This (past) week’s slightly belated Food Friday is a round-up of recent food related links plus a bit of pre-Passover panic.

• Scanwiches – Blog of bizarre and cool scans of sandwiches.
• Story on the Obamas planting a vegetable garden at the White House – This is the first time since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II.
• 1943 Pamphlet on Victory Gardens – Scans.
• Top 10 Bizarre Food Festivals
• Mona Lisa made of Hamburger Grease Video – This is an Arby’s ad.
• This Is Why You’re Fat – Blog of some super-fatty foods people eat.
• Sudoku Pizza

Facebook statuses let me know that a bunch of people I know are cleaning their homes for Passover. I will be hosting my first Passover Seder this year on April 8th. I’m looking for vegetarian seder ideas. Finding stuff here, here, here and here.

Instead of a shankbone for the seder plate, there are some interesting ideas in this article.

Posted belatedly.

Ingredients:

• 100g Spinach
• 100g Broccoli
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons of OSEM onion soup mix (You can probably substitute any other soup mix / powder or even stock cubes.)
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• Bread crumbs (or corn flake crumbs)
• Flour

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. In a slightly greased pie dish scatter a light dusting of bread (or corn flake) crumbs. Quite thin, it just needs to stick.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the other ingredients. You can use a food processor to make it easy. If you are using frozen vegetables, soak them in some hot water and drain, before adding them to the mixture.
3. Bake 45 minutes or until a fork poked through the middle comes out dry.

Sarit, this is the recipe I promised you ages ago. Five minutes of work and then you stick it in the oven.

Went with Kevin to see Gethsemane at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle on opening night on Tuesday. It is on until Saturday (with matinees on Thursday and Saturday.)

I love playwright David Hare. One of my all-time favorite theatre experiences was written by him – Dame Judi Dench starring in “Amy’s View,” from the third row center on Broadway. At the end of the first act I actually gasped. I also thoroughly enjoyed his “The Vertical Hour.” His ability to write emotional dynamics for brilliant actors makes for thrilling theater. (Andrew Scott was my discovery for that production.)

“Gethsemane,” deals with recent British political scandals and the brutal compromises people at all levels make. Reviews: Ion Oxford Tube (I like this one’s description of the set.), Guardian, Telegraph, Evening Standard, Independent, BBC Newsnight panel discussion (I don’t agree with what the panel says but the intro features a good synopsis of the play.). The reviews are mixed, glowing or unnecessarily harsh.

Tamsin Grieg is flawless as a beleaguered politician. Amusingly, I had to point out to Kevin where he knew her from – the very awesome Black Books (Booklovers, misanthropes, Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey fans all should see this immediately.).

Stanley Townsend plays shady fundraiser Otto as a cross between Boss Hog from the Dukes of Hazzard and a mobster from a Guy Ritchie movie – it works. One of the people on the BBC Newsnight panel called the character anti-Semitic, as does the article here. He is a sleazy character in the play and for those playing guess the political figure he is based on – he would seem to be based on Lord Levy, a Jewish, former fundraiser for the Labour party. There is nothing in the play to suggest he is Jewish. The only connection is in the minds of those watching associating the character with a real person. There is nothing to suggest this character represents the Jewish people. I find it dumb and offensive for it to be labeled anti-Semitic.

The rest of the cast are as follows: Jessica Raine plays the troubled daughter of Tamsin Greig’s character Meredith. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is Meredith’s adviser. Nicola Walker is the idealist teacher Lori, Daniel Ryan plays her highly-educated and simple husband who works for Otto. Pip Carter is Otto’s world-weary assistant Frank. Anthony Calf plays the prime minister (Kevin hated his performance, I didn’t mind it.). Adam James plays a sleazy journalist.

