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.

Spinach Patties Recipe

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:

• If using fresh spinach, use 1 kg. – 2 lbs of it; cooked till wilted, chopped, and squeezed dry.
• The original recipe offers matzah meal as an alternative to bread crumbs, but I found that finely-ground, dry bread crumbs gave the patties a desirable light texture.
• If you like nutmeg in spinach, add 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg when mixing the ingredients. I’m not fond of nutmeg and so left it out, relying on the squeeze of lemon juice for that spark of bright flavor.

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.

The stones of the Western Wall look forbidding and dry. But deep inside their crevices, hidden moisture supports life. Is it rainwater and dew that seeped into porous rock? Or have the ancient stones absorbed all the tears men and women have shed praying here, over centuries?

As this caper bush, strongly rooted inside the dry, dusty stone, survives, flowers, and brings forth fruit in a place no one would think of sowing, so do the Jews. I wish, for all Jews in this dry time, that we be blessed yet again with flower and fruit – enlightenment and fullfillment – in this New Year and all the peaceful years to follow.

G’mar Chatima Tova.

Do you have to be Jewish to love cheesecake?

Well, no.

But it helps.

Shavuot  is coming up next Tuesday night. We have reasons  – religious reasons – for eating dairy on Shavuot. For many, that’s cheesecake.

And what, you might ask, rolling your eyes, does cheesecake have to do with receiving the word of G-d on Mt. Sinai?

Well, nothing.

The custom is to eat dairy. Cheesecake is modern tradition, based on the indisputable fact that it’s delicious.

Two commonly accepted reasons for dairy on Shavuot. The gematria, or numerical value of chalav – milk – is 40. We eat milk to remember the 40 days that the Jewish people waited while Moses received the Torah on Mt. Sinai. (Moses was fasting the whole time, by the way). Another reason is that the laws of ritual slaughter and kashrut were unknown till the Torah was received: to avoid eating un-kosher foods while spiritually preparing ourselves, we refrained from meat entirely and got our protein from dairy.

I’m afraid that if cheesecake had been around while we were waiting, our minds would not have lingered long on things spiritual. But – we are also commanded to rejoice on our holidays. Is cheesecake a cause for rejoicing, or one of many ways to rejoice?

This recipe takes a certain amount of focus. And two or three mixing bowls. And some time. But it’s worth the effort because it’s one of the best I’ve ever made. Rich and dense, with a tart-sweet marbling of puréed fresh apricots – a melting mouthful.

If you use a springform pan and grease it well with butter, you will have a smooth-edged cake. I was chicken about its being hard to remove so I placed baking paper in a pan with a removable bottom and got bumpy edges all around.

But when I served the cake to the ladies of the book club, nobody refused to eat the bumpy edges and got up from the table enraged. In fact they loved it.

The cake goes in four stages: bake the cake bottom, pureé the apricots, mix the filling and bake. It needs at least 3 mixing bowls. But don’t be daunted. Read the recipe through and follow my tips for a seamless baking session.

Apricot Swirl Cheesecake

adapted from Junior’s Cheesecakes by Fine Cooking, The Taunton Press

1 9-inch cake – 12 slices

Printable version here

The Cake Base

Ingredients:

1/3 cup flour, sifted

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch salt

2 large eggs, separated

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Zest of 1/2 lemon

2 tablespoons melted, unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preliminaries:

Preheat oven to 350° F, 180°

If using a springform pan, grease all inner surfaces very well with butter. If using a pan with a removable bottom, place a sheet of baking paper inside.

Wrap the entire outside with tin foil. This is necessary because at the second stage of baking, the cake will bake inside a water bath.

Have ready a pan into which your baking pan will fit easily, for the water bath.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a small bowl.

Zest the lemon.

Melt the butter.

Separate the eggs, with the yolks in a large bowl and the whites in a bowl big enough to contain them whipped.

