Yom Kippur 5770

Yom Kippur Baroness Tapuzina

I am still trying to finalize my menu for Yom Kippur on Sunday afternoon. I will be updating this post over the next few days.

For erev Yom Kippur:

For break-the-fast:

  • Crackers
  • Cheese
  • Smoked Salmon
  • Baba Ganoush

About 1 hour later, we will have:

  • Keftes de Prasa (Leek patties)
  • Keftes de Espinaca (Spinach patties)
  • Carrot and Date Salad

Mr. BT and I hope that you have an easy fast. Gmar Chatimah Tova (May you be sealed in the book of life).

Shana Tova u’Metukah

Fruit Dessert Rosh Hashana Baroness Tapuzina

I have been busy preparing for Rosh Hashana and have finally completed everything I intended to make for Friday and Saturday.

I made 4 round challot, one plain and three with dried apricots, dried cranberries, raisins, dried cherries and dried apples. I used the new Kitchenaid to knead the dough and I am very happy with the results. I am back making challah like I used to make in the States. I finally learned how to braid a round challah from this website. I found the website by chance and called Mr. BT to come to my study so I could butter him up to help me with the braiding. He said, “It looks a bit complicated, maybe you should just do it the way you always do.”. I said, no, I would like to give this a try and if we start bickering over it, I will go back to the old way. Well, we figured it out and we didn’t fight about it. Happy days!

For dessert, I am bringing poached pears and Mr. BT’s pomegranate sorbet. We decided to do a light dessert this year. The pears are not too sweet and have a lovely spicy aroma that permeates from the kitchen. I think they will be a big hit.

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Poached Pears
Ingredients
  • 1 bottle semi-dry white wine such as Emerald Reisling
  • 1/4 cup brandy
  • 1/4 sugar
  • 2 strips of orange zest
  • 1- inch piece of fresh ginger peeled and sliced
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 10 whole cloves
  • 8 firm ripe pears
  • Juice of 2 oranges
Instructions
  1. In a pot big enough to hold the pears snugly, put all of the ingredients except for the pears. Bring the liquid up to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the pears, cover the pan, and gently poach the pears for about 30 minutes until the pears are soft, but not mushy. Turn off the heat and let cool.
  2. The pears can be poached up to 2 days ahead and kept in the poaching liquid in the refrigerator.

Saturday, I am serving chicken soup with kubbeh which I will blog about in a few days and Sunday, I am making a surprise, so you will have to wait.

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova u’Metuka to you and your family.

May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life and we hope you have happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.

Chag Sameach,

Mr. BT and Baroness Tapuzina

Birthday Dinner – Fit for a Baroness

Israel Baroness Tapuzina

Mr. BT made me a lovely birthday dinner last week. I couldn’t have had any better at a restaurant. My dinner began with my surprise gift. After 45 years of life, I was presented with a dark blue Kitchenaid, something I have wanted for years. It has already made a two honey cakes, whole wheat bread, and some beautiful challah for Rosh Hashana.

Dinner began with a very artistically displayed portobello mushroom framed by grilled asparagus. It looked like the evil eye was protecting me for my birthday.

The next course was grilled fresh barramundi stuffed with a bunch of fresh tarragon and served with a porcini mushroom and shallot sauce. Barramundi is especially popular in Australia and is now also farmed at a kibbutz in the Negev. We buy it fresh from the kibbutz. It is a lovely sweet, white, flaky fish. Mr. BT served the fish with sauteed fresh spinach and steamed rice.

Dessert were two lovely homemade sorbets: Pink Grapefruit-Campari and Granny Smith Apple-Calvados. They were both delicious and the granny smith apple sorbet was like a whole apple orchard in your mouth. It has an amazing appley flavour accentuated by Mr. BT having left the peel on.

We drank a delicious and fruity white wine blend of Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Gewuertztraminer made by our local boutique winery, Yekev Mond (website only in Hebrew) at Moshav Mishmeret, which is literally a five minute drive from our house. This winery has been producing wines for several years, but only started selling three years ago. Moshe Keren, the winemaker, gave us the grand tour lasting about two hours, most of which was taken up by tasting his wines and liqueurs. We began by tasting grape juice that had been crushed four hours earlier. It already had a lovely fruity flavour. He then gave us a taste of a Shiraz, also straight from the fermentation tank, that had been fermenting for the past 28 hours. It was obviously quite young, but you could already taste the alcohol and it had it a lovely fragrance.

