ceeder seder

This was written two weeks ago but wasn’t ready for posting. I ended up getting to busy to do so, so you get it today. Yay.

Had a loverly seder last night, all the more fun for being thrown together at the last possible second.

Last February or November or something i made vegan matzo ball soup, partly for di but mainly because i like a culinary challenge. Unfortunately, I don't remember how i made them. I think i based my recipe on this one: http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=147 . The first trial was a relative success, but im not sure if i modified it. last night i tried it again and it was less successful, though i saved it with a tasty broth. there are a couple comments i have as plausible reasons for the dissolution of the balls. first, one hour in the fridge is probably not enough. second, I'm not overly convinced of the effectiveness of straight tofu as a binder. i think next time i will at least use one egg equivalent of vegan egg replacer, probably flax seed, just to be sure. finally, i used firm tofu. im not really sure how much a difference that makes, but things like matzo balls are all chemistry, and diversion from the recipe should be noted as a possible point of failure.

the broth, as i noted, was more successful. I hate most commercial vegetable broths, mainly because of the inclusion of tomato. this is especially odd as i love tomato soup. be that as it may, i am generally hesitant to use vegetable broth as the sole base of my soup. in this case, i had already opened a can for use in the matzo balls, so i figured i would use it, but resent it. should you be attempting this, you should note that i had used 1/2 cup of the broth in the matzo balls. someone who cares more about this can do the math and calculate how many cups of broth i used in this recipe.

I started with a small onion and one of the commercially available minced garlics. some people complain about these, but if they are preserved in water they don't have any adverse additives and contribute a lot of garlic flavor without having to spend days peeling garlic. i hate peeling garlic. they say you can just smash it, but i am far too Jewish to pull that kind of thing off.

i set the onion and garlic in a big soup pot with a decent amount of olive oil, maybe 3 or 4 tablespoons, and while the oil heated i cut in 3 or 4 large mushrooms. i cut the mushrooms in 4 so there would be nice bite-size chunks. if i were doing this as a straight soup i would have gone heavier on the mushrooms, but as the focus of this was to be on the matzo balls, i figured i should go a bit lighter. By this point the oil was getting pretty hot, so i added a little broth from the can just to cool things off. through the rest of this recipe it should be assumed that when you are not chopping you are stirring, at least until you start adding water. otherwise things burn. i then chopped in two good handfuls of baby carrots, just cutting them in half so they would be of a good mouth size.

a key thing that many do not realize is that the reason chicken broth is so tasty isnt the chicken. it is the celery. to this end i cut in a few good shakes of celery salt, and then stripped the leaves off of three or four celery stalks, such that i had a good handfull of leaves before i chopped them. its important to check that the leaves aren't rotting, and then give them a good rinse. it is ok if some of the smaller branches get involved. all are welcome. cutting leaves is probably the most fun i ever have with a knife. i just get a big ol knife and go nuts. when they were reasonably decomposed by the cutting, i threw the leaves into the oil and then added a bit more broth. a generous amount of dill at this point is quite tasty.

this is basically it. keep stirring and adding broth a little at a time for five minutes or so, just letting the stock reduce between adding the broth. when you are out of broth, you have basically done enough. turn up the heat to high, and start adding cans of water. the vegan matzo ball recipe calls for 8 cups, so i added 8 cans.

having made my vegan matzo ball soup, i set about cooking meat. i had found a lamb shank at the grocery store, which i was quite pleased about. this wasnt going to be the focus of the meal, though, so i didnt put too much thought into this. i stuck the shank into a ziplock bag, added some shiraz red wine, franks red hot, and some worcestershire sauce, and topped it up with water. this was kind of uninspiring, but i think i watered it down too much, and it was only marinating for 20 minutes or so.

the main thing was to be chicken, that most traditional jewish meat. unfortunately our chicken was mostly frozen. i used the defrost setting on the microwave to get it to the point where i could get a knife in it, and took it down to pieces, then continued nuking the pieces until it was relatively defrosted. if there was one point where this meal could have failed it was here. pieces of the chicken got singed in the microwave, which is gross, and other pieces remained frozen. on the other hand, tearing down chickens is kind of a lot of fun. one of the parables of zen tells the story of a butcher who told the king he had never needed a new knife in 30 years. the secret, he said, was to cut in the spaces between the bones, working with nature to take apart the animal naturally and respectfully. the king, of course, was impressed, and sent his executioner to learn at the feet of this master.

no one ever said the powerful understand the proper lessons.

anyway, taking apart a chicken is a zen experience for me. keeping in mind the parable, i focus on the chicken, on what holds it together, and what makes it itself.

once the chicken was somewhat usable, i sprayed pam into a glass casserole, and put the chicken in, skin side up, onto the bottom of the pan. i discovered some sectns of brest had lost skin, and i covered these with the wings. i then gave the chicken a coating of salt and pepper, a few dashes of franks per peice, and a dusting of grahm masala.

sweet potatoes are an integral part of a seder, mainly because there are no other starches you can eat, save matzo. We didn't have any marshmallows, however, and i definitely didnt have time to do the full fledged mashed sweet potatoes thing. i sliced three potatoes into thin discs, but really just hacked them as small as i could quickly. then i thre more garlic into the bottom of a pan, added two of the three potatoes, added some dolups of smart balance, then added the third potato.

once the potatoes were done, i threw the lamb shank into a pamed pan, and put all three into the oven at 350. they were probably in there around and hour? im not sure, i just kept checking till the chicken was done. as it turned out, the chicken came out wonderfully. i dont know if it was the slightly frozen nature, or the fact that they were somewhat thick on the bottom of the pan, but they came out very juicy in the middle, with nicely crispy skin.

during the actual meal we ended up discussing the strange traditions that had developed in the Seder specifically, and in religious observance in general, around post Colombian contact plant items. for instance, the insistence on dogwood in easter celebrations. I don't know if dogwood is a pre or post contact flora in europe, but i doubt greatly that any kind of cross made in the middle east would have been made of a northern species like dogwood. more to the point, how authentic are the apples in the charoset? apples were an old world fauna, but there has been five thousand years of domesticated genetic manipulation, which was heavily accelerated in the new world.

at any rate, my charoset was very simple. the only walnuts i had were preserved in honey, so i used one apple, a quarter cup of honey walnuts, a quarter cup of almonds, and three tablespoons of shiraz wine. tasty.

The meal itself was somewhat rushed but lovely overall, lubricated with ample amounts of shiraz, my favorite wine. The matzo balls was something of a glorious disaster. As I mentioned, the balls dissolved. When I have read about matzo ball failures, people have talked of thick gelatinous masses. This wasn’t really what happened. Instead it was akin to an oatmeal, with the matzo meal serving to thicken the vegetable broth resulting in a delightfully savory and nutritious soup.