Hot Spiced Wine

A few weeks ago I went to a shabbat dinner at Kibbutz Gezer. The amazing family that we ate with made a really tasty drink for us to have at the start of dinner. It was really good. I asked for their recipe, but didn't get an exact one from them.

I had a very small group of people for dinner last week and decided to give it a shot.

In a large pot I placed,

Sweet Red Wine - .75 liters
Dry Red Wine - 1 liter
Sugar - 12 tsp
Cinnamon - 3 small sticks
Clementine Rind - .5 of a clementine

Bring the wine to a boil, stirring intermittently at the beginning to get the sugar to dissolve.
Boil it for 5 - 15 minutes. Most of the alcohol should boil out, but you need to taste the wine to know if the taste is right for you.

Filter the rind and cinnamon out or serve it with a ladle.

I think I did a pretty good job this time. I can't wait to make it again!

Shakshukah

I love Shakshukah! It's a combination of eggs and tomatoes that is a great breakfast or lunch dish. At the little coffee shop at school they sell a version of it. And I have had it in other restaurants around Israel. It's a pretty popular dish. So a week or so ago I decided that I wanted to make it and the recipe is pretty easy to do. It just takes some time.

I found a recipe at My Jewish Learning and of course changed it.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes - 11 On the vine (a little more than 2 lbs)
Fresh Garlic - 9 cloves
Large Red Onion - 1/3 of an onion
Spicy Paprika - 1 tsp
Olive Oil - 6 Tbsp
Salt - 3 tsp
Eggs - 4 large


Directions:

Cut the tomatoes into chunks, a little smaller than a quarter of the tomato. Chop the onions and the garlic.
Combine the olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, onions, paprika and salt in a small saucepan.
Bring to a simmer and cook UNCOVERED over low heat until it thickens, stirring intermittently.



AT THIS POINT I took a large portion of the sauce and put it in a container to have ready to go for another day.

Transfer to a small, frying pan and bring it to a simmer
(Use a larger pan if you are making the dish all at once).

Crack an egg and put it on top of the sauce.
Break the yolk (unless you like it runny) and cover the pan to poach the egg(s) until they are cooked.

Serve

Yields 4 servings, but you can use medium eggs and serve less sauce and make it go for 5 or 6.



How was it?
The Taste was pretty good. I like the spice from using spicy paprika instead of sweet. The extra garlic was good too. It was really good with a pita! This one was a little runny. I think I may have over done it with the olive oil. Maybe take it down a tablespoon or two. As far as the presentation goes, I don't know if I poured the egg on the wrong way, or if I broke the yolk too violently. It didn't look quite right.

Black Tea

While I was on the Ride4Reform they served us a really good tea at all of our pit-stops and meals. It may have been the fact that I was exhausted and parched, but the tea we had was incredible!

On the last day of our trek I asked for the recipe. Here goes it;

Black Tea
Nana
Zuta
Sugar

I made some of it the other day. I still need to perfect the proportions, but it depends on what you like in your tea.

I put a little more than a cup of water, a tea bag, a teaspoon of Nana, a teaspoon of Zuta and a teaspoon of sugar.
For me this was not quite sweet enough compared to what we had on the ride. But it was close. I'm thinking a little more sugar and it will be perfect!

I wish I could give you the English names of the herbs, but I still can't quite figure them out. Nana is close to Mint, but it's not quite the same. Zuta is a larger problem. The word translates as something small or a small brick. It looks like sage, but isn't quite. The smell is like Nana but sweeter.

I was told that Nana is only really available in this part of the world. The question is, do I try to bring some of it back? Anyone know what the laws for transporting Herbs?

Chicken Rub

It's been a while since I've had the time to sit down and cook much of anything. I've taken advantage of the fact that the last two days I've been feeling to gross to go anywhere as an opportunity to get into the kitchen for myself.

I had a bunch of chicken sitting in the freezer so I started throwing spices and herbs together to make a rub. I'm still working on the right proportions, but I found a great rub that I want to duplicate. It involves a mixture of Zatar, garlic powder, parsley, oregano, salt and little bit of ground black pepper.