From there we went to the tasting room and tried a Merlot, the white blend (see above), Cabernet Sauvignon, and a blend of Merlot and Cab. However, the big surprises were a Muscat Alexandroni that had an absolutely intoxicating aroma of honey, a Port that wouldn’t have disgraced any Portuguese maker (and it’s the first Israeli Port we have tasted that is really worth drinking), a mulberry liqueur, and a mint liqueur. It is just as well the drive home was only five minutes on quiet country roads because we both happily skipped to our car.

Birthday Cake

Cakes Baroness Tapuzina

It was my turn to bring goodies for my team’s weekly Kabbalat Shabbat, which literally means “Receiving Sabbath”. Kabbalat Shabbat is usually celebrated by reciting Psalms and prayers before Shabbat begins on Friday evening, but in Israeli companies and offices it has also come to mean a break on Thursday for colleagues to get together informally over savory or sweet munchies and drinks. Weather permitting, we have our break on the rooftop of our building where there are nice niches with tables and chairs to sit and look over the Sharon plain. Since my birthday was the next day, I decided to bring a birthday cake. Usually we bring coffee cakes or cheese and nuts, but when someone has a birthday, they try to bring something more special.

When I was a child, I always asked for a German Chocolate cake for my birthday. Talk about sickeningly sweet! I am not sure when I stopped asking for cakes with tons of frosting, but now I really dislike buttercream, or even worse, frosting made with shortening like they put on cakes in the States with cups and cups of icing sugar.

But I don’t mind the sour icing that is put on a carrot cake. Usually, it is icing made with cream cheese, but I found an interesting frosting made with mascarpone and fromage frais, which is a low fat cheese from France. It is similar to German quark. I decided to use labane, a yogurt cheese, that is readily available in the Middle East and is 5% fat. This carrot cake is a moist spicy cake that goes well with the sharpness of the icing.

The team enjoyed the cake and took seconds and thirds, but fortunately there was enough left to bring back to Mr. BT, who would have been disappointed if hadn’t got any.

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Carrot Cake with Mascarpone, Labane, and Cinnamon Icing
Ingredients
For the cake:
  • 300 g 2 3/4 cups self-raising flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • Pinch of salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 335 ml 1 2/3 cup sunflower oil or other light vegetable oil
  • 450 g 2 1/4 cup caster sugar
  • 2 cups grated carrots
  • 1 1/4 chopped walnuts
  • 2 tablespoons hot water
  • Butter and flour for the tins
For the icing:
  • 500 g 1lb mascarpone
  • 400 g 3/4lb Labane, 5% fat (or drained greek-style yogurt)
  • 1/4 cup icing confectioner's sugar, sifted
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Instructions
For the cake:
  1. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Lightly grease two 23cm (9-inch) spring-form cake tins with melted butter. Line the bottom of each tin with parchment paper. Butter the paper and then dust the tin with flour.
  2. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, spices and salt in a bowl and set aside.
  3. Separate two of the eggs.
  4. In the mixing bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the oil and the sugar. Slowly add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, beating well. Add the carrots, and then add the walnuts. Then add the flour followed by the hot water. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and fold them into the cake batter.
  5. Divide the cake mixture between the prepared tins. Place the baking tins on a baking tray in the middle of the oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of a cake comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes and then remove them from the tray and let cool on a baking rack.
For the icing:
  1. Whisk all of the ingredients together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Cover with clingfilm and chill for 1-2 hours, until you are ready to ice the cake.
  2. With a palette knife, spread a layer of icing on one cake, then press the other on top. Spread the rest of the icing over the top and sides of the cake. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving. Keep refrigerated.

Rosh Hashana 5770 Planning

Holidays Rosh Hashana Baroness Tapuzina

It has been a long August without you, but I was swept away in work. Three of my colleagues were either on vacation or maternity leave and it left me holding down the fort. I just didn’t have the energy to spare for my poor neglected blog. But, I am back and I have a Wine Festival to report, a very interesting winery that is a 10 minute drive from my house, and my birthday celebration at work tomorrow. My birthday is actually this Friday.

But first things first, I must think about Rosh Hashana planning. This year, I am going to Jerusalem and am responsible for bringing the challot and dessert. I am going to be making the following:

One plain and one fruit and nut challah

Magical Honey Cake

Baked Apples Stuffed with Fruit and Nuts (without the custard sauce)

Poached Pears (water, brandy, little sugar, 2 strips of orange zest, piece of sliced ginger root, cinnamon stick, cloves)

Here are some interesting ideas for you and your loved ones (meat and dairy):

Roast Chicken with Dried Fruit and Almonds

Cornish Hens with Dried Apricot Sauce

Sephardic Spinach Patties

Fennel and Pistachio Salad

Beetroot and pomegranate salad

Carrot and Date Salad

Israeli Couscous with Roasted Butternut Squash and Preserved Lemon

Roasted Pumpkin with Dried Fruit

Apple and Calvados Cake

Apple and Honey Ice Cream

Apple and Honey Sorbet with Pomegranate Sauce

Yogurt and Honey Semifreddo

What are you making this year?

