Tag: Cinnamon

Chicken with Clove, Cinnamon and Chestnuts

Chicken European Holidays Main Course Regional Cooking Spanish Yom Kippur Baroness Tapuzina

Chicken with Cloves, Cinnamon and Chestnuts

Today, with a heavy heart Sarah, Miriam, and I shut down Flavors of Israel. It was a project that we were all very excited about, but work and other things interfered with us devoting as much time as we needed to devote on the website. I haven’t talked about my professional life on the blog, but I do have a demanding full time job in the software industry. This really only leaves me with the weekend to find exciting and interesting food-related adventures to write about and photograph. In my case, maintaining two websites was more than I could handle. But don’t worry, we are all still great friends and plan to continue collaboration in the future. The most important thing is that we all still have our own blogs, with different flavors of Israel; and I intend on still showing you the beauty and bounty, dear readers, of the country that I found love and grown to love, my home, Israel.

Enough with the tears now…

I hope that all of my Jewish friends and family are having a nice time in their Succahs, enjoying family time. David and I spent the first night with a lovely couple in our Moshav.

I already showed you the light dessert I made for the pre-fast dinner for Yom Kippur. The main course was a delicious Spanish dish that originally called for pheasant and pancetta. Since we don’t have access to pheasant here, I made the dish with chicken and did not substitute the pancetta, which you can substitute with smoked goose.

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Chicken with Clove, Cinnamon and Chestnuts
(Pollo con Clavo, Canela y Castañas) Recipe adapted from Moro: The Cookbook by Sam & Sam Clark
Ingredients
  • 6 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 medium onion finely chopped
  • 2 medium carrots finely chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves thinly sliced
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 4 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon Piment d'Espelette - Basque Red Chili Pepper
  • 6 whole cloves roughly ground
  • 1 x 400g 14oz tin plum tomatoes, drained, broken up
  • 1 large chicken cut into 8 pieces
  • 300 ml 1-1/4 cup dry white wine
  • 200 g 7oz chestnuts, boiled, fresh or vacuum-packed, cut in half
  • Sea salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. In a large, deep frying pan with a lid over medium-high heat, add 3 tablespoons of olive oil. When hot, brown all sides of the chicken pieces and set aside.
  2. Turn the heat down to medium, add the remaining olive oil, and add the onions, carrots, garlic, bay leaves and cinnamon, and cook for 5-10 minutes until the vegetables begin to caramelize. Add the thyme, paprika and cloves, and stir well for a minute, then add the tomatoes and cook for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  3. Add the chicken to the tomato mixture and then add the white wine. Reduce the heat and simmer over a low heat with the lid on for 20-40 minutes. Then add the chestnuts and continue to cook for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.

Holiday Stollen

Cakes Hannukah Baroness Tapuzina

It was my turn again to bring goodies for my team’s weekly Kabbalat Shabbat. Since my turn fell on Christmas Eve and given the fact that none of us celebrate Christmas, I thought I would do something unusual and make a typical German Christmas fruit cake that no one on my team had ever seen or tasted.

Stollen is something that is very familiar to me because my family would eat it along with lebkuchen, speculaas, and my grandmother’s famous butter cookies for Hannukah and the end of the year family celebrations. My grandmother never made a stollen at home, but she always received one from family friends in Germany. I thought it would be fun to make one. Now I know why my grandmother never made it and only served it once a year. It is an absolute calorie bomb! Only make this if you are giving 99.9% of it away as I did. Of course, you are welcome to eat as much as you want, it is absolutely delicious, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you about your growing hips.

I think most of the team liked it because they are still talking about it this week and asking me when I am going to bake another one.

I would like to wish all of you a very Happy Holidays and a Peaceful 2010 from the Tapuzina baronial dynasty.

