Alison Roman Hosts Passover Dinner | NYT Cooking

hi guys so the video you're about to watch was obviously filmed a few weeks ago and as you can imagine things have really sort of changed pretty drastically between now and then we're living in a very different world and you know suggesting that you go out to the store and buy all these things and cook a huge elaborate meal for many of your friends and their friends is not not doable right now but hopefully you know it gives you something to look forward to I still feel like there's a lot of value in the idea that you can sort of do this virtually or even alone or with your partner or whomever you're sharing a roof with just kind of reminding yourself that like right now I feel like we need every small reason humanly possible to celebrate anything we hope you love it um yeah thanks for watching Passover scene 1a take one my Passover [Music] I don't know the hello happy spring welcome to my Passover I am Jewish I'm half Jewish my father's Jewish and we grew up kind of half celebrating most holidays like we sort of celebrated Hanukkah and sort of celebrated Christmas and Passover Rosh Hashanah and for me Passover is less about the feasting it's not like you're filling your table with abundance and all this crazy stuff it's more about the ritual if people read from a thing called a Hagaddah there are blessings there are prayers people share a lot this is a very like vulnerable holiday which is probably also why I really love it people get to talk about their feelings for me this is like the other day of the year that I would put in as much effort for something like Thanksgiving so I have sort of taken the things that are traditionally present at a passover meal and made them into really delicious salads and sides and mains to make a delicious dinner regardless of whether or not you're doing that proper actual seder you know regardless of your religion this is the type of thing that you will take joy in if you like the idea of cooking for people that you love [Music] the menu can vary but typically there's a few things president there's matzo ball soup which is one of my top three favorite foods of all time traditionally there's a brisket I'm making short ribs there's a thing called her OSA which is a Napoli salad condiment they'll be some whitefish salad some chopped liver people can put it on matzo also on the table will have jammy eggs pickles because you have to I'm not having a seder plate so there will be no parsley and horseradish but I am making a salad with parsley and horseradish see what I did there this meal is already a lot so for dessert I didn't want to be baking because the world really need another flourless chocolate cake does the world really need another coconut macaroon probably not but you know what the world does need is a really fun sundae bar so I feel like that's exactly how I want to end this meal oh my gosh I forgot the best oh my god sorry I forgot the best part of this whole meal which is honestly aside from the matzo ball soup why I wanted to do this story is because I made a potato kugel I made a crispy potato kugel and it's essentially a giant latke it's so good and honestly if you make nothing else from this menu make this potato kugel thank you so it's the day before Passover gonna go to the butcher gonna get my stuff gonna cook the short ribs and I'm gonna make my broth for the most bows and then if I have extra time we'll see what else I get - I'm wearing glasses because I ran out of contacts I saw a play yesterday and I was wearing the wrong contacts I couldn't see a bee I hear it was great though hi good how are you I would like five pounds of the beef short ribs and can I get them as thick as possible those are beautiful those are perfect yes and it's chicken like four to four and a half pounds chicken fat and then a livers yeah liver is in fact the title of my forthcoming memoir can you do me a favor can you cut it into like ten pieces like just chop it up okay thank you Oh actually you know what I'll do it yeah yeah cuz so I can show you yeah thank you that's perfect thank you so much I'll see you soon bye so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to season my short ribs so these are big voice and with any red meat it's about a teaspoon of salt per pound even with the bone and then I'll give them a few crocks of pepper there will be plenty of pepper elsewhere in this menu all right friends it's time for our chicken soup so for the chicken broth I am a chicken soup purist I like chicken onions garlic carrots since our whoa none of this stuff gets peeled nothing gets seared nothing gets roasted we're making soup and part of that journey is by throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot cover it with water simmering it and tending to it grooming it tasting it seasoning it loving it bringing it into this world and we're gonna break her down you don't need a cleaver to do this but you do need a very sharp knife I always go through the breastplate first because it is the most tender of the cartilage as for the breast which has the bones in it and everything I'm just gonna cut it in half like this leaning on your knife to kind of break that cartilage cutting through the bone is annoying but it is also gonna release a lot of flavor into your bra so in here we have our chicken favorite vegetables I'm gonna add some salt you always gonna start with cold water I'm just gonna start it on high let it come to a boil and then reduce the heat okay so it's short rib time I am NOT a huge fan of over complicating things like red meat especially in a braise so there's honey there's soy sauce there's apple cider vinegar it's kind of like a sweet a salty and a sour all in one pot very good so you are basically just looking for your pot to be very hot and now I'm going to sear them you always want to cure that side down these little sear and then I'm just gonna go ahead and cut the garlic this I will peel because as they braise the papers is simply not gonna serve me oh I'm wearing glasses today which means that these onions are burning my eyeballs people always