I've been playing around with more Zatar than anything else, but that makes it a little too strong. I've put too much black pepper in, and that is obvious when that happens. The garlic is tough, and might not be necessary.

The first time I made the chicken, it was great with a little cheese on the top. I tried making it as a sandwich and in a pita. I'll keep playing around and maybe eventually it will come together as a perfect mixture.

Cookies!

My mom always made these amazing cookies while I was in high school. I brought a lunch to school every day, and almost every day she put two or three of her cookies in my lunch. She baked them fresh on Sunday nights. I always referred to them as her "Kick-A$%" cookies and it was a bit of a running joke. She even made a cookie jar at one of those "Paint-A-Plate" places with that written as their name.

When I moved into my first college house, she gave me a recipe box with that as one of the recipes inside. It's been a while since I've had some of them, you know, that whole 13-hour flight issue. But she did send me the recipe on Facebook.

For the Ride 4 Reform, we are doing some bake-sales to raise money as a group (if you would like to make a donation to me as a rider, please visit the Ride4Reform Donations Site and include my name as the rider). So what do you think I decided to make? This time it was some Kick-A$% Cookies with a few modifications.

I know it's just a cookie recipe, but unless she says it's fine, I'm not going to publish it online, but I did make a few modifications. Instead of only regular chocolate chips, I decided to include chocolate and white "chocolate" chips. In a second batch, I decided to toss the chocolate chips into the mixture before the butter/sugar mixture had cooled down, making the entire batter chocolatey!

Enjoy the pictures, they taste as good as they look.

Chocolate
"White Chocolate" Chip
Chocolate Chip and "White Chocolate" Chip

Blondies

For fundraising for Ride for Reform we are having a few bake sales. I guess this means I need to learn how to bake.

Mission 1; Blondies.

I was going to bake brownies for this first bake sale but the first three stores I checked out did not have brownie mixes. Strange. Apparently there are some stores you can find Betty Crocker mixes, but I since it was Friday at 1:30 and the stores start to close for Shabbat, I was out of luck. Retreating to a little shop near my apartment I grabbed a bunch of brown sugar, chocolate chips, butter and baking powder.

Before trying a recipe that I have never used before, I figured I'd make them for dessert for Shabbat. Good thing I tried them out first...

We don't have a great selection of baking pans or anything like that in our apartment, a big difference compared to the 25-pieces of cookware. So I used these little bread pans. 2 x 8 in. They cooked a lot faster than I anticipated and they were a little crispy. By crispy I mean rock hard. One of my friends here said we should save them for when we need to build a retaining wall. I could not disagree. They were pretty solid.

So I decided to try again and watch a lot more closely. The cook times I give at the bottom of the recipe are variable, watch your blondies if you try to make them.

Butter - 1 cup (melted)
Brown Sugar - 2 cups
Eggs - 2 (beaten slightly)
Vanilla - 2 tsp
Baking Powder - 1 tsp
Baking Soda - 1/4 tsp
Salt - 2 pinches
Flour - 2 cups
Chips (chocolate or other) - 2/3 - 3/4 cups

Turn on your oven and set it to 175 C or 350 F.
Melt the butter

Add the butter to brown sugar in a large mixing bowl. Stir thoroughly.

Mix in eggs and vanilla.

Mix in flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and then the chocolate chips.

Grease a baking pan with butter, lightly floured. Whatever you have. I used two small bread pans and one larger baking pan each time I made them.

Bake in your over at 350 F for anywhere between 17 - 25 minutes. It totally depends on your oven or your pans. The important thing is to watch them.

They are done when the top is golden and a toothpick comes out clean.


I didn't make this recipe up myself. I followed one found at the Simply Recipes website.

I don't have pictures right now, since my camera is broken. Maybe I will add one on an update if I can get a friend to take a picture.


B'tayavon!

Baby 2-Cheese Bareakas with Zatar

I found a basic recipe at the All Recipes website and as you have probably guessed, I changed it up a little. Basically, these are little appetizer type pastries that can be filled with just about anything. They are going to go really well with my salad and hard-boiled egg in the morning.