Measure the sugar, leave it in its measuring cup, and put a measuring spoon on top of the measured sugar. This spares last-second hunting for the spoon when you’ll need to remove a little of the sugar.

Method:

Beat the yolks for 3 minutes, using an electric mixer set on high. Keep the mixer running and add 2 tablespoons of the sugar from the 1/3 measured cupful. Beat another 5 minutes.

Beat in the lemon zest and vanilla.

Sift the dry ingredients over the egg yolk/sugar mix and beat in on low, just to blend lightly. Blend the melted butter in.

Wash the beaters absolutely clean. In the second bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar till stiff. With a spatula, remove about 1/3 of the whites and fold them into the batter. Then add the remaining whites, mixing lightly. Stop when the whites are evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Spread the batter evenly in the pan. No water bath yet – that’s for when the whole cake is assembled. Bake 10-12 minutes or until just set and the center springs back when touched. It shouldn’t be baked till brown.

Keep the oven on. Leave the crust in the pan – you will bake the cheese filling on top of it. Put the pan on a rack to cool while you’re preparing the filling.

The Filling

Ingredients for Purée:

3-5 fresh apricots: enough to make 3/4 cup puréed.

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1-2 tablespoons sugar

Blend apricots and cornstarch and add sugar to taste. The amount of sugar will depend on the sweetness of the apricots. The purée should still be tart.

Ingredients for Cheese Filling:

3 cups full-fat cream cheese at room temperature. If using American cream cheese, use three 8-oz. packages. Israelis: I used Ski.

1/4 cup cornstarch

1-1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

2 large eggs

2/3 cup whipping cream

In a large bowl, mix 1 cup (1 package) of the cream cheese, 1/3 cup sugar, and the cornstarch. Beat on low for 3 minutes or until all is creamy. Beat in second cup (package) of cream cheese, then the third.

Increase the speed to medium and beat in 1 cup sugar, vanilla, and eggs, one at a time. Beat in the cream. Mix thoroughly but stop when everything is mixed; don’t overmix.

Spread the batter over the prepared crust.

Spread the apricot purée over the cheese filling, pushing it down with the back of the spoon here and there. Cut through the purée and batter in a figure of 8, going deep enough to just feel the cake on the bottom. Do this three times, but no more or the cake will will be yellow instead of marbled.

Put the cake in the second pan. Carefully pour hot water between the two pans, up to an inch from the top of the cake pan. Bake for 1 to 1-1/4 hours or until completely set.

Remove the cake from the water bath and put it to cool on a wire rack. Don’t move it for 2 hours lest it fall. When it’s totally cool, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours to overnight.

Leftovers stay delicious if wrapped well and kept cold, for 4 days.

How we do love anything grilled. There’s something about that smoky, slightly charred flavor that just wakes hunger up. And how smart we are not to confine our grilling to meat – even peaches taste special cooked over an open flame. With the Passover week coming up, we expect to smell a lot of al ha-esh barbeques around. Ours will have vegetables too.

I brought marinated vegetable kebabs to the family Purim party. While the rest of us sat at the rooftop table drinking wine and sangria, my son-in-law’s brother-in-law – well, extended family tends to grow close here – anyway, one of the young men stood and kindly grilled.

He turned out grilled chicken fillets and wings and livers (and hearts, those dark, crunchy little nuggets).  Grilled, thinly sliced beef fillets. Spicy little hamburgers. And there was a big potato salad colorful with chopped red onions, cilantro, and celery and tart with a lemony mayonnaise. Dishes of humus and Turkish salad (follow links to recipes).  A bowl of Israeli chopped tomato/cucumber salad. French fries. A feast – but the surprise was the grilled vegetable kebabs. Everyone loved them.

My mechutenet (daughter’s mother-in-law) asked me for the recipe. She herself is an excellent cook in the Sephardic tradition, owning no other kitchen appliance than a hand-held grater and making every single thing fresh.  I was honored.

