By Molly Yeh
Odds are good that if you are a Jew who grew up in America, you can remember one specific macaroon that made you realize one very important thing: Canned macaroons are bullshit. For my friend Jeff, it was a chocolate macaroon his neighbor made. For Leah, it was a macaroon she tried at a Havdalah potluck. For me? It was a rice pudding–flavored macaroon I ate while walking to the subway in East Harlem after a visit to the magical Danny Macaroons factory. Living in a country with modern conveniences like flaccid store-bought canned coconut macaroons seems to have produced two eras in the lives of many: the one that came before the life-changing macaroon, and the one that came after.
The latter era started to gain momentum around 2011, when suddenly everyone had become gluten-free. Bougie macaroons with crisp golden shells and gooey delicious innards were popping up at specialty stores and bakeries. The Jewish-food-blogging world was churning out carrot cake macaroons and matcha macaroons to Jews and gluten-free gentiles alike. And being able to make the distinction between the French macaron and the Jewish coconut macaroon was suddenly a skill required of every foodie (another thing everyone had become by 2011).
What the pedestrian foodie might not realize, however, is that the French macaron and the coconut macaroon are, in fact, cousins. They share an ancestor: an Italian cookie made of almonds, sugar, and egg whites, which won the hearts of Jews way back in the day because it could be eaten on Passover. After migrating to France in the sixteenth century, this cookie was eventually sandwichified and fancied up into the Parisian macaron we know today. Elsewhere, including in the States, coconut was subbed in for nuts to make a sturdier, more shelf-stable cookie. Franklin Baker, a flour miller in Philadelphia who became America’s first large-scale shredded coconut producer in 1897, is largely responsible for this development. But in Sephardic traditions, macaroons made with almonds (or pistachios, or pine nuts) remain the norm.
No matter where you fall on your personal journey of macaroon discovery, whether you’re pre-canned-macaroon epiphany or post, one thing is for sure: It’s just not Passover without them.
Macaroons
Makes 24 cookies
2 cups (240 grams) sweetened shredded coconut
2 large egg whites
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons (25 grams) sugar
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (177ºC). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Process the coconut in the bowl of a food processor for about 2 minutes, until it is ground to a fine meal.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and salt on high speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar and beat for 2 to 3 minutes more, until stiff peaks form. Beat in the vanilla. Gently fold in the coconut by hand with a rubber spatula.
Transfer the mixture to a large piping bag fitted with a ½-inch (1.5-centimeter) star tip. Pipe 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) macaroons onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing them 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) apart.
Bake until browned on the bottom and on the edges, 16 to 18 minutes.
Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
The macaroons will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
By Leah Koenig
From the Passover Seder plate to the apples and honey of Rosh Hashanah, food and symbolism are bound together in Jewish tradition. But India’s Bene Israel Jews have brought edible ritual to a new level. The community, which maintains a special connection with the prophet Elijah, created a ceremony that echoes the deity offerings found in Hinduism. The focal point of the ceremony is malida, a sweet porridge made from flattened rice flakes called poha, which gets flavored with jaggery and cardamom pods and festively decorated with fresh fruit, flowers, dried dates, almonds, and shredded coconut. Bene Israel Jews hold malida ceremonies on auspicious occasions—births and brises, engagements, graduations, recovery from sickness, even housewarming parties—gathering together to pray and offering the platter of malida to Elijah in thanksgiving. After the ceremony, the malida is passed around for guests to nibble—spreading the good fortune via fork.
the legend of elijah rock
One hundred twenty kilometers south of Mumbai in a small coastal town called Alibaug, off a side road accessible only to locals who know where to look, sits Elijah Rock. Believed to be the spot where the biblical prophet Elijah ascended to heaven, leaving behind the markings of a chariot and hoof prints etched auspiciously into the mountainside, Elijah Rock is a sacred site for Bene Israel Jews. Members of the community make regular pilgrimages here, with each visit culminating in a malida ceremony. The local community, which goes back to the second century BCE, had as many as twenty thousand members in the mid-twentieth century. Today less than five thousand Bene Israel Jews remain in India.
Malida
Serves 4 to 6
3 cups (235 grams) poha (flattened rice; can be purchased at specialty grocers or online)
4 cups (1 liter) boiling water
½ cup (80 grams) chopped jaggery (can be found at specialty grocers or online)
½ cup (28 grams) dried unsweetened coconut flakes
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons (36 grams) pistachios, coarsely chopped
1 persimmon
1 pear
3 dried apricots
2 dates
4 kumquats
1 tangerine
3 dried plums, such as Angelino plums
Handful of edible rose petals
Place the poha in a large bowl and pour over enough of the boiling water so the poha is completely submerged. Let soak until the poha is softened and has plumped a bit, about 1 minute, then drain in a colander, tossing gently to remove as much water as possible.