Happy as a Duck in Andalusian Sauce

Duck Spanish Baroness Tapuzina

Last Friday we were invited by a dear old friend of ours to a wine tasting in Har Adar, near Abu Gosh. It is a beautiful drive up to the Jerusalem Hills that always reminds me of Provence. Yossi and his lovely wife Dina, who makes lovely biscuits,  were our gracious hosts. Yossi, who writes a blog called Yossi’s Wine Page, invites vintners from boutique wineries around the country to do wine tastings about once a month at his home .

This month’s event was a tasting of wines from Ben-Shoshan winery at Kibbutz Bror Hayil in the South. The award-winning winery makes approximately 12,000 bottles a year which are sold mostly in wine boutiques. Yuval Ben-Shoshan and his adorable son Gefen (which means a grape vine) were showing off their delicious wines.Bror Hayil in the Sou

Yuval makes his wine from grapes grown in two completely parts of the country. One is Avdat, in the northern Negev desert, an area that 1500 years ago was the center of the ancient kingdom of the Nabataeans, who also built Petra in Jordan. In spite of the desert climate, the Nabataeans were famous for developing irrigation systems, including underground storage cisterns, that allowed them to farm the land successfully with very little rain water; and modern Israeli farmers have done very much the same thing except using modern technology. The other area is at Kfar Shamai, in the northern Galilee, which is one of the countries grape-producing regions.

The result is an outstanding Shiraz 2007, which won a bronze medal at the Israel Wine Awards this year, Cabernet Sauvignon Avdat, Cabernet Sauvignon Kfar Shamai, and a Cabernet-Merlot blend. We tasted the first three wines and came home with a bottle of Shiraz and Cabernet Avdat. The Shiraz was unusually light and fruity, and just right to drink a little cooler than room temperate, which is how it was served due to the heat of the hot Israeli sun beating down on us.

Mr BT’s birthday was last Sunday and I was lucky to find a whole duck on sale that I snapped up right away. I had never cooked a whole duck before, but I knew that I had to find something special to make for Mr BT’s special day. I found a recipe for duck with an Andalusian sauce where the duck is first marinated in a boiling marinade flavored with star anise and tumeric. It is served with an delicious sauce made of oranges, lemons, honey, and balsamic vinegar. I served the duck with pan-roasted potatoes and sauteed artichoke hearts and mushrooms. If I had served this dish in the winter, I would have served it over creamy polenta.

We toasted his birthday with the Ben-Shoshan Shiraz 2007. It was a perfect match to the sweet and sour Andalusian sauce.

For dessert, I served a light dessert of beautiful fresh figs with a drizzle of Provencal chestnut honey.

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Roast Duck with Andalusian Sauce
Ingredients
  • 1.4 kg 3lb whole duck
For Boiling Marinade:
  • 1 quart of water
  • 6 cloves garlic skin on and bashed
  • 6 bay leaves
  • 4 star anise
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon tumeric
For the sauce:
  • Juice and zest of 2 large oranges
  • Juice of 1 medium lemon
  • 2 cloves garlic crushed
  • 1/2 a pint of chicken stock
  • 60 g 2oz sultanas
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • 1 heaping teaspoon cornstarch
  • 3-4 teaspoons cold water for slurry
Instructions
  1. For the boiling marinade: Put all of the ingredients in a tall pot, such as an asparagus steamer, and bring to the boil. Boil for ten minutes and then reduce to a simmer.
  2. Meanwhile, cut the wings tips off the duck and make two cuts into the carcass, parallel to the wing bones. This will allow the duck fat to escape during roasting.
  3. Suspend the duck, using a butcher's hook or similar into the neck over the pot, without letting it fall into the marinade. Using a small soup ladle, pour the marinade all over the duck. Keep doing this until the duck has a nice golden yellow color from the tumeric. Place the duck on a rack in a roasting pan and dry for approximately one hour.
  4. After the duck has dried, preheat the oven to 200C (400F) and roast the duck on a rack over a roasting tin of water for approximately one hour and a half. Check the duck half way through cooking because you may need to put a tent of aluminum foil over it to prevent the duck breast and wings from overcooking.
  5. While the duck is roasting, prepare the sauce. Put all of ingredients in a small saucepan, except for the cornstarch and water. Bring to a boil and reduce the sauce by half. Then, make a slurry of cornstarch and water, and whisk it into the sauce to thicken it. When the sauce is sufficiently thickened, take it off the heat and reheat it before serving.

