Passover…and Then Pass Some More Please

It wasn’t until I started writing this blog that I realized how little I actually know about why we celebrate certain holidays/events.  I’m always up for a good party, but throwing a gala doesn’t require any concrete facts.  Just the fact that I’m alive and breathing today is a good enough reason to get together with friends and gorge my face…this comes as a surprise to no one I would imagine, but this week we had multiple reasons for baking and eating.

The first was to honor Passover.  Let’s be honest, I’m not a religious man, but when trying to figure out the baked good of the week I saw that a holy day of observance had once again crossed my path and I had no idea what it was about.  I always thought Passover vaguely had something to do with Easter (just because they come so close together), but ultimately it is an event unto itself celebrated by those practicing the Jewish faith.  What spurned me on to make this week’s treat, the Apricot Pecan Torte, was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to use flour.

Sure, I’ve made the irreverent and now common flourless chocolate cake from time to time and even made a Linzer Torte before when I was in pastry class, but I never gave much thought to a recipe calling for flour or specifying it’s absence.  As I took to the web once more, I was able to glean useful (if not still slightly vague) knowledge about why flour, and more to the point leavening agents, are not allowed in the preparation of breads and meals during the Passover observation.  It’s all about the rise, baby.

Apparently, according to the book of Exodus in the Bible, God struck the country of Egypt with a series of plagues…10 to be exact, until the Pharaoh released the Hebrew slaves from the bondage in which they were kept.  The tenth plague was the one where the spirit of God came down and took the first born of each family (as well as the first-born animals) as a punishment for the Jews being held captive (Not Andrea and Nathan in this instance).  The devout Hebrews were instructed to sacrifice a Spring lamb and mark their doors with it’s blood so that God would know to “Passover” this house and not kill their firstborn child.  Pretty crazy, huh?  Well, I guess this plague finally did the trick and the Jews were able to get the heck out of dodge…but they were chased of course.

Now, here is the point in our story where we come to the crux of the issue.  The slaves were fleeing so quickly that the bread they were making didn’t have time to rise, and anyone who has ever made bread knows that it can take quite a while for that dough to come up…then you have to knock it down, let it rise, knock it down again, etc…you get the point.  No one wants to do that with a bunch of angry Egyptians on their back.  Thus, in keeping with traditional folklore surrounding the celebration of Passover, no leavening agents are to be used in the making of breads…that’s why Matzo bread is so popular.

Matzo bread can be found in round balls in soups, but is commonly found in a flat (almost pita like) form.  It can be made of flour and water, which confused me at first because I thought you weren’t supposed to use flour when making Passover baked goods, but apparently it’s the rising or leavening which is the enemy here.  From what I was able to discern you can even use baking powder and baking soda if you need to because they are chemical based leavening agents, but not any fermentation based forms of rising…like with yeast.  To put an even finer point on it, I read that any bread product containing flour of any kind cannot be “worked/kneaded” for long and has to be completely baked within 18 minutes or it will be considered as something that has had time to rise and is therefore bad.  I must say it sounds a little nutty to me, but I’m not knocking anyone’s practices.  You know I love a good tradition, whatever the reason that creates it.  As a side note, it’s also mentioned that preventing the bread from rising is similar to keeping your pride or inflated ego in check.  Sounds good to me.

The whole observance is really fascinating to me and I would love to go to a Seder dinner and see the full practice.  I know wine is drunk, stories about the Exodus are told, and bitter herbs are eaten as well as lamb tying into other parts of the Exodus story.  I won’t get into all of it here, but it really is an intriguing story.

