Pickled herring

I like the seasonality of herring, the fact that it is only available for a few months during the summer. I was in the fishmonger the other day (Williamson of Portobello) and behind me was a large Russian lady with bright pink hair. We were both in for some fresh herring to pickle but unfortunately they had sold out. The fishmonger offered us some of their ready-pickled herring instead but we both turned it down ("too soft" I said, "too vinegary" the Russian lady said) and instead got to chatting about the best way to pickle herring (and why the shop-bought stuff was inferior). The Russian lady was originally from Odessa. She recommended adding some vodka to the marinade. It was another couple of weeks before I got back to the fishmonger. They had plenty of fresh herring this time but there was no sign of the Russian lady.

I eat and cook very differently from my grandparents, but there are a few overlaps and they have great emotional weight. This is one of them - there was always a jar in my grandparents' fridge (shop bought, though - suspect my grandmother would have thought this home-pickling of mine was madness).

Ingredients

6 herring, filleted
1/2 onion
20g of fresh dill

For the marinade

300 ml of cider or white wine vinegar
300 ml of water
2 teaspoon of whole coriander seeds
2 teaspoon of white mustard seeds
2 teaspoon of black peppercorns
2 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoon of caster sugar

optional: 3 tablespoons of vodka or gin

1. Place all the marinade ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, stir to make sure the salt and sugar are fully dissolved, and leave to cool.
2. If the herring fillets are still attached, separate into two halves, lengthwise. Finely slice the onion.
3. Place a layer of onion in the bottom of a rectangular tupperware (one that is just long enough for the herring), cover with some fresh dill, pour a little of the cooled marinade over it (through a tea strainer), then place a layer of herring fillets on top. Repeat until you have used up all the herring. If you have any onion and dill left, put some on top, pour the remaining marinade over the fish so that it is covered, put the lid on the dish and leave to pickle in the fridge for three or four days.

Falafel

Since I last posted, one of the members of my family has turned vegetarian. As a result, I've been on the lookout for vegetarian options, so falafel (little fried balls of ground chickpeas and spices) seemed like a good idea. I got this recipe from Tori Avey's Jewish food blog, with a couple of minor adaptations.

Ingredients
250g of dried chickpeas
30g water
1 onion, chopped
a bunch of parsley
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsps plain flour (or use chickpea flour)
2 tsps of salt
2 tsps of ground cumin

1.5 tsps of ground coriander
1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
freshly ground black pepper
the seeds from 2 cardamon pods

1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of water
oil for frying

Method

1. Leave the chickpeas to soak in plenty of water overnight.
2. The next day, drain the chickpeas, and combine with all of the remaining ingredients apart from the baking powder. Chop in a food processor until you have a grainy paste. (Too grainy and it will fall to bits when you fry, too pasty and it will taste ... pasty.)
3. Cover and leave to sit in the fridge for 2 hours.
4. Mix the baking powder with the water, add to the mixture and stir well with a fork.
5. Heat about 3 cm of oil to a medium heat.
6. Shape the mixture into balls, slip them carefully into the oil, and fry for a couple of minutes until golden underneath, then flip them over and finish cooking on the other side.

Borscht (beetroot soup)

My mum came round the other day and handed me a plastic bag. It contained a couple of bunches of beetroot and a small bag of potatoes. I looked at her quizzically. "I was going to make you some borscht," she explained, "but I couldn't be bothered, so I just brought you the ingredients instead." I was still mulling over what to do with the beetroots and whether to obey my mother's instructions, when my veggie box turned up on the doorstep with another instalment of beetroots. Apparently somebody up there was trying to tell me something.

There are lots of different types of borscht: Russian, Polish, Ukrainian; hot or cold; meaty or meat-free etc. This version is adapted from the one in Evelyn Rose's New Complete International Jewish Cookbook.

Ingredients
1 kg fresh beetroots
one carrot
one onion
1.5 l chicken stock
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
to serve
cream cheese

Method

1. Peel and very finely chop the beetroots, carrot and onion. Put in a large saucepan with the stock, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat to minimum and simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft.
2. With a stick blender, blend the soup in the pan until it is smooth.
3. Add a generous spoonful of cream cheese to each bowl of soup as you serve.

