recipes

Stuffed Squash Workshop

First, bake the acorn squash until tender. I bake the squash whole for about an hour in a 350° oven. You can do the baking the day before you use it, if you like.

Now prepare your stuffing. You have so many choices! Klara sent me a few of her ideas, so if the ingredient was Klara’s idea, I’ll say so. (Thank you, Klara). And thanks for some mango tips from Helen and from Alyssa.

Red + Yellow = Orange

I added a beet to my turmeric soup, and it turned orange. OK, maybe it turned a brighter redder orange from the pale yellowy turmericky orange it had been before?

Turmeric Soup

Baila’s got a whole bunch of recipes at the latest Kosher Cooking Carnival.

I’ve been playing in my crock pot again, and this time it’s called Turmeric Soup. It doesn’t look terribly different than my Farmer’s Market Soup.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 or 2 cloves of garlic
• Turmeric, about 1 tsp.
• Pepper, about 1/2 tsp. and salt to taste
• 1 sweet potato or yam
• 1 can of beans (I used cannellini, but chickpeas or northern beans will work, too)
• 3 leaves of kale

Saute the onions in olive oil until translucent. Sprinkle generously with turmeric, pepper and salt. Put chopped sweet potato in crockpot. Put in the can of beans. Put in the sauteed onions and garlic. If you feel up to waiting just before it’s almost ready, you can add the kale right before everything is tender. But if you are lazy like me, just add it at the same time as the other ingredients.

I let it cook for about 4 hours, and it tasted delicious.

Turmeric

Any of you like turmeric?

This spice is discussed in Anticancer: A New Way of Life, the book I reviewed yesterday. It has been shown in cell cultures to be effective against cancer cells. However, it must be mixed with pepper in order to be effective. Ideally, it should be dissolved in oil (olive, canola or linseed oil, preferably).

Anyone have some good ideas of what to do with turmeric? I mixed with some kasha (also had mushrooms and onions) that I made on Sunday night, and it tasted delicious.

Mandelbread

For Mrs. S., mazel tov on the upcoming bar-mitzvah!

Mandel Bread, Mandelbroit, Biscotti

When I need a dessert for company or for my family, I often make these little cookies called mandelbread. In Yiddish, mandel means almonds, so traditionally these cookies had almonds in them. I’ll give you two recipes, one with almonds and one without, so you can choose.

Mandelbread with Crushed Almonds

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• dab of salt
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup of crushed raw almonds
• 2 cups of flour
• Canola oil, enough to wet the dough

Crush the almonds in the food processor. Mix ingredients in order shown, except for the oil. Drizzle in oil until the dough is wet enough to shape into loaves. Shape into 2 long loaves, 2 inches long. Place on parchment paper on baking sheet. Bake at 350° for about 20-30 minutes. Cut into 1/2 inches slices and place on their sides. Continue baking for about 4 minutes.

Mandelbread, plain

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• dab of salt
• 2 cups of flour

Mix ingredients in order shown. Shape into 2 long loaves, 2 inches long. Place on parchment paper on baking sheet. Bake at 350° for about 20-30 minutes. Cut into 1/2 inches slices and place on their sides. Continue baking for about 4 minutes.

With either recipe, you can dot the top of your pre-baked mandelbread with chocolate chips, points facing down, for the choc-oholics in your family.

Lentils

I have been making lentils in various forms this fall. The lentils in the bowl above were made overnight in my crockpot.

Lentil Soup with Curry

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb. lentils
• 3 cups of water
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 slice of ginger root
• Salt, turmeric, cumin to taste

Put all the ingredients except the spices in the crockpot. Cook on low overnight. In the morning, add the salt, turmeric and cumin.

Lentil Salad with Lemon Juice

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb. lentils
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• lemon juice, preferably from fresh lemons
• salt to taste
• optional: parsley

The key to making lentil salad as opposed to lentil soup is use less water. Cook the lentils with the water for about two hours (this is how long it takes in my crockpot). When the lentils are tender, add the lemon juice and salt. Garnish with parsley. Can be served hot or room temperature.

