I’m  loopy over fresh figs; such a seductive fruit. And I love the fig tree, especially on hot summer nights, when the big, coarse leaves smell deliciously like vanilla and cinnamon. I like its sturdy stance, and the branches so generously laden with green and purple-striped fruit. To open a fig plucked right off the tree and see the mysterious red heart that promises a mouthful of sweetness, well…it’s a moment to cherish and come back to when you need to remember how good life can be.

There’s a great big old fig tree in my neighborhood that I visit once in a while, checking if the hard green little figs have ripened yet. I suspect the neighborhood kids and the birds will get most of them, but maybe I’ll get some too, if I’m alert. Till I can forage my figs, the shuk offers plenty of them. So I brought two kilos home.

Two kilos! That’s a lot of delicate figs. Now I had a kitchen dilemma. Could we eat them up before they spoil?

Figs baked with honey; that was good. Chilled fresh figs with frozen arak poured on top; also good. And before Shabbat, a cobbler, to finish them up. The recipe’s easy and it only takes half an hour to bake. The cobbler is light, just sweet enough, and a little different from the usual peach or apple cobblers.

Fig Cobbler

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup sugar, and another 1/2 cup later

2 tablespoons softened butter or margerine

2 tablespoons milk or orange juice

1/2 cup sweet or semi-sweet wine (I used Emerald Reisling)

3-4 cups figs, sliced into quarters

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

optional: whipped cream

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375° F, 190° C. Use a medium cake pan or quiche dish.

1. Cut the stem end away from the tops of the figs; discard them and quarter the fruit.  Sprinkle the cinnamon over the figs and set aside.

2. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Beat the eggs; add 1/2  cup of sugar. Add the butter or margarine and the milk.

4. To the wet ingredients, add the flour mixture. Stir gently until the ingredients are just combined. Pour the batter into the pan.

5. In a medium saucepan, boil the wine and the second 1/2 cup of sugar for 5 minutes. Add the figs; turn them over in the hot syrup and pour the mixture over the batter.

Bake 30 minutes.

Serve warm or at room temperature, with whipped cream if you wish.

Ma’amoul is the Arabic word for “filled.” To me, it evokes filling the mouth. It seems to me that people in this part of the world are especially fond of stuffed foods. Kids and grownups alike love vegetables and leaves filled with rice/meat combinations, from artichokes to zucchini - savory turnovers like sambusak with chickpeas (or meat, or potatoes) inside them, and sweets filled with dried fruit or nuts. Even dried fruit stuffed with nuts.

I wasn’t looking for them, but when I found molds for ma’moul cookies in Nazereth, I was a goner.

How could I resist using those hand-held molds to create cookies? How could they not be delicious, being perfumed with rosewater and filled with dates as they are? Or walnuts, or pistachios. In fact, the design on the mold traditionally indicates which filling the cookie has, so you can choose between them without having to take a bite first. Not that biting into a tender, crumbly ma’amoul – in the interests of science – is any great punishment.

I loved making these cookies, handling dough scented with rosewater. It was fun to fill the molds and knock them out onto my baking pan, seeing the beautiful little design imprinted on each cookie as it came out. Making them by hand is easy, though. Here, I’ll show you.

Ma’amoul, Middle-Eastern Stuffed Cookies

Yield: 24 ma’amoul

Preparation time for the dough:

10 minutes  plus 1 hour resting time

Ingredients for the dough:

½ teaspoon active dry yeast

¼ cup warm water

1 tablespoon rosewater or orange flower water

1 large egg

½ cup unsalted butter or margarine, melted and cooled

1-1/2 cups coarse semolina

2 tablespoons sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar for dusting over finished cookies

Method:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water.

2 Add the rose- or orange flower water.

3. Add the egg and melted, cooled butter or margarine.

4. Add the semolina and mix.

5. Add the sugar and salt; mix.

6. Add the flour, mixing till the dough holds together in a ball.

7. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 1 hour.

Ingredients for Date Filling:

¾ cup pitted dates

3 tablespoons sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons orange flower water plus 1-1/2 teaspoons rose water

Or 3 teaspoons either flower water

Method for Date Filling:

Place all the date filling ingredients in a food processor and process to a paste. Put the paste in a small bowl and set aside till you’re ready to stuff and bake the ma’amoul.

Ingredients for Nut Filling:

1-1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts or pistachios

2 tablespoons rose- or orange flower water

¼ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method for Nut Filling:

Simply mix everything up well. Put the filling in a small bowl and set aside.