The set by Bob Crowley is well done, a modern-looking white box which serves convincingly as a number of different settings with the addition of a few props and at times the use of it as a projection screen. Fast-paced videos to music are also projected onto it to serve as transitions between scenes. See this review for a nice description or another more detailed description can be found at Vocal Eyes (See the Show Notes downloads.). They do audio-descriptions at performances for blind and partially sighted people. They will be at Saturday’s upcoming matinee in Newcastle and in Cambridge on Saturday the 21st.

The criticism I would levy against the play is it seems to still be rough. It seems at times like the outline for an outstanding play / story with the plot elements in place but the nuanced emotional dynamics that I like in his plays are just not fully there.

Learned a new word from the play – Gesthemane. Gesthemane is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives (Gat Shmanim in Hebrew) believed to be the place where Jesus spent the night before the crucifixion in great anguish / doubt. Religion is brought up a few times in the play. In addition to the emotional dynamics this is another place where I think it could have had more meat.

Gateshead Millenium Bridge

The weather was not too cold. We parked on the Gateshead side of the river and walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Theatre Royal. This way we didn’t have to navigate Newcastle’s many one-way streets. It was a really pleasant walk. On the way back the water in the river was so still the reflections of the lights from the bridges and buildings were amazing. We definitely want to go back for an evening to take photos on long exposures with a tripod.

Purim 2009

We invited the family over for dinner on Monday night to celebrate Purim. Everyone was awesome and came in costume. We had pirates, a bunny, Ali G., Pocahantas, a surfer, a lollypop lady, a monkey and a teletubby. Full set of pictures here.

Food was mushroom soup with bread, salad, lasagna (also plain pizza for young fussy eaters) and oznei haman with ice cream and a bit of golden syrup. Usually when we have people over we are still making the food when they arrive. This time we stayed up till 1:30 AM making it the night before so it just had to be heated up on the evening. The only reason it took this long was the mystery of never-ending oznei haman dough.

Made Mishloach Manot deliveries today and am off to see Gesthemane at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle.

Posted belatedly.

Purim starts Monday night, the 9th of March this year. It is a Jewish holiday celebrating the way the beautiful Jewish Queen Esther saved the Jewish people from the villain Haman, an evil adviser to the king. Oznei Haman are traditional, triangular, baked goods with fillings made for the holiday. Depending on who you believe they are symbolic of the evil Haman’s pointy ears, pointy hat or a bastardization of the German mohntaschen – meaning poppyseed-filled pouches. Traditionally, Oznei Haman were made with poppy seed or prune filling. Both of these are horrifying flavors as children, the recipe below uses yummy strawberry or apricot.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 6-7 cups of flour
• 3 sticks of margarine (approximately 300gr)
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Rind of 1 lemon
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla Sugar
• 21/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 whole egg

Filling:

• Jelly / Jam – strawberry or apricot flavor
• Ground walnuts (or almonds)
• Sugar
• Sweet red wine
• Fine bread crumbs

Preparation:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the pastry together. I put them all in a massive bowl, mixed briefly with the dough hooks on a hand mixer and then kept going with my hands.
2. In a separate, small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the filling together. There are no exact amounts, I tried getting my mother to be specific for each of the ingredients and she said “a little.” I don’t like walnuts in general, except for ground walnuts in cakes. I couldn’t find ground walnuts here, and didn’t want to take the time to bash whole ones so I used ground almonds and it worked fine.
2. Cover your work area with a light dusting of flour and take a bit under half the dough and roll flat with a flour covered rolling pin.
3. Cut out circles. I used a cup that had an approximately 3-inch diameter at the top to make the circles. Knead the scraps of dough from around the circles back into the larger batch still in the bowl.
4. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle down on three sides to make a triangle, pinching the corners to seal it.
5. Bake on a greased cookie tray at 190 degrees between 10 and 20 minutes (varies with the oven), until they start to brown up.
6. Keep doing this until you run out of dough. While you are in the middle it will seem like the dough is multiplying because every time you separate half you still end up with more in the bowl. It does run out eventually – makes 50-60 Oznei Haman.

Posted belatedly, but useful for next year.