Vegan Meat Patties

Vegan meat patties

Quite by chance and by accident I have made vegan patties that look and taste like meat. I think I shall have to name them Serendipity Patties. (Btw, hands up who first learned the word serendipity from Dr Who circa 1970?)

Here's how it happened. I went shopping this morning while DD was at school. Included in my weekly shop full of healthy fruit, vegetables and whole grains of course (well mostly - some of the grains aren't wholely whole tbh), were DD's crisps. I came home, unpacked the shopping and sat down at the computer with a cup of tea, to work.

I tried eating a bowl of porridge with banana. Then I finished the cold pasta in the fridge with salad vegetables and a tahina dressing. Then I had another cup of tea. And finally I succumbed to the crisps. (I should have just eaten the crisps first and bypassed all the other calories.) This was over a four hour period but still, I ate her crisps.

DD goes to club straight from school on Friday and one of the leaders comes to the school to walk a group of them over to the club house at 11.45. Yes Stupid Friday school finishes at 11.45. It was my turn to pick her up with her friend, at 1.15. We walked the friend home and then just had time to pop back into the local supermarket for a replacement bag of crisps.

The shops here close at 2pm on Fridays in the winter and don't open at all on Saturday. There was a pile of reduced perishable items by the check out. I was drawn by a designer loaf of bread and a pack of two whole-wheat challah rolls in the 2 for 12 shekels basket. I bought them and the sliced loaf went straight into the freezer for toast. I fancied a challah sandwich for supper.

However, when I took the challot (pl) out of the bag they were dry and sort of crumbled in my hands. I was angry initially but there was nothing I could do about it except resolve never to buy food on offer from that shop again. I've said this before but I keep forgetting.

Ever industrious in the kitchen, I crumbled the challot into a bowl, added a finely chopped onion, a jar of pasta tomato sauce, two tablespoons of nutritional yeast, and a shlug of olive oil. I would have added some soy or Worcester sauce but I didn't have any. I mixed it all up and spooned patty sized mounds of the mixture onto a baking tray. Into the oven for - umm - until they started to smell done, flipped them over and back into the oven for another 10 minutes. Oh yes, the oven was hot  - about 200 degrees.

They were still a bit moist and floppy when I put them onto a plate to cool but became much firmer as they rested. I had about 25 (now only 21) and they really do taste meaty. I think next time I'll make them bigger like burgers.

I packed them into a plastic box and into the fridge for the week. In a prime example of bloggerfail, I'd forgotten to take a photo. So the photo after the fact is not very Martha Stewart but at least I remembered before they were all eaten. Don't they look good for vegan?

Earth Mother Bakes Bread

These have sliced olives in the dough.

I've suddenly got into making bread. It takes about 5 minutes or less to make the dough and another 5 minutes to shape it before 30 minutes in a hot oven. You do need to allow for waiting time (about 3 hours for the first rising and another 20 minutes after its shaped). So if you have 10 minutes to spare over a 4 hour period it's so worth it.


DD only wants my homemade rolls now. She likes them with olives inside.

There are advantages to making your own bread:

1. It's cheaper. It costs less than 2GBP to buy the flour and instant dried yeast which yield about 24 rolls or three large loaves. I didn't factor in the teaspoon of salt per loaf and any other spices you want to add. I usually add some za'atar to the dough because we like our food savoury. And I didn't work out the cost of having the oven on for 50 minutes or the water used. Nor the cost of the washing up liquid. However, artisan bread in this country is about 3GBP per loaf so I still think it's cheaper.

2. You know exactly what's in your bread. No sugar or preservatives, food colouring or molasses for brown bread, or any other chemicals. Seriously take a look at the ingredients of a shop bought loaf - it's a list of about 15 items.

3. If you make rolls you eat less. Going back for another slice of bread and another seems less greedy than eating a third or fourth roll. Especially as there are only eight in a batch and I need to keep some for DD's lunchbox each day. I'm into making bread but I'm not going to do it every day!

4. It tastes better than shop bought unless you are buying designer bread from a small bakery.

5. You can also use this recipe for pizza bases.

Two rolls became one pizza blanca.

Recipe:

Mix 3 cups of flour, 1tspn of instant dried yeast, 1 tspn of salt and any other herbs or spices, in a mixing bowl.
Add 2 cups of warm water and mix with the handle of a spoon or fork until you have a cohesive dough.
Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm(ish) place for about 3 hours.
Divide into rolls or turn the whole batch onto a baking sheet for one loaf. You can use baking paper under the dough or lightly brush the tray with olive oil.
Wait 20 minutes for the dough to rise again while the oven heats up to about 180-200 degrees.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Wait at least five minutes before eating.

These came out the oven tonight. They have 1cup wholewheat flour/2cups white.

