Around the Passover Table (26 page)
Read Around the Passover Table Online
Authors: Jayne Cohen
BREAK
the matzohs into small pieces in a bowl. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and salt.
COMBINE
the apple juice and vanilla in a wide saucepan, and boil over high heat until reduced to about
1
â
2
cup. Pour it over the matzohs and toss until all the liquid is absorbed. Beat the eggs until light and foamy and add to the matzoh mixture. Stir well and set aside for a few minutes to soak the matzohs. Stir in the pecans.
MAKE
the syrup: warm the maple syrup and vanilla in a small saucepan until heated through. Keep warm until ready to serve.
PLEASE
read “
Making Matzoh Brie
” and choose the cooking style you prefer. In a 9- or 10-inch heavy skillet (nonstick works well here), heat the butter over medium heat until it sizzles. Add the matzoh batter, either dropping it in by heaping tablespoonfuls, like pancakes, or all at once, like an omelet or frittata. Fry until golden brown on the bottom, then turn and fry until done to taste on the other side: either golden and fluffy or more well-done and crisp.
SERVE
at once, accompanied by the warm syrup.
COOK'S NOTE
: This simple, sweet matzoh brie should inspire some flavor variations of your own. For soaking, use warm milk or cream flavored with
1
â
4
teaspoon almond extract, generous pinches of nutmeg and cloves, and honey or molasses to taste. Or dampen the matzohs instead with undiluted, thawed orange juice concentrate, then serve the matzoh brie drizzled with orange blossom honey and a sprinkle of sliced toasted almonds. And sweet matzoh brie is delicious accompanied by lightly stewed fruits such as the
Fresh Raspberry Applesauce
or any of the following fruit sauces:
Fresh Applesauce
,
Intense Apricot Applesauce
, or
Ginger-Pear Sauce
.
At the Terezin concentration camp, a vibrant but surreal cultural life was played out against the horrific backdrop of starvation, disease, and death. There, children teeming with lice watched performances of the opera
Brundibar,
and elderly Jews, bodies wracked with enteritis, scavenged for potato peels before attending lectures on theology.
A holding pen where Jewsâlargely from Moravia and Bohemia, as well as prominent Jews from Germany, Austria, and Western Europeâwere kept before being sent to death camps, Terezin, or Theresienstadt, as the Germans renamed it, was held up to the world as a Ghetto Paradise, evidence of the Fuhrer's decency to the Jews.
The cultural activity, extraordinarily prodigious because of the sheer density of talented artists and scholars imprisoned there, and feverishly intensified by the pervasive sense of mortality, was exploited by the Nazis, who trotted out the artists for a propaganda film before shipping them out to Auschwitz.
But, as Cara De Silva points out in her remarkable book,
In Memory's Kitchen,
such fierce cultural pursuits were also a form of revolt. As the Nazis tried to dehumanize them, the children produced poetry and art (later collected in a book,
I Never Saw Another Butterfly
). While the Nazis systematically blotted out their culture, the Jews of Terezin taught philosophy and circulated tens of thousands of books in a camp lending library. And they transcended their hunger by “cooking with the mouth”âtalking constantly about foodâand writing cookbooks.
In Memory's Kitchen,
“a memoir of life in Terezin, written in recipes,” is not the only cookbook to come out of the concentration camps. According to Cara De Silva, there are five more that she knows of, and certainly others exist.
Cocooned in a warm Amtrak berth coming home from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I read De Silva's description of one of these manuscripts, authored by Malka Zimmet, an inmate in a work subcamp of Mauthausen. She mentioned a matzoh brie with wine and prunes, and I conjured up the dish and the vanished life that had savored it. I haven't seen the recipe yetâthe manuscript is in Yad Vashem, Israel's repository of Holocaust researchâso I made up my own version, cooked scrambled eggâstyle.
Matzoh Brie with Prunes and Wine
yield:
3 to 4 servings
The interplay of tastes and texturesâcrisp, tender, and eggy matzoh pieces sandwiching tart-sweet juicy prunesâmade this matzoh brie an instant hit. When my daughter was homesick during her junior year in Paris, she whipped this up with lacy French matzohs, substituting plumped, winy raisins for the prunes.
