Add a Bit of Spice to Your Potato Kugel

A staple food for the Shabbat table, the potato kugel can be also a good comfort food during the week, especially during the winter when you need a piece of hot fat rich everything. I am usually a big fan of a very classical recipe, that require a minimum of ingredients, usually the classical combination. What may differ from a recipe to another are the quantities and the quality of the ingredients (especially when it comes to the kind of potato used). I personally have nothing against a bit of more oil once in a while, as long as it is part of a tasty meal. For the first time on my blog, I am sharing my potato kugel recipe, which this time has a secret ingredient, replacing the usual black pepper I am regularly using.

Ingredients
12 medium-size potatoes
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/4 tablespoon Urfa Biber black pepper that I previously learned how to use a couple of days ago, part of my assignment as Brand Ambassador for Spice Kitchen UK
3 medium-size eggs, beaten
125 ml. sunflower oil

Directions

Grate the potatoes. You can also use a blender, but I personally didn't mind as the potatoes were relatively small and I was able to deal with them easily and painless. I keep the watery starch of the potatoes as it does absorb well during the baking. Add the ingredients one by one and mix well each time. After ready, pour the content into the Aluminium pan and let them rest for about 10 minutes.

Heat the oven at least 15 minutes before starting the baking. 

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Baking time: 1h30 or until fully done

Cut into little cubes before serving. It serves around 16 cubes baked into a medium-size pan. In terms of the spice, I was careful not to use half of tablespoon but if you want a spicier kugel, you can dare. Urfa Biber brings a taste of sweetness while balancing the heavy taste of potatoes plus oil plus eggs. The texture is smooth and silky and the cover is so crunchy that I can hardly resist to not eat only the cover at once. You can have a bit of heavy cold sour cream on the side for an even better flavor balance. 

Bon Appétit!

Sautée mushrooms with onions and tomatoes

I always like my food tasty, easy to prepare and healthy. The more I am experimenting with cooking, becoming familiar with various tastes, the more I am tempted to create my own recipes and diversify my palate.

The following recipe is the result of such an improvisation, using the available resources at home, while trying to prepare a healthy meal for me and the baby.

Ingredients:

1 onion, finelly chopped

2 tablespoon raps oil

2 big tomatoes, finelly chopped

7 brown mushrooms, medium size, finelly chopped

1 teaspoon OSEM seasoning

100 gr. butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

Mix the ingredients in the pan, one by one, at 250C. Stirr well, allowing all the ingredients to melt together well. If you want the onion caramelized, you can add them first, together with the oil and the sugar and mix with the rest 5 minutes later.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Serves: 2

The result is irresistibly delicious and light.

If you are strong enough to give up the temptation of eating it on its own, spoon by spoon. you can combine it in different equally healthy ways.

I personally made a dish with cauliflower. It goes very well with fish, meat - if you are eating kosher, eliminate the butter or replace it with a non-dairy variant - a base mix for pasta or rice. I can dream about throwing some eggs there too, shakshuka style. It is always a good match for boiled potatoes - French fries can be too oily. Because right now it is the open season, some boiled asaparagus can keep the mushrooms an interesting tasty company.

As it is open season right now, it can be a good company for some boiled asparagus too.

If you want your plate even healthier, add some spinach too. 

Bon Appétit!

Experiencing with sachlav

My kosher Instagram feed was flowing lately with pictures and videos and recommendations about how to prepare an easy and tasty sachlav, the thick-milk based drink specific for Israel and the Middle East. It is the equivalent of the hot chocolate for Europe, with an interesting history available here. After getting hungry after so many readings and pictures, I have my own experience, adapting this very easy - as usual - and efficient recipe from Joy of Kosher. 

During a week, I tried various variants and alternatives.

The initial recipe recommends 3 cups - I tried with glasses of coconut milk, which inevitably means that the drink will maintain the unique taste of the coconut. If you use the normal milk, the other ingredients are melting together amazingly and it tastes even better. Probably you can also try other variants of ´milk` such as almond or soy, but I don't know for sure how does it matches in terms of taste.

