Budapest Interlude

  

Public Service Announcement

I am going on vacation and so is Hungry Souls. Blog writing and baking will recommence when I return next week. Have a good week y'all.

Inspiration (Early Fall/Sukkot)

Rolling with the Punches

R. has had a busy summer. She had a steady gig cooking for a group of teenagers who were in Israel for the summer on an educational program. She flitted in and out of the kitchen. Roasting chicken wings and cooking meatballs. Her daughter would also sometimes come along, griping, the way only a pre-teen can gripe about spending her summer vacation helping her mom, but secretly enjoying it. We would also lend a hand, when we could.
On one particular week she was heading out the door, when she realized that she had completely forgotten to chop the Israeli salad that was meant to be served that day. Within seconds, her daughter grabbed some tomatoes, I grabbed the cucumbers, C. ran for the peppers and minutes later R. was on her way.

One of the things I have learned from both C and R is how to roll with the punches. Because, the punches, they will come. Inevitably, you will forget the salad, your car will stall, you will run out of vegetables, or, if you're me, you'll take a test bite of cookie you made the day before and realize that they really do need to be eaten the day they are made and cannot be sold as such. So, (if you're me) you pull your extra dough out of the freezer and curse yourself for not storing it the refrigerator instead as you hack off pieces with a knife. And everything will work out. An hour and half later, your customers will show up and the cookies will be ready and cooled, and packaged. You give yourself leeway, be prepared to eat your losses and rely on your friends. There's no other way to do it.

But enough about me, and more about Israeli salad. A good Israeli salad is one of the most simplest, purest pleasures there is. In the kitchen it is a mainstay of our little family meals that we eat together between rounds of service. I am always surprised at how much I crave the bright freshness of the salad. After hours of standing on my feet it gives me a little jolt. The king of Israeli salad among our little group is our dishwasher, M. He chops the vegetables almost impossibly small and always somehow achieves the perfect lemon-salt-olive oil balance. It is truly a great salad. My Israeli salad is not quite as impressive but it is still very good. Here are a few guidelines:
1) Use the nicest and freshest vegetables you can find. Tired vegetables make for a tired salad
2) Do try and find Persian cucumbers if you can. Don't peel them.
3) Try and dice the vegetables as finely as you can.
4) I like a lot of cucumber and not so much pepper. Feel free to mess around with the ratios.

My Israeli Salad

3 cucumbers
2 ripe tomatoes
1 red pepper
1/2 red onion
freshly squeezed lemon juice
good olive oil
salt
pepper

1) Cut your vegetables into a small dice and combine
2) Juice half a lemon and pour it over the vegetables. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on the salt and pepper. Give it a good mix and let it sit for a few minutes.
3) Taste to see if it requires more lemon juice, olive oil or salt and pepper. The salad should taste bright and lemony, but not lip-puckeringly tart. Adjust accordingly. Eat with bread to sop up the juices.

More Rosh Hashanah (and a Reminder)

The reminder is this: Hungry Souls has opened its doors. Muffins! Chocolate Tart! Honey Cake! Cookies! Take a look at the menu and order now for break-fast, Sukkot, or just to have in the house.
In other news-some pics from Rosh Hashanah prep:

Rosh Hashana Interlude

This year has been a year of changes. At this point last year I was a Master's student in Jewish history with a part time job at an academic research project. Now, I am no longer a student, but a magistra. I am leaving my job at the project. I edit, translate and write. I work in a kitchen. I'm opening a business. I have a food blog. It has been a year in transit.
Change is wonderful. And stressful. And wonderful. It's helpful to have absolutes. My absolutes have been my family and my friends. They tolerate my highs and lows. They buy my muffins and give advice. They are shoulders to lean on, both literally and figuratively. For that I thank them.
The recipe for stuffed fish below is another absolute in my life. For as long  as I can remember it has been my favorite thing that my mother makes on Rosh Hashana. And when, earlier this week, I called my mother for some menu-planning advice, the only two things we could think of that she consistently makes on the Jewish New Year is this fish and my great-aunt's honey cake. (Which is entirely weird, because if there's one thing that my family does it's food traditions).  Because this is a traditional sort of recipe, the measurements are sort of vague. We've been making it for so long, that by now, we can do it by sight and feel. If you find yourself slightly flustered by the lack of measurements, take a deep breath and trust yourself. It's a good dish, this. It won't lead you wrong.
May the coming year be a year of peace and blessings and as sweet as honey.

