Friday Night Dinner

Once again, as Friday rolled around, we weren't quite up to the task of making chicken. So instead we made the side dishes: rice (well, really orzo), salad, and roasted vegetables. Check back next week, we might actually be making chicken!

The rice was relatively easy to make. First, we toasted it for five minutes in a pan on the stove with a little bit of olive oil. Once the rice was brown, we transferred it into a pot filled with four cups of boiling water. After six minutes of cooking while partially covered, we turned off the flame and let it sit for another five minutes. Then we put it in a tin pan and reheated it before dinner. 

This week's salad was also not so Israeli - we put lettuce in it. Even though it is hard to find in the Shuk, we did find it and made a delicious salad. Our secret ingredient? Pears. The salad was accompanied by a new homemade salad dressing: Balsamic Vinaigrette. Thank you to Beth for this great tip: In order to emulsify (turn the oil and vinegar into one substance) your salad dressing, blend it together. Not only did our salad dressing look more like a Balsamic Vinaigrette, but it tasted better too. Thanks Beth!

The last dish we made was roasted vegetables. We were going to grill them, but then we remembered that we don't have a grill! We settled for roasting in the oven and they ended up tasting great. First we sliced the onions, red pepper, zucchini, and eggplant. Then we salted the eggplant to remove the bitterness, as mentioned in an earlier post. Once all of the vegetables were ready, we tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and chopped fresh rosemary. Then we popped them in the oven and we were done. Very easy, very delicious. 

Pizza Night

We decided to have pizza one night. We went to the Shuk in the morning and got ingredients that people would want on their pizzas. We got green olives, mushrooms and tomatoes. We also got laffas for the pizza crust. Laffa is a thin, round bread. Each person told us what they wanted on their pizza and how many pieces they would like. We cut each laffa into quarters and put sauce and cheese on each piece. Then, we put whatever people ordered onto their piece. Unfortunately, we only had room for five quarters of laffa on the pan we were using, so we had to eat in shifts and wait for the next piece.
First batch before going into the oven:

A different batch after being in the oven:

Picture This Ratatouille

Last night we made Ratatouille Casserole. After a long day at the bus station getting "RavKavs" (bus passes), we were ready to make an easy dish. So we stopped at the Shuk, picked up the vegetables we needed, and headed home.

The recipe says to create layers of different vegetables, and then bake it all together for a delicious casserole. We chopped up eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, onions, zucchini and mushrooms. For the first layer, we sauteed the eggplant with garlic and rosemary.

Tip: When cooking with eggplant, try to avoid overly bitter dishes by salting the eggplant first. We cut it into slices, laid it in a pan, sprinkled some sea salt on it, and let it sit for about 45 minutes. The salt draws out some of the bitterness and moisture. We lightly washed the slices, dried them, and put them in the pan to be sauteed.

Then we layered the rest of the vegetables and mozzarella cheese in the pan and baked it for 45 minutes.

To accompany the Ratatouille, we made orzo. First, we toasted the orzo in a pan on the stove for about 5 minutes. Then we boiled a pot of water and stirred in the toasted orzo. It only took 6 minutes for the orzo to cook completely and absorb all of the water.

The Ratatouille over orzo was definitely one of our more successful dishes. Sadly, the memory card was not in the camera so none of our pictures were saved. Maybe we'll just have to make the dish again...

Hot Quiche

Sunday morning, we got up early and went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients for our latest adventure in cooking - quiche! We made our own dough for the crust, and mixed it by hand.

Then, we needed to roll it out, but couldn't find a rolling pin. Instead, we washed and used an empty wine bottle. It worked surprisingly well!

Then, with help from Abbe, we laid it into the pie tins and fixed up the edges for a beautiful crust.

Tip: When making quiche or pie, don't let the crust dry out while you create the insides. Place a damp paper towel over the dough to keep it nice and moist. 

We made two quiches: mushroom-spinach and spinach. Both quiches also had feta cheese, cheddar cheese and of course, eggs. They came out of the oven looking delicious, and they tasted delicious too.

