Plllog
I missed Cloud's info on the cold--pressed veg. shortening and your query about matzah balls.

Could you share the oil info and, maybe, the matzah ball recipe?

Please and thank you!!

Sure! How's the ice cream going?

The information about the shortening was in Loves2cook4six's thread about substituting for dairy in a tart recipe. Cloud Swift recommended Spectrum cold pressed palm oil shortening.

I've baked a lot with the trans fat free shortening that used to be made by Smart Balance then seemed to be the same thing made by Crisco. It works fine in cakes and breads, but it separates when you try to melt it, and it's pretty stiff even at room temperature. The Spectrum is soft and kind of velvety at room temperature, and just becomes softer and looser when melted in the microwave. I think that's from being pressed rather than concocted.

A couple of years ago I started researching matzah ball recipes for a vegetarian friend and found a lot that didn't sound good, but saved a file with ones that had potential. The only one I found that had shortening rather than oil (from mrfood.com) was very close to our old family recipe with the addition of water. Some of the better liquid oil recipes used seltzer. I thought that made them sound really loose, but my friend gave me a Soda Stream and I thought it sounded fun to include it. I have no idea if the bubbles actually help anything. :) The shortening recipe sounded best because the proportions didn't just say substitute liquid oil for schmaltz, one to one, which sounds goofy to me, but I waited until the end to add the water, to see if it needed it. In the end, I combined all the recipes and it came out really well.

Here's what I made (which I already e-mailed to the friend since she still hasn't made any matzah balls, hence the extremely detailed directions):

Vegetarian Matzah Balls

Yield: 37 medium sized matzah balls
Cooking time: 8-9 hours. No joke.

• 12 eggs
• 1.5 cup soda water
• 1 cup vegetable shortening, melted --Spectrum cold pressed.
• 1 + 1 scant teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 3-4 Tablespoons (one handful) of Fines Herbes
• 3 cups whole wheat matzo meal (Yehuda)

1. Separate the eggs into separate mixer bowls. If you only have one mixer bowl, put the whites in that and the yolks in another large bowl. Add about 1/4 tsp of the salt to the eggwhites. Put the rest, along with the pepper and dried herbs in the matzah meal and stir well.

2. Combine the yolks, shortening, and matzah meal and mix well, alternating between shortening and mix about three times. If you're doing it by hand, use a heavy wooden spoon or use the paddle on the mixer. It should all be well stuck together. Add the soda water about a third at a time and mix well. Adding the water in stages helps you assess how wet you want it and adjust the amount of water you add. It could vary on things like how wet the eggs are. The end result should be about the consistency of chocolate chip cookie dough. Stiff but not rigid, and not loose and wet.

3. Whip the salted whites to stiff peaks with the wire whisk on the mixer. Don't worry if it's not perfect meringue. It'll still work.

4. Gently fold the whites into the yolk/matzah meal mixture, using a heavy wooden spoon. Add about a quarter of the whites on top, then reach under with the spoon, turning it over as you reach the top. The mix should seem to wetten, but don't keep folding until all the white is absorbed--you'll overwork the batter and squash all the loft out of the eggwhites. Just fold until the white is like a ribbon through. Add the rest a quarter at a time, gently folding. It should still feel kind of fluffy when it's all mixed, and have no big white spots. Stop as soon as you can.

5. Cover and chill 30-120 minutes. (Half to two hours). Don't leave it much longer, or all the loft will go out.

6. Fill your biggest, widest, pot (stock pot, bean pot) about 3/4 full of water and put it on to boil. You'll want a rolling boil, but even with induction that much water takes some time to boil. If it's ready before you are, turn it down. Bringing it back to the boil will be easy.

7. Put a bowl of water where you're working to rinse your hands and a tray lined with parchment paper to put the balls on. (You can drop them right into the water but this is easier for me.) A medium food scoop is a great help for portioning. Take a rounded scoop's worth (i.e, don't flatten, but get round like a scoop of ice cream, but measure with your eyes--don't try to make it any particular shape in the scooper. Use a soup or serving spoon to get a similar portion if you don't have a scoop. Handle and mush the batter as little as possible. Dump the scooped portion--the size of a walnut or golf ball--into your damp hands and very gently roll it to form the ball shape. Don't worry about the exact shape. Just give it one roll in one direction and one in the other, without pressing, and put it down. Rinse/wet your hands as needed.

