The Second Avenue Deli Cookbook (45 page)

Read The Second Avenue Deli Cookbook Online

Authors: Sharon Lebewohl

2. Melt chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler (if you don't have one, use a small saucepan on very low heat). Add heavy cream, and stir.

3. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar, and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. One by one, fold in eggs, chocolate mixture, sour cream, cinnamon, and vanilla, mixing each in thoroughly. Batter should be completely smooth. Spoon evenly over crust, and bake for 50 minutes or longerâuntil a toothpick inserted in center comes out dry. Cool on counter and refrigerate. Serve chilled.

Note:
Though you can use any 9- or 10-inch cake pan (at least 2Â½ inches high) for this cake, a springform pan with removable sides will allow for the best presentation.

Cream Cheese Rugalach

MAKES
32

This is one of our favorite pareve desserts, because it tastes just as good as the version using dairy products. If you'd like to make the latter, substitute real cream cheese for Tofutti cream cheese and unsalted butter for margarine.

8 ounces Tofutti pareve cream cheese, softened to room temperature

8 ounces (2 sticks) margarine, softened to room temperature

2 cups unbleached flour

â teaspoon salt

Â½ cup sugar

Â½ cup raisins

Â½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

Confectioners' sugar

1. Place cream cheese, margarine, flour, and salt in a large bowl, and work it together with your hands until smoothly blended. Form into a ball, wrap well with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

2. While dough is chilling, mix sugar, raisins, cinnamon, and walnuts in a bowl. Set aside.

3. When dough is chilled, dust your work surface with confectioners' sugar, and roll out half the dough at a time, leaving the remainder in the refrigerator. Roll into a circle about
¹â
₁₆inch thick, giving the dough quarter turns as you roll. Sprinkle with a bit of confectioners' sugar to prevent sticking. Work quickly; when the dough loses its chill, it's hard to work with.

4. Cut the circle of dough like a pie into 16 equal wedges. Place a little more than a flatware teaspoon of the mixture on each wedge, and roll from the wide edge to the point into a crescent. Place crescents on an ungreased cookie sheet, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5. Bake 15 to 20 minutes until lightly browned. Do not overbake; the rugalach will be soft when done.

Strudel

SERVES
10

Strudel originated in Austria (where it was stuffed with cabbage or fish) and spread, via Hungary, to the rest of Eastern Europe. Usually filled with apples or cheese, it became, and remains, a staple in Jewish bakeries and restaurants. Flaky, paper-thin strudel dough has long been one of the many tests of a great Jewish cook, but if you don't care to take on the challenge, frozen phyllo dough is available in many supermarkets and Middle Eastern groceries.

FOR THE DOUGH

2 cups sifted flour

1 cup (8-ounce container) sour cream

4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

Â¼ teaspoon salt

OTHER INGREDIENTS

Flour

Â¾ stick unsalted butter, melted

Unseasoned bread crumbs

Shortening for greasing cookie sheet

Confectioners' sugar

Various fillings

1. Combine all dough ingredients and blend thoroughly, first with a fork, then using your hands. Roll dough into a ball, and refrigerate in a covered bowl for at least 3 hours (it's okay to refrigerate it as long as 2 days ahead).

2. Prepare one of the fillings listed below and set aside in refrigerator.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

4. Cover your kitchen table with a sheet or cloth, and rub it very liberally with flour. To secure the cloth, you may want to tape it under the table. Have your melted butter, filling, bread crumbs, pastry brush, and greased cookie sheet near at hand. Lightly flour your rolling pin. Roll out the dough in all directions, working it toward a rectangular shape (at least 12 by 17 inches, after you've trimmed the edges) and getting it as thin as you can without tearing. You can pull the edges gently with your hands. Trim the sides of the rectangle to create straight lines, and reserve the dough you snip off to roll into a smaller strudel. Using a pastry brush, brush the dough (only the side facing up) generously with melted butter. (Don't worry if you get a little tear in your dough. You can just pull a little over the hole to mend it.)