It is even better with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt, which underscores the richness of the dried fruit.
2 cups pure, unsweetened apple juice, or 1
1
â
4
cups unsweetened Concord grape juice
1
1
â
2
cups pitted prunes, halved or quartered if large
1 teaspoon kosher-for-Passover vanilla extract
4 whole plain matzohs
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
About
1
â
4
teaspoon salt
3
â
4
cup traditional sweet Jewish wine or Concord grape juice
4 large eggs
1
1
â
2
teaspoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Accompaniments: plain yogurt,
yogurt cream
, or sour cream; if additional sweetening is desired, use maple syrup, preserves, or honey
PREPARE
the prunes: in a wide, medium saucepan, boil the apple juice over high heat until reduced to about 1
1
â
4
cups. (If using grape juice, warm it without reducing.) Add the prunes and vanilla, and cook over medium heat until very tender, 10 to 15 minutes. You should have no more than about
1
â
4
cup of liquid left in the pan; if needed, reduce the liquid for a few minutes over high heat.
MEANWHILE,
break the matzohs into small pieces in a bowl. Sprinkle with
1
â
2
teaspoon cinnamon and the salt. Pour the wine or grape juice over the matzohs and stir until all the liquid is absorbed. Beat the eggs until light and foamy and add to the matzoh mixture. Stir well and set aside for a few minutes to soak the matzohs (the eggs will not be totally absorbed). In a small bowl, combine the remaining
1
â
2
teaspoon cinnamon and the brown sugar and set aside.
PLEASE
read “
Making Matzoh Brie
” and choose the cooking style you prefer. In a 10- to 12-inch heavy skillet (preferably nonstickâthe sugar from the prunes will make this matzoh brie somewhat sticky) heat the butter until it sizzles. Add the matzoh and egg mixture all at once. As it begins to set and brown, break it up into largish pieces with a spatula, turning and browning them on both sides. Spoon the stewed prunes and their liquid over the cooked matzoh brie, as a topping. Or you can incorporate the prunes into the matzoh brie: when the matzoh brie is nearly browned, add the prunes and their liquid. Continue lifting and turning until all the matzoh pieces are golden brown and well combined with the prunes. If you prefer a fluffier matzoh brie, lightly fry the matzoh sections until just cooked through on all sides, adding the prunes about halfway through the cooking process.
SPRINKLE
with the cinnamon sugar. Top with plain yogurt, or if you prefer something richer, yogurt cream or sour cream. It really needs no additional sweetening, but if you wish, serve it with maple syrup, preserves, or honey.
Overnight Caramelized-Apple Matzoh Brie
yield:
4 servings
An evil apple may have done the trick for Snow White's wicked stepmother, but no apple caused Adam's downfall. Though mentioned several times in ancient Hebrew literature, the apple plays no part in Genesis. Adam and Eve sin simply by eating “fruit”âthe generic kindâfrom the Tree of Knowledge.
Was the actual culprit the sensuous, many-seeded pomegranate? Perhaps the luscious golden apricot or the flesh-soft fig? Scholars continue to debate. While the apple was first specified as the evil fruit in Eden by Aquila Ponticus in his second century translation of the Song of Solomon from Hebrew to Greek, and later used by early translators of the Bible, it was Renaissance painters who popularized it, burnished an enticing red, to concretize our fall from grace.
The caramelized apples here certainly reek of temptation, but there's no need to lose any sleep over this matzoh brie. Prepare it the night before, then pop it in the oven the next morning while you shower and dress. It's ready when you are, for breakfast or brunch. And it's splendid too for a teatime treat.
FOR THE CARAMELIZED APPLES
4 medium-large flavorful apples (about 2 pounds; an assortment of tart and sweet, such as Winesap, Northern Spy, or Mutsu combined with Fuji, Gala, or Braeburn, works particularly well; avoid Rome apples, which will turn to mush)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1
â
3
cup pure maple syrup
1
â
2
teaspoon ground cinnamon