This bread is like a larger pocket-less pita bread. It is traditionally made by the Druze on a hemispherical pan placed upside down over a propane burner. A wok turned upside down over a gas burner would be similar. Since I have an electric stove, I set a baking steel over two of the burners Read More …
Everyday Schug is an easy version of a chili paste which is popular in Israel. This version is taken from Israeli Soul by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. Use with discretion since it is both very spicy and salty. I used it for the first time in shawarma sandwiches. ½ lb. serrano chilies, stems removed Read More …
This recipe originated in the long defunct Houston Home and Garden magazine in 1982. We have served it for Christmas several times over the years. This recipe makes a large cheesecake which can generously serve 12 people. Most recently I actually made it with pecans vs. walnuts because that is what I had on hand. Read More …
We clipped this recipe out of some cooking magazine 30 or 40 years ago. It is an unusual combination of marinated mushrooms, salami, olives, cheese, capers, and a vinaigrette. In other words, it is all of the flavors of an antipasto platter, mixed together. We served it with a home-made sourdough baguette as part of Read More …
Steak Diane is a pan-fried steak served with a pan sauce, which was very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Why it went out of fashion is mysterious, since it is fairly easy to make and is extremely tasty. It is a great Friday night dinner – a bit special but not time-consuming, other than Read More …
Years ago, one of our standard Christmas desserts was a walnut pumpkin cheesecake from a recipe in the long gone Houston Home &Gardens magazine. It was a bit of a production, but very good, and someday I will make a post on it. In the meantime, we had left over pumpkin puree from roasting two Read More …
I was looking for a good weeknight dinner to go with some baguettes and decided to adapt a basic shakshuka recipe from Joan Nathan’s The Foods of Israel Today. The original recipe came from the Tripolitana Doktor Shakshuka Restaurant in Jaffa. My main change was adding some feta. This recipe is intended to be 6 Read More …
I have had a sourdough starter for many years, but it had been neglected lately, so I bought a new one from breadtopia.com. It took about a week to rehydrate and build the starter to a useable quantity. So far I have used it as a poolish replacement. I have built it up to be Read More …
This is the version of baguettes that I have been making the most often lately. The starter was from breadtopia.com and I followed their Almost No Knead Baguette recipe except that I substituted 250 g.of the sourdough starter for the poolish in the original recipe. (The sourdough starter has 100% hydration, i.e. equal weights of Read More …
This is a stub. I was making a batch of my standard pizza dough, when I decided to turn it into a baguette to go with shrimp with garlic sauce. My standard pizza dough has 77% hydration, which is too high to form a baguette. After quick internet research I decided to try 65% hydration, Read More …