Kichels -- The Recipe from the Old Country

Families in America are supposed to have beloved recipes that their grandmother brought over from the old country - whatever country that might have been.  Our family's recipes were kichels and knishes.  I can't really say that these are a traditional recipe from anywhere in particular.  They come from my grandmother on my mother's side, Reva.  Although her sister, Sue, usually took command of the kitchen.  I've always been told that they came from Poland, but the town I remember hearing of, Ravarushka, is actually across the border near Lvov, in Ukraine.  Like many of the Eastern European towns, it seems like it changed hands with the fortunes of war.  I've tried to find some more information on my grandmother's journey, but I keep running into dead ends.  She and her sister never wanted to discuss it.  And I'm pretty sure that whatever records there might have been in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe didn't survive the triple onslaught of World War I, Stalin and World War II.

Most kichel I've come across were firm, flaky cakes.  Ours are made with a yeasty dough from a mixture of flour and potato.  After the dough has cycled through rising and pounding down, it's portioned, rolled out into circles, covered with lots of melted butter and sprinkled with a good amount of sugar, cinnamon, and crushed walnuts.

Our knishes were different as well.  In New York, most of the knishes people see are the horrible, mass-produced Gabila knishes, sold from street carts along with our famous dirty-water hot dogs and stale pretzels that seem to have been sitting in a warehouse for decades.   Others are large blocks of dry mashed potato or even drier kasha wrapped in tough dough.  Ours were smaller, bite-sized knishes, filled with peppery potato.

The knish recipe I don't have, but my mother passed along the kichel recipe about ten years ago.  I've probably tried 5 or 6 batches over the years, and I get a little better every time.  The tricky part comes at the end -- finding the proper proportions for rolling out the dough, cutting the wedges, and rolling up the crescents.

Recipe at the end.

The recipe is for a pretty big batch.  It's a bit intimidating, calling for 5 pounds of sugar and an artery-clogging amount of Crisco shortening.

Boil and then mash potatoes, while bringing milk to a boil.

 Activate the yeast in the cooled milk.  Then mix together the potatoes, eggs, shortening, sugar and sour cream.

Slowly incorporate the flour.

Let it rise, pound it down, let it rise some more.  Coat the top with a little softened Crisco or butter.

Coat the top once more and let is sit again in the fridge.

When the dough has sat out a bit and come to room temperature, divide it into six balls:

In the mean time, mix together a lot of sugar, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. 

And melt a lot of butter.  A lot.  I heard a lot of this from my Mom:  "Oh, yes, more butter."

We found it was best to melt the butter and then put it in the fridge for a bit to set up.  You want it more of a paste than melted or just softened.

Cut each ball in half, and roll it thin:

 Cover liberally with butter and the sugar/cinnamon/walnut mixture:

Cut into slices. It's tricky to get the right size.   A lot depends on how big you want the final kichels.  Apparently, my grandmother liked them bite-sized.  Her sister rolled them much bigger.

The rolling is a little tricky.  Pull the end towards you a bit, fold in the corners and start rolling -- pulling and tucking all the way.  You want the dough to thin a bit, without breaking, so you get more layers.  And tuck in the ends as you go, so it doesn't get too wide.  Then, take the tip of the wedge and tuck it under the last roll to keep it all together.  (We had some trouble with the layers separating while the kichels were in the oven.  I think we needed more butter and sugar.)

When you're done rolling dip the top of the kichel liberally into the softened butter, and then into a goodly amount of the sugar/cinnamon/walnut mixture.  It's a good idea to keep two bowls each of the butter and sugar mixture.  One pair for spreading on the rolled out dough, and the other pair for the dipping.

Then bake at 350* for about 15-20 minutes, until golden on top.

Turn them all out onto paper towels, topside down.  This allows the excess sugar/nuts to fall off and keeps any melted sugar on the bottoms from sticking to the towels.

One batch makes about 150.   I hope you're hungry.

And there you go.

Heat them a bit before eating.  10-15 seconds in a microwave is perfect.  