One Simple Pizza/Bread Dough

My new favourite You Tube channel is Cooking With Plants. It has amazing vegan recipes and it's not complicated or boring. Anja Cass gets straight to the point and cooks the food without minutes of introspective blabbering about other things on her mind. And her kitchen is clean - I like that.

DD's favourite food is pizza. Seeing as she eats very little of anything, I try to give her what she likes. Obviously I don't want to give her the sugar/salt loaded commercial pizzas and (also obviously) she won't be fobbed off with my pita bread pizzas or plain cheese on toast.

I wanted to be that mum who made homemade pizza from scratch but the dough bit seemed like such a bother. Until I saw this no knead pizza dough recipe from Cooking with Plants. And then I noticed that she used exactly the same dough for her country style bread. It looked so easy it would have been rude not to try it. So I came over all earthy and had a go.

First I made the dough. I dug out a solitary packet of instant yeast from the back of the cupboard. I mixed it with the flour, salt, and some other herbs, and then added water. Nothing had happened after nearly two hours so I concluded that either the yeast was so old it had died, or it was not in a warm enough environment.

As I'd made the dough in a plastic bowl I couldn't put it in the oven (on low) so I put the whole bowl into a bigger bowl and poured boiling water into the inter-bowl space. That seemed to do the trick.

Then DD helped me make a traditional pizza with corn and olives. Guey dough everywhere. Ugh! Next time we agreed that I'd roll the dough and she can put on the toppings. I admit the tomato sauce came out of a plastic cube that looked like tomato puree when I bought it but turned out to be spaghetti sauce - I absolutely do not buy spaghetti sauce.

Then we made a pizza blanca with olives and cheese because we'd run out of tomato sauce. And actually we like that better.

After that we had no more tomato sauce or cheese so I thought I'd try the olive bread. I made rolls and they were delicious.

It was so easy I will be doing this again often. I've already bought more whole-wheat flour and new yeast. Watch this space for Earthy Midlife Singlemum. :~)

One inevitable drawback to being so healthy.

Muffin Tin Meals

Did anyone out there once imagine they would make wonderfully healthy cooked-from-scratch meals for their family every day? Oh, almost all of you? Well there's a surprise - NOT.

Melanie LaDue, who blogs at Reasons to skip the Housework, was one of us in this respect. Her mother even gave her a box of recipes when she got married, that showed her how to spend the whole afternoon in the kitchen making such meals. Hahahaha. As, like us, Melanie doesn't live in the 1950s, she needed fast, healthy meals that could be eaten, on the go if necessary or in a packed lunch, and stored in the freezer in single portion sizes (you don't want to defrost a whole shepherd's pie and be left eating it every day for a week).

One day she realized that a lot more could be done with a muffin tin than just bake muffins (or cupcakes). Super Quick Muffin Tin Meals - 70 Recipes for Perfectly Portioned Comfort Food in a Cup was the result. I was sent the book to review and I can honestly say that I've had a blast with it.

The genius is so simple - normal meals in muffin sizes that can be frozen and used as needed. There are spaghetti nests filled with a meatball, individual  lasagnes, shepherd's pie (you need cupcake holders for this one), chicken pot pies, deep pan pizzas, chilli in polenta nests, muffin tin meatloaf...

Melanie also makes desserts including individual cakes, pies, and s'mores.

I love that the base of your cup can be things other than dough or pastry. You can use a slice of ham or salami, slices of bread or pitta moulded into the muffin tray, or pancake batter, Another idea is to make shells from e.g. bread, pittas or wraps, and fill them with creamy chicken or vegetable salads.

I decided to start with cheesey hashbrowns, If you know me you'll also know that I'm almost incapable of sticking to the recipe as it's written. If I'm already grating potatoes I might as well add a couple of carrots and a chunk of cabbage, right? I actually just put all three in the processor and then added some eggs, milk, grated cheese, salt, pepper, oregano and zhuzhed (why mess up a mixing bowl aswell?). I added a tablespoon of flour for extra binding and some onion soup powder because I realized that an onion would have been good but I didn't have one. So basically, I made it up as I went along and it came out delicious.

Really that was quite enough for one day week, and I am trying to eat through the food in my freezer rather than feeding it more food. However, I'd already cooked some broccoli and defrosted a few cubes of chopped spinach so I had to press on. I was going to make frittatas in brown bread cups but I decided that was a waste of bread. I changed the plan to broccoli, spinach and cheese frittatas. Each muffin cup received a generous spoonful of chopped broccoli, spinach and grated cheese mixture. On top of this I spooned a custard of eggs, milk, a bit of flour for binding as I'm always scared it won't set, salt and pepper.

I've also already defrosted a packet of blackcurrents (or they may be blueberries, who knows) so I'm going to make blueberry oven pancakes as soon as the frittatas come out.

