We used to eat to fill the whole body.
Words of malice that each bit of teeth into their flesh sought a bite of sweet or salty revenge on the oppressor of the Jews from the book of Esther.
The "Polarikos", an egg in the dough, remember the feet of the evil one.
"Dantes de Haman", a nut candy, symbolized the teeth, and a sesame candy was for the haman bugs.
In Morocco, my benevolent love to come to account, they went hard and painfully, and took Haman's eyes out of the "Boijou de Purim", a large challah or individual challahs in which hard-boiled eggs were placed, which the children were ordered to remove from the meat of the bread, as if Haman had plucked out his bad eyes.
According to another version that was whispered in my ears, the children were not thinking of Haman's eyes when they tore eggs from bread and loudly proclaimed - "Cursed Haman".
The Bulgarians ate a dish with thin noodles in the center, trying to remember the hairs of the tyrant.
In Central Europe they ate the heart made of sweet butter dough.
But all this mixed revenge could not prevail over the presence of the evil Haman's ears on the holiday table, as it is written: "Haman entered the house of Genzi the king bent over, mournful and bareheaded, his ears plucked and his eyes dark..." (Megillah tractate).
The French Jews ate the "entourage" on Purim, the elephant's ears made of puff pastry and sugar diamonds.
In Libya and Tunisia they put on the holiday table "Odenin al-kadi", the ears of the kadi - fried dough dipped in syrup.
There were also manna ears, certainly, but these were rounded cookies from Central Europe that sought to resemble the earlobe.
All this abundance was lost in the melting pot of Zionist cuisine, and we were left with the triple pastries, an incarnation of a poppy-filled cookie called "Mon Tasha", which means poppy pocket in German.
Molly Bar David, author of the book "The Folklore Cooking", which was published in 1964, says there that the descendants of the triple "Mon Tash" were eaten in memory of Haman's hat, and they appeared relatively late, only after Napoleon's rule.
The similarity between the name in Yiddish - "Mon" - and the sound of Haman's name, is what established the status of the poppy as a star in Purim.
Not something related to the dirt in the ears of the manna, as we were told when we were children, cultivating in our hearts and imaginations a reluctance to anything related to the black seeds that, even before eating them, man was good at using them to blur the mind and body and for the purposes of worship.
The ears of manna that went around then offered a bitter and rough poppy, buried under a scream of sugar and raisins and wrapped in a margarine dough from which the crispiness continued.
Nothing that pays homage to the refinement of Austro-Hungarian baking in which it grew.
Nothing that reminds me of the buttery dough and the precision of the poppy in the manna ears sold at "Amita", a bakery that Michal Bouton and Anna Shapiro opened two years ago in a building that used to be a canteen for the British officer.
Equipped with a bunch of recipes from the halachic past at the associations, whose place is housed in a white building with a triangular roof and a round skylight, which stands out among a mix of garages on Selma Street in south Tel Aviv, a stone's throw from Bloomfield.
The smell of warm dough and butter steals your nostrils when you enter the place, where they instill a new language in visibility and combinations that are unlike anywhere else.
Whoever ate there cheese and anchovy pastry, Jerusalem artichoke borax, miso cake in chusha or pink cake, where the sourness of the hibiscus tickles the lips and tongue on its way to the sweetness of the vanilla cream hiding inside the yeast dough - found himself stuck with longing in his mouth.
Longings that only they can find comfort in.
Attentive to the seasons, they move along the axis of time, extracting classics from it, baking sweet and salty memories, combining freedom of thought with depth and accuracy.
Shapiro and Bouton have created in two years bakers and it is now clear that they are here to stay.
From past recipes, from a world long gone, they chose their own version for three.
And when we came there with an excited mouth - we knew the beauty of Haman's fingers, legs and bugs.
All are pastries that offer their own interpretation of the past.
was no less than exciting.
We sat together around a table, gnawing on Lehmann's whole body, and for a moment I manage to imagine Shapiro, a beautiful 3-year-old girl who came with her parents from Russia to Safed.
A family that really had no idea what Purim was, so they looked for the girl for a king with a moustache.
All that holiday Anna cried tears, because who wants to walk around with a mustache among all the princesses and fairies.
Boughton remembers dressing up as a sooty newsboy or the sad clown Pierrot.
Remembering beautiful wings her father made for her when she dressed up as the queen of the night.
But of all the costumes in memory, they like the one from last year the most, when "Amitah" dressed up as Uri Sheft's old "bread bakery" from Hasmonaim Street in the city.
The manna fingers will probably find their way to the range of pastries in the place, parts of which change every day.
And if you're already there, and it's Purim anyway, when our whole world wants to sweeten the moment for itself, try the manna ears with poppy seeds, the same triangles that are now everywhere in the city, but somehow this pastry also tastes exceptionally delicious.
Before entering the kitchen, two things: read the recipes carefully and understand the steps in advance.
One more thing: I translated all the weights into cups and spoons, and still and again, I suggest you put a scale in the kitchen.
It's always the most accurate, and much less messy.
