Simple and Spicy

You can spice your meat, chicken or fish meal with this 3 ingredients condiment:

Ingredients:

Jalapeno (jalapeño) peppers
Garlic
Olive oil

Directions:

Grill (better) or roast peppers till skin blisters
Let them cool
Peel the skin and remove seeds
Finely chop peppers
Finely chop (almost to a paste) fresh garlic
Mix peppers and garlic together, add olive oil and salt
Optional – several drops of balsamic vinegar

Roasted Turkey Breast

Great substitute for store bought cold cuts, but much better. No additives, preservatives – just pure delicious.

Ingredients:

Turkey breast (bone and skin removed)
Marinade
Spice Mixture
Butter – 2 tbsp

For marinade:

Water – ~1.5 liter/32 ounces, maybe a little more, just to cover turkey breast
Juice of half lemon + optional orange or grapefruit juice
Garlic – 3-4 cloves (smashed)
Ginger – 1 inch piece, sliced
Salt – 1/4 cup
Sugar – 1 tbsp
Apple cider vinegar – 1/4 cup

For spice mixture:

Salt – 1/2 tsp
Black pepper – 1/4 tsp
White pepper – 1/4 tsp
Paprika – 1 tsp
Cayenne – 1/4 tsp
Cinnamon – 1/4 tsp
Cumin – 1tsp
Dry garlic – 1tsp

Directions:

Pour water into a deep pan
Add salt, sugar, vinegar, make sure salt and sugar dissolves
Place turkey breast into a pan
Squeeze lemon juice into the marinade, add garlic and ginger
Let it marinade in the fridge for several hours or overnight
Mix your spices
When it’s marinated (after several hours or overnight) – pat dry turkey breast
Place on a rack over deep baking sheet
Massage turkey breast with the spice mixture
Pour 3-4 cups of hot water into the baking sheet, so the turkey breast remains moist, but it shouldn’t touch it.
Add couple of bay leaves and all spice to the hot water
Preheat your oven to 275-300 °F
Place baking sheet into oven and roast 2-2.5 hours
After an hour baste the breast with melted butter to develop stronger crust
Add more hot water in case it evaporated.
Repeat basting couple more times till fully cooked
Let it cool down
Serve cold or room temperature

Place all marinade ingredients into a pan

Highly recommended

December 8, 20231 min read AlwaysTasty

These are traditional Russian mini cheese cakes (syrniki) with mashed roasted pumpkin. The tradition says: take 1/2 of ricotta cheese (home made tvorog), 1 egg,

Pumpkin Gnocchi

Ingredients:

Roasted butternut squash puree – 2-3 tbsp
Farmer cheese (tvorog) – 1.2 lbs
1 egg (can be 2 if small)
Flour – 4 tbsp
Salt 1/3 tsp
Butter – 2 tbsp for garnish + sage leaves

Directions:

Place all the ingredients into a bowl and mix really well with spoon forming sticky dough
Put the dough on well floured board, flour your hands too.
It should be sticky, but workable, there is no need to kneed it, but you should be able to form about an inch wide log with your hands
Cut the log into small pieces
Put pot with water on medium to high heat, add 1 tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Do not reduce the heat!
Place several dumplings into boiling water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
Boil the dumplings for 2 minutes
Remove from the pot with a skimmer spoon
Melt butter in a small pan, add couple of sage leaves (or dry sage), pour over gnocchi
Serve hot

Lekach – Honey Cake

This traditional Rosh ha-Shana dessert was one of my mom’s favorite. She never wrote down the recipe, and every store bought honey cake I tried in Israel was so unimpressive – they were too moist, or too sweet or too heavy, mostly all of the above. As I was leaving Israel my dear friend wrote me his mom’s recipe which I implemented several years later and the result was the closest one or even better than my mom baked (honestly by then I didn’t remember what it was, but I am sure my mom would approve) – it was soft, light, airy, fragrant, full of but not overloaded with walnuts, melting in your mouth. Absolutely fantastic with coffee, and worth documenting. So here it is … I will still keep that small piece of paper with my friend’s handwriting as long as I live.

Ingredients:

5 eggs at room temperature
Sugar – 3/4 cup
Honey – 1 cup
Baking soda – 1 tsp
Sour cream – 1/2 cup
Milk – 1/2 cup
Vegetable oil ( I use light olive oil) – 2-3 tbsp
Flour – 2.5 cups
Salt – 1/2 tsp
Ground ginger – 1 tbsp (my addition to the original recipe)
Walnuts – 1 cup

Directions:

Separate yolks from white
In big bowl whisk egg yolks with honey
Add sour cream and vegetable oil, keep whisking
Add milk and whisk again
Gradually mix in flour mixed with soda
Add walnuts to batter
In a separate bowl whip egg whites with 1 cup of sugar with hand mixer
Gently fold whipped whites into the batter
Pour batter into greased baking form (batter should be liquid)
Put into preheated to 375 °F oven
Bake for 55-60 minutes

Grilled Eggplant Spread

The best tastes of summer in one dish, just grill, chop, add olive oil, salt and pepper.