Lentil Soup with Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb. lentils
• 3 cups of water
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 slice of ginger root
• Handful of baby carrots
• 2 sliced zucchini
• 1 can whole tomatoes
• Salt to taste
• Optional: jalapeno pepper, chopped

Cook the lentils, ginger, garlic and carrots in water until the lentils are tender (two hours in my crockpot). Add zucchini and salt (add jalapeno pepper, if using one). When zucchini are almost tender, add the canned tomatoes.

Mabul Cake

First, an explanation for those that do not speak Hebrew. Mabul in Hebrew means flood. This post ideally should have gone up last week, but the cake was not baked until Friday, and the post was not ruminated over until Shabbat, and on Sunday I did JPIX, and after that…well, here it is. I try to make marble cake for Parshat Noach, the section of the Torah about the flood. This year I took Batya’s simple cake recipe (the one I had previously used for orange cake, but no orange in this one, just vanilla for flavor) and divided it in two, one with some cocoa (about 1/4 cup) and one without. I used three cups of flour, and I mixed some chocolate chips into the batter.

The cake itself came out delicious. And no one seemed to care that my lights and darks were not very pronounced. No one except me, however. So in preparing this post I put the picture in Photoshop and made it look a little more marbly (mabully?):

Does it look more like a marble cake now? Maybe next year I’ll melt some dark chocolate and drizzle it throughout the cake batter as I put in the pan. Any suggestions?

Another fun idea for this parsha by Juggling Frogs: Rainbow Menu

Post about this week’s parsha, Lech Lecha:
Avraham Ha-Ivra/the Hebrew (Daniel Saunders)

Crockpot Squash

I am fortunate that I can work at home. Sometimes, especially now that the weather is getting chillier, I set up some food cooking in my crockpot first thing in the morning, and the house smells yummy at lunchtime (and I have something new to eat). Last week I was hoping to make lentil soup one day, but I reached into my cabinet and found no lentils. I had just bought some cut up butternut squash the day before. If you have ever cut a butternut squash, you will know what a time and energy saver pre-cut squash can be. The squash even had an O-U on it, meaning it was cut with a kosher knife. I created this recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 butternut squash, cut and peeled (or substitute another squash)
• 1 or 2 slivers of fresh ginger, peeled and cut from the root
• Collard greens (or substitute a bay leaf, parsley, scallions, kale, spinach, basil, whatever greens you like)
• 2 or 3 fresh tomatoes (or substitute canned tomatoes or some salsa)

Cook the butternut squash and ginger in the crockpot with some water to cover (or even a little less water) for about two hours or until squash starts to get soft. Add chopped tomatoes and greens. It’s ready when the greens are slightly cooked (not long!). If there’s excess water (I had enough to fill one mug), drink that in a cup: it’s a delicious broth!

I did buy the lentils later in the day, and so I made a lentil soup in my crockpot the next day. I’ll post a lentil soup recipe another time.

Our Simanim Experience

In the past, I would say to my husband a few days before Rosh Hashana, now, what are the special foods we need to get? And he would mention maybe carrots and beets, and we would say a yehi ratzon on the carrots in the soup. When I was growing up, I don’t remember doing the yehi ratzon prayers at all. In fact, my father, who joined us for most of our Rosh Hashana meals, thought we should save the pomegranate for the new fruit, which one does on the second night of Rosh Hashana. My husband pointed out that we had eaten pomegranates within the last year, and one is really supposed to say the shehiyanu, the prayer for something new, on a fruit that one has not eaten in the past year.

So this year, because I did all this research on the simanim (thank you, readers, for your encouragement along the way as I posted various foods), I was the expert.

Back to the first night…so we have all these simanim on the table. With the help of Mimi’s Israeli Kitchen, I made the black-eyed beans (peas?) into a bean salad. She used: “seasoning it with a little chopped onion and a handful of mixed, chopped, cilantro, parsley, and celery tops. Lots of fresh lemon juice, to balance the earthy taste of the peas (which are really beans, but never mind) – salt and white pepper.”

Here’s my bean salad ingredients:

• Black-eyed beans, soaked overnight and cooked in a crockpot
• Chopped red onion
• Chopped fresh parsley
• Fresh lemon juice
• Some olive oil
• Salt and pepper

I was considering making a beet salad (Mimi made one: “some thinly sliced onion, salt, pepper, a little cumin, olive oil, a little sugar, and vinegar”), but as time didn’t allow (I was chaffeuring kids to play dates and art class in between cooking and doing a little of my web work), I just made steamed beets and cut them up.

