Lesley is here now - Message Board

No blini for חֲנֻכָּה? Well, what do I know, shiksa that I am. :-/

Reply #2021. Dec 01 10, 6:38 PM

Rowena8482

The Romans (of high class of course) used to organise gladiators to battle to the death to honour the death of a father or head of household iirc. The more they spent on the 'festivities' the greater the accumulated kudos.

Reply #2022. Dec 02 10, 1:40 AM

Ooh yes - blinis/blintzes, preferably stuffed with cheese, and as long as they're fried, and only when you can't face any more latkes and doughnuts.

The official line is that oil-fried foods are eaten to commemorate the miracle of one day's oil lasting for eight days. In practice, I think fried foods at this time of year are quite a nice idea, possibly even sensible. (Depending on the state of your coronary arteries, perhaps?)

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I imagine the kudos would also be related to the number of dead gladiators? Lovely people, the ancient Romans.

Reply #2023. Dec 02 10, 8:10 AM

C30	It is grossly? unfair to mention "fry ups" when there are those in our midst banned from such culinary delights! Reply #2024. Dec 02 10, 8:29 AM

Admiral, may I offer you just a blinchik, then?

Reply #2025. Dec 02 10, 8:38 AM

I am just about to begin my mission to see if tsimmes can be bought outside Bloom's, I would hope you can but won't be certain till I've been to Temple Fortune and Golders Green. I know at least two people who will be very happy if I find it and I am one of them.

Reply #2026. Dec 02 10, 8:51 AM

Well it was fascinating walking round Kosher Kingdom for the first time, it's massive, and they had literally anything you could have imagined. Except tsimmes. I'm looking online now, I can't give up already.

Reply #2027. Dec 02 10, 12:03 PM

Ray, me too. I am supposed to be keeping an eye on my fat intake too, and I haven't had a doughnut for longer than I can remember - they're calories and not much else - but latkes are different. High calorie, high fat, completely delicious.

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Blinchik - baby blintz? - sounds much safer: thank you. :)

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David, isn't it quicker to make them yourself than to go on a shop crawl? There are loads of recipes, most of them over-complicated with the addition of things like sweet potatoes, prunes, chilli flakes. All you need besides the carrots is
- a bit of salt,
- a bit of fat (solid or liquid or a mixture),
- and something sweet (honey or sugar or a mixture)
although I've never understood the appeal of sweet carrots, but still.

Here are three relatively basic recipes. See what you think. And if you're wondering how big a carrot is - middle-sized I suppose. One recipe said a bag of carrots, and I have no idea how big a bag is.

CARROT TZIMMES
12 carrots
3 tbsp. butter - that's about 1.5 ounces
3 tbsp. honey
3 tbsp. brown sugar - so's that, about 1.5 oz or 40g
3 tbsp. lemon juice

Peel and slice carrots.
Melt butter in saucepan. Add honey, sugar, and lemon juice. Mix well.
Add carrots; bring mixture to a boil; lower the heat and simmer for 1 hour.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1950,145178-227193,00.html

--- Carrot Tzimmes - 4 to 6 servings

http://www.whats4eats.com/vegetables/carrot-tzimmes-recipe

--- Simple Honey Glazed Baby Carrots

http://southernfood.about.com/od/carrots/r/r91122a.htm

Let us know how you get on!

Reply #2028. Dec 02 10, 12:03 PM

We U.S. Southerners prepare our holiday sweet potatoes/yams in much the same way as you do the carrot tzimmes, although those cooks in the Deep South add miniature marshmallows and brown them.

No hay nada nuevo bajo el sol. There's nothing new under the sun!

What about the rugelach?

Reply #2029. Dec 02 10, 1:57 PM

Just saw that one of your links is to "southern foods." Although the recipe is for carrots, it's pretty much like what we do with "sweet taters."

I'm slow. Cute, but slow.

Reply #2030. Dec 02 10, 2:01 PM

Rugelach is a lovely idea but it's sweet for ראש השנה, as opposed to oily for חנוכה. I think latkes is quite enough oil for anyone, though. :)

Reply #2031. Dec 02 10, 2:08 PM

I'm just slow. :)

Here's yet another very simple one from

http://hattie-carnegie.info/jewishcook.html

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MEATLESS CARROT TZIMMAS

1 lb of carrots
3 tablespoons of chicken fat
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1 1/4 cups of water
salt
dash of ground ginger

Scrape and dice the carrot.
Heat the chicken fat in a saucepan, add the carrots and cook over a moderate heat lightly brown.
Boil the sugar and water together for 5 mins and add carrots.
Boil gently for 10 to 15 mins., stir in salt and a pinch of ginger and serve hot.

