NBD Fancy in the News + Passover 2023 Report Card

Hey, how'd it all go??

Leftovers… and Snoopy.

First off: very exciting news. NBD Fancy received its first ever shout-out this week, courtesy of CNN, who published the article 26 Cookbooks to gift others (and yourself), according to experts by Jolie Kerr. Follow the link to read the piece, which has some great recs for your shopping cart. So cool to be an official expert on something. Achievement unlocked!

Next, I want to circle back to Passover.

Last week I laid out my extensive — possibly overly ambitious — Passover game plan. There were many questions left hanging in the air: would the gefilte fish work out? Would the cake rise? Would I screw up everything?

Happy to report that the meal went swimmingly. Here’s an official Circle Back to discuss how each component of the meal turned out.

Horseradish

There was minor drama on this front as two stores were sold out of horseradish roots, and Whole Foods only had a few dinky options. In a panic, we bought the dinky options, which was a mistake. While they packed a punch, they sorely lacked flavor. Luckily, Instacart saved the day, and I was able to order a big, fat, fresh root, which unfortunately was not as sinus-clearing as I would have hoped, but taste-wise? Delicious. Nearly a week later, and I’m still adding Grandma Sylvia’s horseradish to everything I’m eating.

Matzah Ball Soup

My mom shepherded in the matzah ball soup (and she also made the horseradish). Last week I noted that when making this soup, I basically just use the instructions on the matzah meal canister, which is honestly great. However, my mom added in a nice handful of dill, a bunch of white and black pepper, and a splash of chicken stock to the dough. She then cooked the matzah balls in a simple stock made from Better Than Bouillon. The plan was to then make a proper soup from my homemade chicken stock, but my stock turned out oddly sweet and not so-chickeny; so we just kind of said EFF IT and used the Better Than Bouillon stock for the final product. And guess what? Now I get it. People lose their mind for Better Than Bouillon, and I can authoritatively state that it’s delicious. The whole thing was fantastic in the end.

Charoset

You know those bags of small, sad apples at the super market? I always wonder what’s the point of buying them when there are big, beautiful, fresh apples inches away. Well, for the charoset, my mom bought the bag of crap apples, and guess what? This was the perfect use for those apples. First, despite looking sad and bruised, they tasted great, but second, whatever blemishes and sadness they had was lost when mixed into this apple, walnut, raisin, date, wine dish. My apple snobbery was unwarranted!

Gefilte Fish

All year long I’ve been excited to improve on 2022’s gefilte fish, and by God I think i’ve done it. I added four garlic cloves to the recipe, instead of one, and this made all the difference. The fish balls remained intensely flavorful when served chilled, and despite having 1.5 tablespoons of sugar in the mix, the dish avoided my mother’s "too sweet!” label. So good I may make this dish even when it’s not a Jewish holiday. This is the recipe I will be using henceforth for eternity. (unless i get bored and try a different one)

Chicken

The #1 Chicken (a.k.a. Alison Roman’s Sticky Pineapple Chicken) continues to be a blazing success — a real high point in the history of poultry cookery. So easy to prepare, so easy to cook, so beautiful to present, and so outrageously delicious to eat. Southeast Asian flavors are not the norm for Passovers I’ve been to, but who cares when chicken is this good?

Meat

I made beef shashlik with a tahini and pistachio sauce from the book Samarkand, adapting the recipe from a skewer to a kefte (basically, a meatball). Last year I cooked the keftes in a cast iron skillet, which took a surprisingly long amount of time. This time around, I put them all under a broiler for about 10 minutes, and the results were impeccable. The accompanying pistachio sauce called for water-soaked bread, but since this was Passover, I subbed in matzah instead. I felt clever about that. The final product was a tangy sauce whose hummus-adjacent qualities played beautifully off the keftes. The only sad part was that I made this dish early in the afternoon, and the keftes definitely lost some magic at room temperature (not to mention the sauce, which stiffened into a paste). Nevertheless, delicious.

Salad

Nothing to report here except that the salad was great, and I overloaded it with dill, which made it even better. In fact, everything was sort of overloaded with dill. DillFest 2023.

