I’m thrilled to invite you into the new Israeli Kitchen. It looks different, but the same good cooking is happening here. So step in – look around again – enjoy the pretty new format, and choose a recipe from my kitchen to cook in yours.
After all, cooking is what it’s all about.
It was Friday, and I was cooking for Shabbat in an uninspired way. Just your basic basil/lemon chicken roasted over root vegetables. Israeli salad (plenty of chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, seasoned with salt, lemon juice and olive oil). Choumous, corn salad, a plate of olives and pickles. The guests were a family with three small children. While I kept the meal plain to please the little people, I wanted one sophisticated dish for the grownups.
I opened the fridge and found two firm, purple eggplants in the vegetable bin. Aha.
Slice, flour, and fry them? Too ordinary.
Ratatouille? Somehow I wasn’t in the mood for ratatouille.
So I searched the friendly Net and found The Eggplant Recipe Database. I adapted this Chinese-ish recipe from it. It’s s sweet and sour, chili-hot and has lots of garlic. My adult guests loved it, and even the Little One, who claims to hate all purple food, ate and enjoyed.
Serves 4 as a vegetarian main dish, 8 as a side dish. Serve hot or at room temperature.
Ingredients:
4 cups chopped eggplant; pieces about 1 inch wide.
oil for frying
8 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
3 tablespoons soy sauce
A healthy pinch of chili flakes – or as much as you like. The dish should have some chili heat.
3 tablespoons plus 1 tsp. sugar
2 tablespoons white vinegar
3 tablespoons dry white wine
1/2 cup chopped green onions, green part only
1 tablespoon corn starch dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons hot oil to add when sauce is finished
note: I was out of green onion, so I used about 1/4 cup chopped chives.
Method:
With Oriental recipes, most of the work goes into assembling and chopping the ingredients beforehand; the actual cooking goes quickly. To make life easier, have ready in separate bowls:
1. Slice the eggplant in half, horizontally. Place each half skin up and cut through the peel first in horizontal, then in vertical slices. This will give you chunks with peel on each one.
2. Fry the eggplant in oil over medium heat for 10 minutes. The pieces should be cooked through and dark yellow.
3. Drain the eggplant on paper towels and set aside.
4. In the same skillet, fry the ginger and garlic, adding a little oil if needed. When a strong aroma arises, add the ketchup and stir for 1 minute.
5. Add the white wine, soy sauce, and chili flakes, and simmer for 2 minutes.
6. Add the sugar/vinegar mixture. Stir and simmer another few minutes.
7. Add the dissolved cornstarch in its water.
8. When the sauce starts to thicken, add the chopped green onions and hot oil. Stir for a minute.
9. Add the eggplant to the sauce. When it’s well coated with sauce, it’s ready to serve.
Serve over white rice or rice noodles.
3 More eggplant recipes:
Bread and soup, soup and bread…that’s dinner around here on winter nights. Everybody wants a hot meal but nobody wants to bother about it too much. Husband might be relaxing with a book – the Little One giggling on the phone with a friend – and I peering earnestly into the screen, too wound up with some project to start banging pots and pans around in the kitchen. What will we eat? Well, bread and soup.
Which I’d cooked earlier, when energy was running higher and there seemed to be more time. I set a plate with two kinds of cheese next to the bread, and call the hungry ones to the table.
A mildly sour bread.
yield: 2 loaves
Start this at night to serve the next day.
Ingredients for overnight sponge:
1 cup sourdough starter
2 cups water
3 cups plain white flour
1/1/4 cups corn meal
Rest of Ingredients:
1 tablespoon corn oil
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup water
3 cups flour, and maybe more
Method:
1. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients for the overnight sponge. Knead it a little too incorporate everything if it’s too stiff for the spoon, but the result should be a soft dough, not a firm ball. Drizzle a little oil over it to keep it from forming a skin overnight – smooth it with your hand to make a thin film over the dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it away in a cool place overnight.
2. By next morning, the sponge should be light, pocked with bubbles, and have a pleasantly sour smell. Now get a small bowl ready, and measure the remaining 1/4 cup water into it. Add the baking soda and the salt. Mix. Add the oil to the mixture.
3. Pour the water mixture into the sponge and beat it in.
4. Add about 3 cups more of flour, kneading it in. If the dough is too soft to handle, add flour a little more at a time. Stretch it out between your hands and fold it as you would make a paper envelope – then stretch it out and fold again, three or four times more. It may get sticky – just dust a little flour over your hands to keep going. You don’t want a stiff dough, but one just cohesive enough to handle.