Serves 4
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I'm not sure I'd dice the carrot - peel and slice is surely good enough?
And oil, particularly olive oil, is good, and will do just fine if you don't happen to have any chicken fat in the fridge!
A quick stir in hot oil should be enough to brown the carrots without burning them, and the water will definitely stop them burning.

David, I reckon even you could make these. :p

Reply #2032. Dec 02 10, 2:15 PM

Rugelach is a lovely idea but it's sweet for ראש השנה, as opposed to oily for חנוכה.
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I could swear I've seen rugelach at Manny Hattan's in Austin, TX, during the חנוכה season.

Or maybe I just wanted to write "Manny Hattan's"? :)

If you're not cute, Lesley, then what am I?

Reply #2033. Dec 02 10, 2:43 PM

fontenilles

"Have you decided yet where you will be spending them?"

Yes I have Lesley - In the sun :)

Robin

Reply #2034. Dec 02 10, 2:51 PM

My friend who does cook said they are complicated, which prompted me to go and check. Even online, nothing. A massive gap in the market. My cooking skills however would bring back afternoons of practical chemistry with fire, water and brimstone (literally, they liked brimstone in our lessons) spilling everywhere and filling the air and the guaranteed final act ending up in the bin. The missing element is the little dumplings which have to be mixed in with the orange gravy or it won't be like Bloom's. I am about to ask a professional cook in case she feels like filling the space in the market and if not to make some for me at least. Once I get an idea I have to follow it through to the end, besides making the stuff myself of course, I think the fire service are busy enough right now ;)

Reply #2035. Dec 02 10, 4:10 PM

"I could swear I've seen rugelach at Manny Hattan's in Austin, TX,"
And that's because they're delicious all year round. They're just not traditional חנוכה fare, that's all.

"If you're not cute, Lesley, then what am I?"
Cute, cute, cute!

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In the sun? Thanks, Robin. :)

Sprog went to SA for about a week at the beginning of this year, and loved it. He only agreed to come back because they were invited back next year.

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They're not complicated, unless you make them so. Cooks everywhere add odd frills to put their stamp on them, but the basic resipe is very... basic. And you didn't mention the dumplings or the orange gravy!

Years ago, I gave a young man whose wife had just died, and whose cooking prowess extended to boiling water without burning it, the easiest recipe I could find. He loved it, made it daily for a while and then started using other things like apples. When his daughter started complaining, he learnt a few more recipes. But here's the one I gave him. This is from Jane Grigson's book, Good Things, and ia either the recipe I gave Brian, or very much like it.

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Carottes à la Vichy (for 4)

1 lb old or new carrots
3/4 - 1 pint water
1 oz sugar
2 oz butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
chopped parsley and lemon juice to finish

Scrape the carrots and slice them diagonally. Put with the other ingredients into a pan (the water should barely cover the carrots). Boil hard, without a lid on the pan, until the water is reduced to a spoonful or two of syrup, and the carrots are cooked. Old carrots may need another 5 or 10 minutes over a low heat, with the lid on the pan to prevent total evaporation and burning. Finish with chopped parsley and lemon juice to taste.
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The hardest part of this would be not letting the liquid disappear completely. If you want orange gravy, you could always add the zest of an orange, and finish with the juice of the orange.

Perhaps your cooking friend told you it was complicated in the hope that you would ask her round to teach you how to do it. Perhaps she can show you how to do the dumplings.

Reply #2036. Dec 02 10, 5:00 PM

My mother would sometimes ask "Who's my little apple dumpling?" I'd forgotten that, so thanks for the memory.

Lesley, you're the cute one. I'm but a mere shadow.

Reply #2037. Dec 02 10, 5:16 PM

{giggle}
Twice. :)

Reply #2038. Dec 02 10, 5:24 PM

I don't know rugelach but may recognise it when I see it. The gravy is orange coloured from the carrots, not the fruit! That sounds revolting! I've had tsimmes once or twice elsewhere but nearly always in the little polystyrene cups at Bloom's so only know how they do it. I'll copy the recipes though and see if I have enough in the house to make a start, but was told little dumplings which are really pretty important are not easy even for the experts. I did just ask Denise Phillips though and told her that there's a gap in the market and if she doesn't make them for shops can she make some for me now I can't get them elsewhere. Hopefully I've given her an idea and both of us can benefit. I've had a few of her biscuits which had just been cooked which were pretty good once, but didn't hang around for the main meal as I'm not a restaurant person.

I did get some Cheese spread in a tube for the first time in about 30 years yesterday, it was a bit runnier than I prefer (too much detail?) but far more my level of preparation, and am reasonably good with onions (cooked or uncooked) except haven't worked out how to get the fried ones crisp however long they stay in the pan. And when my friends have been over recently it's been a pretty passable egg and/or beans on toast just like my grandma would do when I turned up out of the blue. I do my best...

Reply #2039. Dec 02 10, 9:19 PM