Muffin Tin Meals is published by Race Point Publishing, New York, NY (2015) and costs $21.99 US/12.99 GBP/$25.99 CAN. Perfect for a post-Christmas present as there is ample opportunity to use up the leftovers from Christmas dinner, for example, turkey stuffing bites and turkey cheddar melts.

The Cookbook Club

Actually it's Jerusalem Cookbook Club but it can be done anywhere of course. It all started with this article about why cookbook clubs should be the new way we entertain. One friend sent it to another and within a month Jeruselem Cookbook Club had it's inaugural dinner party at the home of Aviva, who conveniently lives next door to me.

Some of the gang before everyone had arrived.

Our cookbook of choice was Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. A fitting choice as Ottolenghi is a local lad after all. We soon expanded the cookbook choice to include Plenty More and even then there was a flurry of sharing recipes online and popping over to Aviva's house to peruse the actual book. We decided next time to choose a chef or cookery author rather than limit ourselves to one cookbook.

As I looked through the recipes I was torn between the easy option of a dish with ingredients I have in the house or could easily get, and something more exotic and complicated. In the end I took the middle ground - uncomplicated ingredients but an unusual dish. I chose to make the Aubergine Cheesecake. It's more of a flan than a cake and definitely savoury.

Most of the ingredients were in my local supermarket but not the 10 fresh oregano leaves to tear over the roasted aubergine slices and tomato base. I waivered between buying fresh basil leaves instead or dried oregano flakes. In the end I opted for half and half and bought both. There were also no baby plum tomatoes but as they were to be chopped up anyway I sneakily used the left over ordinary tomatoes at the bottom of my fridge. (Btw, I peeled them even though the recipe doesn't say to do that as I hate the plasticky bits of peel you get when you cook tomatoes with the peel on.) There was feta cheese in the supermarket but at a cost I decided I wasn't willing to go to for one dish so I substituted goat cheese lebane instead, seeing as the feta was to be creamed anyway.

The slippery slope of altering the recipe had began before I'd even paid for the ingredients but that's me. I can't change my cooking style of over 40 years and that's why I don't bake.

On my way home from work on the bus on the evening of the dinner, I suddenly panicked that the recipe would tell me to salt the aubergine and leave it to stand for several hours. If so I was screwed as I only had two hours to collect my daughter from school, cook, supervise homework, shower and change, make a few phonecalls, put on a wash... Did I remember to say cook?

The Aubergine Cheesecake was surprisingly easy to make. The aubergine slices didn't need prepping hours in advance and I cut out the step where you roast them on a baking tray and then tranfer them to the oven dish. I roasted straight in the oven dish. At the end you are supposed to brush it with more olive oil and sprinkle with za'atar. I decided that roasting the aubergine had taken in quite enough olive oil thank you and we didn't need any more. I sprinkled with za'atar and called it a day. The ladies thanked me for this later.

Aubergine Cake

Basically the Aubergine Cake is roast aubergine slices and tomatoes covered in a cream, feta, and cream cheese custard (3 eggs added) and baked in the oven. I thought it looked a bit anemic when it came out the oven but maybe if you do brush with more olive oil it won't.

We had a rule that we made the recipe from the book with no doubling or trebling the amounts. This turned out to be a good rule as the recipe says it feeds 4, or 6 for a starter. Mine fed 12 and I brought half of it home with me. Even with generous portions, and I admit that we were taking small portions of each dish as we had over 12 different dishes to sample, this was for way more than 4 - 6 people. Also it's very rich so you wouldn't want to eat big portions.

And so we convened in Jerusalem on a mild November evening to celebrate Jerusalem Cookbook Club and Yotam Ottolenghi. The table looked amazing. Positively groaning with fabulous dishes.

More dishes arrived after this photo!

It was a great success with each diner introducing her dish as it was passed around. There was wine to keep it all flowing and conversation during which we got to know each other better and discover mutual friends, shared histories, and a common love of good food and fine dining (although some of us don't get to do the last one so often :~P ).

My personal favourite was the cauliflower cake and I will definitely be trying this one at home. We also had roast fennel salad, rice with red currants, a noodle and soy bean dish, majadara, shakshuka, sweet potato salad, and, and, and.... it seemed to go on forever. It took us over two hours to even get to the delicious desserts which were a cherry in cream syllabub (although Ottolenghi doesn't call it syllabub as that would be very 1970s) and tiramisu (also very 1970s strangely enough).

We enjoyed it all so much we're doing it again in January when we will cook Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa. I'd not heard of her before so it'll be a culninary adventure for me. Jerusalem/Israel people (we already have one member from Carmiel) you can find us on facebook here.

Pre-Pesach Leftovers Recipe

At Pesach time we run down all the food we have in the house. You can keep sealed packets and frozen stuff but I like to use up all the open packets. We start using things up a few weeks before and it's a nice feeling to know that all the storage jars get washed out at least once a year. :~)

What do you think these are?

They are everything I had opened in jars in my food cupboard, fridge and freezer, made into rissoles and a kugel.

