The trick to these apple tarts is thinly and evenly slicing the apples. That and the judicious use of cinnamon sugar above and below the apple slices. And using cooking spray on the apple slices before baking to seal in moisture. And brushing honey over the tarts when they are warm from the oven to make the tarts shiny. Ok, so there are a few tricks.
The Banana Cookie recipe from Donna Hay’s new cookbook, Life in Balance: A Fresher Approach to Eating, sounds like its shouldn’t work; and the sight of the batter will not inspire more confidence. Have faith, though, and you will be rewarded with moist macaroons that taste intensely of banana and faintly of caramel and maple.
The ingredients are extremely simple: ground almonds, mashed banana, a small amount of maple syrup and a bit of cinnamon. When I mixed together all the ingredients, I had a thick batter rather than a stiff dough (kind of like the texture of matzoh ball batter before you refrigerate it). I was perplexed as to how to follow the instructions to “Roll 16 to 18 spoonfuls of the banana mixture into balls, Press them into the sugar-cinnamon mixture to coat all over, spacing the cookies an inch apart. . .” I ended up dropping spoonfuls of batter on a parchment lined baking sheet and sprinkling over the Turbinado sugar.
The resulting cookies were at their most delicious straight from the oven: crispy and chewy on the outside from the caramelized coat of raw sugar, and moist and soft on the inside like a macaroon. When the cookies completely cooled, the sugar on the outside melted a bit and the texture of the crust softened. I stored the cookies in an airtight container in the refrigerator and that seemed to restore a bit of crispness to the sugar coating.
Have you had whole roasted carrots? They have a satisfying meatiness to them that makes them seem like more than just a side dish. Served with tahina sauce, they are even more filling. It doesn’t really matter whether or not you use regular carrots or rainbow carrots, but the rainbow carrots are definitely more visually thrilling, especially if you strew over thin slices of roasted lemon.
My sister-in-law introduced me to the roasted rainbow carrots with tahina sauce from The Oh She Glows Cookbook. She served it with a salad of snap peas, radish and mint, which had a dressing with Aleppo pepper. The smoky heat of the Aleppo pepper went extremely well with the tahina sauce and carrots.
When I recreated the carrots at home, I served it with a tahina sauce flavored with smoked paprika. My sister had given me a seasoning mix from Trader Joe’s that replicates the flavor of the spice paste pilpelchuma. I used the pilpelchuma spice mix on the carrots instead of the cumin and coriander seeds of the Oh She Glows recipe.
The idea for roasting lemon slices on top of the carrots comes from this recipe from Bon Appetit for Harissa and Maple Roasted Carrots.
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Did you ever notice how Kylo Ren’s hood and mask kind of look like a hamantaschen? No? Take a look at this drawing tutorial:
Anyway . . .my mishloach manot theme is Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Kylo Ren Hamantaschen
Storm Trooper Marshmallow and Hot Cocoa
BB-8 Orange
TIE Fighter Cookies (100 calorie pack of hexagonal cookie thins)
Admiral Ack-Bar (granola bar)
Luke Skywater (water bottle)
General Organa Cinnamon Bun (recipe from here)
Here are some other Star Wars mishloach manot ideas:
Han Solo Cup and Wookiee Cookie (or Han Solo Rolos)
Rose Cookies for Princess Leia
Death Star Orange (wrap orange in foil)
Darth Vader Hamantaschen
Yoda Soda
Ice Pop Light Sabers
My husband was in Israel on Chanukah and didn’t eat any sufganiyot. The lines were too long and he didn’t have the cheshek. But, as you can see, they really looked amazing. There is this new thing (well, new to me, anyway) (correction: apparently, this a just-new-to-me-in-the boonies-of-Chutz La’Aretz thing) of putting the filling into a plastic pipette, which you squirt into the doughnut yourself before eating it. Is this to prevent sogginess? Is it just a trendy thing? Does anyone know?
Disclosure: Artscroll supplied me with a review copy of Every Day Secret Restaurant Recipes. Opinions expressed are my own.
For those of you who loved Secret Restaurant Recipes, there is good news: Artscroll has just released Everyday Secret Restaurant Recipes. It is an even bigger, wider ranging cookbook than its predecessor, jam packed with lots more recipes from a much larger number of restaurants. The new book repeats the original’s successful concept of dishes from popular kosher restaurants with a side order of chef tricks and tips.
While the first book had lots of special occasion recipes, the twist of the new book is that the recipes are more down-to-earth. The authors, Leah Schapira and Victoria Dwek said their readers asked for “more casual recipes that work for everyday meals (or easier recipes that can also work for special occasions!).”
There is plenty here for home cooks looking to try a new technique or trend. Authentic smokehouse BBQ is an important trend, the authors say, and they explain how to home-smoke using a regular grill. A pizza recipe uses the interesting technique of par-baking the crust before adding the toppings, which is a great do-ahead trick.
If you are thinking ahead to Chanukah, there are quite a few recipes here that call for deep-frying and that would work for a party: Avocado Egg Rolls, Kani Poppers, Champignon Crispy Rolls, Broccoli Nuggets, Buffalo Cauliflower, Tater Poppers and Churros with Strawberry-Ginger Coulis (a perfect Chanukah dessert). If you like to make rugelach for Chanukah, there is a recipe for Chocolate Rugelach from Zak the Baker.
