Update: Cheese Knishes Coming to Malt & Mold

 I'm happy to report that the knishes are moving briskly at Malt & Mold, and they're already on their third delivery since opening about a week ago. But look at the picture below...

Hey! You got cheese on my knish! Yo! You got knish on my cheese!

There is a lonely platter of knishes surrounds on all sides by wedges of cheese, rounds of cheese, slices of cheese, cheese to the left of me, cheese to the right of me, stuck in the middle with cheese cheese cheese! What's a knish to do?

If you can't beat them, join them. Starting Wednesday, Malt & Mold will be carrying cheese knishes. We're starting with plain vanilla and chocolate hazelnut, and we'll go crazy from there, depending on the feedback.

The Full Court Press of Knishes

J. Lin not pictured.

Scheming, scheming, bubble & boil! Mid-week, I did a full-court knish press to present a full plate to a fellow traveller on the path of starting an updated modern Jewish-inspired food product. In the house was none other than one of my original inspirations to get knishy with it, Danny Macaroon, of, ummm, Danny Macaroons! (Noah Knish just doesn't have the same ring to it.) I caught sight of a Danny Macaroon table at Smorgasburg last summer, a week before I attended Laura Silver's knish lecture, and it all just clicked.  Later in the summer, I introduced myself to Danny, and this that and the other, he's comin' to dinner!

I spent a day in the kitchen while looking after the baby, had a baby sitter come in the afternoon -- thank goodness, because I was getting nothing done. Having to run out because you discovered that your potatoes were too close to the oven and sprouted over night didn't help with the schedule.

Full court press: one day, two different kinds of dough, 2 different cooking methods, nine different fillings. Here is a run down of what I made, with notes on production and outcome....

Square circled

• Potato: Kinda like how vanilla ice cream custard is a base for many many other flavors of ice cream, the potato filling is great on it's own, but is also used as a base for the spinach, sweet potato and broc-ched, as well as a binder for the kasha. This batch came out well, but I went a little too far with the salt, brought it right up to the edge of big flavor/too salty. For the other knishes that took it in, I skipped adding more salt.
• Fried Potato: Second time I've whipped these up, again surprised how good they are. 400 degree peanut oil, same filling and dough as the baked, just square and contained. Plop in the square in, wait until it looks nice and golden & serve. Talking to Danny Mac, I realized how hard these will be to sell in any setting other than where it is fried to order. Damn my American palate, this is good! 

Multiknishical

• Spinach - Roasted Garlic: Four heads of garlic roasted in the oven, wrapped in foil and hit with oil and salt. Only gave it an hour, tasted good but a bit too firm, had to run them through the garlic press. Did about a 3/4 spinach to 1/4 potato mix as an experiment and...yup, 50/50 is the right way to go. This was the only knish Danny Mac didn't finish, said he wasn't a huge garlic fan. On one hand, if the garlic was mushier, it would have blended in better, lesson learned. Then again, Danny has macaroons for brains, so what the heck does he know?!

The Children's Champion

• Broccoli-Cheddar: Working only with what was on hand, I didn't have as much broc as I'd like so I chopped in finer to spread it. (Once concept taught in c-school: the more surface area you give an ingredient, the more able it is to contact the taste buds and give a bigger flavor.)  Hmmm - still needs more broc BUT I do like the texture and mouthfeel of small bits of broc. I imagine next time when I up the broc amount, the flavor (amplified by the fat of the cheese) will step up a level. Of note, this seems to be the only knish my toddler seems to go gaga for.

Yam, Bam, Thank You Maam!

• Sweet Potato: I don't like sweet potatoes, they have a weird texture and are too damn sweet to be a potato. 

Oh Sweet P, how did I ever doubt you?!

However, when mixed 50/50 with the plain potato mix, it works to give a nice light orange color, it becomes extra silky instead of loose, and the note of sweet is just right. I'm happy.

Ka$ha is no second rate Lady KnaKna. -sigh- I'm sorry.

