Spaghetti (squash) Night!

I have always been a vegetable lover, but the same was not true for one of my brothers. One of the ways that my mom cleverly snuck them in was with spaghetti squash and meatballs. With all of the flavors going on, it never dawned on us that we were greedily gobbling up veggies.
With some ground lamb from the farmers market, I made a more grown up version of this childhood favorite.

The sauce:
1) Saute 1 diced onion in some butter in a medium saucepan
2) Add 1 bay leaf and some fresh rosemary
3) Crumble 1 lb ground lamb into the pan and stir until it is well broken up and browned (other meat would do just fine here and the dish would also work just fine vegetarian)
4) Core 1.5 lbs tomatoes (In this case 3 hefty heirlooms; one red, one green and one purple) and then squish the tomatoes into pieces over the saucepan - a genuine tactile pleasure! For the non-squishers among us, dicing with a knife also works.
5) Bring sauce to a boil then reduce to a simmer for about 20 minutes.
6) My sauce ended up being a bit too runny. To fix this I added in small crumbs of bread that I had bought at the market that day. It ended up being a delicious addition that really added to the heartiness of the whole dish.


Easy Spaghetti Squash
1) Cut in half
2) Scoop out seeds
3) Put 1 inch of water in the bottom of a 9x9 glass baking dish and put one half of the squash in it, cut side up
4) Cover tightly with plastic wrap
5) Microwave on high for 8 minutes give or take
6) Once it cools enough to handle, use a fork to scrape the inside of the squash. Out will fall a torrent of spaghetti-esque strands.

Machu Picchu Matza Pizza Part 2

One of my favorite and least favorite things about Passover is kosher for Passover (K for P) food made to resemble non-K for P food (things like K for P cake, matzaroni and cheese, potato egg noodles etc.). On the one hand, there are so many K for P options that don't pretend to be something they're not - and that we would happily eat during the rest of the year - that it seems unnecessary to make these often mediocre Passover substitutes. These foods also feel like a cop out. Sure, they're still kosher for passover, but the purpose of the laws forcing us to eat unleavened products (and limiting the cooking and preparing time for wheat) seems lost when we find ways to eat wheat-based cookies on Passover.

On the other hand, it's always fun to figure out new things to do with matza farfelle, matza meal, matza cake meal, and all those other things that are basically matza ground down to different degrees. Passover forces us to think and be more creative when we cook since our ingredient options are limited (especially for Ashkenazi Jews). Its also fun to see how versatile matza can be, and non-Jews always love seeing the crazy concoctions we come up with.


Last night for dinner I made one of my favorites - Matza Pizza. But not the take-a-slice-of-matza-and-slather-on-some-KforP-tomato-sauce-and-Mozzarella kind. I find this variety to be somewhat digusting.


To make this matza pizza, you'll need:
-around 12 sheets matza broken into pieces, or a big can or 2 of matza farfalle (the coarsest of the ground matzas)
-5 or 6 eggs
-tomato sauce ( please God not the prepackaged K for P stuff!!)
-vegetables
-cheese- preferably mozzarella, but during passover just use what you can get.
- olive oil
- salt and pepper

Take your ground matza and soak it it water for around 5 minutes. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Drain the matza, and add the eggs, along with a bit of salt and a dash of olive oil. Mix it all together; the matza should be completely covered in egg, but there should not be a lot of liquid pooling at the bottom of the bowl. Press the mixture into a greased baking sheet, pushing some up on the edges of the pan for a crust. Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.


Now, you may be asking yourself "what should I use for sauce since the K for P ones are so gross?" The answer is make your own!! Another thing that I like about Passover is that we learn how many prepackaged food products, even the ones that we would never expect have some kind chametz in them. This gives us a great oppotunity to make them from scratch. Not only will they taste better than the K for P varieties, but they'll probably be better than the stuff you have the rest of the year. So take a minute to go to allrecipes.com or a similar site and find yourself a tomato sauce recipe. They can be really simple, and who knows, maybe you'll be converted to making fresh sauces during the rest of the year as well.

After the crust has baked for ten minutes, drizzle a little olive oil on the crust, and put on your toppings. ( I usually precook my vegetables for a bit, but its up to you) Place the pizza back in the oven, and bake for another 10 minutes or so, until the cheese has melted and has started to brown.



And the ever popular close up shot



We also made this exact replica of Machu Picchu out of matza pizza with leftover batter



Here are the people who ate it


Read the previous entry for a more scholarly discussion of Machu Picchu Matza Pizza


EDIT: So for lunch yesterday I cut into the Machu Picchu Matza Pizza


Which kind of reminded me of this


- A cross section of skin under a microscope

Machu Picchu Matza Pizza (MPMP)

Feelings On:
Sarah W - tomatoes, matza, mountainous, Christmas, cheese, tasty,

Aliza - Machu Pichu Matza Pizza
I wanna eat you, I wanna eat ya
Eggs as glue and tomatoes will feed ya
My belly is full don't you know that I need ya


Avi - The interesting thing about MPMP is kind of like a return to slavery as well as a departure from it because it is using matza which is what the Jews ate when they were leaving Egypt and slavery and they stopped building and we are using it to create more buildings (aka the matza machu picchu) Aliza comments: :"will the Master's tools ever dismantle the Master's house?" (Audrey Lorde) Josh: an ax is an ax, why does it matter. Sarah: if the metaphor doesn't work then you can't use it as a metaphor. Are the tools only useable by the master or can they be used by anyone. Hmmm....very sophisticated for a post-dinner conversation on Matza.

David - MPMP Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. For the Incan Jew at heart. It makes great art.

Kara: I think that the creation of a blog about MPMP as a dinnertime activity is the best thing about small schools.

Josh - A brilliant reimagining of a "traditional American" food. Yumzz.

Ruby - The truth that we were originally talking about doing a spinach pesto sauce which would have been grass on the mountains. When I saw Avi pour the tomato sauce go on to it I saw it as the blood of the people who were colonized.

Sarah - It was amazing how pizza-y this MPMP really was.