Happy Purim! Yes, today is the Jewish celebration of Purim, a happy little holiday where costumes and drunken revelry are mandated, and rolling from house to house bringing gifts of food and drink is exactly what you're supposed to do. The party is mostly a secular one, a celebration of the bravery and resourcefulness of Queen Esther, favorite of Persia's King Ahasuerus. When Haman, one of the king's advisors, plotted to rid the kingdom of Jews, Esther went to the king, revealed her previously hidden Jewish identity and pleaded for her people to be spared. As a result, Haman got it in the neck instead of the Jews, and persecution was set aside for another day.

So, a fine reason to celebrate. At the synagogue, the story is read from the Book of Esther, and every time Haman is mentioned, noisemakers are cranked to drown out his name. Sometimes the story is acted out, in a goofy pageant called the Purimspiel. Many synagogues or community centers hold a Purim Carnival for kids. Who could resist games like "Throw the Beanbag through Haman's Mouth"? Best of all, of course, are the hamantaschen, cookies made in the shape of Haman's (supposedly) three-cornered hat and filled with a thick, sweet paste of apricots, prunes, or poppy seeds.

Clearly, this is a cookie born in Central Europe, brought over by immigrants raised on the buttery cookies, the poppy seeds, honey, spices and dried fruits found in baking traditions from Vienna to Budapest. What sets hamantaschen apart from, say, thumbprint cookies are their fillings: dense and sticky, full flavored and rich. Called lekvar, these are pastes, not jams, made from dried fruits plumped in juice and water, flavored with citrus and spices. Where jam would boil and run, lekvar stays put.

It's not impossible to find hamantaschen at bakeries around the Bay Area, especially at this time of year. But they're never anywhere near as good as homemade. Too often, the dough is sugar-cookie bland, the filling a thin scrape of rubbery goo. What you want is a fat, buttery-lemony cookie folded around a plump spoonful of rich fruitiness, something almost more mince pie than mere cookie.

Now, it's easy to find canned lekvars in the kosher section of any supermarket. Like so many prepared foods, though, they're often filled with unnecessary junk: high-fructose corn syrup, weird preservatives. Happily, though, making your own is easy, and the taste is well worth the tiny bit of effort put in at the blender.

You will, however, need to make a special trip for the apricot paste. Any shop specializing in Middle Eastern groceries will carry this, essentially a flat brick of lightly sweetened fruit leather. I've only ever seen one brand, made in Syria and wrapped in golden cellophane, with a beautiful blue label painted with bright orange apricots.

While you're there, of course, you can browse for all kinds of other delicious things, like olives, thick yogurt, pink pickled turnips, mint tea, pomegranate molasses, rose-petal jam, baba ghanoush, chunks of halvah ribboned with chocolate, fresh pita bread, crunchy melon seeds, belly-dancing videos, copper pots for making Turkish coffee, sesame candy, and more. I found mine (and all of the above) at Samiramis Imports in the Mission.

Apricot paste in hand, you can divide up the process over a few hours. Make the cookie dough and stash it in the fridge. Make the fillings, apricot first so you can reuse the pot and the blender without needing to wash them, since the darkness of the prune will absorb any remaining apricot stickiness. Roll out the dough, cut the rounds, move them onto cookie sheets and let little hands plop on the filling and pinch the three-cornered triangles. Bake, make tea or pour milk, and celebrate. And then bring a plateful to your neighbors.

Hamantaschen
Both dough and fillings keep well in the refrigerator, so you can roll out and fill just a few cookies at a time. Then again, these are really delicious and fun to eat even for breakfast, since they're not overly rich or sweet. In my experience, even a whole batch doesn't last very long out of the oven.

Makes: about 20 cookies

Ingredients:
8 tbsp (1 stick, 4 oz) butter or margarine
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tbsp orange juice
1/2 tsp grated lemon rind
2 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Apricot and/or Prune Lekvar, recipe below

Preparation:
1. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg, orange juice, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir flour into butter mixture, mixing gently until just combined. Add lemon zest and stir until dough is smooth.

2. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap or pop into a resealable plastic bag.
Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight. (Otherwise dough will be too sticky to roll out.) While dough is chilling, making filling(s).

3. Preheat oven to 375 F. Lightly flour a large wooden cutting board or countertop. Because this dough tends to be sticky, it's easiest to roll it out with a sheet of waxed paper between the dough and the rolling pin. This will prevent the dough from sticking and tearing as you roll.

