Parshat Bo: Night and Day Lava Cakes (Plus Chocolate Lava and Blondie Lava Cakes)

In Nesivos Shalom (pp. 73-74, based on the Toldos Yaacov Yosef)  Slominer Rebbe offers an interesting explanation of choshet, the plague of darkness: what the Mitzrim and B’nei Yisroel was both experiencing was an overwhelming spiritual light. The Mitzrim experienced this as impenetrable darkness–they were blinded by the light. Similarly, the Jews that were not prepared to leave Mitzraim could not handle the light and it killed them. The Jews who were ready to leave Mitzraim experienced it positively and for them there was light.

The analogy is made to the experience of the righteous and the wicked in the afterlife. Heaven and hell can be the same place, but the righteous can appreciate its purely spiritual nature, while the wicked find it excruciating. Why is this so? The Rambam explains that just as a sick person can taste sweet as bitter, those who are spiritually deprived perceive good as bad.

Finally tasting water after being without it for three days, B’nei Yisroel found it bitter. The Toldos Yaacov Yosef says that Torah is the water; having gone three days without studying Torah, B’nei Yisroel had a hard time appreciating its sweetness.

Three in-depth discussions of this:
Rabbi Yitzchok Alderstein, “The Painful Darkness of Light,” Nesivos Shalom, Parshas Bo, Torah.org

Rabbi Moshe M. Wilner, “Blinding Light,” Parshas Bo, Parsha Encounters, Chicago Community Kollel

Rabbi Yisroel Ciner, “Bo,” Parsha Insights, Torah.org

Rabbi Alderstein adds to this discussion an insight from Rav Moshe Midner: “‘To all Bnei Yisroel there was light in their dwellings.’ Sometimes, the light is too much for any individual to bear. When Jews dwell together, when they band together as a group to bring down Hashem’s light, they are able to jointly receive it. This is why Jews gather and sit with each other in large groups on Shabbos.”

Chipotle-Avocado Quinoa Salad

I was very ambitious for Friday night dinner last week: I made this quinoa salad, plus tempeh mole with braised string beans and mashed sweet potatoes, plus serving the more usual potato kugel, schnitzel, stuffed cabbage, white rice and star-shaped ptitim (starch, meat, meat, starch, starch).

My husband loved the quinoa salad, hinting it would make a great lunch to take to work. The delicately tinted green dressing tastes as rich as if it was made with lots of oil or mayonnaise, but most of the richness comes from the avocado.

The dressing, incidentally, is wonderful as a salad dressing (think avocado Caesar salad and use Romaine lettuce, with grape tomatoes and some croutons or tortilla chips).

Perfect Pumpkin Bread

This is the pumpkin bread recipe you need. Sweet and moist, but not too sweet, spicy, but not overbearingly so–this irresistible pumpkin bread has been winning accolades for my mom. She made it for Thanksgiving, and it was a huge success. So much so that my mom decided to bake it for other occasions.  Now, she is asked to bring it all the time and it is rapidly becoming a signature dessert.

The recipe comes from Lunch ‘Til Four, a cookbook put together by the sisterhood of Young Israel of West Hempstead. This cookbook, incidentally, is full of wonderful recipes. One of the recipe contributors is Michele Friedman, the author of Chef’s Confidential.

This pumpkin bread is almost exactly the same as Irene’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread, except that Irene uses allspice instead of nutmeg and 12 ounces of chocolate chips instead of nuts and raisins. Plus, Irene uses a slightly different mixing method, adding the sugar to the dry ingredients.

Israel 365

Take a look at this beautiful picture of the Rosh Hanikra caves by my sister, Yehudit Zagdanski. The picture is being featured by Israel 365, a site which “promotes the beauty and religious significance of Israel. Featuring the stunning photographs of more than 30 award winning Israeli photographers alongside an inspiring Biblical verse, Israel365 connects you with Israel each day.”

Here is what the site says about the photo:

“Located in the northwest corner of Israel, Rosh Hanikra has sat on the trade route between Syria to the north and Egypt to the south since ancient times. The beautiful caves are accessible for visitors by the steepest cable car in the world (60 degrees) where you can see for yourself why Rosh Hanikra calls itself, the ‘love story between the sea and the mountain.’”