• Kasha: There is a reason why you hit your freshly toasted kasha with boiling water and not cold water: if you hit it with cold then bring it up to heat, you will have very mushy kasha - instead of soft individual grains, you will have an undifferentiated gray mass that looks like mashed potatoes that have been used, abused and left for dead. I tossed the first pot and started over, but it made me think - some day, I may have a use for this, a trick where I can subtly add kasha flavor to something without the granular texture...
• Brisket: Oy. Oy. What the what! I just made brisket knishes for the first time a few weeks ago, and I held aside a cup of my last brisket in the freezer for this. However, instead of going to the nice market, I sourced my tripe from a small super market close by. It read "Canadian-previously frozen" and was a half section of a roll of tripe, unlike last tripe I used, which was fresh and NY State raised. So as with before, I boiled the hell out of it for about 3 ours. Last time, no issues, it came out looking a little bit smaller but ready for grinding. THIS time, after 10 minutes, a weird bleachy ammonia smell took over my kitchen for an hour, and when I checked it 3 hours later, it had disappeared!! Dissolved into the water, leaving behind a few threads of white snotty-looking slime!!! Aigh dios mio!!! So suffice to say, these brisket knishes went with out the softening power of nice bouncy tripe, and like a meat perogie in a Slavic diner in the East Village in the early 80s, were a bit heavy. I mixed it 50/50 with kasha, which flavor wise was the right deal, but it was just a bit leaden. Perhaps I could have thrown a few eggs in there. Next time I'm gonna get the right tripe.

Oatmeal  Hashbrown Knish: it's what's for breakfast

• Hash Brown-Oatmeal: First time experiment, needs work but the concept is solid. Start with some left over oatmeal. Not some lame quick cooking rolled faff, but proper hardcore steel cut Irish oats. No half-oatin'! I prepare my breakfast oatmeal with brown sugar, salt, butter, vanilla and cinnamon. It keeps it real up in the hizzy. It makes me speak 1990s ebonics, yo. Any way, like kasha, this grain needs a potato counter point. So instead of going to the potato knish mix bowl, I cubed a potato and cooked it in butter.

MC Potato Hash lockin' it down

Then the potatoes met the oatmeal and was joined by two other breakfast elements: some egg and some maple syrup....

Maple sizzyrup!

In the end, not particularly good but has potential. I liked the syrup's flavor, the whole thing is sweet and savory, and the browning of the potatoes gave a nice toasty flavor that complimented the oatmeal. In the future, the potatoes will be cubed smaller, and in addition to syrup, all the add ins of the oatmeal (brown sugar, vanilla, etc) will be amped up. Also, lose the butter and use oil or shortening, to keep it in a kosher stylee....

• Chocolate Hazelnut: Due to time constraints, rather than continue to experiment with hazelnut paste and dutched cocoa, I reverted back to an earlier recipe from the Knishening, that involved Nutella. The filling hit it's mark, and Danny Macaroon seemed to really like it (he is a man with a professional sweet tooth, after all) but I'm still not happy with it's form factor.

A carpenter's dream

Cooking it loaf style on a flat sheet just makes it go too flat, and to keep it at a reasonable portion, it looks too much like a cookie. I want knishes! I think I just need to find some long, thin loaf pans or something.

 So there ya go. If your still reading this, you must really care! (Or at least really like ebonics-based jokes!)  Since you've come this far, a note on KnisheryNYC's future...

As I hinted at earlier in the post, I got NOTHING done while having a 3 month old baby underfoot. I've come to the realization from this day of cooking that my plans for the season are overly optimistic, if I don't want to semi-abandon my young family. I was thinking a few tables every weekend, but now I think one or two tables this season is more likely. In addition, I have 2 or 3 vendors in mind who expressed interest in carrying my knishes in their shops, which means anyone can go get 'em anytime -- expect some announcements in the next few months. Around that time, I'll start offering special orders to the public. In the begining, it'll be limited to the 5 boros, but once I get the packaging down, shipping will be offered to. 

Thanks for everyone's enthusiasm and support so far! I hope to get a knish in yo mouf sooner than later. F'shizzle!

ADDENDUM

 

Want to see this child boop a raw knish? Here ya go...

(all booped knishes were promptly unbooped then baked in a 400 degree oven to prevent boopalism)

Rollin' into 2012

Eeny meeny mighty minis!

Life with a new infant (and a toddler on school vacation) did not allow much time for me to make -- and sell -- holiday knishes. But I was able to knock out some miniatures that seemed to be a big hit at the season's social gatherings (where I was inevitably asked: "So, how's the knish business coming along?" Sigh). At this point, even if I don't have the time to produce mass amounts of my product I still have to keep my knishnaut helmet on. Thus:

1. I made my first batch of mini-knishis;
2. I tried out the rolling method of assembly;
3. I reformulated the chocolate hazelnut knish.

