BAKING FOR THE NEXT FULL MOON
My family growing up were Food Jews. Really not religiously inclined but culinarily
attuned to the Jewish calendar. You could tell where we were in the calendar by the
Jewish holiday foods my mother prepared or purchased. And Purim meant
hamantaschen. Mom bought Passover sweets (macaroons of various sorts infinitely
superior to the ones we find in cans these days, Passover nut cake that you could buy
by the inch, marzipan robed in chocolate) from the two bakeries near our Long Island
home, and taigelach for Rosh Hashana from one of them (that is a whole other story),
but hamantaschen she made herself.
Purim still means hamantaschen, openly confessing the Ashkenaz-centric nature of my
discourse.
Let us start with pronunciation issues. I suppose you can get by saying something like
HAH-min-tash-en. But the first vowel really is not an “ah” sound. It is something
halfway between an “oo” and an “uh”. The last “en” bit is really not quite a separate
syllable from the preceding “tasch”.
And then there was the annual good natured argument between my parents about how
to pronounce the Yiddish word for the hamantaschen’s poppy seed filling. In my
mother’s Galitzianer Yiddish learned from her maternal grandmother it is “muhn”, the
vowel being perhaps just a bit shorter than that first hamantaschen vowel. Yiddish was
my father’s first language (English his second, even though he was born in New York),
his mamaloschen learned from his Byelorussian parents. My father said “moon”, the
vowel being not quite as long as the “oo” in “moo”, but much more moo-ish than my
mother’s “muhn”. The argument was really beside the point, because my mother filled
her hamantaschen with lekvar, usually prune but sometimes apricot.
While we are on the subject of fillings, what are acceptable hamantaschen fillings? This
is, of course, entirely a matter of taste and tradition. Or perhaps, like what constitutes a
bagel, not something that should be left entirely to taste (those doughnut-shaped things
with raisins in them are not bagels). The filling made with poppy seeds, whether muhn
or moon, is an excellent choice, as are prune or apricot lekvars or jams, and maybe
cherry or plum jam or preserves. Peanut butter is interesting, but pushing the envelope
and a bit messy. Chocolate? I think not. Cheese, it turns out, is traditional in some
circles. And thereon hangs a tale of hamantaschen history.
You may know about “The Settlement Cookbook”, first published 1901. Its subtitle tells
the origin story: “Tested recipes from The Settlement Cooking Classes, The Milwaukee
Public School Kitchens, The School of Trades for Girls, and Experienced Housewives”.
“Settlement” refers to the Settlement Houses organized in Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston,
New York, and other places, all having the goal of assisting the economic and social
integration of the wave of immigrants to the U.S. from Eastern and Southern Europe
from the 1880s into the 1910s. The Settlement Cookbook was not a Jewish cookbook,
not having a focus on kashrut, but more intended to enable the immigrants, Jewish and
not, to adapt their traditional recipes for American kitchens and to learn American
foodways without entirely losing their European roots. So, not a Jewish cookbook but
one with many Jewish recipes and used by many Jews, then and even now.
I have my own well-worn copy of The Settlement Cookbook, from a revised edition
printed in the early 1970s. I mostly use it for baking recipes, including Passover
desserts. My mother had a Settlement Cookbook, probably an edition of the late 1940s
or early 1950s (I think one of my brothers has that book). I have my maternal
grandmother’s copy, which says it is the twelfth edition copyrighted in 1921, two years
before my mother was born. This is precious to me, falling apart, with recipes in my
grandmother’s handwriting (mostly for cakes, cookies and puddings) written in the
inside back and front covers, and jotted down in summary form on slips of paper or
used envelopes or clipped from magazines or newsletters and stuffed in between the
now brown and crinkly pages of the book. In these handwritten recipes, flour or sugar
or liquids are sometimes given in “a glass of” measurements; the glass of course meant
a small leftover yahrtzeit candle glass.
I digress, as is my want. Back to hamantaschen. You will not find a recipe for
hamantaschen in the index of any of these Settlement Cookbooks. With persistence,
eventually you will stumble on an entry for “Purim cakes (Haman pockets)”. Neither my
1970s Settlement Cookbook nor my Gran’s from 1921 has a complete recipe for
hamantaschen. Instead, there is a short description (on page 81 in my book) of how to
make Haman pockets, with cross-references to other recipes for the dough and filling.
Here is what my copy says:
After first rising, roll out any Kuchen Dough, pages 76-77, to ¼ inch
thickness, cut into 4-inch rounds, brush with oil, spread Poppy Seed
Filling, page 83, or Cheese Filling, page 94, on each round. Fold 3 sides
to meet over filling, pinch together to make a three-cornered cake. Brush
top with warm honey, let rise, and bake in a moderately hot oven, 400º F.,
until golden brown.
The summary in my Gran’s book is similar, except it says to use either a “Cholla” dough
(which is a variant spelling of challah, it turns out) or Parker House roll dough, and it
only mentions poppy seed filling, not cheese.
This is really different from the hamantaschen I grew up eating or any you are likely to
find in American Jewish settings now. The acceptable fillings have multiplied over the
last 100 years, trending sweeter and simpler in flavor profile, certainly. But what is
really interesting is that the prescribed dough is a yeasted dough enriched with eggs
and with just a bit of sugar, otherwise used for bread, rolls, or the formerly ubiquitous
Middle and Eastern European kuchen. How different this must taste (and feel in the
mouth) from the more sugary and rich cookie dough we have come to expect. The
referenced cheese filling, by the way, is made with dry cottage cheese, egg yolks, butter
and sugar.
Purim is coming in about a month, on the 14 th of Adar II, the day before the next full
moon. I can’t wait to try hamantaschen made the old way. I’ll let you know how they
turn out.
Here is my mother’s recipe (copied by me and not, alas, in my mother’s handwriting):
2 eggs
½ cup butter, melted
½ cup sugar
Rind, juice 1 lemon
2 cups flour +
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Mix dough.
Roll out 1/8 inch
Cut in rounds. Fill with lekvar, muhn, etc.
Bake at 375º about 20 minutes.
If doubling recipe, use 5 cups flour.
Notes: My mother used salted butter. If like me you use unsalted, you may want
a bit more salt, but not much. Mom used table salt, rather than kosher salt, and
that makes a big difference. Mom says “2 cups flour +”, and this recipe usually
needs a bit more than two cups of flour, or else the dough is too soft and too
greasy. I chill the dough before trying to roll it. Do not trust the baking time; you
want them nicely brown and not burned, and whether that takes more or less
than twenty minutes in your oven is on you. I’d line the baking pan with
parchment, but Mom never did and the dough is high in fat, so….
With blessings for a week of safety and community,
Hazzan Steve
החזן שלמה זלמן עיט בן מרדכי מרגלן