almost forgot the apple sauce, but they held my place in line at Trader Joe's so I could run back and retrieve.

This year, damnit, there would be latkes. I printed this recipe out from last year's blog post and taped it, once again, to my counter.

Marissa wandered in as I stooped over my sink, violently grating a potato. She's my neighbor. Her daughter and my son are in the same third-grade class. She often drops by to pick up her daughter, who we all call "Nutella," and stays for some wine and chatter.

"What are you making?" she asked, picking up the matzo meal. "Those matzo ball things?"

"It's Hanukkah," I said. "And I'm grating potatoes. What else might I be making?"

"I dunno! I'm Mexican!."

"I know what tamales are. You never heard of latkes?"

"No."

"They're potato pancakes. They're traditional on Hanukkah."

At this point we were both in tears, as I grated an onion and tried to press the water out of it. This latke making was a lot of work.

"So you're making hash browns."

"Kind of." I wiped my eyes.

"What do you eat them with?"

"Sour cream and/or apple sauce."

"Eww. I've never tried hash browns with apple sauce."

"I looked at her. "You want some wine?"

We toasted the holidays as my latke mix "melded," which is what it told me to do on the back of the box.

Then it came time to fry. I remember my friend E.J. telling me I had to squeeze every last ounce of liquid out of my latkes before frying them or there'd be trouble. I scooped up a handful of grated potato and onion and squeezed into the sink. The liquid was brown. Gross.

Grosser still was the uncooked pancake itself. "That looks like an old sock," observed Marissa.

"They tell me the nice-looking ones don't taste as good as the ones that look like old socks," I said, keeping a straight face, even though yes, she was totally right. The patty in my hand looked very much like an old baby sock discovered after a year in the garden.

I fried the first one up. A couple of minutes on each side. I let it rest on some paper towels and dished it up for Marissa to try. I included a generous portion of apple sauce.

"Me first?"

"You're gonna have to take the first bullet for that old sock remark."

"Dang." She took a bite. Chewed. There was no bad reaction; no twitching, clutching of throat. I had seasoned the HELL out of the latke glop, so how bad could it be?

Marissa looked thoughtful. "Not bad," she said. "It would be even better with a little bell pepper. Or some ham and cheese."

We drank some more, toasting the holiday season and my not bad latkes.

The kids fell on theirs. The boy ate four, but commented, "I'd like them better if they were lighter, and crunchier." I told him he'd need a different mom for that feat.

In the end, the latkes were pleasing to everyone. Next year, however, I buy the frozen ones at Trader Joes.

The turkey of best intentions

I happily accepted my friends' invitation to come to their house for Thanksgiving and partake of their hospitality. Also, somewhat less enthusiastically, of their turducken. Mostly I wanted to punk out of the responsibility of hosting my entire extended family plus various out of town relatives and hangers-on for this year's turkey day.

Mission accomplished. At the end of my Thanksgiving, I came home with my sanity intact, half an uneaten pumpkin cake, two pies and a 14-pound turkey, courtesy of my friend E.J., who bought it just in case his turducken didn't turn out to be all that and a bag of chips.

And so, in the comfort of my own home, with no outside pressure at all, I cooked my own turkey, in my own oven. It was a milestone indeed. I sipped Benedictine and hopped around to the kitchen iPod, the nits with their father, alone with just my own wiles to cook my first ever bird.

I had big plans. BIG plans.

These included turkey and rice soup. Turkey pot pie. Turkey sandwiches for years hence. And gravy. I would craft my own gravy out of the drippings of my very first turkey. Like a pioneer woman, I would use every inch of my bird. Nothing would go to waste.

The turkey, to my surprise, turned out well, if not a tad dry. I employed the basic, time-tested method of rubbing it with salt (and does anybody else see unsettling similarities between a raw turkey and a dead baby?) and roasting it for five or six hours. My home filled with the aroma and warmth of open arms. And yea, verily, I was greatly pleased with myself.