Return the poha to the bowl. Add the jaggery, stirring until it is thoroughly combined and mostly dissolved in the rice; you may have to use your fingers to break it up further—no piece should be bigger than a lentil. If some smaller pieces remain, that’s OK. Add the coconut, cardamom, and salt and stir to combine.
To serve, spoon the rice mixture onto a platter and garnish with the pistachios. Arrange the persimmon, pear, apricots, dates, kumquats, tangerine, and dried plums around the perimeter of the rice and scatter with the rose petals.
By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
A thing you have to admire about margarine is that it is like Jews themselves: great at assimilation. It can hide in plain sight, with only a vague Uncanny Valley aura about it that something’s off—it’s not as creamy, not as sumptuous-smelling, not as delicious as butter. But it does what it needs to do, which is restore dignity to both the kosher-keeping and lactose-intolerant among us.* The only problem is, aside from the several qualities I have already listed in just three lines of prose, the more you know about it, the grosser it becomes, its double carbons flipped in the service of its lies, allowing something that should just be oil to hold a fork in a death grip. If that’s what it does to a fork, then it’s not a terrible leap to wonder how it behaves in your aorta.
But what are you going to do? Serve fruit? Not when there’s margarine, you’re not. So stop thinking so much and just empty a vat into your next cake. Life will be shorter, but it will be sweeter. Or something.
By Alana Newhouse
Perceptive readers will note that in putting together this book, we did not rank the entries. This wasn’t merely a matter of self-interest, though we admit that the thought of spending hours fighting with critics about whether chopped liver was treated dismissively struck us as too close to a dystopian Seinfeld episode for comfort. But the truer reason here is that these foods represent the experiences of different people, places, and times in Jewish history. The majesty, allure, joy, and terror of this story reside in its diversity and complexity.
And yet it is not outlandish to argue that only one food was present at the creation of the Jewish people, and it has miraculously managed to sustain that bond over millennia: matzo—our unleavened bread of affliction and redemption. This is the only entry that is receiving a numerical value, because on a list of foods judged for their Jewish significance, none is more important.
It might not be anybody’s favorite dish—it’s certainly not the most delicious!—but it’s arguably the only food that we all somehow eat, no matter where we live or where our family came from. The old saying “two Jews, three synagogues” accurately captures our age-old love of disputation and drawing distinctions, which can be fruitful and necessary but, at times, absurdly destructive. We might also do well to occasionally remember the gifts and pleasures that have come—for thousands of years—from staying committed to what we have in common.
By Joan Nathan
Here is my considered judgment: No Jewish dish—not one—is as comforting or iconic as the matzo ball.
With neither the heat of spicy Szechuan dumplings nor the delicacy of Italian gnocchi, there is no ambrosia quite like matzo balls, floating in homemade chicken broth, when you are sick or celebrating a Jewish holiday.
Matzo balls began as the German Knödel, a bready dumpling. Jewish cooks in the Middle Ages first adapted the dumplings to add to Sabbath soups, using broken matzo with some kind of fat like chicken or beef marrow, eggs, onions, ginger, and nutmeg. As Jews moved eastward from Germanic lands to Poland and the Pale of Settlement in Russia, they brought kneidlach (Yiddish for Knödel) with them. In Lithuania, kneidlach were filled with special bonuses like cinnamon or meat for the Sabbath. Though kneidlach arrived in America under different guises, the B. Manischewitz Company started packaging ground matzo meal like bread crumbs and marketed the dumplings in a box as “feather balls Alsatian style” in their Tempting Kosher Dishes cookbook of 1933.
The term matzo ball itself was first used in English in 1902 in the section on Jewish food in Mrs. Rorer’s Cookbook, and the name stuck. Today matzo balls come in all sizes and varieties; there are those the size of tennis balls and even bacon-wrapped matzo balls.