Ingredients
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shreaded
1 cup yellow cheese, shreaded
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp parsley, dried
zatar

2 eggs
2 tbsp water
pastry crust - room temperature
flour

Instructions
30 minutes of prep time
23 - 30 minutes of cooking time

First mix together 1 egg, all of your cheeses, garlic powder, onion, black pepper, and parsley.
Put the bowl of this aside.

Crack the 2nd egg and mix it with your water in a small bowl.
Set this aside.

Turn your oven on to 175 celsius or 350 fahrenheit.

Lightly flour the counter top and your cooking sheets.

Roll out your pastry crust on the floured surface and cut it into 1.5in x 1.5in squares (The size doesn't really matter that much).
Put about 1 tbsp of your cheese mixture onto each square/rectangle of pastry crust.
Paint the edges with the water/egg mixture.
Fold the pastry over into whatever shape you like. I tried triangles, envelopes and rolls. This is entirely up to you. Just make sure that the edges that touch each other have some egg on them so it stays together.

Place them on your baking sheet.
Paint the tops with egg/water mixture.

Sprinkle as much/little Zatar as you want on the top.

Put in your 175 C (350 F) oven for 23 - 30 minutes.
Check on them and take them out wen they start to turn golden brown and have puffed up.

They are best when served warm.

Like anything, I'm glad I made this for myself before I tried to make them for anyone else. They didn't turn out to be the best thing I've ever made. They are pretty good, but I need to play with the cheese and find a blend that I like. I also need to find the right size to cut the squares into. According to the recipe, there were supposed to be only 12, and I ended up with 19. I think there was supposed to be more cheese in each one.

Not the best I've had, but also not the worst thing in the world. Play with the different blends of cheese, you can get some interesting combinations and I'm sure you can add some other things to bake into the pastry. I'll play again later and let you know how it turns out!

B'tayavon!

Pita

Although I already learned how to make Challah, I decided it was high time to add another carby food to add to my arsenal. Enter one of the simplest forms of bread; the Pita.

This is a very easy recipe to make, but it does take more than three hours to make properly. I found the recipe here.

Since it is baking, I figured I'd stick pretty close to the recipe.

1 package of yeast (2.33 tsp)
1/2 cup of warm water
1 tsp of white sugar

3 cups of flour
1 1/4 tsp of salt
1 cup of lukewarm water

vegetable oil
flour

Start by adding the sugar and yeast to 1/2 cup of warm water.
Let it sit for about 10 minutes or until the mixture is foamy.

Add the salt to your flour in a medium sized bowl and mix it together.
Then slowly add the yeast and 1 cup of lukewarm water to the flour/salt and stir with a wooden spoon.
Knead until the the mixture is not sticky anymore. This should take about 10 minutes.
Coat the edges of a large mixing bowl with vegetable oil and flip the dough over in the bowl so the entire dough ball has been "kissed" by the oil.
Set the dough aside for about three hours. In this time it should double in size.

3 hours later you need to turn on your over to about 500 fahrenheit, make sure your baking pan is in the oven while you're doing this.
Take the dough and roll it out into a long rope.
Depending on the size pita you want, break the dough off into pieces and put on a floured surface.
Let them sit for 10 minutes
Roll the pieces out with a rolling pin. If you don't have one, yo can also knead the pieces into the size and shape you want.
This recipe, for me, made rather small sized pitot (Hebrew plural of pita), maybe 3 inches in diameter.

To bake them, put them on your baking sheet towards the bottom of the oven for 4 - 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, flip them over for not more than another 2 - 3 minutes.
Just know that the longer they sit in the oven, the greater risk of burning. If you're shooting for the 7 - 8 minute range, watch them closely.

They will have bubbled up while baking. Take the pitot out and squash them down before they cool.

I took the opportunity to serve these pitot with some freshly made hummus from scratch. Feel free to check out the recipe I used for that on an earlier blog post.

This time the hummus was a little different because I used canned chickpeas and they were wetter than I anticipated. The mixture was a lot smoother, but the taste is still there.



