April 11, 2012 | 4:46 pm

The Rest of Passover—Fifth Night [RECIPE]

Posted by Rob Eshman

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When you’re searching for how to create dinners during Passover that avoid all the no’s, you can’t go wrong sticking to vegetables, fruit, fish and meat—and that leaves a lot of possibilities.

Today’s menu is as simple as a trip through the Farmer’s Market.  Spring means fresh parsnips, fresh artichokes (our front yard is full of them) and fresh greens.  You can go vegetarian, even vegan, by omitting the grilled chicken.

Roasted Parsnips
Italian Dandelions
Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichokes
Grilled Chicken Breast

[RECIPES]

Roasted Parsnips

3 pounds super-fresh parsnips, peeled and cut in 1-inch slices
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Toss parsnips with other ingredients.  Roast until very crisp, turning occasionally.

Italian Dandelion

1 pound Italian dandelion (or other green), very well washed
4 cloves garlic, chopped or sliced
olive oil
salt and pepper

Bring a large pot of water to boil.  Boil dandelions until tender.
Drain and squeeze dry in a dish towel.  Chop dandelions.

Heat a skillet.  Add olive oil and garlic, and saute until garlic is golden.  Add chopped dandelion, salt and pepper, and saute until heated through, about 5 minutes.

Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichokes

▪ 4 medium or large artichokes
▪ Juice from 1 medium-large lemon (about 1/2 cup)
▪ 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
▪ Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
▪ Fresh thyme
▪ 3 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Remove tough outer leaves from artichokes. Cut top of remaining leaves at the point where the green and yellow come together. Dip cut end in the lemon juice. Cut off bottom tip of stem, and peel away green layer of stem until white inner layer is exposed. Cut the artichokes in half and remove the inner fuzzy choke and any small prickly leaves. Slice in half again and toss with the lemon juice.
Pour the artichokes and lemon juice in a casserole dish, drizzle with the extra virgin olive oil, season with the salt, pepper and thyme and add the garlic. Stir and place in the preheated oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, stirring once during cooking.

Grilled Chicken Breasts

4 chicken breasts
1/4 cup white wine
3 cloves garlic
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 T fresh chopped thyme
1/4 c. olive oil
salt and pepper

In a bowl or Ziploc bag, combine all ingredients.  Let marinade 15 minutes to an hour.  Drain.
Preheat grill.  When hot, spray with olive oil, add chicken and grill until cooked through, about 4 minutes per side.

April 10, 2012 | 3:26 pm

The Rest of Passover Cooking- Fourth Night

Posted by Rob Eshman

It’s coming up on Dinner #4 in the “What to Eat the Rest of Passover” series. Are we even at the hump yet?  There are still a few days of Passover left to go.  This is no time to fall back on hackey “cheese ‘n matzo pizza” recipes that pop up every time you Google “Passover cooking.”  Stick to great, fresh food—plenty of it around this time of year. So, for tonight:

Asparagus Milanese “Biffi” 
Avocado Salad “Garga”
Bubbie’s Passover Rolls

Tonight’s menu (minus the Passover rolls) comes from a trip we took to Italy in 2008.  Biffi is a classic Milanese restaurant in the Galleria Vittoria Emanuelle II in Milan.  Great for people- and Duomo-watching, it caters to tourists but mostky of the Italian variety.  Asparagus Milanese is, to break it down, asparagus with a fried egg and parmesan cheese. Works for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whenever. 

Garga is the Florence Italy version of de Struisvogel: family-run, instantly warm and welcoming.  Whereas de Struisvogel reflects a more sedate Dutch propriety, Garga can be wild, a place of spontaneous partying and joyful noise.  This is their classic salad, which uses exotic—for Italy—avocado.

[RECIPE]

Garga Salad
 
INGREDIENTS

6 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
8 cups baby arugula
1 pound tomatoes, diced
4 stalks canned hearts of palm, sliced into rounds
2 medium avocados, peeled, diced
1 2 oz. wedge Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted

Whisk oil and lemon juice in small bowl to blend. Season dressing to taste with salt and pepper.
Combine arugula, tomatoes, hearts of palm and avocados in large bowl. Add dressing and toss to blend.
Using vegetable peeler, shave Parmesan cheese into strips over salad. Sprinkle with pine nuts.
Serves 4.

Asparagus Milanese

4 extra large eggs
1 pound asparagus
salt and pepper
1/2 pound (approx.) Parmegiano-Reggiano
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven broiler.  Heat a skillet and add some olive oil.  Add asparagus, some salt and pepper, and cook over high heat until cooked through and still bright green, about 5 minutes.  Remove from pan and divide among four ovenproof plates or place in a shallow casserole.  In the same skillet, add some more olive oil and fry eggs until just set.  Place on top of the asparagus.  Grate parmesan on top, then place under broiler for JUST A FEW SECONDS until cheese is melted.