4. Roll out dough into a broad round, as if you're making a thickish sheet of pie dough. It's better to have it on the thicker side, maybe a quarter-inch or so, as the cookies are nicer when they're a little puffy, and also will be easier to fill and pinch if they're not super-skinny.

5. Using a cookie cutter or a drinking glass, stamp out circles of dough. Move the circles onto a cookie sheet, leaving an inch or so between each one. It's important to fill the rounds on the cookie sheet (rather than on the counter top) as they are hard to move without tearing once they're filled. The size is up to you; I usually use a cutter that's about 4 inches across, making a round the size of a smallish hamburger patty.

6. Place a generous tablespoon of filling in the center of each round. Fold the top sides of the circle into the middle and pinch the top into a point. Fold the bottom half up to meet the folded-in sides. Pinch each side to seal, forming a triangle with a patch of filling peeking out from the middle.

7. Bake for 20 minutes or so, until cookies are pale golden brown around the edges. Let cool on a rack. Note that the filling will be super-bubbling hot right out of the oven, so try to give them at least a few minutes' cooling time before you bite into your first one.

Apricot Lekvar

Ingredients:
7 oz apricot paste
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
1/2 cup golden raisins
2 tbsp sugar or honey, or to taste

Preparation:
Tear apricot paste into bite-sized pieces. Place in a small, heavy saucepan with the rest of the ingredients. Warm over low heat, stirring frequently, until paste is soft and melting and raisins have plumped up, about 10-12 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a food processor or blender. Puree until smooth. Taste and add more sugar or orange juice, as needed. Store in the refrigerator until needed. (If you have extra, it keeps for a very long time and is excellent on toast.)

Prune Lekvar

Ingredients:
1/2 cup water or orange juice
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup pitted prunes
1/2 cup raisins
2 tbsp sugar or honey
1/8 tsp cinnamon

Preparation:
Mix all ingredients together. Put them into the same pot you used for the apricot filling (no need to wash it out), and warm over low heat until prunes and raisins are soft and mushy, about 8-10 minutes. Let cool slightly, then puree. Store in the fridge until needed. Like the apricot filling, it keeps a very long time and tastes divine.

Samiramis Imports, 2990 Mission St at 26th St., San Francisco. (415) 824-6556.

Happy (post-) Purim. I should have written this post last week but, frankly, I forgot all about Purim this year. I'm not good with dates. And I'm not a Jew, though I have been told many times by Jewish friends that I am, in fact, Jew-ish.

And that makes me exceptionally happy.

Now, I bet you are wondering, "Why the photo of the lady with the enormous décolletage and the even more enormous hat? What on earth does it have to do with Purim or those delicious, Purim-related delicacies, Hamantaschen?"

Please let me explain...

Nine years ago this month, I had never even heard of Purim until I received a phone call from my friend Tricia.

"Are you free tonight?" she asked. "Want to go to a Purim party?"

I said yes, of course. And then I asked, "What the hell is a Purim party?"

She admitted that she really had no idea. As a Mexican-Scottish agnostic, she wasn't exactly up on Jewish religious tradition. Her fiancé was, however, in his second year of Rabbinical school and she was boning up on her holidays. She told me that, unlike Yom Kippur, this was one of the fun holidays, where people dressed up, ate, drank, and made a lot of noise. Being rather good at all of the above, I became rather excited about it-- especially when she told me we needed to go in costume.

I had approximately six hours to come up with costumes for the two of us to attend a party at a temple in which I'd never been, celebrating a holiday I never knew existed. I did a little research, called her back and said, "Just show up here at six in a black turtleneck."

For those of you who still don't know what Purim is about, let me explain as briefly as possible.

Purim, for Dummies

Purim is a rather joyous holiday-- one celebrating the Jews' deliverance from extermination by the King of Persia's evil advisor, Haman. Haman despised the Jews because of their otherness-- they refused to bow to him, the king, or anyone but their own God.

Fortunately, the king's favorite wife, Esther (who was the adopted daughter of Mordecai, a man who once saved the the king by revealing a plot against his life) was a Jew, though closeted at the request of her father. When Esther learned of Haman's plans to exterminate her people, she revealed herself as a Jew and argued that, should Haman have his way, both she (his favorite wife) and Mordecai (his savior) would be murdered as a result. Tables were turned, Haman was himself killed, and the Jews were allowed to exact reprisals upon Haman's people-- essentially freeing themselves from their famous Babylonian Captivity.