I wish you with all my happy heart that this will find a desire to dress up, to tickle the hearts.
That for a moment Adar will do what he was meant to do - and bring joy with him.
Happy holiday!
Sesame manna bugs
In the kitchens of the Ottoman Empire, it is a semolina cake filled with nuts whose sound similarity, "tishpishti", to the word fleas - is what made it match in some homes to the holiday of Purim.
The associations added a perfume of spices to the somsiya, which was part of the holiday sweets table in Arab countries, including in Syrian cuisine.
It turned out great.
The amount in front of you is good for 20-30 rectangles/diamonds, depending on what size you choose to cut them.
Sesame manna bugs, photo: Itiel Zion
the ingredients:
√
300 grams (1/4 2 cups) toasted sesame
√ 150 grams (3/4 cup) of sugar
√ 20 ml (a little more than 1 tablespoon) of water
√ 30 grams (1/2 1 tablespoons) honey
√ 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
√ A pinch of cardamom
√ A pinch of ground fennel
√ A pinch of salt
Preparation:
Dissolve the sugar in the water and add the honey.
Stir over low heat for about 5 minutes and add the toasted sesame and the spices.
Mix until all the sesame is coated in syrup, and pour on a silicone surface or greased baking paper.
Spread with a spoon - and cool.
Cut into individual rectangles.
Haman's fingers
A Purim dish that originated in the Spanish kitchen, in the Jewish communities in Greece and Turkey.
Originally filo dough was used for pastry, but the associations converted it to puff pastry filled with almond cream.
It turned out crazy delicious.
The quantity is good for 50 fingers.
You can easily prepare in advance, freeze and bake before serving.
Fingers of Haman, photo: Itiel Zion
For the dough:
√ 500 grams of good quality puff pastry
For the almond cream:
√ 200 grams of butter
√ 200 grams of white sugar
√ A pinch of salt
√ 1 egg
√ 300 grams of almond powder
√ 20 grams of flour
For the syrup:
√ 200 grams of sugar
√ 200 ml of water
√ 2 drops of Zohar water
√ 2 sage leaves
√ Peel of 1 orange (only the orange part)
for assembly:
√ 1 egg
Preparation:
On medium heat, melt all the syrup components in a cauldron and reduce for about 5 minutes.
Transfer to the refrigerator until use.
Prepare the cream: in a mixer with a guitar hook, soften butter and sugar at medium speed.
Add salt, and when the butter mixture is swollen, add an egg.
Reduce the speed and add almond powder and flour until a uniform cream is obtained.
Transfer to a piping bag.
Roll out the puff pastry to a minimum thickness of 1 millimeter.
Cut 20x4 rectangles.
On one side of the rectangle, along the side, brush about 1 cm of the beaten egg. On the other hand, on the other side, sprinkle along a strip of about 1 cm of the almond cream.
Form rolls, starting from the side where the almond cream is.
Roll and seal the roll with the seam facing down.
Brush with egg and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Please note: even if you decide to freeze - brush first.
Transfer to an oven preheated to 200 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes.
Take out when golden, and immediately brush generously with the cold syrup.
Haman's feet
A dizzyingly creative version of "Polarikos", in which Hamindos eggs are used immersed in the dough, next to a dimple that creates pebbles.
The hole is filled with refreshing tomato paste, steamed dough and eggs made overnight in the oven are dipped in it.
Read carefully before you proceed, and look at the pictures, to understand what you are aiming for.
The quantity is good for 20 pastries.
Fingers of Haman, photo: Itiel Zion
For the dough:
√ 900 grams (1/2 6 cups) flour for bread
√ 100 grams (1/2 cup) of sugar
√ 20 grams (1 tablespoon) of salt
√ 12 grams of dry yeast
√
About 450 grams (a little less than 2 cups) of water
√ 6 tablespoons of olive oil
For the tomato salsa:
√
5 tomatoes grated on a fine grater
√ 1/2 finely chopped hot green pepper
√ Chopped peel from 1 lemon
√ 1 finely chopped garlic clove
√ 1 tablespoon of olive oil
√ Salt and pepper to taste
for assembly:
√
20 Hamindus eggs (these are the brown ones of the hamin) peeled
Preparation:
Place all the dough ingredients in the mixer bowl and process with a kneading hook at medium speed for about 15 minutes.
Cover with a towel for 30 minutes.
Divide into 20 balls weighing 70 grams.
Each ball is "opened" into a 20 cm long roll - and immediately shaped into the shape of the number 8. In one loop, a peeled egg is placed, and the other is floured and a pebble is placed on it, the function of which is to create a hole during baking.
Arrange the pastries on baking trays at intervals of 3 cm from each other. Using the leftover dough, make small loops. Every two loops will create an X above each egg, to keep it from rolling to the side when the dough rises.
Cover with a towel for an hour and a half, until the pastries double in size, and bake for about 12 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees.
At the end of baking, remove the pebbles.
At the same time mix the salsa ingredients.
Pour a spoonful into each hole, and enjoy the holy trinity of dough-egg-salsa.
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