And, of course, there is the age-old discussion of “floaters” versus “sinkers.” You can make floaters with the packaged mix by including baking powder—yes, baking powder—or by adding, as my mother-in-law did, soda water to the prepared mix. Today I make mine using matzo meal, spices like ginger and nutmeg, and fresh herbs like cilantro, dill, or parsley for flavor and color and cook them the way I like them—al dente. Now that is what I call a matzo ball!
by Joan Nathan
Makes 10 to 12 matzo balls; serves 6 to 8
For the Soup
1 (4-pound/1.8 kilogram) chicken
2 large yellow onions, unpeeled
4 parsnips
2 celery stalks, with leaves
6 medium carrots
6 tablespoons (20 grams) chopped fresh parsley
6 tablespoons (20 grams) dill sprigs
1 tablespoon (15 grams) kosher salt, plus more as needed
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, plus more as needed
For the Matzo Balls
4 large eggs
¼ cup (60 milliliters) schmaltz or vegetable oil
¼ cup (60 milliliters) chicken stock
1 cup (130 grams) matzo meal
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons (6 grams) finely chopped fresh parsley, dill, or cilantro
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
Coarsely ground black pepper
Make the soup: Put the chicken in a large pot and add enough water to cover by 2 inches (5 centimeters—about 4 quarts/4 liters). Bring the water to a boil, skimming off the gray scum that rises to the top. Reduce the heat to medium-low so the soup is at a gentle but visible simmer.
Add the onions, parsnips, celery, carrots, parsley, 4 tablespoons (13 grams) of the dill, and the salt and pepper. Cover the pot with the lid ajar and simmer for at least 1 hour and up to 2 hours. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the soup cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours or up to overnight so the soup solidifies to a gel-like consistency and the schmaltz (fat) rises to the top and solidifies. Skim off the schmaltz and reserve it for the matzo balls.
Make the matzo balls: In a large bowl, using a soupspoon, gently mix the eggs, schmaltz, stock, matzo meal, nutmeg, ginger, and parsley, dill, or cilantro. Season with salt and 2 to 3 grinds of the pepper. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least 1 hour and up to overnight.
When ready to cook the matzo balls, bring a wide, deep pot of lightly salted water to a boil. With wet hands, take some of the mix and mold it into the size and shape of a golf ball. Gently drop it into the boiling water, repeating until all the mixture is used.
Cover the pan, reduce the heat to a lively simmer, and cook for about 20 minutes for al dente matzo balls, and closer to 45 minutes for lighter matzo balls. To test their readiness, remove one with a slotted spoon and cut in half—the matzo ball should be the same color and texture throughout.
Just before serving, strain the soup, setting aside the chicken for chicken salad. Discard the vegetables, and reheat the broth. Spoon a matzo ball into each bowl, pour soup over the matzo ball, and sprinkle with the remaining dill sprigs.
NOTE: Like many Jewish foods, matzo balls are polarizing. First, there’s the size: Some prefer a boulder big enough to occupy most of the soup dish, while others like a ball small enough to fit two or three to a bowl. Then, there’s the texture. The larger balls, usually leavened with baking powder or seltzer, err on the light and airy side, aka “floaters.” The more petite kneidlach typically correspond to a dense, “sinker” consistency. This recipe, which balances heft and fluff, lands somewhere in between.
By David Samuels
The ingredients are as basic as they come: matzo, eggs, pepper, salt. But matzo brei, like every other good thing on the planet, is about the doing, and because it is Jewish, there is a particular way it needs to be done. The matzo needs to be broken over a colander, so you can save the precious fine-grained dust. Then gently wash the matzo fragments until they start to get soggy. Add the matzo dust along with the eggs, salt, and pepper, and a kind of alchemy happens. Fry it up in enough butter to float a battleship, until you have something that looks like the proverbial dog’s breakfast, or worse. Add grade A Vermont maple syrup, and you have something undeniably delicious.
Matzo brei tells a story that starts out where I live and includes nearly the entire history of my people, with asides about copper, fire, belief in God, and so forth. Once those conditions are no longer binding, the food you eat tastes different. It’s part of someone’s nostalgia trip. Matzo brei is impervious to that kind of treatment, which is why, when they grow up, your children will make their matzo brei for their children.
Is this not the entirety of the agony and the ecstasy of a 3,500-year-old religion in one dish, with the addition of maple syrup neatly folding in nearly everything that will seem worth preserving, two thousand years hence, about the whole North American Jewish experience—namely, New England, where the Puritans created a safe haven for all faiths while teaching their children Hebrew at Harvard and Yale; and where the Boston Red Sox, who might also be the Brooklyn Dodgers, play baseball; and where Robert Lowell and Robert Frost wrote poems that could have been written in Russian, all of which is merely another way of expressing the gratitude of a hunted people for the nearly unbearable sweetness of life in this place. It is arguable that better maple syrup comes from Quebec, where Montreal is, and therefore, by extension, Toronto, and also Hollywood, which is secretly run by Canadians, some of whom eat matzo brei. So eat it, and smile. But only on Passover, or the spell will be broken and you may as well order a Big Mac at McDonald’s for all I care.
