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Healthy, Sustainable Purim Resources

by Leah Koenig · March 8th, 2008
Holidays, Jewish Culture, Meat, Participate!, Purim, Sustainability

hamentashen.jpgCelebrate 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.

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6 Responses to “Healthy, Sustainable Purim Resources”

  1. Jackie Topol Says:
    March 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    Love the resource list! Lots of good info. My favorite was the idea to start growing your own parsley in time for Pesach. What a wonderful idea!! I think I’m going to try to grow enough to give to some family members too ! :)

  2. Regina Ostrovski Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 9:07 am

    Go savory you say? How does roasted red pepper & creamy cheese filled hamentashen sound (or taste)? That is certainly thinking outside of the usual hamentashen. Thanks for boggling my Purim mind and for piecing (or peace-ing) these resources together. Leah, if I had the authority, I would pronounce you Queen Esther of this season- you put together a wicked (radical; mad; – whatever slingo groggers your ear drum) cool Resource List.

  3. dory Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 9:52 am

    I never really thought of Queen Esther as the pampering type…

  4. Leah Koenig Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    Thanks Jackie! If you end up planting parsley, let us know how it turns out.

    Thanks for all your help Regina :)

    Dory – after all that “saving the Jewish people,” business, Esther deserves a day at the spa, no? :-)

  5. Diana Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Hi Leah,

    Great ideas. Do you have a recipe for whole wheat hamantaschen?

    Thanks,

    Diana

  6. David Radwin Says:
    March 1st, 2009 at 11:11 pm

    Diana,

    It just so happens that I made an excellent batch of whole wheat hamentaschen this evening as an experiment. I’d prefer to make it a few more times before I give it my conclusive seal of approval, but since it might be a few more Purims before that happens, here is the beta version. I used butter.

    It is adapted from Andra Tunick Karnofsky’s recipe in Joan Nathan’s “The Jewish Holiday Baker” (Schocken Books, 1997). Pastry flour has less protein than all purpose flour, even in whole wheat versions, and orange juice apparently tempers the tannic flavor of whole wheat that some people find objectionable.

    For the filling, I cooked down some unsweetened apricot puree I had in the pantry with a little corn starch until it was as thick as jam. The dough is sweet enough that the filling doesn’t need sugar.

    All of the ingredients except baking powder and salt are available in organic, at least here in the San Francisco area.

    For other readers, I should point out that this recipe assumes some experience making hamentaschen. It’s not rocket science, but if this is your very first time, I recommend consulting a book or website with illustrations.

    Enjoy!

    David

    Heavenly Whole Wheat Hamentaschen

    0.5 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or pareve margarine at room temperature
    1 cup sugar
    1 large egg, beaten
    2 tablespoons orange juice
    0.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
    2 teaspoons baking powder
    0.5 teaspoon table salt or 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
    2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
    Your favorite filling (maybe 1.5 to 2.5 cups)

    1. Using food processor with steel blade, cream butter/margarine and sugar with a few pulses.

    2. Add egg, OJ, vanilla, baking powder, and salt and mix well (just a few pulses in the processor). Add flour 0.5 cup at a time. The mixture should come together as a ball.

    3. Wrap and refrigerate the ball of dough for 2 hours.

    4. Remove dough from refrigerator. Preheat oven to 375F. Grease two cookie sheets or line with parchment or silicone liners.

    5. On lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to one-eighth inch thickness. (I found the dough too cold to manipulate and heated it briefly in the microwave.)

    6. Prepare the cookies as you wish. My grandmother used a knife to cut squares 2 or 3 inches across, which efficiently uses almost all of the dough on the first round of cutting and virtually eliminates the need to roll out the “scraps” of dough a second time. More common, though, is to use a round cookie cutter or thin-walled drinking glass to cut circles 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Either way, put about a tablespoon of filling in the center of each cookie and pinch the corners up to make a triangle. Space cookies about 1 inch apart.

    7. Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack of the oven for 10-12 minutes. It can be difficult to judge the doneness by sight because the dough is already golden brown before it bakes. If you want to be sure about the timing, you can bake a single cookie to test.

    Yields 30-48 cookies, depending on size

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