For the sweet part, I used honey - the worst choice, as well as brown sugar - which is good, instead of the white. I also used a special variant of vanilla sugar - Bourbon sugar, which gives an elegant taste.
The initial recipe recommends rose water, but it is also possible to use orange water, but as for now, I kept this one, simply because I love rose water.
It is very easy to make and especially when using coconut milk, it stays warm for a long time. I always decorated my glass with pistachio. My variant was neutral, but if it is a bit salty, the contrast between too much sweetness - a feature specific to many Middle Eastern sweets, which I really love and cherish - and the pint of salt creates a pleasant effect.
The preparation time is of maximum 20 minutes.
This recipe serves two middle-size glasses of sachlav.

Ingredients:
3 glasses of coconut - or normal - milk
1 tablespoon sugar - both white and brown sugar are fine
1 teaspoon vanilla essence - or vanilla sugar or Bourbon vanilla sugar
2 tablespoon corn starch
1 pinch of sea salt
It is very important that you mix very well the ingredients. Sometimes, the canned coconut milk can be half-water, half 'milk', so before you add all the other ingredients, you should mix well in order to have a compact paste.

It is also important to mix well when you add the cornstarch to mix well with all the other ingredients. 

The mix should be heated at 150C until it starts to boil. I let it to boil for maximum 5-6 seconds and after I took it out and poured into glasses while warm. 

Serve it either warm or later on, as a cold thick pudding.

Bon Appetit!

Easy latkes recipe

To latkes or not to latkes...this was my question Saturday evening on the first day of Hanukkah - Jewish holidays start in the evening -, when I knew that for the next days all the food stores are closed and thus, most probably I cannot prepare a great deal of food for the next days. Relying on the welcoming invitations from friends is a great solution too, but I am stubborn enough to not accept that my Hanukkah will be latkes-less. Thus, yesterday morning, the cooking fever finally returned into my life and I decided that, among other recipes that I did - more updates in my next posts - I should also prepare for the lunch with baby D. and me some latkes. I made a short tour of my pantry and realized that, in fact, I had enough ingredients for a fresh portion of latkes. Because the baby D. is still quite sensitive to spices, I eliminated garlic or onions from the recipe, and had the following combination of ingredients:

7 small and medium potatoes, peeled and finelly grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pinch of za'atar
2 small eggs beaten - one was enough also
15 gr. baking powder - it make the composition fluffy but it might leave a taste so you can easily forget about it
1 tablespoon margarine for a milky creamy taste and appearance
Mix well everything. Try to pour the extra water out by using a strainer.
Meanwhile, pour generously oil in the pan and wait to get warmer at around 250C. I used peanut oil because I tried to see how the final result comes out in terms of taste but it was not a big deal.

I preferred to fry in batches of three, leaving more space in the pan. The warm is easier distributed when there are not too many items frying. It resulted 9 small latkes, that I left to rest and get the oil out of it on a parchment paper. 

The entire preparation and frying process lasted around 45 minutes and although baby D. wasn't too keen to taste it - and it seems is his problem with latkes in general - I enjoyed my portion and the spirit of the holidays. 

Now, I wonder if I am brave enough to try some sufganiyot too. Why not? Given my passion for home made cook, a final - positive - decision may be only a matter of days, or rather hours.

Persian pancakes with yogurt

When I want to try a sophisticated yet affordable kosher recipe, Elizabeth Wolf Cohen's book helps me. 

The tasty yogurt

I wanted to try this Persian recipe for a long time, but probably only this post-Hanuka blues was the necessary impulse to simply do it. As I trained my cooking hands in latkes for 8 days, coming each day with a new fancy idea, the pancakes were like the natural move towards another success in the kitchen. I modified at a certain extent the ingredients, eliminating the muscat, using 5 eggs instead of 6, normal meal instead of matzo meal and cayenne pepper instead of black pepper.

The ingredients needed for this wonderful recipe are:

- 400 gr. spinach; as it was almost impossible to find a fresh bunch of it, I used the frosten variant, equally tasty

- 2 scallions, finelly chopped

- 5 eggs, beaten

- salt, on taste

- 125 normal while meal

- coriander

- cayenne pepper

100 gr. oil for frying

For the yogurt:

I only added some pinches of cayenne and beat it together for a couple of seconds, and kept in the fridge at least 2 hours before use.

The famous pancakes

Add in a mixer the spinach, coriander and scallions, till you have a puree. Add the eggs, salt and pepper and the meal.

Pour the oil in the pan and wait for 3-5 minutes. Add small portions of the mixture and back on both sides. Let to rest on a backing paper for a couple of minutes.

Your gorgeous pancakes will be ready in less than 30 minutes.

Bon Appetit!