It's amazing how freeing coming out of the closet can be, whatever one's secret. In this case, quite literally.

Oh, It Needs a Hat

I was at a loss as to what to wear to the party. How many Esthers, Mordecais, and Hamans would show up? I imagined people with a poor grasp on historical costuming showing up in togas or basic burlap. Thanks to a little time and Googling, I came across several recipes for Purim cookies, or Hamantaschen, which are supposed to represent Haman's hat or, as some would argue, ears.

As a literal-minded man who loves to put things on his head, I found the notion of making a hat-inspired cookie into a cookie-inspired hat rather delicious. I spent the rest of the afternoon making giant Hamantaschen headwear.

Dressed as The Hamantaschen Twins, Tricia and I were a hit at Temple Sha'ar Zahav. After the noise-making and game show-themed events, the evening culminated in costume judging. We came in second place, much to our delight, beating out the less-inspiring costumes and, inexplicably, a woman wearing a giant vagina suit. I have since blotted from my memory the costume which stole our thunder.

We celebrated by strolling into the Castro wearing our hats. Most of the people on the street looked at us with utter confusion. A few people, however, smiled and gave us the thumbs up sign. "Jews," we thought, "They dig us."

We settled into a bar table at Harvey's, where I drank my first, second, third, fourth, and last ever Lemon Drop. Why? Because we were wearing big hats, that's why. We chatted up a table of gay softball players next to us. I was rather (unsuccessfully) fixated on one fellow there celebrating his birthday. Tricia was occupied by another, more interesting gentleman. When a drag queen handed us pencils and stapled sheets of copy paper, we realized it was trivia night, so we in our giant hats joined tables and forces with the jocks.

And, this time, there was no second place for us-- we won, even though none of us could name more than one porn star out of the many represented on our test papers. Fortunately, we were good at geography and disco hits of the 1970's.

I went home that evening rather high from all the contest-winning and Lemon Drops, but I came away with much more than that-- I met one of the best friends I've ever had that night chatting and playing trivia games, all the while savoring the time I was able to share with one of my oldest friends-- a girl who, at 13, I asked to go to Europe with me as gravely as any other shy boy might ask another girl to go to the prom.

And all thanks to our giant, conversation-starting Hamantaschen hats.

The hat was somewhat worse for wear by the time I gave it to my next door neighbor-- a Jew who loved playing dress up more than any straight man I've ever met. God only knows whatever became of it. Or him. Fortunately, the friendships are still around, however tattered and frayed by life and stress and distance they may have become at times. They are sometimes shelved, but they are always there. A little more glue or glitter or TLC, and they are as good as new-- more durable than any styrofoam, brown paper, and satin that a hot glue gun could ever put together. I'd be a fool to give those two away like I did that damned hat. I don't care how many cookies you offered me.

Hamantaschen

In German, the word tasche means "pocket", which is essentially what these cookies are all about-- there is a pocket made for jams or other pastes like those made of poppy seeds or prunes (lekvar). How they are meant to represent a hat worn by Haman, I have no idea. Three cornered hats were favored by European gentlemen of the 18th Century C.E., not Central Asian ones in the 6th Century B.C.E.. The European Jews of the 18th Century may not have had much of a knack for historically-appropriate head gear, but they did come up with a rather delicious cookie.

While trawling for recipes, I landed on the one that sounded the most delicious (to me)-- that of a very popular food blogger who shall not be cited here. There was something about her non-traditional use of both butter and (especially) cream cheese in the dough that told me these were the ones to bake.

They didn't turn out so well.

While they were as delicious and tender as I suspected they would be, I followed the recipe too blindly as I am wont to do whenever I bake anything new. I should have read all the comments attatched to the post before my baking venture to get a little more insight. For example, the dough should have been rolled more thinly, too much jam (even for this jam lover) in the center, the oven temperature was not high enough, and the baking time, which was suggested at 20 minutes, was more like 30. Oh, lots of problems, but that is another blog topic altogether. Sadly, the walls of these little Jerichos came tumbling down with the weight of all that bubbling confiture. Some of them looked remarkably like gaping wounds. But, like I said, they tasted rather good.

Of course, it could have been my own, simple lameness. But I very much doubt it.

I should have stayed with Mark Bittman.