5. Now you want to create a 3-inch band of bread crumbs (don't use too manyâjust a moderate sprinkling) on one side of your dough, over which you'll place your filling. Start about 2 inches from the top (shorter end) of your rectangle and about 1 inch from the side over which you will place your filling. Distribute the filling evenly over the bread crumbs. (Reserve a bit of filling for your small strudel made of leftover dough.) Roll up, lengthwise, like a jelly roll, beginning on the side with filling. Seal the ends well, and place completed roll, seam-side down, on your greased cookie sheet. Brush the top of the roll with melted butter and, with a sharp knife, make neat diagonal slashes every Â¾ inch along the top. This creates a nice decorative touch and also keeps your strudel from swelling up like a beached whale.

6. Repeat process with leftover dough and filling.

7. Bake for 45 minutes (check after 38) or until top is a light golden brown. Remove strudel to a rack or plate, and, when it has cooled a bit, use a sieve or sifter to sprinkle the top with confectioners' sugar. Serve slightly warm or chilled.

APPLE FILLING

3 cups peeled, cored, and very thinly sliced McIntosh or Granny Smith apples

Â½ cup chopped pecans

Â½ cup golden raisins

Â¾ cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, mix thoroughly, and spread on the strudel dough as indicated above.

CHEESE FILLING

1 pound farmer cheese

8 ounces whipped cream cheese

â cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, blend thoroughly, and spread on the strudel dough as indicated above.

RASPBERRY FILLING

1 12-ounce jar raspberry preserves

â cup chopped pecans

1 cup raisins

1. Spread raspberry preserves along the band of bread crumbs (see
above
), and sprinkle evenly with nuts and raisins.

Mad About You
star Paul Reiser was born and raised in New York City, where, as a teenager, he haunted Village comedy clubs. In college, summer breaks were spent doing stand-up at places like Catch a Rising Star and The Improv; as a result, he was already well established on the comedy-club circuit by the time he graduated. Paul's first big break came in 1982, when he accompanied a pal to a movie audition; director Barry Levinson unexpectedly asked him to read, then cast him in the movie
Diner.
Other films followed (
Aliens, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Marrying Man,
and
Bye, Bye Love,
among others), as did the TV sitcom
My Two Dads
(
1987â90
).

Mad About You
is largely based on Reiser's life (like his alter ego, Paul Buchman, he's married, with a baby and an almost-human dog), with further documentation in two best-selling books:
Couplehood
and
Babyhood.
A Deli regular when he's in town, Paul has used Second Avenue Deli shopping bags and mugs as archetypal New York props on
Mad About You.

My favorite image of Abe is him standing outside the restaurant, serving complimentary “tastes” of chopped liver to the people waiting on line to come in. And while taking care of them, he would also oversee
the loading and unloading of several Second Avenue Deli vans that were preparing to deliver more food to yet more about-to-be-happy customers all across town. He would step into traffic (in his shirtsleevesâI don't know if I ever saw the man wear a coat) and proceed to guide the vans safely on their way, halting and directing traffic in four directions with effortless skill and good cheer. It was as if all the wonderful, nurturing chaos of his kitchen was spilling out onto the street, on its way to enveloping the entire city in a warm blanket of pastrami and love.

Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt working in a plug for the Second Avenue Deli on
Mad About You.

Paul Reiser's Fourteenth Street Egg Cream

SERVES
1

Step one:
Play basketball, and get real sweaty. Like rosy-cheeked, out-of-breath sweaty.

Step two:
Go home.

Step three:
Take a glass (a
glass
glass, not a plastic glass), and pour in a bunch of Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup.
^*(It doesn't matter how much.)

Step four:
Pour in some seltzer. (It doesn't matter how much.)

Step five:
Add a little milk. (It doesn't matter how much, but too little is better than too much.)

Step six:
Get a
metal
spoon. Now this is the only important part of the whole thing: stir vigorously and increasingly quickly, until your wrist is a blur, and the spoon is actually moving
vertically.
You should hear a very strong, rapid clanking of metal on glass.

Step seven:
When the ferocious whirlpool has subsided, drink the egg cream very fastâin fact, a little faster than is reasonably healthy.

Step eight:
Emit a long sigh, stressing the letters
a
and
h.

Step nine:
Go out and play basketball some more.