Monthly Archives: April 2015

Crisp Rosemary Olive Oil Matzo

Weirdly, I’m introducing my Pesach rosemary matzo by talking about Christmas. Christmas, you see, was where I fell in love with Carta di Musica, the thin crisp paper-like bread of Sardinia.

It was a number of years ago and I was spending Christmas with my friend, Antonietta. We–hubs and I–were arriving Christmas Eve, leaving the day after Boxing Day. There were no trains these days–Christmas in the UK isn’t just one day, its a string of days with so many businesses and transportations shut down that we were invited to settle in with Antonietta and her family, eat and drink, watch movies and open prezzies. While not EVERTHING closes the way it once did–you couldn’t even get a pint of milk for tea for days after the 25th–still, offices shut down, little business is done, and mostly you hang out. If you have family you might spend time with them, if you are a Christmas “orphan” that is, no family, you hang with friends. (These days I hang with my dogs, but then I celebrate each and every festival with them; they are very festive pooches).

Scrolling back the years, though, we spent Christmas with Antonietta who may have lived in the UK for decades but so Italian you think about bringing your passport when you go visit. In true Italian Christmas style her offerings were lavish: piles of beautiful cured meats, bowls of olives, plates of seafood, vegetable tarts, a turkey scented with truffle. She made risotto. There were cheeses. And in British style we ate, and then noshed on leftovers for the next few days. And each time we thought about a nosh, Antonietta said: “Wait! Lets have some carta di musica to go with it!”

She would take several rounds of the paper-thin flatbreads that look much like the parchment upon which music is traditionally written, pop them individually into a very hot oven to toast golden for a few minutes then drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with fresh rosemary then coarse salt. When all the sheets were done she piled them onto a plate and we ate them with whatever was left from Christmas dinner. At the end of our several day visit there was still leftover turkey, prosciutto, vegetable tarts, leftover everything in fact. Except carta di musica; there wasn’t a sheet left.

I was thinking of this the past week of Pesach, the holiday when Jews are commanded to forgo leavened bread and eat only unleavened, ie matzo. Many get tired of matzo after a few days; even those who normally love matzo reach the very end of their tolerance, let alone love. The Jews I know who “keep Pesach” that is, eat no levened bread but only matzo, among other things, usually need to take a little break when the holiday is over. For many, its awhile before matzo starts looking appealing again. But for myself? I just keep looking for new ways to eat matzo.

And today, it still being Pesach albeit the last stretch, I was thinking of tasty things to do with matzo until bread was back on the scene. Suddenly I remembered that Christmas with Antonietta and a lightbulb went off in my head–why not toast matzo, drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and rosemary, just like with carta di musica!

Crisp Toasted Matzo with Rosemary, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt.
Per person
Serve with a glass of wine and a bowl of olives.

1 sheet of matzo
About 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
About 2 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
Several large pinches coarse or flaked sea salt

Break the matzo up into cracker sized pieces, 6 to 8 per sheet.
Place on a baking sheet under a hot broiler and lightly toast until golden light brown, first on one side, then on the second.
Immediately transfer the toasted matzo to a plate, drizzle with the olive oil, sprinkle with the rosemary and salt, then serve.

This is my East Williamsburg Charoset: a basic Ashkenazi mixture plumped out deliciously by handfuls of Trader Joes Omegar 3 fruit/seed/nut mix. I was making  charoset with my daughter, Leah, in her East Willimsburg kitchen, and realized, late in the game when I was already mixing chopped apples with cinnamon and the sun was getting ready to set: Aiiiii, we didn’t have any walnuts!  Happily, Trader Joes was right down Metropolitan towards Queens, but once I got there for the walnuts, yeah, I got waylaid by the mixture from TJ’s– so varied and delightful, full of rich nuts, crunchy seeds and sweet dried fruit. There was some sort of berry in the mix–cranberry? cherries? which gave the whole charoset a surprisingly tangy edge. I plan on including this rather elegant trail mix in place of walnuts next Pesach. (fyi: Trader Joes has not sponsored this post).

For those of you who have never been to a Seder, it is the ritual meal that narrates the flight to freedom of the Hebrew slaves, or, by the time we end the evening, ex-slaves.  The word itself means, in Hebrew, “order”:  and in a seder there is a special order to everything. Think of a tasting meal (of simple dishes) with symbolism: the parsley dipped into the salt water tears, the bread of affliction which had no time to rise, the bitterness of the herbs and the egg…..a universal symbol of springtime, the wholeness of the world.  Other holidays and festivals can have a seder as well, and its become popular in recent years: for instance, tu b’shevat, the birthday of the trees when Jews sample the first fruits, or Sukkot, tasting the fruits of Autumn. But most people associate a Seder with Pesach/Passover because the ritual meal IS Pesach: the meal consists of a narration, read from the Haggadah, a book that leads us through from to freedom, each step of the way symbolized by specific foods.

While Jews all over the world celebrate basically the same way, with basically the same foods, there are, of course, so many variations in both, depending on the community. One of my favourites is beating each other with green/spring onions, to symbolize the whips of Pharoah; its a Persian tradition and when my late brother married into a Persian family my daughter and I fell in love with doing this. For one thing it breaks the seder up a bit and lightens the mood because it is SO MUCH FUN.  You get to slap people around harmlessly, whack a swoosh of the delicate green leaves across the person next to you, smoosh against the shoulder of the person across the table, tickle against the ear of whoever you can stretch your arm to reach! By this time everyone should be laughing hysterically, and the room should smell fabulously  perfumed with onion!

