From Suq to Shuk

Dessert inspired by the dessert - spiced winter fruit with banana chips and cashew pastry

When I first saw BT's request for food from the desert I mistook it for a request simply for dessert.  I don't make a lot of dessert so I searched my cookbooks for some ideas.  I came across a recipe in Frank Stitt's Southern Table for spiced winter fruit with cornmeal madeleines.  The recipe was initially attractive to me because of the lack of very complicated techniques involved.  Upon discussing this choice with BT, she clarified that she had requested food from the desert, not a dessert.  Well yesterday I posted my savoury meal from the desert and last night I made an attempt at a dessert inspired by the desert with a few modern french variations.

 The primary divergence from the desert plan came when I realised that the dough I had bought at the supermarket and defrosted was not filo dough but rather pâte feuilleté, which is used to make puff pastry and it his country is used primary for "burekasim", which are usually savoury pastries stuffed with cheese, mashed potatoes or spinach.  When I still thought that the dough was filo, I had planned to make a variation of baqlawa (or baklava in Greek and Turkish),  which is traditionally made with filo dough, pistachios, rose water, sugar and butter.  I had puff pastry, in which I rolled up a mixture of deep fried banana chips and cashews in a similar way, but obviously when baked I had a very different result.  It was nonetheless very tasty, though the next time I'll be sure to by some actual filo dough.

With regards to inspiration from Frank Stitt's, I used his recipe for the spiced syrup in which to marinate the fruit directly from the book, but I changed the combination of the fruit quite a bit to better suit what looked good at the Shuk.  His recipe called for bananas and pineapples, and I didn't feel like putting bananas in the pastry as well as the fruit mixture, and the pineapples here are tiny and very very expensive, so I went with papaya.  I also substituted of the of the oranges for tangerines, because I had just seen them for the first time at the Shuk, bought some, and they were darn tasty.

All in all it was very pretty and very tasty and came out pretty well for such a huge error in identifying the type of pastry I had bought.  Although I liked Frank Stitt's syrup a lot, I think I would have half the amount of vanilla in it, because it came off a little strongly for me.  In any event, enjoy!

Ingredients:

For the syrup:

1 cup of sugar

4 cups of water

1" peeled ginger, sliced into 1/4" pieces

3 black peppercorns

3 white peppercorns

1 vanilla bean, split

1 cinnamon stick

the zest of one lemon

2 star anise

6-8 cardamon seeds (not the pods but the seeds inside)

6-8 coriander seeds

For the fruit

1 pink grapefruit, supremed

3 blood oranges, supremed

2 tangerines, supremed

1 mango, diced

1 papaya, diced

For the pastry

2 9" squares of pâte feuilleté

50 grams of melted butter

1/2 cup roasted cashews, coarse ground

1/2 cup banana chips, coarsely ground

3/4 cup of the syrup from the fruit

Directions:

Combine all ingredients for the syrup in a sauce pan, bring to a boil, then remove from heat and cover.  Allow flavour to infuse and the syrup to cool for 30 minutes (should still be a little warm).  Combine all fruit in large bowl then pour over syrup, cover with cellophane pressed directly against the fruit and leave in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Pre-heat oven to 180C/355F.  Combine the cashews, banana chips and syrup once the fruit has already been marinating for 4 hours. Brush butter over one side of each square of pastry.  Divide this mixture in half, and lay out each half over the extremity of each square of pastry, then roll up tightly.  Brush over each roll with remaining butter, then bake for 30 minutes.

Slice and assemble plate and spoon syrup over the whole mixture.  Enjoy!

B'Teavon!

    

Ilan's Hummus and Bread

Although Wednesday is our usual day for cooking together at Ilan's place, yesterday I went to school early to take out some books and read and went over to Ilan's to do so.  The day prior, Ilan had made hummus, which turned out to have been almost entirely consumed when Ilan took the container out of the fridge to show me.  He still had a great many cooked chickpeas left, and so we made some more.  The recipe is Ilan's and it is with his permission that I present it to you.

Ilan's roommate had a seldom used bread maker that she brought to the apartment whose use greatly expanded under Ilan's new supervision.  He had previously experimented with many variations of ingredients, but I requested simple white.  The baking of the bread took about two hours in the machine and it's quite mesmerising to watch a tiny paddle spin with precision to produce a kneaded ball of dough.

The food processor in which we made the hummus broke down before we had achieved the desire consistency, but it was nonetheless delectable.  The Israeli made product featured a Magen David (Star of David) at its centre, as seen in the photograph.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups cooked chickpeas

1/4 cup of tahina

1 cup of water

1/2 lemon, juiced

1 large clove of garlic, peeled

1 dried chili, ripped into pieces

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

paprika and tumeric to top

drizzle extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Put the chickpeas and the chili in a food processor and blend until completely broken up, about 5 minutes, occasionally opening the food processor to push down the contents on the sides.  Add half the water and the garlic, blend for another 2 minutes.  Add the tahina, coriander and cumin, blend in.  Add more water a bit at a time until the right thickness is achieved.  Plate and top with paprika, tumeric and olive oil.

