Hi, everyone, welcome to my Brooklyn kitchen. This is Liz Alpern from the Gefilteria.. I'm so happy you're here because we are going to talk about my absolute favorite food of all time, which is soup. Yes, soup, the humble pot of soup. But we're really going to focus on what goes into the soup today. And that is going to be kreplach. Kreplach, a singular would be krepel. And this is, of course, an Ashkenazi Jewish dumpling. It can be fried or put in soup, but I think it really belongs in soup. And and it's always it's really characterized by being soft and pillowy and it's often filled with meat. It could be filled with potato or vegetable. And I'll show you what I do with mine. So any good soup needs to start with a really good base. So I'm making two different soup bases today. Of course, I've got my classic chicken soup, right. I've got my carrots, my celery, my onion, of course, my chicken. And there are also some herbs, some thyme, some parsley. Maybe I'll throw in some dill. And if you ask me for a recipe, I will just say fill your pot with a bunch of stuff and cover it with some water and cook it low and slow for about two or three hours and strain it. That's it. I can't give you any more recipe than that. Oh, but I did forget the bailiff and the black peppercorns that are under there. So that's a very classic chicken soup mix right there. There you go. And then I thought, I'll make a vegetarian broth as well. And so I actually have pretty similar base to the chicken soup. I have the carrots and I have celery. But instead of onion, I thought I would have leek some leeks in there. And I love Leek because it's a little bit of a milder onion and it makes it a little bit more of a refined broth than your classic onion broth. But of course, I also have some mushroom stems. This that I had lying around Ashkenazy cuisine is all about being resourceful and using everything that you have in your kitchen. But the highlight of this broth is, of course, the dried mushrooms that I have from Poland. Of course, this is going to be really good. So again, I've got a really hearty pot with all these veggies and all these herbs, and I'm just going to cover this with water, the vegetable broth, this mushroom broth. It doesn't need to cook quite as long. I'd say, you know, more like an hour and a half max. Again, simmer on low. So we'll get that onto the stove and we'll get going on the actual kreplach soup. Now, for me, soup is so incredibly powerful. Why do I love soup so much? Well, when I was a little kid, I used to love eating soup at the Jewish deli in the town that I grew up in. I used to love eating soup when I was sick. I used to love eating soup on the Jewish holidays, on Passover, on Rosh Hashanah, on Sukkoth, on all the holidays there was always a soup. And so for me, soup really represents comfort, soup represents family soup, represents the Ashkenazi lifestyle of using everything. Just throw a little scrap of this and a little scrap of that in the pot and you come out with amazing, amazing results at the end, right? You don't need perfection. Everybody can contribute. Go through your refrigerator, find out what's in there. And I love the image of that. Right. Because so much cooking that we do is so particular, so delicate - soup is not. And of course, kreplach are amazing because they are a little bit more special than the matzo ball that American Jewry loves to eat in the Jewish deli. Well, I love the matzo ball, kreplach are a little bit more complex. So let's get into those. Ok, so this is a very basic dough that I'm going to make here. I just have some flour and some salt that I'm mixing together. No big deal. And of course, I'm going to add some oil, some regular old vegetable oil and the secret ingredient. Boiling hot water, you need hot water to make this dough as supple and as soft as we want it to be. So I'm just going to stir up these ingredients. And while I do, I'll tell you, you might ask me, what is the history of kreplach? What are kreplach all about? What what's the background? What's what's the Jewish history trivia that I need to know? And the truth is that there is no one story about kreplach. Kreplach have been a part of the Jewish story as long as Jews have been making lokshen or noodles, right? And some say that those came through traders from Italy or East. But I would say that I will settle on on the fact that there are probably many different ways that Ashkenazi Jews in Poland and in Lithuania and in Russia could have learned about noodles and pasta. But we are really making the most simple, basic, humble pasta dough that we're going to roll up. So this is so simple, you can see. But I want to get a little flour on my hands and finish meeting it. It's warm because the water is so warm and it's already so soft. I don't want it to be overly sticky. So if I need, I'll add a little bit more flour. And of course, I've got my board ready to go so that when it's done, I can roll out my kreplach, which is the real fun of it all. All right. So here we go. And to me, kreplach are an art form. They're they're delicate. They're not necessarily easy to make. Everyone has a little bit of a different style for making them. Even though it's such a simple dough. Everyone has a bit of a different way of of making your dough proportions. And when we were working on our cookbook, The Gefilte A Manifesto, we tried many, many, many different formulas for making this dough, even though there's only four ingredients. It really was a big question of how do you get it, right? How do you get that softness? Because truly, the key to good kreplach are that they are very soft and supple. Right. This is something that should almost melt in your mouth and you'll see that later when we eat them. So now we've got this dough and we're going to set that aside while we get our fillings all set. So we've just got a nice, smooth ball of dough. I actually don't want to over mix it. And we'll be back in just a minute to roll them out and fill them with some special fillings. Ok, we're back. Our soup processor simmering. Our dough is ready. We are ready for kreplach