Recipes

A delightful Internet urban legend concerns a diner who supposedly tasted this scrumptious cookie at the Neiman-Marcus Cafe and asked for the recipe. When her request was denied, she asked if she could purchase it, and the waitress quoted her two-fifty. When she got her monthly statement, the store had charged her $250! She tried to return it, but was again denied, so she vowed to get even by faxing and emailing this recipe to everyone she knew and asking them to pass it on to others. (A lovely hoax, but at least this one isn’t scaring the bejeebies out of us about carjackings and exploding cell phones.) 
Years ago I saw the same recipe touted as Mrs. Fields' classic, although Mrs. Fields too has denied it. But everyone I've ever served them to says who cares if it's the original. It's just as good or better!

5 cups rolled oats
4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature 
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
24 ounces chocolate chips
1 Hershey chocolate bar (8 ounces), grated
3 cups chopped walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 375° F.  Have ready several ungreased baking sheets.
2. Process the oatmeal in a blender to a fine powder and place in a large bowl. Stir in the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.
3. Cream the butter and both sugars with an electric mixer at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 90 seconds. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until combined, about 1 minute more. Reduce the speed to low and blend in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips, grated chocolate, and walnuts.

My column on OU's website, Shabbat Shalom includes recipes for My Chicken Marbella from "Cooking Jewish," Orange Beets with Almonds from "The Healthy Jewish Cookbook by Michael van Straten and Apricot Jelly Roll from Joan Kekst's "Passover Cookery"

Passover is the most observed Jewish holiday of the year. Even those who never step inside a synagogue pull out all the stops for this one. With our celebratory meal, the Seder, we retell the 3500-year-old story of our ancestors' flight to freedom from the land of Egypt. And everything on the table is laden with meaning.

The centerpiece is the Seder plate, holding the traditional symbols. On every Seder plate sits karpas (a green vegetable), the symbol of spring, which we dip into salt water as we remember the tears shed by our ancestors. Actually for Jews in the shtetls (little villages) in Eastern Europe, spring arrived late, and greens were rare at Passover time. "My father's family always used potato," suggested my friend Yiddish songstress Lori Cahan-Simon, "but added parsley as karpas in the new country, so we have, in effect, parsley potatoes!" Read the whole story.

Passover Chocolate Chip Mandelbrot

My friend Dede Ginter tested this recipe for me, and her husband Ed’s AK
/(alter kocker)/Poker Club gave these light and crispy cookies sixteen
thumbs up. If a recipe called for chocolate chips, you could always
count on Aunt Estelle to use lots. She should have named these Passover
Downfall. Enough said. Mom says “ditto.”

Parchment paper or vegetable cooking spray, for the baking sheet
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter or nondairy margarine, at room
temperature
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon Passover vanilla
2 1/2 cups matzoh cake meal
3/4 cup potato starch
4 cups (two 12-ounce bags) semisweet chocolate chips

1.Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a baking sheet, or better yet, line
it with parchment paper.

2.Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed
until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a
time, scraping the bowl several times. Then beat in the vanilla. Reduce
the speed to low, and add the cake meal and potato starch. Scrape the
bowl, and blend just until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate
chips.(If the dough feels too sticky to handle even with floured hands,
cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate until it is stiff, 30 minutes
to several hours.)

3.Divide the dough into 4 portions. Flour your hands with cake meal, and
form each portion into a log the length of the baking sheet. Space the
logs evenly on the prepared baking sheet, and bake on the center oven
rack until they are golden and the tops are firm to the touch, 30 minutes.

by DEBORAH S. HARTZ

Sally Bower - nee Rabinowitz - has celebrated a lot of Passovers. But the one she remembers most fondly happened 70 years ago in Brooklyn. The Seder was at her boyfriend’s house, and it was the first time she would meet his family. When he opened the door, he had a bouquet for her.

During that evening, he put a ring on Bower’s finger in front of his family - even though the couple had been dating only three months.

Although this story is not in "Melting Pot Memories" by Bower’s niece Judy Bart Kancigor, many other exploits of the Rabinowitz family are. What started as a book written as a family heirloom has become popular across the nation with the book in its fifth printing and more than 3,200 copies sold.

It begins with the story of the Rabinowitz family leaving Slonim, in what is now Belarus, for the United States. It includes a history of the area, the family tree and 600 recipes gathered from 159 family members.

"It’s more of a story than a cookbook," Kancigor says by phone from her home in Fullerton, Calif.

But many of the recipes are from Bower, who was one of the tribe’s better cooks. She learned her way around the kitchen from her mother, who made a mean challah, and her mother-in-law, who had prepared meals for bar mitzvahs and weddings in the old country.

She remembers her mother soaking glasses for three days and burying the silver outside with hot coals for purification. The house was cleaned and any remaining crumbs of chometz - leaven - were searched out with a feather and burned.

Then there were the fish. The live ones kept in the bathtub so they’d be fresh when it was time to make the gefilte fish.

My Passover story in the Orange County Register features recipes for Rack of Lamb with Fig Marsala Sauce, Honey-Pecan Crusted Chicken, Zucchini Leek Latkes, and Chocolate Drenched Stuffed Fruit. Chag Sameach!!

Rosh Hashanah is coming, apples are in season, and thoughts turn to the familiar. Friends tell me this tried and true, really simple cake reminds them of the one their bubbe or tante used to make.

Aunt Sally's Apple Cake
Serves 9

I'm making minis this year for our Hanukkah tapas party! Different latkes with different sauces - one can't have too many! See my blog.