The Pros Take On Chanukah
Top Jewish Chefs Share Memories and Recipes
By Sharon Boorstin
There's a lot to eat at Chanukah besides latkes. Ask four of the top female Jewish chefs in America: Evan Kleiman, the chef-owner of Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles and host of NPR's "Good Food"; Elizabeth Katz, the pastry chef at Fiamma, in New York City; Nicole Kaplan, the pastry chef at Eleven Madison Park, also in New York; and Gale Gand, the co-owner and pastry chef at both Tru and Brasserie T in Chicago and host of the Food Network's "Sweet Dreams." These women all have fond childhood memories of celebrating Chanukah in which, as with so many reminiscences about Jewish holidays, food plays a leading role.
 Evan Kleiman learned how to cook in her mother's kitchen. At UCLA, her major in Italian literature and film took her to Italy, where she learned Italian home cooking. Eventually, her passion for cooking overrode her passion for film, and she started working in Italian restaurants in Los Angeles. A couple of decades and five cookbooks later, Kleiman's Angeli Caffe is praised not just for its contemporary Italian food but for its international dinners as well.
Every Thursday night, Kleiman cooks an ethnic feast—perhaps Indian, Mexican, or Middle Eastern—for guests who pay $25 and sit at communal tables. Every year on Chanukah, she prepares a dinner that features Jewish dishes from around the world.
"Chanukah is all about fried food because we're celebrating the miracle of the oil," Kleiman explains. The Angeli Chanukah menu might include Italian rice fritters, eggplant fritters, fried chicken with lemon and cinnamon, and Israeli deep-fried doughnuts. "The rice fritters are made with a little lemon zest and plumped golden raisins, for a sweet and savory taste—another tradition in Chanukah food," she notes.
Kleiman's potato latkes—so popular that she makes the batter to go—come from the recipe of a dear friend of her mother's. "When I was a child, we always celebrated Chanukah with the Katz family," Kleiman recalls. "Roz's latkes were so crisp and lacy. She used all the usual ingredients—grated potatoes, eggs, flour—plus just a touch of baking powder."
Kleiman always serves latkes with homemade applesauce. "The secret is to use apples, a little water, and a pinch of cinnamon—no sugar," she says. Every Chanukah, the Kleimans and the Katzes had a running debate: "To peel or not to peel, that was the question," she says. When it comes to Kleiman's apples, she prefers not to peel.
Elizabeth Katz grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., where she helped her mother in the family's gourmet food shop and catering company. "Holiday season was our busiest," she recalls, "but even when we worked late, we found time to light the Chanukah candles."
Katz remembers how she and her brother couldn't wait to get home and tear open the box of pastries that their Grandpa Harry brought from the city. And how she helped her grandmother Clara bake yeast-raised babkas and mandel bread.
Food memories such as those were what inspired Katz to tackle the pastry program at the Culinary Institute of America after high school and to become a professional pastry chef. At 24, she was the sous pastry chef at Daniel in New York, a restaurant that the New York Times granted a coveted four stars. Today, at 26, she is the head pastry chef at Fiamma, a sleek, multi-level Italian restaurant in SoHo.
There, Katz prepares mostly modern Italian desserts, but there is a cookie on the assorted cookie plate based on one she remembers from her childhood Chanukahs. "My mom and I were always trying out recipes in an attempt to re- create the butter sandwich cookies we bought in the Jewish bakeries," she says. "This Milano recipe is the winner. If Mom liked it, then it must be good."
At 33, Nicole Kaplan is the pastry chef at the award-winning Eleven Madison Park, a contemporary American/ French restaurant in New York City. Among the most popular pastries on the menu are her chocolate souffl for two, lemon tart with lemon crepes, and an assortment of cookies featuring her homemade macaroons.
It took Kaplan years to hone a recipe that would yield macaroons like those she remembered from the Jewish holidays when she was growing up in Rockland County, N.Y. "My mother and grandmother were terrible cooks, and holiday dinners were always roast chicken or brisket, chopped liver, gefilte fish from a jar, Carvel ice cream cakes, and canned macaroons," she recalls. "My brother and I would fight over who got to pop open the macaroon can and eat the first one."
It wasn't until Kaplan was studying flute at Mannes Conservatory in New York that she was drawn to baking. "I missed my old friends," she says, "so I started baking and sending them cookies." Since Kaplan couldn't afford classes at Peter Kump's Institute of Culinary Education, she got a job there instead. When she moved on to Osteria del Circo, she traded her flute for a rolling pin for good.
At Eleven Madison Park, Kaplan's macaroons are available daily, though she still thinks of them as a Jewish holiday treat. "When I have kids, I want them to experience all the Jewish holidays, and food is a big part of them," she says. "I picture myself in my kitchen with my daughter, baking macaroons."
Gale Gand is one busy woman: host of "Sweet Dreams" on the Food Network; executive pastry chef at Tru and Brasserie T, the two Chicago-area restaurants she co-owns; co-author of several award-winning cookbooks—and a mom. Not bad for a nice Jewish girl from Chicago's North Shore who studied silver- and goldsmithing in art school and only by accident (she got a part-time job in a restaurant) learned that her artistic skills translated to baking.
And how's this for a twist on the happy-Chanukah-memories story: Gand's mother was a non-observant Jew and didn't celebrate the holidays, so Gand celebrated them secretly with her best friend, Lauren Shay. "If I couldn't make it over to Lauren's house to celebrate with her family, I'd call her and we'd say the prayer over the Chanukah candles together on the phone," she recalls.
Gand has fond memories of the moist marble cake that Lauren's Grandma Fanny made for Chanukah. "I've been trying for years to get the recipe from Lauren's mom, but she won't tell it to me. I even offered to treat her to dessert at my restaurant, but she keeps putting it off." In the meantime, Gand makes Chanukah marble cake from a recipe she got from the mother of another one of her girlfriends.
The true way to eternal life is to share recipes," Gand believes. "My six-year-old son only knows my Grandma Elsie by her cabbage strudel," she says, explaining that her grandmother used cabbage in strudel because she couldn't afford apples. "When I was in my thirties, I went to stay with my grandmother for a week and she gave me all her recipes. Someday, I'll pass them down to my children."
Sharon Boorstin is the author of Let Us Eat Cake: Adventures in Food and Friend ship (Regan Books/HarperCollins).
Chanukah Recipes
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Evan Kleiman's Italian-Jewish Eggplant Croquettes
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Serves 6
1 large eggplant, approximately 4 lbs.
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup bread crumbs plus more for breading
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Olive oil for frying
Lemon wedges
Preheat oven to 450 F. Place the eggplant on a cookie sheet with sides, to catch drips. Bake in pre-heated oven approximately 45 minutes, or until the eggplant collapses and the inner pulp is soft. Let the eggplant cool enough so that you can handle it. Carefully scoop out the soft pulp and place in a cheesecloth-lined sieve. Press out as much liquid as possible.
In a food processor, place the drained eggplant, eggs, bread crumbs, Parmesan, parsley, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Process just until mixed. Do not over-process. Place mixture in a bowl and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour.
Cover the bottom of a pie or cake pan with 1/2 inch of bread crumbs. In a medium frying pan, heat enough oil to come 1/2 inch up the sides. Drop a tablespoon of the eggplant mixture onto the bread crumbs and roll to coat. Place immediately in the frying pan. Fry until golden brown on all sides. Serve hot with lemon wedges.
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Gramma June's Marble Cake
From Gale Gand
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Cake:
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup water
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
10 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Chocolate Mint Buttercream:
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups powdered sugar
34 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon mint extract
In a small pan stir together the chocolate, sugar, baking soda, and water and warm it to melt the chocolate. It will froth up. Remove from heat and let cool. In a mixing bowl, place the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and mix. Make a well in the center and add the oil, water, egg yolks, and vanilla, and cream it together with a wooden spoon. Divide batter evenly in 2 bowls and stir the chocolate mixture into one. Whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff but not dry, and fold half into the chocolate batter and half into the vanilla batter.
Pour batters into an ungreased tube pan (with a removable center is best), layering and alternating batters. Run a knife through it once to marbleize the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 325 degrees and bake another 3035 minutes or until firm to the touch. To cool the cake, invert the tube pan onto a wine bottle and let it hang upside down. Once cooled, run a table knife around the walls of the pan and turn the cake out. Trim some off the top to make it flat, and then flip the cake over.
In a bowl, put all the ingredients for the buttercream and blend until smooth. Frost the cake on the sides and top, and garnish with mint leaves or white chocolate chips. Gramma June used to place some money in an envelope, wrap it in plastic wrap and stuff it into the hole. She'd cover it with foil and frost right over it. Later the surprise would be revealed.
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Eleven Madison Macaroons
From Nicole Kaplan
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Makes 2530
10 egg whites
2 1/4 cups sugar
14 ounces dried, unsweetened coconut, finely chopped (find in gourmet stores)
1 tablespoon apple butter or applesauce that has been reduced to a thick paste
Pinch salt
In a pot placed over a pot of simmering water, stir together the egg whites and the sugar and cook until all the sugar is dissolved, about 1520 minutes. Add the coconut, apple butter, and salt. Stir and continue to cook until most of the moisture has been absorbed, about 1520 minutes. The mixture should be stiff enough to scoop. Cool to room temperature or keep refrigerated for up to 3 days.
When ready to use, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. On a nonstick flexipan or parchment-covered baking sheet, spoon mounds of dough—about 1 1/2 tablespoons. With your fingers, smooth the shape and bring to a point. Bake until the cookies are golden all over, about 2530 minutes. They stay fresh for a few days wrapped; they are also delicious dipped partway into melted chocolate.
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Fiamma Milano Cookies
From Elizabeth Katz
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Cookies:
6 ounces butter
5 ounces sugar
1 egg
6 ounces all-purpose flour
Zest of 1 orange
Buttercream:
4 ounces egg whites
4 ounces sugar
6 ounces softened butter
1 vanilla bean, scraped, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted, for dipping
In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and mix until smooth. Add in the egg and mix until completely combined. Mix in the flour and orange zest and mix until combined, making sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure that all ingredients are well combined. Line a metal baking pan with parchment paper. Using a pastry bag with a small round tip, pipe 1-inch lines of the cookie batter, leaving space between each line. Bake at 325 for 68 minutes, until golden brown.
To make buttercream:
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine egg whites and sugar and place bowl over a pot of simmering water. Gently whisk egg whites and sugar to combine, and continue mixing until the whites are warm to the touch. Place bowl on the electric mixer, and with whisk attachment, whip on high until mixture has tripled in volume and formed medium peaks. Slowly add softened butter and continue whipping until combined. Add seeds from the vanilla bean or the extract.
To assemble:
Flip half of the cookies upside down. Place the buttercream in a pastry bag with a small round tip and pipe a small line of buttercream down the center of each cookie. Sandwich together with remaining cookie halves. Place in refrigerator to chill and set. Dip end of each cookie in melted chocolate and place back on cookie sheet to dry.
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