Parsnip latkes

It's been over six months since my last post. This is because my long-standing back problem finally decided to go critical. I twisted it in March last year and throughout the summer and well into the autumn I was unable to walk more than a couple of hundred yards or even stand up for a few minutes without experiencing severe pain down my left leg. And I also found that sitting at the computer for any length of time caused problems. I didn't completely stop cooking but I generally focused on the quick and easy end of the culinary spectrum and didn't have much energy left for blogging (or much else besides). On 28 December I went into hospital for a micro-discectomy, and three weeks later I am pretty much pain-free and mobile.

Although it's been a long nine months, there have been quite a few positives: I have certainly learned to appreciate some of the simple pleasures I had been deprived of, such as walking, standing and blogging, and I've also learned how to chart a middle path between an unconvincing stoicism and constant whingeing.

In the meantime, our veggie box has continued to arrive and as autumn turned to winter parsnips have  featured with increasing regularity. Last year, I turned the parsnip glut into some rather fiddly oven-baked fritters but this year, in the wake of Hanukkah, I was inspired to make some parsnip latkes.

Ingredients
1 kg parsnips
300 g onions
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Peel the parsnips and grate finely by hand or using a food processor. Squeeze out the excess water.
2. Peel and chop the onions, and whizz in a food processor with the eggs and salt. Add parsnips and whizz again briefly.
3. Heat about 1 cm vegetable oil in a large frying pan. Use a tablespoon to shape the mixture into fritters, add to the oil, fry until golden-brown, turn carefully and fry the underside.

Dutch Jewish ginger buns (gember bolus)

I came across these ginger buns (gember bolus) in the cafe of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. I googled "ginger bolus", but all I came up with were reports of people choking to death in Thailand. Eventually, I found something which appeared to be related on a blog called Bake My Day! So I contacted the author of the blog where I had found that recipe and she very kindly got back to me with a version of what I was looking for. Needless to say, I then fooled around with the recipe a bit (well, quite a lot) and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
dough
500g plain flour
7g active yeast
320g milk
30g water
20g brown sugar
20g margarine or butter

syrup
200g brown sugar
200g water

filling
250g ginger crush in syrup

for sprinkling
more brown sugar

Method

1. Put the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, cover and remove from the heat.
2. Combine all of the dough ingredients. If you have a food processor with a dough hook, then knead for a couple of minutes on the slowest settng. Alternatively, mix the ingredients thoroughly with a spoon, then stretch and fold in the bowl until you have a smooth dough. Cover the dough and leave to rise for about 1 hour.
3. Oil 16 muffin cases and put them on 2 muffin trays. Set the oven to 200oC.
4. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and divide  into 16 equal pieces. Very lightly turn each of the pieces in the flour, then press out to form a rough circle. Put a teaspoon of the filling mixture in the centre of each circle, and form the circle into a ball, crimping it closed with your fingers. Place each of the balls into one of your prepared muffin cases, and when the tray is full cover it with clingfilm and leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.
5. Remove the clingfilm from the trays, glaze each ball with 1 dessertspoon of syrup, sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon of brown sugar over each of them , transfer trays to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.
6. Remove the trays from the oven, transfer the buns from their cases to a cooling rack. Pour a little more syrup over the buns before serving.

Cinnamon knot buns (zeeuwse bolus)

I don't usually just lift other people's recipes, but I have to start this post by admitting that I have copied this more or less directly from a wonderful blog I came across called Bake My Day! This is stage one of my plan for reproducing the delicious little buns filled with candied ginger which I ate in Amsterdam. I thought I would start with the dough, and as this recipe is for a Dutch sweetened bread of Jewish origin, it seemed a good place to start. (We bought the matrushka oilcloth in the background of the photo below at the street market in Albert Cuypstraat.)


Ingredients
500 g plain flour
7 g salt
7 g fast action yeast
320 g milk
75 g butter or margarine
zest of one lemon
250 gr soft brown sugar
2 tbs cinnamon

Method

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, fast action yeast, milk, butter or margarine and lemon zest. Start by mixing it thoroughly with a spoon, then when it comes together mix by hand and knead until you have a nice light dough. Put the bowl inside a plastic bag, leave in a warm place (if you have one) for 45 minutes (a little longer if you don't have a warm spot in your kitchen). In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
2. Weigh the dough and divide into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball, place on a tray, cover with plastic and leave to relax for 20 minutes or so. After 20 minutes, take each ball and roll it gently out into a rope, about 20 cm long - see photo below. (You should be able to do this between your hands, but feel free to roll it on a flat surface if needs be.)
3. Now sprinkle plenty of the sugar and cinnamon mixture over a clear work surface, and one by one roll the dough ropes in it until they at least 30 cm long, making sure they get thoroughly coated with the sugar.
4. Finally, form the ropes into knots, as per the photo below. (This is very easy - just find the mid-point, wrap one end of the rope around your finger, remove the finger from the resulting hole and poke the end of the rope through. Then repeat for the other side.) Place the coils on an oiled baking sheet, cover with plastic and leave to rise for about 60 minutes until they have more or less doubled in size. You will probably have to use two baking sheets and bake in two batches. (Because my sugar wasn't quite sticky enough, I cheated and sprayed the finished knots with a little water and sprinkled them with some extra sugar just before baking.) Turn the oven on to 250oC.
5. Bake the knots for 8 minutes. They should be brown and even a little crisp on the outside, but still very soft on the inside.