Recipe

1 pt sour cream

5 lbs boiled potatoes

3 lbs butter

5 lbs sugar (you won't need it all)

10 lbs flour (you won't need it all) 

1.5 lbs rough-chopped walnuts

cinnamon

2 cups milk

4 packages yeast

2 cups Crisco

6 eggs

Soften 1 stick butter

Boil 2 cups of milk and let it cool

Boil enough potatoes to get two cups mashed.  

Save one cup of the potato water.

Mix the cooled milk, cooled potato water and 4 packages yeast. 

Let it sit until it forms bubbles.

Mix together:

1 cup Crisco

1 stick softened butter

2 cups sugar

3 tsp salt

2 cups mashed potatoes

1 pint sour cream

6 eggs

Add 5-8 lbs flour in stages.  Knead until dough moves away from the side of the bowl and is tender and soft.

Leave dough in the bowl, coat the top with Crisco and lay a towel over it.  Put the bowl in a warm spot to rise for 2.5 - 3 hours.   Punch down the dough and knead with more flour.  I can't really explain how much, because I don't know.  Butter the top and and cover.  Put the bowl with the dough in fridge at least 1 hour -- or overnight, with a dish sitting on top.  (I don't know what the dish is for.)

Pre-heat the oven to 350*

Take dough out of fridge and let it come to room temperature.  Divide the dough into 6 balls, and coat each with soft butter or Crisco.

Separately, mix together 3 cups of sugar, 1 1/2 lbs chopped walnuts and cinnamon.  You pretty much have to eyeball this to get the proportions you think will fit your taste.  Separate that mixture into two bowls.  Melt two sticks of butter.

Cut the balls of dough down to a smaller size.  Spread flour out on the table.  Roll out dough to about 12".  

Brush the dough with a good amount of melted butter, and sprinkle generously with the  sugar/cinnamon mixture.  Cut the dough into wedges and roll into crescents.  Dip the top of the crescent into butter, then into more sugar/cinnamon.  Roll should be about the size of a large egg.

Put the rolls onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet, leaving space in between them.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden on top.  

Schmaltz, Schmaltz, Baby.

Every once in a while I get it in my head to do something a little odd.  

One morning recently I thought I'd make some schmaltz.  Why?  I don't know.

I went to the local Adams Fairacre market and stuck my head in at the meat department.  "You got any chicken skin?"  The lady looked at me like I was nuts.  This is a real butcher shop -- they generally know what they're talking about.  But I guess no one has asked them for schmaltz ingredients.

"I want to render some chicken fat.  I thought that if you all were trimming chickens, you might have some skin and stuff I could take."  "Sure, she said.  Come back in about 20 minutes."

So I did my shopping and heading back to the meat department when I was done.  She had a nice big bag for me -- about 5 pounds of chicken skin, tail nubbies and what not.

By the way, Adams sometimes has frozen bricks of unrendered duck trimmings -- at about $1.50 a pound.  I bought two bricks, chopped up the trimmings into chunks, and put them in a pot of simmering water.  It took a while, but the hot water rendered all the fat out and then boiled off.  You have to be careful not to let the pieces burn, or you'll got an off-flavor (and dull yellow color) to the fat.  I was left with about a quart of beautiful white duck fat -- for about $2.50.  Rendered duck fat is $12 a pound mail order from D'artagnan.  Duck fat is awesome for frying potatoes, making popcorn, and, of course, confit duck legs (not that I've ever confitted a duck leg).  And it's low fat and heart friendly!  (No, it's not.)

I took them home and threw them into a large cast-iron skillet.  I think I should have chopped it up a bit more.  I played with the heat -- I needed it hot enough to render the fat in a reasonable time, but I didn't want to burn anything.

After a while, I had a skillet of golden fat and lots of crispy gribenes.  I ate one piece of crispy chicken skin and tossed the rest.  (Although maybe the next time we make mashed potatoes, some crumbled gribenes over the top?)

I poured off the fat into some clean mason jars:

One went to my dad, and one to Lisa's dad.

The Deer Project - The Dinner (Part 3)

(From December 2012.)