Fish, Fish, and more Fish with a Smattering of Cherry

Fish Fruit Dessert Baroness Tapuzina

I love to experiment with all of the wonderful fresh fish we can get here in Israel. And the other day, they had some small fish at the fish monger in the supermarket. I don’t usually buy fresh fish there, but this looked especially fresh. I have been buying my fish from Dubkin Brother’s located at Moshav Tekuma near the border with Gaza. They sell their fish to restaurants and come up to the center of the country every two weeks to make deliveries to individuals. They are lovely people, have good prices,  and most importantly their fish is a high quality and very fresh. The fish comes packed in ice in a Styrofoam cooler that they take back with the next delivery. So far I have ordered baramundi, sea bass, gilt-head sea bream, and red mullet.

The best way to cook it is to not do too much to it.  Most of the time I saute it in a pan or grill it under the oven, depending the type of fish. If I saute it, I slice garlic thinly and place it in a hot pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, add the fish, and then add the juice of two large lemons and a couple of tablespoons of chopped thyme, fresh zaatar, oregano, or chives. If I grill it, such as trout, then I stuff the cavity with rosemary, thyme, oregano, lemon slices, and sliced garlic and grill in the oven.

I bought small red mullet and another fish that I have never heard of and don’t know the name in English, but they were both wonderful. I just lightly coated them in flour and cooked them in a shallow pan of oil for about two to three minutes on each side. I served them with basil-garlic red potatoes and steamed broccoli.

Mr BT made red mullet with a mango sauce. He sauteed the fish in a little butter and olive oil. He added mango juice, white wine and a splash of balsamic vinegar, removed the fish and reduced the sauce. He has also made drumfish with a sour cream and herb sauce. You could also make it with yogurt. Skies the limit.

For one of the meals, I used the last of the cherries that we picked at the cherry festival. I had frozen them and they were perfect for a nice fruit crisp. It brought back childhood memories when my mother used to make a delicious apple crisp. She didn’t make the topping with oatmeal, but this recipe is British fruit crisp. The crisp was delicious and the cherries didn’t need any additional sugar.

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Fresh Sour Cherry Crisp
Ingredients
  • 4 cups pitted sour cherries
  • 4 tablespoons flour
  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 100 g 1/2 cup butter, melted
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Butter medium size baking dish, approximately 22 x 32 cm (9 x 13 inches).
  2. In a medium bowl, mix the cherries and the flour. Evenly distribute the cherries in the baking dish.
  3. Combine the oats, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and melted butter. Crumble evenly over the cherry mixture. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the crumble topping is golden brown.

Georgian Chicken with Walnut and Garlic Sauce

Chicken Georgian Baroness Tapuzina

Mr BT and I have been busy in the garden planting artichokes, sugar snap peas, lavender, and sunflowers. I hope to show you the fruits of our labour in about six weeks. We also have a nice array of herbs growing: lemon thyme, rosemary, oregano, regular thyme, basil, purple basil, and zaatar. I really love cooking with herbs and we cook with them several times a week. Fresh herbs really add a special flavour to food that you can’t always get with dried herbs.

I decided to try another Georgian recipe for Shabbat. This time one of their famous chicken with walnut sauces. Since, Mr BT is half  Hungarian and can’t live without a garlic dish, I decided to try Chkmeruli  (pronounced ch’k-muh-roo’-lee) which is made with walnuts and 10 cloves of garlic. The sauce is so creamy that you may think there is cream in the recipe. Next time I want to try Satsiv, which is another chicken with walnut sauce that has cinnamon, clove, fenugreek, and coriander in the recipe.

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Chicken with Garlic and Walnut Sauce - Chkmeruli
Ingredients
  • 1.5 kg 3lb chicken cut into pieces
  • Salt for non-kosher chicken
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 10 garlic cloves peeled
  • 1 cup of walnuts
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsely
  • 1 cup of water
Instructions
  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
  2. In a large skillet, heat the oil. Brown the chicken over medium high heat for 10 minutes; turn and brown for 10 minutes more. Cover the pan and continue cooking over low heat for 20 to 25 minutes, until the chicken is done.
  3. Meanwhile, finely grind the garlic and walnuts.
  4. When the chicken is tender, transfer it to a plate and keep warm. Pour off all but 4 tablespoons of the pan drippings. Add the ground garlic and nuts mixture, water and the parsley to the pan. Add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt and simmer the sauce on medium heat for approximately 5 minutes. Place the chicken pieces back in the pan, turning them to coat them with the sauce. Heat thoroughly before serving.