Now it occurs to me that except for the pile of fresh pitas, this menu would be wonderful on a Passover get-together. Many like to grill on the holiday. And at the conclusion of Passover, half the country goes to the parks for the Mimuna festival. Everyone sets up portable grills and boom boxes and lounges around on the grass, eating grilled meat and grooving to loud music sung by people with nasal obstructions. Vegetable kebabs would make a welcome light note there.

Grilled Vegetable Kebabs

6-8 servings

Choose from any mix of eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, bell peppers of any color, white or red onions, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.

Combine:

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon orange zest

1 tablespoon lemon zest

2 teaspoons freshly-ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh, chopped za’atar or oregano, or 2 teaspoons dried

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon thyme

1 tablespoon chopped, fresh rosemary leaves or 1/2 tablespoon dried

Cut tomatoes in quarters or use cherry tomatoes.  Chop peppers and onions into chunks convenient for skewering. If using button mushrooms, there’s no need to cut them; if using larger ones, slice into halves.

If using eggplant and/or zucchini, slice them thickly, place them in a colander, and cover with a light layer of salt. Set the colander over a bowl to catch the juices, and let the vegetables drain for half an hour. Rinse them and either put them back into the (rinsed) colander to dry or pat them dry.

If using sweet potatoes, slice them thickly and drop them into boiling water. Cook for 5 minutes, covered. Remove from the water and drain.

There should be about 8 cups of vegetables, not tightly packed, when you’re done chopping. Combine all the vegetables and pour the marinade over them. Cover and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours and up to overnight.

Have plenty of wooden skewers at hand. Soak them in cold water for half an hour before spearing them into the food – this will help prevent them from burning while the vegetables cook.

Arrange the vegetables on the soaked skewers and grill 5-10 minutes on each side, till all are tender. Have fun sliding the fragrant grilled chunks off the skewers and onto your plate.

Yes, of course I took the recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (find it on my recommended books list, over there on the right). The book, in two volumes, was a gift from my journalist sister Dina when I visited her in Calgary. The sales lady had to search the store for the complete set because  there’s been a run on Volume I, the one with the boeuf bourguinon recipe, since the Julia and Julia movie was released. Well, I wanted both books, to work my way slowly through the kashrut-adaptable recipes. Which might take years.

Meantime, I’m with boeuf. It’s a handsome dish for Shabbat or Yom Tov, and I’m thinking that substituting fine (cake) matzah meal for the flour, it will be an excellent dish to serve on Passover.

Julia Child would have OK’d the changes I made to her recipe, I think. Reading her autobiographical My Life in France (also recommended), a sense of her warmth and humanity rises from the pages like the scent of good cooking. I’m sure she understood about kosher dietary restrictions. And after all, that’s how Jewish cuisine evolves, by adapting local recipes to kosher standards.

If you want to be historically accurate, boeuf bourguignon must be cooked with bacon. That’s no option for kosher cooks, but there is an umami-contributing alternative: shmaltz. (Here’s how to make that wonderful, fragrant, old-world shmaltz.)

Other flavorful ingredients in this potchkeyed recipe include soy sauce and dried mushrooms. More garlic than Julia called for, but then, I must have a constant high level of garlic in my bloodstream or I start feeling…pale. Or something.

Notes:

• Use beef with some fat running through the flesh. I buy shoulder. Here in Israel it’s the no. 5 cut.
• While Julia’s recipe instructs you to drain the bacon fat, I find that you should keep the shmaltz to brown the vegetables. The dish is not at all greasy, although you can certainly draw a couple of paper towels over the surface when it’s done to get rid of  fat.
• I use an entire bottle of  dry red wine as the cooking liquid. The classic recipe calls for veal stock but since I cook so little beef, I don’t keep it around. Sometime, I might try chicken or turkey stock, but meantime, wine makes a rich, flavorful sauce. Only dry red wine, please, and while it shouldn’t be plonk, it shouldn’t be an expensive bottle either.  (Israelis -most  Segel brand wines are inexpensive yet drinkable  – I usually use one of those  or another in a comparable price range.)
• I don’t strain the sauce, although maybe I should. Nobody’s complained yet.
• If you leave the soy sauce out and substitute fine (cake)  matzah flour, this is an impressive and easy dish to serve on Passover.
• Alright, so I usually leave out the classic fresh sautéed mushrooms and cooked whole small onions that go into the pan almost just before serving. But if you want to, cook 18-24 pearl onions in stock and sauté 500 grams – 1 lb. fresh, thickly sliced mushrooms in olive oil. Add them to the pan after step 7.

