To celebrate my one year blogiversary, and because I wanted to keep all my recipes together in one place, I decided to put up a cuisine blog. If you don’t know what to eat tonight, go ahead and visit
What about having some nice chicken in mushroom sauce for dinner tonight?
Vacation means: finally some extra time to get into the kitchen and do some serious cooking. This shabbes I made honey vanilla challah (I found the recipe here but slightly adapted it), chicken with mushroom sauce, potato knish and zuccini-filled tomatoes. Although the dishes could have used some more spices, they were quite tasty. Because of shabbes I couldn’t take a picture, so you’ll just have to believe me that the challah looked really nice… Best part: this morning the challah was still fresh!
Honey vanilla challah
Ingredients (makes one loaf)
1/2 tablespoon active dry yeast
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 1/4 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup of warm water
2 eggs + 1 for the glaze
4 tablespoons of olive oil + 1 teaspoon for greasing the bowl and another for the glaze
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon honey
In a large bowl using a whisk combine the yeast, sugar, salt and 1 cup of the flour. Add the warm water, 2 eggs, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, then the honey and vanilla. (Add the olive oil first, then use the same measuring spoon to add the honey – residual oil on the spoon will make the honey slide right out.) Vigorously mix the ingredients until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl halfway through, about 3 minutes. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, switching to a wooden spoon when the dough becomes too thick for the whisk. Continue mixing the dough until it is too stiff to stir.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until soft and springy, about 4 minutes. If the dough is sticky, dust with flour 1 tablespoon at a time – just enough to prevent it from sticking to the surface. The dough is done when it’s smooth and small air bubbles show under the skin. If you press your thumb into it the impression should bounce back. This is a slightly firm dough, which is exactly what you want for easy braiding later on.
Place the dough in a deep container greased with 1 tsp of olive oil. Turn the dough once to coat the top and cover with plastic wrap. Allow it to rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or lightly grease it with non-stick spray. Gently deflate the dough by pressing your fingers into it, then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 4 equal portions, and roll each portion out into a smooth, thick strip about 20 inches long, with the ends slightly thinner than the middle. Lay these ropes side-by-side, touching only at the top.
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I really like the 4 rope-braiding. It looks fancy and it’s really easy. This is what you need to do: starting with the outer left rope, you move each rope over the 2nd, under the 3rd, and then again over the 4th. Again, take the left rope and follow this procedure. Continue until ropes are completely braided. Combine the ends and tuck them under the braid.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and place the braided dough on your baking sheet and let rise until almost doubled in bulk, 30 to 40 minutes.
Just before the rising time has finished whisk together 1 egg and 1 teaspoon of olive oil, this is going to be the glaze for your bread. Gently brush the dough with a thick layer of it. Place the dough in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the bread is a deep golden brown and sounds hollow when you thump it on the bottom. Transfer to a baking rack to cool.
PS. The original recipe uses warm milk in stead of water, but I wanted the challah to be parve. If you prefer milchige challah, just replace the water with milk.
For weeks I had been looking forward to midterm exams. Not because I love grading (on the contrary) but because it would give me a week and a half of less lessons to prepare. I wanted to use the time for preparing an outline of the next semester, writing a new history syllabus, doing some extra reading, going to the city centre to shop for yarn, knitting, and cooking.
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‘Fall, leaves, fall’
Ingredients
This month’s teachers’ potluck carnival is on over at Ms. Whatsit. Go, visit and be satisfied!
This morning at 8:00 AM I was already in the kitchen to cook for the last days of Sukkot. We will have six guests, and because of the laws of the holiday all the cooking has to be finished by 6:50 PM tonight. So I just popped a potato kugel into the oven, after taking out the apple pie and sweet noodle kugel. It’s the first time I tried the potato recipe, so I don’t know yet what it will turn out to be like.
Traditional potato kugel
6 medium potatoes
1 onion
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1,5 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
4 tbsp oil
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes and place in a large bowl of cold water. Peel onion. Grate on small holes of grater into a clean bowl. Add eggs to potato-onion mixture. Stir in remaining ingredients and mix well with fork.
Place in greased 9×9 inch baking pan. Bake for at least 1 hour or until light brown and crisp. For variation, grate a small head of cauliflower or 2 grated medium carrots.
These past days we celebrated Rosh haShana, the Jewish New Year. Rosh hashana is a serious time of soul-searching and introspection, but at the same time it is a very happy holiday on which we welcome the new year with a strong belief that it will be a blessed one. Special dishes are prepared to underline this double character of the holiday. We eat pommegranate, uttering the wish that in this coming year our good deeds will be as plenty as the seeds of this beautiful fruit. We also eat apple dipped in honey, to symbolize our wish that the upcoming year will be a sweet and happy one. Some families prepare a dish called ‘tzimmes’, which is a dish made of carrots, prunes, raisins and honey. The Yiddish word for carrots is mehren, which also means ‘more’, thus expressing the wish that our good deeds will multiply this coming year.
I guess this will be my submission for the next teachers’ potluck carnival.
This August poem describes exactly what I feel like. Enjoy this last month of summer with a quick, homemade Israeli limonana!
Mix the juice of 6 lemons with 6 cups of cold water and 1 cup of sugar. Add fresh mint leaves to taste (nana is the Hebrew word for mint). Serve chilled and on ice.
“August rushes by like desert rainfall,
I just had to post this cake recipe. First of all because we had this cake at our friends’ place in Berlin. We hadn’t seen them for more than a year, so it was great talking while enjoying a moist piece of this cake. Secondly, what better way to hold the summer feeling a bit longer at the start of the new schoolyear than with this yummy Hawaiian cake?
Hawaiian pound cake
1 cup margarine
1,5 cups sugar
6 eggs
2,5 cups flour
0,5 tsp. baking powder
0,5 tsp. ground ginger
1 8,5 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained
1 cup flaked coconut
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease and flour a 10-inch bundt pan. In large mixer bowl, cream margarine and sugar until light. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add remaining ingredients. Blend at low speed until thoroughly combined, scraping bowl occasionally.
Pour batter into prepared pan, making sure it reaches edges all around. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool for 30 minutes before removing from pan. Is best if still warm when served.
Yesterday I made healthy chocolate chip cookies. I don’t know why the recipe says ‘healthy’ because after all, they are cookies plus they have chocolate chips inside. Maybe it’s because whole wheat flour was used. Maybe it’s because there isn’t that much sugar inside and part of the sweetening is done with honey. Maybe because of the oats? Anyway, they came out great.
