I walked out on a sunny, windy day between two rains, and found flowering henbit, fumaria, and shepherd’s purse. All three are edible, and are medicine too. But I only picked a few of each, to gather into a delicate bouquet for my eyes to rest on.
I thought you’d like to see them too, so here they are.
It’s really much cheaper to make your own condensed milk. And you can make quantities of it at one time with almost no effort. But it does require time and patience. It’s something to stir while doing other kitchen projects. Like an intensive cooking or cupboard-cleaning session, or a morning of phone calls you’ve been putting off. Actually, the coolest thing would be to have a magical spoon that stirs all by itself. Lacking that, just old-fashioned patience and time will do.
Why would I want to make my own condensed milk? Well, here in Israel, all condensed and evaporated milk is imported in squeezable tubes and cans. Living in a dairy-rich country, it seems wrong to buy a milk product that’s been shipped across the planet. That’s Noble Reason Number One.
Then, while these products have kashrut, it’s not a strong hechsher that strict kosher-keepers accept. If I’m baking, it’s for guests as well as family, and I want all ingredients to be acceptable to everyone. That’s Noble Reason Number Two.
And Number Three, for some reason I had too much milk taking up room in the fridge and I wanted to use it up before it got old and I had to (shudder) pour it down the drain.
As a teenager living in Brazil, I used to hang out in the kitchen with the servants and watch them cooking. The two maids, Rose and Lydia, would let me get in their way among the pots and pans, answering my questions with good humor and occasionally poking sly fun at my ignorance. All our food was made from scratch, from the bread crumbs that coated shnitzels, to the daily rice and black beans, to Floating Island for dessert. (For some reason, those ladies loved to make Floating Island, although I don’t believe they ever ate any of it themselves.) They made lots of condensed milk for us back then.
My mother has often said that she misses her two girls, for girls they were when they worked in our home – rather, young women whose own watchful mothers accompanied them to the interview when my Dad hired them. We have often wondered if dainty-stepping Rose married her Portuguese policeman, whom she didn’t like but who was terribly in love with her and wrote letters (first read by her parents) offering his honorable hand and heart. Lydia, who was a little older and not so pretty, graduated from housemaid to cook in our home. Although only semi-literate, she could make out a recipe from Dona Benta’s cookbook and proved to have a light, sure hand with that savory Brazilian fare. I hope she married a nice man and has long been surrounded by grandchildren of her own.
That was long ago.
But condensed milk. All it takes it to put a liter or two or three in a big, wide pan and let it simmer without boiling till it’s reduced by at least half, if not more. Wide is the operative word here; you want lots of space for the water in the milk to evaporate. Once the milk steams, you must keep stirring and removing the skin that forms on top of the hot milk, or it will prevent evaporation. And scrape the bottom every so often to keep stray bits of fat that drop down from scorching. That’s where patience comes in.
It may take as little as half an hour, or up to several hours, depending on the quantity of milk you’re reducing. Get it down to at least half, if not a quarter of the original volume. The milk will turn tan to beige over the process and start giving up that sweet, condensed-milk odor. When it’s been reduced, allow it to cool somewhat, and strain if you want it free of floating skin particles and the inevitable slightly scorched bits. Refrigerate and use as needed. Condensed milk freezes well. If you’re fond of recipes that require it, freeze by the cupful or 2-cupfuls.
Brazilians reserve the skinny layers and when there’s enough, make biscoitos de nata from it – little milk-fat cookies. They are rare nuggets because they’re really a by-product of making condensed milk at home. I have Dona Benta’s recipe but confess that I didn’t make them this time. I put the cupful in the fridge and promptly forgot about it till it did get too old for use. I am ashamed.
But next time I make condensed milk, I’ll make you the biscoitos. Meantime, here’s the recipe, with a photo borrowed from jmarconi via Flickr, whose images of northeastern Brazil gave me a shock of recognition and nostalgia.
Source: Dona Benta Comer Bem, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1969 edition.
