A Little Spice is Nice

Here is a fabulous way to prepare chicken or turkey that gives the skin a dark spicy taste and the meat a rich smoky aspect. And you can do it in your own home oven without needing any special equipment. This is sure to become a favorite in your house as much as it is in mine.

Start with a whole kosher turkey or chicken. Kosher meat has already been soaked and salted, which means you get a bird that has been essentially brined for you. You can get them organic, free-range or conventional. Aaron's Best brand is especially good - you can usually find them frozen and sometimes fresh, depending on the size of the city where you live. If you start with a frozen one, defrost it. Then puree in the blender a small can of chipotle chilies in adobo sauce. You can actually get those kosher, too. These are smoky roasted jalapenos in a smoky rich tomato sauce. Add to them a dash of pomegranate syrup, if you've got it. This will add a little it of tangy sweet to the glaze - but it isn't necessary. Using a pastry brush or a sauce mop brush the whole turkey or chicken with this puree: top, bottom, inside, under wings, etc. Put it in a baking dish and into the hot oven. Start at 400 degrees for half an hour, then re-brush bird, turn over in the pan and lower temperature to 350. Cook until done (~20 minutes per pound), brushing more sauce onto meat ever 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to sit 20 minutes before carving. The skin will be spicy so you can discard it if you don't want the spice. This meat will be delicious hot and cold. Enjoy!

Hamentashen and Purim

Time to be irreverent, drunk and becostumed; it is Purim. Along with the shtick, the jokes and the gifts of food comes another, possibly even more important, Purim tradition - the hamentashen. These tri-cornered cookies that remind us of the hat Hamen (the foe of the Jewish people in the Purim story) wore. Translated into English hamentashen means Hamen's pockets. These cookies are often traditionally filled with poppy seeds and in a nice little play on words mon is the Yiddish word for poppy seed so you could also translate hamentashen as poppy seed pockets. Here is the best recipe for small, cookie dough hamentashen (they are also sometimes made with yeast dough). Fill them with your choice of Solo brand fillings (I like apricot, raspberry and almond; prune and poppy seed are also very popular), chopped nuts with honey and cinnamon, chocolate chips, marzipan, dried fruit with honey or jam. Make sure to use a small dollop of filling, especially of the runnier ones as otherwise it will leak out. You can make these dairy-free by substituting pareve margarine (I only use Earth Balance) for the butter. The number of cookies you get depends on the size of the glass you use for cutting. I use a standard sized wine glass and get around 4 dozen. Enjoy!1/2 cup butter, room temperature3/4 cup sugar1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder1 egg1 cup and 1 1/2 cups flour, separated2 tablespoons orange juiceyour choice of fillingsbutter for greasing the panHeat oven to 350 degrees F. In a mixing bowl cream butter, sugar and baking powder. Add egg and mix together until well-creamed. Mix in 1 cup of flour, then the orange juice. Add the final 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix until the dough mostly holds together. Remove from the mixer, form into a ball and wrap in waxed paper or plastic wrap. Working with half or a third at a time, roll the dough to 1/8 inch thick using flour to keep it from sticking to the board and your rolling pin. Cut rounds with a glass, place a dollop of filling in the center of each round then fold into a triangle, leaving a tiny space in the middle to see the filling. Pinch the dough edges together then place each cookie on a buttered baking sheet. Bake about 10-20 minutes (depends on your oven, the pan, how thick the dough is, etc) checking after about 7. The edges and bottom of the cookies will be golden, the rest will stay white. Save the scraps in a ball, wrap them up while you work with the rest of the dough and re-roll it. You can re-roll the dough several times before it becomes too stiff. Allow them to cool on the pan then remove. Eat them, share them, give them as gifts. Chag Purim Sameach!