2 cups of polenta
1 1/2 cups of red lentils (soaked)
1 cup or orzo (cooked)
1/2 cup of  porridge oats
1 onion chopped
Half a bag of frozen broccoli
1/4 bag frozen spinach
About 100g of butter
Some cooking oil
Salt
pepper
curry powder
2 eggs
2 cups of milk

Saute the onion in the butter, cook the orzo, cook the broccoli, thaw the spinach and drain, mix it all together.

Pour into a well oiled dish and bake for about an hour until done for the kugel. Here is the kugel. Cut it into squares and serve with salad.

Make the leftover mixture into small patties and fry. Also serve with a salad, with or without ketchup.

Homemade Falafel

Homemade Falafel Burgers

Falafel is a national dish in Israel. It was always a traditional Arab food and still is in Egypt and other Arab countries but there it is more likely to be made from fava beans. In Israel they use chickpeas. Yemenite Jewish immigrants started the tradition of stuffing the falafel into a pitta pocket (or wrapping it in a bigger laffa) with salad humus, pickles and chips. 

This portable snack can be picked up on the streets in Israel the way you pick up a hot dog in NYC or a slice of pizza. It is the Israeli equivalent to the UK's fish and chips and you'll find several falafel shops along every high street here.

I have a big jar of dried chickpeas

The traditional Israeli falafel is dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and ground (processed today) and mixed with onion, garlic, parsley, coriander, cumin, salt & pepper, and a bit of flour to assist the binding. The resulting paste is then rolled into balls and fried. No eggs, this is totally vegan. With the pitta and salad it's a whole vegan meal.

The first time I tried making it I made the mistake of cooking the chickpeas before I made the falafel paste. This is totally unnecessary unless you prefer a more mashed-potato type consistancy to your falafel.

In recent years 'designer' falafel has emerged - curry flavour, green (more green herbs), lemon-garlic, sweet and sour, hot and spicey... You can add anything you like. I like to put some tehina paste in mine because my food processor isn't strong enough to really grind the chickpeas so the tehina gives it a bit more moisture.

In the pan

People don't tend to make their own falafel as it's so easy and cheap to buy. However I was tempted by a big bag of powdered falafel mix in the supermarket (just add water) before I opted for the dried chick peas.

I also opted to make bigger, burger sized, falafel rather than the more commonly sized balls. That way I'm more likely to eat them on a plate with my salad than with the unnecessary pitta. And I find I eat less when they are bigger. I could easily eat 7 - 8 small falafel balls whereas I'll only have two falafel burgers that are the size of about three balls. And you can't just pop one extra into your mouth every time you pass the plate.

You can google falafel recipes if you need exact amounts but I prefer to be creative and add whatever I have to hand.

A Store Cupboard Vegan Dinner Party

I am aware that I may have upped the ante when it comes to store cupboard meals. If my store cupboard guru isn't proud of me for this one I give up.

It all started when an old friend from England, currently living in Tel Aviv, came for Friday Night Dinner. Notice the capital letters there? Friday Night Dinner isn't just food on a Friday evening. It's one of the two main Shabbat (Sabbath) meals. At least three courses are expected and there are often four.

My friend and I have a mutual friend living round the corner so I also invited her and her family of three. We were six at table, four courses, vegan, and almost entirely from the store cupboard.

The Menu

Hors d'ouvres
Wine - My friend from round the corner brought a bottle of wine.
Challa - I bought two loaves of challa. (about 6 shekels each but one is left over for sandwiches during the week)
Humus - Home Made and all from the cupboard.
Coleslaw - I had a cabbage and I made it with red bell peppers instead of carrots as that's what I had.
Salad - Tomato/cucumber/avocado
Pickled cucumbers - A tin from the cupboard.

Soup
Tomato soup - There was an offer of three one litre cartons of assorted soft drinks for 12 shekels. I bought apple and mango for drinking, and one litre of  tomato juice to add to the soup. The other ingredients were sauteed onions, red peppers and garlic, tomato puree and seasonings. I had all of those in stock.
Soup nuts - From the cupboard.

Main Course
Shepherd's pie - In the freezer I had a bag of Tivol 'minced meat' (tvp) which I sauteed up with onion, garlic, tomato puree, soy sauce and some powdered onion soup mix. The topping was made from two other packets found in the freezer which needed to be used up; cauliflower and artichoke hearts. (I'm not even sure why I bought the artichoke hearts, they must have been on offer.) Both boiled and processed into a puree with seasoning and some flour to bind it a bit.

I only remembered to photograph it afterwards. #bloggerfail

Roast potatoes - Yup, we had potatoes and oil in stock.
Mixed vegetables - I used up whatever there was. It was mainly mushrooms, peas, tofu cubes, and onions.