To Stuff and Bake the Ma’amoul:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350° F -190° C.

2. Prepare a cookie sheet by the method you prefer: line it with parchment, or grease it lightly, or lay a silicon sheet over the surface.

2. Use a tablespoon to take dough out – a level tablespoon each time. Flatten each piece onto the palm of your hand, and push it till it’s about a 3-inch circle.

3. Place 1 ½  teaspoons of the nut filling on top of the dough. Bring the edges of the dough up with your fingertips and press them together to seal the filling. Repeat with remaining dough and filling.

Or, simply hold some dough in the palm of your hand, poke a hole in the middle, and fill. Roll the ball of dough between your palms – lightly – to seal the filling.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until  pale golden. Watch them after 20 minutes and don’t allow them to brown, as they will continue to harden while cooling. Transfer to a wire rack immediately. Dust with confectioner’s sugar.

An irresistible combination of aromas and flavors: orange and fresh pastry. Inspired by the orange trees in bloom all around the neighborhood, I went searching for a recipe featuring the fruit. I found this recipe at Recipezaar.

I made a few adjustments, using margarine to keep the pastry pareve and changing the glaze’s original ingredients. And can I tell you how delicious these tempting little pastries are?

I’d better not.

I want them all for myself.

Orange Rolls

Makes about 30

Ingredients for Pastry

1 package fresh yeast (1/4 oz.)

1/4  cup warm water

1 cup more warm water or milk

1/4 cup margarine or butter

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

3 1/2 – 4 cups flour

Ingredients for Filling:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup soft margarine or butter

2 tablespoons grated orange zest

Ingredients for Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

4 teaspoons margarine or butter, soft

5 teaspoons orange juice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method for Pastry:

1. Dissolve the yeast the 1/4-cup of water, in a small bowl.

2. In a large bowl, mix the cup of water or milk, marg or butter, sugar, salt, and egg. Use a mixer for this if you have one; it’s easier and less messy.

3. Stir in the yeast mixture.

4. Add the flour. You should have a soft dough; one you can knead but will still be a little tacky.

5. Knead till smooth – 5 minutes or so. You can knead it in its mixing bowl.

6. Sprinkle flour over the surface of the dough, turn it over, and sprinkle more flour over it. Cover the bowl.

7. Let the dough rise for about an hour or until doubled and light.

8. Punch it down and divide it in half.

9. Roll each half into a 15 x 10″ rectangle (I just judged by eye and made a fat rectangle).

10. Mix the filling ingredients until smooth. Spread half on each rectangle. Spread it thinly and smoothly, covering all the rectangles.

11. Roll each rectangle up, starting from either long edge.

12. Cut each big roll into 15 pieces. It’s a little tricky, but don’t worry if the little rolls pull apart a little. You can quickly re-shape any awkward-looking ones.

13. Place the rolls into baking pans that have either been greased or covered in baking paper. I recommend lining the pan with baking paper, as the filling leaks out a bit in baking, and makes removing the finished rolls difficult.

14. Cover and allow it to rise 45 minutes or till doubled in volume. About 25 minutes into the second rising time, preheat the oven to 375° F -  190°C.

16. Bake  for 20 – 25 minutes. Keep a sharp eye out – they should be a golden brown, not a deep brown. The heavenly smell in the house will announce doneness.

17. Mix the glaze ingredients. It won’t look like there will be enough to glaze all the rolls, but there will be. Spread the glaze generously over the rolls while they’re still hot.

18. Refrain from devouring everything.

It looks like glue unless you top it with chopped nuts and a drizzle of syrup. But slide a spoon into the softly yielding white mass and put it in your mouth. You’ll taste rose-flavored sweetness and a light, creamy texture that keeps you dipping your spoon back in till the Malabi’s all gone.

Here in Israel we call it Malabi – in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, people call it Muhallibieh. The Greeks know it as well, and make an elaborate, panna-cotta-like dish based on it. And it’s only milk pudding, made in ten minutes. Sounds like a dessert for children, and children naturally do love it, but I’ve eaten Malabi in restaurants and at dinner parties.

The old-fashioned way is to use rice flour as the thickener. Easy enough to make in the food processor – just whirl rice around in it till it’s fine, floury particles. Health food stores carry rice flour, if you’re not in the mood to powder rice. I confess I yielded to laziness the other day and bought some. When made with rice flour,  Malabi has more body and a slightly gritty texture. Cornstarch-based Malabi is silky and very light.

