by rivka
on November 9, 2012
Jerusalem is a city of enclaves. There are Yemenites and Iranians and Bukharians, Russians and Syrians and Brazilians, Ethiopians and Venezuelans and Jordanians, Libyans and Italians, French and Americans. Each group has its own neighborhoods, its own language, its own culture, its own food. And now, there’s finally a book cataloguing everything.
Yotam Ottolenghi was raised in mostly-Jewish western Jerusalem. His partner, Sami Tamimi, was raised in Muslim east Jerusalem. They now live in London, where they run restaurants – but both still think of Jerusalem as their home. The two have collaborated on a new cookbook called Jerusalem, which they claim is a self-indulgent nostalgia trip. I’ve been leafing through this book before bed for a couple weeks now, and I couldn’t be happier to be along for the ride.
If you’ve cooked from Plenty, you’ll instantly recognize the style of recipes in Jerusalem. Lots of fresh vegetables, plenty of legumes, olive oil in every pan, generous use of eggs and yogurt. This book isn’t vegetarian, but I’d say probably 85% of the recipes are. And while in Jerusalem there are 200 ways to eat meat, it’s the fruit and vegetables that I (and clearly they) miss the most. They are in such abundance there that you can’t not use them. You can’t not top every salad with a handful of fresh herbs, chop up an Israeli salad to go with your meal, cut open as perfect a tomato as you’ll find outside of Italy. This book is a celebration of all that makes Jerusalem’s food life quirky and intimate and conflicted and wonderful. I can’t stop reading it; and while I’ve only just begun to cook from it, I can tell I’ll be doing that regularly from now on, too.
If you do have the book, here are a couple of recipes to make now. Make the roasted cauliflower and hazelnut salad. It looks simple, but the cinnamon and roasted hazelnuts make the cauliflower somehow more romantic. If you still have access to good tomatoes, make Na’ama’s fattoush. It’s not the fattoush I ate in Jerusalem, but I think that’s the point. Make the kubbeh hamousta, which still is my favorite food in Jerusalem (especially if you eat it at Morduch). And then, if you want to be totally and completely wowed, suspend judgement and make this: pan-fried snapper with spicy harissa and rose.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on November 7, 2012
Fresh from the archives, first published October 27, 2007: it’s my Ima’s challah, with new pictures and better instructions. Enjoy!
Growing up, there was one option for challah in town. Every Friday, my mom would swing by the local market and pick up two loaves from a nearby kosher bakery. The challah was truly uneventful: it was never dense enough, far too airy, not sweet or eggy, and usually even a bit crumbly. A lame excuse for challah, if you ask me.
My mother started making her own around the time I left the house, and she’s never gone back. Before she had the kitchenaid, she did it all by hand, which is actually less time-consuming and labor intensive than one might think. Now that she has the stand mixer, though, challah is a snap.
Over the years, I’ve collected three fantastic recipes for challah. I used to make each with some regularity, but for several years now, I’ve only been making my mother’s. Her basic recipe makes 2 small challot or 1 very large one, which is perfect for me, since I really don’t need all that extra bread lying around (not that I would struggle to find things to do with it…. cough cough french toast cough cough). Second, it’s just sweet enough without being cloying. Third, it’s very easy to substitute some whole wheat flour and wheat gluten for white flour, which makes for a healthier, more rustic loaf of bread. And finally, she’s my mom. Moms’ recipes are best.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on October 29, 2012
Perhaps I’m the only one who stresses about these things, but I’ve been away from the blog for some time. Actually, I’ve been away from the kitchen for some time. October has been a busy month for me at work, and getting a big project out the door meant fewer of those fall nights where my slippered feet pad into the kitchen searching for something to cook. Now that the project is finished, I’ll be on the road a fair amount across the next couple months, presenting the research to hungry executive teams. If only they were hungry for pie.
In months like these, I browse recipes and write shopping lists on the tail ends of plane flights, wrack my brain to remember what’s in all those jars in my fridge, and just try my best to squeeze a few home-cooked meals in between trips.
Still, weekends exist for a reason. Once I have a to-do list in order, I’m up and at ’em, cooking as many dishes as I can without exhausting myself and spoiling the fun. This past weekend, after a quick trip to the gym, I got Vietnamese chicken stock blurp-blurping away on the stove, mixed up the dough for Luisa’s yeasted plum cake and left it to rise, and then got going on today’s recipe, a spicy-sour-salty-sweet eggplant and leek salad that will leave you wishing you were coming with me to Vietnam in December. (!)
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on October 19, 2012
Introducing a new occasional column, Indian Feast, where I’ll slowly tackle staples of Indian cooking right here in my kitchen.
I recently received an email from a reader (hi, Deborah!) about curry. She said she’d been on a kick lately, and wanted to know if I had any recipes to share.
It’s strange and wonderful when I get emails from you and realize we are on precisely the same page. Â Over my years of cooking, I’ve managed to make Vietnamese pho, real phat Thai, 30-ingredient mole negro, and more. But Indian food — the kind you eat in restaurants: silky, smooth, and generously spicy — continues to elude me. But now, after a few fits and starts, I’ve been tearing through lentils and rice like no one’s business, trying to finally find recipes and formulas that will bring my favorite Indian staples within reach at home. The more successful I am, the more recipes I’ll be sharing. Wish me luck. Shall we begin?
