and visions of kreplach danced in their heads...

From Christmas Eve 2010 post on arthursdays.blogspot.com
This all starts with dinner the other night, as we had meat rolled in cabbage and perogis. These came from a Polish food provider housed in a suburban basement with access through a ground level window with a door (or window) bell. They offer a range of home made and frozen Polish food items. They are very good, and we all enjoy them prepared in various ways. However, I am always reminded, when we have this kind of dinner, of my grandmother, a Jewish cook of great excellence, who made fantastic meat rolled in cabbage and kreplach.

I was thinking this morning about kreplach. This is a life long fantasy, dreaming about one of my favorite things made best (of course) by my grandmother, and never duplicated.

Kreplach (from Yiddish: קרעפּלעך kreplekh, קרעפפּל krepl neut. sg.) are small dumplings filled with ground meat, mashed potatoes or another filling, usually boiled and served in chicken soup. They are similar to Italian tortellini and Chinese wontons. In many Ashkenazi homes, kreplach are served on Rosh Hashanah, at the pre-fast meal before Yom Kippur, and on Hoshana Raba. Kreplach with vegetarian or dairy fillings are also eaten on Purim because the hidden nature of the kreplach interior mimics the "hidden" nature of the Purim miracle. A variety with a sweet cheese filling is served as a starter or main dish in dairy meals, specifically on Shavuot. Stuffed pasta may have migrated from Venice to the Ashkenazi Jews in Germany during the 14th century.

The word krepl is probably derived from the Old High German kraepfo meaning grape. The Middle English word grapple is related (from a grape vine hook).

There are recipes of course for kreplach, and there are delis and caterers who prepare them but some things in life are best in memory. My first pizzas, my first fast food hamburgers (when I swear they had taste) and maybe my first kiss. But for me and many more like me, its Grandma’s cooking (or Mothers cooking for some) that wins every time.

We had Jewish food, or Eastern European food or maybe Russian/Lithuanian food but whatever mixture it was, it was wonderful.

Her rolled cabbage had raisins in a tangy sweet tomato sauce and I did love it, but today I want to focus on kreplach.

She made huge ones, and mounds of them. They went in her chicken soup and were added just before serving. Some of them (I swear just made for me or so I felt at the time) were lovingly smeared in chicken fat (schmaltz) and put on cookie sheets and baked in the oven. They were hot, salty and fantastic! You could put them in soup or eat them on a plate. I think they may have been sprinkled with a bit of paprika and some cinnamon as well. They became browned and a bit crusty and it was heaven! The recipes below suggest frying them which works as well but does not include the loving and tender schmaltz treatment!

Here are a couple of kreplach recipes I found on the net. I have not tried them but thought I’d include some anyway.

#1
Kreplach Dough

½ tsp salt

2 eggs; slightly beaten

2 cups flour; unsifted (scant)

KREPLACH PREPARATION:

Add salt to eggs, add eggs to flour. Mix with your hands until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl. It should be fairly stiff. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Roll out on a lightly floured board. Roll and stretch until it is paper thin. Cut into 3” squares. Place 1 Tblsp of filling i(see below) in center of each square and fold to make a triangle. Crimp edges with a fork and cook in boiling water.

Cook until they rise to the top; about 10 or 12 minutes. DO NOT COOK IN THE SOUP.

You may warm them in the soup.

FILLING

2 cups veal; cooked and ground

1 egg

1 tablespoon onion; minced salt and pepper to taste

FILLING PREPARATION:

Put all the ingredients for the filling in the food processor leaving the eggs for last.

Recipe makes about 30.

#2
DOUGH:

2 cups flour

½ tsp salt

3 tbsp. Oil

2 egg yolks

½ cup water

1 ½ tsps. Baking powder or baking soda

FILLING:

1 onion diced

2 Tbsp. Oil

1 cup cooked ground beef or chicken

1 tsp. Salt

¼ tsp. Pepper

1 egg

1 Tbsp. Matzoh meal

DOUGH:

In a large bowl combine flour, salt and oil. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks, water and baking powder (or soda). Add to flour mixture. Knead and roll out thin on floured board. Cut into 3-inch squares or circles.

FILLING:

Saute onion in oil. Add ground beef or chicken and brown for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Add salt, pepper, egg and matzoh meal and mix well.

