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 21, 2010 · 9:51 pm

Food really is love, and also a marker of shared experience

When interviewed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about his recollections of Sephardic life before World War II, Dr. Isaac Nehama described in detail the special characteristics of some of the special foods his mother used to make in their Athens home. Speaking for posterity, his choices were wise and wonderful, reflecting dishes unique to his parents’ native Monastir (Bitola), others universally Sephardic, some with their roots planted firmly in Spain and even earlier in Jewish history.

Even though he watched his mother prepare the same recipes countless times, he never ceased to marvel at the intriguing flavors, shapes and textures she produced each day for her family.  He reminds me of my grandfather, who adored his mother’s cooking and always spoke of it with the same sense of wonder as Dr. Nehama, as if the transformation from raw ingredients to final product was somehow miraculous rather than the work of a skilled and practiced cook.  Continue reading →

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March 19, 2010 · 10:46 pm

Oops! A few quick remarks about Pandespanya

Pandespanya (sponge cake) can be made at Passover substituting matza cake meal for flour.

At other times of year, I love the texture obtained making it with regular flour; however, if you want a superfine texture, use cake flour instead.  It’s pretty amazing.

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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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