Recipes vary a little.  Some call for a combination of milk and cream. One requires ground almonds. Some people flavor their Malabi with rosewater, some with orange flower water. Very old recipes call for mastic, a resin from a shrub belonging to the pistachio family. I saw one recipe that requires flavoring the pudding with two leaves of a bitter orange tree, or the flowers.

I’d like to try that sometime. In fact, orange trees are blooming all around my neighborhood now – maybe I’ll remember to pluck a few blooms for Malabi. Up till now, I’ve favored vanilla and rosewater. There is something so Oriental and heady, and at the same time so soothing, about the perfume of roses.

Toppings vary too. I like to top Malabi with chopped pine nuts and walnuts, or with chopped pistachios. Some dust a little cinnamon over the top, or sprinkle shredded coconut and peanuts. A little syrup over everything – it can be silan, or date honey, which I favor, or a home-made sugar syrup flavored with lemon, or even maple syrup. Israelis sometimes use “pettel,” a cheap raspberry-flavored syrup used to flavor water, which I don’t recommend.

The photo above shows a rice-based Malabi with pistachios and silan.

And by the way, you can make Malabi pareve (non-dairy) as well. Just substitute water, or better yet, half water, half coconut milk. Or use all rice milk.  I use water and a can of coconut milk, and everyone loves it.

Here are two basic Malabi recipes.

Rice-Flour Malabi

6 servings

Ingredients:

1 liter (4 – 1/2 cups) milk

1/2 cup rice flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons rose water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

chopped nuts

Method:

1. Put the rice flour in a small bowl. Slowly, add 100 ml. (1/2 cup) from the milk to it, stirring well to dissolve. Use a whisk, if you have one – lumps in Malabi are not nice.

2. Bring the rest of the milk, plus the sugar, to the boil. Stir in the rice flour/milk. Stir well to distribute the rice flour, but don’t scrape up the thickened layer that will form at the bottom of the pot – it will simply form lumps.

3. Lower the heat to medium and cook the pudding for 5 minutes, stirring.

4. Add the vanilla and the rosewater; stir.

5. Pour the Malabi into a big bowl, or ladle it into 6 dessert-sized bowls. Cool it completely, then refrigerate it.

6. Garnish the tops with chopped pistachios and a drizzle of your favorite sweet syrup.

Cornstarch Malabi

8 servings – can be halved

Ingredients:

4 cups milk

1 cup sugar

5 tablespoons cornstarch, diluted in 1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons rose water or orange flower water

4 oz. chopped nuts

silan or other syrup

Method:

1. Put the milk and the sugar in a pan and bring the mixture to a boil.

2. Always stirring, add the cornstarch and water mixture.

3. Cook over medium heat till the pudding thickens – up to 5 minutes.

4. Add the rose water; stir.

5. Ladle into small bowls. Cool the pudding and then refrigerate it till cold.

5. Garnish the servings with chopped nuts and a swirl of syrup.

• Another pudding recipe: Flim Flam Flan
• Silan date honey in a savory recipe: Eggplant with Techinah
• Another savory silan dish: Tajine of Turkey with Dried Fruit

These past two weeks, I’ve been wanting to write about apple pie. I used to bake good apple pie – learned from my Mom, who learned from Grandma. Rich, sweet fruit spilling out of a flaky crust…I had it down pat. Thought I still did, although I haven’t baked a pie in while.

Well, if you don’t use it, you lose it. I had no less than three apple pie disasters in the past two weeks. I was demoralized.

These were times for desperate measure. Times when the only thing to do was square the shoulders, starch the upper lip, and make myself some hot chocolate.

So that’s what I did. I like it very strong, almost bitter, and dark. Spiced with cinnamon and enough chili flakes to burn the back of the throat a little, and smoothed out with vanilla. Brandy is nice but not essential. A floating island of whipped cream on top – if I’m really feeling self-indulgent. Tonight I had only 10% cream, which doesn’t whip up but still adds depth and richness. I added a couple of tablespoons to each cup.

It seems like a lot of trouble for a cup of hot chocolate. But part of the charm is in the ritual of carefully preparing the most delicious cuppa for yourself and one other lucky person. It’s like saying, “Here, take a little sweetness  and fire for yourself.”

Hot Chocolate Morale Restorer

serves two

Ingredients:

2 cups – 1/2 liter milk

2 oz.  – 50 grams – half a bar – of  bittersweet chocolate, broken into chunks or grated

a pinch of salt

4 tablespoons cocoa powder

4 tablespoons sugar

1 tsp. cornstarch

1/4 cup boiling water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 stick of cinnamon or 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

chili flakes

1 teaspoon  cocoa extra

Optional: a shlook (Yiddish for dollop) of brandy. Whipped cream.