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Holiday Stollen
Adapted from Hans Rockenwagner and the recipe from the NYTimes
Ingredients
  • 2/3 cup black raisins
  • 2/3 cup golden raisins
  • 1/2 cup dried cherries or dried cranberries
  • 1/3 cup dark rum
  • 1 cup almond halves lightly toasted
  • 1 package active dry yeast 25g fresh yeast
  • 1/2 cup milk at room temperature
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 3/4 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
  • 1/2 vanilla bean seeds scraped and reserved
  • 450 g 4 sticks unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1/2 cup chopped candied ginger
  • 1/4 cup chopped candied orange
  • 1/4 cup chopped candied lemon
  • 2 cups icing sugar
Instructions
  1. DSC03847
  2. The night before baking, put the raisins, cherries or cranberries, and rum in a small bowl.
  3. DSC03848
  4. Put the almonds with 1/4 cup water in another small bowl. Cover both and let sit overnight at room temperature.
  5. Stollen Starter
  6. The next day, in an electric mixer with paddle attachment, set on low speed, make the starter by mixing the yeast with milk until dissolved. Add 1 cup flour and mix until a soft, sticky dough forms, about 2 minutes. Transfer the starter to a lightly greased bowl, cover with oiled or buttered plastic wrap, and let rest for 40 minutes at room temperature.
  7. In an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and set on low speed, mix the remaining 3 cups of flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, lemon zest and vanilla seeds. With the motor running, pour in 1 cup of melted butter. Mix at low speed for 1 minute, then add the egg yolk. Mix until liquid is absorbed, about 1 minute more. You may have to add a little milk if the mixture is still too dry.
  8. Divide the starter into 3 pieces and add it to the mixing bowl, 1 piece at a time, mixing at low speed until each addition is thoroughly combined, 2 to 3 minutes after each addition. After the starter is absorbed, mix the dough on a medium speed until glossy, 4 to 5 minutes.
  9. DSC03846
  10. Add the almonds, candied ginger, candied orange and candied lemon, and mix at low speed until combined, 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the raisins, cherries, and rum, and mix until combined, 2 to 3 minutes more.
  11. Stollen Dough
  12. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until the fruit and nuts are well mixed into the dough rather than sitting on the surface, and the dough is smooth and glossy, about 5 minutes. Place the dough in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest for 1 hour to let rise slightly, then knead it once or twice, cover with plastic and let rest for another hour.
  13. Shaped Stollen
  14. Divide into two equal pieces and shape each into an oval loaf about 20cm (8 inches) long. Stack two rimmed baking sheets on top of each other, lining the top sheet with parchment paper. Place the loaves on top and cover with plastic wrap. Allow the loaves to rest for 1 more hour at room temperature.
  15. Baked Stollen
  16. About 20 minutes before the rise is completed, preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Remove the plastic wrap and bake for about 1 hour. The loaves should be uniformly dark golden brown and the internal temperature taken from middle of each loaf should be 88C (190F).
  17. Stollen covered in Ginger Sugar
  18. Meanwhile, mix the remaining 3/4 cup sugar and 2-1/4 teaspoons ground ginger in a small bowl. When stollen is done, transfer the top pan onto a wire cooling rack (leave stollen on pan). While still hot, brush the stollen with the remaining 1 cup of melted butter, letting the butter soak into loaves. Sprinkle the ginger sugar on the tops and sides of the loaves. When the loaves are completely cool, cover loosely parchment paper or foil and let sit at room temperature for 8 hours or overnight.
  19. The next day, sift 1-1/2 cups of confectioners’ sugar over the loaves, rolling to coat the bottom and sides evenly with sugar. Wrap each loaf in plastic and let sit at room temperature for at least 2 days before sifting the remaining 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar over the loaves before serving.

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.

Curry Roasted Chicken

Chicken Baroness Tapuzina

Since my surgery, I have been trying to get back in the kitchen, but I have been working long days at work and so I haven’t had a lot of energy to cook. Most of our meals have not been special enough to blog about. Last Shabbat, I decided it was time to cook again. There was a whole chicken staring at me in the freezer and I knew that I wanted to try something new. I had a hankering for curry, so what better than curry roasted chicken. You can be very flexible with this recipe by using a curry and other spices of your choice. This chicken is even better the next day. You could easily make this dish the night before and pop it in the oven the next day.