On floured board roll dough out as thin as possible without tearing. Cut rolled out dough into 3-inch squares. Place a teaspoon of filling carefully in center. Bring point 1 up to point 4 and seal edges. Moisten edges with tip of finger dipped in cold water to keep seams closed.

Place in boiling water. Cook approximately 20 minutes until kreplach float to top. When ready, remove from pot and serve in soup.

NOTE: This can also be served as a side dish. For crisp kreplach, fry boiled kreplach in heated oil in 10-inch skillet over medium flame until golden brown on both sides.

Yields: 18 kreplach

#3
DOUGH:

1 ¾ flour

2 eggs

½ tsp. Salt

3 Tbsp. Oil

FILLING

1 cup ground cooked beef or chicken

1 small onion, grated

1 tsp. salt

DOUGH: in a large bowl combine dough ingredients together. Knead and roll out thin on floured board. Cut into 3-inch squares or circles.

FILLING: in a small bowl mix filling ingredients well. See Kreplach illustrated for filling and folding. Kreplach can now be either boiled and served in soup or sauted in oil.

TO BOIL: Place in boiling salted water. Cook approximately 20 minutes until kreplach float to top.

TO SAUTE: Heat oil over medium flame in 10-inch skillet. Saute boiled kreplach until golden brown on both sides.

NOTE: Dough will roll out more easily after being wrapped in a damp cloth for one hour.

YIELDS: 18 Kreplach

The Pie Crust from arthursdays.blogspot.com

My wife seldom or never reads this stuff, and usually my daughters don’t either. They hate my writing it, and wish I didn’t speak or write, unless spoken to. This is my lot in life and while I don’t understand it, I live with it. As a communicator by nature, I could really care less, because I will continue. However, there are a few stories I start to tell my wife which she immediately tells me I can’t say, usually because she feels it would embarrass someone somewhere. I generally don’t care about it, and enjoy the challenge.



This is one of those I guess, but I can’t imagine this embarrassing anyone, it’s just sort of funny. I will leave out all names and references, and the person I’m writing about will recognize herself immediately and find it funny.

I had a call on the weekend asking if either my wife or daughter were home. The caller, when asked, needed baking advice and wanted to speak to the bakers. I explained that they both were out and asked if I could help. I was baking and cooking before my wife was born, but this seems to be lost on most people. I do know how to do stuff, even though I’m seldom called upon to do it.

She was baking a pie shell and wanted to know if she should prebake and if it was OK to use rice as she had no dry beans. I thought she could, although I’d never done that myself and she thanked me. I made many assumptions, as did she.

She assumed I knew nothing!

I assumed she knew something!

In this there is a world of difference.

She made the pie crust with rice as a weight but failed to realize that one must put something on the wet pie crust first before you put in the weights, or you will bake the weights into the pie! She poured the rice onto the wet pie shell and baked! She made a “hard rice pie”.

Prebaking a pie or tart crust is done so that you partially or completely bake before it is filled. This is done to help keep the crust from becoming soggy from a wet fruit filling, or so that you have a cooked crust if you are filling the pie with something already cooked, such as custard.

To prebake a crust, you roll it out and put it in the pan. To keep the bottom from puffing and the sides from falling, you should line the crust with parchment paper or aluminum foil, with holes poked in it. Fill it with beans or rice. There are also special pie weights on the market.

Make sure to gently push the beans or rice up against the sides of the parchment or foil to keep the sides of the crust from collapsing in the heat of the oven. Place the crust in a hot oven (say, 425°F; 220°C), which will help set the flour in the sides before the fat starts to soften, and bake for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the weights and liner from the crust, prick the bottom with the tines of a fork to allow steam to escape, and return the crust to the oven.

If you are prebaking the crust, it may only need another 5 minutes in the oven, until it is a very light brown. If you want to fully bake the crust, it may need 10 to 20 minutes more baking until it is done. You may also have to prick the bottom again.

Now, having done all this prebaking, you also must take care if you're subsequently going to add a filling and bake some more, that you don't overcook the edges of the crust that you so magnificently crimped or fluted or otherwise decorated. You can buy a pie crust shield, or if you're a master of aluminum-foil origami, you can make your own.

