{"id":28156,"date":"2008-03-06T13:56:49","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/production.ou.org\/holidays\/purim\/purim_merriment_mirthand_good_eats\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T05:55:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T05:55:57","slug":"purim_merriment_mirthand_good_eats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/holidays\/purim_merriment_mirthand_good_eats\/","title":{"rendered":"Purim: merriment, mirth\u2026and good eats!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hamentashen\"It has all the elements of pulp fiction biblical style: the foolish king (Ahasuerus), the spurned wife (Vashti), the wicked first minister (Haman), the brave and beautiful maiden (Esther) and her honorable protector (Mordecai). Add to the mix an assassination plot foiled and a people saved, leading to millennia of rejoicing.<\/p>\n

Fast forward 2,500 years, and along come scholars asserting that Purim, the holiday of merriment, mirth, and trickery, may itself be a trick, casting doubt that the story ever happened!<\/p>\n

Go ahead. You tell that to all those colorfully costumed kids, graggers<\/i> in hand, waiting to drown out the name Haman every time it is mentioned as the Megillah<\/i> is read. This is a day to party!<\/p>\n

To celebrate our deliverance, sweets are the order of the day. Gifts of cakes and fruit (mishaloch manot<\/i>) are exchanged. For Ashkenazim no Purim celebration would be complete without eating three-cornered hamantaschen (Haman\u2019s pockets), traditionally filled with poppy seeds, while Sephardim enjoy fried pastries called oznei Haman (Hebrew for Haman\u2019s ears). You\u2019ll find a recipe for the Italian Orecchie di Amman from Joyce Goldstein\u2019s \u201cCucina Ebraica\u201d below.<\/p>\n

Why Haman\u2019s ears? According to Gil Marks in \u201cThe World of Jewish Cooking\u201d: \u201cEar-shaped pastries are derived from the medieval custom of cutting off a criminal\u2019s ear before execution as well as a legend that Haman\u2019s ears were twisted or triangular in shape like a donkey\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long ago, in my den mother days, a non-Jewish friend gave me her family\u2019s recipe for Polish Cream Cheese Kolacky. I shaped them into three-cornered cookies for Purim. Because my family wouldn\u2019t touch poppy seed filling, preferring chocolate to any fruit, I created my own tradition, using a chocolate filling recipe another friend gave me, and my chocolate hamantaschen have been a perennial favorite ever since.<\/p>\n

(Ask my sons, though, what they remember most about Purim and they will say goldfish. No, not the crackers. Every year they would win a goldfish or two at our synagogue\u2019s Purim carnival, and if we were lucky, they might live until Pesach.)<\/p>\n

What is it about Purim and poppy seeds anyway? Andr\u00e1s Koerner states in \u201cA Taste of the Past: Daily Life and Cooking of a 19th Century Hungarian Jewish Homemaker\u201d that although poppy seeds have long been associated with the holiday, they were eaten during Purim well before the baking of hamantaschen. He cites a religious twelfth century poem by Abraham Ibn Ezra which recorded the eating of poppy seeds and honey as a sweet for Purim.<\/p>\n

Author Joan Nathan\u2019s adapted her recipe for hamantaschen in her \u201cJewish Cooking in America\u201d from \u201cTaste of History: Recipes Old and New\u201d published by Philadelphia\u2019s Historic Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, Kahal Kadosh Mikveh Israel, which was founded in 1740. Nathan uses her own family butter cookie dough and admits that like mine, her children do not care for prune or poppy seed filling and will fill the cookies with chocolate chips, either alone or in combination with peanut butter.<\/p>\n

Bulletin! This just in! Taschen<\/i> means \u201cpockets,\u201d and Haman never wore a three-cornered hat! (You just can\u2019t believe anything you hear these days.)<\/p>\n

Matthew Goodman, the Food Maven<\/i> columnist of the Forward<\/i>, points out in \u201cJewish Food: The World at Table\u201d that these Purim sweets were originally called mohntaschen<\/i>, meaning \u201cpoppy seed pockets.\u201d Over the years the word morphed into hamantaschen<\/i> (\u201cHaman\u2019s pockets\u201d), referring to his coat pockets, which supposedly held the lots (purim<\/i>) he cast in order to choose the date for the slaughter of the Jews in his kingdom.<\/p>\n

Pockets, hats\u2026whatever! Eat and enjoy! This is a holiday to dress up and have fun!<\/p>\n

Rabbi Abraham Twerski in \u201cA Taste of Nostalgia\u201d offers several possible explanations for the masquerade on this holiday. Among them is the possibility that we hide behind a mask as a symbol for the hidden hand of the Divine responsible for the miracle of Purim. Similarly, Esther hid her Jewish origin. Therefore, hamantaschen and kreplach, with their hidden fillings, have become traditional for this holiday.<\/p>\n

Judy Bart Kancigor<\/b> is the author of \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d and can be found on the web at<\/i> www.cookingjewish.com.<\/p>\n

CHOCOLATE HAMANTASCHEN:<\/b><\/p>\n

From \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d (Workman Publishing) by Judy Bart Kancigor<\/p>\n

Makes about 4 dozen<\/p>\n

FOR THE DOUGH<\/span>:<\/p>\n