On the whole, baking pita was a lot of work and I'm not quite sure how worth it they were to make. It was a great way to spend the second half of my shabbat though. I can't wait to play with the recipe a little bit more though add spices and what have you.

B'tayavon!

Second Night Dinner & Apple Crisp

Last week Marina asked me if we could have a dinner for the second night of Rosh HaShanah. Since we always had two dinners when I was growing up, my answer was of course! We left if open to the entire class and even some American College students studying here this year. Small problem though, there were 30 people that RSVPed before the weekend. Our apartment could not contain that many people and the number kept growing.

Luckily, she was in a meeting at school and asked if we could use the space at school to host this dinner. HUC said that we could use the space and our number expanded even more. When we went to school to set up last night, we were setting places for 53 people that had RSVPed, and a few extra people came too! Insane!



It was a potluck style, because there was no way could we cook for that many people. So I needed something to bring. Who did I turn to for a recipe for desert? Mom.

I asked her to send me a message for an apple crisp.

Apple Crisp



I changed what she gave me as a recipe based on what I wanted for taste

14 Granny Smith Apples (peeled, sliced and cored)
1 1/4 cups of brown sugar

2 cups of flour
1 1/5 cups of white sugar
4 tbsp of cinnamon
4 eggs
4 tbsp of butter (113g)

Directions:
Measure out the flour, white sugar and cinnamon. Combine in a large bowl and set aside.

Peel, cut and core the apples.
Mix together the apples and brown sugar until the apples are coated.
Lay out in a large baking pan.
Set this aside and preheat an over to 195 degrees C.

Beat 4 eggs.
Melt the butter.
Combine the eggs and butter in a small bowl.
Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix thoroughly.
Take this mixture and spread as evenly as possible over apples.
It does not need to cover everything, but cover most of the apples.

Bake in the over at 195 C for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, check back regularly to make sure the edges do not burn.
Bake until the crust is golden brown and a knife can be put in and taken out clean from the center.


As a final note, I want to give a massive shout out to Marina for getting the dinner together. Technically I was helping host too, but she did about 95% of the organizing and preparations. Also a massive thank you for everyone who brought fantastic food. Since it was much more Marina's night, if you want to check out here account, I'm sure one will be up on her blog shortly.

Challah From Scratch

I don't think it's my recipe to give away this time, but I emailed my mom asking her for her challah recipe. I just wanted to make some that reminded me of home. If you're wondering this is a very simple break recipe. It takes a little while to get things going and letting the dough rise and re-rise. By looking at the pictures I am providing here, you can tell there is a trick to getting the braids to work out the right way.

After preparing the dough I made a four-braided-challah. That did not work very well. The challah plumped up a little better but it's not that easy to make a 4-braided challah. For the second challah, I made a five-braid. This one worked a lot better and the rolls ended up turning out really well.

I love Zatar. It is a great spice to toss on just about anything. So I figured, why not?
Mom also suggested to put it on there, presumably because she knows how I feel about this flavor.

It worked really well and I loved the taste of both of the Challot. She did leave instructions on how to make sure that the Challah rises better and gives a more airy texture. I will do that next time. Shabbat Shalom.

Tahini (Tchinah) & Hummus Round 2

Tchinah (Tahinah)
2/3 cup of raw tchinah (Sesame Seed Paste)
2/3 cup of water
1 lemon (juiced)
4 garlic cloves (chopped)
10 parsley sprigs (chopped)
3 scallions (chopped)
salt


On Friday afternoon I made a large trip to the Shuk and bought a bunch of products for making my own Tahini. I started it from scratch. I picked up the supplies that I needed from Mister Zol the day before the rest of the fresh ingredients. Since I was also prepping to make the Hummus before hand, this time I was prepared, I turned on the stove to start cooking the Chick Peas before I set in on the Tahini.

I used a recipe found on the same blog that I discovered a recipe that I found for Hummus.

I played with the standard recipe and ended up using the following.