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Curry Roasted Chicken
Ingredients
  • 1 roasting chicken about 2kg 4lb
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon nigella seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
  • 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
  • 4 green cardamom pods
  • 1 tablespoon medium madras curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 head garlic cloves separated and unpeeled plus 6 cloves, peeled
  • 2 tablespoons finely grated ginger
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 shallots unpeeled and quartered
  • 3 sticks cinnamon
  • 1 cup chicken broth
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 230C (450F). Pat chicken dry with paper towels. Place on a rack in a small roasting pan or baking dish. Set aside.
  2. Spices for Curry Rub
  3. In a small frying pan over medium heat, combine cumin seeds, nigella seeds, black peppercorns, coriander seeds and cardamom pods. Swirl until lightly toasted and fragrant, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly; grind using a mortar and pestle. (To save time, or if you don't have equipment, use pre-ground spices and toast in pan 45 seconds.) Mix with curry powder, cinnamon and red pepper flakes. Add six finely chop peeled garlic cloves and combine with ginger and olive oil in a small bowl. Rub mixture over entire chicken.
  4. Curry Roasted Chicken
  5. Place the unpeeled garlic, shallots and cinnamon sticks inside the chicken cavity. Tie legs with kitchen string. Roast 30 minutes before basting with 1/2 cup of the chicken broth. Roast 20 minutes more, then baste with the remaining 1/2 cup of broth. Continue cooking until the juices run clear when the chicken is pierced with a knife and meat is no longer pink, about 1 hour and 15 minutes in total. Remove from oven and let stand for a couple of minutes.

Perfect Dish for a Cold and Rainy Winter’s Night

Cakes Lamb Baroness Tapuzina

Israel depends on a rainy winter for its water supply for the rest of the year. We have had a serious drought here that no one is taking seriously. However, the last few weekends we have had a significant amount of much needed rain.

Rain and cold always demand hot and hearty dishes to keep us warm and cozy inside and out. There is a another sale at our local supermarket on lamb; this time the sale is on lamb neck. I don’t think lamb neck is readily available at supermarkets or butchers in most parts of the US and Canada, but you may be able to find it at a Halal butcher in larger cities with a Muslim population. If not, you could always use lamb shoulder. I don’t think you will have a problem finding it in Europe.

This lamb recipe was published in Haaretz newspaper a couple of weeks ago and is from a famous restaurant in Nazareth called Diana’s. It specializes in meat, especially lamb kebab that is chopped by hand, and seafood.

The seasoning of the lamb is more subtle than usual for middle eastern food: even though one tablespoon each of allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon appears to be a lot,  this is for quite a large quantity of meat and none of the spices has a very strong taste to begin with. It is very important to let the meat cook on a very low flame for long enough to become really tender: in fact, if you can cook the meat (without adding the spinach) the day before and then cook it again for about 30 minutes (following the rest of the instructions) just before serving, it will be even better.

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Lamb and Turkish Spinach Stew
Ingredients
  • 4 pieces lamb neck with the bone weighing approximately 350g (3/4lb) each
  • 1 tablespoon ground allspice
  • 1 tablespoon grated nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • Olive oil
  • 8 whole shallots peeled
  • 8 whole garlic cloves peeled
  • 5 garlic cloves crushed
  • 1 kg 2 lbs fresh medium size spinach leaves, stems removed, rinsed well and coarsely chopped
Instructions
  1. Mix the spices together. Lightly salt the meat and rub the spices on both sides of the lamb neck.
  2. Heat a little olive oil in a skillet and saute the pieces of meat until they start to brown. Transfer the meat to a large pot. Saute the whole shallots and the whole garlic cloves and add to the pot with the meat. Pour in enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Cook for about an hour over a high flame.
  3. Lower the flame and skim off the foam that has formed on top. Simmer for an additional two hours over a low flame until the meat is very tender.
  4. Add the spinach leaves and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
  5. Meanwhile, add olive oil to a pan and saute the crushed garlic until golden. Add the garlic to the stew, mix and adjust seasoning to taste. Serve over rice.

For dessert, I used a new carrot cake recipe that I hadn’t tried before. This cake is spicy, but not sweet at all except for the natural sweetness of the carrot, in spite of the fact that it calls for 1-1/2 cups of icing sugar. So if you like very sweet cakes, this one might not be for you.