Matzo Brei
Serves 4 to 6
5 sheets matzo, broken into 2-inch (5-centimeter) or bite-size pieces
4 large eggs
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter
Place the matzo in a large bowl and pour 3 cups (720 milliliters) water over the top, or enough so the matzo is completely submerged. Allow the matzo to soak for 1 minute, until it is soaked through but still holds its form, then drain in a colander. Press the matzo gently to squeeze out as much liquid as possible, then set aside.
Beat the eggs with the salt and pepper in a small bowl until the whites and yolks are fully blended, then set aside.
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. When it starts to foam, add the matzo, making sure to coat all of it with the butter. Fry the matzo, stirring occasionally so it cooks evenly, until it starts to turn golden and fragrant, about 3 minutes.
Add the eggs and scramble with the matzo until the mixture is cooked through but still fluffy and tender, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and serve immediately, with sweet or savory toppings, such as jam, whitefish salad, leftover brisket, charoset, salsa and guacamole, or cinnamon sugar.
By Leah Koenig
At the heart of all Jewish cooking lies culinary ingenuity—that is, finding creative ways to eat well, despite Jewish dietary restrictions. It is not surprising, then, that Sephardic Jews managed to adapt their passion for savory pastries—burekas, boyos, pasteles, and the like—for Passover. During the weeklong holiday, the phyllo and other doughs that typically encase these parcels and turnovers are verboten. Instead, Sephardic home cooks bake mina de matzo—pies made from softened matzo sheets that are layered, lasagna-style, with fillings like sautéed eggplant and spiced lamb, or cheese, spinach, and leeks. Sliced small, mina de matzo (which is sometimes called megina, depending on where it is made) can be served as part of a Passover mezze spread. Presented whole at the table, it also makes a stately and hearty main course—no chametz required.
Mina de Matzo
Serves 6 to 8
1 large bunch Swiss chard, washed and stemmed
3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) extra-virgin olive oil, schmaltz, or duck fat
2 large yellow onions, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1½ pounds (680 grams) ground beef, turkey, or chicken
4 cups (960 milliliters) quality marinara sauce, such as Rao’s
9 sheets matzo
1 large egg
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (177ºC).
Fill a large pot with 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) of water and place a steamer basket inside. Cover and bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat. Put the chard in the steamer basket, cover, and steam for about 5 minutes, until the chard is wilted. Remove from the heat and transfer the chard to a bowl to cool. When the chard is cool enough to handle, squeeze out excess moisture and finely chop.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the onions and cook, stirring now and again, until the onions are translucent but have not yet taken on color, about 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook, stirring, until the onions begin to caramelize and the garlic is fragrant, about 5 minutes. Season with a generous pinch of salt and some pepper.
Add the ground meat and cook, stirring and breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon as it cooks, until the meat is no longer pink, about 8 minutes. Season with a pinch of salt and some pepper, then remove from the heat and set aside.
Spread a third of the marinara over the bottom of a 9 by 13-inch (23 by 33-centimeter) baking dish.
Fill a shallow dish (large enough to accommodate the matzo) with water. Dip 3 sheets of matzo in the water and let them soften, about 1 minute. (You don’t want to soften the sheets too much or they will fall apart.) Shake the excess water off the softened matzo sheets and arrange them over the marinara in the baking dish, breaking the matzo as necessary to fit. Top with half the ground meat mixture, followed by about half the chopped chard. Repeat with another third of the marinara, 3 soaked matzo sheets, then the remaining meat mixture, the remaining chard, and the remaining marinara. Place the remaining 3 matzo sheets on top.
In a small bowl, beat the egg with 1 tablespoon water until combined. Generously brush the top layer of matzo with the egg wash. Set the egg wash aside.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for about 45 minutes, or until cooked through. Remove the foil (set it aside—you may need it later to store the leftover mina de matzo). Brush the top of the mina de matzo with the remaining egg wash, return it to the oven, and bake, uncovered, until the top is golden and glossy, about 15 minutes more. Let stand for 5 minutes before cutting into pieces, as you would lasagna, and serving.
By Gabriel Stulman
The best part of Passover is when it’s over.
