THE ONE DISH YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS HOLIDAY DINNER

Every holiday season I have an urge to reinvent my cooking. Did I say reinvent? I meant SIMPLIFY.

The whole Thanksgiving dinner hu-ha is much too much for me. Don’t get me wrong; in the most part, I’m excited for the days and days of grocery shopping and cooking – but sometimes, I feel like having a nice dish that doesn’t require too much effort and that would still taste amazing. Besides, sometimes – hours before dinner, when I’m up to my ears in cooking – I find myself thinking: maybe I over did it, next year I’d rather sit down at the dinner table refreshed and responsive rather than exhausted and worn out from all the fun cooking 🙂

HOLIDAY HACKS
I’m a big believer in short cuts, as long as they don’t take away flavor. Over the years, I pulled together a few tricks to have up my sleeve whenever I want something that is quick to make and super elegant, enough to fool everyone around the table.

HUFF AND PUFF AND BLOW THIS HOLIDAY AWAY!

One of those dishes that always work is my puff pastry colorful strips.
The basic trick is to cut ready-made puff pastry to strips, and dress it with different vegetables in different colors, creating a festive look along with distinctly different flavors on each strip.

It’s almost like salad on puff pastry!

Look for frozen puff pastry next time you’re grocery shopping and give it a try. It’s also perfect for a fancy weekday dinner, to be served with a simple radish and Parmesan salad.

 

 

50 SHADES OF PUFF

You can go soooo many ways with this.
The basis is the same for all strips: defrost 1 package of puff pastry, have an egg wash ready (1 yolk scrambled with 1 teaspoon of water), and set your oven to 350.
Once you finish arranging the vegetables and sprinkling the cheese, apply a little egg wash all around the sides of the pastry.
Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the pastry is slightly golden on the sides.

These are my favorite combinations:

Yellow squash and Asiago cheese with thyme
Yellow squash, cut to 1/8’’ rounds
2 tablespoons Asiago cheese, crumbled
2 sprigs thyme

Cherry tomato with fresh goat cheese and rosemary
½ box cherry tomatoes, halved
1 package soft goat cheese (like Chevre), cut to ¼’’ rounds
1 sprig rosemary, chopped

Pears with blue cheese and almonds
1 pear, sliced to ¼’’ rounds,
2 tablespoons blue cheese, crumbled
2 sprigs thyme

This one is a little more complicated, but is worth the effort!
Asparagus, brown butter and balsamic reduction
½ bunch asparagus
¼ cup 1 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoons of sugar
3 tablespoons butter

*to make the brown butter: in a small saucepan over medium heat, put the butter and allow to melt. Take off heat when it becomes slightly golden and smells nutty. Allow to cool slightly before drizzling over asparagus.

*to make the reduction, combine vinegar with sugar in a small saucepan and allow to reduce by half.

Arrange asparagus and drizzle with balsamic reduction and brown butter. Season with sea salt.

 

 

 

MAKE AN IMPRESSION WITH (so easy) FANCY BANANA BLONDIES

FALL RUSH AND EXCITING NEWS
Oh I’m so late in posting these (promised I will in my previous post) – September was a busy month! Lots of projects for the holidays and another exciting project of my own – a cookbook! It’s a crazy idea that came by me and a super-talented photographer I met at my former workplace, a food-startup which unfortunately shut down. We said we should meet and take some pictures to benefit both our portfolios, and then she suggested we’d go the whole nine yards and make it into a cookbook. So I thought, why not! If anything, it would be a very interesting process..

The featured recipes will be my go-to’s which are very simple but gorgeous looking, and could be done in any kitchen (the most complicated tool used is a mini – food processor). Promise to post some of the recipes that will be included in the project!