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Carrot and Walnut Cake
Ingredients
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 1/2 cups icing sugar confectioner's sugar
  • 1 cup crushed walnuts
  • 1 cup grated carrots
  • 1 cup milk or water
  • 6 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground clove
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 170C (350F). Grease and flour one large tube pan.
  2. Sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder together and set aside. Beat the eggs together with the spices for 5 minutes. Stir in the icing sugar and mix well. Beat in the vegetable oil and continue beating for 5 minutes.
  3. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk or water, 1 tablespoon at a time, to the egg mixture. With a spoon stir in the carrots and the walnuts. Pour batter into prepared pan.
  4. Bake at 170F (350F) for 1 hour.

Erev Yom Kippur 5769

Beef Chicken Syrian Yom Kippur Baroness Tapuzina

Erev Yom Kippur dinner at my parent’s and grandparent’s house was always a multi-course affair. It was really no different from the festive multi-course meal we had for Rosh Hashana. Since moving to Israel, I realized that these massive meals did not help with the 25 hour fast. In fact, they made it much more difficult. So, we had a two-course meal.

I deboned chicken quarters by removing the the pelvic bone, thigh bone and half of the leg bone. If you buy your meat from a butcher, you can ask them to do this in advance. Otherwise, it is really not that difficult to do. I then stuffed it with a Syrian meat and rice mixture called, Hashu. It is typically used as a filling for kubbeh or lamb shoulder. It has a lovely aroma of allspice and cinnamon with a hint of hot paprika. I used sweet paprika this time, because it is better to have blander food before you fast. It is an easy main course to prepare and would be elegant enough for a dinner party. But, to add a little more elegance to the meal, you could stuff cornish hens.

For those of you who fasted, I hope it was an easy one for you.

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Chicken Quarters stuffed with Hashu
Ingredients
For the chicken:
  • 4 chicken/thigh quarters deboned by removing the pelvic bone, thigh bone and 1/2 of the leg bone
  • 2-4 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
  • String to tie chicken
For the filling:
  • 500 g 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 1/3 cup short-grain rice white or brown
  • 2 teaspoons ground allspice
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon hot paprika
  • 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1 onion finely chopped (1/2 cup)
  • 1 cup pine nuts
  • 1/4 cup water
Instructions
  1. Soak rice in cool water, enough to cover, for 30 minutes. Drain.
  2. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix well with your hands. Add the meat mixture to a frying pan, add water and start breaking the meat in to small pieces. Cover until the rice is cooked through for approximately 10 minutes. Let cool.
  3. Deboned and Ready for Stuffing
  4. Stuffing with Hashu
  5. Tied with a Silcone Tie
  6. Ready for the oven
  7. Fill the chicken with approximately 1/4 cup of the meat mixture and fold the chicken meat over the mixture and tie with cooking twine (I used silicone ties) to enclose the stuffing. Put seam side down and drizzle each chicken quarter with pomegranate molasses.
  8. Bake at 180C (350F) for 1 hour.

Not my Grandmother’s Honey Cake

Cakes Holidays Rosh Hashana Baroness Tapuzina

We didn’t have a Rosh Hashana tradition of making honey cakes in my house. I didn’t even know there was a tradition to serve honey cake during this holiday. We made Honigkuchen, which were basically lebkuchen, a type of spice cookie that we always made for Hannukah. My grandmother always made Noodle Schalet (Noodle Pudding, not Kugel, with eggs, lemon zest and raisins) with lemon sauce for dessert. We had Suesse Apfel (carmelised apple slices in honey) as a side dish with roast beef.

So when I moved to Israel, people started asking me what does your mother put in her honey cake? Does she put nuts in, coffee or tea, schnapps, only cinnamon? I had no idea what they were talking about. All of the supermarkets and bakeries were selling different types of honey cakes. The few times I had them in the States, I always remembering them being dry and inedible. I made my first honey cake a few years ago and I could have built a house with it. It was heavy and dry. Then, I made the Beekeeper’s Honey Cake and it was less dry.