The best part about the hunting is the eating.  I invited a bunch of people up for a little feast in December.  This was pre-blog, so I don't have good photos.

The two main dishes were venison bourguignon and backstrap filets in a pepper sauce.

But first, slices of the heart and tenderloins, quick sautéed in a cast iron pan.

I don't think I've ever eaten heart before.  It was surprisingly good.  I expected it to be tough and gristly, but it was pretty tender.  Strongly flavored, like an aged rib-eye.  I had no idea how to cook it.  I sliced thin the "meaty" parts of the muscle, avoiding the ligaments and valves.  Then tossed it in the hot skillet.  The tenderloins were also seared quickly and sliced.  

For the bourguignon, I used Julia Child's beef bourguignon recipe.  First I took a top round (I think it was a top round) and some random chunks and browned them in the Le Crueset.

I added the onions and carrots, wine and stock, and let it simmer.  Separately, I cooked the mushrooms and then the pearl onions. Added it all together at the end and .....

Sorry, I didn't get a picture!

The backstraps are the equivalent to the New York strip on a cow -- much smaller.  These were sliced into 1" thick steaks and seared in the cast iron skillet.  Some wine to deglaze the pan, lots of pepper, some butter and cream.

The venison was tender enough to cut with a fork.  It has a distinct flavor, but not as strong as a good lamb.

J. Dominick's Trattoria

     Among some of my friends in New York, "red sauce" Italian food is, well, a bit of a joke.  "It's not authentic!  No one in Italy eats that!".  "It's too heavy!"  "It's too greasy!"  "It's fine to feed your kids, but it's not a real cuisine!"

     It sure tastes good to me.  Although I admit that it's getting harder and harder to find good Italian food, at a reasonable price.  From over-cooked pasta, to mushy parm, and, of course, marinara sauce laden with sugar, most of these places deserve the bad reputation they're getting.

   And then there's J. Dominick's Trattoria.  This place opened a few years ago on Route 44, just outside of Poughkeepsie.  We stopped by one Saturday night a while ago and were shocked to be told that it was already booked for the night.  Most restaurants in the area were struggling.  So a few weeks later, we made a reservation for dinner with a friend.  We've been back about a dozen times since then, and our friends from the city want to come up just to have dinner here.  (Apologies in advance for the poor photos.)

    A glass of wine to start?

 

    The food is terrific.  All of my fond memories of eating Italian food as a kid are wrapped up and served here.  They start you with a plate of home made dinner rolls, warm out of the oven, served with whipped butter and marinated vegetables.  Try not to eat too many.

   We've had a bunch of the appetizers in our many visits.  Don't miss the hot and spicy shrimp, served in a vinegary cherry pepper and tomato sauce with lots of butter.  (And feel free to ask for the hot and spicy shrimp over pasta for your entree.)

The fried calamari is as good as you're going to find anywhere.  If they have the stuffed artichoke on the menu -- go for it.  We got a softball sized artichoke, liberally covered with breadcrumbs and butter.  Wonderful stuff.

     Moving on.  If you like veal or chicken parmigiana, this is the place to get it.

On the lighter side, broiled seafood plate:

Scampi over pasta:

And the stunner of the evening, zuppa de pesce.  I'm telling you, it could feed a family of four:

My main complaint about the food is that the pasta is often over-cooked.  Not badly, but it's not the al dente that it should be.

I can also recommend the pork chops (ask for them to be cooked medium), and the lemon cake for dessert.

J. Dominick's Trattoria
779 Dutchess Turnpike
Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
(845) 486-9400

The Big Smoke (August 2004)

[This post was originally made on The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board, but I've edited it a bit.  TVWBB is the place to go for information on making righteous barbeque on the Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker.  It's from my first big BBQ at the house in August 2004.  (Apologies.  Obviously, I'm new at this.  And for some reason, when I try to drag images to various places in the post, they wont stay there.  Not sure what I'm doing wrong.]

Coffee and Budweiser

The Meat:  Two pork butts, a whole brisket,
two racks of spar ribs and four chickens

All you brewers out there will recognize this, the soothing mantra of the art. Whatever happens, whatever goes wrong, if your mash temp spikes, if your cat eats half your hops, if you sneeze into your yeast, there's always one essential response: Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.