What I can say is that everyone who eats this dish likes it. And after you’ve made it once, you’ll see how easy it is. Putting it together takes maybe half an hour, then the oven does all the work. It’s delicious re-heated too.

Kosher Bœuf Bourguignon

printable version here

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 kg. – 2.2 lbs. beef, cut into large cubes

2 tablespoons shmaltz

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large carrot, peeled and thickly sliced

1 large onion, sliced

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper

2 tablespoons flour or fine matzah meal

1 750-ml. bottle of dry red wine

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 cup dried, sliced Porcini or other mushrooms

1 tablespoon Tamari soy sauce

2 bay leaves

1 large sprig fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

4 cloves garlic, minced

Method:

Preheat oven to 450° F – 220° C.

1. Pat the beef chunks with paper towels to dry surface moisture.

2. In a large, heavy pan, melt the shmaltz. Add the olive oil. Let the fats get quite hot.

3. Sauté the beef chunks in the hot fat, a few at a time. Turn them over so that all sides brown.Remove the browned beef from the pan to a platter. I use tongs for this.

4. Sauté the onion and carrot in the same pan for about 5 minutes. Return the beef to the pan and sprinkle salt and pepper over everything. Mix with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle the flour over all and mix again.

5. Put the uncovered pan in the oven for 5 minutes. Mix the meat and brown it again for another 5 minutes. Place the pan on the  stovetop, over medium heat, and turn the oven down to 325° F – 160°C.

6. Pour the wine into the beef and vegetables. Add tomato paste, garlic,  soy sauce, and dried mushrooms. Stir to dissolve the tomato paste. Place the bay leaves and thyme on top of the beef and push them in a little with a spoon so that they flavor the cooking liquid.

7. Cover the beef and put it in the oven. Cook for 2 hours, then check to see if it’s fork-tender. Let it cook 1/2 hour longer if needed.  When you judge it’s ready, take the stew out of the oven and skim the fat off if liked. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Add optional onions and fresh mushrooms now.

Garnish the stew with a little parsley and serve with plain boiled potatoes, rice, or noodles. Mighty good.

Often I’ll survey the Purim baskets and feel like something’s missing. They’re not full enough, not pretty enough. What could be missing among all the cookies, candies, home-made liqueurs and preserves, fresh yeast rolls? Who knows, a Jewish woman goes meshuggah on Purim. At least, this one does.

So, to help cooks needing an eleventh-hour recipe to fill up baskets, here are links to all kinds of foods that make Purim gifts to friends and neighbors special.

How about hamine eggs?I’m making a whole bunch for Shabbat, and extras will go into Purim baskets.

Chocolate Fruit/Nut Clusters are divine, and so easy to make.

Got a sourdough starter? Make some sourdough apple muffins.

And here’s a savory cheese and tomato muffin recipe.

Honey-Orange Biscotti are good in baskets, being a fairly non-crumbly cookie.

Prune-Chocolate Bread: so, so delicious and rich.

Ma’amoul – cookies filled with dates or nuts.

Chickpea Sambusak – savory chickpea pastry

Orange Rolls are incredibly delicious. The recipe makes a lot, and you just pull them apart to pack into the baskets.

Then there are nut butters. A small jar of home-made nut butter is an original gift – and yum.

Ba’aba beh Tamur – Iraqi pastries stuffed with dates. Light and crisp.