B'Teavon!

Happy Birthday BT!

   

Apple-walnut mini muffins with meyer lemon glaze

Yesterday I got a request for muffins.  My friend Joel was sick, and rather than eating chicken soup, he wanted some muffins as comfort food.  His original request was for some sort of berry muffin, but berries, other than strawberries, are not in season, where as apples are.  I found a recipe for the muffins on Epicurious.com, which had in turn taken the recipe from a 1997 issue of Gourmet Magazine.

I made several alterations to the recipe - I used a whole Hermon apple, rather than 1/2 a Granny Smith, and I used a silicone muffin sheet rather than individual muffin tins, as silicone doesn't need to be greased.  I also used the juices from my confit Meyer lemon for the glaze, rather than the suggested apple cider vinegar reduction.

I'm told they were delicious.  You need to make one recipe of Meyer lemon confit, found in the post on Artichoke soup etc.

Ingredients:

1 Hermon apple

1/4 cup of chopped, toasted walnut

3 tbls unsalted butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup white flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

2 tbls apple-cider vinegar

1 large egg

about 3 tbls of the syrup from Meyer lemon confit

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 200C/400F.  Peel and core your apple then cut into 1/4" dice, combine with walnuts in a bowl.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a bowl and mix well.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low heat and combine with the brown sugar.  Once the brown sugar has melted into the butter, turn off the heat, remove the pan from heat if using an electric burner, and whisk in cider vinegar and the egg.  Then whisk in the flour mixture, pouring it into the pot slowly, whisking the whole time.  Once even, fold in apples and walnuts.

Fill each muffin hole with 1 tbls of the mixture, then divide whatever remains between all holes.  Place in the oven for about 12 minutes (Epicurious says 15... I think they'll burn).

Take out of the oven (and close the oven door Grandpa), then brush on glaze of meyer lemon syrup, allow to sit 5 minutes before removing from the silicone tray, then serve.  Yum!

B'Teavon

Drumettes lolly pops with roasted new potatoes, cream biscuits, mint coulis and fruit salad for dessert

I am so happy that I've started to embrace the Russian supermarket in the Shuk.  The meat and poultry comes at Shuk prices but is refrigerated and clean!  I still prefer to buy beef and lamb at my butcher on Jabotinsky St., but the chicken is dirt cheap at the Russian supermarket (possibly nameless, I will check), and there's cheap frozen goose of the same variety available everywhere else.  Wings were on sale yesterday for 12 shekels a kilo ($1.50/lb) and so I bought two kilos.  I separated the wings from the drumettes,  and made a stock out of the wings.  I then pulled back the meat on the drumettes to make lolly pops out of them, cleaned the tips, and made a range of other components for my meal with two classmates, Emilia and Analia, and the staple, Ilan.  I picked up quite a bit of beautiful fruit at the Shuk and made a fruit salad as well.

I was slightly annoyed to find out that the lady who works at my favourite greens stall slipped in some items without me asking and I blindly paid.  It wasn't so much money in the end (18 shekels in total), and I got some mint and ginger out of it, but it was the principle.  Suddenly I had this mint, and I've been sick of using a tiny amount and having the rest wilt and die, so I used all of it.

The cream biscuits weren't particularly related to the dish, I just wanted some kind of starch and they're really yummy.  I'm not suggesting, whatsoever, that the biscuits clashed with the meal; they're probably just more appropriate for a dish that has more juice to soak up.

Preparing the drumettes is a bit of a pain--I gave up after 15--so I wouldn't necessarily plan for these to be at your next cocktail party unless you're paying someone else to do it.  The idea came from my instructor at culinary school in France, though he used a lot more sugar to give them a lot more of a caramel glaze (he also used Grand Marnier instead of Cointreau).  You can do the same if you'd like but be careful!  The caramel can easily solidify after it has cooled, and then you don't so much have a sauce for your chicken, rather a hard encasement like that of a candied apple.  As much as I liked those, they are terrible for your teeth.

All things considered, I think it was a lovely meal, to which I believe my guests would attest.  See my post on sliders with cream biscuits for the cream biscuit recipe.  This time, I cut triangle instead of circles, and just brushed on butter rather than dipping.