Ingredients:
2 cups of skimmed milk solids
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
Flour, as needed
Method:
Put the milk solids, butter and salt in a bowl. Add just enough flour to make a tender dough. Either roll out on a floured surface and cut out circles, or shape as in the photo above by dropping spoonfulls onto a baking tray lined with parchment and pressing a fork on each to make indentations. Bake at 375° F – 190° C for 12 minutes or until golden.
Another thing you can do with excess milk is make dulce de leche. The granular texture of the home-made product doesn’t resemble the slick commercial stuff, which is usually smoothed down with glycerin. But it’s the real, original milk jam. Use it to fill pastry, make ice cream, sweeten coffee as they do in Cuba, or spread on toast. Or just serve it on a little plate, with a coffee spoon. Like any other jam, it needs added sugar.
Ingredients:
For each liter of milk, 250 grams – 1 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence or lemon zest.
Method:
In a large, wide pan, simmer the milk and sugar together over low heat, stirring often. Cook till the milk has reduced to a semi-solid mass and you can see the bottom of the pan when you stir. Add vanilla or lemon zest just before removing from the fire.
Photo of dulce de leche by Fabiana of the delicious Brazilian blog, Figos & Funghis.
Last week, my small apartment turned into a synagogue.
At 7:00 a.m. every morning, twelve to eighteen men wrapped in white tallitot stood in the living room, facing a narrow cupboard with a Torah scroll inside. They came in quickly and made almost no noise unless the service called for the reader to repeat prayers aloud. At Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, Husband’s voice rose over the others. For my mother-in-law, whose travail I have written about here before, had returned her soul to G-d at last. Our neighbors came morning and afternoon for Husband to say Kaddish for her during the shiva week.
Naturally, it was hard for Husband to swallow food in the beginning. But the first thing a Jewish mourner does upon returning from the burial is eat a small ritual meal. Round foods, traditionally lentils and hard-boiled eggs, to symbolize the circle of life, and bread. This meal should a gift from a neighbor or friend, reaffirming community ties. It’s a poignant meal, a step away from death, a step towards continuing life. My good friend Hannah Katsman of A Mother in Israel brought us this meal.
I cooked up a big pot of – what else? – chicken soup. I had told every one that offered that I would handle the week’s cooking – no need to bring anything. It was just Husband, the Little One, and me. Michelle of Baroness Tapuzina brought some nosh to have handy for visitors anyway. It did come in handy. Soon enough, I realized that I should have accepted the offers of meals that well-meaning neighbors pressed on me.
It’s not that I didn’t have time. Simply, the atmosphere in the house wasn’t conducive to anything as creative and free as cooking (or blogging). Visitors came in and out all day and late into the evening. I was uncomfortable making cooking noises and smells in the kitchen while the men were concentrating on prayers in the living room. Everything seemed like a huge effort.
I did cook, though. Comforting, familiar dishes like mashed potatoes and meatballs, simple dishes like creamy scrambled eggs and toast. And always, that pot of chicken soup, full of colorful vegetables and made with a whole chicken each time. But it took more out of me to cook than it ever had before. It was just not the right time to be cooking. I regretted not having bowed to custom and taken up the offers of ready-to-eat food more and more.
What food would I have liked?
Simple food that doesn’t require the household to make decisions or think too much. When you’re grieving, the mind doesn’t want to engage with layers of flavors or subtle hints of anything, anyway.
In many communities, someone takes it on to organize a food roster for the mourner’s shiva week. This is an excellent idea. To it, I’ll add: cook the food you know best; don’t cook to impress, but to comfort.
Another tip for shiva visitors, not related to food: stay only 15 minutes, unless you’re a very close friend and are certain that the mourners would rather you stayed. Wait till after mealtimes to visit. When several visitors dropped by at around noon and stayed for over an hour, I started wondering if I was supposed to pull lunch together for them.