With all of that said, the flourless torte I made this week ties in nicely.  No leavening agents were used in the making of this dessert so anyone and everyone could eat it when I brought it to work today.  I have to tell you, you don’t need a special day for this one, but you will want to have your sweet tooth on hand.  It is rich and moist because it’s chalked full of apricots and eggs, a heavenly combination.  Normally with a cake, or something in that vein, flour is the mainstay of your dry ingredients, but here it is mainly sugar, dried apricots and nuts.  The recipe called for almonds, but my friend Katherine’s family has a huge organic Pecan farm in Missouri and she sends me enough nuts each Christmas to last me a good part of the year.  They keep nicely in the freezer until you are ready to use them.  Toast them in the oven at 325 degrees for 10 minutes and they become warm, fragrant and delicious.  Just make sure you cool them off completely before putting them in the food processor or the heated oils in the nuts break down the dried apricots and sugar a bit, and you wind up with more of a paste than dry ingredients (yes I did this…and it’s a pain to recover from).

The wet ingredients are mainly eggs.  You separate 8 eggs and whip both the yolks and whites separately with sugar.  This is what will ultimately give your torte the volume since there is nothing inside helping it to raise a whole lot.  At the end, you just coat it with some heated up apricot preserves and some sugar.  This baby is unbelievably moist and fruity…almost sinful.

And while we are on the subject of sinful I can’t let last night’s dinner go without mention.  As a joint, continued celebration of Jonathan and Izabella’s birthdays as well as my impending birthday we decided to have a very big splurge-y night out and went to Blue Hill at Stone Barns.  I have written about this place before, in one of my first postings in fact, but I haven’t had the pleasure of a proper dinner there in a couple of years.  It’s not something one can do everyday (unless one is wealthy and would like to become fattened like one of the Berkshire pigs on the farm), but as a special treat it’s a not to be missed experience.  I dare say that last night’s dinner may have just made the all time top 3 dinners of my life…along with experiences at the Fat Duck and Per Se.

What made last night so special was, of course the company, but the process by which we arrived at our dinner had changed greatly from previous dinners I had at this restaurant.  The main thing was the lack of choice.  All you could choose from was either a 5 or 8-course dinner (and give any restrictions you might have), but it was of the chef’s imagination in tandem with what is in season at the farm (and the surrounding farms), which wound up on the plate.  No menu, food purely driven by seasonal ingredients…I cannot describe how much this excited me.  I profess a great love for eating local and keeping with the seasons, and this dinner was the pentacle expression of my foodie love.

We got the 8 courses, I just have to say it right out, but there were so many little bites and amuse bouche that accompanied these courses…it nearly bordered on the ridiculous.  The simple preparations and presentations of vegetables were maddeningly creative. Fish and pork were put on a pedestal, bathed in complex sauces.  And truly the most insane pasta that has ever crossed my lips melted in my mouth like it was never there.  We got to hear about and see the products which were going into our food; goose eggs which made the pasta, hen eggs which were cooked in a shell of salt and hay, honeycomb brought from the hives outside and deliciously dropped into a homemade tofu and Meyer lemon dessert…Y-U-M!  Coincidentally we were also served a Sacher Torte for dessert which I thought tied in nicely with my theme of the week, though the story we were told about the pastry chef’s recipe had to do with his Austrian grandmother and not Passover, but who’s counting?  The highlight of the evening (if you can believe this) was one of the tiniest things of all…a beet burger.  Perfectly cooked sweet and sour beets placed in between two mini-sesame seed buns about the size of a quarter, dissolving on your tongue in a memory worthy of a tear of two rolling down your cheek.

The real tear inducing part is that I didn’t have my camera with me.  I would have loved to photograph the food, or photographed the huge serving table in the middle of the space full of rustic breads, wines, flowers and towering branches laden with cherry blossoms.  I would have loved to have tried to get the perfect photo of the honeycomb and the goose eggs, the dishes of cheese and elegant cocktail glasses full of scotch, but I didn’t…it’s all in my mind, an experience to be treasured and certainly not repeated in the same way ever again…and Izabella better give me all the photos she took! 

Being placed in a position where you just have to trust the chef is adventurous, a little scary and completely exhilarating.  I wish I had someone making those food decisions for me every single day.  The thought of coming home to a surprise, seasonally considered meal every night is the stuff dreams are made of.  And whether it’s a day where you can have leavened bread or not, all that is required is that it taste good.  I bet you can relate to that.  I know I can.  It’s just who I am.

                              Hellebores coming up in our garden.