Kosher Cooking Carnival - Adar

Welcome to the Rosh Chodesh Adar edition of KCC!

I want to welcome new blogger Miriam, writing From Miriam's Kitchen. She makes "Safta Cookies" from her kitchen in the Negev for her 13 Israeli grandchildren. She also posted some great looking "Yummy Salads and a Dessert" including a pareve Chocolate Espresso Mousse Recipe.

Yael's strawberry cake in progress

It seems like yesterday I was welcoming Country Mouse Cooks to the J-blogosphere, but now Yael seems like an old pro.  She recently baked "Salted Caramel Chocolate Cookies" and a layer cake with fresh strawberries in "Strawberry Season."

Yael and I are both bummed we didn't post our Purim ideas in time to share them here, so I hope you'll come back and visit. (Better yet, follow me!)

The past few weeks I, Yosefa, have been making the BEST EGGPLANT EVER. Even eggplant haters love my traditional Eggplant and Tehina. I am also excited and scared about getting a new kitchen and having strange Israelis in my house for a week.

New kitchen Coming! Excited and Scared

We signed the rental agreement for our apartment without seeing it in person. We were living in Florida and needed a place to land when we arrived in Israel. My husband's Israeli pen pal checked it out and sent us a video, and then we just exchanged a couple emails with the landlords and hoped for the best.  When our cab from the airport dropped us, our three kids, and ten suitcases and boxes off on that rainy day at the end of 2009, we were pleasantly surprised.  We had some bad experiences moving into dirty apartments in Pittsburgh and South Florida after the landlord had promised to fix things and clean the place. In Florida we had to leave a deposit and get on a waiting list without ever seeing a unit.  (The floor plan was much exaggerated.) But our apartment in Israel was CLEAN! The landlords had left us basics like tissues and toilet paper, and food and treats. They left us tables, chairs, a mattress, and arranged for us to borrow blankets and pillows from neighbors. They turned out to be the nicest people ever.

Eggplant & Tehina

See also: Key to Great Eggplant.

I think this is both the easiest and most delicious eggplant dish I've made in years.  It can be eaten with a fork and knife as a vegetable dish or spread on bread like a dip. The "recipe" for tehina follows. Plan ahead what else you can cook in the oven at the same time, or make several trays of eggplant and rotate them in the oven. If you are making this as a main side dish, plan about two large eggplants for every three people.

1. Wash the eggplant and slice off the top. 
2. Quarter lengthwise.
3. Salt very generously and let sit for at least 15 minutes until they sweat.
4. Rinse off the salt and pat dry. 
5. Paint all sides with olive oil and lay skin-side up on a greased baking sheet.
6. Roast in the top of the oven around 400 F / 200 C.
7. When they start to get dark, pull them out and carefully flip them over. 
8. Cover then with a thin layer of tehina (see below).  Lightly cover.
9. Rewarm before serving.

Make Yogurt Cheese - No cooking required

I had some down time in a mall last week and spent about 45 minutes browsing a beautiful gourmet food and cooking store - Lagaat B'ochel. One thing I saw was a "Yogurt Cheese Maker."  The instructions seemed so easy - just pour yogurt into the mesh insert in the plastic container and put it in the fridge for a few hours.  I thought, "I can do that, and I don't need to buy this "uni-tasker" to do it!"

1. You will need a clean, thin piece of cloth, cheese cloth, or extra fine mesh.  I used an old fashion flat cloth diaper or "mussy." Note, if you use cloth you may not have usable whey, just a very wet cloth.
2. Lay the cloth in a container so it is not touching the bottom. Secure it with a rubber band.
3. Add any yogurt. I used a small individual serving container to try this out and got enough cheese to spread generously on four pieces of bread.
4. Set the cover or a plate over the container and wrap any extra cloth over the top.

Sweet Red Rice and Beans

I just wanted to share this delicious rice dish I made that was even great cold.  It started with a homemade stock that included three small bay leaves and a large stick of cinnamon.

In the pressure cooker I put half "red rice" (like a cross between brown rice and wild rice, very tasty) and half black-eyed peas with twice as much stock/broth as the rice and beans.  I added dried fried onions and a mixture of nuts and seeds and cooked under pressure for 15 minutes plus natural pressure release.

You can even add some extra raisins or chopped dried fruit to celebrate Tu B'Shvat - the birthday of the trees.  Happy Tu B'Shvat!

Cauliflower Tabouleh

In honor of my Father-in-Law's arrival this evening I want to share a raw food salad made with his favorite food - cauliflower. I got the idea from the Good Eats episode "The Caul of the Flower." I combined it with my recipe for quinoa tabouleh, and got a delicious and very healthy salad, which only gets better after a day or two in the fringe.

