Potato Gratin

by Stephanie | 10 Comments

Before we share a recipe with you, please join us in wishing our sister Rayna a very happy birthday!

And a happy Hanukkah to everyone!

Now, back to food:

When we were in Ireland, we had the most delicious potato gratin at a little cafe on Inishmore, the largest of a group of islands called the Aran Islands. We had to take a ferry there from where we were staying in the amazing town Doolin, and the water was rough, but this recipe was worth getting seasick on the trip back. We spent the day exploring a place much more remote than the island we live on, seeing beautiful old sites and gorgeous green views! This gratin was one of the only vegetarian things on the menu at the cafe, and one of the few things that didn’t include sausage, which is why we ordered it. After the first bite I asked them how the prepared it; I had to recreate it at home!

The beautiful prehistoric ring fort, Dún Aengus:

Continue reading …

Chicken and Spaghetti

by Jessica | 8 Comments

Chicken and spaghetti was always a Friday night staple in our home. Though Poopa Dweck’s book states that it’s a Syrian custom to not eat this dish for Shabbat dinner because it’s a sign of bad luck, my family’s been eating it for years, and I don’t think we’re any less lucky than other people out there. So If you’re superstitious, make it on a weeknight. It’s a good meal with just a small side salad or vegetable. If you’re not superstitious, or just want to make a main course that consists of a carb and a protein (does the tomato sauce count as a vegetable?), then make this for Shabbat dinner. Your guests and family will fight over the crispy burnt edges.

When my mother makes this, she always leaves the chicken pieces whole. This way, it’s easier to eat just the spaghetti, which I often like to do (especially when there’s chili on the table – chicken and spaghetti chopped with some chili is awesome). I sometimes shred the chicken into the spaghetti, so that every bite has a little bit of chicken and a little bit of spaghetti. I find that the chicken also stays more moist this way and soaks up the flavor of the sauce more. Try it both ways and let me know which you prefer. Remember if you’re shredding to be careful to remove all the bones and stuff. No one wants a mouthful of spaghetti and chicken bones!

And Spaghetti!

  • 1 pound spaghetti
  • 1 chicken, cut into eighths (bone in, skin on)
  • 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
  • 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • Kosher salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Place chicken on baking sheet and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 35 – 45 minutes, until cooked. Then let cool and shred, cut, or leave whole. Save the chickeny oil and juice!

3. While chicken is roasting, boil spaghetti in very salty water for one minute less than stated on the package.

4. Drain the spaghetti.

5. Place spaghetti in roasting pan and add the tomato sauce, tomato paste, spices, salt, and some pepper. Mix well.

— Now you have what we like to call “And Spaghetti” which is the BEST Friday afternoon snack ever.

6. Add the chicken (pieces, shreds, whatever you decided) and the chicken juice and mix well.

7. Cover and roast in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour, until the edges are crusty and the middle is soft.

Duck Confit

by Jessica | 1 Comment

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!

And so my duck experiments continue! Duck confit is a daunting dish, but not when you do it this way. The day of curing and hours of cooking make it succulent, rich, and really crispy! This is definitely my favorite way to prepare duck for a few reasons. First, I got to use my mortar and pestle. Second, it’s crispy but not disgustingly greasy. And third, you get to save the duck fat for future uses! From sauteeing stew vegetables to cooking potatoes, the duck fat possibilities are endless.

What, were you expecting a turkey recipe for Thanksgiving? Turns out, we’re pretty sure they served duck at the first Thanksgiving (along with wild turkey, not the same as the ones we usually see at the Thanksgiving buffet nowadays). I decided to follow tradition.  No, not really our tradition, because my ancestors were probably in Syria at the time, but the tradition of our country.

Remember, if you make this dish for thanksgiving, you need to change the song:

Happy Thanksgiving, hooray hooray hooray!

Aren’t you glad you’re not a duck on this Thanksgiving Day.

[Why doesn’t my picture look anything like the one in the Times photo?]

Easy Duck Confit, adapted from the New York Times:

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 bay leaf, crumbled
  • 8 moulard duck legs (about 4 pounds total), rinsed and patted dry

Directions,

1. In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf. I crushed them together with my mortar and pestle, but you don’t really have to.

2. Sprinkle duck with mixture and place in pan in one layer. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

3. The next day: preheat oven to 325 degrees.

4. Place duck legs, fat side down, in a large ovenproof skillet, with legs fitting in one layer (or do it in batches – you don’t want to steam them!)

5. Heat over medium-high heat until fat starts to render.

6. When there is 1/4 inch of fat on the bottom of the pan, after about 20 minutes, flip the duck legs, cover the pan with foil, and place in the oven. (If you used two skillets or did this in batches, place in baking dish together and cover).