Serves 4.

with, of course, Bubbie’s Passover Popovers

Bubbie’s Passover Popovers

(adapted from Ruth Levy and Joan Nathan)

1/2 cup vegetable oil, plus more for baking sheet
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup matzo meal
(or half matzo meal, half matzo cake meal) 
1/2 tablespoon sugar (or, to taste)
4 eggs
 
Directions:

1 Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2 Brush a baking sheet with oil; set aside.
3 In a medium saucepan, bring oil, 1 cup water, and salt to a boil over medium-high heat.
4 Stir in matzah meal (or matzo meal/cake flour) until sticky, remove from heat and let cool completely.
5 Add sugar and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
6 Fill a large bowl with water.
7 Dip your hands in the water and then form dough into a ball about the size of a tennis ball.
8 Place on prepared baking sheet.
9 Repeat process until all dough has been used.
10 Transfer to oven and bake until popovers are puffy, about 15 to 20 minutes.
11 Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking until golden brown, about 40 minutes.
12 Serve immediately.

For what to expect tomorrow, click here.

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April 9, 2012 | 2:31 pm

The Rest of Passover—Third Night

Posted by Rob Eshman

This week I vowed to supply you with a Passover’s worth of dinner ideas beyond the seder.

Today’s Passover recipe comes from a rainy July night in Amsterdam.

It was pouring, and we were hungry.  There was a café near our bed and breakfast, Inn Old Amsterdam,  in the Nieumarkt district, but we wanted something warm and filling and, you know, Dutch.

The owners of Inn Old Amsterdam sent us to de Struisvogel, a cab ride away.  From the moment we walked down a quick flight of stairs into the small, subterranean space, I knew it was going to be a good night.  The small place was packed.  The signs, the menus, the clientele were all Dutch, Dutch, Dutch.  Bottles of jenever and beer and wine studded the tables.  It was Bruegel with Polo, and without the threatening undertones. 

It had, instantly, all the attributes I want in a restaurant: just like eating at home, but much better.

de Struisvogel means “the ostrich,” and there is ostrich on the menu.  I don’t know why.  The men and women sitting next to us, a loud and friendly table of World War II vets and their wives who gather every year for a reunion (“until there are none of us left”) directed us to the fish.. and the jenever.

The menu is small, and prix fixe.  But you can choose from a fish, beef or, of course, ostrich.  There are Dutch dishes, like lamb stew, roasted potatoes, local blue cheeses, but plenty of Italian influence: risotto, carpaccio, etc.

The family that runs the place is just welcoming.  Everybody is drinking, every body is speaking over everybody else, the temperature inside stays warm as rain pounds away outside.  When it’s time to go, after a superior apple crumble, you’ll feel like you’re leaving home. 

Here’s a Passover-friendly dish from de Struisvogel:

[RECIPE]

Grilled fillet of Sea Bass with Sauce Antiboise

You make sauce vierge (virgin sauce) with virgin olive oil, basil, garlic,  tomatoes and perhaps some anchovies.  Antiboise sauce, ostensibly from the Antibes,  uses cilantro instead of basil.

4 sea bass filets (or halibut, snapper, cod)
1/2 lemon, grated zest only
      1/2 orange, grated zest only
½ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2 shallots, very finely diced
      2 clovew garlic, crushed
1 cup coriander leaves, chopped
2 large plum tomatoes,chopped
          2 T capers, chopped (optional)
black pepper
lemon juice, to taste
Arugula and watercress leaves

1. Place the sea bass fillets in a large, shallow dish with the lemon and orange zest ¼ cup olive oil for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

2. Place the remaining olive oil in a heavy-based frying pan.

3. Add in the shallot and garlic and fry very gently until translucent. 

4. Add the coriander leaves and cook gently a minute or two.

5. Add the tomatoes and warm gently, then add the capers. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper and the lemon juice.

6. Preheat a grill until very hot.

7. Remove the sea bass from the marinade and cook on the hot griddle, skin-side down, for 3 minutes, then turn and cook for 3 minutes on the remaining side.

8. Spoon the tomato mixture onto four serving plates. Top each serving with a griddled sea bass fillet, then top with a few cress and arugula leaves. Drizzle with a little olive oil and serve at once.

I like to serve with Passover Popovers—more roll-like than plain matzo.  Of course, these they didn’t have at deStruisvogel.  The recipe is below:

Bubbie’s Passover Popovers

(adapted from Ruth Levy and Joan Nathan)

1/2 cup vegetable oil, plus more for baking sheet
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup matzo meal
(or half matzo meal, half matzo cake meal) 
1/2 tablespoon sugar (or, to taste)
4 eggs
 
Directions:

1 Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2 Brush a baking sheet with oil; set aside.
3 In a medium saucepan, bring oil, 1 cup water, and salt to a boil over medium-high heat.
4 Stir in matzah meal (or matzo meal/cake flour) until sticky, remove from heat and let cool completely.
5 Add sugar and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
6 Fill a large bowl with water.
7 Dip your hands in the water and then form dough into a ball about the size of a tennis ball.
8 Place on prepared baking sheet.
9 Repeat process until all dough has been used.
10 Transfer to oven and bake until popovers are puffy, about 15 to 20 minutes.
11 Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking until golden brown, about 40 minutes.
12 Serve immediately.