These are just some ideas I culled from the archives. Go ahead and try one or two, or scroll through the site to get others.

I wish all of Clal Israel a Purim Sameach!

Turning away from grief – for us in Israel and for the suffering of Japan – I’ve been putting my mind towards Purim. I confess, after the shock and tears, it’s a strange feeling to know that a joyful holiday is only around the corner. I hope that this coming Purim will truly foretell hasty redemption and rejoicing.

It was therapeutic to turn to my kitchen, take up my measuring cups, and get to work on something delicious. I found an interesting Iraqi recipe on this eclectic site. Rich pastries stuffed with cheese, nuts, or dates.  They’re meant to be eaten on Purim, I guess, because each one hides a sweet or savory filling in the dough (symbolizing how Queen Esther hid her Jewish origins from Ahasuerosh until the time came to plead against the  genocide Haman had plotted).

I must say – this reminds me of the wry joke that goes around the Internet every so often: How do you define a Jewish holiday?

Like this: 1. They wanted to kill us. 2. We were saved. 3. Let’s eat!

Not true for all holidays of course, but close enough, close enough.

So here is what I baked today, adapted from the original recipe.

Ba’aba Beh Tamur – Iraqi Stuffed Pastries for Purim

About 30 pastries

Notes: the original recipe calls for butter. Pareve margarine works fine too. Likewise, it assumes that you’ll be mixing the dough in a mixer. I just beat everything up by hand.

Here in Israel, you can get concentrated essences of rose and orange water. They’re much stronger than the “waters” and I prefer to use them.

I substituted 1 teaspoon freshly-smashed cardamom seeds for the fennel in the recipe because I dislike fennel. Lacking either of those, use 2 teaspoons cinnamon or the zest of 1 lemon. The dough must have something aromatic or it will be too bland.

My filling was almond/pecan, the nuts ground up quickly in the food processor. I’ll include the recipe for date filling as well. Finally, the buttery dough does seem to call for cheese. I’ll suggest alternative cheeses to the original version’s.

Ingredients:

For Dough:

1 cube fresh yeast

1 cup warm water

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground fennel seed

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted butter (or marg)

1 beaten egg for glazing

For Almond Filling:

1 cup ground almonds

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon each rose water and orange water or 1/4 teaspoon edible rose and orange essences.

Method:

1. Dissolve yeast in water. Add flour, baking powder, fennel or other spice, and melted butter. Mix until you have a soft dough that forms a ball.

2. Cover with plastic bag or damp cloth; allow to rise 1 hour or until doubled.

3. Preheat oven to 425°F – 200°C.

4. Work with a quarter of the dough at the time for convenience. Roll it out 1/4″ thin. Use a large biscuit cutter or glass to cut into 3″ rounds. Brush the rounds with a little water.

5. Mix filling ingredients in a small bowl. Put 1 teaspoon filling in the center of each round and fold it over. Press your fingers down all around the edges to seal, or use the tines of a fork. Brush beaten egg on pastries.

Bake 25 minutes.

Date Filling for about 30 pastries:

8 oz. – 250 grams pitted, finely chopped dates. Here you can get date paste in blocks and that’s better.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon milk

1 egg white

sesame seeds

Combine ingredients in top of a double boiler and cook 5 minutes, stirring a few times. Allow the mixture to cool and roll it into balls for stuffing the pastry. When forming the pastry, place a small ball at the center of each pastry round and pinch the sides upwards to make a closed bundle. Flip over and flatten slightly with the rolling pin. Pierce with a fork in several places. Paint the pastries with an egg white and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake as directed above.

Cheese Filling:

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/2 cup mild yellow cheese, grated

1 teaspoon dried, crumbled za’atar, oregano or rosemary

1 finely chopped scallion

1 egg

Combine cheeses, herbs, and egg. Bake pastries as half-circles as in the almond filling.

Too good.

By the way, I wonder if the correct name for this pastry is ba’aba beh tanur, no “m.” I don’t speak Arabic, so I can’t tell if someone’s typo may not be going around, as typos do.

