Thanks to Elena Sigman for this guest post.

My Tante Toni (may her memory be a sweet blessing) made a dish for Purim, called noun, which I haven’t seen since the 70s. It was my favorite treat at her house: a plate of sweet, sticky pieces of noun cut in the shape of diamonds about one-and-a-half inches long. I guessed it was made of honey and chopped nuts and dates, but I was never sure of the recipe. It was dark brown and chewy and even though it was super-sweet it was also somehow tangy. The plate was passed around the table at the end of our Purim seudah, and it was quickly finished. The batches were never big.

Tante Toni had blue eyes that were two different colors because one was hers and the other was glass. The glass eye was bluer and bigger and her real eye was smaller and more hazel. At home in the evening, she wore a hairnet in order to preserve her coiffure from erev Shabbos, after she came home from the beauty parlor, until the next Friday morning when she’d get her hair done again. She was a smart, compact woman, barely taller than my child self, but she walked with a spine so straight no runway model could match it. She never tried to make chit chat with me. When I was a kid I would occasionally sleep over at her apartment on Friday night. After dinner she read the B’nai Brith Messenger cover to cover in her high-backed chair, and I read my book (Agatha Christie mysteries one year, Pearl S. Buck novels the next) on the couch until the Shabbos clock clicked off the light.

In this week’s Jerusalem Post, Dr. Richard Schwartz writes:

“Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story, was a vegetarian while she lived in the palace of King Achashverosh. She was thus able to avoid violating the kosher dietary laws while keeping her Jewish identity secret.”

Well, sort of. As a vegetarian and a woman, I find Dr. Schwartz’s line of logic tempting. Hooray! Queen Esther, the sassy savior of the Jewish people, loved tofu! But he has the midrash backwards.

There are actually conflicting opinions about what Esther chose to eat and refuse in the palace (one commentator suggests that she was actually served pork!). But the midrash that stuck is that she ate beans and legumes. If this was the case, then Queen Esther avoided meat so as to not violate the kosher laws in her non-Jewish surroundings. Her intention would not have been to eschew all flesh, as Dr. Schwartz suggests, just the non-kosher kind.

Even if she wasn’t a card-carrying PETA member, Queen Esther’s diaspora diet gives us a glimpse into the strength of her character. She maintained her sense of self, even within a palace that was undoubtedly filled with temptations. The lesson to take away is not that all Jews should be vegetarians (though many could benefit from eating less meat!), but that defending one’s core values is the deepest form of heroism.

In honor of Queen Esther, here’s a recipe for Persian Stuffed Peppers by Chef Gil Marks, author of a mind-bogglingly comprehensive book of vegetarian Jewish recipes, Olive Trees and Honey.

The saffron in the cake adds not only its distinctive beautiful color but also an elegant earthiness. Remember, rosewater and orange blossom water (which can be found in the baking sections of most grocery stores) are exotic and potent. A little goes a long way.

This recipe can also be used to make a gorgeous batch of cupcakes. Make each one a work of art by decorating the tops with non-sprayed rose petals and dried, candied orange rind.

Purim is coming! If you haven’t yet perfected your hamantaschen filling technique and are still contemplating dressing as Tickle Me Elmo on Purim night – not to worry. The Jew & The Carrot presents our favorite Purim recipes and resources from around the Jewish blogosphere.

And while you’re checking out these sites, take a peek at The Jew & The Carrot’s Healthy, Sustainable Purim Resources and our Cafe Press Gear - a beautiful line of tote bags, mugs, aprons, T-shirts, journals, note cards and more all emblazoned with a gorgeous “Eat, be Satisfied, and Bless” decal. The note cards would make a particularly sexy addition to your mishloach manot gifts.

On Monday, Chef Gil Marks offered us a delicious array of recipes to fill your shalach manot basket with freshly-baked treats (hamentaschen, of course, but also baklava, almond horns, pecan tassies and even fortune cookies!) Now, he’s back with even more ways to surprise your friends on Purim with creative, DIY shalach manot.

Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning, Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food – Next week, Chef Marks will be back with a menu for a Purim Persian Feast!

Themed Gifts:
Besides giving baked goods and confections, theme baskets provide an outlet for your ingenuity.

Try an Italian motif with an assortment of pastas, homemade tomato sauce, pesto, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, salami, Italian bread or focaccia, biscotti, and a bottle of Italian wine.

For a sushi basket (most of these items can be found in health food stores) include some homemade sushi, short-grain rice, nori (seaweed sheets), rice vinegar, tamari, mirin (sweet rice wine), homemade pickled ginger, wasabi (Japanese horseradish), salmon caviar, dashi (soup stock), sake, and Japanese tea and enclose instructions on how to use everything.

For an English effect use scones, an assortment of marmalades or jams, Cheddar cheese, rice pudding, pound cake, shortbread cookies, English ales and beers, and an array of teas.

After you have gone to the trouble of making and/or purchasing special items for shalachmones, it seems only appropriate to put them into something special…

Thanks to Chef Gil Marks for this wealth of resources and recipes that will brighten up your Shalach Manot basket. Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food – Keep your eye out for more of his Purim ideas and recipes!

Sophisticated Shalach Manot – Recipes

The Megillah declared “… they should make them days of feasting and gladness, of sending portions (mi’sholach manot) one to another and gifts to the poor.” The obligation of shalachmones entails sending gifts of at least two ready-to-eat foods to at least two people. The most common Purim foods are sweets, a symbolic way to wish for a “good lot” or, in other words, a sweet future. It is for good reason that Moslems refer to Purim as Id-al-Sukkar (The Sugar Holiday).