You can get the daily photos and text from Israel 365 through a free iPhone app or by signing up for a free daily e-mail. Israel 365 is a project of United with Israel.

Va’eira: Frogs Here, Frogs There . . . .

When I asked my son about the parsha, he and my daughter starting singing the frog song (“frogs here, frogs there . . .”). He told me that there was one big frog, and the Egyptians hit it and it became many frogs.

There is an interesting post at Rationalist Judaism that complains that schoolchildren are taught the above Rashi as peshat instead of derash.  Rashi explains that the use of the singular for frog (“the frog came up and covered the land of Egypt”) has the midrashic interpretation that one frog was beaten and turned into many frogs and the simple meaning that “frog” can mean a swarm of frogs, the way that lice is singular and plural at the same time.

Spicy Goan Curry Black-Eyed Peas

I stumbled across Hungry Desi last night and wanted to make everything I saw. I started with a recipe for black-eyed peas that Nithya adapted from Ruta Kahate’s “5 Spices, 50 Dishes” (as it appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle). I looked back to the original recipe, and added back in the coconut milk that Nithya left out.

 

Garlic Paprika Tilapia

My grandmother A”H used to make wonderful garlic carp. She would take carp steaks and rub them with garlic, salt and paprika and then bake the fish for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees. This carp was one of her fish specialties, along with pickled salmon.

I tried this with some tilapia filets, and the delectable smell of this cooking brought my family to the table in record time.

Here is what I did: mashed garlic to a paste with a little salt and rubbed it all over the fish filets (1 clove was enough for three filets). Sprinkled over a very generous amount of paprika. I added a light sprinkle of Paul Prudhomme blackened fish seasoning (which has paprika, herbs, garlic powder, onion powder and some other spices).  Then I drizzled over some olive oil and rubbed the oil and seasoning into the fish.

I roasted the fish at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes (it was really done after about 10-15 minutes, but my husband likes his fish really well cooked).

Bonus: Sierra has a recipe for sauteed tilapia with tomato garlic  sauce that looks nice. I was originally thinking of serving my tilapia with tomato sauce, but the fish got eaten up before I had a chance to implement this plan.

Shemot: Moshe B’Tayva Cookies

In Israel, hot dogs in puff pastry are called Moshe B’Tayva, referencing Moshe in the little basket floating in the Nile river. This is good for an appetizer, but not for a dessert. Instead, I decided to make cream horns, also known as clothespin cookies, because you can use round clothespins as the mold instead of the usual metal tubes.

Four kinds of molds for cream horns: (1) lady lock molds, which are conical; (2) cannoli molds, which are hollow tubes; (3) mini cannoli molds; and (4) wooden clothespins, wrapped in nonstick foil.

Why did Moshe’s mother put him in the Nile in a basket? According to Rashi, Pharoh’s astrologers predicted that someone would be born who would save the Jews, but that person would be brought down by water. So Pharoh commanded baby boys to be cast in the Nile.  Moshe’s mother put him in the basket in the Nile so that Pharoh’s astrologers would think that he had already been cast into the river (Midrash Rabbah). As a result, the astrologers claimed that their predictions have come true, and Pharoh recalls his decree (Shemot Rabba 1:25; Sotah 12 b)

Did Pharoh’s daughter try to reach for the tayva, or did she send her maid to fetch it? There is a Midrash that she reached for the tayva, although it was out of reach, and her arm miraculously extended to be able to get it. The Kotzker Rebbe asks why she would extend her arm if she knew the tayva was beyond reach. Often, when a situation seems beyond our control, we resign ourselves to inactivity, the Kotzker Rebbe notes. “There is a profound lesson here for each and every one of us . . . .  Pharaoh’s daughter heard a child’s cry and extended her arm. An unbridgeable distance lay between her and the basket containing the weeping infant, making her action seem utterly pointless. But because she did the maximum of which she was capable, she achieved the impossible. Because she extended her arm, G-d extended its reach, enabling her to save a life and raise the greatest human being ever to walk the face of the earth.”