Remove the beans, rice, aluminum foil, parchment paper, metal weights and anything else before you put in the pie filling!

This is from www.arthursdays.blogspot.com June 20, 2010.

Today I decided to go with a new recipe. Every now and then I’ve written about food, and it usually involves some earlier story about a food article we’ve done, but today I’ve decided to go with a new one. This was last night’s dinner, made up from a novel reference.

In a recent James Patterson novel (I have no idea what the name is) that I'm listening to on my MP3 player in the car, one of the characters makes a dinner for his girlfriend, a Crabmeat Stuffed Tilapia. He tells her that he can prepare it, put it in the oven, and they can have forty five minutes to make love, and the dinner will be ready.Now any cook would know that any tilapia dish made in an oven for forty five minutes would be like a fish brick.

I loved the sound of the dish, but knew the writer didn't research the recipe a bit. It had little to do with the story and he probably didn’t care. For me, I can’t remember the name of the book, but can remember the food item. It says much about the writer, and me.

I read through a number of crab meat stuffed tilapia recipes on the internet and realized that any boy from Baltimore knows more about crab than the food writers ever will. So I went with the combination of recipes and my gut instinct. This is not rocket science.

Crabmeat Suffed Tilapia

Ingredients: (This is for two people, not the usual four)

2 tilapia filets about 6 ounces each (170 grams)

1/3 lb. fresh crab meat (fresh if possible)

1 stalk celery

1 small onion

1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (or dried if needed)

2 tbs. butter½ cup bread crumbs (I used whole wheat I made myself)

1 tbs. lemon juice

1 teas. Old Bay Seafood Seasoning (I guess you could use 1/4 teas. cayenne if you have no access to Old Bay, but a boy from Baltimore always has his Old Bay)

Sprinkle of paprika

Instructions:

Chop the onion and the celery into fine pieces

Sauté in a small skillet, with some butter, until softened

Chop the parsley and add to the onions and celery

Remove from the heat and add crab meat, bread crumbs, lemon juice and the Old Bay (or cayenne) and mix together very well

Form the mixture into two large crab oval crab cakes and place on a greased baking dish

Place a tilapia filet on top of each

Dot fish with butter and sprinkle on the paprika

Put in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes (mine was done in 15 minutes in a convection oven)

Serve on plate with lemon wedges (and anything else you'd like to add)

Serve with a smile, but make love before or after, there is not enough time while baking.

This one is from my other blog: arthursdays.blogspot.com

In 1995, my family appeared in one of many “Six O’clock Survival” features in the Calgary Herald. We cooked our way to “instant success” with a number of great meals with photos.

This favorite started as:

We’re back! Here’s a great dinner that we make together. It’s a little exotic, but Arthur chose this for his birthday dinner earlier this week.

We suppose that living in Detroit for 12 years, with its large Greek and Lebanese population, had its effect on us, and Mid-eastern food became an important part of our diet. Here’s a recipe that we love to make and it can be done in 30 minutes or less.

My recipe is based on many year’s of eating this at the Joe Zania’s Gnome Restaurant in Detroit, and this was my take on it. I’m sure Joe never used soy sauce in his life!

Ground Lamb and Pine Nuts Over Hummus

Basic Hummus Recipe

1 can chick peas (19 oz.)
5 tablespoons tahini
1 teaspoon minced garlic (2 to 3 cloves)
juice of 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons water

Put all ingredients in a food processor and blend until almost smooth.

3/4 lb. ground lamb
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste

Brown lamb in a frying pan in oil with all listed ingredients.

1/2 package pine nuts (50g)

Brown pine nuts in oven or toaster oven at 400 degrees F, for about 10-15 minutes, checking every 5 min.

Assemble on serving plate. Spread hommus on plate, cover with lamb mixture, top with browned pine nuts. Serve with warmed pitas and a Greek or tossed salad.

Serves 4.

This story is not really about the recipe, it’s about a pound of lamb!

On Saturday, my wife and I went to the grocery store in the afternoon. While wandering through the meat department, I spied ground lamb on sale, usually $8.49 per 500mg (a bit over a pound) on sale for $6.00. This was still much higher than it should have been (my thoughts), but it was $1.50 in savings.