Why? Because:

1. Two- to three-bite appetizer knishes are low-commitment kings at potlucks and multi-food family gatherings;
2. Rolling is how knishes are made in large quantities quickly in professional settings;
3. While the chocolate hazelnut knish easily got the largest, happiest raves at the Knishening, I want to eliminate Nutella from the recipe, a very lazy ingredient.

In culinary school, it was impressed upon us why appetizers are so expensive: despite the smaller quantity of food per serving, it's literally multiple times the amount of labor. So to make minis, some labor-saving techniques were called for. And if you do any amount of knish research, you'll find that the description "hand-rolled" is mentioned multiple times by those trying to hype their wares...even if hand-rolled says cigars and bagels to me. Hmmm.

Until now I've been cutting squares of dough, plopping a measure of filling in the middle, then folding it up, shumai-style. But if the same quantity of food that yields twelve knishes could do more than FORTY, why do three times the amount of labor? Hence:

Obligatory nikkit knish shot, perves!

Instead of 80+ tiny squares, we got three big ones with a carefully laid log o' potato-onion filling...

Circumknishen.

Then, once rolling it all up, I chopped it into 1-inch pieces. Surprisingly, the chopping action opened and spread the end that was just done...and sort of sealed the end being currently chopped. Thus, only a small amount of handling was required to seal the bottom and get the top to a nice symmetric look.

I came at the chocolate hazelnut cheese knish with the same rolling technique, but these were not to be mini -- perhaps smaller than what you get at Schimmels or what you got at Stahls, but the same form factor: a wedge of rolled knish, with two open ends.

The World's Largest Chocolate Cigar

My current chocolate hazelnut recipe tasted pretty good (so they say) but it's been rubbing me the wrong way, what with the from-a-jar Nutella. Knowing I could do better, I tinkered with a combination of dutch cocoa, hazelnut paste, and shortening. Then I sprinkled sugar on the crust after applying the egg wash, baked it and...

Knishloaf

From here, some slicing and dicing and...

Voila: The look is right, far superior and less handwork than using a cupcake tray. However, the taste was all off, not sweet enough, too dry, hazelnutty in the wrong way. It left me some clues how to come correct next time, though.

Next up, in a couple of weeks: Off to a kosher kitchen for my first stab at 100% kosher knishing! Hopefully you'll all be pestered by a Kickstarter campaign coming soon, too...

Addendum 1:
My KitchenAid mixer died a loud and clanky death while making this round of knishes (I had to make the sweet knish dough by hand -- a shanda). Now I'm onto my third stand-mixer in less than five years. Why? One: I use them a lot. The other reason: Bagel dough.

Kneading bagel dough in a standard KitchenAid mixer will kill the motor if you walk away and let it knead the dough as much a you need it to. After spending a few years working with pizza in a professional setting, one becomes surprised that a 5-quart stand mixer just won't quite have the same torque and raw power at a 100-quart floor mixer. Oops. Due to common sense and a slumping economy, I was able to snag a 6-quart lift model (twice the wattage) for about the same price of the lower-level tilt head model.


Addendum 2: 
I ate an empanada recently. Send a knish to South America, have him marry a local, and their baby will be kinda like an empanada. Anyway. The actual shop is kind of what I envision a first iteration of a modern knish shop, minus, y'know, the pork sausage, the salsa, and the yeast dough. Metro Empanadas have a quality product, if you're into that kinda thing.

Five days until.....The Knishening

So for the first day of production, started with those that'll keep best in the fridge. Knocked out dough, filling, assembly and baking of a whole mess of apple-cheese and chocolate-hazelnut knishes. I had picked up a can of fancy hazelnut praline paste to experiment with, but decided against it because why risk ruining a very large batch with an x-factor. Maybe next time.

Ever wonder what 45 lbs of diced onions look like?

 

Oh caramelization, take me away!

I wore goggles, but still got a runny, stingy nose and a scratchy throat from breathing in the onion. Such are the daily dangers in the life of a knishnaut.

Apple on Top

Up until this point, the sweet knishes I've made were an afterthought, using left over dough. This time, it was all about the cheese knishes.