Potatoes

Melting potatoes with dill. Last week I brazenly declared I’d cook the potatoes in duck fat. That was a lie. I woos’d out at the last second. There was so much going on I just didn’t feel like experimenting anymore. These potatoes took probably 45 minutes longer to cook than advertised, but that’s because I doubled the recipe, and I suspect that slowed everything down. The end product was buttery and rich and so decadent. My only gripe was that I really didn’t do a very good job of seasoning the dish. Again, it was the final stretch, and i think i just wanted to get them to the table. But even underseasoned, these potatoes were full of wonderful flavor. Next time, duck fat. I promise.

A Roasted Green Thing

After much hemming and hawing, I made Andy Baraghani’s Fall-Apart Caramelized Cabbage Smothered in Anchovies and Dill, which was ultimately the totally correct choice. I was hesitant to do a roasted vegetable, knowing there might be an oven traffic jam with the chicken, but it wasn’t a problem at all. While the #1 chicken cooked away, I seared cabbage wedges in a cast-iron skillet — which seemed like it would be annoying but was actually very easy. I just let those wedges go for minutes on end while I tended to a million other things. The recipe calls for wrapping the cabbage skillet in foil and placing it in the oven, but I was wedge-abdundant; so I transferred it all to a sheet pan instead, and the end result was great. Very happy with this side dish.

Something Carrot-y

I made Smooshed Carrots with Cilantro-Pesto from Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love, and it was beyond. The journey, however, was fraught. The recipe states that I must place the carrots in a baking dish with water and olive oil and roast away, stopping after twenty minutes to add garlic and later, maple syrup. After about an hour, the carrots should be knife-tender and ready to go. In my infinite wisdom, I doubled the number of carrots, but still piled them into the same baking dish, which meant it took forever to soften them. I covered with foil, I raised the temp, I lowered the temp, I added time. Nothing seemed to really work. After nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes, most of the carrots were tender; so I simply pulled the dish and mashed what I could up. The end product was a dish with varying textures - which was kind of cool actually. Next time, however, if I double the recipe, I’m doing it in two baking dishes. And there definitely will be a next time. These carrots were revelatory — thanks in large part to the pesto and the lime yogurt we speckle over the final dish. Ottolenghi knows his way around a condiment and a drizzle, and this dish proves it.

Dessert

I made Aleksandra Crapanzano’s Pain De Gênes, which was very exciting because it was my first time using almond paste. I could probably eat that stuff raw it was so good. And yes, I did eat it raw now that I think of it. It’s basically just almonds and sugar ground together into a fine paste.

Anyway, this cake had no flour — just almond paste, egg whites, and a few other ingredients like corn starch. There was some mild-to-moderate anxiety about the egg whites, which seemed unwilling to stiffen, but after some time in the Kitchen-Aid followed by bouts of elbow grease from my mother AND father AND me, we finally achieved peaks. It took forever though. I suspect some fat must have snuck in. Once the whites were folded into the batter, the cake baked away flawlessly — although maybe 5 minutes too long? The final product was on the dry side, but somehow it worked. The almond flavor was unmistakable, and had I served the cake with some whipped cream or a glaze, all dryness would have melted away. Instead I opted for a refined dusting of powdered sugar (mainly so I could use one of my favorite and most ridiculous gadgets: the OXO dusting wand). Moisture levels be damned, this was a sophisticated and understated cake that felt like a classy way to end the meal.

But wait! There’s more. My mom decided to make little hazelnut cookies — specifically Baci di Dama — from Cook’s Illustrated. She insisted they would be simple to make, but I was skeptical. I even told my mom several times “I think these are going to be more complicated than they look.” But I was wrong! They were very simple - or at least my mom made them look simple - and quite delicious. Hazelnuts are ground together to make a dough with flour (yes, flour, but there are no leavening agents in the recipe; so we think it was kosher for Passover). This yields sixty-four tiny cookies that are then joined in holy matrimony by melted chocolate, turning them into macaron-esque bites of joy. An adorable treat to pair with the almond cake.

And now, time to eat more matzah.