We start when we are slaves. A Seder Plate welcomes us to the table with a small amount of each important ingredient for the course of the evening, with Charoset/Haroset/Harosses/Halek (or any number of different names depending on the community you have come from) having an important place in the ceremony. While it symbolizes a thing that oppressed us–the mortar we slaves were forced to build with–the mixture itself is utterly delicious:  a sweet mixture of fruit, nuts, spices and wine. It t is something completely different from anything else you’ll eat the rest of the year: is a confection? a fruit salad? yes, its all of these things, but it tastes remarkably, specifically, evocatively, of Pesach.

We end the meal spiritually with freedom, or rather our hopes and intentions of facilitating freedom. When we raise our glasses and proclaim: L’shana Tova B’Yerushalayim, next year in Jerusalem, we have eaten our way through this epic and universal story, and hopefully (a good reason to make a big batch) we have enough leftover charoset to enjoy throughout the rest of the festival, plopping it here and there as we like. Its lasts beautifully, really, for about two weeks but will be eaten up far more quickly.

Back to our recipe, this is basically an Ashkenazi charoset with the Eastern European flavours that our grandparents brought from Europe. We might have it chopped or sliced to a different consistency, we might use grape juice instead of wine, we might vary the ingredients a little bit. For instance, we always had celery in ours: i like the savoury, saline, edge that celery gives the fruit. You can leave it out if you like. Sephardi charoset/haroset/halik/etc has the same place in the seder but is far more varied and exotic with such ingredients as dates and orange flower water and cardomom. Next year I’m going to share some of my favourite Sephardi Charosets with you.

Ashkenazi Charoset, with Trail Mix

Serves 6 to 8

• 3 apples, cored but unpeeled, diced
• 1-2 sticks/ribs celery, finely diced (optional)
• About 150g/6 oz/ 1 1/2 cups omega three fruit/nut/seed mix or any very delicious trail mix, or 100g/1 cup walnut pieces (plus optional dried fruit such as cranberries, raisins,cherries)
• 5-6 tablespoons sweet red wine for Pesach (or any dry red wine, or red grape juice or other fruit juice)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• A spoonful or two of sugar/honey, to taste

Combine the ingredients, mix well, and chill until ready to use.

Those of us who celebrate Pesach know that a good charoset means snacking on matzo spread with charoset throughout the festival. But its pretty great with all sorts of dishes: greek yogurt. smoked cold meats. leftover cold chicken, cheeses. Hot grain cereal if you are not observing Pesach. I think it might make a great sundae with ice cream, or a layered between spongecake and whipped cream , a Pesach/Passover spongecake of course.

In my handbag today? Preserved lemons, Indian mied pickle, dark chocolate, Tuscan truffle salt…. oh and 30 month old Parmigiano cheese!

When I was growing up I knew, deep deep down, that I’d one day be famous. I wasn’t quite sure for what, but figured time would let me know. As years passed and I wrote cookbook after cookbook, every so often I paused for a moment: thinking: am I famous yet? As I wrote my column, did a radio show in London on LBC, guested on the BBC, i wondered: Am I famous yet? Sadly, no. Not famous yet. Not EXACTLY.

However, I AM famous for one thing: my handbag. Wherever I go in the world, people want to know what I have it in: chances are its going to be something unexpected and delicious. With my big fat handbag I pull out the goodies I’ll need wherever I go, whatever food I find that might need perking up or whoever I meet that might need just the goodies I have to share.

Today, for instance, i opened my handbag and let the ingredients spill out a bit: then I took a picture. Here is what came tumbling out of my bag: a big fat Englsih cucumber, a half jar of black truffle salt from Tuscany (what happens if on my travels of a day i meet a hard cooked egg without it?). There is a half jar of preserved lemons and a full jar of Indian mixed pickle, a big bar of dark chocolate….oh and a wedge of 30 month old Parmigiano. I have been known to use my handbag as an affinage cave, that is, aging it until the perfect state. With 30 month old Parmigiano, it doesn’t need more aging, nor does it need refrigeration, its perfect to have in my handbag just in case I need to grate it over pasta or a Caesar salad, i need a nibble on an airplane, or in case I run into YOU and you’d like a taste. We can always find some lovely pears to go with it!

When my buddies, Clark and Marcy– food broadcasters Clark Wolf and Marcy Smothers–heard I was going to be at the San Francisco Winter Fancy Food Show they invited me to come onto their program. And bring my handbag: they knew that after shlepping aroundFancy Food Show I would no doubt have a great stash to share or nosh or give away. My big bag of delicious “just in case”.

Listen Here

And I have to say that my handbag is a two-way street: not only is it a great stash of condiments and ingredients but its also a perfect bag to have when you need to put something away “for later”. In a restaurant where there is fabulous bread? I got my bag! Walking down a street and spy lemons growing abundantly? reach up and grab a lemon, stash it in my bag and I’m outta there!

And if you want to see me make something with the stuff in my handbag; here is a little video. i had preserved lemons and harissa, and on the way down the path to my friend Betsy’s kitchen, I found a chicken laying eggs! really! this recipe if for brik a l’oeuf and its BRILLIANT.  Messy but not too difficult; after a few tries you’ll be a pro. Go make it!