Ingredients:

15 chicken drumettes

1 stalk lemongrass, bottom part only and bruised

1 inch ginger, sliced finely

4 tbls olive oil

1/4 cup sugar

3 tbls of honey

1 tsp sweet paprika

1 tbls sriracha

1/4 cup Cointreau

1 large bunch of mint

20 cherry tomatoes

4 medium Israeli (or Persian) cucumbers

1 cup chicken stock

1 kilo/ 2.2 lbs red new potatoes, sliced in half length wise

1.5 tsp tumeric

Directions:

With a sharp knife, make an incision circularly around the bone on the top of the drumette (where the wing met the drumette).  Cut down to the bone and cut any tendons.  With the back of your knife, scrape down the side of the bone to push down the flesh.  Cut any newly revealed tendons, and reverse the meat. Do not scrape too far or the shape won't hold.  Clean the tip, first scraping off any remaining flesh with the back of a knife, then cutting off any remaining connective tissue.  Set aside.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F.  Combine potatoes, 1 tbls of olive oil and the tumeric in a medium baking dish.  Top with S+P, then add 1/2 cup of chicken stock, and place in the oven for 45 minutes.

Wash all of your mint well in cold water, and remove all the leaves from the stems.  Reserve one quarter of the leaves for the fruit salad.  Combine the remaining leaves in a high edged bowl with the remaining chicken stock, 1 tbls of honey, S+P, and pulverise with an immersion blender for about 3 whole minutes.  Allow to cool.  (now is a good time to make the biscuits)

Heat the remaining olive oil over medium heat in a skillet.  Put in lemongrass and ginger and once the ginger starts to change colour, move them all to the side of the pan.  Enter in the chicken with the flesh side down and bone coming directly up.  Allow to sit for about 3 minutes this way so that it will maintain its shape.  Pour on sriracha, sugar and remaining honey evenly around the pan and allow the sugar to melt.  Once the sugar has been bubbling for about 2 minutes add the Cointreau.  Now you can turn your chicken over and let and pieces that haven't had contact with the pan have a bit of contact.  After about 3 minutes of turn the chicken in the liquid, turn of the flame and plate all your ingredients as shown.

For the fruit salad:

Ingredients:

1 medium cantaloupe, cubed

1 lb strawberries, stem removed and halved

1 lb figs, quartered

1 tbls Poire William brandy

2 tbls sugar

remaining mint

Directions:

Combine all ingredients and toss.

B'Teavon!

Sliders with cream biscuits

Wednesdays are when I visit my "Kitchen away from Kitchen" as Ilan describes it... that is to say I cook in Ilan's kitchen.  I had run across a recipe for cream biscuits on the Deb Perelman's blog, Smitten Kitchen, that I was intent on trying.  She had initially lauded them as an excellent sponge for braising liquid, and I have no doubt that they are. 

I have often lamented the choices for food on campus - there's a McDonald's, a shawarma joint, "Green Leaves" which serves semi-fresh salads, and "Lemongrass", and Israeli Chinese food chain whose most prominent ingredient is corn starch, and a few cafés that serve over priced sandwiches.  If you make your way down to the Ramat Aviv Mall, the fanciest mall in Israel, there is yet another McDonald's, a Burger King, a Sbarro's (I know, how did they make it out of the states?!), some over priced Sushi that was frozen until this morning, and some more cafés with over priced sandwiches.

Because I am left so often dissatisfied with the consumption of any of these things, usually Ilan and I go to the supermarket (it's an hour away from the Shuk), and make our own lunch.  Yesterday I picked up 1.5 lbs ground beef, Ilan got the ingredients for the biscuits, and away we went making sliders.

The funny thing, is that despite the popularity of Burger joints in Israel (Agadir, Burger's Bar, Burger Ranch, McD's, Burger King etc), you can't buy buns in the supermarket.  When I lived in Jerusalem a few years ago, I was a little shocked at the first BBQ I went to in which burgers were being served in pitas.  To each their own, but I prefer to leave pitas to Middle Eastern food.

This lunch is easily reproduced, and I highly recommend it.  It was a little rich, but delicious!

For the recipe for cream biscuits, visit Smitten Kitchen:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/12/cream-biscuits/

Now that you've made your biscuits, continue with the rest of the recipe:

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs/ 700 g ground beef

1 large onion, grated

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 red chili, seeded and minced

a few tomatoes, sliced into rounds

1 small red onion, sliced

1 ripe avocado, sliced

1 box of alfalfa sprouts

Directions:

Combine Ground beef with onion, garlic and chili plus S+P, and mix well well with your hands.  Pour a bit of the remaining butter from the biscuits into a frying pan and get it good and hot over medium heat.  Form little balls of beef in your hands, about 1.5" in diameter, enter them into the pan and press down with a spatula.  Fry one minute on each side.  Cut open a biscuit, place atop one slice of tomato, then your burger, then 2 slices of avocado, a little bit of red onion, and then alfalfa sprouts.  Place your desired sauce on the half of the biscuit, top it off and eat.  YUMMY!

B'Teavon