What to do with leeks? Mimi posted a delicious leek tart (same post); I decided to incorporate the leeks with my chicken soup and with my roasted chicken with apples and mushrooms (I stuck one leek inside the chicken). I had more leeks than I needed, as I bought two sets; the first set of leeks didn’t look so good, and I had to go back to the supermarket on Monday morning anyway, so I bought a fresher set of leeks. The not-so-nice leeks are now resting in my compost pile which will hopefully be decomposed by next spring and will provide a new spot for growing tomatoes.

I made stuffed squash for the k’ra, the siman that can be a gourd, squash or pumpkin. I used Mimi’s stuffed artichoke post for inspiration on the stuffing. Hers had more ingredients; I had chopped meat, onion and spices in mine. I added chopped fresh ginger, too.

For the carrots, I went for simple. I liked the idea of cutting the carrots like coin-shapes.

Do you think I put a fish or lamb’s head on the table? I did the same thing I did last year, which was cut a piece of gefilte fish into the shape of a fish head and use a bit of cooked carrot for the eye.

Finally, I did one “joke” of a siman, which was to steam a “head” of broccoli.

The problem was, it was late, we were all tired, and my eldest son only liked the pomegranate. So after doing the apple dipped in honey (my daughter had us doing this one at every meal), we ate the pomegranate. It wasn’t nearly as juicy as ones I have eaten in the past. I bet the ones in ALN’s backyard taste better.

Next we ate the gefilte fish. Or five out of seven of us ate it. It turns out there is a special yehi ratzon for fish, separate from the “head and not the tail” one — “she’nif’reh v’nir’beh ki’dagim” (that we be fruitful and multiply like fish).

At this point, we just started eating the rest of the meal. Did we say any more of the yehi ratzons? I don’t know, but everything got eaten, at any rate. I enjoyed the meal, and it didn’t last nearly as long as a Pesach seder.

Chicken Soup Recipe

My Friday night guests (and my regular family attendees=husband, father, sons, daughter) all seem to love my chicken soup. I own a large 8 quart pot, and I purposely try to make leftovers. Soup freezes well. Key to flavor is to use enough chicken; don’t do what I did when first learning and just use necks.

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken backs (with some chicken meat still on it) or 1 small chicken or 3 parts of chicken
• celery (2-3 stalks, cut in half)
• 1 onion, chopped in quarters
• carrots: handful of already peeled baby carrots (easiest) or 2-3 carrots, peeled and sliced
• fresh dill or fresh parsley
• salt and pepper to taste
• optional: parsnip, turnip, leftover kale, collards or cabbage
• optional: pieces of flanken (I tried using chopped steak one week, but it wasn’t nearly as tasty as flanken)
• optional: matzo balls (follow matzo meal box directions; this could be a whole post itself, how to make a good, light, tasty matzo ball)

Put your chicken or chicken parts in a large pot. Cover the chicken with water (or more than cover). Cook for about one half hour. Your house will already begin to have aroma of chicken soup. Add carrots, onions and any other root vegetables. Parsnip will add a sweet, yummy taste to your soup. If you are making matzo balls, now is a good time to prepare the matzo ball mixture and refrigerate. Add celery. Add salt, pepper. Cook for at least another hour. With a fork, remove the already cooked chicken. At this point I often give the soup chicken as a snack to my kids. Add matzo balls to the hot soup. Add pieces of flanken if you have. Add any bits of cabbage, collards or kale. If you like, sprinkle a bit more salt and/or pepper. Put in parsley and/or dill towards the end.

Friday night/Shabbat trick: you are allowed to unwrap food on Shabbat, but not to wrap food (called “hatmana“). I wrap my soup in two blankets on Friday afternoon right before Shabbat to keep it warm. This way I don’t have to keep the stove going in the summer. I then unwrap the soup right before serving.

Skim the fat: if you store the soup in the refrigerator for a day, you can then skim the fat off the top.

Soup is delicious, nutritious and a nice option for a whole meal (with challah and grape juice) if one is planning ahead for the many holiday meals in a row we will soon celebrate.
Learn to make matzo balls, too. And then enjoy more soup recipes.