Start with the dressing:
Using the chopping blade in the bowl of your DRY food processor, put salt and other seasonings of your choice like red pepper flakes and cumin. (I didn't use cumin this time because I was making it for someone with celiac disease and I wanted to be extra careful that none of my ingredients were contaminated with traces of gluten.)  Turn on the food processor and drop two cloves of garlic through the chute. Add the juice of two lemons (close to half a cup) and almost 1/2 cup olive oil.  Set aside in a large bowl for mixing. You do not need to wash out the food processor or the blade, but set aside this blade.

Gluten free "bulgur":
Using the shredding blade on your food processor, feed in only the florets (the outermost inch) of one head of cauliflower. Dump it into the mixing bowl with the dressing.

Roated Veggie "Chips" PLUS Quinoa

A friend wrote to me:
"i'm sure you know this and might already prepare it but...this is a wonderful treat we have been feasting on. we got an extra virgin olive oil infused with roasted garlic ... not a cheap overpowering one...we've been slicing eggplant very thin (especially when it's the long lavender ones) brushing them with olive oil, sprinkling some seasoning and baking them on an olive oil brushed cookie sheet. some come out like chips and others are softer and all are addictive!

 on the bigger fatter and darker eggplants we put the kosher salt on the thins slices until they sweat, wash that off to kill any bitterness and then bake at 350 like the aforementioned ones. they are filling and fabulous."

Buying Falafel PLUS Hebrew Lesson

I thought my son and I were unique, occasionally ordering a pita sandwich with all the fixings, but no falafel.  However, on my last trip, a man ordered "chips" (French fries, for you Americans) on a hoagie bun.  That's it, a roll full of deep fried potatoes.  This shop, Shawarma Hacohanim, seems to have unusually sweet chips, but what really makes it my favorite is the fried eggplant, bell peppers, and friendly service.  The falafel is tasty and never under cooked, and the pita is VERY fresh - soft, springy, and delicious.  And another perk - I order and wait inside where there's no smoking!

my favorite take-homes: peppers,
eggplant, & sauerkraut

Most falafel shops begin serving falafel around 10 or 11 in the morning and are open late.  Most have some kosher supervision and are closed on Shabbat and holidays.  Hacohanim has some indoor seating and has a sukkah outside during Sukkot, so diners can fulfil the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah.  There seems to be a little price war between Hacohanim and the falafel shop on the other side of the small street.  Mimi of Israeli Kitchen wrote a post featuring the other shop with exterior photos of both.

A falafel sandwich is a delicate balance of ingredients and if one is off or missing, my falafel experience feels incomplete.  In the coming weeks I plan to teach you how to make many of the ingredients necessary to create you own falafel dinner.  First, we'll see how the experts put together a great falafel pita.

Creamy Buckwheat "Kasha" in the Pressure Cooker

seasoned crunchy buckwheat groats
photo by vsimon

My hubby and kids gobbled this super simple side dish up so fast I just had to share.   Buckwheat is actually a seed unrelated to wheat.  It's gluten-free and low glycemic! (Buckwheat scores around 51 on the glycemic index and red lentils come in around 21.)  Plus buckwheat and lentils are good for the heart, high in fiber, and all that jazz.

1. Caramelize two chopped onions in olive oil in a pressure cooker.
2. Add chopped garlic.
3. Add 3/4 cup of buckwheat groats.
4. Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup red lentils and about 3 cups of water, plus a couple pinches of salt.
5. Lock the lid and cook for 10 minutes after the pressure cookers reaches pressure.
6. Turn off heat and let pressure come down naturally.
7. Season to taste with salt, pepper, smoked paprika, mustard powder, cumin... whatever you like.  It doesn't need much.

If you want to up your intake of buckwheat, check out this recipe for Crunchy Buckwheat Groats.

Lunch Apples and Breakfast Bags

Last week my 6.5 year-old daughter told me she liked the way I cut her apple for her lunch and put cinnamon inside.  I thought I'd show you what I did.  You will need a knife, a melon baller, and a piece of plastic wrap, or a bag and a rubber band to keep the apple together.



VIDEO URL
Start by cutting the apple in half.  By coring it with a melon baller you waste less than cutting pieces off the core.  Then cut the apple into pieces and put it back together.  My kids like when I put honey or cinnamon in the middle.  You could also hide raisins inside or even stick the apple together with peanut butter, if you want to get messy.

Another trick I want to share this week I call "breakfast bags."