Dessert
Hot vanilla-iced cake - I bought it (14 shekels)
Dates and fresh strawberries - Brought by friend from Tel Aviv.
Tea and coffee

The total cost for dinner for six was 6 shekels for the challa, 12 shekels for the drinks, and 14 shekels for the cake. 32 shekels is about 5.50GBP. And there are leftovers for the week in the fridge.

Obviously you can't do this every week as you have to buy food sometimes but it's great when you can pull it off. If I'd not had so many vegetables in the fridge I could have made the shepherd's pie into a pasta bake and the mixed vegetables could have been tinned mushrooms and a gravy to be served with couscous or rice. I always have tvp and peas in the freezer and a cabbage, tomatoes and cucumbers in the fridge. The soup nuts are also a staple here as DD likes a little bag of them to take to school for a snack.

For more about store cupboard eating look here.

Real Carrot And Apple Mini-Muffins

After my stressful baking experience last week, this week I made real carrot and apple mini-muffins with real butter. I also upped the sugar and apples as last week they weren't quite sweet enough. I've removed last week's recipe as we don't need to know how to make muffins that were only ok. These are good and DD will have one in her snack box each day for school.

Real Carrot and Apple Mini-Muffins

A . Cook all the following ingredients together until the carrots are soft and the water is reduced to a slightly thicker syrup. You'll include the syrup in the cake batter. 
4 carrots peeled and sliced
2 apples peeled and sliced
water to cover
4 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

B. Put all of A (including the syruppy water) into the food processor and add the following ingredients. Whizh until you have something that looks and tastes like cake batter.
2 cups of wholewheat flour
1 sachet of baking powder (12g)
100g butter
2 medium eggs
4 tbs brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
pinch of salt (Not sure why but I remember we always had to add a pinch of salt in school cookery lessons, so I did.)

C. Resisting the urge to skip straight to the bit where you get to lick the bowl, put about 2 tbs of batter into about 22 medium fairy cake (cupcake) holders and bake in a hot oven until they're done.

By the way, when we got to lunch last week my host had made dessert herself. Turns out she loves making desserts and couldn't resist. Grrrr.

  

NOT-vember 1st: Baking Stress

Having driven all my friends mad this morning on facebook, here's the story...

I have taken on the NOT-vember challenge from Elaine (Mortgage Free in Three) to continue her STOP-tober challenge - a money diet and store cupboard amnesty - which I posted about all last month. The most important thing I learned from last month is that it's a learning curve and you won't get the best results by doing it for only one month.

One aspect I failed to internalize sufficiently is that the store cupboard has the basic ingredients so that when your friend asks you to bring dessert to contribute to Shabbat Lunch, you can make a dessert for free out of your store cupboard rather than trotting off to the shops to buy something. That's the whole point, to keep your spending down to a bare minimum.

As well as the NOT-vember challenge, there are four other factors that had to be considered...

1. My friend is serving meat tomorrow and she keeps kosher. This means milk and meat are kept totally separate and she can only serve/eat something with dairy in it, three hours after eating meat or chicken.

2. I don't really like cakes, biscuits or chocolate. I don't like dry and sweet. To me a cake is simply something on which to serve the cream and icing. The sort of desserts I like are creme caramel, cheese cake, real ice-cream, and fruit salad. On the other hand, a moist cake or pastry made with real butter can be delicious. I'm more than happy to fill up on the main course and skip dessert after a meat meal.

3. My friend has a medical reason that she can't eat fruit. So my fallback of always offering to bring a fruit salad wasn't appropriate here.

4. I hate using stuff that isn't real food. Examples of this are: margarine, non-dairy creams and ice-creams, and too much sugar in anything.

So we had this impossible situation where all my friend was asking of me was to go to the shop and by a non-dairy cake that the children would enjoy for dessert. And all I was thinking was that I couldn't do that because I had to 'shop' from my store cupboard.

I then had to find something I'm prepared to bake without butter. The vast amount of oil in some of the vegan recipes didn't appeal. I put it on facebook and got some fabulous suggestions including, meringues with lemon curd, and carrot cake made with oil and apple sauce. These were really the only two that covered all the bases. (I'll say it again - I know you can bake without using butter but I don't like it and I will not use non-dairy creams.)

So I adapted the carrot cake recipe as I wanted to make muffins rather than a cake, I wanted to use less oil and sugar, and I didn't have enough apples to make apple sauce. (I was that close to buying apple sauce in the supermarket when I remembered that I should make it.)

Verdict: we got 21 mini-muffins and they're..... ok. But what do I know, they're sweet so I'm not that interested. Next time if they don't want a fruit salad I can bring a vegetable salad or a bottle of wine. This whole episode was far too stressful. And the funny thing is, it's happened before - although of course I only remembered afterwards.

I'm still planning to make cakes and biscuits for us at home but as we don't have meat in our house at all, I can happily bake with butter.

