Read Around the Passover Table Online
Authors: Jayne Cohen
Around the Passover Table (11 page)
Veronese Rolled Turkey Loaf (
Polpettone
)
yield:
8 to 10 servings
Like its poor relation, the Ashkenazi
helzel
(a goose neck filled with fat, flour, and scraps of meat), this refined loaf of boned and rolled turkey (similar to a ballotine) relies on gentle cooking within a pouch sewn of poultry skin to keep the contents moist and succulent.
A favorite for holiday meals, variations of this polpettone are found throughout the Jewish communities of Italy, some calling for additions of ground veal or pistachios, some grinding the turkey instead of cubing it. This version comes from Ester Silvana Israel of Verona, who has gathered the recipes of the city's elderly Jews. It is often featured on Passover menus, surrounded by the Italian spring trio of purple artichokes, mushrooms, and baby peas.
A wonderful alternative to turkey roasted on the bone (many Orthodox and Conservative Jews refrain from eating roast meats at the seder meals), polpettone, bathed in broth and served at room temperature, remains moist and flavorful even during the longest seder.
To make the loaf, the turkey skin is removed, sewn into a neat pouch, and stuffed with cubes of the meat. Although it looks daunting, it is time-consuming rather than difficult. The trickiest task is taking off the skin as nearly intact as possible. Turkey skin is much stronger and more elastic than chicken skin, but you must work carefully and patiently to avoid tearing it.
1 half turkey, skin intact (7 to 10 pounds)
3 or 4 eggs (use 3 if turkey is around 7 pounds, 4 if it weighs closer to 10), beaten
3 or 4 large garlic cloves, finely minced
1
â
2
teaspoon ground allspice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 to 10 cups chicken broth, preferably
homemade
, or good-quality, low-sodium
purchased
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
3 large carrots, scraped and quartered
2 celery stalks, including leaves, coarsely chopped
Optional accompaniment:
Green Olive Sauce
(substitute 2 teaspoons mayonnaise for the mustard), or mayonnaise diluted with some of the cooking broth
REMOVE
and discard the clumps of fat around the neck and tail openings. Starting at the neck end, slowly work your hands under the skin, gently easing it away from the flesh. Move your hands all the way down the leg, then, using a small, sharp knife, cut the skin carefully away from the base of the leg. Now slip the skin off the leg, like pulling a sleeve over the turkey's wrist. It's very difficult to cut around the wingtip in the same way, so instead, cut a circle around the shoulder area, and slip the skin down and off the wing. You'll have a big hole there, but you'll patch it up when sewing the pouch. When you have separated all the skin from the body, gently take off whatever excess fat can be removed easily without damaging the skin. Rinse the skin inside and out and pat it dry.
THREAD
a large embroidery needle with strong white cotton thread or dental floss, and using an overcast or loop stitch, sew a few stitches to close up the base of the leg, then sew up the hole left from the wing. Fold the skin in half to make a rectangle. Sew the base and outer edge closed. You should have a neat pocket, open only at the top. (The first time I made this, I was wondering where I would get more skin: surely this would never hold all that turkey flesh. But it stretches quite a bit and is very resilient, so you will be able to fit all the meat into it quite easily.)
SET
the skin aside while you cut all the meatâwhite and darkâfrom the turkey carcass and cube it. Cut away the tendons and discard. Include a small amount of turkey fat to help keep the loaf moist. Place the cubed meat in a bowl and stir in the eggs, garlic, allspice, and salt and pepper to taste.
STUFF
the pouch with the meat mixture. Gently push the meat down into the pouch so you have enough room. Using the embroidery needle in an overcast stitch again, sew the top of the pouch closed. Rinse a clean, thin kitchen towel (that has been washed in unscented laundry detergent) or double layer of cheesecloth in cold water and squeeze it out. (I use inexpensive extra-large men's cotton handkerchiefsâthey don't shred like cheesecloth and they can be washed and reused.) Place the pouch in the towel or cloth and roll up very tightly. Tie the cloth securely closed in several places: at both ends, in the middle, and between the middle and the ends.
PUT
8 cups of broth in a heavy saucepan large enough to accommodate the filled pouch. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and simmer for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and add the turkey pouch. If necessary, add more broth so the pouch is covered. Simmer, covered, for 1
1
â
2
hours.