I took the bird out of the oven. I helped myself to a great deal of salted, crispy skin. Then I went on to other things, and the Bad Home Cook emerged.

The plan was to carve the turkey, set the meat aside, and boil the carcass for turkey stock. From the turkey stock, I would proceed to make delicious turkey soup, using one of the delicious recipes I found from this BlogHer roundup.

I waited a day to carve the turkey. Why? Pick your reason. Malaise. Disorganization. Forgetfulness. (although how does one forget a 14-pound roast turkey covered in tinfoil on the counter? I have a great talent for ignoring what's in front of me.) As I set about slicing it up, I noted two interesting asides: the only way to learn the intimates of a bird, where the dark and light meats reside, is to carve a bird. Also, neither one of my two kids wanted anything more to do with turkey.

Ten pounds of turkey meat and nobody to eat it.  Sorta takes the thrust out of your plans.

The turkey stock turned out OK, I suppose. The turkey soup not so much. I didn't have any celery. And without thinking I used lemon-flavored wide pasta. "This tastes like mint!" barked the drama-tween, pushing her bowl aside. The boy had even less interest.

The gravy. Sigh. The gravy. That's a post for another time.

After these three defeats, the promise of a warm and creamy turkey pot pie just didn't seem likely. Make my own crust? Yeah right. In any case, by this time the turkey had just about gone over, relieving me of any further culinary fantasies.

It all seemed a tremendous waste after all. I think when my confidence returns and I get my cooking game back on, I'll give the turkey soup recipe another go.

Because, you know, it's about time for the soup swap again...

Pumpkin cake with sour cream ganache

Sixteen years ago I moved across the country, away from friends and family, to make my fame and fortune in New York City. It was there that I spent my first Thanksgiving alone, 3,000 miles from anyone I cared about. At the time I truly thought I could tough it out. It's only another day, just like any other, I told myself.

That afternoon I cried so hard my landlady came upstairs to make sure I was OK.

I've never spent another Thanksgiving by myself, no, not even in the remaining three years I spent not finding fame and fortune in New York City.

This was the year I was supposed to have the big dinner at my house. But as the number of proposed guests grew the pressure got too great. Then Marya called and asked if I wanted to come to her house for Thanksgiving, and I took the coward's way out.

In thanks, I made a pumpkin cake with sour cream ganache. The above picture is of my daughter, coming home to find said cake on the counter. Note the stunned look.

Here's how I did it: The recipe is from the L.A. Times, what's left of the Food Section.

2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cloves (ground, duh.)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup safflower or canola oil
2 cups pumpkin puree

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 2 (9-inch) springform pans

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and salt

In a separate large bowl, stir together the eggs and sour cream with a fork. Stir in the brown sugar and then the oil until just combined. Take care not to overwhisk (whatever that means)

Gently stir in the flour mixture into the batter into just incorporated and there are no lumps. Stir in the pumpkin puree.

Divide the batter between the two pans. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until golden brown on top and a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean. (there might be crumbs, but there should be no batter). Remove and let cool, still in pans, on a wire rack until room temperature.

And for the ganache...

18 ounces semisweet chocolate or 6 3-ounce bars, coursely chopped.
3 cups sour cream (at room temperature)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups chopped, toasted pecans (I used walnuts)

melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. When it's melted and creamy, remove from heat

Gently fold the sour cream into the chocolate until well-mixed. Then mix in the salt.

Place one cake flat-side up and frost the top and sides. Place the next cake, dome side up, and frost.

Work quickly, or the chocolate will start to harden, making it harder to spread.

I spent a lot of time pondering the chocolate. The recipe calls for a less bitter chocolate such as 60 to 65%. Trader Joe's had baking chocolate...but it was 100% cacao, which scared me off. It also had 3-ounce bars of organic 65% chocolate, but at $2.99 a pop, it was a much more expensive option than the $3.99 12-oz bar of baking chocolate. In the end I bought two bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips at $1.99 a bag and melted them down. I think it worked OK.