And if you don’t have peppers – t’s fine too. Actually my mom was doing it with just 3 ingredients: eggplant, tomatoes and onion. The amounts are very flexible, but the important is – don’t use a blender, it should not be pulverized, just finely chopped.

Ingredients:

1 Midsize Roasted/grilled eggplant
1 Large Roasted bell pepper, red or yellow
3 – 4 mid size tomatoes or use 2 small ones
1 Shallot
2 gloves of garlic
1 tsp of Salt 1/2 tsp black pepper
1/3 cup Olive Oil

Directions:

Peel grilled or roasted eggplant (grilled is always better), poke eggplant with a fork before grilling/roasting so it doesn’t explode
place it in the sieve to drain extra liquid.
Chop the eggplant into small chunks about 1/8 inch.
Do NOT use food processor, it completely changes the taste.
Peel tomatoes, use your knife to bruise tomatoes (forcing the juices to the skin) so it’s easier to peel and chop them to the same size as the eggplant
Chop grilled bell pepper. I leave the skin on intentionally, it is part of the taste in my opinion.
Finely chop shallot and garlic
Add salt, pepper, olive oil and mix it all together with a fork or a spoon.
Check for seasoning and add if needed.
Serve room temperature as a dip with bread, the best way in my opinion to consume it – as side dish with any meat or fish.
To see the details click here:

Cheese Gnocchi (lazy vareniki)

It was one of my favorite breakfasts, called lazy vareniki. Vareniki (similar to pirogi, but with thiner pastry) are Russian or Ukranian dumplings made with potato or ricotta cheese filling. So instead of making a dough, rolling it, cutting, preparing a filling, forming every dumpling you just put everything together in one bowl, mix it, divide into little pillows and boil. Lazy! And done within 5 minutes!

It should be done with tvorog, but if you don’t have it I found that farmers cheese is not a bad option for this dish (don’t use store bought ricotta, it’s too watery).

Ingredients (for 1 serving):

Tvorog or farmer’s cheese – 1/4 lbs (100 gr)
1 egg
Flour – 3 tbsp
Pinch of salt

Directions:

Place all the ingredients into a bowl and mix really well with spoon forming sticky dough
Put the dough on well floured board, flour your hands too.
It should be sticky, but workable, there is no need to kneed it, but you should be able to form about an inch wide log with your hands
Cut the log into small pieces
Put pot with water on medium to high heat, add 1 tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Do not reduce the heat!
Place several dumplings into boiling water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
Boil the dumplings for 2 minutes
Remove from the pot with a skimmer spoon
Garnish with melted butter or sour cream and sprinkle with sugar if you want to make it sweet
Serve hot or warm

Creamy mushrooms

Ingredients:

Works best with shiitake, you can combine it some other mushrooms – oysters, baby bella, but shiitake is a must.
Small shallot or 1 leak
Heavy cream – 1/2 cup
White wine 1/4 cup
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
2 tbsp of light olive oil + 2 tbsp butter

Directions

Heat your pan with 2 tbsp of light olive oil. Start with frying some mild onions (shallot or leaks) till golden brown
Add your dry clean mushrooms to the pan and let them get golden brown, only after they get that nice crust keep stirring them till they are almost fully cooked.
Add butter, stir and fry mushrooms for another minute
Season with salt and pepper
Deglaze the pan with white wine, reduce the heat and cook for about 5-7 minutes
Add the cream, bring to a boil, cook for about 2 minutes
Check for seasoning, add some nutmeg
Serve hot or warm

Walnut Rugelach

These tender cookies are not just a delicious dessert, but can be a great breakfast as they are packed with protein and not loaded with sugar.

Ingredients:

For the filling:

Walnuts 250 gr
Sugar 90 gr 1/3 cup
1 Egg white
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Optional: lemon zest, pinch of cardamon.

For the pastry:

All purpose flour 220 gr (1 +3/4 of a cup)
Butter 100 gr (cold)
Sour cream 100 gr (1/2 cup)
1 Egg yolk
Baking powder 5 gr (1 tsp)
Pinch of salt

Directions

Finely chop (grind) walnuts in the food processor. You can do it with roller pin, place walnuts in plastic bag, but to small crumbles.
Add sugar, egg white, vanilla extract and mix till everything is well incorporated.
You can also add lemon zest, cardamon, even pinch of chipotle to make it very fragrant
For the dough in a big bowl put your flour, pinch of salt, and pieces of cold butter
Using pastry cutter or a knife cut the butter mixing it evenly with flour till butter is a pea size
Add baking powder, egg yolk, sour cream
Mix dough with your hands, make a roll and put it in the fridge for about an hour
Divide the pastry roll into 3 even parts, do the same with the filling
Take 1 small roll, dust working surface with some flour and roll it to about 12 inch circle sheet
Cut the circle into 8 sectors, with your hands split your 1/3 of filling into 8 parts
Place the filling to the wide end of each sector and make small rolls
Place rolls onto baking sheet covered with parchment paper
Repeat with 2 other parts of dough and filling (you will have 24 crescents)
Put into preheated to 375 °F oven for 35-40 minutes
Let the cool and dust with confection sugar