I finally decided which cake I am going to make for Erev Rosh Hashana, the Magical Honey Cake. As most of my regular readers know, I usually have to tweak a recipe and this time was no different. I used Janna Gur’s recipe as a base and added a few more spices, some orange rind, and substituted cranberries soaked in rum for the raisins. I cheated and tasted one of the cakes on the second day, it is moist, spicy and bursting with flavour from the honey. This is going to be my tried and true honey cake from now on.

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Magical Honey Cake
Adapted from The Book of New Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey by Janna Gur
Servings: 3 loaves
Ingredients
  • 6 cups + 3 tablespoons flour
  • 1-1/2 cups sugar
  • 2 heaping teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon cardamom
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon cloves
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
  • 1-1/2 cups honey
  • 1 cup oil
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons instant espresso coffee
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 2 level teaspoons baking soda
  • Zest of two medium oranges
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries soaked in rum just to cover
  • 1/2 cup walnuts chopped
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 170C (325F). Grease the loaf pans.
  2. Dry Ingredients
  3. Mix the flour, sugar, and spices in a bowl. Add the honey, oil and eggs, and whisk into a smooth batter. Dissolve the coffee into 1 cup of boiling water. Add the baking soda to the batter, and then add the coffee. Gently fold in the orange rind, cranberries and rum, and the walnuts.
  4. Honey Cake Batter
  5. Pour the batter into the greased loaf pans and bake for approximately 45 minutes until the cake is dark brown and the toothpick is clean with a few crumbs adhering.
  6. Cool the cakes completely and wrap with aluminum foil. Place in a cool, dry place to mature for 7 days.

Erev Yom Kippur

Chicken Moroccan Baroness Tapuzina

Tonight, I making a simple two course meal consisting of a Moroccan Kdra called Djej Kdra Touimiya or Chicken Kdra with Almonds and Chick-Peas, green beans, and some fresh fruit for dessert.

A Kdra is a tagine that is cooked with smen (I have to use olive oil), onions, saffron, cinnamon and sometimes ginger, depending on where you live. I am making a Fez version, which is made with a little dried ginger.

I think I was Moroccan in a former life because I am in love with the food, the architecture, the music and the culture in general. My earliest introduction to Moroccan food was when I bought Paula Wolfert’s, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, at a cookery shop in Seattle, Washington. The first dish that I tried got me hooked and I have exploring Moroccan food ever since. Since moving to Israel, I have been intrigued even more.

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Chicken Kdra with Almonds and Chick-Peas (Djej Kdra Touimiya)
From Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert
Ingredients
  • 1 cup blanced whole almonds
  • 1/2 cup dried chick-peas soaked overnight or canned (if you must)
  • 1/4 teaspoon pulverised saffron mixed with a little tumeric
  • Salt to taste omit for kosher chicken
  • 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 large cinnamon stick
  • 3 tablespoons butter or olive oil or 2 tablespoons smen
  • 1-1/2 kg 3 to 3 1/2 lb chicken, quartered
  • 2 medium yellow onions quartered lengthwise and finely sliced
  • 4 cups chicken stock or water more if necessary
  • 1/4 cup chopped parsley
  • Juice of 1 lemon or to taste
Instructions
  1. Put the almonds in a pan, cover with cold water and simmer, covered for approximately two hours. Set the almonds aside, submerged in water.
  2. In another saucepan, cover the soaked chick-peas with fresh cold water, boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook for one hour. Drain and rinse with cold water. Rub the chick-peas to remove their skins. Discard the skins.
  3. Note: For canned chickpeas, rinse and skin them and set them aside. Do not add them until the chicken has finished cooking.
  4. Place the butter, smen or olive oil in a casserole. Add 1/2 of the saffron-turmeric mixture, the spices and the chicken. Cook on a low flame for two to three minutes. Chop 4 or 5 slices of onion fine and add to the casserole. Add the stock or water. Bring to a boil and add the fresh chick-peas. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, covered.
  5. Add the remaining sliced onions and parsley. Cook for an additional 30 minutes or until the chicken is falling off the bone. Remove the chicken from the casserole. If relevant, add the canned chick-peas to the sauce. Boil the sauce at a high heat, uncovered and reduce the sauce to a thick gravy.
  6. Drain the almonds and add the remaining saffron to the sauce. Cook for an additional two or three minutes and spoon over the chicken. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Serve with couscous or rice.

