1,000 Jewish Recipes (106 page)
Read 1,000 Jewish Recipes Online
Authors: Faye Levy
1
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2
cups, enough for the top of a 13 Ã 9 Ã 2-inch cake
This luscious frosting is great on chocolate cakes or on brownies.
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2
cup whipping cream, nondairy creamer, or nondairy rice milk
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
6 tablespoons (
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4
stick) unsalted butter or margarine, slightly softened
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon honey
1.
Bring cream to a boil in a small, heavy saucepan. Remove from heat and immediately add chopped chocolate. Using a small whisk, stir quickly until chocolate is completely melted and mixture is smooth. Transfer to a bowl. Cool to room temperature. Using an electric mixer, whip mixture at high speed about 3 minutes.
2.
Cream butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer until very soft and smooth. Beat in chocolate mixture in 3 batches. Beat well until frosting is smooth. Gradually beat in honey until blended.
Red-fleshed plums give this sauce a beautiful color. Turn a slice of honey cake into an elegant dessert by surrounding it with a ribbon of this sauce and accompanying it with a few wedges of fresh fruit. It's also good with sponge cake or angel food cake.
Another way to use plum sauce is in savory dishes. Omit the powdered sugar, and you can serve this dish with roast chicken or duck, instead of applesauce.
3
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4
cup sugar
3 cups water
1 vanilla bean (optional)
1 pound ripe plums, preferably red-fleshed, halved and pitted
5 to 6 tablespoons powdered sugar, sifted
1 to 2 teaspoons plum brandy (optional)
1.
Combine sugar, water, and vanilla bean, if using, in a heavy saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring gently, until sugar dissolves. Bring to boil over high heat. Add plums. Cover and cook plums over low heat about 12 minutes or until tender when pierced with sharp knife. Cool in syrup. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2.
Remove plums from their poaching syrup; reserve syrup. Puree plums with 5 tablespoons of poaching syrup in food processor or blender. Add 5 tablespoons powdered sugar and puree until smooth. Strain into a bowl, pressing gently on pulp in strainer. Use rubber spatula to scrape remaining sauce from underside of strainer.
3.
Whisk sauce until smooth. If sauce is too thick, gradually whisk in 1 or 2 tablespoons more syrup. Taste and add more powdered sugar if needed. Whisk sauce thoroughly to blend in sugar. Strain sauce again if necessary. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Stir in plum brandy, if using. Serve cold.
This sauce requires advance planning to prepare, but it's worth it: with its rosy wine color, it is great with cakes, especially in autumn. Serve it with homemade or bakery honey cake, vanilla ice cream, or pear sorbet.
Only part of the delicious wine syrup is needed for the sauce. Save the rest and use it to moisten fruit salads. Or make a quick fruit compote: Bring the syrup to a simmer, add dried fruit, and let it steep in the syrup off the heat until tender.
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2
cup sugar
2 cups dry red wine
1 vanilla bean
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4
pound ripe pears, peeled, halved, and cored
2 tablespoons powdered sugar, sifted
1.
Combine sugar, wine, and vanilla bean in medium, heavy saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring gently, until sugar dissolves. Raise heat to high and bring to boil. Add pears. Cover with a lid slightly smaller than diameter of saucepan to keep fruit submerged. Cook pears over low heat 30 minutes to 1 hour or until tender when pierced with sharp knife; cooking time varies with ripeness.
2.
Cool in syrup, still covered, to room temperature. Refrigerate in syrup for 8 hours or overnight so that pears absorb color and flavor from syrup.
3.
With a slotted spoon remove pears from syrup, reserving syrup.
4.
Puree pears with 3 tablespoons of poaching syrup in a food processor or blender. Add powdered sugar and puree until smooth. Strain into a bowl, pressing on pulp in strainer. Use rubber spatula to scrape sauce from underside of strainer. Whisk sauce until smooth and sugar is completely blended in. If a thinner sauce is desired, gradually whisk in up to 2 tablespoons more syrup. Strain again if any lumps of sugar remain. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes. Stir before serving. Serve cold.
If you like gooey, sticky sweets, tayglach are for you. This old-fashioned Ashkenazic confection of pastry balls and nuts simmered in honey is a Rosh Hashanah specialty. Just before the holiday, tayglach are featured at Jewish bakeries, where the shiny sweets are often shaped in mounds, set in cupcake papers, and garnished with candied cherries. Be sure to serve them with strong unsweetened coffee or tea.
Tayglach keep very well wrapped in plastic and stored in airtight containers. (The plastic prevents them from sticking to the container.) You can either wrap the tayglach mixture and cut it when you need it, or cut it into squares and wrap each one.
1 cup hazelnuts
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2
cup small walnut halves
1
1
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3
cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
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4
teaspoon baking powder
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4
teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup honey
1 cup sugar
1.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Put hazelnuts in a baking pan. Toast them in oven about 8 minutes or until their skins begin to split. Transfer hazelnuts to a strainer. While they are hot, remove most of skins by rubbing hazelnuts energetically with a towel against strainer. Let nuts cool on a plate. Add walnuts to hazelnuts. Leave oven on.
2.
Grease 2 large baking sheets. Sift flour with
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2
teaspoon ginger, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Make a well in center. Add eggs, egg yolks, and oil to well. Stir until combined. Knead on a lightly floured surface about 3 minutes or until it becomes a soft, smooth dough. If dough is very sticky, knead in about 1 tablespoon more flour. If dough is very dry, add 1 tablespoon water.
3.
Cut dough into 8 pieces with floured knife. Using both hands, roll a piece of dough on a lightly floured surface into a thin rope of
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2
-inch diameter. With a floured, heavy knife, cut rope into
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2
-inch lengths. Repeat with remaining dough.
4.
Place dough pieces on baking sheets without letting them touch each other. Bake about 10 minutes or until their bottoms are light brown. Remove from oven. Line another large baking sheet with foil and oil the foil.
5.
Combine honey, sugar, and remaining 1
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2
teaspoons ginger in large, heavy saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil over medium heat; be careful, as mixture boils over easily. Cook over low heat about 5 minutes or until syrup reaches the hard-ball stage, 260°F on a candy thermometer.
6.
Carefully add tayglach, hazelnuts, and walnuts to syrup. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasion-ally, about 10 minutes or until tayglach are golden brown.
7.
Stir tayglach mixture to distribute nuts evenly. Spoon mixture onto foil-lined baking sheet. Flatten it so that tayglach form a thin layer; let cool completely.
8.
Turn tayglach over onto a board. Carefully peel off foil. Cut into 1-inch squares. To store, wrap in plastic wrap. Keep in shallow, airtight containers at room temperature until ready to serve. Serve in candy papers.
During this season, plums are plentiful and make a lovely addition to fresh fruit salads. Choose two different types to make a good mix of color. They make a pretty and delicious combination with yellow nectarines and green or red grapes. For Rosh Hashanah, make a light, easy dressing from honey, wine, and mint.
If you like, serve the fruit salad with
Fresh Plum Sauce
instead of making the honey dressing. Or, if Rosh Hashanah falls on a hot day, serve the fruit salad in bowls and top each with a scoop of fruit sorbet.
6 ripe plums, preferably 3 red-fleshed and 3 yellow-fleshed, cut into wedges
1
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3
cups green or red seedless grapes
3 ripe nectarines
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons dry red or white wine or orange juice
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
Fresh mint sprigs for garnish
Put plum wedges in a large bowl. Add grapes, nectarines, honey, wine, and mint. Serve cold, garnished with mint sprigs.