The shiva week finished just before Shabbat, with the afternoon service. The Sephardic custom of putting out all kinds of small snacks, each requiring a different blessing, seems to have caught on in the general community. The intention is to lend the merit of the blessings to the soul of the one who died. So I put a variety of dried fruit and nuts, cookies and drinks on the table – with a bottle of whiskey for those who like to say a l’chaim. It was well done; the guys pretty much cleaned up everything.
And that was the end of food during shiva. It was a relief to turn to normal cooking for Shabbat. What did I fix for Shabbat? Well, arroz con pollo. Picadillo. Salads. Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots. Simple things.
And one more pot of chicken soup.
It’s soup weather, no doubt about it. Even if Israeli skies are blue, it’s cold out there. And what I want to eat when it’s cold out, is soup. A flexible recipe, please, a soup that accepts lots of variations but always tastes good. And, while I’m at it, one with chicken and plenty of green herbs and vegetables.
Oh, I know. This soup.
Green Soup with Chicken Dumplings
Serves 4-5
Stock:
1/2 kg – 1 lb chicken wings, or 1/2 fresh chicken
1 onions, chopped
1 celeriac or parsley root, or 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery stalks with their leaves, chopped
1- 1/2 liters – 6 cups water
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup mixed chopped dill, coriander leaves and parsley
1 cup of the following: frozen or dried (soaked, and rinsed) fava or navy beans, string beans, fresh or frozen peas
1 large potato, chopped into large chunks
1 leek, trimmed of its green top
salt and pepper
Dumplings:
150 grams – 1/2 cup ground chicken
1/2 cup matzah meal
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoons oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
a small handful of fresh coriander leaves, chopped fine
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 cup stock
In a large pan, brown the chicken in the oil, together with the onions and celeriac (or substitute root vegetable). Add the celery stalks and leaves. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring to brown all sides of the chicken.
Add the water and chopped green herbs. Bring to a boil and then cook for 1 hour, covered, over medium heat. Allow to cool slightly; strain broth into a clean pot. Keep cooked meat from the chicken for some other use.
Add beans, potato and leek, with salt. Bring to a boil again and lower heat to medium. Cook 45 minutes. In the meantime, prepare dumplings.
Mix all dumpling ingredients well and refrigerate, covered, for 1/2 hour.
After the 45-minute cook and if you’re using string beans or peas, add them to the soup now.
Wet your hands and lightly form balls the size of large eggs. Cook dumplings in the soup, covered, 20 minutes. The dumplings will rise to the top. Taste for seasoning and add salt or pepper to taste.
Enjoy!
On a rainy day like this, what better thing to do than stay in and bake bread?
I wanted a new bread, something I haven’t done before. So I turned to my cookbooks – too many cookbooks, some of which are dedicated to bread, and to bread alone. Lugging about five into the living room, I spread them out on the coffee table. Spent about 10 minutes leafing through them, rejecting all the recipes for one reason or another. You know how that is, when your fancy can’t seem to light on one thing. Sighing, I put the books away again.
But I did want to bake. I imagined the Little One coming home from school cold and wet and a little grouchy, then brightening up as she smelled warm, fresh bread. Domestic magic! Love, security, and fresh bread! (I have these fantasies. I call them Yiddisheh Mamma dreams.)
Which bread, which bread? Then the white cover of The Joy of Cooking sort of twinkled out at me from the shelf. These days, I tend to consult other cookbooks before The reliable old Joy. But out of sentiment, I pulled it out and turned to the Yeast and Quick Breads and Coffee Cakes section.
Anadama bread. Bread made golden with a small proportion of corn meal, slightly sweetened with milk. Easy to make. It caught my imagination. Why hadn’t I made it before?
So I baked up a big loaf of moist, golden Anadama bread, with a little variation. Here it is. Thanks, Joy!
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 1973 edition
1 large loaf
Ingredients
1- 1/4 cup hot milk
1 cube of fresh yeast
1/2 cup yellow corn meal
2 tablespoons sugar
2-1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Method:
Scald the milk. Put 1 cup of the hot milk in a bowl, and to it add the corn meal, sugar, salt, and olive oil. Stir.