The cake was a hit. And I impressed even myself with the nice spice-cake result. The trouble? Standard Thanksgiving engorgement. Not enough stomach left at the end of the meal for the deserts, of which we had pumpkin pie, apple pie, brownies, and the pumpkin cake. I've got lots left. Come on by if you want some.

There was a lot to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving. I'll save the Turkducken for another post. Stay tuned....

L'Shanna Tova (My ongoing trouble with roast chicken)

Out of the blue I decided to have a Rosh Hashanna dinner party. It was sort of my turn to host a dinner for my circle of friends anyway. And I get points for touching on the major Jewish holidays. "If it wasn't for you I wouldn't celebrate any of them," one told me. This tells me that having to endure my mediocre food is a small price to pay in exchange for observing tradition. Whew. That relieves some of the pressure.

Some, not all. But this year I was determined to make it easy for myself. This would be a simple meal: Roast chicken, salad, soup. Everyone else would bring the side dishes, deserts and libation. I made my shopping list, checked it twice, and steeled myself to keep on top of it all on a weeknight.

I found a recipe for roast chicken with pomegranate glaze and rosemary that sounded simple enough. Adapted from a Barbara Kafka favorite, this recipe promised a rich, dark brown bird with a savory gravy brightened by pomegranate seeds. Here it is:

5 to 6 stems of fresh rosemary, and 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary.
5-to-6 lb. chicken, excess fat removed, giblets reserved for stock.
2 to 3 teaspoons kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 whole cloves garlic, unpeeled
seeds from 1 pomegranate (about 1 cup)
juice from 1 large or two small pomegranates (about 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup chicken stock

Wash and dry bird. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds, garlic and a sprinkle of salt in the cavity. Lay chicken on top of whole rosemary stems in a heavy roasting pan. Pour 1/4 cup pomegranate juice over the chicken and scatter 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary over it. Sprinkle bird with 1 teaspoon salt. Roast for 50 minutes. If the chicken is browning too fast, reduce heat to 400 degrees and open over door for a minute to lower the temperature quickly.

Continue roasting at lower temperature. The chicken should be a gorgeous mahogany brown. Tilt chicken over pan to drain juices, then remove chicken and rosemary sprigs to platter. Spoon out fat. Place pan over medium high heat and pour in chicken stock and remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate juice. Bring this to a boil, scraping up any browned bits from bottom of pan with a wooden spoon. Lower heat and simmer for one minute. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add any juices that have collected on the platter. Pour some juice over the chicken and top with the remaining pomegranate seeds. Serve rest of juices in a sauce-boat. Serves four.

Sounds pretty straightforward. Until one of many variables inherent in the weeknight dinner party occur.

Such as: guests who arrive at different times. People are busy. People get there when they can, after finishing up work, sitting in traffic, picking up kids. How do you keep a chicken warm when you planned on eating at, say, 6:30, but eating doesn't get underway until an hour later?

How do you manage eight (eight!) starving kids who need their pasta NOW! and you realize that paper plates and cups were not on your shopping list?

How do you cope when the chicken you roasted for 50 minutes per the recipe, which has been sitting in a 200-degree oven for an hour keeping warm, is not, in fact, actually cooked through?

Are you supposed to scrape up the black bits in the bottom of the roasting pan for the sauce? And if so, why does the sauce come out tasting like burnt chicken stock with pomegranate undertones? If you pick black burnt bits from the sauce off the top of a roast chicken when nobody's looking, does that make you a better home cook than you actually are?

My friends are very forgiving. The carrot and ginger soup from Trader Joe's was a hit, and even I can make a pretty decent salad out of fancy greens, heirloom tomatoes, feta and toasted walnuts. The chick peas Joey made from a Nigella Lawson recipe were delicious over the cous-cous with cranberries. And the menfolk insisted the chicken, finally on the table after another 20 minutes in the oven, was tender and lip-smacking. I chose to believe them. And I had plenty of alcohol on hand to assist me.

