Cheese Kreplach are a potchke or a project, depending on how you look at it(it’s also fattening but yummy) but Shavuot is a relatively undemanding holiday. On Shavuot you get to stay home and eat regular food. No cleaning rituals required. The change is in scheduling. The custom is to forego sleep and spend the entire night studying the Torah.
The unpolitically correct truth is that most women don’t stay up. Since you can cook on Shavuot, that leaves plenty of time to make a batch of yummy cheese kreplach.
Recipe from the Balabusta’s Choice Yields 30 kreplach. Freezes well.
Put up a large pot of salted water (1/2 salt) to boil. Then make filling and then dough.
Filling
One and one half cuups farmer cheese (in Isarel Tuv Taam or Canaan–1 package)
2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
Squirt of fresh lemon juice
Blend with an immersion blender and set aside.
Dough
Four ounces or 1/2 cup sour cream (I used low fat)
1/2 cup cream cheese
1 egg
1/2 tbsp melted butter
2 cups flour
pinch of salt
Knead together and roll out on floured surface. Try to roll it as thin as you can and cut into 3 inch squares.

Place a teaspoon of filling at the center of each square. Fold the dough to form triangles. Pinch edges together tighty.
Drop in boiling water and cook for 20 minutes or until the kreplach rise to the surface. Drain well
Fry in butter. You can dust with confectioners sugar before serving.

Here’s a picture.
I discovered this Challah from Nicholas Stavroulakis’s wonderful “cookbook of the Jews of Greece.” He drew a lovely picture and offered instructions which I attempted to copy.
The orb at the center which is roughly the size of a smallish Challah represents Mount Sinai . Around it are seven rings–made from ropes of dough–to represent the seven heavens (sheva rakiyim in Hebrew). On top of them are small dough sculptures representing Miriams well, the 10 Commandments, an open Torah scroll, a dove ( a symbol of the Jewish people) and Moses’ copper serpent (nachas nehoset).

This is what it looked like when I took it out of the oven.

Preparation
1. Cream all ingredients together until smooth
2. Add ¼ to ⅓ C matzo meal
3. Refrigerate for at least one hour (you can leave overnight and make balls the next day)
4. Roll into walnut-sized balls and drop into rapidly boiling salted water or soup.
5. Cook covered for 30 minutes. Drain and serve.
Freezes well. Makes 10 balls. Serves 4-6
Kneidlach with a Neshoma
Thisgolden egg yolk filling is whimsically called a neshoma or a soul. Don’t try this will floaters. A neshoma needs the tough outer skin a sinker provides.
Preparation
1. In a separate dish mix together one egg yolk, ¼ to ½ tsp sautéed onion, a pinch of cinnamon and enough matzo meal to create a paste (measure it in pinches).
2. Make balls using the firm recipe.
3. In the palm of your hand flatten each ball slightly and insert a quarter teaspoon of “neshoma’” filling.
4. Seal the filling inside by closing the matzo ball batter around it and follow cooking instructions for firm matzo balls.
Fluffy Kneidlach or Floaters
Ingredients
One egg
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp oil or schmaltz
1 Pinch cinnamon
⅓ C matzo meal
½ tsp salt and a good pinch of black or white pepper
Preparation
Pinch cinnamon
Pinch sugar
⅓ C matzo meal
½ tsp salt and a good pinch of black or white pepper
Preparation
1.Mix all ingredients together . Cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge to set for at least an hour. You can leave this batter overnight.
2. Fifteen minutes before you are ready to roll your balls boil up a small pot of well salted water or soup stock.
2.Wet your hands and roll into into walnut-sized balls
3.. When the water reaches a roiling ball turn it down to simmer and plunge the balls inside. Cover the pot and let the balls cook undisturbed for a half hour.
5. Drain and serve.
Freezes well.
Chicken Balls
In Hassidic homes , matzo balls are off the menu on Seder night. This is because some Rabbis, most of them Chassidic believe that when matzos are mixed with water the mixture runs the chance, leavening or turning into chametz. Hence they ban all matzo liquid mixtures including kneidlach.
As this is a remote possibility, most Rabbis reject this ban Among Chassidim it is the norm to abstain from ‘gebruchts,”—the general term for kneidlach, matzo brei, matzo kugel and other foods based on matzo liquid combinations. (gebruchts is the Yiddish term for broken as matzos are broken or ground before they become wet). Hassidic cooks have cleverly developed an ersatz matzo ball made of ground chicken combined with mashed potato When I first heard about this I was skeptical, but to my surprise it proved to be quite tasty and not unlike the real thing.
Chicken Balls
Ingredients
One pound or 250 grams ground turkey or chicken
One egg
Pinch black pepper
¼ tsp salt
One medium-sized mashed potato.
½ a small onion finely diced
Pinch ginger
¼ C potato starch .
Preparation
1. Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for an hour or more.
2. Boil a pot of soup. Form the mixture into balls—they will be slightly ragged looking.
3. Plunge into rapidly boiling soup.
4. Cook in covered pot over low flame for 45 minutes.
Freezes well. Serves six to eight.

Stuffed cabbages also resemble Torah scrolls–especially when you serve them two at a time. At Purim the Jewish people reaffirmed their allegiance to the Torah. 

