Read Around the Passover Table Online
Authors: Jayne Cohen
Around the Passover Table (15 page)
STIR
in the horseradish, season with salt and pepper and cook 5 minutes. Transfer the meat to a platter and wrap loosely with foil. Discard the bay leaves. Strain the pan sauce, reserving the solids. Skim as much fat as possible from the liquid. Puree the reserved solids with as much of the defatted braising liquid as necessary in a blender or food processor, or use an immersion blender. Return the puree to the pot, add the rest of the defatted braising liquid, and reduce over high heat until you have reached the consistency you prefer. Taste for seasoning. I love the tangy undertone
1
â
4
to
1
â
2
teaspoon sour salt imparts to the sauce. If you choose to add it, start with a small amount and keep tasting until you reach a beautifully subtle acid-sweet balance. And you can add a bit more horseradish, if you'd like (freshly grated and heated briefly, it is more robust and earthy than pungent). Just cook a few minutes after adding additional seasoning to marry the flavors.
WHILE
the pot roast is braising, prepare the beets and knaidlach. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Trim the greens (save and cook like spinach or chard) and the root ends from the beets. Scrub the beets well, but don't peel them. Tightly wrap each beet in foil and place on a baking sheet. Bake until tender, 1
1
â
2
to 2 hours (if they are very large). Carefully remove the foil and set aside until cool enough to handle. Peel and cut the beets into quarters and set aside.
MAKE
the knaidlach: cover the potatoes with cold salted water, bring to a boil, and cook, partially covered, until fork-tender, 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the size and age of the potatoes. Drain the potatoes and set aside until they are cool enough to handle. Peel and mash them well (no lumps wanted here), using a ricer or food mill or by pushing through a strainer. Spread them out on a sheet of wax paper to cool to room temperature. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes with the eggs, about 2
1
â
2
teaspoons salt (or to taste), and several generous grinds of pepper. Add 1
1
â
2
cups matzoh meal and knead with your hands for several minutes to combine the ingredients well. Transfer the dough to a work surface, lightly dusted, if necessary, with matzoh meal. If there is too much dough to handle easily, divide it in half and knead each separately. Add a bit more matzoh meal if the dough is sticky, but avoid adding too much, which would make the knaidlach heavy. Keep kneading until the dough is smooth. Shape the dough into four balls, then divide each into smaller balls about 2 tablespoonfuls each (a standard coffee measure). Flatten the balls slightly. Place a heaping
1
â
4
teaspoon of horseradish in the center, then pinch the edges together to enclose the filling. Reshape into a ball. Gently press the ball over the convex bowl of a teaspoon, flattening and indenting it slightly. (This will ensure that the knaidlach will cook through before the outside begins to disintegrate.) Continue stuffing and shaping the knaidlach until you have used up all the dough. (If you wish, you can refrigerate them at this point on a platter or in a baking dish, in a single layer, not touching, for 2 to 3 hours).
BRING
4 quarts water and about 1
3
â
4
tablespoons salt to a boil in a large wide pot. Cook the knaidlach in batches, so you don't crowd the pot, dropping them one at time into the boiling water. Reduce the heat to moderate, and cook, uncovered, for about 10 minutes until cooked through. The knaidlach will rise to the top, swell up, and become fluffy around the edges. To check for doneness, remove one from the pot and either taste or cut open. If knaidl is dark in the center, ascertain whether this is the horseradish filling or an uncooked part. Don't overcook the knaidlach or they will fall apart.
REMOVE
the cooked knaidlach with a skimmer or large slotted spoonâthey are too delicate to be poured into a colander. Place them on a platter and moisten them lightly with a little pot roast sauce or melted margarine, and tent with foil, as you prepare the remaining knaidlach. Or keep them warm in a 250°F oven.
TO
serve, slice the pot roast very thin, against the grain. Surround with cooked beets and potato knaidlach. Nap everything generously with sauce. If desired, sprinkle some freshly grated horseradish over all, or offer guests some to season their food with instead of pepper. Pass additional sauce separately.
COOK'S NOTE
: To grate horseradish, peel it, cut it into small chunks, and grind in a food processor. You'll avoid most of the eye-stinging volatile oils. And avert your face when opening the food processor lid for the same reason.
You may have knaidlach left over; it is difficult to decrease the recipe proportionally. They are delicious served as you would gnocchi, with tomato sauce, leftover gravy, or for non-Passover meals, toasted bread crumbs sautéed with garlic in good olive oil. To reheat, sauté the knaidlach lightly and quickly.
It's more work, but the dumplings are even more flavorful with onions added to the stuffing. Sauté chopped onion or shallots in olive oil until rich gold, season well with salt and pepper, and let cool. When inserting the horseradish, add some of the onions as well.
As with most braised meats, the pot roast benefits from a day's rest. Preparing the meat ahead not only cuts down on last-minute seder cooking, but also makes it easier to remove any fat from the gravy. Just scrape off the congealed fat while refrigerator cold.