Dissolve the yeast in the remaining 1/4 cup hot milk. Combine the yeasty milk with the corn-meal/milk mixture.
Stir in 3 cups of the flour. Mix to make a loose dough. Add more flour by tablespoons, just enough to make a dough you can knead for 10 minutes, or stretch and fold 8 times.
Don’t make a stiff dough – flour or oil your hands to keep the dough from sticking, to keep added flour to a reasonable minimum. This is good policy for a light, tender crumb any time you bake bread.
Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rise in a warm place until it’s double in size and light – about an hour.
Knead briefly, and if you like to stretch and fold, do so again, 3 or 4 times. Place in a greased pan or, for a free-form loaf, shape and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Allow dough to rise again till doubled. This will take less time – about half an hour. At this time of year, the top of the stove is a good place to leave it, while the oven’s preheating.
Preheat the oven to 375° F - 190° C. Bake for 30 minutes, then check for doneness. If the top is crusty but the bottom still soft, flip it gently over and allow to bake another 10 minutes upside down. Check again.
Anadama bread is a good breakfast bread, being enriched with milk. It also makes good toast (wonderful hot and spread with peanut butter), and is delicious as French toast.
Baking notes:
I hardly ever knead bread dough anymore; just a little in the bowl to integrate the flour. Then I stretch and fold – less tedious, better for my back, and results in a lovely crumb each time.
My favorite method for checking doneness of bread is the old-fashioned poke with a toothpick, as with cakes. If the toothpick comes out free of crumbs, the bread is done.
I baked this on my seasoned clay flowerpot saucer, gently sliding it off parchment paper onto the saucer, which had been liberally sprinkled with corn meal just before baking the bread to prevent it from sticking.
Have you done a lot of frying this Hanukkah?
Me, I usually adapt fried foods to baked, but on Hanukkah, latkehs have to be fried at least once. So I fried traditional potato latkehs the first night, but until last night, I kept Husband and the Little One happy with fishy things like Slow-Cooked Salmon and Tajine of Red Mullet in Chermoulah. Then I decided to succumb to tradition and fry something. Hanukka’s winding down, after all.
I came across cookbook author Gil Mark’s Keftes de Espinaca – spinach patties. Perfect – Husband’s favorite vegetable is spinach. The Little One could do without it, but even she ate and took seconds of these patties. And to my delight, they needed but little oil to fry up into delicious, crusty morsels with tender insides. I served pasta with tomato sauce on the side and we had a great vegetarian meal.
The patties need something a little acidic to brighten the spinach’s earthiness. Squeeze half a lemon over the batch, or serve thick sour cream next to them. Or try making your own cream cheese – much less expensive than store-bought, and slavishly subject to your personal culinary whims. Recipe for home-made cream cheese below.
about 16 patties
Adapted from Gil Mark’s Olive Trees and Honey
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large, chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste
570 grams – 20 oz. frozen spinach, thawed, chopped, and squeezed dry
1 cup fine, dry bread crumbs
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly-ground black pepper
3 eggs, beaten
Oil for frying
1/2 lemon or thin lemon wedges for serving
Method:
Use a large frying pan. Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Sauté the onion till golden. Add the garlic and stir, cooking about 1 more minute.
Scrape the onion and garlic into a bowl. (No need to wash the skillet now). Add the spinach, bread crumbs, salt and pepper. Blend well. Add the beaten eggs.
Cover the bottom of the frying pan with more olive oil and place it over medium heat.
With your hands, take lumps of the spinach mixture and flatten them into patties. They should hold their shape firmly; if they seem too watery, add a tablespoon of bread crumbs.
Don’t crowd the patties in the frying pan; cook in batches. Fry them 3-6 minutes, turning them over when the bottoms have acquired a light-brown crust. Remove from heat when both sides are well crusted. Set them to drain on paper towels.
Keep the patties warm in the oven while continuing to cook the remaining batches.