Shalachmones has become a bit commercial lately, many baskets containing the same assortment of bags of snack foods, chemically-laden cakes and cookies, and candy bars. While store-bought foods certainly fulfill the letter of the law, they lack something in the spirit. Homemade goodies show special care and thought and they generally taste better. Granted, many people are simply too busy to prepare their own shalachmones, and they should not feel guilty. If you have the time and desire, prepare any or all of the following impressive treats:

Hamantaschen, Pecan Tassies, Individual Baklava, Leaf Cookies, Fortune Cookies, Flower Spritzes, Almonds Horns, Lemon Halos, Spice Sandwiches, Sarah Bernhardts, Chocolate Bells

Recipes below the jump and Purchase Gil’s cookbook, Olive Trees and Honey here.

Celebrate Purim with The Jew & The Carrot’s:
Healthy, Sustainable Purim Resources.

Find tips and tricks on how to:

- Bake unique and healthy, homemade hamentashen
- Throw a Persian Purim banquet
- Pamper yourself like Queen Esther
- Make unforgettable shloach manot

Click here, to get your Purim celebration on – The Jew & The Carrot style.

Tonight, a few friends are coming over for a pizza-making party – it seemed like an apporpriate activity for a random mid-winter night.  Meanwhile, last night was Purim katan (the mini-Purim celebration that occurs a month before regular Purim - and only on leap years when the month of Adar rolls around twice).

Something about the convergence of these two events must have released the crazy bug in me – because, as I was scanning cookbooks for a good dough recipe and shopping for ingredients (a combination of wilted broccoli rabe, toasted pine nuts, roasted garlic, red sauce, mozzarella and parmesan), a BRILLIANT IDEA hit me: pizzatashen!  Pizza dough, pizza ingredients, hamentashen shape - there really couldn’t be a more obvious culinary partnership.

I recognize that hamentashen – those little jam-filled, tri-cornered pastries, fall pretty squarely in the sweet category – cherry, poppyseed, ginger marmalade if you’re feeling bold.  Until the possibility of pizzatashen crossed my mind, I’d don’t think I’d ever used “savory” and “hamentashen” in the same sentence.  But once the initial kitsch factor wears off, this new cousin of the calzone seems long overdue.  If you’re feeling a little freaked out about the whole idea, check out this photo of another pizza-inspired pastry.

And if you have other recipes/traditions for savory hamentashen – please share!  Check out the recipe for herbed pizza dough below the jump.

(Thanks to Nigel for co-writing this with me)

Most of us have a sense of the distinct identities of different Jewish holidays. We eat latkes and light candles on Chanukah; we fast and talk of forgiveness on Yom Kippur. But what we often don’t recognize is the larger framework of the holidays, the way that they connect to each other in an annual cycle of harvest and history. Purim is perhaps the most extreme instance of a holiday which is well-understood in its own terms, but little understood in relation to the season of the year that it inaugurates. Now that the revelry of Purim is behind us, let’s look at the key motifs and traditions of Purim, and place them in the longer time frame that helps us understand their deeper purpose.

Following the holiday of Purim, I can be pretty sure that many people have a large volume of the following items in their house: candy, chocolate, and a variety of baked treats. I think that the mitzvah (Torah commandment) of sending Mishloach Manot (sending of portions” which often include wine and pastries; alternately, sweets, snacks, or any foodstuff qualifies) is a beautiful one which emphasizes building community and spreading sweet, warm feelings to one’s friends and family.

The neat thing about blogs is that people who leave comments often also do neat things themselves. Here are two bits about Purim worth sharing:

Carly from Peel a Pomegranate offers us a Mishloach Manot Swap:

In the spirit of the mitzvot of both giving gifts to the needy at Purim and also giving gifts to friends and acquaintances — I hereby dedicate the great Shalach Manot Swap of 5767. Read more

And Gluten-Free By the Bay offers us Gluten-free Hamentaschen

Every Purim, my family makes a lot of hamantashen. A few years ago, my mother started a homeschoolers’ baking group, and for the past couple of years, we have enlisted their help. We have two flavors that we make every year. One is poppyseed. The other is cherry. Each year, we also experiment with a variety of other fillings. For example, one year we did fig, another we did pumpkin. We’ve also done strawberry, strawberry-rhubarb, apple, and blueberry. My personal favorites are the poppyseed and apple. We are trying to think of a new flavor for this year. Does anyone have any ideas?

One of the most curious notions concerning the festival of Purim is the concept of Adloyada – a drunkenly-slurred reference to the following quote from the Babylonian Talmud, (Megillah 7b):

“Rava said: It is one’s duty to make oneself fragrant [with wine] on Purim until one cannot tell the difference (ad d’lo yada) between, ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai.’”

Many Jews take this talmudic dictum literally, and you’ll never see as much sincerity surrounding drunken revelry as in many a shul on Erev Purim. As the cantor of a suburban shul where Purim is focused as much on our kids’ sense of merriment as our own, I can’t very well break down the doors of perception using Manishewitz as my own personal peyote during the congregational megillah reading. No, I have to find some other way to get at the subversive heart of adloyada – a way to spin my world upside down for one brief moment each year, to gain new insights into our world through the temporary reordering of our religious and cultural norms. But how?

Many so-called unaffiliated Jews find their connection to this here people through the very thing my family didn’t seem to have: Jewish food. Gourmania.com calls this denomination of our faith “Gastronomic Judaism.” But I am not a Jew by food.

Growing up as an Army brat in the Great Plains, away from any Jewish community to speak of, with a mother who didn’t dig the cooking schtik and a dad who converted from Christianity, I missed out on everything from knishes to gefilte fishes.