Ah…so refreshing. Originally from the south of Italy, limoncello is becoming better known in the world as a digestif and something to toast “l’chaim” with. The lemon-based drink is also very good in cooking or baking when you want to add intense lemon flavor without the bitterness of fresh lemons.

You can buy limoncello at the liquor store. But I like things made from scratch. And come Purim time, my friends love getting it in their Purim baskets. The trick is finding unsprayed lemons because to make limoncello, you must use only the peels. Not a great idea to put pesticide-sprayed peels into vodka. But if you really, really want something, sometimes your wish is granted.

Across from the shuk, there’s a corner where several elderly people sit and sell little bunches of their garden produce for a few shekels. Once I scored a load of fresh grape leaves from an old lady there and cooked a dish I was longing for – mushrooms in grape leaves (here’s the recipe). Last week I was hurrying home from the shuk, loaded down as usual and a little impatient, when lo and behold – two bags of beautiful, home-garden lemons, on a folding chair.

The vendor was a small, thin man with big eyes under the brim of a sporty cap. I came to a halt in front of him.

“Are these lemons sprayed?”

“Nooo,” he said indignantly. “They’re from my own trees. It’s a different taste. Try them. Here – take both bags.” He stuffed the bags into the top of my shopping cart. If he hadn’t been so elderly and earnest, I would have taken only one, but as it was…those lemons looked good. All of 10 shekels for about 2 1/2 kilos of lemons picked that morning.

Now I had my unsprayed lemons. Cutting one open, the divine aroma of new citrus arose. My vendor friend was right – their sweetness and fresh flavor was beyond compare. I started my limoncello right away, to preserve the best of those essential oils in vodka, and juiced the peeled fruit for freezing.

Here’s the recipe. When you see how easy it is to make, you’ll want to go on a hike for some fresh lemons yourself.

Limoncello

Ingredients:

1 bottle of vodka, 750 ml.
7 or 8 large lemons
5 cups water
3 cups sugar

Method:

1. Wash the lemons well. Peel them thinly, avoiding the white pith as much as possible. A vegetable peeler works best.

2. Pour the vodka into a wide-mouth jar and add the peels. Cover tightly and label the jar with the date.

3. Shake the jar once a day. This redistributes the essential oils in the liquid. The peels will become pale and become hard. One week of this maceration will make good limoncello, but longer – up to a month is even better. When the peels have given their all, they’ll be crisp and dry.

4. Strain the vodka into a clean jar.

5. Make a simple syrup by boiling the water and sugar together for 5 minutes. Allow it to cool and add it to the vodka.

6. Allow the limoncello to develop for 1 week. Then bottle. Store in the freezer and serve it cold. It will pour out thick and syrupy if frozen.

Smack yer lips.

Enjoy!

For our Tu B’Shvat feast, I thought I’d stuff an eggplant.  I saw this gorgeous shiny purple “baladi” – prime – eggplant in the shuk. Brought it home, set it down on the kitchen counter, and contemplated it.

I could imagine layering it, fried, with cheese. Doing something tomato-saucy.

Umm, too much.  Too big to chop up into ratatouille. We would be eating ratatouille for weeks. Too big for babah ganoush for the same reason. Too big to grill. Too big, too big, too big. There’s only three of us in the house these days. What was I thinking?

But it looked so good.

Then I recalled a fruity bulgur salad that was sitting in the fridge. It was full of chopped nuts and fruit and chives and celery. Hmmm. Wheat. Walnuts. Currants. Sounds like Tu B’Shvat to me. So I stuffed and baked the purple monster with fruity bulgur and let me tell you, it was good. We didn’t have any trouble eating it up. If you’re fond of eggplant, try this one.