One week later: I removed the recipe I had here as the muffins were only ok. The next week I made Carrot and Apple Mini-Muffins with real butter and they were great. You can see the recipe here.

Making Sauerkraut and Homemade Tofu (Potchkerei)

I love sauerkraut and last week I stood looking at the jar of it in the supermarket and thinking there must be a way to make this rather than paying about 20 times the price of a cabbage for it. And I'm sure there was added stuff that I didn't need in it.

A couple of days ago Elaine at Mortgage Free in Three, posted how to make sauerkraut. And guess what? It's just cabbage and salt. I always have a cabbage on the go in the fridge. I slice off a bit to give some crunch to any savoury sandwich. I had about a 1/4 of a cabbage left so I followed Elaine's instructions and made a jam jar's worth of sauerkraut. Of course it has to ferment for a week but if it tastes good I'll make a bigger batch next time. (You can see my soy beans soaking in the background.)










As I was potchkeing about in the kitchen anyway and I'd bought dried soy beans with the express purpose of making my own tofu, I decided to get to it. You have to soak the soy beans for about 7 hours before you start and then make the soy milk before you even get to the tofu part. I chose this recipe because it tells you to save the ground soy beans left over from making the soy milk. It's called okara and it's nutritious. There are loads of recipes online for okara. It would be a crime to throw it out but many of the tofu recipes say to chuck it.

I used one cup of dry beans which swelled to about three cups after soaking. I used lemon juice as the coagulator. I was thrilled when I saw my soy milk curdling. Payback for all the times I've baked a cake and added the eggs too fast or something. Suffice to say I know curdling when I see it.

My yield of tofu was less than one cup. Delicious as it was, and it was - with a delicate lemony taste, I was decidedly underwhelmed. I could have used it in a tofu recipe but I was fed up by that point. It was like one of those French Haute Cuisine or Cordon Bleu things where you reduce and reduce for hours and end up with a thimble of exquisite sauce. I sprinkled it with salt, olive oil and some za'atar and ate it in less than a minute.






If you were unsure of the meaning of potchkerei above - this is it. Eight hours of work and a sink full of pots for this. Tofu isn't cheap but if you factor in the time, water, gas, electricity, washing up liquid... I'll be buying my tofu in future.

The okara however, ended up as 24 soy-oat-peanut butter-raisin-brown sugar cookies. Yum. And the final straining of the tofu curds left me with a soy stock which looked and tasted like a light misu soup. I fried some onions and garlic, added seasoning and soy sauce and ended up with delicious onion-soy soup.

So I got something for all the potchkerei, just not the mountain of cheap and healthy tofu I was expecting. And I'll let you know how the sauerkraut tastes next week.

Matza Brei

Obviously I had my matza brei on Pesach (Passover) but I was so out of the blogging loop that I forgot to take photos of it. Can you believe that!?

Before leaving Jerusalem for London, I had had to buy a packet of matzas for DD's mock seder at kindergarten. Also, I rented out the apartment here during Pesach. So when we returned there was a fair amount of leftover matza in the cupboard. I managed to get through most of it with butter and/or cheese. Maybe one or two with butter and jam. And then I was down to the last three slices. I took the opportunity to return to matza brei so that I could share it with you because it's one of life's pure pleasures and, for many of us, the ultimate comfort food.

Matza Brei

Ingredients
Slices of matza (the big ones)
water
one egg per slice of matza
a splash of milk
salt and pepper
a generous knob butter for frying

Method
1. Run your matza under the tap for 3 seconds to wet them but don't make them soggy.
2. Beat the eggs, milk, salt and pepper in a bowl (like for making an omelet).
3. Melt the butter in a frying pan.
4. Break the matza up over the pan and drop the pieces into the hot butter. Stir and fry over for a minute. You may have to add lots more butter.
5. Pour over the egg mixture and cook like scrambled eggs.
6. Turn out onto a plate and add more salt and pepper to taste.

Variation
There are those who prefer their matza brei made like an omelet and they may even season it with sugar like a pancake. Others can't resist adding fried mushrooms or onions to the mixture but, imo, you can't improve on the basic pure matza brei. I would advise you not to play with the recipe.

Warning
Everyone has their own family matza brei made to Grandma's traditional recipe. Everyone thinks that theirs is the best and the original. Don't get drawn into arguments about this - keep your cool and be secure in the knowledge that mine is the best and the original.

Invitation
I invite those with different matza brei experiences to add them in the comments below.

Rainbow Soups

In order to get DD to try something new I have to insist and offer a small bribe - cake for dessert usually. I've been pushing the soup issue for a while now. Let's face it, a bowl of soup in the winter is the best way to go on every level. It's warming, filling, cheap, and easy to make a big batch for a few days and some for freezing.

DD, however, was not interested. Although she loves the mandlech (soup-nuts) on their own or with grated cheese (why not?) the soup always met with a defiant, "DON'T WANT!"

