Month: December 2018
Turnip the Heat with Alsatian Lentil Soup
December 31, 2018
I don’t know about you, but this winter’s been hitting me pretty hard. It started early, and while there haven’t been any REALLY freezing days yet, the cold (and the dryness) are pretty relentless. All I really want to do is curl up under the covers with a nice warm bowl of soup. (What, you […]
Theodore Herzl’s Christmas Cookies: Spiced Chocolate Hazelnut Krokerle
December 24, 2018
Ever have ambivalent feelings about Christmas? So did the Jews of nineteenth-century Germany. While you might have though Chrismukkah is a modern invention, it actually wasn’t dreamed up by the writers of The O.C.—its history is much longer and, arguably, more distinguished than that. Prewar German and Austrian Jews were well known for having been […]
Everything Bagel Mixed Nuts
December 17, 2018
There are a bunch of different ways Poppy and Prune recipes come to be. Sometimes I stumble across a cool recipe or historical factoid that I can’t wait to share. Sometimes I get a request. Sometimes I have a brilliant (or not) idea for an original recipe. And sometimes, there’s something I want to make […]
Flaming Tea: The Wildest Hanukkah Tradition
December 10, 2018
You know about latkes (even, if you’ve been keeping up with Poppy and Prune, obscure varieties like chestnut and brain). You know about sufganiyot and its predecessors, from awwame to zvingous. But have you ever heard of the flaming tea ceremony? No? Me either, until a few years ago when I was leafing through Phyllis […]
Luqmat: A Little Fritter With A Long History
December 4, 2018
Luqmat. Bumuelos. Sfenj. ʿAwwamé. Lokma. Zvingous. So many names for one deep-fried dough ball. How did these little-yeasted fritters—whatever you want to call them—spread all across the Mediterranean? And how did they become the preeminent Ḥanukka treat of the Sephardi world, from Morocco to Turkey? This Hanukkah, I covered the world of Sephardi fritters (and […]