Trust me when I tell you, these cookies are not beyond reach, or even that much of a stretch. They are really easy, even though they look hard.

Vayechi: Fish Cake

When I asked my children what they wanted to do for a parsha project, my son said he wanted to do something connected with Ephraim and Menashe. He wanted a chocolate cake, and I suggested one decorated like a fish. When Yaacov blessed Ephraim and Menashe he said “may they multiply abundantly like fish, in the midst of the land.”

Why fish? Rashi says it because fish proliferate hidden from view of the “ayin harah.”

Rabbi Edlestein explains: fish are protected from the evil eye because they live hidden from our view. They do not inspire jealousy because people are not aware of what goes on in their world. The message is that Jews should model themselves after fish in this regard, living in a separate spiritual environment, modestly, without the ostentation that would attract envious attention. “In the midst of the land” means that Jews should also be part of and contribute to the larger world.

Other ideas:

Just as a fish cannot live without water, so a Jew cannot live without Torah. (Chabad)

A fish cannot lose its kosher status if it is kosher; other kosher animal can become unkosher if they slaughtered properly or if there is some defect. Yaacov’s blessing was therefore that Ephraim and Menashe never lose their pure status. (Partners in Torah, Rabbi Meisels)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a java twist)

I’ve been holding out on you. I should have posted this recipe long ago, but this cookie has a way of slipping through the cracks.

Years ago, my sister called me up, raving about a fantastic peanut butter cookie recipe that she insisted came from me. I had no idea what she was talking about.

My sister was shocked. “You mean you don’t make these cookies anymore? Oh, you must make them!” She told me the recipe was in the cookbook that I put together for her when she got married.

I took a look at the cookbook and I remembered how I came up with the recipe. I wanted a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, so I added some peanut butter to a chocolate chip cookie recipe. So far, pretty standard. But, then I had the idea to add in coffee powder, and lots of it. It was part of my Maida Heatter phase. Maida Heatter often added in coffee powder to intensify a dessert’s flavor, and it became my secret weapon. Here, I fearlessly wielded that weapon like a cudgel, adding in 2 tablespoons of coffee powder.

I called my sister back. “Do you really follow the recipe and add 2 whole tablespoons of coffee powder?” She told me, that, yes, she does, and why was I asking, since it was my recipe in the first place? Well, okay . . . .

I made the recipe (using a little less coffee powder) and found that the coffee and peanut butter flavors fused together in an interesting way, balancing each other so that the cookie was not strongly coffee-ish or peanut butter-ish, but mostly a very intense chocolate chip cookie with a deep rich flavor.

Depending on how much coffee powder you use, the cookies will taste and look quite different. My mother goes full on with the coffee and her cookies look almost as dark as if she used cocoa powder in the dough. I can’t bring myself to use that much coffee (I know, I know . . . it was my idea to begin with). With 1 1/2 teaspoons of coffee powder, the coffee is barely there, subtly intensifying the peanut butter flavor, making the cookies more Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup-ish (see above picture). With 2 teaspoons, the flavor is almost like Cracker-Jacks, with a rich caramel molasses and roasted peanut flavor (see below picture).

Caramel and roasted peanuts (well, roasted anything) have added flavor compounds and a certain bitterness that comes from the process of caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Coffee has a certain bitterness, too. In fact, coffee flavor is in part a result of the Maillard reaction because coffee beans are roasted, as well (which is not to say that coffee is bitter only because of roasting, but there are those who argue that roasting is primarily responsible for bitterness in coffee). Cocoa beans (chocolate) are also roasted. The browning of cookies and the enhanced flavor from that browning comes from the Maillard reaction. Could this be why a little coffee powder  intensifies flavor so well, because it has flavor and bitterness associated with well-browned food?

Random food science digression: food scientists now believe that the antioxidants in coffee come not from caffeine or the chlorogenic acid found in green coffee beans, but these antioxidants are rather mainly a direct by-product of the Maillard reaction during roasting.

with all light brown sugar and 2 tsp. coffee in the dough

You can also get different effects by using all light brown sugar, or half light brown and half white, or half dark brown and half white. Although the recipe calls for white flour and margarine, I have successfully made the cookies with whole wheat flour and oil.