5. Shape your loaves, cover them, and let them rise in a warm place 1 1/2 – 2 hours or till they’ve grown light, with noticeable bubbles under the surface skin.
6. Preheat the oven about 20 minutes before you anticipate baking.
7. It’s best to slash the tops before baking, to prevent a cracked crust. So cut some slashes into them and then allow them to recover for 5 minutes.
8. Bake at 350°F, 180°C, for 30 minutes.
9. Inspect the loaves for done-ness. If they seem a bit underbaked, turn them upside down and continue baking for another 5-10 minutes.
This bread tastes best when totally cooled down. That gives the sweet flavors of wheat and corn a chance to come through.
And by the way, it makes fantastic bruschetta.
**********************************************************
You’re Invited!
After a successful blogger’s event hosted by Israeli Kitchen in Petach Tikva, we are travelling to Nes Tziona.
Sara Melamed of Foodbridge will be hosting the next Israeli Blogger’s Evening on Saturday, December 26 at 8 PM.
Guest Speaker: Jacob Share of Job Mob.
Join us for an evening of learning, networking, refreshments, and good company.
Who is Jacob Share?
Jacob Share is the job search expert who created the award-winning JobMob at http://jobmob.co.il/, one of the most popular job search blogs in the world, with over 1.5 million pageviews in 2009 alone. The founder of Share Select Media, a company focused on authority blogging, Jacob has also created Group Writing Projects at http://groupwritingprojects.com/, the original home and premier resource of the blogger favorite- group writing projects.
To get the most out of this event, please contact Jacob in advance with questions you have about blogging and he will answer as many as possible at the event. Send your questions (after registering) via a direct message on Twitter (http://twitter.com/jacobshare) or email Jacob at jacob.share@shareselectmedia.com. Include your blog url if you have one.
Advance registration is required. You will receive confirmation and more details by email. Closer to the event, participants will receive the name and URLs of those attending so you can check out their blogs in advance.
Click here to register for the Israeli Blogger’s Event on December 26 in Nes Tziona.
Pareve, meaning a food that’s neither milk-based nor meat, is a useful Kitchen Yiddishism to express something mild or neutral: “Last night’s date? He was nice, but not all that interesting…sort of pareve.” Or: “She’s incredibly misinformed and opinionated – but she’s the boss, so when she talks, I just murmur something pareve and keep my opinion to myself.”
To hock something is to chop it up. As in ge-hockteh herrink, chopped herring. If a person’s troubles are many, you say that they have ge-hockteh tsuris – problems chopped fine. Of course, you know what tsuris are – who doesn’t?
The basic concepts of kosher and treif (non-kosher) are easily applied to people, books, movies, life. A PG-rated movie can be kosher for a mature sort of kid, and not so kosher for a kid less so. A really graphic movie is treif!
Glatt meat undergoes the strictest kashrut supervision. You can describe people’s behavior as glatt too: “I’ll do business with Joe anytime – he’s honest and his company records are glatt – open to anyone.”
Now this an idiom I use but don’t know where it came from. To hock a chynick – teapot. As in: “Again with the trip to Europe? We can’t afford it! Stop hocking me a chynick!” 
My daughter and I spent an afternoon walking around Tel Aviv, the Carmel Market, and the Kerem HaTeimani (a section of town settled by Yemenite immigrants). The wall art and grafitti is great in that area. Here is some for you to enjoy.
A message from the counter-culture…
I didn’t know what to make of this sad Russian pirate and his little wooden Mariushka doll.
The same artist, who seems to feel that doll faces hide other realities.
Well jeepers, turn the volume down.
Something startled Norman badly. Was it all that noise?
Confessions of a narghila-smoker… a beautiful portrait.
Sleeping Beauty turned truculent.
…But the country runs on optimism – no other choice!
A new earthenware pot inspired a delicious red bean stew, and possibly a new psychological phenomenon.
Wandering Through Israel on Passover
Passover vacation was a great time to do a series of short trips around the country. From Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and the north, I rode buses and trains and renewed my ties to Israel.
Gefulte Fish Recipe Like Grandma Used to Make
I prefer my gefulte fish without matzah meal. These are bursting with old-fashioned flavor, but delicate and light.
Follow me on Twitter 