ask me how do you prevent onions from singing your eyes and I say wear contacts because that's what I do when I was little my mom would tell me that if you took a paper towel and you soaked it in water and put it in your mouth so that would help but like I'm not doing that oh there burns I burn them a little luck away this is too dark don't do that don't do what I did don't walk away it's not burn to the point where I would ever decide that I couldn't serve it also once it's braised you won't be able to tell that I burned it but I just want you to know that I know that I burned it this is gonna affect me fortune all right our shamans are done all this fat I'm actually the night the songs I did as previously mentioned burnish warpath earlier and then gonna add our we're gonna kind of just scare them lightly on each side my eyes so these are getting kind of toasty in here so I'm gonna add the honey now you're just looking to cook it until you see it kind of bubble up and start changing color and then one on a printer and then soy sauce why does the soy sauce come out it's like this we'll see you in five hours when the soy sauce measures me what I need it to we are gonna bring this to a strong simmer before adding our red stock and you can check out our stock situation I'm not a big skimmer do you want to cook this very low and slow you want it to be gentle the more fiercely you simmer a stock the cloudier it becomes and I want to keep it like pretty clear and pure okay so this shortens our gonna go bone side up you want the meat itself to be as a submerge as possible as these cook and braise they are gonna shrink a little bit so they will kind of settle into the pot all right tonight and I'm not even gonna think about them for three hours [Music] shop deliver something tells me this will not be the most popular recipe of this menu but if you are at all interested in livers chopped livers livers that are chopped then this will very much be for you so I'm gonna use equal parts shallot and liver again my eyes are burning though wow I really am feeling for everybody who has complained to me about how many shallots they had to peel for that pasta oh my god oh my god a disaster should I put it wadded up paper towel on my mouth okay oh my god that is so real oh I'm so sorry America Oh light a candle okay let's see Martha you guys I will try anything except for putting a paper towel in my mouth I hope she's some guilty this is brutal but see ya let's go let's give it a whirl honest I'm feeling pretty good it doesn't really totally matter how thin or thick these are you want to just them to be the same thickness we're gonna sear these and chicken fat I love chicken fat look how like silky and oh so nice we're gonna leave them in there they're gonna sizzle and be crazy I think it's like a really nice snack just to have a tiny amount beginning the meal it feels very decadent and kind of fancy even though it's not and these I'm gonna still cook at a pretty high temperature I'm looking for like almost fried frizzled shallots that is tender enough to chop a little Applebee's flare-up therefore you love to see it some had some wine about 1/4 cup ish this is just a further soften them it smell really very very very good so the wine is pretty much all evaporated they're soft they're jammy I'm gonna kill the heat let them cool a little bit our livers have been chilling out so they're cool enough for me to handle and these as described just get chopped I get chops it's chopped liver and the taste of these I mean alone right now are they my favorite no not really there's a reason that I'm mixing them with a lot of salt pepper wine shallots more chicken fat and these you can kind of just run your knife through a few times and then I'm gonna add another spoonful of chicken fat because it tastes so good it's also just gonna help it like find it you want to mix it really really well and then we're just gonna let it sit in the container overnight I basically have nothing left to do except stirring the stock I haven't touched it really at all this has just been simmering gently and I trust that at this stage it's very delicious mmm that is so good okay so it's ready and our short ribs are still braising they'll be in there probably another two and a half to three hours I will overheat it tomorrow in my car matzo balls and do everything else and all the hard part is pretty much done so I'm really excited to have you back tomorrow ready yeah was that a sick Scott alright Passover scene six eight take one welcome back it's the next day last night after you guys left I took the short ribs out of the oven I literally just let them cool a little bit on the stove and I put them in the fridge same thing with the chicken drop I strained it I put it in the fridge and I did a bunch of others I read The New Yorker I had a real night so all that stuff on the top is fat that we don't need or want to eat this is a good way to get most of the fat who's a little excavator okay that's actually pretty good this is just gonna chill out here because I need that space in the fridge um hi ready for the most important part of your life no I don't want to oversell it but making no good matzo ball is extremely important I believe that a matzo ball should be light and fluffy and I think that it should be big enough to eat two rather than one big one I think that the big ones are not cute and I don't like it I don't want to eat them I would say that the most superb thing in this whole recipe is the club soda I feel like it's a bit superstitious I'm not sure that's the bubbles in this actually create a letter matzo ball but I feel like if I don't use soda water I am setting myself up to fail like I don't think that the quarter cup of soda water is gonna like create airiness in them but just do it just use that okay the key to a good matzo ball is the resting period you really need to let this mixture rest at least two hours and that's to let them out to meal fully hydrate otherwise no matter how long you boil it it's gonna kind of always be dry and crumbly and you want a very silky kind of smooth almost