Instead of using the tougher, potato-based dough that has been my go-to for the savory, I consulted a book I plucked off of Amazon recently, Love & Knishes, long out of print, my edition from 1958. There were two dough recipes, one with and one without baking powder -- I chose the latter, hoping for a flakier, lighter lift. 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, 2 tbsp "salad oil" (I assumed vegetable oil)1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt. The recipe warned that it could may be too dry to come together, and to add water. It did not come together, but water would just develop gluten without adding anything...so I threw in a 3rd egg and all was copacetic.

For the fillings, I did a second attempt at chocolate hazelnut and a first attempt at apple. For the first one, used 1 pack of farmer's cheese, half a container of nutella, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 flour, 1 tbsp cocoa powder (dutched), 1 egg, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla. For the apple's cheese filling, the same, with nutella swapped out for sour cream. I peeled, cored, sliced, and fried three apples in butter with a little cinnamon, cardamom, salt, and brown sugar until firm (but still a bit soft). I made a slurry with 1 tsp of both corn starch and water, and added it to the pan once off the fire just to give the juices a little body, and prevent them from watering down the cheese mix.

Used a cupcake pan again. After panning most of them, decided 4" square is enough dough for these pastries. For the apple, some I put the apples on the bottom, some on the top, but once they came out of the oven (300 degrees instead of the brown-inducing 425 for the savories, 20 minutes instead of savory 30-45), clearly the apple-on-top just looks more appetizing. Two hot ones went into my mouth with lunch and they were good, but the real test is when they are cold. The apple cheese didn't taste sweet enough (the apples were REALLY tart), but cold always makes things sweeter.

Knish 4.0: Knishnaut

Well, THAT was educational! I paid closer attention to each one, each step of the way, and here's what I discovered:

• Potato: This is the first time I used russets rather than Eastern. Easterns are good because they're potentially local, but they're like the AP flour of potato -- good for most things, but not if you're making pastries or hearty bread. Russets milled a lot lighter and flakier, but developed a nice smoothness when worked in with the other ingredients. For the basic potato, it was caramelized onions, eggs, some vegetable shortening, several grinds of black pepper, and salt -- nothing more. Had to go back and add salt and taste a few times before it started singing.
• Sweet Potato: This was supposed be sweet potato curry, but realized at the last minute I threw out my curry powder last week because it didn't smell fresh. Since the sweet potato mash alone is very moist, I mixed about 2/3 sweet potato with 1/3 plain potato to get it firm, along with onion, egg, a little vegetable shortening, and salt. For this round, instead of curry, I added a bit of cayenne (not so much for spice as to round out the flavor). Due to moisture, they spread a little more than others.
• Broccoli Cheddar: This is like the little twerp you think will be a drain on your baseball team but, in order to be fair, have no choice but to include...only to watch him turn out to be a strong member. Broccoli, shredded mild cheddar, potato, egg, and pepper (no shortening or salt needed due to the cheese). They baked up nice and firm, no problems.
• Spinach: As with the sweet potato, added about 1/3 plain potato to the garlic-soaked spinach for firmness, along with some egg. No need for shortening as the spinach was already cooked in it, salt to make it hollah like yo momma.
• Kasha: Problematic. I was hoping I might make this a "vegan" entry to the menu but the grain was just too....grainy, crumbly, loose. So egg and potato had to go in to firm it up, along with some shortening plus a bigger black pepper grind than the others. I had to trash a few with the original mix because they would just flop open when sealed.
• Chocolate Hazelnut Cheese: Interesting. This is essentially V 1.0 of this knish. Lined cupcake tin with dough, scooped in the filling, folded flaps over the tops. They came out goonish, the filling expanded and burst, the bottoms burned. Despite these setbacks, the filling was firm, sweet, chocolate-cheesy in just the right balancce. Needs some cocoa powder, maybe some hazelnut extract, lower temp, less filling to account for expansion...but a solid first step.
• Misc: Found out that adding scraps of dough to fill out the square pieces cut out of round sheets works well without harming quality -- good efficiency saving. Oven ran at 425 convection mode. First round I did the cupcake tray on the bottom, elevated by another cupcake tray which was fine, but on the second round put knishes on a broiler pan on top of tray; they burned. I added another protective pan and that did the trick. But! Doing so prevented the two trays above from browning. If I'm going to run three sheets per batch in my home oven instead of the standard two, I gotta figure this out.