We had some leftover dough so we attempted to make croissants, but they didn't fluff up in the oven. Moral of the story: if you want to make croissants, you have to use a croissant recipe.

Mystery Wheels

When Friday rolled around, the family (minus the two vegetarians) wanted meat for dinner. Sadly, we are not up to that just yet. So we decided that we would buy the chicken already prepared, and we would make the side dishes.

We decided to make a classic green salad with lettuce. Unbeknownst to us, lettuce is hard to find in Israel, so most salads are chopped. Luckily, we were able to locate some lettuce in the Shuk and we combined it with some baby spinach. We chopped some cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and grapes.

Then we realized that we needed salad dressing! Earlier in the week we found a special salad dressing maker in the apartment, so we cleaned it out and experimented. Mixing together red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and honey, we made our first salad dressing.

The other side dish we made was zucchini wheels! First, we cut the zucchinis into fifths and scored an "X" into the top of each of them. 

In the food processor, we ground up a bread crumb pesto. When we were ready to cook the dish, we placed them into a medium sized skillet and put about a teaspoon of the pesto mixture inside. Then we poured a cup of water in the skillet, covered it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. 

Here was the end result:

We had doubled the recipe because it had originally only been enough for four servings; however, we had a LOT of leftovers. Once again, the mothers liked them and the little kids didn't. Sophisticated food calls for sophisticated taste!

We also want to put in a little shout out to our guest/sou chef Ilana! We loved having you over and cooking with you. 

Risky Bisque

Every time we ask for suggestions for dinner, Abbe pulls out the cooking magazine that we have, and requests Avocado Chipotle Bisque. Cautious of cold soups, we continuously reject the suggestion. However, last week, we gave in. So here it is for Abbe: the cold soup, our experience, and the pictures to prove it really happened. 

We've learned from our experiences so far that some ingredients are very challenging to find in Israel, even in the Shuk. The Avocado Chipotle Bisque recipe calls for miso paste and chipotle powder, two ingredients we were unable to find. So, being the resourceful thinkers that we are, we decided to substitute. Instead of miso paste, we sprinkled some sea salt into the pot. Instead of chipotle powder, we bought a few dried hot peppers and chopped them up ourselves. We didn't make the soup too spicy because we wanted the kids to eat it, but we had optional red pepper flakes on the side to give it some more flavor. The garnish you see in the picture is slices of fresh red pepper. How are our plating skills?

We needed a vegetable side dish, and we found some broccoli in the fridge. We minced a few garlic cloves, drizzled the broccoli with olive oil, and roasted it in the oven. The broccoli was well received by the family and very easy to make, so we will definitely be making it again! 

The bisque ended up being very light and good for the summer, but it wasn't such a hit with everyone. Better luck next time?

Tomato Basil Penne Pasta

On Monday night, we made a delicious pasta dish and sauteed vegetables. Instead of going to the Shuk, we went to local supermarkets to find the few ingredients that we needed. Today's lesson: ITS WORTH THE TRIP TO THE SHUK! The prices at all of the local supermarkets were a lot higher than prices in the Shuk. From now on, we are headed to the Shuk for most of our ingredients.

We made a pasta dish called Tomato Basil Penne Pasta. The recipe calls for shredded mozzarella cheese and grated parmesan cheese, but we could only find blocks. So we settled for that and attempted to shred our own mozzarella and make our own parmesan flakes! They turned out pretty well, but we didn't get any pictures before it all melted. Mmmmm, doesn't it look delicious?

As noted in a previous post, Chef Brian had told us to put salt in the water, not oil, when making pasta. After the pasta was ready to be strained, we made sure to shock it, to stop it from cooking. Thanks for the advice, Chef Brian! It worked out well.

We told ourselves that we would leave some pasta out for anyone who might not like our Tomato Basil Penne Pasta. We forgot and had to scoop it out of the tomato basil mixture. Woops!