Squeeze lemon juice over the patties and serve warm. Alternately, serve with thick sour cream or cream cheese.
Cream cheese recipe: Put two containers of sour cream into a bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon table salt; stir well. Grind in some black pepper if liked. Pour into an improvised pouch of cheesecloth, new nylon stocking (washed with dish soap and well rinsed), or a clean kitchen towel – twisting it closed and hanging it to drain over the sink overnight. In the morning, scrape the thick, semi-solid cheese into a clean container and refrigerate. You may flavor it before draining with a clove of mashed garlic, dill, duxelles, or any combination of herbs and spices that strikes your fancy. I like finely-chopped scallions and smoked paprika.
For potato latkehs, it’s best to leave the cheese plain. That way, you can serve applesauce without a flavor clash.
Notes on Spinach Patties:
Just in case you want something fried but seriously different for the remaining nights of Hanukkah, try my cheese fritters with fig jam and creme fraiche. It’s another Hanukkah post with a dairy recipe on the side.
Disclosure: Contrary to usual practice, I’ve borrowed someone else’s photo for my recipe. Because the spinach patties I made got gobbled up so fast, I didn’t have time to photograph them. But they looked much like the ones above, just not all round and tidy; more like traditional latkehs. These patties were photographed by Ocean Yamaha via Flickr.
Katherine Martinelli is an internationally published food and travel writer and photographer who contributes regularly to publications on three continents. A native New Yorker, she currently calls Be’er Sheva, Israel home.
That’s how Katherine introduces herself on her delicious blog, www.katherinemartinelli.com . But I can say more. She writes the kind of blog you and I love. It’s chock-full of recipes that turn ordinary ingredients into food experiences (like her Sour Cream Smashed Potatoes), and humor, and the most sensuous, mouth-watering photographs. Everything that the ardent foodie likes.
I’m tickled pink that Katherine has agreed to write a guest post on Israeli Kitchen. (I’m telling you, just looking at that photo makes me want to reach into the screen and tear a chunk off that cake.) So please welcome Katherine, and read on…
I discovered this Cinnamon Bun cake during a brief stint photographing contest finalists for The Joy of Kosher website. I wasn’t entirely sure how it would come out. I mean, who doesn’t love a good cinnamon bun, but does it really need to be turned into a cake? Well, let me allow the fact that it was gone in two days flat speak for itself. And there’s just two of us. We ate it for dessert, and for breakfast, and as an afternoon snack. I think it makes a perfect holiday breakfast, something pretty and festive to place on the table.
The cake comes together easily, and this is from someone who is an infrequent baker with a temperamental oven. Be sure to position the cinnamon buns so they face out as this makes for a very pleasing presentation. Although I opted to make this cake dairy it can also be made parve by using margarine in the cake and parve cream cheese for the frosting. I can’t speak to how that will taste, but I’m sure it would be fine.
Cinnamon Bun Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from The Joy of Kosher
Serves 8 to 10
Ingredients:
Cinnamon Bun Cake:
1 1/3 cups warm water
4½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
4 eggs, whisked
7½ cups AP flour
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Cream Cheese Frosting:
Ingredients:
4 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup powdered sugar (plus more to taste)
Sometimes nothing but a peanut butter cookie will do. With a glass of milk, naturally. And something different in the cookie – not chocolate chips. Looking through my freezer, which often yields gratifying surprises, I find a bag of cranberries. Ah! Perfect.
This recipe requires a lot of cranberries. A lot of everything, in fact. So the cookies, which have a slightly crisp crust yielding to a just-chewy-enough interior with those bright little berries in it – are good just before a brisk, 30-minute walk. And don’t eat too many before heading out.
Just a word to the wise.
Yield: about 45 cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup margarine or butter at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup peanut butter
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cups dried cranberries
Method:
Preheat oven to 350° F – 180° C.