Eggplant Stuffed with Fruity Bulgur

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant

olive oil

1/2 cup medium-grade bulgur

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup boiling water

1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1/4 cup raisins or currants

1 celery stalk

1/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds

2 tablespoons minced chives or 1 shallot

1/2 red apple

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon honey

1/4 teaspoon cumin

dash cinnamon

1. Place the bulgur in a heatproof bowl with the salt and mix. Pour the boiling water over it and cover the bowl. Leave it alone for 1/2 hour.

2. Meantime, toast the sunflower seeds in a medium oven for 5 minutes. Chop the walnuts coarsely and the celery and apple finely (don’t peel the apple). Chop the chives (or shallot).

3. Pour some of the lemon juice over the apples to prevent browning. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover, and set aside.

4. Remove the green cap from the eggplant. Slice the eggplant in half horizontally. Cut away the pulp, leaving a thin shell inside. Chop the pulp finely and add it to the fruit bowl. Mix well.

5. Brush the insides of the eggplant halves with olive oil. Sprinkle generously with salt and grind some pepper over all.

6. Fluff the cooked bulgur up with a fork. Add it to the fruit/eggplant bowl and mix well. Drizzle more olive oil into it, mix, and taste for seasoning. Add more salt, pepper, honey, cumin or cinnamon to taste.

7. Stuff the eggplants, tamping the bulgur mixture down with your hands to keep it firm. Drizzle yet another little olive oil over all.

8. Tuck a strip of tin foil tightly around each half. Bake at 350° F – 180° C for 1 to 1-1/2 hour, depending on size of eggplant. When the meat on the shells and the chopped eggplant in the stuffing is tender and an appetizing odor of “cooked” arises, it’s done.

Remove the tin foil and bake another 10 minutes to make the top crisp.

The stuffing tends to crumble when first taken out of the oven. To slice firm portions, allow the dish to cool and then re-heat it. Good at room temperature too.

I’m going to show you the beef I cooked up in my tajine last week for Shabbat. After a phone call to my housebound son in blizzardy New York, I thought that for my readers in cold countries, a spicy Middle-Eastern stew is the sort warming, comforting dish that you want when you look out the window and it’s all snow whirling out there. (Here’s another tajine recipe for turkey.) Hard to imagine the extreme cold in Europe and the U.S. when here it’s too warm and dry and we’re still praying for rain. But tajine is welcome in any weather.

For me, beef has to be very well seasoned. In addition, there have to be at least three vegetables in the pot. North African tajines, those long-cooking, rich stews simmered in a clay platter, are ideal then.You don’t have to have a traditional tajine pot to make this: a pot set over low heat works fine too.

Notes: For convenience, use canned chickpeas. Just rinse and drain them before cooking.

Non-traditional but very delicious is 1/2 cup dry red wine as part of the cooking liquid.

Moroccan Beef Tajine

serves 4 and is easy doubled to serve 6-8

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil

1 lb. stewing beef, chopped into 2″ pieces

1 large onion, thickly sliced

3 cloves garlic, halved

1 large tomato, peeled and quartered

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1 large bay leaf

1 teaspoon cumin

3-4 cups water or stock, to cover meat

1 cup cooked chickpeas

2 large potatoes, quartered

1/2 medium butternut squash, quartered

1/2  small head cabbage, quartered

2 tablespoons honey or Silan date honey

Fresh cilantro or parsley to serve

Method:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot and add the beef. Let the meat brown over medium heat , turning it over often. Add the onions, garlic, tomato, and all the dry spices, stirring to coat the meat, onion and tomatoes with the spices.

2. Add water or stock to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 1 hour with the lid on. If using wine, add it now.

3. Add the chickpeas and the remaining vegetables. Cook for 30 minutes, turning the vegetables and meat over occasionally to ensure even cooking.

4. Five minutes before serving, add the honey or Silan. Taste and add salt or pepper as desired.

Pile couscous or rice onto a large serving dish and push it to the edges to make a space in the center. Spoon the tajine into the center and sprinkle with cilantro or parsley.

Put a bowl of the cooking liquid on the table for people to spoon over their food. Enjoy!