Category Archives: Your Questions Answered

June 24, 2010 · 3:32 pm

Vişinată – Sour Cherry Drink

Hello Janet, I was wondering if you had a recipe for a drink my grandma used to make, it was, I think, called visnada or visnata and basically a sour cherry syrup with the fruits it. It was reduce and you would dilute it with water. My family is from Izmir, Turkey. Thanks!   – Estelle

Well, Estelle, you’ve just pretty much described the recipe you’re looking for!  Visnada is one of those seemingly exotic things that turns out to be sraightforward and simple.

Sour cherries are native to central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Romania, etc.) and parts of Asia Minor. The word vişinată is actually Romanian, deriving from the Romanian word vişine (cherry).  Rumania was part of the Ottoman Empire (as were all of the countries I’ve named above), so it doesn’t take too much thought to figure out then how a Romanian word, if not the specific recipe, found its way into Ottoman (and, by extension, Ottoman-Sephardic) gastronomy.

Vişinată, kirsch, marsachino are all Central European cherry brandies, which are generally made by macerating sour cherries in sugar and alcohol.  Turkey being predominantly Moslem, it’s logical that a non-alcoholic version would have evolved there, and just as logical that our essentially teetotalling relatives would have latched onto the same alcohol-free version.   I have to confess I’m free-associating here, letting logic prevail without my usual deep digging.  When things settle down again at the restaurant (end of summer)? I’ll be able to unearth some specifics.  In the meantime…

To make an alcohol-free vişinată, you need only simmer sour cherries & sugar in water.  Use only sour cherries – the sugar will offset the tartness without killing the cherry flavor.  Sweet cherries will just give you bland results.  Try 2 parts sugar, 2 parts cherries and 1 part water.  Dissolve the sugar in water on the stove, add the cherries and simmer them to reduce the liquid to a dark, thick syrup.  Let it cool thoroughly – hot sugar burns!   To make a drink, pour some of the syrup  (and cherries) into a glass and dilute it with cold water.  You might like seltzer instead of water, and a sprig of fresh mint leaves adds a wonderful aroma.  Or add a squeeze of lime juice and you’ve got a Cherry Lime Rickey – one of the goofiest drink names ever dreamed up, but a great thirst-quencher.

As an aside, vişinată syrup is also great served over vanilla ice cream and pan de spanya.  But what isn’t!

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March 19, 2010 · 9:57 pm

Matza Meal vs. Flour: To substitute, or not to substitute?

Thank you so much for the recipes. I read them thru and wanted to do a cooking/baking marathon so I could have them all on my table at once. Question: do you have a formula for making some of the desserts with regular flour, etc., so I might make them for non Passover events? –Andrea

This is an interesting question, because the usual dilemma is over how to adapt recipes for Passover. Rest assured there’s no rule against eating matza once the holiday’s over. I like using matza meal all year round.

There are plenty of Jewish recipes (including those you’ve got in the folio) that call for matza meal to begin with. In these, matza meal isn’t a substitute, it’s the preferred way to go. Using raw flour in a cuajado, for example, would be awful; the better substitute here is plain bread crumbs. That goes for my Aunt Rachel’s Cake as well.

Matza meal is nothing more than ground up matza, so you’re beginning with a product that’s already been cooked – toasted. Many people tend to think of matza as bland, but it’s got a distinctive flavor, which of course affects the flavor of whatever it is you’re making. The toasting also affects texture. Regular matza meal has a coarse crumb that’s good for savory cooking – for example in fillings or coatings. Matza cake meal is finer and is meant to approximate raw flour. That works in cakes, cookies, and sauces like agristada that call for a little flour to thicken them.

The key word is ‘approximte’. Non-Passover baked goods can be adapted with fine matza cake meal, but the resulting taste and texture will be a bit different. Food is supposed to be different at Passover, so I don’t see that as a problem. As for the rest of the year, feel free to work with matza, too, and enjoy its distintive flavor and texture.

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January 3, 2010 · 8:45 pm

Ajada (Q & A and a recipe)

Hi Janet,

My mother used to make what we called Ajada. It was made with soaked bread, eggs, fresh garlic and lemon juice. It was mixed and mashed together and we used it as a dip for meat. What is the origin of this food?   Is it Turkish or Spanish or Greek?  I would love a recipe if one is available.  Did I ask this question before?  Thanks and wish I could come and take a class with you.

Estelle

Good question, Estelle.

Ajada, a traditional Sephardic condiment, has its roots right here where I live in the north western Mediterranean and is just one member of a broad category of emulsions that are used at table to flavor savory meals – meats, fish, soups, stews, vegetables, you name it.  The word ajada is Ladino and translates loosely as ‘a thing made of/with garlic’ which, along with olive oil, is the basic recipe for the whole category.  Between Catalan, Spanish, French, Langue d’Òc, Italian and umpteen different dialects of each, garlic & oil emulsion goes by at least a dozen different spellings, among them alioli, aioli, alhòli, alloli, ajjoli, aillade, and ajada. The French word in the group, aillade, is equivalent in structure to the Ladino ajada.  The others you see here are all compound words, in various Romance languages, that mean garlic (allium – of the onion family) and oil (oleum).   And with this many variations in the spelling alone, you can easily imagine the countless variations in the recipe – Continue reading →

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October 9, 2009 · 1:12 am

Ashkenazi Mina, Anyone?

Dear Janet,

My grandparents Nissim, and Virginia, originally came from Istanbul, and the area in Bulgaria just over the Turkish border. I grew up eating borekas, spinach pies, haviar (tarama), biscochos, et al. But there is one dish my grandmother made that although I’ve researched everywhere haven’t found anything remotely similar. Unfortunately no one’s left alive who can even remember what it was called. The ingredients were ground liver, raw eggs, chopped walnuts, rye bread, and possibly chopped onions/celery. The raw ingredients were combined making a paste, which was then spread into a greased baking pan about 1/2 an inch thick, the top glazed with beaten egg, and baked. When cut and served it was quite firm, and dark brown on top. Have you ever heard of anything similar?

Thanks so much for all your hard work, it’s been an enjoyable read.

Alan

Wow.  When we talk about Jewish cooking being adaptive, I suspect this may be a prime – and very personal – example.  Off the top of my head, this sounds like a Sephardic rendition of a classic Ashkenazi dish from Eastern Europe:  chopped chicken liver.  Neither rye bread nor chopped chicken liver are part of Sephardic gastronomy.  Continue reading →

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