1. Beat margarine (or butter) till smooth. Add the brown and white sugar, beating till all is blended and creamy.
2. Beat the eggs and add to the butter mixture. Beat in well. Add the peanut butter, and beat some more.
3. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the peanut butter mixture and mix thoroughly. Add the cranberries and beat, beat, beat again, until the fruit is well distributed throughout the mass.
4. Line a cookie sheet with baking paper. If not using paper, don’t grease the sheet. Use a tablespoon to separate pieces of dough onto the cookie sheet.
5. Bake 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are slightly brown. Allow them to cool down; they will become crisp.
I had this chicken that needed cooking. But I was bored with all my usual recipes. I stood in my kitchen, revolving ideas around in my mind. Nothing doing; empty head. Well, I do have a lot of cookbooks. Why not open the cabinet where I keep them and get a recipe?
Nah. Too logical.
So I stood there with a blank mind until my hand, obeying some part of my brain still responding to self-preservation, opened the cabinet and pulled out Elizabeth David’s “Mediterranean Cooking.” All kinds of good chicken recipes there. One was so simple and attractive, I just had to make it. Of course, once I got the chicken into the roasting pan, I had to potchkey it up with more seasonings. But I don’t think Ms. David would have disapproved – the result was so delicious.
Every bite of the seasoned chicken is perfumed with oniony goodness. And what I really like is how you get all different degrees of onion doneness. Under the chicken, the slices are soft and sweet and sort of bind together. Just around the sides, the onion caramelizes and you lift these savory brown rings off the pan. Way off to the edge of the pan, the slices are crisp, toasted almost black. You’d best like onions if you plan to cook this.
Another neat thing is, since it’s such a simple recipe you can up- or downscale the quantities and always get delicious results. Even if it’s one portion to be cooked in a toaster oven, it’ll work.
Serves 6
Ingredients:
1 chicken, cut into eight pieces
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup olive oil
1 lemon, halved
kosher salt
black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried, rubbed sage
more olive oil, for drizzling
1. Place the sliced onions in a shallow baking pan, in a low heap. Pour the quarter-cup olive oil over them. Place the chicken pieces on top.
2. Squeeze the lemon halves over the chicken, making sure that each piece gets plenty of juice. Tuck the juiced lemon pieces under the chicken. Allow it to stand for 5 minutes.
3. Drizzle a little more oil over the chicken, to give the seasonings something to stick to. Shake a little kosher salt over the pieces of chicken, and grind black pepper to taste over it. Scatter the thyme and sage over the chicken.
4. Roast at 350° F – 180° C for 45 minutes – 1 hour, or until the chicken is cooked through and golden.
Serve with rice, or for a perfect winter’s dinner, mashed potatoes. Green beans with blanched almonds go very well with this, as does a big, leafy salad with vinaigrette.
According to this article in Ynet, kosher goose liver that tastes exactly like pork will soon be available.
Kosher, yet. Organic, noch!
The Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, Yona Metzger, has not only approved of this specially-bred Spanish goose, he enthusiastically endorses it and hopes to see it imported to Israel in quantity.
Rabbi Metzger feels that the pork-flavored goose offers non-observant Jews an attractive alternative to eating treif. “As for religious Jews, I believe they will be disgusted at first, but will eventually get used to it.”
Maybe. I remember “kosher shrimp,” which passed through the market here and eventually vanished.
Would you try the pork-flavored goose liver?
Do you think I would?
I was foraging for wild greens one morning and couldn’t resist bringing home a fistful of wild flowers too.
Condensed Milk, Milk Cookies, Dulce de Leche, and a Ramble
One recipe leads to the next in this post about rcipes for condensed milk, milk cookies, and dulce de leche.
During Husband’s shiva week, I spent way too much time thinking about food and cooking. It would have been wiser to accept gifts of cooked food.
Green Soup with Chicken Dumplings Recipe
Nothing so comforting and good for you as a hearty chicken soup. I like this recipe because it allows plenty of variation, but always tastes delicious.
Bored with my usual bread recipes, I came across one for Anadama corn bread. Results: a tender loaf with a tempting golden color and slightly sweet flavor.
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