8. When your matzah balls are ready and your water is at a rolling boil, lower the water to a fast simmer--the high end of low (probably number 3). Carefully place matzo balls in the boiling water trying not to get spattered. Simmer for as long as you can. Bare minimum, 4 hrs. They'll sink first, then they'll rise to the top. If you have more balls than room at the top, they'll kind of stack up and the top ones start to turn brown. Just bop them down with your wooden spoon so the brown parts turn under and to let lower level ones up. After they've floated for a long time, they'll start to submerge, though they don't go down all the way to the bottom. When they're all hiding under the surface they might be done, but you could leave them in for another hour or more. If they start looking waterlogged and fluffy floating away, as in falling apart, they're overdone, so aim for 5-7 hrs. Yes, other people make matzah balls that they say are done in less than an hour, but this is how we do them for firm, fully cooked, tender and bounce free matzah balls.

9. Drain the matzah balls well while you're dishing them up. I use a ladle with a built in strainer, but you could also fish them out with a slotted spoon or small strainer with a long handle. Nobody likes the matzah ball water in their soup. :)

You're welcome. Glad it worked out for you! I've been pleased with the results everywhere I've tried the spectrum.

We had a dairy seder because one of our son's and his family are vegetarian. I made matzah lasagna which came out really well this year - the matzah tasted a lot like noodles.

I didn't want to miss out on matzah balls so I made Italian-inspired matzah balls a minestrone like soup. I used my regular matzah ball recipe substituting extra virgin olive oil (local from the farmer's market) for the chicken fat. I used liquid from diced tomatoes as the liquid in the recipe and put in some chopped oregano, basil and parsley. I like sort of dense, somewhat chewy matzah balls so I use a recipe that doesn't separate the eggs.

They came out really good. I didn't make any alterations in subbing olive oil for chicken fat - I think there is enough leeway in the recipe including the ability to pick up liquid while cooking that the difference between a soft solid fat at room temp and a liquid fat isn't a big deal.

Thanks, again, Cloud Swift for the explanation about the substitutions. That makes sense. Your Italian style matzah balls sound great! And your whole Italian style dairy Seder sounds good as well as fun. How do you do your matzah lasagna? I've made a lot of layered things, minas, and strata and kugel-casserole hybrids, but never a lasagna.

It's a take-off from a recipe in Moosewood cookbook that's for regular lasagna. I use the same recipe with lasagna noodles when it isn't Passover.

I made a thick sauce with tomato sauce and diced tomatoes starting by sauteing onions, garlic, then adding in some red and green pepper to saute a bit before adding the sauce. Season to taste with the usual herbs and black pepper. Simmer to thicken.

Grate about a pound of mozzarella cheese, mix a pint of ricotta with a couple of eggs and pepper, grate Parmesan cheese. Saute some vegetables - this time mushrooms and spinach.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Then it's time to build the lasagna:
A smear of sauce on the bottom of the baking dish.
A layer of matzah breaking pieces to fit.
Put on dollops of the ricotta using about half,
Cover with a third of the sauce
Distribute about half the vegetables
Repeat the layers
A final layer of matzah
Cover with the last of the sauce
Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on top

Cover, bake for 35 minutes covered and another 10 uncovered. See how it's doing and let it go a bit longer if it seems too wet. Take it out of the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes before eating.

The top of the lasagna was near the top of the dish so I tented the foil over it so as to not have foil in contact with the tomato sauce and also so that the foil doesn't steal some of the cheese on removal.

This post was edited by cloud_swift on Mon, Apr 21, 14 at 12:16

So it's really just make a lasagna with matzah instead of noodles! It sounds like your filling is wetter than I usually use for lasagna which, I'm sure, makes the difference in making it noodle-like rather than mina-like. I'll have to try that. I don't make a lot of dairy meals for Pesach--I don't call cream cheese and matzah, cold fish, and raw veg "making" a meal--but a lasagna's leftovers would carry well through the week. :) I've saved your directions to my Pesach file for next year. Thank-you!