We also sauteed some zucchini, red peppers, and onions. Because of the limited cooking space and supplies in our apartment, we were unable to saute all of the vegetables in the same pan, at the same time. In the end, the dish tasted delicious anyway. Nothing can stop us! 

Cukes and Beans

Tonight we cooked our very first dinner! It was pretty low key, but still required a lot of work. We chopped up the tomatoes, cucumbers and Arab cucumbers that we bought at the Shuk today.

We then made hard boiled eggs.

 They turned out beautifully.

 
We bought baked beans from the makolet (a small neighborhood market) down the street from our apartment. When we got home, multiple people tried opening a can with a few different can openers. Unfortunately, none of them worked too well. Finally, Sarah heroically opened the can, but with a splat.

We also made some guacamole. Along with each of the things we prepared, we put out pita from the shuk, cheeses and who can forget chumus!

First Shuk Adventure

Today was our first day at the Shuk. We took a wonderful tour. We learned first hand which vendors would give us the best meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit. We bought delicious olives from an olive vendor.

We learned the layout of the Shuk and the different street names.

We were introduced to a cousin of the cucumber: the Arab cucumber. After some research online, we aren't sure that they are actually called Arab cucumbers, but that's how they are referred to at the Shuk.

They are yellowish or light green and have fuzzy outsides, just like peaches. They taste a lot like cucumbers, but with a little more crunch and more of a lemony flavor. Not everyone in our family liked the Arab cucumbers, but everyone was at least brave enough to try them!

A nice surprise was seeing how nice some of the vendors were. One member of our tour was feeling a little faint (she's fine now), and a bunch of vendors rushed to help. One offered a chair, the flower vendor misted her with his plant mister, and another offered sugar water and said, "drink, drink. שתי, שתי!". Of course, it wasn't all paradise because we met our fair share of gruff vendors too. Looking forward to going back for our next adventure at the Shuk!

We've Arrived!

We made it to Israel! One of the first things we did was drink שוקו בשקית (chocolate milk in a bag). Although it may sound strange, it is quite delicious!

Then we moved into the apartment, unpacked our suitcases, and got ready for Shabbat. Michal's sister, Sarah, cooked a yummy meal for friday night dinner. 
 
After a relaxing (and hot) shabbat in Jerusalem, we are now ready to start cooking. Tomorrow morning we're taking a tour of Machane Yehudah in order to familiarize ourselves with the Shuk.

Our Aprons

With all the cooking that we'll be doing this summer, we thought it would be cool to design our own aprons. Today we bought and decorated them.

Our first project of the summer!

Instead of diving right into the food, we decided to start with some paint. 

We finally finished, and they look great. Ready to cook!

 

 

The final product

We wrote בתיאבון on our aprons because בתיאבון (pronounced b'tei avon) is the hebrew equivalent of Bon Appetite.

Our First Cooking Lesson

Last week, we headed to Michal's Uncle Brian's restaurant, The Cutting Board, in Ridgefield, Connecticut (http://www.cuttingboardct.com/). There we learned some knife skills and the basics of spices. After chopping a bunch of onions, carrots and squash, we watched the dishes transform from raw vegetables to delicious meals.

Chef Brian talks about different cooking techniques.

While we were learning from Brian, our friend Melissa stopped by to join in the fun. We can't wait to get started in Israel!

Michal (left) and Melissa (right) watch and listen to Chef Brian at work.

Tip: When cooking pasta, add a pinch of salt to the water to flavor the pasta. Adding oil to the water will not keep the pasta from sticking together. First, shock the pasta so it stops cooking by running the pasta under cold water. Once you have shocked the pasta, adding a little olive oil can help to prevent sticky pasta.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! Our mission this summer is to go to Machane Yehudah, an outdoor marketplace in Jerusalem, each day and to come home with ingredients to prepare dinner each night. It might take us a while to master the art of cooking, so join us as we embark on this journey. We might even post some pictures, recipes and the occasional cooking tip!