Winter Squash Penne: Check Our Our Guest Post on Kosher in the Kitch!

Now that it’s November, we’ve been getting a lot of winter squash from the CSA. You may remember my zucchini overload this summer, which I turned into a pasta dish, but winter squash is a totally different vegetable (and butternut is our favorite), so we created a pasta and squash dish just for these chilly months.

Head on over to Kosher in the Kitch for our Winter Squash Penne recipe!

(You may remember them from when we shared our Kosher Pad Thai there.)

Beef and Veggie Stew

As you can tell, we like making stews in our Dutch ovens. It’s not something we do much during the summer, but now that the temperature is dropping, we’re back to braising and browning and serving over rice!

I used mostly vegetables from my csa with a few other groceries that were hanging around in my fridge. Served with a simple green salad, this made for a delicious dinner for two with enough leftover for a lunch the next day. Which is the perfect kind of dinner.

Beef and Vegetable Stew

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound beef stew meat (I don’t know what that means, I bought it at Trader Joe’s)
  • 4 carrots, chopped
  • 3 medium potatoes, chopped
  • 3 tiny red onions, chopped
  • 1 celery stalk, chopped
  • 5 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 2-3 cups of stock or water
  • olive oil, salt and pepper

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Brown the beef over medium-high heat in a little bit of olive oil in a heavy pot or Dutch oven.
  3. Remove beef from pot and stir in chopped onions. Let cook for 5 minutes and add garlic. Mix and add the rest of the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.
  4. Add half of the stock (I used vegetable stock), mixing well. Put the beef back into the pot and mix. Add more stock if it seems too dry.
  5. Bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and let simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.
  6. Put the pot in the oven and bake for 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  7. Serve over rice.

Duck and Mushroom Pizza

Duck pizza?! Yeah, that’s right. I had to make something with the prosciutto besides eating it with fruit. And who says pizza has to be dairy, anyway?

To tell you the truth, I didn’t love the prosciutto plain. It was too, well, duck-y for me. But rendering the fat and cooking mushrooms in it, then toasting all that on some homemade pizza dough? Now that’s a super easy gourmet dinner. If you don’t have duck, make this pizza with chicken. It will still be a great dinner and a nice change from that sauce-and-cheese pizza you usually have. (Or, if you don’t have pizza as much as I do, it’s still enjoyable.) Continue reading

Duck Prosciutto, Take 2

Ah, so I bet you were wondering what I did with that other duck breast. Well, I didn’t just leave it alone in the fridge to roast. I didn’t cure it the same way, either. I found a completely different recipe for duck prosciutto and experimented with that one. No, I did not confuse the two breasts hanging in my fridge at the same time (Zeke was quite confused, I might add). I liked this recipe because it called for a bunch of different spices and I got to use my mortar and pestle. I love that tool (those tools?). Continue reading

Meatless Mondays: Mushroom Rice

A version of this dish is a staple in my mother-in-law’s kitchen. When we go there for barbecue on Sunday nights, we always have this delicious mushroom-y rice that she made using leftover Shabbat rice (Syrians make a lot of rice). I decided to duplicate this dish in a non-leftovers way and used brown rice to make it a little healthier. You can try it with your favorite kind of rice. Continue reading

Kibbe Mushroom

Kibbes are our version of little meatballs, and are a staple in the Syrian household. We cook them with peas, cherries, sour soup and many other savory dishes. Let’s just say it’s not Friday night without a kibbe (or many) at the table. Now don’t confuse these little kibbe meatballs with the bulgur-shelled and meat-stuffed kibbe torpedoes. They’re completely different. If that made no sense to you, continue reading this blog, we’ll definitely explain more about these middle-eastern staples soon! Continue reading

Cedar Plank Salmon

Technically, grilling season is almost over. But I’m not ready to start cooking inside just yet…you’ve never been in my kitchen in the summer. It is just too hot! So I spent a lot of the summer in the yard cooking. I figured out that meat and chicken aren’t the only thing you can cook on the grill. I decided to change it up a little and make some salmon using cedar planks I picked up from Whole Foods. I’ve never actually eaten plank salmon, and I don’t really like strong smokey flavors…talk about an impulse buy. But since I bought the planks, I had to try it. Turns out, the salmon was great! It wasn’t too smokey, but definitely tasted different and stronger than if it was just cooked in the oven. There was no fishy flavor, and the simple topping imparted the perfect amount of spicy sweetness. I’m definitely going to be using these planks a lot this grilling season. Continue reading

Soba Noodles with Vegetables

This was served as the side dish with my broiled tofu, which Martha Stewart suggested as a meal. Well, I will always listen to Martha, because this was a great meal! Maybe I would have considered this the main dish and the tofu the side dish, but I served them on the same plate at the same time, so whatever. It’s delicious nonetheless.

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Meatless Mondays: Broiled Black Pepper Tofu with Ginger Lemon Dipping Sauce

Soooo remember when I was freaking out about that almost-exploding tofu package? I had been preparing to make this meal. And I made it anyway, but I bought a new package of tofu, because I didn’t want to risk anything.

Think you don’t like tofu? That’s probably not true; I’ve made a slimy tofu before, but you just have to cook it the right way and it’s great! And it’s as easy as broiling it for less than 10 minutes. This is a great start to a Meatless Monday meal!

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