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 The challah braiding team gets to work. |
Meals Kids Might Eat:
Challah And Cholent
by Judy Sobeloff, Newsletter Volunteer, from the May 2007 newsletter
Admiring Jyotsna as a friend, cook, and writer, I realized upon taking up the mantle of her column that I would need to lower the bar: Instead of “Meals Kids Might Eat,” I would think of this as “Meals Parents Might Cook.” My personal goal will be to increase the number of easy, nutritious, and appealing meals at my family’s — and your family’s — fingertips, to cook more food ourselves and rely less on the beckoning call of the frozen/canned/boxed/mac-n-cheese/pb-and-j
While I envisioned cooking something quick and easy for my MKME/MPMC debut, what happened was far from quick. I made two traditional Jewish foods for the first time: challah, the braided bread served for Friday night Shabbat, and cholent, a slow-cooking bean-based casserole.
Making challah (Hebrew for dough) turned out to be so easy that my friend Lesley brought over her 20-month-old to show us how. The goal, Lesley explained, is to keep the yeast alive, using water warm enough to activate the yeast but not so hot that it kills it. I knew I was in the hands of a challah master when Lesley told me about her own challah-making debut, as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp where she was assigned to lead a group of kids in making weekly challah for the entire camp of 150. I was pleased to learn that the measurements did not need to be exact—Lesley sometimes adds more sugar than called for, and the amount of flour needed varies. “You don’t want the dough too sticky,” she explained, “but when it stops absorbing flour, don’t add more.” While unbleached, pre-sifted flour is ideal, the flour I got from the Co-op’s bulk bins worked fine, as did the Co-op’s not-so-white sugar. All of us enjoyed kneading and even mixing the dough with our hands, with Lesley recommending the removal of rings, as “challah dough is hell on rings.”
The recipe made enough for four quite tasty loaves, some of which we froze, with my children each opting to braid their own family-sized loaf rather than making smaller kid-sized knots. The results seemed well worth the effort expended, particularly as it felt like a morning playing with playdough.
On, then, to the cholent (pronounced CHIL-lent), which began innocently enough. As my daughter dumped beans and water into a pot the night before construction was to begin, little did we know that it would be days before we ate the results. Letting the soaking beans sleep in, we got a late start the following afternoon with chopping and sautéing. The first inkling of excitement came after I loaded the pan (brimming with hot water) into the oven, and water ran out beneath the closed oven door.
As Cholent One was launched, I found a recipe for Children’s Cholent, which requires an additional day to cook. This second recipe calls for meat and a different kind of bean, but instead I took a short-cut, adapting the first recipe by adding sliced potatoes on top and a crust. The most important instruction: make sure your children are there when you take off the lid.
Part of cholent’s appeal seems to be its science-fair-project qualities: Pour boiling water into an already full pan; watch potatoes float around; attempt to affix crust; watch it, too, float around. Foodwise, both versions of cholent met with acceptance but not wild enthusiasm. My 3-year-old kept repeating about Cholent Two: “It’s good! I want more!” before finally groaning, “I had a lot of food,” but no one was interested in leftovers. Fred suggested adding more garlic and spice to Cholent Two. Lesley, who went home and made Cholent One, found it “yummy” and reported positive results on the kid front: “More! More!” (20-month-old); “MmmmMmmm” (11-year-old); and “I wouldn’t want it every Shabbat, maybe only once a month” (9-year-old).
Were I not writing this article, I would never have undertaken a recipe that takes a day and a half to complete, much less one with a crust, but I was pleased to see how little effort, apart from planning ahead, this required.
Challah (adapted from The Jewish Catalog)
1/2 cup oil
4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup cold water
2 packages dry yeast
1/3 cup warm water
3 eggs
7 cups unbleached flour (you may need less)
OPTIONAL: sesame or poppy seeds
Pour the oil, salt, and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Add 1 cup boiling water and stir; add 1/2 cup cold water. Dissolve 2 packages dry yeast in 1/3 cup warm water. Beat 3 eggs, and add to oil and water mixture, saving 1 tablespoon of beaten egg to be brushed on loaves before baking. Add dissolved yeast and stir. Add flour and mix well.
Turn out on floured board and knead until dough does not stick to board or hands. Add more flour if necessary. Return dough to bowl and cover with a clean towel. Place in oven that has been preheated for one minute and then turned off. Let dough rise in oven for one hour; it should double in bulk. If poked with finger, the hole should remain.
Turn dough out on lightly floured board and knead for about 1 minute. Cut into 4 pieces and then cut each of these into 3 pieces, kneading each piece with a little flour until it is not sticky. Grease a cookie sheet with vegetable shortening. Roll each piece of dough into a strand about 8 inches long. Make 4 braided loaves.
Place on baking sheet and let rise for 45 minutes at room temperature. Brush tops of loaves with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds. Bake in 375 oven for 25-40 minutes. Remove loaves to racks to cool.
Extra loaves may be stored in the freezer, then thawed and placed in oven for 5-10 minutes to restore their fresh flavor.
Bean And Barley Cholent (adapted from The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook)
1/2 lb. Great Northern beans
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 large carrot, sliced thin
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. sweet paprika
1 Tbsp. honey
1/2 cup pearl barley
5 cups boiling water
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Soak beans overnight in large covered pot or bowl, with water level 2” above beans.
Preheat oven to 350. Heat oil in large, heavy oven casserole. Add onions, sauté until golden. Stir in sliced carrot, cook 5 more minutes. Stir in garlic and cook 1 more minute.
Stir in paprika and honey. Stir in barley. Drain beans and add to pot.
Add boiling water, cover and bake for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 250 and bake 30 minutes longer. Remove cover and season with salt and pepper.
Children’s Cholent (inspired by and heavily adapted from The Children’s Jewish Holiday Kitchen)
Assemble Bean and Barley Cholent as described above. After adding beans and prior to adding boiling water, slice 6 medium potatoes thinly and add to top. Cover cholent with boiling water. Make a dough from 1/3 cup margarine, 1 cup self-rising flour, a dash of salt, and 2 Tbsp. ice water. (NOTE: For a wide casserole dish, you may need to double this amount of dough.) Spread the dough all around the rim of the casserole like putty, and put on the lid, sticking it to the dough to make sure no air gets in while cooking. Bake at 250 degrees for approximately 12 hours. Open and eat!
Judy Sobeloff looks forward to unlocking the mysteries of meals kids might eat that parents might cook.
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