I'm not sure what the analogous line is for smokers. (Perhaps some suggestions?) But what I say is, relax, don't worry, have an alcoholic product and jiggle the vents.

So I drive upstate on Friday night, and hit the local Adams Fairacre market. $312 later, I leave with two full carts. (Granted, they were smallish carts. A full 12* brisket, two 7.5* butts (unfortunately with most of their fat caps trimmed), 10 pounds of burger, 7 pounds of sausages, 4 chickens and piece of salmon for the Kosher contingent.

Let's not forget, flour/sugar/cream cheese/butter/etc. for the cheesecake and carrot cake; beans/parsely/pancetta/etc. for the white bean salad; 20 ears of corn and tomato for the, yes, roasted corn and tomato salad; and other stuff. The three cases of beer were purchased already.

After unloading, I went to a bar to get my self mentally prepared for what would follow.

Saturday a.m. -- I double check the importants: cold beer (check); coffee (check); two large bags of briquetts (check -- yes, I would easily forget this); smoker (check).

I trimmed and rubbed up my meat -- brisket, butts, ribs and chix.

Two Butts, Rubbed.

 As noted above, most of the fat cap had been removed from the butts -- but DON'T WORRY. 

Brisket; Rubbed

Swig down some Bud and chase it with strong black coffee. It's ten a.m. and I made the executive decision to save the morning bacon and lay it atop the butts for the smokes The ribs weren't in great shape either. 

Ribs; Trimmed and Rubbed

They were meaty, but oddly (poorly?) trimmed, with large hunks of strange bone on the non-sternum side. Oh well. I finished the bud and rubbed 'em up any way.

On the brisket, I used the Texas BBQ #2. There's a lot of sugar (turbinado?) in there, and it worried me cause I'm not a sweet guy. So I cracked another Bud and refilled my coffee and didn't worry. I used their #1 rub on one of the butts and Old Bay on the other. I used the #1 and some old Ms. Brown's butt rub (recipe on the TVWB site) on the ribs. The chix were a mixed bag with Old Bay on one, Lemon Pepper on another, and various pork rubs on the last two. Into the fridge with them all.

The rest of the afternoon was spent roasting corn on the stovetop, chopping parsely, chopping tomatoes, etc.

I lit the coals, Minion method. Since it was pouring outside, (it poured, non-stop from 11 pm Friday night to 4 pm Sat afternoon. My front yard was a lake), I set up the bullet in the old dog kennel. Good idea for keeping rain out of the bullet. Bad idea for keeping smoke out of the house.

The parents showed up because they wanted to see how the smoker works. The had already missed the mayem of the trimming. Now they managed to contain their joy and excitement as they watched me deftly place three pieces of meat into a large metal cylinder, stick in the probes, and afix the top. Sit back folks, that's it. There's nothing else to see, except smoke.

The smoke was exasperating. With two butts and a brisket in, (with warm water in the pan), it took forever to get the temp up. And the brisket temp rose almost as steadily as the smoker temp. 

Butts, In the Morning

But the folks were kind enough to bring up a 5lb bag of Jelly Bellys. The sugar balance out the beer/coffee buzz quite nicely. As we ordered pizza for dinner, I thought I should get some type of vegetable topping, what with all the meat I'd be eating the next day. I settled on sausage (I hear there's some kind of seed in there).

So then I made a cheesecake and a carrot cake. Both of which are good.

Brisket, in the Morning

I refilled the pan a few times, cursed at my ET-73, and the brisket was up at 170-ish after 6 
hours.
 Blah, blah, I left there, what the hell. I watched Atlantic City -- good movie, and napped. At 4:30 am I took off the brisket, wrapped it in foil and put in the cold oven. Back to sleep. At 7:30 I took off the butts, wrapped them in foil and putt them and the brisket in a cooler which had now been cleaned of some really disgusting fungus.