custardy texture at the end time for our favorite segment where we discover what kind of chicken is inside these eggs zealous Zeena thank you so much Zella Zeena cranes her long neck for a full view of her pasture paradise Wow I love her thank you for your gifts Dena five eggs are gonna go right in here and add the fat okay so all this will get mixed together and then the soda water goes last the magic ingredient which may or may not make a difference don't forget it so it's very liquid a very soupy this will transform remarkably not only as a chicken fat gonna solidify but the flour in the matzo meal is gonna hydrate and expand so in two hours it's gonna be firm enough for us to roll balls you'll see I'm gonna make my two sauces for our sundae bar my two sauces are gonna be like a chocolate shell and tahini caramel Magic Shell it's essentially just chocolate and coconut oil and what happens is is that it's super super liquidy and then when it hits that frozen ice cream it solidifies and becomes hard coconut oil chocolate it's equal parts with a hefty pinch of salt every time I unwrap these bars I feel like really Wonka and what's the boy's name charlie the boy coconut oil and chocolate are both hard when they're cold and they're liquid when they're warm you take something that's liquid and you pour it over something that's cold it's gonna harden magic shelf magic we're gonna make caramel no exciting for you I used to be a pastry chef I used to make caramel on the daily I became very good at it caramel and its most basic form is sugar it's caramelized sugar sugar until it's heated up and then it caramelizes this is like that game type over you can't use the word to describe what it is I'm doing a great job the way that I was taught to do it is from dry which means I'm literally just putting sugar in a pan and I'm heating it until it melts so it calls for a cup of sugar and I'm gonna start with a quarter cup of sugar when you melts the sugar is liquefies and then it's much easier to add the rest of the sugar if I were to add the whole cup now what would happen is it would clump up parts of it we start to caramelize and other parts would be raw I'd be like a mound of sugar sitting on top of each other and I don't want that so I'm just gonna do it a little bit at a time wait for it to kind of liquefy and then add more sugar and that's our 1 cup of sugar so that's where we want it it almost looks like honey and now I'm gonna add or and that's obviously gonna make it Wow do I look like I read Harry Potter never seen it but it basically stops the cookie I'm gonna add this tahini while it's still really hot see it's like already nice and extremely creamy and then I'm gonna also give this a pretty big pinch of salt because this is mostly sugar it needs a good amount of salt so that's done and then from there I'll toast some sesame seeds will crumble some halva will put out some salt it'll be some chopped chocolate some cocoa nibs whatever not that I've pretty much done everything that I can do up until now to get ahead I'd rather take this time and go do something fun like go grab flowers you're gonna wild I'm back and now I'm gonna develop we've all been waiting for I'm gonna make the matzo balls and we're gonna do them now because they can actually sit while we do everything else but this is where things get tricky because of the size of my burner as you can see my shorts have been out they're still solid nothing's happened there I'm actually just gonna throw this in the oven now just again to kind of get them out of my way I'm just trying to essentially evenly warm them through and liquefy the broth tenderize the meat etc so this is our broth from yesterday it's been chilling and I'm gonna just have it on low so remember last time we saw this Maxwell mixture it was really soupy and liquidy check it out now it is basically like play-doh or clay or a paste or matzo ball oh you want to roll these balls about the size of a golf ball I've never golfed in my life I honestly don't even know if the golf ball looks like is that about a golf ball pretty good you do want to make sure they are all roughly at the same size they'll sink and then they'll float and then they'll kind of just poach in the salty water until they're cooked through they take about ten minutes series seven here for ten minute Becky we please set a timer for 10 minutes thank you I learned how to make matzo balls mostly by eating a lot of matzo balls just you know you got to get in the field you got to go in there you gotta do the Recon you're the research beat the matzo balls I'm gonna stick these in the fridge just while I wait just sort of dance around it's very sweet there's not like a anything that I need to do I don't even know I'm holding this honestly I'm like helicopter mommying over here I can just let them do their thing they don't need in this pot is just froth and when I have the matzo balls it'll just be balls and broth I don't believe in adding any vegetables until the very very end so I'll cut the celery now but I'm gonna hold it until later you want thin pieces because again we're not really cooking it we're just gonna add it to the broth at the last minute all right these are coming out you're going right into the soup all right I'm gonna cut the rest of celery and cook the rest of these balls I'll see you in a minute [Music] so in the meantime I'm gonna get my potato kugel going I'm thrilled to present to you this potato kugel almost as excited as I was about those matzo balls basically think of this as a giant potato pancake what is a kugel Scott that's a great question it's a casserole right yeah sometimes it's made with noodles and not tends to be on the sweeter side but it's essentially like a very eggy baked custard dish as the name would indicate we're gonna start with potatoes we are gonna peel and grate these we are gonna grate this onion I'm wearing my contacts today so don't worry about me no tears today if you have a food processor with a shredding blade please use it I cannot find mine I have no idea where it is if you've seen it call me so I'm just gonna grate everything