I remembered the Ground Lamb, Pine Nuts and Hummus and thought how we haven’t made that for dinner in a year. Since both girls are home for the summer, we should make it! My wife agreed and we put it in the cart. The pine nuts were $45 a pound but we only needed a little!

At the checkout I checked the receipt and it rang in at $8.49.

I couldn’t argue with the cashier because he can only do what the machine says, so off I went to customer service, who were busy with elderly lottery players. I decided to wait while they painstakingly chose numbers. Why should I rush their fading dream?

I got to the counter and explained my plight. I was questioned a bit, and the store person called a meat department person to go and check out my story, as if I’d make this up for my $1.50!

A new person of authority appeared and was consulted. She asked the store person questions, and after determining I was correct, she said, “You get it for free!” and she than handed me $8.49!

I will enjoy my Ground Lamb and Pine Nuts Over Hummus more than ever!

From my Blog to my Mothers- A Cooking Addendum

Second Prize sounds OK, but not great. Wrong! In this case it was wonderful!

I received an email from the Shopping Channel about the Wolfgang Puck Recipe contest, in which there would be three prizes, first, and two runner up prizes. The prize would be for the best recipe (original I imagine) using Wolfgang Puck appliances.

OK, I am a good cook, and both my wife and I have appeared in the paper many times with cooking sensations. We did it mostly in Calgary, where we have been included in a Published Cook Book (not a church fund raiser) and once here in the Hamilton Spectator. So, I had recipes and I could find out quickly about Wolfgang Puck appliances.

I knew who Wolfgang Puck is, a very well know chef who has restaurants all over the world, and I had seen him cooking on the Shopping Channel selling his appliances and his cookware.

I quickly put together my entry and easily forgot all about it. The phone call from the Shopping Channel reminded me quickly enough, as I was one of three winners in the country!

The first prize was an all expense paid trip for two for two days to the Shopping Channel’s headquarters and the opportunity to cook your dish on the web. Maybe, if you were lucky, you might do it on television and you might meet Wolfgang Puck. The headquarters for the Shopping Channel is in Mississauga, Ontario, a forty five minute drive from my house. I may have been given gas money!

The runners up prizes were a 26 piece set of Wolfgang Puck cookware, which came in a forty two pound box currently sitting in my garage waiting for us to open it officially. It is big and beautiful!

The recipe is for Lion’s Head Meatballs, a gourmet Asian dish I had tasted once many years ago as it was made for me by a friend who was involved with gourmet cooking classes. I have seen it described in cookbooks twice, and put together my recipe, which I find wonderful. When we did this in the paper, my daughters were attacking it with chopsticks when my youngest was two years old. The photo was great but a bit fictitious as she could hardly do much with a fork at that time. Today, she is a wiz!

Enjoy the recipe!

LIONS HEAD MEATBALLS

1 pound Ground Pork or Ground Turkey

1/4 pound Cooked Shrimp

4 ounce (1/2 can) Water Chestnuts

2 Scallions

1/2-1 bunch Swiss Chard (trimmed of stems)

3 tbs Hoisin Sauce

1 1/2 cups Chicken Bouillon

1 teas Chopped Garlic

1 teas Ground or Minced Fresh Ginger

2 teas Soy Sauce

2 tbs Corn or Tapioca Starch

Salt and Pepper

2 tbs Cooking Oil

1/2 teas Sesame Oil

Combine shrimp, pork or turkey, scallions, water chestnuts, 1 tbs cornstarch, soy sauce, some salt and pepper and 1 1/2 tbs hoisin in a Wolfgang Puck Professional Series Food Processor with Flow Attachment and lightly blend. Shape into 8 large meatballs and dust with cornstarch.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add meatballs and brown on all sides and drain grease and oil. Add ginger root and garlic, bouillon, 1 1/2 tbs hoisin and some salt and pepper. Bring to boil and simmer meatballs for 5 minutes. Cover meatballs with as many Swiss chard leaves as possible, cover and simmer for 10-15 more minutes. Add remaining cornstarch, mixed in a little cold water to thicken the liquid.

Serve by placing cooked leaves on plate (Lions Mane) and cover with meatballs (Lions Head) and spoon on sauce. Serve four with rice made in our Wolfgang Puck 7 Cup Rice Cooker with Removable Lid. .