Rosh Hashana 5768

Appetizers Cakes Chicken Duck Rosh Hashana Baroness Tapuzina

Chag Sameach everyone! I hope you had a nice meal with your family. We went to my cousin’s house for the first night of Rosh Hashana and had a lovely time.

We invited some friends of ours for dinner last night. My husband made a Rosh Hashana favourite and I introduced several new surprises to our repertoire. Everything was delicious.

The cake calls for sour cream and one of my guests has a dairy allergy and can only tolerate butter in baked goods, so I substituted a non-dairy yogurt in its place. It worked fine.

And in case you are wondering about why I served a dairy cake, we keep kashrut according to the Italian tradition which is one hour between meat and dairy.

Our menu was:

Cocktails


Provence des Papes Savoury Biscuits

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Provence des Papes Savoury Biscuits
Recipe from Restaurant: La Garbure (Châteauneuf du Pape) Chef: Jean Louis Giansilly
Servings: 24 biscuits
Ingredients
  • 5 garlic cloves
  • 3 sprigs of basil
  • 5 tbsp olive oil
  • 50 g 3.5 tbsp pine nuts
  • 300 g 1.3 cups flour
  • 10 cl .4 cup warm water
  • 10 cl .4 cup olive oil
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 25 g 1.7 tablespoons baking powder
  • 4 egg yolks
  • Ground pepper
Instructions
  1. Prepare a pesto by crushing the garlic cloves with the basil, olive oil, and pine nuts.
  2. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, virgin olive oil, egg yolks, warm water, and some ground pepper. Add the pesto and blend well to obtain a smooth dough.
  3. Roll into a long snake and slice the into 1/4 inch (6mm) wafers and bake at 180C (350F) for about 10 minutes (depending on size).


Rosemary Cashews
Cocktails

First Course
Apples with honey
Pomegranate seeds


Ducklava with Chestnut Honey

Main Course


Clay Pot Festival of Fruits Chicken
Couscous
Green beans

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Clay Pot Festival of Fruits Chicken
This recipe was created by my husband for the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashana. It is a fruity, but not an overly sweet dish.
Ingredients
  • 1 chicken cut into eighths
  • 1 onion thinly sliced
  • 4-5 whole garlic cloves
  • 2 cm fresh ginger grated or chopped finely
  • 1 quince cored and cut into eighths
  • 10-20 majhoul dates pitted and cut into quarters
  • 10 dried figs stem removed and cut into eighths
  • 10-20 dried sour apricots cut into quarters
  • 20 walnut halves
  • Couple of pinches of black pepper
  • 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 2 tsp cloves
  • 1 tsp. ground allspice
  • 1 tsp. ground nutmeg
  • 1 cup dry red wine
  • 1 cup water
  • ½ c pomegranate molasses
  • ½ tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • Olive oil
Instructions
  1. On a low heat, place the olive oil in the clay pot, just to cover the surface. Add the onions when the oil is hot, but not sizzling. When the onion is soft, add the garlic. When the onion is lightly brown, turn up the heat and add the chicken pieces, stirring constantly until browned, approximately 10 minutes.
  2. Reduce the heat and add the rest of the ingredients. Cook on a low flame for approximately 1 ½ hours, stirring every 15 minutes and checking that there is enough remaining liquid for a nice sauce.
  3. Server with nut-studded rice or couscous.


Round Challah with dried fruits and nuts
Golan Winery Sion Creek red wine

Dessert


Beekeeper’s Honey Cake
Mango-Nectarine sorbet

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Mango and Nectarine Sorbet
Ingredients
  • 3 medium size mangoes cut into chunks
  • 3 large nectarines peeled and cut into chunks
  • Juice of one medium size lemon
  • 1/2 cup simple syrup or to taste
Instructions
  1. ying and yang
  2. Place the mango and nectarine chunks in a food processor and process until the mixture is a puree. Add the simple syrup and lemon; mix for one to two minutes. Put in an ice cream maker, following manufacturer's instructions.
  3. Take the sorbet out of the freezer 15 minutes prior to serving.