I wanted to fit four racks of ribs on the bottom, so I rolled them and stuck 'em with skewers. I got them on, and laid the strips of sternum/trim over the top. I had lit another chimney of charcoal and added it. Very proud of myself for lifting the top two sections without spilling water or hot fat on the fire. (More on that later).

Chicken Dance

Oh my aching calves. (Calfs?) So I couldn't get the temp on the top rack over 220. I figured that the ribs on the bottom would take forever, and decided to add some more coal. I carefull lifted off the top two sections, proud of myself for remember to use potholders. (I did try this once without protection, the fingerprints have almost reformed.) As I stood there, holding a levitated half-bullet, filled with four slabs of ribs, four chickens and a water bath, over a pile of red-hot coals, I realized that they only floor space was at 12 oclock. Without much thought -- remember, for the last 24 hours or so, I'd had about 14 beers, 4 pots of coffee, a pizza and 4.5 pounds of jelly beans, I leaned over the open fit pit and deposited the top sections on the other side. It was a little warm, and I recalled my history lessons and that in days of yore people were tortured by suspending them over pits of hot coals. Whoever came up with that method was a good torture-method-comer-upper. Now my back and calf muscles are killing me. But then again, they kept me from falling into the fire.

Then I made the Mac & Cheese. If you haven't made your own -- do it tonight. Go to the Saveur website and use their recipe. But instead of all cheddar, do equal portions of cheddar, gruyere and parmesan. (Real parmesan, not the stuff in a cardboard tube. And don't buy that pre-shredded processed cheese food. But you would never do that anyway, would you?)

Well, the guests trickled it at noonish. The food went out. 

Celery Salad

The Brisket was absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much mr TexasBBQ man. I thought it was a bit sweet -- it ended up with something like a glaze on top. But the whole brisket was eaten withint 15 minutes. It was perfectly tender, with good bite too it. The fat in the point was luscious and creamy.

The butts turned out great as well. I can't say that I noticed a difference between the two rubs, but I didn't worry. I had made two sauces (vinegar and tomato) from recipes on the site. The tomato went fast. I think the folks from Westchester aren't ready for vinegar sauce. (And -- a number of the guests told me that they had never eaten pulled pork or pork ribs before. And they loved them.) 

Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad

By the way, try explaining the smoke ring to someone who's afraid of meat. "Yes, it's cooked. Of course it's cooked. I know that's red, it's the smoke ring. I don't know. Smoke. I don't know, but it's cooked. Well how could it be cooked on the inside if it was still uncooked on the outside? Because that's the smoke ring. No, you don't have to worry about trichinosis, we're not living in the middle ages. No, it wont kill you. IT'S THE SMOKE RING. Go look it up on Google."

The ribs were great and the chicken was perfect. 

Brisket (brisket lose about half their size during the cook)

White Bean Salad

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: So like the idiot that I am, when I took the last of the meat off, I left the lid of the bullet off, instead of putting it on and closing the vents. There was already some acrid smoke in the kitchen from some cheese spillage in the oven. But soon there was a very funky burning smell in the house. AhA!!!!! The water pan, now filled with bubbling fat, was smoking. If this happens to you, don't do what I did. Wearing my Orka silicon gloves, I reached in to pull out the water/fat pan. Some spilled on the coals, bursting into flames. I was now carrying a pan of flaming fat. Luckily, the smoker was in concrete cinder block enclosure (known as Abu Gharib), so I left that to burn out. But what to do with a pan of burning fat? The one smart decision I made was to exit the house quickly. The one bad decision I made was to walk towards the water spigot. Repeat after me: DON'T POUR WATER ON A GREASE FIRE. Really, it's not a good idea. But I did it anyway. Cold water on hot flaming grease. Looking back, it's a wonder I have hair left. Although the flames shot up high enough to get everyone's attention, I wasn't even singed, and the house was fine. But it's not a game for children.
Alas, by six, the leftover porksicles, chix and butt were in bags. I didn't get any brisket or cheesecake. Never had to put the burgers or sausage on the grill. I should have made an extra mac & cheese just for myself. And I'm happy to say that most of the light beer was still in the cooler.

With Gazpacho