When I was growing up, Passover was dominated by my mother’s side of the family, extremely observant Sephardic Jews from Morocco. My mom believed Passover was a holiday absolutely worth staying home from school for, though mostly so we could help clean the house of chametz—she gave my siblings and me toothbrushes to get into the corners of the carpet. The Seder always started with my grandfather Joseph and his wife, Perla—the “Joseph” of my restaurant Joseph Leonard and the “Perla” of my old restaurant Perla Cafe. Everyone wore caftans and djellabas. Each passage of the Haggadah was read in Hebrew, with Sephardic rhythms and Moroccan songs. There was a break after every single passage for debate, which took place in several different languages.
We kept kosher, so I always brought my own lunch to school. But my brown-bag lunches that week were different. Even my Jewish friends couldn’t believe it: “Your mom makes you eat matzo all week?” And let me tell you: Eating a peanut butter and jelly or turkey sandwich with matzo is a hot mess.
But finally, when the sun set on the last day of Passover, it was time for Mimouna—which meant it was time for fun. And not only because I was at that point very sick of matzo. My grandmother would come over, and she and my mom would make all these different Moroccan pastries, filled with dates, prunes, and pistachios. But the highlight of Mimouna was always mufleta.
The best way to describe mufleta is as a thicker crepe or blintz. It’s not quite as thick as naan or as bready as pita. It’s a bit like a tortilla, except puffier. Think of Neapolitan pizza and the blackened, crisp, burnt part under the crust. The perfect mufleta is thirty seconds away from that pizza—right before it turns black.
My mom and my grandmother rolled out the dough, threw it in a cast-iron skillet, and cooked it until it blistered. They stacked the mufleta like pancakes and covered them with a big kitchen towel for later, when they’d be warm, spongy, and a little bit oily from all the butter. That was the secret: all the butter. (Every time you finish cooking one, you add butter, so that when you put the new dough in, it oils up the bottom half.)
And then there were the fillings. The most popular were apple and honey, of course—lavender-infused honey, chamomile-infused honey. Then you’d line the mufleta with apples or bananas. My mom made a chocolate spread similar to Nutella, and I’d spoon that in. And that was the meal. You would just eat sweets for an entire dinner.
I have all these great memories of just stuffing my face with mufleta, and they came rushing back to me last year. My wife and I were invited to eat at Per Se, and the pastry chef, Anna Bolz, wanted to do something to surprise us. She had James Lauer, the general manager at our restaurant Fairfax, get in touch with my sister for recommendations. My sister told James about mufleta. Anna looked it up online, studied the principles of the dish, and made an entire mufleta dessert course at Per Se. It was like that scene in Ratatouille when the critic takes the bite of ratatouille and gets zapped back to being a kid. That happened to me. I literally cried in the restaurant.
History Lesson
Items symbolizing luck are central to Mimouna, and the festive table is decorated with “an array of symbols that are basically variations on a theme,” explains Israeli historian Yigal Bin-Nun. Some families display a whole fish—even alive, swimming in a bowl of water—on the Mimouna table as a sign of good fortune, and also because the holiday is said to fall on the day when God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross to freedom. Foods are often served in numerical groupings, such as seven green pea pods dotting a plate of flour to symbolize fertility and renewal. In some homes, Hanukkah gelt–like gold coins are strewn across the table.
Though the festival’s name is often thought to refer to the twelfth-century’s Rabbi Maimon (the father of Maimonides), Bin-Nun has uncovered folkloristic songs and historic sources that link it to the rituals of the Gnawa, a Sufi sect in Morocco whose adherents pray yearly through songs, parades, and ecstatic dancing to the goddess of luck, Mimouna. Sure enough, Bin-Nun says, during Jewish Mimouna celebrations, “songs are sung in honor of ‘Lady Luck.’ One of them is ‘Lala mimouna/mbarka masuda,’ which means ‘Lady Mimouna/lucky and blessed.’” The Arabic word mimoun also means “luck” or “good fortune.”
Today in Israel, Mimouna is considered more or less a national party, and Israelis will point to its celebration as an example of peaceful relations not only between Sephardim and Ashkenazim but also between Muslims and Jews. After all, the culinary traditions of the holiday originate with Arab and Berber families who lent flour and yeast to their Jewish neighbors following sundown after Passover. In return, Moroccan Jews are said to have either given them the remainder of their matzo or opened their homes and eaten their first baked goods together—a tradition still maintained with Moroccan Jews leaving their front doors open on Mimouna eve.