Method:

1. Mix the cocoa powder, sugar, salt, and cornstarch together in a small pan.

2. Pour 1/4 cup boiling water over the dry mixture and stir till everything is dissolved and you have a smooth paste. (You can skip this step and just add the dry stuff to the hot milk in the next step, but there will be cocoa lumps.)

2. Put the milk, cinnamon stick, and vanilla into a pot you can pour out of.

2. Slowly heat the milk up. When you judge it to be hot – not simmering or boiling, just hot – add the 2 oz chocolate. Stir to dissolve.

3. Add the sugar/cocoa paste to the milk.

4. Keep stirring. When a ring of bubbles forms around the edges of the milk, turn the heat off. Remove the cinnamon stick.

5. Pour the  chocolate into two cups.

6. Shake as much chili as you like onto the surface of the hot chocolate. Anywhere from just a few flakes to a lot. I like a lot.

7. Stir a tablespoon of brandy into the chocolate, if you want.

Whipped cream is decadent and pampering, but not crucial.

With or without brandy or whipped cream, shake a little dry cocoa into each cup.

Sit down, sip, and feel strong, like an Aztec warrior.

The Aztecs should have had it so good.

Do you know the Kosher Cooking Carnival? If you don’t,  it’s time you did.

It’s a collection of links to blog entries discussing recipes, food traditions, stories, Jewish law, restaurant or cookbook reviews – anything related to kosher food. For example, this month mominisrael shows us a cooking ingredient spreadsheet; Pesky Settler presents a psychedelic tie-dyed cheesecake; and I submitted my cholent entry.

Batya at me-ander is hosting this month’s KCC, up now. Be sure to visit and get the full story on what the kosher foodies are talking about and cooking.

And next month’s KCC will be here, at Israeli Kitchen. Submit your link here to show the blogosphere your food thoughts. Deadline for submission is October 25th. Hope to see your link soon!

The Big Move is behind me. With the High Holidays over and Sukkot  just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about meals and menus without much interruption. Plenty of time to think about all that because for the past several days I’ve been lying in bed, blowing my nose.

Oh, woe. If I’d only drunk my daily cup of kefir, I could have avoided this cold and gone to a post- Yom Kippur breakfast, met some interesting new people…and look, I had even made some flan to take.

Many food historians claim that this elegant dish goes back to the ancient Romans and an egg-and-honey custard. Although the ancient Romans had a sophisticated cuisine, I suspect that flan in some form, under other names, existed long before them. We don’t know who first baked bread, brewed beer, or pickled olives; nor do we know if the ancient Phoenicians invented custard and brought it to Spain, where the Romans first sampled it. I lean towards the last theory – it evokes an even more ancient time, when some barefoot farm wife found herself with an excess of creamy milk, not enough to make cheese but a few dipperfulls. And say her hens had just laid an unusual number of  eggs. It wouldn’t have taken much imagination to mix the two in a clay pot, bake the mixture in the embers of a fire, and douse the custard with honey. People have always loved sweet things and that would have been a treat for a seafaring husband, something to make him miss home.

Well, that’s just romance and speculation. For a good read on the history of puddings, custards, and creams, with many historical recipes, go here.

But flan, flan takes me back to my childhood in Venezuela. I remember spooning up the silky custard with its veil of caramel syrup, allowing that tiny burnt taste to just approach my senses before it yielded to sweetness and the blander taste of cream and eggs. I still love flan. When thinking of a light dessert to please a crowd who’d been fasting 25 hours, that was what rose in my mind. Never mind… guess we’ll just have to eat it all ourselves, here at home.

Out on the Net, almost every recipe calls for cans of condensed and evaporated milk. You can get those here, but they’re expensive and not kosher enough for everyone as they’re chalav nochri (milk produced by Gentiles). This recipe, needing only whipping cream and milk, is adapted from one I found on Epicurious.com

Note: flan does shrink in cooking, so ramekins make a prettier presentation than a ring or a pie plate. I doubled the recipe and used a silicon bundt pan plus a pie pan, as I was going to transport them in a car.

Traditional Spanish Flan

printable version here

6 servings

Ingredients:

1 and 3/4 cup whipping cream

1 cup milk

pinch of salt

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

*******

1 cup sugar

*******

3 large eggs

2 large yolks

7 Tablespoons sugar

*******

hot water for steaming the flan

Method:

1. Combine the cream, milk, and salt.

2. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean into the cream mixture. Add the bean. Over medium heat, bring the mixture to a simmer. Turn the flame off, cover the pan, and allow it to infuse for 1/2 hour.

