<p>I will give you my famous Sephardic recipe. It is made with dates. Get one two large containers of dates (the best you could find), remove the pit and process them with 1/2 cup of kosher wine (sweetest is best, grape juice also will work). Set aside. Process 1 cup of raisins with 1/2 cup of wine until smooth. Add to date mixture. Process 1 cup of walnut and one apple. Mix everything adding another cup of wine. Cook at low temperature stirring constantly and adding wine as need to make the consistence smooth. Let the alcohol evaporate approximately 15 min. It is amazing.</p>
<p>Yes, that sounds very much like the recipe my neighbor used. I love anything with dates and thought it was delicious.</p>
<p>Huh, I never heard of cooking the charoset. I got my recipe from my mother in law - chopped apples and walnuts with honey, wine and cinnamon. If it is too wet, then straining it fixes that problem. </p>
<p>My dear friend taught me how to make her recipe which uses no apples but instead has raisins and dates. It is wonderful and my personal favorite.</p>
<p>Late to this thread, but cooking it will lead to cinnamon-walnut applesauce. Dont cook it-- just chop up the apples and nuts-- add cinnamon, red wine and a little sugar. Voila. Done.</p>
<p>OP --If you’re doing the apple/nut/wine raw charoset, try blending half the batch (apples plus nuts) IN A BLENDER, to thicken it. Add just enough water or wine to moisten it, so it’ll actually blend. It’s nuisance-y to get it to work right.</p>
<p>Those blender-chopped nuts will help it become more of a paste. Then add the second half of the ingredients as hand-chopped, so everyone believes you slaved, I mean, worked hard to please them… you know what I mean.</p>
<p>I like the Sephardi recipes very much, but use a microwave for the heating rather than stovetop, even if the recipe calls for stovetop. I’m just an iconoclast, I guess. Or lazy.</p>
<p>In a Joan Nathan cookbook I have here I see there are both an Egyptian charoset recipe and one from Surinam that involve cooking.</p>
<p>^^Yes, because Sephardic charoset uses dried fruit that often needs to be rehydrated in some fashion, whereas Ashkenazi charoset uses fresh apples, which, when cooked, results in applesauce, as jym points out.</p>
<p>Good point about the dried vs fresh (hydrated) fruit. The idea of warm cinnamon-walnut applesauce does have an appeal… Sounds yummy!</p>
<p>Anyone tired of matzo yet?? Tonight I’ll make our passover brioches so DH can take sandwiches. This year Manichewietz made a “thinner, crisper” matzo which translates into “breaks easily into a million pieces”. But I digress…</p>
<p>Mine is the traditional Egyptian Charoset (plus an apple, see recipe above). Both my parents were from Egypt.</p>
<p>wegotin, I started to wonder if the apple is an artifact of Ashkenazim coming to Egypt in the 20thC, but I checked my file and there is in fact a 13thC Provencal recipe for charoset that uses apple as well as dates, figs and chestnuts. I make a 16thC Portuguese recipe for charoset that calls for softening dates in fresh orange juice before processing with cherry jam, wine or sherry, and ground almonds.</p>
<p>Actually the apple was an American addition. When we came to America (from Brazil, were I was born), she was intrigued by the used of apples in the Charoset. She end up liking the addition because it helped curb some of the sweetness of the dates and raisins.</p>
<p>I think mine would turn into the applesauce if cooked. Almond version here instead of walnut. We wanted to get KLP matzoh but didn’t want to get a pack of five boxes so we ended up purchasing one box of a less favorite brand. I prefer the taste of the others.</p>
<p>I prefer chopping by hand - the processor can result in a more of a pur</p>
<p>The cooked one I’m familiar with is essentially a date jam which did have a loose consistency. That does however make it really easy to dip maror in the charoset if you’re using slices of horseradish and/or romaine.</p>
<p>My parents still do the classic american version of apples/walnuts/cinnamon/wine, but we’ve gone over to sephardic varieties involving all sorts of nuts, dates, raisins, many interesting spices (black pepper in one case!), and even strawberries and bananas in one. They range from somewhat gloppy (though thick enough to put on matzah and not run off) to stiff enough to form into shapes.</p>
<p>And it’s all done in the processor, which does give the puree effect, but not entirely.</p>
<p>I know nothing about it but I was reading a Slate column about hard boiled eggs and saw this:[Best</a> charoset recipe: it should look like mortar and taste like dates, walnuts, and apples](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/04/04/best_charoset_recipe_it_should_look_like_mortar_and_taste_like_dates_walnuts_and_apples.html]Best”>Best charoset recipe: it should look like mortar and taste like dates, walnuts, and apples)</p>
<p>Appaloosa you have just hit the nail on the head.</p>