Sumac and Spice Makes Everything Nice

Chicken Middle Eastern Baroness Tapuzina

I guess I am on a spice kick right now, but then spices are the key ingredient in Middle Eastern food. I bought some sumac a while ago and have been meaning to make something with it and today is the day.

Sumac has a sour and vaguely lemony taste and grows wild in the Mediterranean and in much of the Middle East. It is a popular condiment in Turkey and Iran, where it’s liberally sprinkled on kebabs and rice, or mixed with onions as an appetizer or salad. The Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians add water and other spices to sumac to form a paste, and add it to meat, chicken and vegetable dishes. I only recently learned that sumac is related to poison ivy.

I decided to make a popular Palestinian dish, called Musakhan (which means ‘something that is heated’), that is typically made in a taboun oven, but I will have to make due with my regular oven. My dream is to have an outdoor wood-fired oven someday so I can do some real slow cooking and baking.

As with all Middle Eastern dishes, there are numerous variations of this dish. Some are only with sumac, others with sumac and a combination of several different spices. I have chosen to make the dish with sumac, allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Because the dish is cooked on top of flat bread, it is typically eaten with your hands, using the bread as a base to pick up the moist chicken and sauteed onions.

I got the flat bread above, called Saluf, at a Yemenite bakery around the corner from my house. They sell this flat bread that they made right in front of my eyes and they also sell Yemenite Shabbat bread called Kubaneh. It was very tempting to tear off some of the hot bread, but I behaved myself.

The dish was delicious. My husband I thought that I could have added a couple more tablespoons of sumac and next time I will cover the dish with foil before I put it in the oven. The bread was a little too crunchy on the top.

We did taste all of the spices and they gave off such a wonderful perfume in the house. I forgot about the pine nuts. Oh well.

This dish was even better the next day and the bread on the bottom was very soft and was infused with all of the juices and flavour from the chicken and spices. I am definitely making this again.

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Musakhan
Adapted from recipes by Clifford A. Wright and Paula Wolfert
Servings: 4
Ingredients
  • 1 1 1/2kg or 3lb frying chicken, quartered
  • 2 tablespoons ground sumac
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
  • Sea salt optional for kosher chicken
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 kg 2lbs red onions, peeled and thinly sliced
  • Olive oil
  • 2 large Saluf Yemenite flat bread, Lafa (Iraqi flat bread), khubz 'arabi (Arabic flat bread) or 1/4 kg (1/2 lb) of pita, split in half
  • 1/4 cup pine nuts toasted
  • 2 heads of garlic roasted
Instructions
  1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry. Trim off excess fat.
  2. Sumac Rub on Chicken
  3. Combine the sumac, spices, salt and pepper. Set aside 2 teaspoons and mix the rest with the lemon juice. Rub into the chicken and marinate up to 1 day.
  4. Place the onions in a large skillet, toss with 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, reserved spices, and a pinch of salt. Cover and cook gently 30 minutes. Set aside in a bowl. (Up to this point, the dish can be prepared 1 day in advance.)
  5. Bring the chicken to room temperature and preheat the oven to 180C (350F). In the same skillet as used for the onions, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil, then lightly brown the chicken on all sides over a medium heat. Remove and set aside.
  6. Layering Onions and Chicken
  7. Cover a baking dish with two overlapping halves of the flat bread or several pita halves. Spoon half the onions over each, then arrange the chicken on top of the onions and cover with the remaining onions and the juices from the skillet.
  8. Musakhan Oven Ready
  9. Cover with the two remaining half leaves of flat bread or pita, tucking in the sides, crusty side up, and spray with water. Bake until the chicken is very tender and almost falling off the bone, approximately 1-1/ 2 hours. Check the chicken occasionally and cover the baking dish with aluminum foil before the top cover of the flat bread begins to burn.
  10. Serve at once with a sprinkling of the pine nuts and roasted garlic.