Back to Basics: 2-ingredient homemade cheese (Labneh)

One of the things I love most is taking on a DIY project. Pickling, home made butter, jams… and home made Labneh.

SO CHEESY
Labneh is a tart-flavored soft cheese, made out of plain yogurt. Its richness and smooth texture makes it a perfect addition to salads and grains, as a lighter alternative to sour cream in soups (or anything, really) and even by itself on a slice of sourdough bread with some nice olives.

SECRET RECIPE?
My mom’s recipe for Labneh does not ‘run in the family’ – it’s not like a centaury old tradition. I don’t know where she picked it up but it’s been an honorable member of her repertoire ever since. She used to make it every Saturday morning, and we’d all wait for brunch – where she’d serve it alongside fresh vegetables, baguettes and olive oil – and just like that, a whole batch would be gone within hours.
‘Young’ as this recipe may be, it’s sooooo good that had you tasted it, you’d feel like you are in on a well-kept secret.

KEEP IT SIMPLE
The most amazing thing about this recipe is that it calls for 2 ingredients only: Yogurt and Salt.
Basically, it’s drained yogurt.
…And to think you get to call it ‘homemade cheese’.

INGREDIENTS MATTER!
Because the recipe is so simple, ingredients DO make a difference. You can use almost any kind of plain yogurt – but it would work best with whole milk yogurt: the full fat will contribute to the thick and firm texture, and of course the flavor will be richer. I like to choose a tangy-flavored yogurt to begin with, because the flavor will enhance when the yogurt is drained: just think of it as a concentrate – every flavor is more pronounced, so you want it to be great to begin with!

I’ve tried it with Trader Joe’s plain Greek Yogurt and also with their Organic Goat yogurt –I have no doubt that the Plain Greek worked out better.

If you want a texture that is a little more runny (but still spreadable), you’ll be satisfied with the Goat yogurt, or any low-fat yogurt; but if you’re looking for a firmer – more traditional – texture, go with a whole milk version.

Another plus for the full-fat version is that the texture is firm enough for you to be able to ‘play’ with it afterwards – think about the Tapas options! – you can roll the labneh into small balls, put it in a jar and cover with olive oil, and even add some dry chili pepper to make it a bit spicy. When refrigerated this way, it will keep for nearly 2 weeks!!

recipe shots

HOMEMADE LABNEH CHEESE
Makes about 1 cup

 From the Pantry:
1 lb (16 oz) of your favorite regular yogurt*
1 tsp salt
Cheesecloth or clean swaddle cloth (if using cheese cloth, fold it twice to have a thicker fabric)

*Whole-mlik yogurt would work best

Get Mixin’:

1. mix both ingredients until smooth.
2. Pour into cheesecloth, and tie each opposite end of the cloth; hang the bundle in a place where it won’t bother you too much (I usually hang it in the shower on the lower faucet.. after we’re done with it for the day of course…:) )
3. Let drain for 12 hours.
4. Scoop the Labneh out and place in a sealed container; it will last for about 5 days. You can also roll the cheese into small balls and submerge in olive oil – which will make a beautiful jar and would keep for about 2 weeks in the fridge.
5. Serve with olives, bread and a drizzle of olive oil.

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!

Everybody Loves a Short Cut

I love inviting people over for dinner. I deliberately say “I”, because my dear husband doesn’t share this passion with me – at least not in our current shoebox we like to call home. Like many other NYC diggs, we don’t really have much room to play with: the table only seats 4, and if we want a more casual option around the coffee table, it can probably entertain 6 people altogether. Tops. And this is before you calculate all the room that the unused pots and pans would take up (they usually reside in the oven, but when the oven’s on, they’re in all sorts of places – on the window, the table, on the book shelves… I get very creative with it 😉 ). Our kitchen is tiny as well and so I can’t prep and cook at the same time, nor can the stove accommodate more than 2 pots together (and there’s absolutely nowhere to put cold dishes. My fridge is packed).
So for all of there reasons, Mr. Hubby gets a migraine just thinking about this Rubik’s Cube logistics, the before, the during and the after… But I don’t mind. If it were up to me, we’d have friends over day in and day out…

Trick and treat
So in order to come to terms with my hubby and still be able to spoil my friends, I usually try to take short cuts in the meal components to create a beautiful but not-so-hard-to-make meal, and convince Mr. Hubby that ‘honestly, it wouldn’t take me more than 4 hours, including everything!’. Not very convincing, I know, I know… But usually he’s kind enough to put up with my pleadings and just doubles up the Advil dose.