7. Roast for two hours, then remove foil and roast for another hour, until the skin is golden brown and crispy.

8. Remove duck fat and reserve for other uses.

9. Serve with bitter salad greens, potatoes, or wide egg noodles.

Steak Tacos

by Stephanie | Leave a comment

Wednesday is always Mexican night at our house. Well, not officially, but it seems that on Wednesdays we happen to eat tacos. It can be fish tacos, chopped meat or bean tacos, but this time it was steak tacos! And it was delicious.

Tacos don’t photograph that well, but I tried my best to show you what my dinner looked like above.

I marinated two sandwich steaks all day, and when I got home from work I “grilled” them in my cast iron pan before slicing them up and loading them into a tortilla with some complementing flavors.

These steak tacos were fun, and felt a little bit fancier than the chopped meat kinds we usually have on meat taco night, especially since I marinated the beef all day. Sure, it took some extra time before leaving for work, but I’d say it was worth it. It didn’t take that long!

Steak Tacos

Ingredients:

For the steak:

  • 2 sandwich steaks
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 1 small yellow onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • a few cracks of black pepper

For the salad:

  • 1 bunch of arugula, cleaned, dried, and chopped
  • a handful of cilantro, cleaned, dried, and chopped
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • juice of one lime
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

For assembling the tacos:

  • 8″ corn tortillas, toasted over the open flame of your stove – careful not to light them on fire!
  • your favorite salsa, taco sauce or homemade guacamole (I made some of that! I’ll share that recipe with you, too.)
  • sauteed onions and peppers, or whatever else you want to put on top of your taco…

Directions:

For the steak:

  1. Put all of the spices in a mini food processor (you can use a mortar and pestle) and pulse until it turns into a paste.
  2. Place steak in a glass dish and cover both sides with the marinade. Cover and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours or all day.
  3. Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and cook the steak, only about 4 minutes on each side. Put on a plate and let sit for 10 minutes.
  4. Cut the steaks in thin strips against the grain.

For the salad:

  1. Add lime juice, salt and pepper to a small bowl. Whisk in some olive oil to make the dressing.
  2. Combine arugula, cilantro and peppers in a bigger bowl. Add dressing and toss to coat.

Assemble your tacos:

  1. After heating the tortillas, place them on a place. Smear some salsa or guac and place a few strips of steak on top. Finish with some salad on top, fold and eat! Don’t forget extra napkins!

So, what’s your favorite kind of taco? Do you prefer the meat kind, or do you miss melty cheese and sour cream too much, and prefer bean tacos?

Meatless Mondays: Ades (Red Lentil) Soup

by Jessica | Leave a comment

You already know we like to transform boring lentils into yummy meals. Here’s one of our favorite recipes, delicious and filling for a Meatless Monday!

Ades soup is a classic Syrian dish. These red lentils turn yellow when boiled, and often confuses people who’ve never seen the soup before (“Wait, I thought you said RED lentil soup. This is yellow!”). It’s an easy and comforting dish you can make on a chilly winter evening and that you can enjoy for lunch the next day. The first time I made this dish was in college, and my roommates were not to keen on tasting it (I don’t know why!). Lucky me! I ate a lot of soup that week.

It’s flavored with coriander and cilantro, one of my favorite flavors. If you don’t like cilantro, just use parsley instead. Or leave it out, this soup has enough flavor on its own. To add some extra flavor, use vegetable or chicken stock in place of the water.

Ades Soup, or Syrian Red Lentil Soup, adapted from here and some family traditions:

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon ground coriander
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 cup split red lentils, rinsed
  • 6 cups water
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • Kosher salt, to taste
  • 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • Pinch of cayenne pepper

Directions:

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add oil.

2. When the oil is hot, add the coriander and let cook for about one minute.

3. Then, add onions and garlic. Add some kosher salt. Stir and cook for about 10 minutes, until onions soften.

4. Add the lentils to the pot. Mix and coat them with oil.

5. Add 5 cups of water and bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

6. Meanwhile, mix flour with the remaining cup of water to make a paste. Add to the lentils.

7. Stir in the lemon juice and some more salt. Continue stirring over high heat until the mixture boils. Then, cover and cook another 15 minutes.

8. Add the cumin and cayenne. Mix well. Taste for salt and add more if needed.

9. Then add the cilantro. Serve with some lemon wedges and more chopped cilantro on top, if desired.

Grandma Sally Makes Keskesoon

by Jessica | 16 Comments

Here’s something you should definitely put on your Shabbat menu for tonight: Keskesoon is not a complicated dish. In fact, it’s really just a pasta dish with chick peas in it. But no one makes it better than Grandma Sally, which is why we invited her to our kitchen JUST to make her specialty.

As you will see, the ingredient list isn’t so extensive. You probably have everything on hand, except maybe the teeny pasta, which you will find in most supermarket pasta aisles. Never seen it before? You probably just glanced over it because you prefer little stars in your soup than these crazy peppercorn shaped pastas. These are much better. The secret to this dish is toasting the pasta before adding the water. It adds a nutty flavor that you don’t ever associate with pasta, but just works. It also makes some of the kernels browner than others, which makes it prettier on the plate, of course.

