Ritual culinary secret revealed

[ritaxis]

For years I have been told by people who have some experience in the matter that I make the best haroseth.  I have to make at least a half-gallon of it every year.

I have puzzled over why I apparently make the best haroseth and I have to make a half-gallon of it every year.

I have figured it out.  It is a matter of texture.

Here is what you do -- or rather, what I do:

I cut up some appropriately large number of tasty apples into little slivers.  They tend to be like wooden matchsticks chopped into eighths or so, but they are somewhat irregular. I do this with a slicing technique rather than a chopping technique because I find it less tiring.  This year it was six of those giant granny smiths because of circumstance.  I would have preferred a realler apple.  I squeezed three small Meyer lemons on them to keep them from browning.  Yes, three.

I mix this with an appropriately large amount of walnuts which are -- here is the secret -- grated in a rotary hand grater, so that they are small small flffy mealy flakes. This time it was about two thirds of a pound.  And a like amount of raisins, also run through the rotary hand grater, though you could chop them.

Then there is an appropriate amount of cinnamon and ginger, sometimes candied, sometimes fresh.  This time it was this weird fresh ginger I got that is extra juicy and a bit bland.  And a healthy splash of either the weird sweet Passover wine or what have you. This time it was what had I, which was plum wine from 2007, a very good year I made myself and it's high time I did it again.

And honey to taste.  This time it was a bit much, but I did say the best haroseth, not the perfect haroseth.

Comments

[carbonel]

I like ginger in my haroseth, but I can't do it if I'm making it for my family, because they're purists. Apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, wine, and maybe a bit of nutmeg. And the apples get chopped in the Cuisinart.

Yours sounds great.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I am baffled as to how to respond to people who claim to be purists in the creation of folk food that has several distinct and even more indistinct traditions.

. . . and if we're going to be purists here, how come no wooden chopping bowl and round chopping knife?

(I wanted a round chopping knife like my mother's for years and years but I could only find tinny imitations that fell apart quickly and would neither take nor keep an edge)

[carbonel]

I think "purists" was probably an ill-chosen word, since you're ascribing a lot more in the way of values to it than I intended. "Minimalists," perhaps? I mean, raisins are also traditional for charoset, but my mother doesn't like them in it, either. (Neither do I, but I don't like raisins as an additive in much of anything, for texture reasons.) I was thinking more of an attitude (my mother's, I mean) where she has what she considers the proper recipe, and isn't interested in experimenting with it. Not that it's "correct" in any greater sense, just that it's the one she's happy with.

I wonder if the kind of round chipping knife you're looking for would match the kind that seems to be for sale at Alaska souvenir shops. If so, those are probably not all that worthwhile, but they are probably poor imitations of something better-constructed.