My Mother's Stuffed Fish

1 largish firm fleshed whitefish, butterflied.

Stuffing:
vegetable oil
 white button mushrooms, sliced (as much, or as little as you like)
2 onions, chopped
salt
freshly ground pepper
a bit of water
breadcrumbs
1 egg

Sauce:
5 tbl mayonaisse
7 tbl ketchup
1 tbl lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350

Saute the onions in the oil until translucent. Add the mushrooms. Cook until they are browned. Add salt and pepper to taste, and then deglaze the pan with a bit of water. Transfer to a bowl and let cool a bit. Beat an egg into the mushroom-onion mixture. Add the breadcrumbs in slowly (I'd say start with about a 1/2 cup) until the mixture begins to hold together and look like stuffing. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed.

In a seperate bowl, mix together the ingredients for the sauce.

Loosly fill the cavity of the with stuffing. Close the fish and brush the sauce over the top.

Bake for an hour* until the fish is translucent and the stuffing has set.

* My mother usually stuffs a big fish- one that fits into an 11x13 pan. If you are using a smaller fish (or two smaller fish), adjust the time accordingly.

Battle Wounds

"...they come not single spies, but in battalions" Claudius, Hamlet IV.5

I do not speak of sorrows, but of life. I find that Claudius's maxim on the sorrows of the world, applies also to life in general. When life happens, it happens all at once. It comes in battalions. Life in the kitchen is no exception.

There are two sinks in the kitchen- a small one in the fore-room where we wash our private dishes- the mugs we use for coffee, etc- and a fairly large one in the prep room where we dump  our loads of vegetables to be washed and sorted. The big sink is a little bit essential. That week, it was also a little bit broken and by a little bit broken I mean the handle snapped off and couldn't be reattached. We would have to manage with one small sink. On a normal day, that would be difficult but within the range of not-chaos inducing. On that particular day, R. happened to be in kitchen prepping for a private catering event that she had later that day. This meant we had one more hand in the kitchen, which was useful, but it also meant that there was a whole lot more produce to wash and general stuff to be done than there usually is. We were all a tad bit uptight that day. Our dishwasher was testier than usual.  C. cut herself. And then, after, having been instructed to keep an eye on some cooking vegetables, I completely forgot and ended up with a nice pot of burnt. Broken sink. Burnt vegetables. Bleeding cook.  At that point I excused myself to the front to do service, both to avoid the wrath of the dishwasher, who hates nothing more than burnt pots, and to minimize my ability to screw something else up.

While doing service, as often happens, I ran out of whatever protein we were serving that day. I called to the dishwasher to pull me another pan out of the oven. He complied. He leaned in. I moved my arm back and felt a sharp pain on my upper arm. At first I thought I had cut myself on the sharp edge of the pan. I lifted my other hand up to feel. No blood. I continued service. Later, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized what I thought was a cut, was really a nice long burn. My first real kitchen burn. My first battle scar. For a few weeks I walked around in short sleeves as often as I could, showing off to myself a little bit. For all my tough-guy posturing though, I soon discovered, that a) it was uncomfortable and b) it was also healing quite nicely. I barely have a scar.

All the while, R., old hand that she is, was calmly prepping chicken wings, laying them in pans, pouring on sauce and sprinkling them with sesame seeds. Save her car breaking down on the side of a busy highway while transporting food to an important event (another story for another time), there is very little that rattles R. So in honor of the unflappable R, chicken wings.

Grilled Chicken Wings in Sumac
As usual adapted from The Book of New Israeli Food  by Janna Gur
(what can I say, I like this book)

Sumac is widely used spice in Middle East. Less so, in the States. It is deep, ruby red in color and sort of salty and tart. You can use it in marinades and dressings, as its used here. Or sprinkle it over hummus, or fatoush salad. It pairs nicely with thyme. You can probably find it in your local Middle Eastern grocery store.

For about 25 wings:

1/2 C olive oil
3 tbl sumac
Salt and pepper

1. Clean and prep your wings. Remove stray feathers and break off the tips. Save them for stock.

2.  Mix together the olive oil, sumac, salt and pepper and pour over the wings. Cover and marinate for at least 4 hours.

3. Heat your grill until quite hot. Grill the wings for 10-15 per side, about 30 minutes total, until they are done and nice and crispy on the outside. Alternatively, if you do not own a grill, do not wish to grill or are a non-Chicagoan in a Chicago winter (real Chicagoans don't let a little bit of snow stop them) you can grill the wings under a broiler of an oven set to 425 F.