Pu- Pu Shabbat

I remember eating with my family as am elementary school kid at either the now defunct Harold's or the more recently defunct Rubin's and seeing Pu-Pu platter on the menu. I thought that the term was one of the funniest things I had ever read. I was clearly still of the age when bathroom humor was really funny.

My family didn't eat in Chinese or Polynesian restaurants. This was in the 1960's, before that sort of "international" cuisine had hit the Boston Kosher food scene. But just thinking of the term Pu-Pu platter was enough to give me the giggles for years after that first sighting on that menu long ago.

Although I am much older I am still fond of the term and have been known to serve my kids a random bunch of stuff on a plate and call it a Pu-Pu platter. I have learned that if you give something a cool name it makes it better. Clearly, I brought the right kids home from the hospital because they think the term is as funny as I do.(One of my sons says that I am actually an 8 year old boy in disguise.)

Last night I went to see what meat lurked in my freezer so I could make my youngest a proper send off on his last Shabbat at home before he goes back to college. I had one sheet of flanken, one small London broil and two smallish packages of Chicken wings. I turned to my boys and asked them "Well, How about Pu-Pu Shabbat??" 

They loved the idea. This morning I went to one of the local Kosher butchers to see if I could ramp this up a notch. I bought two packages of beef fry and a package of sausage. I thought I could make pigs in blankets with the sausage. 

I thought I would buy ready-made puff pastry. I found a package but it needed over night to thaw. I didn't have that kind of time.One of the staff members at the butcher's suggested that I might that the puff pastry dough out in the microwave, but we both soon realized that that would lead to a disaster of melted fat and flabby dough.  Instead I came home and made a soft bread dough with lots of oil, rolled it out into a thin sheet, cut it into strips and rolled strips of dough around a bit of sausage.

Beef-fry

Wings

This will be a meal that will make my gang very happy. This might be a start of another family tradition.

Flanken