by hand on a box grater I'll set up my little station and get greeting [Music] back to work [Music] careful box grater will getcha I had a minor injury a miter box fader injury so we're back over here has taken over for grading you're not wearing contacts are you okay well good luck okay not unlike a lot code we want to bring out all of the water in these potatoes which is a shocking amount if you want to use a cheesecloth or a kitchen towel to do this you can I just use my hands oh very strong I have never had a potato kugel before and I thought okay well there's got to be a way to make a very delicious one because eggs potato and onion and salt together and fat that sounds like an absolute dream how much water do you think's gonna come out of these potatoes well we might have more than a cup we might have like two cups this is just for my own gratification oh my god a full and exact two cups of water from those potatoes very cool to me this serves zero purpose but I think that is cool this liquid left in those would give you a really soggy kugel that would never crisp up so that's why we squeeze hashtag why I squeeze cool potatoes from here it's literally salt pepper eggs well this can take a lot of pepper four tablespoons of the fat are going in here bags go in here two more tablespoons of taco empty my short ribs are in there at a really low time I'm actually gonna take them out right now so I can bake my kugel that's gonna cook 10 to 15 minutes on the stove we want that underside to be totally brown and crisp that way when we put in the oven the top is gonna then get brown and crisp and the inside will cook all the way through so just to recap our short ribs are done all that needs to happen is I'm gonna remove the lid and we're gonna put them back in the oven at 425 just to kind of keep them through get the top really nice brown and bubbly the mop so soup is done it's ready the balls are cooked the broth is hat it's seasoned and then we have our parsley fennel salad slice the apples and then make our carrots so we're kind of like ready to go let's get a kugel update we got a kugel update over here it's getting very Brown I'm liking what I'm seeing but it needs to go in a little bit longer wow that is a helicopter Gina it's literally outside my apartment holy moly Keanu Reeves is out there it's Liam Neeson we've been taken I don't know any more movies than that carrots these carrots were like cartoon carrots this one especially is like a Bugs Bunny carrot I don't like it so these are literally just sliced carrots sounds boring are delicious these gets gently sauteed in chicken pot we are like just cooking them we don't want them to be raw but we are not trying to make them money and I'm gonna add the garlic now and just toss them to coat she's golden brown she's cooked through and tender these short ribs there's a bit more fat in here than I want there to be so I'm in a skin they should be so crazy tender that like when you press on them they just like they give I'm gonna put them back in the oven so they're pretty much done Rebecca's gonna make a whitefish salad but I'm gonna make this a lot for this particular salad I'm also using the entire bulb Fung's stem bulb the whole enchilada [Music] this is our chicken liver from yesterday looks gross that's fine we're gonna top it with the herbs oh she's gorgeous my god what do you stunning creature this is very funny to me it just came in such a hilariously large box that I had I just had to have it it's like a beautiful gift I know they taste great there's nothing cooler though but again it's not all that looks you know who this one is maybe the nicest because it's toasty and then that's the one this is just to have on the table as is customary [Music] so everyone is here for charity like I mentioned before I wasn't wearing this cute outfit everything's pretty much time a character dies it's oops Todd sharpies are want to grow the kugel stuns all I'm really gonna need to do is assemble the salad and because that's something that you bring to the table at first it's honestly a great reference okay okay that's plenty of time the most important time okay so you're gonna top this with some dill and celery leaves hashtag la Fidele cheers you guys think you can amaze I'm so glad that you're here I'm just gonna shave the apples emanates the parsley and fennel salad it's apples dressing honey again this is kind of like the interpretation of harissa which I find to be not delicious and it's not something that I want to eat with short ribs but I do want like a very tiny sort of salty sweet apple salad that sounds great oh my god thanks guys thank you guys so much this is not our governor rolled out thank you [Music] all right this is our kugel we're gonna slice this into wedges and this is just parsley fennel lemon salt pepper fresh horseradish so you don't need a lot a little bit does go a long way and then short ribs [Music] thank you guys thank you so much this is the most important part of this recipe do not forget to finish with lemon I know there's vinegar in here already but you really need the additional acid mmm that is so good that's really good these people are so lucky I know I'm ready to sit down any Passover with my friends oh my god there's more everyone this is so nice you guys all came I really appreciate it and especially because I've been to now eight peoples here I've been the three of your Passover's so it's nice to like host one for you guys too and one of my favorite things about it is that every time I come there's at least two to seven people I don't know and it's like a really nice way to feel a little bit uncomfortable and also meet new people so I hope that you guys did that tonight [Music]

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 633,418

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, Alison Roman, Passover, Matzo, Matzo Ball Soup, Matzo Meal, Matzo Flour, Short Ribs, Braised short ribs, garlicky carrots, parsley salad, dinner party, full menu, passover menu, tahini caramel, magic shell

Id: 24Xa7Q-o2pY

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020