Here’s a recipe for Stuffed cabbage, sweet, Galicianer or Polish style,this time.
Ingredients
1 savoy cabbage (no stuffed cabbages can’t be red!)
Five small onions.
I can sauerkraut (optional)
1 lb (or 500 grams) chopped meat. I mixed turkey and beef
One cup tomato juice
½ c brown sugar
⅛-¼ tsp of black pepper
Juice of 1 fresh lemon
2 eggs
½ cup white rice
Stuffing Preparation
1. Sauté one small onion.until soft and brown.
2. Add rice to sauté and mix together for a minute. (this is just an initiall sauté; the rice will cook later on when it’s stuffed inside the cabbage rolls)
3. In a separate bowl combine chopped meat with ¼ cup tomato juice, (or ¼ cup water plus 1 and ½ tbsp. tomato paste) two eggs and salt and pepper to taste.
4. Add fried onion and rice to meat mixture. Note : in this recipe you don’t precook the meat. It cooks later with the cabbage.
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Cabbage
1. Boil two inches (about 4 cups) of water on the bottom of a large pot (Dutch oven)
2. Insert your cabbage. It can take 10-15 minutes for the cabbage to soften enough that the leaves can be pried loose.
3. Remove cabbage from steaming water.
4. Delicately separate the leaves one at a time.
Tips: You’ll probably be able to get two or three loose at one time and then you’ll return the cabbage to the steaming water to soften some more. This takes patience.
The leaves must be pliable enough to fold and roll.
The art of cabbage stuffing
1. Once you can separate a few outer leaves from the cabbage (small tears don’t matter but try to leave them intact) take a paring knife and thin the vein at the center of the cabbage (a big fat vein will make rolling impossible) taking care not to tear the cabbage leaf.
2. Place a tablespoon of filling at the center of your leaf. (if your leaves are small use less filling.).
3. Roll up the cabbage and press it on both sides to make sure the filling is secure inside. If there’s a small rip on the side, the cabbage will still survive, but try to avoid major leaks.
Cooking
1. Line the bottom of a large pot or Dutch oven with quartered onions and sauerkraut. (It’s yummy to throw in a few beef bones and a piece of flanken,)
2. Layer the cabbages on top of the sauerkraut and onions.
3. Continue layering until you’re done.
4. Pour a cup of tomato juice, a half cup of brown sugar, the juice of a lemon and between 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoons of black pepper (add pepper to taste) .
Add 250 grams of tomato paste and 250 grams of water along with more brown sugar and pepper to taste and a handful of raisins.

Weren’t the only people who ate chickpeas were Italians, vegetarians or people who were having Shalom Zachor–a Friday night party celebrating the birth of a son at which chickpeas are served.

I just didn’t get it. I assumed that my friends were crazy for chickpeas and they wanted to share their passion with us, until just recently. Call me a slow learner, but when I first learned that Esther ate a vegetarian diet at Ahashverosh’s palace I didn’t make the link to chickpeas, until now.

Recently, I figured out the  reason for my friend’s gift. There is an ancient custom to eat them along with other legumes and seeds on Purim (called in Hebrew zaronim) to recall the fact that Esther ate them in Ahasherosh’s palace. The food wasn’t kosher, so what was there to eat–legumes, seeds and grains.  All around, Esther  didn’t have an easy life. Her marriage to Mordechai ended when she submitted herself to Ahashverosh to save the Jewish nation. And as to nachas from the kids –some scholars say that Darius, the Persian King who permitted the rebuilding of the Holy Temple was her son but Darius wasn’t a good Yiddishe boy.

Yet there is no record of Esther complaining. I suppose there were some perks to being a queen, nice clothes, a driver, a maid but being married to a drunken bum is a pretty heavy deal. And yet Esther accepted her situation and rose to the challenge and because of her the Jewish people still lives.

Consider that when you much your chickpeas

Chickpeas in a classical Jewish style aka Arbis or Nahit

Sort through the chickpeas to remove stones and dirt

Soak them for 10 hours in cold water

Drain the water and boil them for two hours. 

Then add salt and pepper to taste and eat

You can also toss them into green salad or puree them into humous

Happy Purim

Kindl
Dough recipe adapted from Tzippora Kreisman’s “Delights of the Jewish Kitchen”
3 and ½ cups of flour
1 and ¼ teaspoons of instant yeast
Juice of one lemon
1 egg plus one egg yolk
1 cup (200 gm) margarine or butter softened
2 ½ tablespoons of sugar
Dissolve the yeast in the juice. Add eggs. Using the paddle attachment of a standing mixer add the margarine, sugar and flour.
Mix together on a low setting until the dough forms a ball.
Cover the ball of dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least two hours (you can leave it there for up to three days. If you’re going to be leaving it for longer, then freeze)
Filling
11 oz or one and ½ cups of walnuts (300 grams of walnuts)
½ cup of raisins
Sugar to taste . (around 1/3 cup is probably just about right)
Juice of one lemon (don’t use bottle lemon juice)
Combine all of the above in food processor using the blade attachment. Pulse briefly just enough so that the ingredients bind together and create a lumpy mixture not a smooth paste. (think cottage cheese rather than cream cheese)
½ cup apricot jam
Preparation
Divide the dough ball into two equal parts—these will be your kindls.
On a well floured surface roll out the dough until it’s as thin are you can stretch it without tearing. You want to create two or three long rectangles. (approximately 12 to 14 inches long and 4 to 5 inches wide)
(It will feel like a rolled pie crust)
Smear apricot jam and over that smear the walnut filling. Roll up jelly roll style
Brush with an egg yolk
Prick several times with a fork
Bake in a preheated oven at 350 F or 180 C for ½ hour or until brown.
The kindl will keep for up to several weeks without refrigeration. You can freeze it.

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