VEGAN MATZOH BALLS--GEORGIAN-STYLE

Vegan Easter and Passover Resources

By that I mean the Republic of Georgia! I'm not Jewish, but I've long been intrigued by the global scope of Jewish cooking and by all religious and cultural holidays. I wanted to make a vegan matzoh ball soup for my upcoming issue of my newsletter, The Vegan Feast, which I know is hard because it's usually the eggs that hold the dumplings together. I also wanted to make them a bit different in taste.

Georgian cuisine deserves to be better-known. It is characterized by fresh foods and some of the foods that are used often are: walnuts, aromatic herbs, garlic, vinegar, red pepper, pomegranate, grains, barberries, and other spices. A famous bean dish which should appeal to vegans is lobio. If you want to explore this unique cuisine further, check out the book "The Georgian Feast", and "The Classic Cuisine of Soviet Georgia". Your library may have these books.

Anyway, I found a recipe for Georgian Walnut Matzoh Balls in a Russian cookbook and was intrigued. I decided to try using silken tofu in place of the egg, and use more matzoh meal to help hold them together without eggs. (See my "Notes about using tofu during Passover" at the end of this post. I understand that many vegan Jews choose to follow the Sephardic traditions for Passover cooking, even when they are of Ashkenazic ancestry, because they allow more choice within the vegan diet. Again, see below.)

The balls are flavored with oregano as well as lots of ground walnuts. The dumplings have to be steamed instead of simmered, or they tend to fall apart, but they are then served in a light broth with lots of herbs and we loved them! It was just what I wanted, and makes a light meal or a lovely starter for a larger meal.

They'll be in the next Vegan Feast, coming up soon. UPDATE: I POSTED THE RECIPE IN THIS BLOG POST ON APRIL 9, 2008.

NOTES ABOUT USING TOFU DURING PASSOVER: I know that soy is not used by Azhkenazic Jews during Passover. This is from my book "The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook":
"For the eight days of Passover, observant Jews eat no hametz-- leavened bread, leavening agents, products made from flour, wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt.

Sephardic Jews can eat all vegetables and many eat rice, but observant Ashkenazic Jews do not eat any grains, corn, string beans, peas or dried legumes and beans. Ashkenazic Jews generally use potatoes (and potato starch or flour) and matzah, the unleavened Passover bread which is like a large, thin cracker and can be made into crumbs or flour for Passover cooking and baking....

Making Passover cooking and baking vegan is a challenge! Beaten egg whites are commonly used as leavening during Passover, but it's not possible to use powdered egg replacer instead because it contains a small amount of leavening. Since gluten and seitan, TVP, tofu, soymilk, grains and beans, and grain syrups would also not be used by observant Ashkenazic Jews, the possibilities are severely limited! However, commercial lowfat almond "milk" or, for some people, commercial rice milks, might be used as a milk substitute; and, for those who don't use sugar and honey, fruit syrups can be used. Potato starch, arrowroot, tapioca starch and, for some, rice flour can be used to thicken mixtures..."

"Ashkenazic" refers to Western and Central European, Yiddish-speaking Jews; "Sephardic" refers to Ladino-speaking Jews of the Iberian Peninsula and the Levant.