For what to expect tomorrow, click here.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

April 6, 2012 | 12:34 am

The Rest of Passover Cooking [RECIPE]

Posted by Rob Eshman

The food challenge of Passover is not the seder.  It’s the seven days that come after.

After all, you know what to make on seder.  Torah and tradition are right there by your side, cooking: matzo, charoset, chicken or brisket, kugel if you’re Askenazi, something people actually like if you’re Sephardic.  It’s all preordained. God is your sous chef.

But then the holiday of Passover is over, and you’re facing seven days of elaborate, seemingly all-encompassing food restrictions.

Not only are the usual non-kosher food off limits, but so is all bread, pasta, beans, rice, and, of course, beer.  The idea is to avoid not just leavened bread, as it says in the Torah, but anything that can or will be used against you to harbor leavening.

Sephardic Jews are a bit more lenient. They get to eat beans, seeds and rice. Observant Ashkenazic Jews ar the most exacting—I’ve passed evenings arguing whether it’s okay to serve fresh green beans.
Where do I fall on the spectrum?  During Passover, I go full Ashkenzi.  I’m not sure why—the rest of the year I have a very expanded and convenient idea of what kosher means to me. (OUTSIDE our home, I hasten to add.  Inside I am under rabbinical supervision).

But during Passover it feels right to forego the weightiness of flour and starches and legumes.  It’s liberating.  The rabbis who developed these arcane rules perfectly understood that spirituality begins with what we eat.  By spending a week free of the heavier stuff, I really do feel lighter, more free. The Exodus continues, just in my stomach.

But… it ain’t easy.  Thinking of menus that don’t involve bread, pasta, beans rice, but excite you, satisfy you—that takes some doing .  As I said, anyone and their grandmother can give you a matzo ball recipe, but what about dinner on Day 5?

Here’s how I solved the problem this year: by looking at iPhoto.  We traveled to some great places this year, and I’m one of those people who takes photos of food and menus, and keeps notes.  I went back through my photos and found favorite dishes that happen to be Passover friendly.  They are mostly from restaurants in Amsterdam, Barcelona, London and Milan, with a few local places, including my home, thrown in. Many involve fish, and there’s a lot of vegetables.  The flavors are strong.  The ingredients are fresh.  My pet peeve are those prepared Passover foods, like brownie mix and cereals, that completely subvert the spirit of the holiday, if not the law. These recipes are springy: herbs, fresh vegetables, fresh fish.

Check back here each day next week. I’ll post at least one main dish recipe each day during the intermediate days of Passover, along with a bit about where I ate it. 

It’s a long holiday, but I promise, you won’t go hungry.

I’ll start with the last recipe, for Chef Micah Wexler’s Roasted Beet Salad with Grilled Haloumi Cheese.  Micah is the chef/co-owner of Mezze on La Cienega Blvd., and many of his Levant-inspired dishes are Passover friendly.  This one uses garbanzo beans in the original—boiled and fried, if I remember correctly.  But you can leave them out.  If you’re Ashkenazic.

Here’s what’s on my non-seder Passover menu the rest of the week:

Cod Gratinée with an Artichoke Mousse “Café de l’Academia” in Barcelona

Lemon and Olive Oil-Roasted Artichoke “da Toni” Venice

Sole with celery puree and roasted cherry tomatoes “Arcana” Barcelona

Sweet Potato and Soft Goat Cheese Gratin with Spring Herb Salad “Struisvogel” Amsterdam

Seared Trout with Berber Spice and Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette (okay, this one is mine)

Asparagus Milanese “Biffi” Milan

Padron Peppers “Santa Catalina” Barcelona

Cauliflower, Courgette, Mint and Ticklemore “Great Queen Street” London

Potato Cake, Bell Onion, Romesco and Fried Egg “Great Queen Street” London

Grilled Fillet of Sea Bass with sauce antiboise “Struisvogel” Struisvogel

Roasted Beet Salad with Grilled Halloumi Cheese, “Mezze” Beverly Hills

RECIPE

Roasted Beet Salad with Grilled Halloumi Cheese

3 baby red beets
3 baby gold beets
3 baby striped beets
1 block halloumi cheese
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1 tbsp dried mint
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup sherry vinegar
1 tsp sea salt

Trim the beets of their leaves and stems. Place each type of beet in a separate foil packet with 1 tbsp EVOO, 1 tsp sherry vinegar, and some salt. Place the three packets on a roasting pan and roast at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until tender.

Remove beets from oven and allow to cool. Using a dish towel, rub the beets to remove the skin and discard the skin. (Please use a towel you don’t care about - the beet juice WILL stain it.) Cut the beets in halves and marinate in a quarter cup of EVOO and 2 tbsp sherry vinegar.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry in a pan with oil until golden. Mix the yogurt with the lemon juice, dried mint, salt, and a quarter cup of EVOO.

To dress, place the marinated beets in a bowl, and garnish with the yogurt dressing and fried halloumi.

 

 

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