A Bowl Full of Summer

Desserts Fruit Fruit Dessert Ice Creams/Sorbets Baroness Tapuzina

There are some things that I regard as “Food of the Gods” and cherries are one of them. It is cherry season here in Israel and that means the annual Cherry Picking Festival at Kibbutz Rosh Tzurim is on. Last year, I blogged about the festival and took a visiting colleague from Germany. This year we took Mimi from Israeli Kitchen and her youngest daughter. We brought a picnic, not quite as fancy as last year, but still quite tasty. Mimi brought a delicious cheese, mushroom and swiss chard tart. Mr BT made a tuna salad sandwich on a baguette, and also made a rocket, nectarine and walnut salad. I made a whole wheat pita with a runny chevre from Jacob’s Dairy in Kfar Haroeh in the Hefer Valley, near Netanya. We also had green olives and garlicky cured black olives from Morocco. We definitely didn’t starve.

Of course the most important reason we went was to pick the juicy ruby cherries, and we definitely succeeded in picking enough of them to make a couple of different dishes and still have a few to much on. I decided the first thing to make was frozen yogurt. I used low fat cow yogurt that I drained in a fine mesh sieve until most of the water had drained. You can use the greek-style yogurt they sell in the States. The yogurt tastes like a big bowl of ripe cherries and has a nice creaminess from the yogurt. Next time I am going to use sheep yogurt for a little extra tang. Mr. BT’s face lit up after eating it and he still has a glint of summer in his eyes. He said that it was good enough to have come from a gelateria in Firenze. Now the Baroness has a glint of summer in her eyes.

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Frozen Cherry Yogurt
Ingredients
  • 3 cups of fresh cherries pitted and cut in half
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1 cup sheep goat, or cow yogurt
  • 1 tablespoon cognac
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
  1. Place the pitted and cut cherries in a medium size pan with the sugar and cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes until the sugar has dissolved and the cherries have softened a little. Don't let them get mushy.
  2. In food processor, with knife blade attached, pulse the hot cherries until the cherries are in small chunks. You can blend them smooth if you wish, but I prefer little chunks of cherry in my frozen yogurt. Place the cherry mixture in a medium size bowl and cool to room temperature.
  3. If the yogurt is not really thick (Greek-style), then put the yogurt in a fine-mesh sieve and drain out as much liquid as possible; set aside.
  4. When the cherries have cooled, add the yogurt, cognac and vanilla and mix until the yogurt is completely incorporated. Refrigerate the yogurt mixture for approximately 2 hours. Transfer the yogurt mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
  5. Take the frozen yogurt out of the freezer 15 minutes prior to serving.

Georgian Meatballs with Walnuts and Sour Cherries

Beef Chicken Georgian Baroness Tapuzina

Georgian food is not widely known, but it has a mixture of Eastern European, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern influences. They make dumplings like you find in Poland and Russian and  Khachapuri, which is similar to Turkish pide with kashkaval cheese. One of their famous dishes is chicken with walnut sauce and you will find numerous different recipes for walnut sauce. Some of them contain garlic and herbs, such as Satsivi,  and others contain red wine vinegar or pomegranate molasses, such as Bazhe.

I decided to make a delicious and easy Georgian kebab or meatball recipe. It contains dried sour cherries and walnuts. You can add pinenuts instead of walnuts, but I like the earthy taste of the walnuts. Don’t leave out the mint in this recipe because it really adds to the flavour of the kebab.

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Georgian Meatballs with Walnuts and Sour Cherries
Ingredients
  • 7 ounces ground veal
  • 7 ounces ground chicken
  • 1 onion peeled and finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves peeled and crushed
  • 1/4 cup dried sour cherries chopped
  • 1/2 cup walnuts roughly chopped and lightly toasted or toasted pinenuts
  • 1/2 teaspoon Hungarian paprika
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 egg white lightly whipped
  • 1/4 cup of fresh parsley finely chopped
  • 2 tablespoons fresh mint finely chopped
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
  1. Georgian Kebab
  2. Combine the veal and chicken in a bowl, then add the onion, garlic, sour cherries, pine nuts, paprika, allspice, and cinnamon. Mix well, then add the egg white and mix again. Finally, add the fresh herbs and salt and pepper to taste and mix thoroughly.
  3. Shape the mixture into small balls the size of golf balls. Heat the oil in a frying pan, then sauté the meatballs, a few at a time, turning occasionally, until cooked through and brown on all sides, about 10 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature.