Supper Club V: How Sweet It Is
We'd had gefilte fish, but even the best gefilte fish is often looked at with concern by the uninitiated, and indeed several people sent their plates back with portions uneaten. It was clearly time to punch up Supper Club by throwing a couple of guaranteed winners at them.
My parents have belonged to B'nai Israel Synagogue in Grand Forks, North Dakota since we moved to that area in 1984. In those years, the grand dame of the congregation was Mildred. She was good looking women with striking silver hair and keen conversational skills, but more importantly she was a heck of a cook. She had a kugel that was famous, but more interestingly she had a dish that I've never seen before or since. This dish was Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup.
Mildred ultimately had a stroke the night of her fiftieth anniversary party and moved into a nursing home before passing, but even before then her Hot Fruit Soup recipe had been given to another member of our synagogue Barbara, who served it at special occasions but always referenced as "Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup". Her family and my family were close then and now, so we had this dish at least once a year for some holiday dinner. Barbara ended up being diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor that killed her at a ridiculously unfairly early age early last decade, and I had not had the dish since then. Fortunately, my mother had preserved a copy of the recipe, and so while it isn't really a Jewish recipe, it is to me. And now I give it to you.
Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup As Made By Barbara
1 15 oz can slice peaches
1 15 oz can pears
1 15 oz can mandarin oranges
1 20 oz can pineapple chunks
1 9 oz box pitted prunes
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Juice of 1/2 orange
1/2 of 46 oz jar of applesauce
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 can cherry pie filling
1. Mix all ingredients except cherry pie filling in large roasting pan.
2. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
3. Add 1 can cherry pie filling and bake another 15 minutes or until hot throughout.
Yep, this recipe is really as simple as dumping it all into a dish, stirring it and baking it. We threw it together Saturday afternoon and baked it so that it finished right as people were sitting down for dinner. It is super sweet and would probably make a pretty good dessert. It certainly provided a nice change of pace from the gefilte fish opener. We made two batches and served it in paper bowls. We had about half a batch left, but that's probably because we ate a lot of bread.
You have to have bread when you serve soup, right? This was the primary excuse for importing my celebrity guest baker (aka, tigerlily_blue) and she did not disappoint as she prepared a really fantastic loaf of the quintessential Jewish bread, challah. But this was no ordinary challah. This was challah with figs in it.
Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah
From Smitten Kitchen
Bread
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet - 1/4 ounce or 7 grams) active dry yeast
1/4 cup (85 grams) plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil, plus more for the bowl
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, or 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
4 cups (500 grams) all-purpose flour
Fig Filling
1 cup (5 1/2 ounces or 155 grams) stemmed and roughly chopped dried figs
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest, or more as desired
1/4 cup (60 ml) orange juice
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
Few grinds black pepper
Egg Wash
1 large egg
Coarse or flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
This assumes you have a stand mixer. Check the blog for instructions on making it sans mixer.
Part 1 - Can You Get a Rise Out of Me
1. Whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon honey into 2/3 cup warm water (110 to 116 degrees), and let it stand for a few minutes, until foamy.
2. In a large mixer bowl, combine the yeast mixture with remaining honey, 1/3 cup olive oil, and eggs. Add the salt and flour, and mix until dough begins to hold together.
3. Switch to a dough hook, and run at low speed for 5 to 8 minutes.
4. Transfer the dough to an olive-oil coated bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside for 1 hour, or until almost doubled in size.
I Don't Give a Fig For You
5. In a small saucepan, combine the figs, zest, 1/2 cup water, juice, salt, and a few grinds of black peper.
6. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the figs are soft and tender, about 10 minutes.
7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
8. Remove from heat, and let cool to lukewarm.
9. Process fig mixture in a food processor until it resembles a fine paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Set aside to cool.
Figs & Dough = Better Together
10. After your dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured counter and divide it in half. 11. Roll the first half of the dough into a wide and flat vaguely rectangular shape (precision is not important).
11. Spread half the fig filling evenly over the dough, stopping short of the edge.
12. Roll the dough into a long, tight log, trapping the filling within. Then gently stretch the log as wide as feels comfortable and divide it in half.
13. Repeat 10 through 12 with remaining dough and fig filling.
I Love Your Weave
14. Arrange two ropes in each direction, perpendicular to each other, like a tight tic-tac-toe board.
15. Weave them so that one side is over, and the other is under, where they meet. So, now you’ve got an eight-legged woven-headed octopus.
16. Take the four legs that come from underneath the center and move the leg to their right - i.e., jumping it.
17. Take the legs that were on the right and, again, jump each over the leg before, this time to the left. If you have extra length in your ropes, you can repeat these left-right jumps until you run out of rope.
18. Tuck the corners or odd bumps under the dough with the sides of your hands to form a round.
19. Transfer the dough to a parchment-cover heavy baking sheet.
20. Beat egg until smooth, and brush over challah.
21. Let challah rise for another hour, but 45 minutes into this rise, preheat your oven to 375°F.
Get Baked?
22. Before baking, brush loaf one more time with egg wash and sprinkle with sea salt.
23. Bake in middle of oven for 35 to 40 minutes. It should be beautifully bronzed; if yours starts getting too dark too quickly, cover it with foil for the remainder of the baking time.
My sister has been following the Smitten Kitchen blog for some time; some of you may recall the Whipped Marscapone with Fresh Berries I made last time around which came from something my sister adapted from the blog. Since then, a cookbook has come out which tigerlily_blue has been evangelizing to everybody. In a five week span she brought her copy to New York City (in an attempt to get it autographed at a book signing that failed when my sister fell ill), to Seattle (where it was used to test drive the brisket for Supper Club) and to Cleveland. I think she bought a copy as a hostess gift for the people we stayed with in Seattle. In other words, she's obsessed.
Fortunately, obsessed people make good bread. Her test run in Atlanta was very successful, and this batch was equally successful. For years I have had trouble getting bread to rise in my house, but tigerlily_blue worked around that by cranking a space heater in the spare bedroom and letting the dough rise in there. She made two loaves on Saturday morning, which we baked in the early afternoon. She put together the first load while I walked Tulip and had to improvise slightly on the ingredients for the first loaf because I hadn't bought enough of certain items. I was immediately dispatched to the store to correct this, but ultimately you couldn't tell the difference in the final product from the taste. In fact, the only way to tell them apart was that one rose a little too much and the braids exploded on baking. That loaf still tasted delicious but was less photogenic, so we cut it up first. The second load was cut up after everyone got to admire it. Both loaves were almost entirely gone by the end of the meal. Nobody even noticed that a little too much pepper ended up in the fig paste due to a pepper container that didn't close properly.
So yeah, it was totally worthwhile to fly her in from Atlanta for Supper Club. And that was before she contributed the recipe for our soup course...
My parents have belonged to B'nai Israel Synagogue in Grand Forks, North Dakota since we moved to that area in 1984. In those years, the grand dame of the congregation was Mildred. She was good looking women with striking silver hair and keen conversational skills, but more importantly she was a heck of a cook. She had a kugel that was famous, but more interestingly she had a dish that I've never seen before or since. This dish was Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup.
Mildred ultimately had a stroke the night of her fiftieth anniversary party and moved into a nursing home before passing, but even before then her Hot Fruit Soup recipe had been given to another member of our synagogue Barbara, who served it at special occasions but always referenced as "Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup". Her family and my family were close then and now, so we had this dish at least once a year for some holiday dinner. Barbara ended up being diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor that killed her at a ridiculously unfairly early age early last decade, and I had not had the dish since then. Fortunately, my mother had preserved a copy of the recipe, and so while it isn't really a Jewish recipe, it is to me. And now I give it to you.
Mildred's Hot Fruit Soup As Made By Barbara
1 15 oz can slice peaches
1 15 oz can pears
1 15 oz can mandarin oranges
1 20 oz can pineapple chunks
1 9 oz box pitted prunes
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Juice of 1/2 orange
1/2 of 46 oz jar of applesauce
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 can cherry pie filling
1. Mix all ingredients except cherry pie filling in large roasting pan.
2. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
3. Add 1 can cherry pie filling and bake another 15 minutes or until hot throughout.
Yep, this recipe is really as simple as dumping it all into a dish, stirring it and baking it. We threw it together Saturday afternoon and baked it so that it finished right as people were sitting down for dinner. It is super sweet and would probably make a pretty good dessert. It certainly provided a nice change of pace from the gefilte fish opener. We made two batches and served it in paper bowls. We had about half a batch left, but that's probably because we ate a lot of bread.
You have to have bread when you serve soup, right? This was the primary excuse for importing my celebrity guest baker (aka, tigerlily_blue) and she did not disappoint as she prepared a really fantastic loaf of the quintessential Jewish bread, challah. But this was no ordinary challah. This was challah with figs in it.
Fig, Olive Oil and Sea Salt Challah
From Smitten Kitchen
Bread
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet - 1/4 ounce or 7 grams) active dry yeast
1/4 cup (85 grams) plus 1 teaspoon honey
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil, plus more for the bowl
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, or 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
4 cups (500 grams) all-purpose flour
Fig Filling
1 cup (5 1/2 ounces or 155 grams) stemmed and roughly chopped dried figs
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest, or more as desired
1/4 cup (60 ml) orange juice
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
Few grinds black pepper
Egg Wash
1 large egg
Coarse or flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
This assumes you have a stand mixer. Check the blog for instructions on making it sans mixer.
Part 1 - Can You Get a Rise Out of Me
1. Whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon honey into 2/3 cup warm water (110 to 116 degrees), and let it stand for a few minutes, until foamy.
2. In a large mixer bowl, combine the yeast mixture with remaining honey, 1/3 cup olive oil, and eggs. Add the salt and flour, and mix until dough begins to hold together.
3. Switch to a dough hook, and run at low speed for 5 to 8 minutes.
4. Transfer the dough to an olive-oil coated bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside for 1 hour, or until almost doubled in size.
I Don't Give a Fig For You
5. In a small saucepan, combine the figs, zest, 1/2 cup water, juice, salt, and a few grinds of black peper.
6. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the figs are soft and tender, about 10 minutes.
7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
8. Remove from heat, and let cool to lukewarm.
9. Process fig mixture in a food processor until it resembles a fine paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Set aside to cool.
Figs & Dough = Better Together
10. After your dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured counter and divide it in half. 11. Roll the first half of the dough into a wide and flat vaguely rectangular shape (precision is not important).
11. Spread half the fig filling evenly over the dough, stopping short of the edge.
12. Roll the dough into a long, tight log, trapping the filling within. Then gently stretch the log as wide as feels comfortable and divide it in half.
13. Repeat 10 through 12 with remaining dough and fig filling.
I Love Your Weave
14. Arrange two ropes in each direction, perpendicular to each other, like a tight tic-tac-toe board.
15. Weave them so that one side is over, and the other is under, where they meet. So, now you’ve got an eight-legged woven-headed octopus.
16. Take the four legs that come from underneath the center and move the leg to their right - i.e., jumping it.
17. Take the legs that were on the right and, again, jump each over the leg before, this time to the left. If you have extra length in your ropes, you can repeat these left-right jumps until you run out of rope.
18. Tuck the corners or odd bumps under the dough with the sides of your hands to form a round.
19. Transfer the dough to a parchment-cover heavy baking sheet.
20. Beat egg until smooth, and brush over challah.
21. Let challah rise for another hour, but 45 minutes into this rise, preheat your oven to 375°F.
Get Baked?
22. Before baking, brush loaf one more time with egg wash and sprinkle with sea salt.
23. Bake in middle of oven for 35 to 40 minutes. It should be beautifully bronzed; if yours starts getting too dark too quickly, cover it with foil for the remainder of the baking time.
My sister has been following the Smitten Kitchen blog for some time; some of you may recall the Whipped Marscapone with Fresh Berries I made last time around which came from something my sister adapted from the blog. Since then, a cookbook has come out which tigerlily_blue has been evangelizing to everybody. In a five week span she brought her copy to New York City (in an attempt to get it autographed at a book signing that failed when my sister fell ill), to Seattle (where it was used to test drive the brisket for Supper Club) and to Cleveland. I think she bought a copy as a hostess gift for the people we stayed with in Seattle. In other words, she's obsessed.
Fortunately, obsessed people make good bread. Her test run in Atlanta was very successful, and this batch was equally successful. For years I have had trouble getting bread to rise in my house, but tigerlily_blue worked around that by cranking a space heater in the spare bedroom and letting the dough rise in there. She made two loaves on Saturday morning, which we baked in the early afternoon. She put together the first load while I walked Tulip and had to improvise slightly on the ingredients for the first loaf because I hadn't bought enough of certain items. I was immediately dispatched to the store to correct this, but ultimately you couldn't tell the difference in the final product from the taste. In fact, the only way to tell them apart was that one rose a little too much and the braids exploded on baking. That loaf still tasted delicious but was less photogenic, so we cut it up first. The second load was cut up after everyone got to admire it. Both loaves were almost entirely gone by the end of the meal. Nobody even noticed that a little too much pepper ended up in the fig paste due to a pepper container that didn't close properly.
So yeah, it was totally worthwhile to fly her in from Atlanta for Supper Club. And that was before she contributed the recipe for our soup course...