Keskesoon was always a Friday night and holiday staple in my Grandma’s house. We ate in in our chicken soup instead of rice. We put sauce and meatballs (and eggy-surprise!) over it. We used it as a base for our Hamud, peas and kibbe, and kibbe mushroom. Basically, you won’t run out of ways to eat this stuff. Some people even enjoy it plain, and why not?

My family really only eats this with meat meals. We always make it pareve, and with oil. When I consulted Deal Delights (the red one) for the recipe, I was surprised to find how different their recipe is from ours! Theirs calls for about 6 tablespoons of butter, and baking it in a dish with grated cheese on top – keskesoon, mac and cheese style, sounds awesome. They also spell it keskasoon. I guess since it’s not an English word there is no one proper way to spell it. One day I will have to try that version, but for now I’m sticking to our traditional way of eating and spelling. How does your family make keskesoon?

Keskesoon, recipe adapted from Grandma:

Ingredients:

  • 1 box acini di pepe pasta, #44
  • 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 can chick peas
  • 3 1/2 cups water
  • Salt

Directions:

1. Place a medium saucepan over medium heat and add the vegetable oil.

2. Open the can of chickpeas. Drain and rinse.

3. When the oil is hot, add the pasta. Swirl and mix, making sure each piece is coated in oil. Stir constantly until toasted.

4. Add the water and the chickpeas.

5. Bring to a boil, then lower, and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes, until the water is absorbed.

Keftes, or Syrian Meatballs

by Stephanie | 7 Comments

These little Syrian meatballs are totally different from the ones we eat on top of spaghetti. Keftes tend to be smaller and are cooked in a sweet and sour tomato-based sauce and are eaten over rice. They’re one of my favorite Syrian dishes, and though they’re usually served as part of a whole spread of meats, salads and vegetables (sometimes they’re not even the only serve-over-rice dish), I like to make them the main event on a weeknight!

Keftes, or Syrian Meatballs

Ingredients:

For the keftes:

  • 1 lb chopped meat
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons matzah meal
  • salt and pepper

For the sauce:

  • 2 (14 oz.) cans tomato sauce
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 teaspoons sugar
  • salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Mix all of the ingredients for the keftes together and form into balls, about 2 tablespoons in size.
  2. Brown the meatballs in a little bit of olive oil in a pot.
  3. Add all of the sauce ingredients, mix well and bring to a boil.
  4. Lower the fire, cover and let simmer for 40 minutes to an hour, making sure the keftes are cooked through.
  5. Serve over rice.

Oh, and happy birthday Rebekah!

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

by Stephanie | Leave a comment

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.)

Meatless Mondays: Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette

by Jessica | 14 Comments

I admit that I don’t love the cold weather. People take up so much more room on the subways with their puffy winter coats on! But with the cold weather comes some delicious winter treats, and one of those is butternut squash. They’ve been prominent in supermarkets ever since Sukkot, and I’ve made soup with them, roasted them, and added some the pot pie. But now it’s time to add another cold-weather favorite to the mix, apple cider. I love warm apple cider, especially from the farmer’s market near Columbia on Thursdays. Yes, I schedule my grad school classes around apple cider, who wouldn’t?

So welcome winter with a totally-fitting-for-a-main-dish-salad on this Meatless Monday!

Anyway, I couldn’t pass up on this salad recipe that calls for a salad with teeny little butternut squash chunks and a warm dressing made with apple cider. The dried cranberries can’t hurt either. Usually I don’t like walnuts. I never buy them, and I never add them to my brownies or baked goods, unless my mom is coming over. She thinks walnuts make any cookie or brownie infinitely better. They actually add a nice crunch to this salad, and an extra texture, which I like. This salad has crispy lettuce, soft butternut squash, chewy cranberries, and hard walnuts. What more can you ask for in a salad? Oh, a warm dressing, obviously.

Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette, adapted from Ina Garten:

For the dressing:

  • 3/4 cup apple cider
  • 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar, which I don’t have in my pantry – you can use red wine, too)
  • 2 tablespoons minced shallots (I omitted these)
  • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

1. Combine the apple cider, vinegar, and shallots in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and reduce to 1/4 cup, about 6-8 minutes.

2. Off the heat, add the olive oil, Dijon, salt, and pepper.

For the salad:

  • 1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch dice (about 1 1/2 pounds, if you have a scale)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon maple syrup
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 3 tablespoons dried cranberries
  • 1/2 cup walnut halves, toasted
  • 4 ounces lettuce, I used mixed baby greens. Ina used baby arugula.
  • Some Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. On a half sheet pan, combine the butternut squash, olive oil, maple syrup, salt, and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, or until the squash becomes soft and begins to brown.

3. When the squash has been roasting for 15 minutes, add the dried cranberries to the sheet pan.

4. Place the lettuce in a large bowl and add the roasted squash and cranberries, and walnuts.

5. Spoon dressing over the top until just moistened. Toss well. Serve with a shaved Parmesan cheese.