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on October 5, 2012
We’ve been having some of the most beautiful days in DC these past couple of weeks. The air is crisp but not yet cool, and the sun seems happy to shine all day long. It looks like summer from my office window, but it’s starting to feel like fall.
The weather’s confused my compass a bit in the kitchen. tomatoes and — believe it or not — peaches are still at the market for the taking, but apples cropped up early this year, and now they’re everywhere. Most confusing of all, as I passed through the lower part of the Dupont market a few Sundays ago, I saw unlikeliest of early fall produce: fresh ginger.
Ginger typically doesn’t come into season until mid-October, but there it was, at the end of September, and it was gorgeous. I’d used up my stash from last fall months ago and craved more ever since. Was I going to hold back? No, no I wasn’t.
The first thing I do with market ginger is make ginger ice cream. It’s been that way every year. Fortunately, I bought enough to have extra after the ice cream was frozen and tucked away. So I flipped to a recipe I’d tabbed back when I breezed my way through The New York Times Essential Cookbook, for fresh salmon and lime cakes.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on September 27, 2012
The other day, I spent too many hours at the office. It was dark when I left work, and by the time I got home, all thoughts of roasted eggplant tartines went out the window. I wanted something I could dig into with a spoon, that would be warm and soft and comforting. Strangely, I wanted something with sour cherries.
It was dark in the kitchen. I couldn’t find my individual gratins. I’d misplaced my whisk, too. Not one to let minor issues deter me from cooking, I tucked a strip of foil 2/3 of the way into my smallest baking dish. I flexed my muscles and whisked egg whites by hand. I squinted my way through the recipe. Lo and behold, what emerged from the oven 45 minutes later was as fluffy and light as I’d hoped it would be, never mind all of my adjustments. It’s called  Quarkauflauf, and it lives up to its name.
Quarkauflauf is from a new cookbook by Luisa Weiss. As I made my first Quarkauflauf, I pictured Luisa standing by my side, laughing at my makeshift gratin and my sore forearms, cheering me on. We’ve never met, Luisa and I, but I read her blog. I cook her food. In the kitchen, she’s a friend.
Luisa’s been blogging forever at The Wednesday Chef, which by god you must read. She shares recipes from newspaper dining sections, but the good ones, the ones you read about and immediately dog-ear. She also writes wonderfully. And now that she’s got her very own book, there’s even more writing, even more of her captivating story, all in one place. When Luisa sent me her a copy of My Berlin Kitchen, I picked it up and promptly stopped everything else I was doing for 48 hours. Â This is one good story.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on September 19, 2012
Growing up, caponata was a thick, saucy affair. The eggplant was cooked until it almost fell apart, then melted into tomatoes, raisins, olives, and onions until it DID fall apart. Â The result was a dip you could eat alone, but it was even better spread on crackers or sandwiches. I loved that caponata, and I still do.
In college, I encountered caponata anew. My boyfriend at the time had a chef for a dad. Alan was an expert at so many things: his challah recipe was the first one I tried, his salad of perfect Berkley tomatoes sticks with me, and his caponata was the best I’d ever had. Alan made two kinds of caponata. One was redder, with plenty of tomatoes and red wine vinegar. The other was lighter, probably with white wine vinegar and golden raisins.  I’m pretty sure Alan thought about bottling it at one time, and wisely so. Both were excellent.
Not that I’m a stickler for authenticity, Â but I’ve come to learn that none of those caponatas was authentic. True Sicilian caponata is more like a cooked salad. Every component is discernible, cooked carefully so that the flavors are married but not muddled. Caponata, like so much of the best cooking in any region, is about the slow, deliberate layering of complementary flavors. It’s a dish that requires time and patience. With eggplant at the height of their season, I made time last weekend to make it the traditional way.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on September 16, 2012
With Rosh Hashana less than 12 hours away, it may seem a bit late to be posting a cake for the Jewish New Year. However: however. Some of us leave the cooking until the last minute, yeah? And besides: if someone had shared this cake at the same time last year, I’d have read it and realized that I focused so intently on getting that brisket just perfectly seasoned, that challah burnished and browned just so, that there was absolutely no dessert. There was a Rosh Hashana meal at my house last year when my gracious guests nibbled on leftover apples and honey after the meal was done. This year, I’ve got dessert covered, for you and me both.
Apple cake is traditional on this holiday, as is honey cake. Why not combine the two? If you make this into just one cake, it is a monstrosity, a tall and majestic cake with spices that demand to be heard as well as seen (the cake is a deep, dark brown). The apples are sprinkled with sugar and spice all their own, and after a nice, long stretch in a hot oven, they soften just enough while keeping their texture.
You’ll be delighted to know that you can make this cake without any special equipment. No mixer necessary; I stirred the batter with a fork. And while I made this in a bundt pan, you can make it in three loaf pans, two round pans, or one 9×13 pan. At this stage in the game, options are key.
[click to continue…]
{ }