3. Now preheat the oven to 350°F – 180° C.

4. Get your ramekins or mold ready: place them (or it) on a baking pan.

5. Put the cup of sugar into a medium pan. Allow it to  dissolve and caramelize over a medium flame. Keep a sharp eye on it – it takes only a few minutes for the sugar to brown. Once it goes black, it’s bitter and inedible. Break up any chunks with a spoon. As soon as the sugar smells only a little burnt and has a deep orange color, pour the syrup into the mold. Be very careful – burnt sugar causes painful burns on the skin. Best is to wear gloves. Now tilt the mold so the syrup coats as much of its inside as possible. Let it cool till the 1/2 hour of cream infusing with vanilla is up.

6. You’ll need to fill up the baking pan with water to half-way up the mold, so heat the water up in a kettle now.

7. Whisk the eggs, yolks, and 7 Tablespoons of sugar together in a medium bowl.

8. Whisk the infused cream into the yolks, gently. Try not to make foam, which will create air holes in the texture of the finished flan (can’t avoid them entirely, but small ones don’t matter).

9. Pour the custard into the mold, through a sieve. Sieving removes the pieces of vanilla bean and the skin which formed on the surface of the cream .

10. Pour enough hot water into the baking pan to come half-way up the mold.

11. Bake till the center is gently set: 40-50 minutes.

When it’s done, remove the whole thing from the oven, baking pan and all. when the water in the baking pan has cooled, lift the flan mold out and set it to finish cooling on a rack for an hour or two. Then cover and store it in the fridge. Serve the flan cold.

To serve, run a knife around the inner edges. Turn the flan over onto a plate. Shake it gently to loosen it. Lift the mold carefully and watch, entranced, as the caramel syrup runs over the baked cream custard.

Coconut Flan: use 1 can coconut cream instead of the milk. Use only 1 and 1/2 cups whipping cream.

Mango Flan: Add 1 cup sieved, puréed mango pulp and 1 Tablespoon rum to the recipe.

Whipped Berry Pudding. Photo by Yaelian Lee.

My blogger friends continue to support Israeli Kitchen while I’m finishing up my house move. This delicious-looking contribution is from Yaelian, a Finnish blogger living in Central Israel.

Even if you can’t read Finnish, please visit her blog, which has photos from this week’s late-night fair in Tel Aviv’s Carmel market. Wish I could have gone to that fair – I hear it was great, with artisans and food booths open till late at night. I’m glad Yaelian went and shared some images.

I had to chuckle when I read through Yaelian’s recipe – it requires semolina, which as my readers know, I had 5 kilos of at Pesach time. I don’t intend to accumulate so much semolina again, but do intend to make this pudding as soon as I can locate which box my mixer is in. In fact, I wish I could have some of that pudding right now. It’s breakfast time and I’m hungry.

Thank you, Yaelian!

*

I am very happy to guest blog for Mimi, when she asked me. For my guest posting I chose a typical Finnish dessert, which is called Whipped Berry Pudding (Marjapuuro). It is made with semolina and berries. I have not eaten this for years, but thinking about a recipe for the guest posting I suddenly had a great urge to make this dessert. It is quite easy to make.

In Scandanavia, the whipped pudding is usually made with lingonberries. Instead I have used frozen raspberries. This can also be made with cranberries.

Whipped Berry Pudding from Finland (4-6 servings)

Ingredients:

2 cups of fresh/frozen  raspberries (or cranberries)

1½ cups of water

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

a dash of salt

½ cup of semolina

Method:

1. Heat raspberries  in 1 1/2 cups water until it boils; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered for a few minutes.

2. Press raspberries  through a  sieve to remove seeds. This may take some time, as you want to get all the goodness out of the berries, leaving only the seeds.

3. Return the raspberry juice to saucepan. Add sugar, 1 cup water and the salt; heat to boiling.

4.  Add semolina gradually, stirring constantly. Cook until thickened, 3- 5 minutes.

5. Pour into a mixer bowl. Beat on high speed until pudding becomes fluffy and the colour of the pudding turns into light pink, about 5 minutes.

The pudding is served cold, so put the bowl in the fridge for a few hours before serving. Serve in individual cups.

Mimi adds:

Yaelian says that she didn’t have whipping cream at hand when she made the pudding, but that it’s customary to whip some up and top the pudding with it.