Jenifer Robins, winner of TC Jewfolk’s First Annual Recipe Contest, starts a monthly recipe column centered around a Jewish holiday. This month she focuses on Tu B’Shvat!
It is that time of year — Tu B’Shvat – the “new year for the trees,” which begins this year on the evening of Tuesday, February 3, 2015, so to celebrate, this week I am in the kitchen with my friends Julie and Shana, Shana’s daughter, Emmy and my daughter, Dinah. (In the kitchen with Dinah – how apropos.)
If you have conducted or participated in a Tu B’Shvat seder, you know that it is about honoring and tasting the three different kinds of tree fruits and nuts – those with a hard shell and an edible inside, those with a hard pit and an edible outside and those fruits you can eat whole.
L to R: Citrus fruits, almonds, pistachios and pomegranates are all examples of fruits and nuts with hard exteriors and edible insides. Dates, cherries, olives, plums (prunes) and apricots are all examples of fruits with hard insides and edible exteriors. Whole fruits include berries, grapes, apples and pears.
We decided to try an experiment: could we make breads from each of these varieties of fruits using the same recipe – my sister-in-law Carolyn’s delicious banana bread recipe? The experiment went great and resulted in these tasty treats.
L to R: Date-cherry bread, Strawberry bread, Orange-pistachio bread – yum!
Here are the Tu B’Shvat combos we tried…..
First preheat you ovens to 325°.
Date Cherry Bread
1 1/3 cup dates, chopped
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 egg
½ cup cherry juice
- Melt the dates and the butter stirring in a saucepan for 6 minutes.
- Let mixture cool and stir in the egg and the cherry juice.
- Mix in the dry ingredients (see below) and pour into a greased 8×4” loaf pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean.
Orange Pistachio Bread
Juice and pulp from 2 oranges (1/2 cup)
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 egg
½ cup shelled pistachio nuts
- Mix ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Mix in the dry ingredients (see below) and pour into a greased 8×4” loaf pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean.
Strawberry Bread
1 1/3 cups mashed strawberries
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 egg
- Mix ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Mix in the dry ingredients (see below) and pour into a greased 8×4” loaf pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean.
Dry ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Notes:
There is fourth category of fruits that is sometimes mentioned in a Tu B’Shvat seder – those fruits with both a shell and a pit. In honor of this category, we tried this recipe with avocados and chocolate chips.
The avocado-chocolate bread was a bust.
What came out was a bad-tasting hot mess! So, please let me know if you have a good avocado bread recipe. I’d like to try it.
As my dad points out, strawberries aren’t a tree fruit, but they are often mentioned in Tu B’Shvat seders as an example of a fruit you can eat whole and they are much easier to find in the Minnesota winter than the more traditional fig. If one of you brave souls decides to try this recipe with figs when they are available, please let me know how it turns out.
And one more thing…
Tot Tu B’Shvat!
For those of you with young ones who you are looking for a fun way to get to eat their veggies, try this Tu B’Shvat Forest:
A healthy Tu B’Shvat choice.
Recipe: Steam 1 head of broccoli for 5 minutes and rise with cold water. Spread 2 packages of hummus on a plate. Cut the broccoli florets so the stems are ½ to 1 inch and “plant” the broccoli trees in the hummus. To eat, tip and dip a “tree” – fun and yummy for both kid and adult broccoli lovers alike.
Happy Tu B’Shvat. Enjoy!!
Jenifer Robins occasionally likes to cook, but more often likes to read cookbooks with recipes she will never make. She has three cute kids, one cute dog and a husband who is pretty cute too. While she is probably best known for making various soups, Jenifer admits her guilty food pleasure is roasting marshmallows on her kitchen burner.