This was pretty easy. Basically you just mix everything together. The recipe recommends that you take your time and mix everything in slowly. Ha. I'm not that patient and I mean, it's mixing. Let's get real here. I mixed everything in and as I was adding salt, I realized that I didn't really have a lot left. This was at about 4:00 on a Friday afternoon. In Jerusalem, the city is effectively closed at that point. I thought I could make it happen anyway so I just kept going.

Once you mix all of the ingredients together you let it sit in the fridge to cool down. You just need to make sure that everything is mixed in really well together.

At this point the chick peas were about done. Let me just say that it works really well when you actually use baking soda and cook the peas in boiling water on the stove. That worked really, really well.




















Hummus
2 cups of chick-peas
1 cup of freshly made tachina
2 lemons (freshly squeezed)
1 garlic clove
garlic powder
3 teaspoons of cumin
1/2 bunch of parsley (chopped)
olive oil
salt


This time worked so much better than the last time I tried to make Hummus. I ran into a small problem though. You see, I needed a lot more salt than I thought I would. So the final product is a little under-salted. I will also note that the chick peas dry up just about any liquid you put in with them. If you try to make this following this recipe, make sure to add the cooking water back to the mixture until you get a rather loose texture. It should seem to be way too moist. I ended up also needing to keep adding olive oil to the mixture as it sits in the fridge. I love the fact that I keep practicing with this recipe. Some time soon I should have it very close to perfect. Just make sure to add more salt and oil than I was planning.

Hummus: Round 1

The next food I decided to tackle was hummus. The recipe that I used I found searching online. I was directed to a site called Hummus Blog

My issue was that I read the recipe over a week before I meant to make it so I didn't really remember the details when I started to get everything ready. In the end, I changed the recipe provided a little bit.

1 cup - Dried Chickpeas
Rinse three times in water
Let soak overnight

In the morning, rinse again and soak for another 8 hours. The chick peas will swell back to a normal size.
Cook the chickpeas until they are soft.

2/3 cup - Tahini
1/2 - Juiced Lemon
2 tsp - Salt
1 tsp - Cumin
1 tsp - Garlic Salt
1/2 bunch - Italian Parsley, Chopped
3 TBSP - Olive Oil

With a food processor, blend the chickpeas to a pulp.
Add Tahini and all other ingredients and continue to blend.
Blend into a fine pulp.

I made a few mistakes on this one. We don't have gas in our apartment now so I cooked the chickpeas in the microwave. They were not cooked as well as possible. I also didn't know that we were out of baking soda. The consistency was a little bit off as it was a little grainy. Again I will be doing some of this slightly different. Look for Hummus: Round 2 to come when I try it again when we have gas.

B'tay'avon!

Israeli Salad

I love to cook. I don't know if you knew that. I'm not great, but I think I'm serviceable. Appendix A will be my cooking adventures in Israel.


One of the first things I made here was Salat Israeli, Israeli Salad. This one turned out really well. Especially because I was able to make everything fresh a few hours before we ate it. The only problem was that I ended up eating a lemon seed. Since nobody else mentioned anything I will assume nobody else had a problem.

Here was the recipe that I used;

2 red peppers
2 green peppers
1 yellow pepper
5 small tomatoes
6 small cucumbers
1/2 bunch of cilantro
1/2 bunch of green onions (scallions)
3-4 table spoons (literally our spoons for our table) of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 lemon
salt
pepper

The directions are as follows;
Chop up all of the peppers, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro and green onions. Put them in a large bowl.
Take the lemon, cut it in half and juice the lemon.
Pour the lemon juice onto the salad mixture.
Pour the olive oil over the salad.

Throughly mix the entire salad so the ingredients are evenly dispersed.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve as promptly as possible. As the salad sits, the juices gather at the bottom and get soggy the longer it sits. I have managed to save some to eat four or five days later if it is refrigerated.

You can make any numerous changes to this recipe. Feel free to add different vegetables like carrots, onions or anything for that matter. The cilantro can be replaced with Italian Parsley. The salt and pepper doesn't need to be there and can be replaced with other spices. Personally I liked adding Zatar.