'raw' ropes

rolling the rope in sugar, and forming the knots

risen knots

Fried matzo

I have an unofficial rule on my blog that anything on it has to have been cooked by me. However, this is the first thing that Sammy has learnt to cook all on his own, so I think it deserves an exception to be made for it. I remember my grandma (and my mum) making this for me when I was a kid, so seeing Sammy make it brings back happy memories.

Ingredients
1 piece of matzo
1 egg
salt
oil for frying

Method

1. Break the matzo into large pieces, place in a colander and sprinkle with a little water to soften it up.
2. Beat one egg in a bowl with a little salt, and add the matzo pieces to it.
3. Heat the oil in a non-stick pan, and pour the matzo and egg mixture into it. When it is cooked underneath, flip it over, cook for a few seconds more and serve.

Unleavened bread
Breakfast is sometimes a bit of a problem, so we were really relieved to find "pane azzimo" in the local supermarket. That's just Italian for "unleavened bread", and is identical to matzo (although without all the Beth Din stamp tomfoolery). At some point I may even have a go at making unleavened bread, although first I have to track down a recipe which doesn't involve a long trek through the desert and across the bed of the Red Sea.

Bubelach: matzah meal pancakes

I remember my grandma making these for my grandpa, Sam, and for my brother, Mark, and me. I had a bit of trouble tracking down a recipe, as we always called them 'egg latkes'. As far as I can tell, the proper name is 'bubelah' (or the plural 'bubelach', as there are always several of them), which means 'darling' in Yiddish.



I can't easily get matzah meal in Spain, so I used breadcrumbs instead. It's sold in bags and comes in varying degrees of fineness, so makes a good substitute.

Ingredients
3 eggs
175 ml water
80g matzah meal
1/4 tsp salt

Method

1. Separate the eggs, and add the water to the egg yolks. Beat lightly, add the matzah meal and salt, and mix well. (This step can be done the night before and left in the fridge overnight.)
2. Beat the whites to stiff peaks and fold into the yolk, water and matzah meal mixture.
3. Heat some vegetable oil in a non-stick frying pan. When it is hot add as many tablespoonfuls of the mixture as will easily fit into the pan, and fry until golden brown on each side. Avoid turning more than once.

These are really best if cooked in plenty of oil, as that way they puff up. However, I wasn't really up for frying this morning, so I just did them with a little oil to prevent them from sticking, which produces something which looks more like a light Scotch pancake than a little fritter.

Roast chicken soup with knaidlach

Making your own stock is really easy. Good quality bought stock is fine for general cooking purposes, but for soup you really need to make your own.

Knaidlach are just little dumplings, made from matzo meal. There is a lot of debate about the best way to make these, including all sorts of ridiculous magical ingredients (club soda, ginger ale etc.), and endless family anecdotes about Auntie So-and-So, whose knaidlach were like cannonballs, as opposed to Auntie-Such-and-Such, whose knaidlach were as light as a feather. Actually, they’re very easy to make, and it’s quite hard to go wrong. My recipe is adapted from the one which appears in Evelyn Rose’s Jewish Cookbook. If you want to, you can add other embellishments – some chopped parsley, a bit of ground ginger or whatever.




Stage 1: making your stock

1. Put your roast chicken carcass and the juices from the roasting dish in a large pot. (Don’t worry if the juices are oily.) Set aside any leftover meat from the bird (breast, legs, oysters from the back) but remove any skin and bones to add to the pot. Cover the carcass with water (but only just). Bring to the boil, reduce to minimum and simmer for at least an hour.
2. Allow to cool, strain the stock through a colander or sieve into a large bowl, cover and leave in the fridge. Discard the carcass. The next day you should have a bowl of jellified stock, covered with a thin layer of solidified fat.