Then yesterday I had one portion of orange soup left over. (Squash, sweet potato, carrot, and a dash of orange juice added to sauteed onions and garlic, salt and pepper - all liquidized into anonymity of course.) I laid down the law - no mandels on their own, only in soup. Luckily I had cake to offer for dessert.

DD was doubtful. Then I was inspired. Remembering the enormous raw beetroot I'd popped into my shopping trolley earlier, with no idea what I was going to do with it, I told her, "if you eat orange soup today, I'll make purple soup tomorrow."

Her eyes lit up. I continued. "And then we can have red soup (tomato obviously), green soup (pea), and even white soup (cauliflower and potato)!  No darling, I can't make blue soup."

So tonight we have purple soup. It's delicious, even if I say so myself. I didn't expect it to be this good. here's what I did:

Sautee an onion and a few cloves of garlic in oil, add an enormous beetroot cut into cubes, more than cover it with water and bring to the boil.

Meanwhile add a cup of tomato ketchup (or puree and sugar), a dash of soy sauce, some onion soup mix, salt, pepper and.... because beetroot has a sharp taste.... two tablespoons of honey. Reader, I kid you not. It works.

Simmer for up to an hour (beetroot is tough) and zzhuzzh (I think that's Yiddish for wizz) with a hand blender. It comes out a velvety purple. Here is mine with some mandlech. (It looks more purple in real life).

I'm linking this to Mrs M's Meal Planning Monday (go take a look to see what people have planned for the week). Even though it's not a week of meals, it is a plan to see us through the winter and add a major element to each meal.

I don't know why naming soups by colour is so much more fun and less threatening to a 4yo than naming the vegetables in it but it is. Whatever it takes eh?

Lemony Roast Vegetables With Ptitim

Keith the Reluctant Housedad (aka Big Chief Recipe Shed) took up my challenge to make a lemony vegetarian dish that isn't dessert. He came up with Lemony Middle Eastern Roast Vegetables with Zatar served on (so tempted to write: a bed of...) Fluffy Couscous and Feta Cheese. It looks amazing. I was especially intrigued by the cubes of lemon with the peel that get roasted with the vegetables. Of course I promised to cook it myself and blog about it...

Now what would be the point of reproducing exactly Keith's recipe and writing an almost identical post? Exactly. So I've made a few modifications....

1. Instead of butternut squash, I substituted aubergine. I love roast aubergine and it's still very Middle Eastern.

2. I'm not a fan of cooked chickpeas and anyway I use chickpeas a lot in my homemade humus and falafel. So I left out the chickpeas and put in garlic.

3. I forgot to buy a green pepper so I just have the red pepper and courgettes (mine are the light green ones rather than the dark ones that Keith used) to go with my aubergine and garlic.

4. I can't put feta cheese in my couscous because I'm doing a DIY-Detox with Jane from Diary Of a Desperate Exmoor Woman. I've cut out dairy completely so no cheese sorry.

5. We're not big on couscous although the couscous with feta sounds amazing. Seeing as I'm not doing the feta and I'm also trying to feed a 3yo I used coucous ptitim intsead.

About Ptitim

In the early days of the State of Israel in the 1950s, there were many refugees from Arab countries. They weren't used to the pasta and potatoes familiar to the Europeans. They cooked with couscous, lentils and rice. A cheap oven-baked pasta was created in the shapes of rice (like orzo), lentils, couscous, and the giant pearl couscous (maftoul or mograbeih). You cook it like rice or pasta. They are now a favourite Israeli food and come in rings, stars and hearts as well. Follow the links for a fuller account on Wikipedia.

So here it is:

For the marinade: Olive oil, lemon juice, zatar (if you can't find zatar cumin is also good and still Middle Eastern). I added salt and pepper though Keith didn't.

Cube the vegetables: aubergine, courgettes, red pepper, garlic (throw in whole cloves with the peel still on). I left out the whole cubed lemon as this was my second attempt. The one I made yesterday I found too lemony. Keith, however says he likes the sharpness so it's a matter of taste. I prefer a subtle hint of lemon.

Mix the marinade into the vegetables and leave to marinate for at least an hour.

Roast the vegetables in the oven for about an hour turning them over occasionally. (Yesterday I added black olives after about 45 minutes and it was a nice touch. Today I didn't have any.)

Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their peels and squash each one lightly with a fork to release the flavour.

Serve the roast vegetables on a bed of  (just kidding) with ptitim.

When I packed the leftovers away I mixed everything together and it actually looks like a very nice side dish to serve with fish or chicken.

Thanks Keith!

What Are We Going To Eat In The Holidays?

This is going to sound strange but I've not often fed my daughter three meals a day for more than a few days at a time and I'm not sure exactly how to do it efficiently or exactly what she likes. Before the welfare people start making inquiries I'll expalin that DD has nursery 5 1/2 days a week (normal for Israel) including breakfast, lunch and two snacks. I only have to deal with Friday lunch, Saturday and suppers.

