Heldzel

Hi,
I think I have been 'channeling' the cooking spirit of my Bube (grandmother) lately. Maybe it's just the cold, damp winter months, but I have been yearning real Jewish comfort foods. Stuff that is so unhealthy, it deserves a Surgeon General's warning label before eating. Designed to go straight to your arteries, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 and take a ticket at the emergency waiting room for the next cardiac arrest... but boy, is it delicious!

My latest foray into gastronomic suicide has been 'heldzel'. I have no idea how to spell this any better in English but the pronunciation in our house sounded like "held-zel" so that's how I'm spelling it. Heldzel is the Jewish equivalent of a Scottish haggis. The principal is the same, but the taste is totally different. I was roasting a duck for dinner with friends and couldn't resist the temptation to try re-creating my Bube's hedzel. For those of you who are not on cholesterol medications, you might try this recipe out.

First you take the skin from the neck, clean and scrape it. This skin is going to become the outer casing, like a sausage. Then I took the duck fat (I warned you about the heart attack so leave me alone) and sauté an onion in the fat. Then add in flour to make a thick rue. I also threw in some cooked oats. This was my first attempt at this so it was more of an experiment than anything else. With a needle and cotton thread You then have to sew up the neck skin, leaving an opening to stuff the onion, oats, fat & flour mixture in. Once the skin is stuffed full, sew it closed. Mine came out in a medium ball shape, about the size of an orange. I then threw the heldzel into the roasting pan with the duck and let it roast in the fat drippings for about an hour. Are you still here or have you been rushed to the ER yet?
 
When the duck was cooked, so was the heldzel. I sliced it up and it disappeared. What's not to like? Duck fat, roasted in duck fat, surrounded in crispy duck skin. Can you imagine the calorie count of this thing? It's awesome! Mine was pretty good, not as delicious as my Bube's was in my memory, but not half bad either. I may try making heldzel again in ten years. I think I need to give my body a good amount of time to flush out my arteries before eating this again.  Some dishes are definitely worth the health risk.... this is one of them.

xox
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