Around the Passover Table by Jayne Cohen Read Free Book Online

coffee grounds
    2 tablespoons olive oil
    2 teaspoons vinegar
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 ⁄ 2 teaspoon black pepper
    PREHEAT the oven to 200°F. Arrange half the onion skins on the bottom of a large lidded ovenproof pot or casserole. Put the eggs on top. If the eggs are tightly packed, or if you must place the eggs in two layers, use additional onion skins to cradle them. Add the coffee grounds, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Cover with the remaining onion skins. Pour in 2 quarts of cold water, adding a little more if necessary to cover the eggs. Cover the pot tightly and bake in the oven overnight or for at least 8 hours or up to 12.
    REMOVE the eggs and wipe them clean. Serve plain, hot, warm, or cold. Leftover eggs are easy to reheat (place them, unshelled, in a baking dish and warm in a slow oven until heated through). They are also wonderful sliced in salads (they make a terrific egg salad) or as a garnish for saucy stewed vegetables like ratatouille.

    His own mother had spoiled him, her first-born son and the only child of her seven to go to college and then law school. My maternal grandmother Rebecca loved to spoil my father, too—her tall son-in-law whose blue-black hair led strangers to mistake him for her own handsome son.
    â€œSave that piece for your father,” she would admonish us. “Go, put on lipstick,” she’d urge my mother. “Max will be home soon.”
    Ignoring her, we would strip the crackling, garlicky skin from just-roasted turkey or chicken, greedily devouring it before he arrived home. And only once can I remember my mother applying lipstick just for my father, in the candy shade of pink she wore to match the soft blush beneath her freckles. We knew when my father dished out the servings at the dinner table, the choicest morsels went first to the children, then to my mother, and he took what was left.
    But if we wouldn’t show him proper respect, Grandma Rebecca did. When she learned he loved chopped eggs and onions, she substituted it for the traditional Ashkenazi hard-boiled eggs dipped in salted water eaten at the beginning of the Passover meal.
    I first ate eggs in salt water at a boyfriend’s seder when I was seventeen. They tasted like a picnic ruined by high tide. Those who imagine I am impugning one of their favorite Passover foods might try the dish at any other time of year, without the spice of hunger to season it.
    But chopped eggs and onions are delicious anytime. Spread on thin pumpernickel or egg matzoh, garnished with strips of roasted red pepper, black olives or skinny slivers of smoked salmon, it is light-years ahead of a traditional egg salad.

    Chopped Eggs and Onions
    yield: 4 to 6 servings
    My grandmother’s chopped eggs and onions got their flavor boost from griebenes, the cracklings of fat and skin that are a by-product of making schmaltz, poultry fat. I add well-browned onions and their oil for the same effect.
    For Passover, serve on soft lettuce leaves, or for a gussied-up presentation, in radicchio or alternating pale green and red Belgian endive leaves. Or pack into small custard cups or cleaned tuna cans and invert onto frilly greens. Grated Black Radish and Endive Salad in Shallot Vinaigrette is a superb complement.
    This should be rather coarse and crumbly, not at all paste-like. Using a food processor—even in pulsing motion—usually results in some overly large chunks and some paste. I find it much easier to chop this in an old-fashioned wooden chopping bowl with an inexpensive curved hand-chopper (like the half-moon-shaped Jewish hockmeisser or crescent-shaped Italian mezzaluna). It’s much quicker to clean than the food processor, too.
    3 to 5 tablespoons best-quality olive or avocado oil
    1 ⁄ 2 cup thinly sliced onions plus 1 ⁄ 2 cup finely chopped onion
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    6 hard-boiled large eggs , peeled and cut into eighths
    Olive Oil Schmaltz or Poultry Schmaltz (optional)
    HEAT 3