Friday lunch involves shopping for the weekend. The mall has a ready-made food for Shabbat market full of take-away meat, potato or rice, vegetable and salad dishes. I usually buy a small container of goujon chicken schnitzels for DD to eat while we're shopping. As we don't have meat at home this satisfies me that she's had some good protein for the day. (Her usual meat meal is lunch at nursery).

On Shabbat (Saturday) we get up late and DD has snacky things to keep her going until an early lunch. So I've never had to deal with breakfast. This week I even asked the nursery teacher if she has milk on her cereal as I had no idea whether she likes this or not. Apparently every child has milk on their cereal except DD, who prefers to eat it dry. Who knew?

Starting on Wednesday we have three weeks of summer holiday during which I have to feed DD three meals a day. Obviously I needed a plan and a list. So here it is.

Breakfast:
I bought boxes of cereal. I always swore I wouldn't as they are full of sugar but I gave in. Shoot me, we have cereal for breakfast. (Not me, I'm doing a Not The Scarsdale/GrapefruitCabbage Soup diet involving a slice of toast and black coffee [with milk]).

Lunch:
Everyday the same. There is a limit to what I'm prepared to do here and as my lunch is a small salad and some protein and we eat together this is lunch: Chopped tomato and cucumber salad (dressed with O.O., S&P, lemon juice), cottage cheese (DD loves this), a HBE each and bread and butter for DD. She can also have a yogurt for dessert.

Suppers:
I have a list of six suppers which we can play with but I've assigned them days to make it easier. I, of course will be having my magic Tomato Soup but we'll be sitting together while DD has:
Sunday - Pitta Pizza with Tomato and Olives
Monday - Egg Noodles and Cheese (no sauce, it's what she likes) with Peas.
Tuesday - Tuna Salad on Crackers and Apple Wedges (that means a cut up apple - try it, tuna and apple goes really well.)
Wednesday - Cheesey Pancakes (The link suggests all sorts of fancy pancakes but DD actually likes the plain cheese ones best). Peas and Mashed Potato
Thursday - Omelet or Scrambled Egg and Chips
Friday - Burekas (The link is for when I made my own but I may just buy them) with a sauce (tomato or mushroom) and Peas or Brocoli (I'm trying to push brocoli but she likes peas.)
Saturday - Lunch (meaning the usual weekday lunch as we usually go to friends for lunch on Shabbat).

Snacks:
Fruit, ice-lolly from the freezer (it's very hot here), jelly-beans on Shabbat, boxes of SunMaid raisins.

Simple food. Not much cooking. Remember we are a Scarsdale/Grapefruit/Cabbage Soup Wannabee and a 3yo in extremely hot weather.

I'm linking this post to Meal Planning Monday over at 'At Home With Mrs M.' Pop over there to see some real weekly menu plans for real people.

#Listography - Cookery Books

My American friends laugh when I talk about cookery books. They say it sounds like some sort of witchery-pokery with spells and hocus-pocus. Well they can have their cookbooks - mine are cookery books. And here are my five favourites. Visit Kate Takes 5 for more cookery book collections.




1. Florence Greenberg's Jewish Cookery Book

First published in 1947, mine is the eighth edition (1972). Up until the mid1970s this was the only Jewish cookery book available in the UK and every girl received a copy on her Bat Mitzva at the age of 12 (the equivalent to the boys' Bar Mitzva at 13). My mother was still using hers when mine came along. I love the notices to Jewish housewives about being careful to buy only kosher food and the adverts from 1947:

It's amazing to see the way people ate in those days - everything was cooked in shmaltze (beef or chicken fat). It has all the traditional Jewish recipes from long ago with the Yiddish names transported from the shtetls of Europe. But you can't beat it when you need a basic recipe for e.g. shortcrust pastry, sponge cake, custard, and other things that most people don't bother to make from scratch these days.

2. A Proper Tea by Joanna Isles

Everything you ever wanted to know about afternoon tea. Beautiful illustrations of teatime in various styles, including the recipes. Exquisite is the only word to describe this book.

3. A selection of bumper Vegetarian Cookery Books

Between them these books contain everything you could possibly do with an aubergine, a tomato, a potato or a mushroom. You are welcome to add some meat to your menu but there's really no need.

4. French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

This isn't cheating as it does contain some very nice recipes. However, it's also my Bible. when I found this book all my diet books (and I had a few *ahem*) were thrown out. You can create wonderful cuisine to your heart's delight but if you don't know how to eat like a mensch (a civilised human being) what's the point?

5. The Book Of New Israeli Food by Janna Gur

A recipe book, yes, but also a social history of the food and eating culture in Israel. And a comprehensive review of where, who and how we eat today. I read it cover to cover before I even went into the kitchen with it.