Charoset (2) - Bubbe's Jewish Super Food

Traditions come in many shapes and sizes. You can find, or understand the origins of some pretty easily. Others are buried in the mists of time, and you just have to accept them as they are.

My Zayde told me this story years ago. He had been a kosher food wholesaler, delivering meat and cheese to people's homes as well as to restaraunts and supermarkets. One Friday morning he was making a delivery to an elderly woman's home. He knocked on the door, and she asked him to bring the boxes into the kitchen for her. As he walked in, he noticed that she had been preparing the meat dish for her Shabbat dinner in the middle of her dining room table, and on each corner of the table she had set a lit pillar candle. 

Never having seen this before, and not wanting to be rude to a customer, he cautiously asked, "What are the candles for?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've never seen anything like this before."

"Young man," she replied (mind you, my grandfather was probably 50+ at this point), "this is how you are supposed to check your meat before Shabbat. This is the way my mother did it, and hers before. What's wrong with you?"

Having been given all the answer he was going to get, he wished her a 'Gut Shabbos,' and headed home. It wasn't until he recounted the story to my Bubbe that, together, they figured out what was going on. This woman had grown up in a shtetle in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, her mother and grandmother before her. They had no electricity in their little hovel and so, in order to make sure that meat was without blood, and the chicken without feathers, they would set four pillar candles around the table to better see their work area. It had never been explained because, of course, it needed no explaination.

That's the case with haroset. It is mentioned in the Mishna, the Jewish Oral Law codified more than 1500 years ago. Eat it, is all the Mishha says, with no explaination of what it is, why it is, or how to make it. Just eat it.

This recipe has a somewhat similar cloudy past. It's my mother's family's recipe. Her family is Polish and Russian. I don't imagine that in the 'old country' they had dates or apples to mash into this paste, but somehow it became their recipe. 

Hillel Sandwich: Haroset, Matza, and Romain Lettuce (or for the more adventurous - fresh horseradish)

Ingredients

• 4 cups of chopped apples (braeburn or pink lady are our favorites)
• 1 lbs of majhul dates, pitted and chopped
• 2 cups of chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup of sweet red wine (optional)
• large mortar and pestle or food processor

Directions

1. Working in small batches, place about a quarter of the apples and a quarter of the dates, and quarter of the nuts into the mortar and mash into a paste. Transfer into a medium sized bowl, and repeat with the remaining ingredients.
2. If using a food processor, work in two batches, rather than four.
3. When done, taste the paste. If it's too sweet, add another 1/4 cup of chopped and ground walnuts. If it's too dry, add in the wine, a quarter cup at a time. If it's just right, transfer the wine to a nice glass and enjoy it with a heaping teaspoon of your haroset.
4. Your haroset will be better made at least 24 hours in advance and stored, covered, in the refrigerator where the flavors can meld.