TWO WORDS ABOUT COCONUT OIL
I like experimenting with my recipes, because sometimes a small change in an ingredient can make or brake a recipe. I’ve tried for a while to play with “healthier” ingredients – coconut oil instead of butter, brown sugar instead of white and whole wheat flour to replace AP. I have to say that coconut oil does a great job replacing butter in quick breads and cakes, but less so in cookies – it liquifies so quickly that the dough appears to be too liquidy, which makes you want to add flour, just so it’s not soooo sticky – resulting in a denser, harder cookie.  I do have it on my to-experiment list, so I promise I’ll get the perfect dough along with tips to you.

AND WITHOUT FURTHER A DUE

HEALTHY(IER) BANANA BLONDIES *and a way to make it super fancy
13×9.5” pan size

From the Pantry:
½ cup (3 oz) coconut oil, melted
1 ½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 TBS vanilla extract
4 bananas
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup AP flour
½ cup chocolate chips

Get Mixin’:

1. Turn on oven to 350f.
2. Mix coconut oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and bananas.
3. In a separate bowl, mix salt, baking powder and flours.
4. Pour the dry mix into the wet mixture, and mix using a wooden spoon – only until it‘s combined. Add the chocolate chips.
5. Pad a baking pan with parchment paper, and pour the mixture over it.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the top is dry and the center is set. Cool completely before cutting.

**** For a real fancy and decadent dessert:

Make banana pudding and whip up some whipped cream.
Serve the blondies with a generous spoonful of the pudding and a dollop of the whipped cream!

Market Memories (and Passover Macaroon Cookies)

I’ve loved markets for as long as I can remember. There’s something very unique in the experience of walking between the packed stands and the calling merchants, smelling fresh herbs and dried spices, eyeing odd looking vegetables and trying new kinds of food you’ve never heard of. One of the first things I do when I explore a new traveling destination is checking to see where I could find an authentic farmer’s market. I experience life through food, so my most vivid recollections have something to do with food, especially those of my traveling in remote villages around the world: French freshly squeezed apple cider and local brioche loaves; Croatian peasant stew; an Irish sheep cheese my sister couldn’t get enough of so we actually drove back to get more, she was crying so hard; Guatemalan oh-so-soft yellow cakes; Chinese steamed bread; Bolivian colorful orn and the list goes on and on. BALKAN BEAT  But nothing beats childhood memories. My mother is of Turkish descent; so we always have a Balkan feel in family meals. In Tel Aviv, there’s a market called the Lewinsky Market. It lies in a neighborhood that used to be populated by many Balkan immigrants in the early 30’s. My mother still remembers when she was a child in the 60’s, how busy the streets were – filled with merchants selling everything from olives to lemonade, Turkish Burkes to different spices. TRAVEL ALERT  Today the market is alive and kicking, beautiful and colorful, but had changed its character from ingredient-driven to culinary-driven. The neighborhood lost most of its earlier residents, so the demand for the local ingredients has decreased and so did the specialty stores, leaving only a few open. But the market is far from gone; today, in its more up-to-date version, you can find many ethnic eateris from different Jewish cultures around the world like Persian, Greek and Turkish foods. You can still find some of the city’s best Burekas there. TWO WORDS ABOUT PASSOVER I don’t like dried coconut chips. At all. And most Passover sweets I know contains it, one way or the other. I’ve always tried to come up with recipes that would make a detour around it so I could also have a bite. No gluten doesn’t mean you have to stop making baked goods, right? So here’s how I came across a divine coconut-free, gluten-and-dairy-free cookie that I still love making any day of the year.. THE LOST WORLD Back to the market. A couple of years ago, on my mom’s birthday, we all went for a walk down memory lane around the old Lewinsky neighborhood, where my mother showed us where her grandmother used to live, the path she took to the now-long-gone grocery store and the playground. Wandering around, we got to a store we didn’t know before but my mother was excited to find again: an old bakery, with no signs on the outside, no name, just an “open” sign on the old milky-glass door and some antique-looking scales in the store front – it really looked like it wasn’t touched for a few decades. We followed her in. Inside we found an elderly couple, the woman hustling around the sheet trays and the man sitting down, with a huge pile of almonds next to him, and two bowls – one filled with water and silvered almonds and one with almond skins. It had a back-in-the-day kind of feel. Many shelves, but most of it half empty, with a selection of only 4-5 kinds of cookies. “This is where we came for special occasions – to get the best Marochinos cookies”. Marochinos is, as I’ve discovered later, the Ladino word for what we now know to be Almond cookies. “we are using only a certain kind of almond that is best for making these cookies. Because the cookie is flourless, the almond flavor is dominant and very important. We use raw almonds, soak it over night and peel it one by one, as I am doing now”. Which explained the piles. Because of the long, manual procedure, the cookies were kinda pricey so we each started with just one to taste. I will never forget my surprise when I took a bite into it; I didn’t really expect to like it, not as much as I did anyway. It was phenomenal. Dense but yet airy, sweet and scented… I knew I had to figure out how to make these. MAROCHINOS//AKA MACAROONS Makes around 30 cookies; this recipe requires a stand mixer.  From the pantry 8 oz almond paste 6 oz sugar 1 oz confectioners’ sugar 2 fl oz egg whites (2 large eggs should yield that) For Show: a little more confectioners’ sugar, to sprinkle decorating options: candied cherries, pine nuts Get Mixin’:

1. Cut almond paste to roughly 1-inch pieces.
2. Combine with the sugars in a stand up mixer, using the paddle attachment. Mix on very low speed for 2 minutes.
3. Lightly whisk the egg whites to break it. Turn the mixer speed a little higher and add the egg whites in 3 additions, scraping the bowl between additions. Mix until the batter unifies.
4. For best results, put in a closed container and allow to age in the fridge overnight. Nothing will happen if you decide to bake it straight away though J
5. Prepare a sheet tray with some parchment. Put the batter is a pastry bag with a ½-3/4 inch tip (you can spoon it too, it will just look different). Pipe / spoon batter onto the tray, leaving 1’’ around each cookie.
6. Using a damp cloth / water spray, moisten the top of the cookies. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. You can decorate it with sliced candied cherries, pine nuts etc.
7. Bake at 375 for about 10-11 minutes, or until puffed and light-golden. Do not over bake – it will make the cookie dense and sticky. Cool before you try to take it off the tray; it tends to be very delicate when warm.

** Tip: These sweeties tend to stick to the paper. Don’t worry! When cool, lift the paper up and wet the sheet tray with a little bit of water, using wet hands. Wait 2 minutes and it will come off like a charm.

Nutella, Pretzels and Shortbread. This is gonna be good

So this week was the Jewish holiday Purim. It’s the equivalent of Christian Halloween Costume wise. Unlike Halloween – there’s no trick-or-treating, but we have something else: it’s a mitzvah to drink until you drop. Yes, you’re reading correctly. Gotta love this holiday.

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS
Another thing about this holiday is that it’s customary to give your friends and family a goody-bag filled with candy and the traditional cookie – Hamantaschen, which literally translates as ‘Haman’s ears’ (did you really think we’d let a holiday go by without something to nosh on?). It’s also customary in a large crowd to have a raffle deciding who this goody bag will go to. I can still remember a school table packed with bright yellow, green and red cellophane-wrapped parcels, each with our name on it (noting who made it), and the raffle that followed. My best friend’s mom used to make the best bags, but somehow I was never the one to receive it.

BACK TO THE COOKIES
These are a kind of shortbread cookies filled with all kinds of yummy filings; the traditional version calls for a poppy seed filling, but you can fill it with whatever you want – chocolate, halva, peanut butter, etc. you can go savory too, of course, but this is a whole other discussion… So we’ll stick to the sweet part, if it’s ok with you.
The only thing you should look out for is making sure that it’s thick enough so it wouldn’t leak out of the sides of the cookie which can cause it to open and ruin the whole nicely-shaped-triangle you were working so hard on. The rule is: if you spoon a little on a plate and it keeps its shape – spreading just a little, you’re fine. If it flattens up – not so much. So how do you fix it? All you need is something to absorb the extra liquid.