REMOVE
the pot from the heat. Leave the turkey loaf in the pot, and weight it down with several heatproof plates or one plate with a large weight placed on top. Let cool under the weights until it reaches room temperature. Remove the weights and the cloth covering, and slice the loaf. (If it crumbles, it will still taste delicious.) Moisten each slice with several spoonfuls of the broth. Reduce some of the remaining broth over high heat and spoon over the turkey as sauce before serving. The turkey will be very flavorful, but it will need the broth to stay moist. It's a good idea to keep any leftover loaf submerged under lots of broth.
IF
you want to serve the loaf warm, let it firm up at room temperature first, then reheat it slowly in the broth.
FOR
a more elaborate sauce, serve with
Green Olive Sauce
or some mayonnaise thinned with a little broth.
COOK'S NOTE
: Here is my favorite way to eat this, especially leftovers: simmer lots of chopped Swiss chard, spinach, or even broccoli rabe in some of the broth and spoon the mixture over slices of the turkey loaf arranged in a soup bowl. Then stir a little mayonnaiseâor, if you have it on hand, a few spoons of pureed artichokeâinto the broth to enrich the sauce. Scrumptious.
Artichoke puree is available jarred in many specialty stores or prepare your own by pureeing jarred artichoke hearts drained of oil (avoid those packed in strong marinade). Or puree cooked, frozen artichoke hearts with a little extra virgin olive oil and season to taste. Artichoke puree, also called artichoke paste, makes a superb substitute for cream or butter when you need to enrich or smooth out a meat or poultry sauce.
Passover in Paris
I walked through the open-air market, filling my bags with the new spring garlic, brilliant vegetables, fresh-caught fish, and fragrant herbs. Preparing for Passover seders takes a long time; in our case, it was several years. And the place was Paris.
Our daughter Alex was spending her college junior year there. Since her schedule would not permit her to come home for the holiday, we decided to celebrate our seders in Paris with her.
The location would not be the only first for us: my husband Howard and I had never hosted our own seder before. For years, we have spent the first seder with my sister and her family and the second with my husband's sister's family. And while we cook for my sister's seder and contribute to the service at my sister-in-law's, we had never led one of our own.
It became a game we played every year: what would we include in our seder? We compiled booklists for creating personal seders and downloaded provocative Haggadahs from the Web. We stuffed folders with names of songs and ideas for rituals we would add.
But in the end, Passovers are made of family memories, and we were too close to our own families to enjoy seders without them. There was no way we could break with tradition and go off on our own.
Until now.
We packed the ceremonial items and rented an apartment with a good kitchen and a large dining room in an area we knew well from past visits.
I once read that a guest at a holiday table is a gift for the family because then the family looks at all the traditions, listens to the songs and the stories as if for the first time. Our service would include not only Alex, but her boyfriend, and Emily, a very close family friend also in Paris for her junior year, perhaps a few students from Alex's theater classes and relatives of stateside friends too.
We revisited and revised each section of the Hagaddah in the service we created and wove in poems, personal stories, and a profusion of songs, from “Dayenu” to “Go Down Moses” (with all song lyrics printed out), that would make the celebration not just interactive but authentically shared as well.
The day before the seder, we went to buy a brisket in the old Jewish quarter around the rue des Rosiers and came away with a renewed affection for Gallic-Jewish warmth.
As we waited for the meat in the tiny shop, M. Michel Kalifa, the Moroccan butcher, brought out wine in real wineglasses. The couple ahead of us, jewelers from the posh sixteenth arrondissement, were buying kilos of house-made cured meats for pre-seder hors d'oeuvre, and Michel insisted that we taste them, comparing the beef to the goose, and those studded with pistachios and without.
Then he placed little china plates heaped with just-cooked chicken on the tall glass display cases of meat. With surgeon's skill, he e bones in a few deft strokes. One chicken was prepared with olives, the other with both olives and preserved lemons. “Lequel préférez-vous?” he wanted to know. But we couldn't choose a favoriteâboth were perfectly succulent.
Michel explained that only thighs and legs, bone in, stay moistâespecially important at seders when food must wait out the predinner service. “Forget the bland and dry boneless chicken breasts that most Americans use,” he winked. His Moroccan chicken was the perfect complement, we decided, to our traditional
Braised Brisket with Thirty-Six Cloves of Garlic
.
And whether it was Paris or just the late-April date of that year's holiday, I have never cooked for a seder with such intensely flavored produce. Deeply perfumed raspberries, blood oranges, and rhubarb bursting with taste made my staple
spring compote
a real standout.
We began the service by blessing the children. But as the seder unfolded, we felt blessed as well.