Erev Purim - Spicy Butternut Soup with Dumplings and Poppy Seed Pastries

Tonight is Erev Purim (eve of Purim) - the celebration of Esther, Queen of Persia, who saved her Jewish community while married to King Ahasuerus of Persia. It's traditional to eat triangular foods that represent the villain (he did try to kill all Jews in Persia) Haman's triangular hat (or pockets) so I decided to make Bombay Potato Kreplach (triangular dumplings) in Spicy Butternut Soup and Mohn Hamantaschen (Poppy Seed Triangular Pastries) - they taste amazing and I'm usually not a fan of poppy seeds.
It's also customary to give 2 different types of food to an adult and give charity to 2 poor people on Purim.

Hamantaschen - they reminded Damon of his childhood! :-)

From the 3 recipes above only the Spicy Butternut Soup and Bombay Potato filling are my "creation" so I'll post links to the other recipes.

Kreplach (made about 12 dumplings - though I can't be sure as I ate quite a couple of them along the way)

Kreplach in Soup

I made the filling first:

Bombay Potato Mash

Ingredients:
2 potatoes, peeled, chopped and steamed/boiled. Grossly mashed.
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
chillies or chilly powder to your taste
Olive oil
3-5 Tbsp milk
A knob of butter

How to:
Pour a good "swig" of olive oil in a pan and heat on medium heat.
Add the mustard seeds and wait until they've "popped" (you might want to cover the pan as the seeds tend to jump all over the place). Add the turmeric and chillies and heat up for about one minute.
Add the potatoes to the pan until they are all coated evenly with spices and turn to a lovely golden yellow colour.
Take off the heat, add a knob of butter and the milk to make an extra creamy, smooth mash.
Keep aside and let cool down to room temperature.

I used this recipe for the dough.
To make it easier I posted a shortened version. 
Ingredients:
2 cups flour (I use spelt flour and that seemed to work quite well)
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil
2 egg yolks
½ cup water or as much/little as you need
1 ½ tsps baking powder

How to:
Mix everything together.
Roll out the dough thinly onto a floured surface and cut out square 5cm x 5cm.
Put a small teaspoonful of potato mash in the middle of the square. Fold the dough into a triangle over the filling.
I always struggle to close dumplings with my fingers.

Spicy Butternut Soup

Ingredients:
1 butternut
2 Tbsp yellow or red curry paste
1 tin coconut milk
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

How to:
Preheat oven to 200C.
Cut butternut in halves, removes seeds and cut each piece in half. Put into an oven-proof dish and drizzle olive oil generously over the butternut. Cook for an hour or until butternut gets really soft.
Once it is soft enough, simply scoop out the flesh from the skin (I HATE peeling butternut, just ask my old room mate!) and put it in a large pot.
Add the coconut milk and curry paste to the butternut. Blend until smooth. Start heating the soup on medium heat, add water until it reaches the desired consistency.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Tonight I added some of the leftover Bombay Potato mash from the dumplings into the soup as well, so delicious! 
If you make the dumplings, serve the soup with a couple of dumplings in it. 

For the Hamantaschen, I used the Shiksa in the Kitchen's recipes: 

I made the dough (I only made 4 cups of flour worth of dough and it made a LOT of Hamantaschen) first so it had time to rest in the fridge and then the Mohn - a sweet poppy seed filling ("Mohn" means poppy seed in German - thanks Wilhelm!).

Mohn, dough and finished Hamantaschen - heaven!

I used the Shiksa's method of rolling the edges of dough into a triangle rather than folding them over the filling.

Parsnip Latke served with Horseradish

Latkes dipped into the soup topped with some horseradish cream

So for my first recipe I thought I'd start with tonight's dinner: Parsnip Latkes with horseradish cream and Kale Soup.

I know that potatoes and onions are traditionally used to make latkes but the parsnip adds a little zing to them and make them extra crispy. If you don't have parsnip, you can use onions instead, use 1 onion for 2-3 potatoes. 

To be honest, the kale soup had been sitting in the fridge for a few days... I'd been defeated by the amount of kale we've been getting in out veggie box lately (from Riverford) and didn't know what else to do with it so I threw it in a pot with some onions, garlic, potatoes, stock and blended it all together. You can pretty much use any soup but the latkes are perfectly respectable (read DELICIOUS) when served alone or with some horseradish cream.

For the Parnsip Latkes (I adapted this recipe Smitten Kitchen for what I had lying around)
Makes at least 12, excluding those used for tasting while cooking :-)

Ingredients:
1 large potato
4 medium sized horseradishes
Juice of 1 lemon
2-3 spring onions, sliced thinly
1/4 cup whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour)
1/4 cup soya flour (or some other high protein flour, though you could just use some more whole wheat flour)
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil for frying (this uses quite a bit)

How to:
Peel and grate the potato and horseradish using a coarse grater (or anything else you've got handy).
Using paper towels or a clean kitchen towel, dry the grated horseradish and potato until there are quite dry - this ensures extra crispy latkes!

Transfer the grated veggies into a bowl and add the lemon juice and spring onions. Mix.
 In another bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, salt and pepper (to taste) and the 3 eggs. Add to the veggies and mix well.

Pour olive oil into a heavy pan (cast iron is best but you can use any pan you have lying around) so that the oil is about 3-5mm deep (!!). Heat up the oil until it starts to sizzle - the guideline is that a drop of water flicked in the oil should hiss and sputter. Then try to keep the temperature as constant as possible, adding oil to the pan if necessary through the frying process.

Using your fingers, grab a small ball of mix, roll it then flatten it between your palms. Throw it (gently) into the pan. Repeat until the pan is full, though leave yourself some space to be able to flip them. Let each side cook about 3-4 minutes.
Once a latke is done frying, put it out onto some brown paper or kitchen paper towel to get some of the excess oil off.

Serve as is or with some horseradish cream or any other sauce of your choice.

Enjoy!

Just keep on frying!