Lara Rabinovitch
Mufleta
by Uri Scheft
Makes one 14-inch (35-centimeter) pan of mufleta (about 24 sheets)
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons (300 grams) cool room-temperature water
2 tablespoons (15 grams) fresh yeast, or 1 teaspoon (5 grams) active dry yeast
4 ¾ cups (500 grams) cake flour or white pastry flour, sifted, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
3 to 4 cups (720 to 960 milliliters) neutral oil
Unsalted butter, at room temperature, for serving
Honey, for serving
Combine the water and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk by hand until the yeast is mostly dissolved. Add the flour, sugar, and salt. Fit the dough hook on the mixer and mix on low speed until the dough comes together into a semismooth ball, about 2 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Stretch one corner of the dough out and fold it on top of the middle of the dough. Give the dough a quarter turn and repeat a few more times, until each corner has been stretched and folded twice to make a nicely shaped ball.
Lightly flour a large bowl and set the dough in the bowl; sprinkle the top with a little flour, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and set aside at room temperature until the dough has nearly doubled in volume, about 30 minutes.
Pour 3 cups (720 milliliters) of the oil into a large bowl and set it aside. Lightly flour your work surface and set the dough on top. Pat and stretch the dough into an 8 by 12-inch (20 by 30-centimeter) rectangle that is as even as possible. Use a bench knife to divide the dough lengthwise into 4 equal strips, then into 6 strips crosswise, to yield 24 pieces. Holding one piece of dough in your hand, stretch one-quarter of the piece up and over onto the middle. Repeat with the other three sides to create a rough ball shape. Place the dough, seam-side down, on your work surface and repeat with the remaining pieces.
Wipe the excess flour from your work surface and cup your hand around a piece of dough. Push and pull the dough in a circular motion on the work surface until it is rounded into a tight ball with hardly a seam on the bottom. Drop the dough ball into the bowl of oil. Repeat with the remaining dough. Add more oil to the bowl as needed to make sure the dough balls are completely covered; you don’t want them to dry out. Let them rest in the oil for 10 minutes.
Set a dough ball on your work surface. Using your hands, stretch and push it into a paper-thin sheet (try not to create holes, but if you get a few, it’s OK). It should stretch very easily. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and carefully lay the dough sheet in the pan. While the first piece of dough cooks, stretch another piece of dough. Once the dough in the skillet starts to turn golden brown, about 2 minutes, use a spatula to carefully flip it over. Lay the second sheet of stretched dough on top of the first in the skillet. Stretch your next piece of dough. When the bottom of the dough in the pan is golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes more, carefully flip the two layers over together and place the just-stretched piece on top of the stack. Repeat this process, stretching, flipping, and adding to the dough stack, until all the dough pieces are stacked in the skillet like a giant flatbread layer cake. While you work, adjust the heat as needed so the sheets don’t get too dark. Remove the stack from the skillet and place it on a large plate.
Mufleta is best eaten hot. Serve with lots of butter and honey. To eat, peel away a layer of mufleta, add a smear of butter and a drizzle of honey, and roll it into a cylinder.
By Ben Wizner
Rabbi Meir asked: “What makes an olive a Jewish food?” [He was answered:] “Its use in any recipe or drink that is not a martini.” And what is a martini? Rabbi Yehudah answered: “A martini is a glass that the goyim use to overcharge for schnapps.” But Rabbi Simon said, in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: “A martini is four parts gin to one part vermouth.” And what is a part? A part is the minimum amount required of something to fulfill an obligation. And what is that minimum amount? A kezayit [literally “like an olive”]. According to the sages, if one eats less than a kezayit of any foodstuff, one is excused from saying the preliminary blessing or the grace after meals. But does this ruling apply to the olive itself? Yes. Because an olive is the size of an olive, one may eat an olive without having to say the preliminary blessing or the grace after meals. And according to Rabban Gamliel, if one places a swizzle stick across two olives, that which passes beneath is not chametz.
It was told in a baraita that a goy walked into a bar and asked, “How many olives should be in a martini?” Rabbi Yosef bar Tender answered him, saying, “One, in tribute to the One Lord, but the olive must not be eaten.” Rabbi Nachman bar Keep said, “One, in tribute to the One Lord, but it may be eaten only in an emergency [e.g., if you are too drunk to drive home and require some sustenance].” Rabbi Eliezer bar Back disagreed and said, “Two: one to eat before you drink, and one to eat after—as it is written: ‘Prayer is helpful both before and after the judgment is sealed.’”