This recipe began with a tattered French novella I read in the library. It led me to medieval towns in the south of France better known for ambrosial melons than Jewish cooking, and took me to bookstores and museums throughout Paris. It tells the story of a vanished cuisine.
I stumbled on
“les juifs du Pape”
(the Pope's Jews) while researching early French-Jewish cuisine at the New York Public library. Although the Jews were expelled from France in 1394, they were allowed to remainâwith restrictionsâin four small areas comprising the Comtat Venaissin under papal jurisdiction: Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon, and L'Isle-sur-La-Sorgue (in Hebrew,
Arba Kehilloth
).
Tantalizing snippets along the paper trail intrigued me. The French poet Frédéric Mistral, for instance, claimed that the vocabulary and enchanting folklore of the Comtat Jews had enriched the lyrical language of his native Provence. These Jews had their own Judeo-Provençal dialect, their liturgy was unique, and, by all accounts, their cuisine distinctive.
But although French Jews have written scores of cookbooks, I could find no recipes at all from this community. I was about to give up, when a fellow researcher, eyeing the books spread-eagled around me, made an offhand remark about Armand Lunel, a Comtat Jew who, he claimed, wrote evocatively about food in his fiction.
In his charming novella,
Jérusalem à Carpentras
(1937), Lunel limned with gentle humor the hot
coudoles
from the ancient Passover oven in Carpentrasâmatzohs so exquisite that Christians, defying the Bishop's interdiction, came banging on the gates of the Juiverie to purchase them. But it was Lunel's lavish praise for le prin, which he called
“le
nec plus ultra
de l'art culinaire judéo-carpentrassien,”
that convinced me. Served on Passover, this meltingly tender breast of veal, is, as he described it, the essence of spring: stuffed with a mixture of chard and spinach and a scant fistful of rice, intensely refreshing and fortifying at the same time. It sounded so delightfully contemporary, and so delicious, I had to have the recipeâor something equally enchanting from this elusive cuisine.
In Cavaillon, where a Jewish museum dedicated to the Comtat Venaissin is housed in an old matzoh bakery, I inquired about recipes or cookbooks detailing what must have been a scrumptious cuisine. None existed. In the beautiful old synagogues of Cavaillon and Carpentras, now French landmarks, I couldn't locate any members of the old Comtat community, which had been assimilated and replaced by new waves of French Jewry.
In Paris it was the same story. Even Lunel's book was out of print.
It was Passover, I was in France, and in my mind's eye, I could taste Lunel's prin. Like Proust's admirers dreaming of madeleines, I had fallen in love with a food from reading a book. But in the end, this love could only be requited through an act of imagination.
This is how I envisioned the recipe.
Provençal Roasted GarlicâBraised Breast of Veal with Springtime Stuffing, Plus an Ashkenazi Variation
yield:
6 to 8 servings
Don't pass by this fabulous veal because your family refrains from eating rice on Passover. When my agent Elise Goodman wanted to prepare it for her seder, we came up with a wonderful alternative mashed potato stuffing (see Cook's Note).
Veal breast is a delectable but somewhat fatty cut of meat. I have my butcher bone it because it is easier to remove most of the fat that way. But leave the bones in, if you preferâthey will add flavor. Just trim most of the fat carefully. The weight listed in the recipe is before boning. In either case, have your butcher cut a large pocket for stuffing.
Salt
1 large bunch of Swiss chard (about 1
1
â
2
pounds), washed, white stems removed and reserved for another purpose, green leaves coarsely chopped (5 to 6 cups tightly packed)
1 large bunch of spinach (about 1 pound), washed, coarse stems discarded, and leaves coarsely chopped (about 5 cups tightly packed), or one 10-ounce package frozen leaf spinach, thawed
4 large garlic cloves, minced (1
1
â
2
tablespoons), plus 1 whole large head, unpeeled
1
â
2
cup plus 2 teaspoons olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1 very large onion, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
1
â
2
cup medium- or short-grain rice, preferably arborio (medium- or short-grain is called for because you want a creamy texture, like a risotto; long-grain rice will give you fluffy, separate grains)
1
1
â
2
cups chicken broth, preferably
homemade
, or good-quality, low-sodium
purchased
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
Juice and grated zest of 1 large lemon
1 cup firmly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 cup firmly packed fresh mint leaves
1 large egg, beaten
One 5- to 6-pound veal breast
1 cup sauvignon blanc or other dry white wine
PREPARE
the stuffing: bring a large pot full of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the chard and spinach, bring the water back to a boil, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes until thoroughly wilted. Drain and squeeze out as much moisture as possible, pressing the greens against a colander with a wooden spoon. Or for a more thorough job, use your hands when the greens have cooled somewhat. Finely chop, either by hand or by pulsing in a food processor.