Short cuts
Short cuts can be taken in every part of the meal, by creating dishes that combine both store-bought and homemade ingredients. You can apply this on every part of the meal – hors d’oeuvres, starters, main and dessert. The simplest example would be a homemade pie accompanied by store-bought ice cream. The coming recipe is the ultimate finger-food – yummy, not too messy, aesthetic – and pretty darn easy to make. This is guaranteed to take you less than 20 minutes to assemble (and less than 5 to enjoy before it’s gone -10 if you have super-polite guests ;)) One of my favorite things to make is a fancy alternative to bruschettas or blinis: Crinkle-cut potatoes (aka the wavy kind) with sour cream, smoked salmon and caviar. I’m getting hungry just imagining it… in utopia, I would make the potatoes myself as homemade fries by using a mandolin that would create that effect – but due to all of the above, I settle for store bought chips.

Culinary Marketing
Because I rarely purchase any kind of old-school snacks, I rarely get to the chips shelves. There’s many ways to utilize chips, and snacks generally, in all kinds of food preparations. It can replace breadcrumbs when you’re making chicken Supremes, the crunch factor in salads, the salty-crunchy bite in chocolate truffles filings and whatnot. But rarely do I see any attempts to approach foodies with these suggestions.

Brand dropping
I checked a very posh brand’s website – Kettle brand, which has its Krinkle Cut chips (very tasty, BTW). No recipe section there. Come on, guys! This product is aligned very well with recent health trends (no trans fat, all natural ingredients, no preservatives etc.), so it’s already half way there. Mix it with the home cooking trend, and you’ll find that your demand will rise, because people will not only be using the products as snacks – but as relevant cooking ingredients. Searching other sites for inspiration, I visited Ruffles’s website (a FritoLay brand’s). Success! There’s a recipe section. Like many other houses-of-brands, FritoLay supplies the Ruffles recipes as part of a bigger picture, which offers many other recipe options for all of the brands, mixed together (you can find Cracker Jack, Dorito’s and more). But to my surprise, almost 75% of the recipes did not involve the use of the product itself, but recipes that would compliment it (such as dips of sorts), or that are inspired by it (dry BBQ rub, inspired by the BBQ Ruffles product). I think there are many more opportunities to explore here, and it could use some more creative recipes utilizing the products themselves. Point for thought.

Strike-A-Pose Crinkle Chips
Serves a crowd

From the Pantry:
1 bag Crinkle Chips, regular (unflavored)
1 cup sour cream or Crème Fraiche
2 teaspoonds wasabi powder
1 tablespoon warm water
¼ cup minced chives
pinch of salt

10 pieces smoked salmon, cut to smaller 1’’ by 3’’ pieces
few drops lemon juice
zest of ½ lemon  

For show:
Red/black caviar (depends on how fancy you’re looking to be)
Arugula Micro greens / some more chives  

Get Mixin’:

1. For the cream: mix the wasabi and warm water to create a paste. Fold into the cream. Add chives and salt.
2. For the salmon: mix the fish with the lemon and zest.
3. Assemble! Arrange the chips so that they would stand nicely (and wouldn’t flip over when you mount it with all that yumminess)
4. Put ½ teaspoon of the wasabi cream on the chip, add a folded piece of the salmon, then another ½ teaspoon of the cream. Top with a dollop of caviar and some micro greens.
5. Wait for your guests. It’s for them, after all… or is it?