Stage 2: rendering your chicken fat

1. Skim the fat off the top of the bowl and place in a small saucepan, for which you have a lid. (This chicken fat is the original schmaltz which has made its way into the English language with the meaning sentimental.)
2. Place the saucepan over a low heat, and as soon as it starts to spit, place the lid over it, but leaving it slightly off so that the steam can escape as any water trapped in the fat evaporates. Once the fat has stopped spitting (probably after about 10 minutes), pour the fat into a small bowl, leave to cool, and transfer to the fridge so that it solidifies completely. This chicken fat was a basic cooking ingredient (as were a range of animal fats across Europe, including goose, pig and beef fat). It’s not the healthiest cooking medium, but helps adds flavour to the knaidlach below.

Stage 3: making your knaidlach

Ingredients
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of chicken fat
4 tablespoons of chicken stock
1 teaspoon of salt
4 tablespoons of ground almonds
10 to 12 tablespoons of medium matzo meal (in Spain, I use breadcrumbs, which are sold in all supermarkets and bakeries)

Method

1. Fill a large saucepan with water, add salt and set to boil.
2. Beat the eggs thoroughly with a whisk. Stir in the rest of the ingredients with a spoon, leaving out the last two tablespoons of matzo meal, just in case. The mixture should now be just stiff enough to easily be formed into balls. If the mixture is too loose, then add some more of the matzo meal. If it is too stiff, then add a little more stock. (It’s important that the mixture is not too stiff at this stage.)
3. Once the water in your pan is boiling, reduce the heat to medium, roll the knaidlach mixture into marble-sized balls, and add them to the water as you go. Once you have added all the knaidlach to the water, cover the pan, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 30 minutes before adding to the stock (see below).

Putting it all together

1. Heat the stock in a large pan. Using a slotted spoon, remove the knaidlach from the water in which they have been cooked, and add to the chicken stock. Simmer gently for another couple of minutes and serve.

(You can add carrots and other things to the stock if you want, but I think it is best served just the way it is.)

Coffee and spice honey cake

This is traditionally associated with Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year). This recipe is based on the one given by Evelyn Rose in The Complete International Jewish Cookbook, which is really a Mrs Beeton’s for the Jewish housewife of the 1970s. It even has a section on how to organise dinner parties which contains the following invaluable tip: “… the Jewish woman is expected to entertain in a more sophisticated fashion than ever before, paying attention to the flowers, the décor and the table accoutrements as well as to the food that she sets before her guests.” Sound advice indeed!

Ingredients
225g plain flour
170g demerara sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
250g clear honey
100g sunflower oil
2 eggs
100ml strong black coffee
50g chopped walnuts

Method

1. Set the oven to 170°C, and prepare either one large tin (an 8-inch round tin is fine) or two loaf tins, by lining the bottoms with baking paper and greasing the sides.
2. Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, ginger and baking powder. Add the honey, oil and eggs and beat until smooth. Add the coffee and the walnuts and mix in.
3. Pour the batter into the tin(s) and bake for 60 minutes.

This cake keeps very well, and actually improves during the first week or so. I usually only make one round cake, so it never lasts that long, but if you make two smaller loaves then you can wrap one in foil once it’s cool and set it aside.

Simple fried fish in breadcrumbs

This is something I remember my grandma making. It’s great served hot, with chips, but it's also delicious cold the next day. I always make large quantities so there will be some left over for snacks or picnics. There was usually a large tupperware container of it in my grandma's fridge, which I would sometimes raid during the middle of the night, and the smell of it still transports me immediately back to her kitchen in Parkhill Road.

I can’t get haddock in my local market in Cadiz, so I usually use John Dory fillets, also known as St Pierre, supposedly because the mark on its side was made by Saint Peter’s thumb. The matzo meal is replaced with breadcrumbs.

Ingredients

500g of haddock fillets (or any other firm white fish)
Plain flour
½ teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
Breadcrumbs (or medium matzo meal)
Sunflower oil for frying

Method

1. Cut the fillets in half, lengthwise.
2. Coat the fillets in flour, then dip in the egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.
3. In a large frying pan, heat plenty of sunflower oil (about 1 cm deep).
4. Once the oil is fairly hot, place the breaded fillets in the oil. (You'll probably need do three or four batches.)
5. Fry for a couple of minutes, until golden, then turn and fry for another minute or so.

Any fish which is not going to be eaten straight away should be left to cool on kitchen paper before being stored in the fridge. It keeps for a few days (if it lasts that long).