time. Now, it's really important to keep in mind that you need to move a little bit quickly with kreplach. So have a baking sheet ready. So that when you finish, you can put your kreplach on that baking sheet, and if I feel like I'm moving a little bit too slowly, I actually like to keep this baking sheet in the freezer wall and folding the kreplach. OK, now one of the things about kreplach is that they are a traditional food to eat for several Jewish holidays. Sukkoth, which is coming right up, is one of those holidays. It's actually traditional to eat stuffed foods for Sukkoth and then people also eat them for before the fast of Yom Kippur. They're very hearty, they're very healthy, they're very filling. And then people also eat them for Purim. And I've heard a lot of different explanations about why kreplach became so traditional for these holidays. And I feel like I don't really none of them quite resonate with me. If you want me to be perfectly honest here, there's the idea that kreplach reveal something that is hidden, right? That something is inside, something is beneath the surface. There's also this idea that kreplach are soft, even though judgment, the judgment of the high holidays can be harsh and serious. I read that and I tend to prefer to think about kreplach as a you know, as a symbol of community. You know, a lot of ways. You can see I'm doing this by myself, but in some ways sitting around with other people in the kitchen making kreplach have been some of my happiest memories at, you know, doing Jewish cooking with others, right? Everybody's got a board. Everybody has a rolling pin. And you all just kind of get into the rhythm together to make these kreplach and you make so many it almost seems crazy, but you you can freeze them. You can use them later. And I know community is really important right now, especially as we're isolated from one another. And, you know, in the times before we were in a pandemic, I actually used to throw a party every month here in New York City. But there were chapters all over the country of a party called Queer Soup Night. And this was LGBT folks coming together and particularly LGBT chefs making soup and serving it up to raise money for charity, for different organizations. And so there might be beer and wine and cocktails served, but soup was really at the center of this party. And so this party was all about community and it was all about doing good for the community. And we had a lot of amazing soup. I don't think I ever made kreplach for that party, because you know what? There is hundreds of people there. And I would have to make many hundreds of kreplach. But certainly I have made many a soup for that party. And we've seen so many wonderful soups and so much joy kind of coming out of the soup pot, right? And I miss those times and I know that that will come back when we do come back to having parties together. And, you know, in the meantime, I'll just make soup at home and feed it to whoever's nearby. So now I've got this dough and I think it's pretty thin. And there's an old legend that says that a Jewish cook is judged by how thin their kreplach are. And I you know, I'm only going to do the best that I can today. Now, you can use a cookie cutter to cut these out, but I'm actually going to use a glass because I'm going to honor the ancestors here with a simple glass. But I want to show you what I'm going to fill them in with first. Now, I roasted some squash. On a pan, I thought instead of doing beef, I wanted to keep my own vegetarian, I'll also make another mixture with the chicken from the soup, I'll grind up the chicken from the soup. But keep in mind, like I said before, kreplach really need to be soft, pillowy. And so I only want things that I can grind up and make them very soft. And so I thought squash would be colorful. It fits with the season. It's perfectly in season this time of year, and it's so beautiful. So I roasted that squash in the oven and ground it up. And now I've got a very simple paste, tons of herbs in there as well. And and here we go. We're going to make some kreplach now. So I'm just going to cut out a couple of these. With this glass, you can see. Here we go. I don't like to do too many at a time because we don't want it to dry out. Key here is do not overfill, you can make them any size, but whatever size you make them, don't overfill them. So I'm going to put a little dollop. That one might be even too much. And I'll just show you a couple before we finish off this demonstration, OK, so I'm going to lift them up. And fold them into a little halfmoon, you might have seen these like pierogi, except we're going to do something extra fun. We're going to take the two ends and we're going to connect them together. So now we've got this adorable little crown shape. Can you see?? Let's do another one. Some people would just stop there. Some people use a square, so they kind of become a triangle also very beautiful. But again, I wanted to use a glass, a simple glass that I would drink out of because that's how my grandparents would have done it and my great grandparents and my great great grandparents in Poland. Ok, here we go. Wonderful. And one more for good measure, again, people followed them all different ways, but this way feels like the way I know the best. These little crowns, I love thinking of them as a crown. So elegant. OK, there we go. That's it. And now we can put them in, we'll boil them in some boiling water for about 10, 15 minutes until the dough is all the way cooked through. Lots of salt in that water, too. So they have their own flavor and then we'll take the cooked crap off and add them to a bowl of soup. All right. We did it. We have a bowl of golden chicken soup. We've got four delicate soft kreplach floating in this broth with some squash, some roasted squash filling. And I've got just a little bit of parsley on top for some green. This is it. I can smell the soup coming up. It just makes me feel comforted. And it reminds me of sitting with community, everybody throwing something into the pot. So thank you. And thank you to the kreplach, the star of this show.