The kids all got ice cream. The adults feasted on apple pie. All store bought. All delicious. And we all gathered around to dip apples into honey while I pontificated in the shallow end about the Jewish New Year.

My New Year's resolutions: Take some cooking classes. Forget about roasting chickens for a while. And let other people throw the dinner parties.

For you, a nice matzo ball.

Pesach snuck up on me this year, and given present circumstances, a seder of my own can't be managed. I did say, "next year at Greenblatt's" didn't I? I don't know if that will happen either.

No matter. Sit down. For you, a nice matzo ball. Blog roundup, that is.

Erick at the Black Table presents the ultimate How to make the proper Matzo Ball Soup.

Deb at Smitten Kitchen presents her mouth-watering fare here.

Adam Roberts (The Amateur Gourmet) soothes his savage cold with these babies.

Take a breather here and read about the matzo shortage in the New York Times. Such tsuris.

How to make a matzo ball - and why - from Judaism 101.

Ed Levine tells us about the best Passover Take-Out (so far).

Tonight I made the kids something out of a Manischevitz box, which, if you're to believe the stories out there, isn't such a crime after all.  They fell on it like starving people, which was very gratifying. Or maybe they were just hungry. I'll attempt something a little more ambitious, maybe, later this week. We'll see. 

Nisht gegehrlach, nu?

Holiday Hell: Ginger things

Regular readers of this blog won't be surprised to hear that I was the sort of grade school student who couldn't cut a neat circle out of construction paper to save my soul. Got C's in penmanship all my life (until computers took over and nobody cared anymore). Never met a rapidograph pen that would do my bidding.

Little wonder I'm not a natural when it comes to crafting men out of gingerbread.

But I volunteered to try my hand, so to speak, at making gingerbread men when my daughter, who is following me down the path of extreme procrastination, announced that her "How To" project was due soon and she still hadn't found a cricket bat. Her initial project idea was How To Score in Cricket, and although her dad tried his best to explain the nuances of cricket to her, I don't believe she had a firm enough grasp of it to explain it, in poster form, to anyone else. So I came up with How To Make Gingerbread Men as a quick alternative.

I mean what's less likely to work? A 10-year-old girl trying to explain the inexplicable sport of cricket to a bunch of her American peers or the Bad Home Cook trying to bake a decent gingerbread man? Six of one, half dozen of the other, as the saying goes.

Holiday Hell: No latkes for you

Call it Fear of Frying.

This is the second year in a row I did not make latkes for Hanukkah. The second year in a row I had a recipe at the ready, already taped to my cupboard for easy reference. The second year I had potatoes, onion, matzo meal, but no applesauce. The second year I felt the disappointed eyes of my kids and kin.

All because I'm terrified of frying.

Holiday Hell: Bring on the bourbon balls

I come from a long line of Irish alcoholics. My mother's side of the family has an armory of tales involving  fist-fights, three-week benders, lost weekends, smashed cars and Christmas trees hurled through plate glass windows. I remember a few such doozies from my childhood. And although this has made me fairly humorless when it comes to dealing with alcoholics as an adult, I can still summon a perverse pride in the knowledge that certain members of my family could easily out-drink any frat brother you put before them. You would think such lineage would equip me to drink early and often. And yet my brothers and I have stepped away from the bottle. It's only been recently, in the midst of my middle-aged mommy malaise, that I've developed a relationship with red wine. But ask anyone. I hold my liquor like a 10-year-old.

Nevertheless, they're in there: those miserable Irish alcoholic genes. That's probably why I loved bourbon balls as long as I can remember. They're the perfect holiday sweet: Little balls of cookie dough with nuts rolled in powdered sugar and spiked with alcohol. It's impossible to eat only one. I believe I actually copped a small buzz one year after I ate 17 of them in one sitting. Or maybe that was just the sugar high.