PRETZEL TALK
Say you want Nutella filling (I know I do). Very runny. But you still want it. What you can do is add a thickening agent – which in this case is much easier than making roux, dissolving cornstarch etc.: to get the desired consistency, an addition of crumbled cookies, day-old pound cake crumbles and so on would work perfectly. In my filling – being a sweet-and-salty gal myself – I decided I want to try adding crumbled pretzel sticks.

BRAND DROPPING
Wow, Snyder’s of Hanover. Great job well done on your recipe tab. I didn’t quite expect it, given that the snacks category tends to sometime overlook the foodie recipe-searching community, but you did great with all the different options. The site goes from your usual suspects of pretzel bread-crumb alternatives through finger food to main course and dessert with lots of navigation options, and offers many recipes that actually include the product itself. Lots of topping-things involved, but many variations, so I’ll give them that. I also looked at Rold Gold’s website – another FritoLay brand (remember them from last time?). I guess being part of a larger group of brands can sometimes mean being in the background. There were only 5 recipes dedicated to the brand, 3 of which did not involve the use of the product itself. Maybe FritoLay considers the brand a ‘Milking Cow’ and does not want to invest too much into it. Whatever the reason, it could definitely use some serious touch ups.

RECIPE AWAY
*You can always not-use any equipment, but it’s just simpler in this recipe to use a mixer and a food processor. In any way, both methods are described.
*make sure you’re not stressed with time because the dough needs to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to get its act together.

Nutella and Pretzel Hamantaschen
Makes about 50 cookies, depends on the diameter of cookie cutter 🙂

From the pantry
For the dough, all in room temp:
3 cups (13.5 oz) AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (4 oz) confectioners sugar
1 stick and 6 TBS (6.5 oz) butter
1 L egg + 1 yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the filling:
1 cup Nutella spread
1/2 pack – about 4-5 oz of any kind of hard pretzels
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
*Piping bag would be nice if you have any.

For show
Some confectioners sugar to sprinkle

Get Mixin’

Make the dough: 

1. If you have a mixer (lucky you, what luxury to have in a tiny apartment!), start by beating the butter and sugar with the pedal attachment. If you don’t, don’t worry, just use a wooden spoon. Try going slow because the sugar is so light it will fly right out of the bowl (and here goes your measuring. And your recent cleaning efforts).
2. Add the egg + yolk, and the vanilla. Mix until well combined.
3. Add the flour and beat until incorporated (if you’re doing it manually and it starts getting harder with the wooden spoon, you can use your hands and knead it a little).
4. Wrap in plastic and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Make the filling:

1. If you have a small food processor, grind the pretzels to very small pieces. You can leave some larger pieces for texture. If you don’t, take 2 (clean!) nylon bags, double wrap the pretzels and smack the hell out of the bag until the pretzels give up. Good way to let out some of those aggressions.
2. Put the Nutella and cinnamon in a bowl. Gradually add the pretzels. Don’t get it all in at once – you might end up with really condense texture. Remember the test? Spoon some to a place and see if it spreads just a little. If you have a piping bag – fill it up with the filling. No need for a special tip.
3. Heat the oven to 350f.
4. Roll the dough to 1/3″ thickness. Use a round cookie cutter or a regular cup to make rounds out of the dough. I used an 8″ cutter. Collect the dough leftovers to roll again and repeat the process.
5. Using a spoon or a piping bag, put about 1 tsp of filling on each round. Fold the dough to make a triangle and pinch the ends with your fingers.
6. Arrange on a sheet tray with about 1’’ space between the cookies.
7. Bake on the upper rack for about 15-18 minutes until the cookies are golden (my oven took full 18 minutes, but I know other ovens are probably better and require less time).
8. Share with all of your friends, and don’t forget the cellophane!