Everyday Secret Restaurant Recipes makes for great armchair travel, with fascinating descriptions of kosher restaurants across the United States, Israel and beyond. The book covers an impressive 100 restaurants from 11 countries, spanning 5 continents. And the range of places covered is broad, too, encompassing high-end restaurants, cafes, pizzerias, fish grills, falafel spots, sushi bars, burger bars, delis, sandwich shops, BBQ joints, steakhouses, bakeries and gourmet take-out places.
I worked my way through 22 of the approximately 104 recipes in the book. The soups and salads were all excellent (especially the Harvest Salad from Pantry in Toronto) and the Par-Baked Pizza (from Brooklyn Pizza in Uruguay) worked brilliantly. The Dilled Salmon with zucchini and bell peppers (from Mocha Bleu in Teaneck) was delicious, super easy and had the added benefit of being a main dish and side dish all-in-one. The Gong Bao Chicken (from the Chabad restaurant Dini’s in Beijing) worked out really well made with tofu instead of chicken. The Peanut Butter Sundaes (molten chocolate cakes topped with ice cream and peanut butter sauce, from Glatt-A-La-Carte) were easy enough to make on a weeknight and a delicious twist on the usual lava cake.
I had roasted a large (14 oz.) beet and had no idea what to do with it. I found a recipe on Saveur that called for combining shredded raw beets, carrots and apples. I shredded the cooked beet with a large carrot and two apples. I seasoned the salad very simply, with a little Montreal Steak Seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic and some other spices). The original recipe called for garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon juice and orange juice.
The beet salad works well as an accompaniment to gefilte fish.
Many years ago, I had a recipe for pareve ice cream that was perfect, except for one thing: it called for raw eggs. I revised the recipe a while back by heating the eggs with sugar until they reached a safe temperature. But, that was kind of a pain to do.
Now, I have veganized that recipe, replacing the eggs with something that has recently been dubbed aquafaba, a neologism for the liquid left over from cooking beans. It seems that this liquid can be whipped into something very much like meringue. It can be turned into meringue cookies, topping for lemon meringue pie, marshmallows, marshmallow fluff, Italian meringue buttercream and more . . .
In the last several months, there has been a flurry of experimentation with this in the vegan community. It seems to have started with Jöel Roessel, who discovered that the liquid from cooked chickpeas could be whipped into meringue and then posted about it on his blog, Revolution Vegetale. It really took off, though, when Goose Wohlt shared his experimentation with this technique via Facebook (full story here and here and here). There is much more information on this Facebook page.
Theoretically, all you need to do for aquafaba mousse is whip the liquid from a can of chickpeas until it forms a dense white foam and then fold into the foam some melted chocolate (3.5 ounces). I think that the mousse has better texture when sugar is whipped into the aquafaba foam. The added sugar makes for a dense, stable meringue instead of a delicate foam. To balance the added sugar, I add in some cocoa powder and oil.
I have tried this mousse various ways. I am giving you two versions I especially liked. The first version has more sugar/cocoa/oil. The meringue is especially stable, but the resulting mousse is very light and delicate instead of dense and firm. If you like a denser, firmer mousse, try the second version, which adds in more chocolate and reduces the cocoa/sugar/oil.
These remind me of rum balls–intense chocolate-ey nuggets with a slight chewiness to them. Actually, they are really more or less a chocolate-covered bite-sized Lara Bar, but with a lighter, brownie-esque texture. I keep these in the fridge or the freezer. Excellent as a quick pick-me-up snack, but pretty enough to serve at a party as a fancy candy.
I don’t remember exactly where I got the basic proportions for this recipe (I made this before Pesach and wrote everything down on a scrap of paper), but I remember looking at a recipe for raw date brownies by Chana Schottenstein on Joy of Kosher, (which is very similar to this recipe on Minimalist Baker) and that might have been my starting point.
I ended up making this three times, finally changing the nut I used, in order to get the right texture.
My first two batches of this were made with pecans. Only pecans. The first time I made it, I had the problem of the mixture becoming oiley when I tried to shape it into balls. At first, I thought this was a problem of how I mixed everything together: perhaps the nuts were getting overheated and releasing oil as they were processed with everything else in the food processor? The second time, the mixture was okay as long as I handled it very gently.
Then I realized that the problem might be the pecans, so I researched the oil content of different nuts. Turns out that pecans are especially high in oil content, and almonds are much lower. Almonds are about 55 percent oil and pecans are 70 percent oil. A third batch of raw brownie made with almonds instead of pecans was lighter in texture and taste, more like a brownie than chewy fudge.
Originally called “Soul Soothing African Peanut Stew,” this recipe is really more about the vegetables than the peanuts. The flavor of peanuts is actually pretty subtle. There is so much else going on: chickpeas, spinach, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic and lots of spice.
I know . . . the right name is African Peanut Stew . . . and the concept is based on a real West African dish (Maafe or Domodah).
This comes from a cookbook that my sister-in-law has been steadily working her way through: The Oh She Glows Cookbook by blogger Angela Liddon. Everything my sister-in-law has made from this book has been fantastic, and she has made a lot of the recipes from the book. My sister-in-law makes this stew for company and it has become her most requested recipe.
Given the above, you would think I would just faithfully follow the recipe instead of changing it around. But, I changed it just a little bit. Just a little.
I added eggplant, increased the amount of spinach and reduced the amount of broth. Plus, I replaced the jalapeno pepper with a poblano pepper.
You can use my changes, or follow the recipe as originally written, but do try it. The combination of peanut butter and vegetables sounds improbable, but the end result is fantastic.
Pragmatic Attic 