How to Keep On

It started with Toffee Bars, or at least that is how I remember it. I found Jess's blog, Sweet Amandine, by accident, following a link that led me to a link that led me to a link, etc. I liked it immediately. I liked the clean, welcoming design, and Jess's warm voice.  I liked how she seemed to understand that food is not only meant to nourish but also meant to evoke memories and feelings and stories. I liked the food.  (How could I not? Pluot Cake, Olive Oil Citrus Cake, Lemon Curd Squares with Rosemary- and those are just (some of) the desserts). So, in a move quite unlike myself, I screwed my courage to the sticking place- because I am introverted and socially anxious even in the virtual world- and  I commented on one of her blog posts. Jess was warm and welcoming, as she is, but it was the Toffee Bars (or Toffee Squares, as Jess has it) that really did it.

It's hard to describe what Toffee Bars mean to me. I have no memory of the first time I ate them, because always, as long as I can remember,it has been, Mrs. Anis has Toffee Bars. Mrs. Anis is my surrogate grandmother. She has fed me and loved me since I was born and she always- may she live and be well- always has Toffee Bars. Toffee Bars is also one of the first things I learned to bake by myself as a child because they are easy and require not so very many ingredients. To me, they are a part of myself-my child self and adult self and the self that is loved and cared for- all of that is in a Toffee Bar. So, imagine my surprise when they showed up on Jess's blog- the very exact recipe- the one I have, the one scrawled on a browning notecard in my mother's hand. Imagine my surprise to find that to her they were also love and care and chosen family. Something slotted into place.

Jess and I communicated on her blog and via email for a couple of years. We found other things in common- academics, that one street in Jerusalem we both lived off of, though not at the same time. She became someone I could talk to about food, obviously, but also life, academics, words, things that mattered. She became a friend. Eventually though, we fell out of touch, because, life; and I have fallen out of touch with more friends than I care to admit.

Then Stir came out.

It's a little bit weird to read a book by a friend whom you've never met; to come to know her again by her own words, and Jess is, by far, one of the best wielders of words I know. Her words choice is so accurate, so onpoint, it is a wonder to read. Like Jess, Stir is warm, personable, and  honest. It is in turns both joyful and heartbreaking. It is a book about how to keep on when everything changes and how food can get us there. It is about Jess, and her family and her friends, and her kitchen. It's a wonderful book and I'm very, very glad Jess wrote it.  I hope you will read it.

Jess, thank you for Stir. xo


Much as I loved all the food in Stir, and despite the fact that it will probably change the way I make pastry and the way I make challah, the recipe I have to share with you is not from Stir but from Jess's blog, Sweet Amandine.  I make a lot of recipes from Sweet Amandine, but this is the one I make the most. It is THE soup. It is the soup that has turned many a fennel hater into a fennel lover. It is the soup that my family now makes every Passover when we've gotten sick of eating and all we want is soup and salad and maybe some matzoh and butter. It is the soup I make when summer slips into fall. It is carrots and fennel, roasted until they go brown and lovely and sweet. It is the genius of a spoon of tomato paste turning dark around a layer of oil-slicked onions and all the depth and complexity it lends. I love this soup.

Make this soup and think of it as a teaser. Then go out and buy Stir (or take it out of your local library if you have one). Treasures await.

Roasted Carrot and Fennel Soup

Very lightly adapted from Jessica Fechtor on Sweet Amandine

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 pounds carrots (about 8 medium carrots)
1 bulb fennel
1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon fennel seed, toasted and ground (or if your me, roughly smashed with a knife on your cutting board)
4-5 cups water or vegetable broth
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat your oven to 450 F.  Peel and chop the carrots into 1/4 inch rounds. Trim the fennel and then cut into 1/2 inch wedges. Toss the carrots and fennel with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Spread on a baking tray and roast for about a half an hour until the vegetables are tender and golden at the edges and smell delicious.

2. Meanwhile, heat the rest of the oil  oven medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onions and the fennel and saute until the onion is translucent. Add the tomato paste and stir.

3. By now, the carrot and fennel should be ready. Add them to the pot with the onion. Stir and then pour in 4 cups of water or broth. Bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and carefully! blend using an immersion blender,adding more water or broth to thin it a bit if the soup seems to thick. Reheat, and serve.

If you can't stand the heat...

Quite a few summers ago, my sister and I took a trip to Spain. We spent a few days in Madrid and then wound our way down to Cordoba, where we also intended to spend a few days.   It is safe to say that I did not understand the phrase, "a wall of heat" until I arrived in Cordoba. We stepped off the train and into what could only be described as "a wall of dry heat". It was 40 degrees Celsius and just past midday. The hostel we were staying at was beautiful, but it had no air-conditioning, only an slow-moving ineffectual fan, that moved the hot air around our small room. The only bearable time of day was between 3 and 6 am. We did not like Cordoba. Something about the heat turned everything flat and dull and almost oppressive. Maimonides was everywhere, but there were no Jews. The Meziquita, the Roman bridge, the great city that was once a shining star for the three monotheistic faiths, felt like nothing but a tourist trap. The next day we fled to Seville where we learned how the locals deal with the heat and the reason for the preponderance of public fountains in the city. There is nothing quite like sticking your bare feet into a cold fountain on hot day.

I mention Cordoba because the weather in Jerusalem the past few days has been positively Cordobian. Walking outside is like moving through a furnace. The heat is its own entity.There is no fighting it. You just have to give in. On Friday, I walked out of my apartment with every intention of shopping at the wonderful, cheap green-grocer just a 12 minute walk away. But then, I took one step and said, nope, not happening. I went to the expensive green-grocer around the corner. I did not buy a melon, or anything other than the bare essentials. I walked home as quickly as possible, which is to say not very. The melon is important. The melon is important because without it I could not make Mark Bittman's Tomato-Melon Gazpacho, which is my go-to summer soup. But I needed cold soup. In fact, still now, all I want to eat, forever and ever, until the heat breaks, is cold soup. I had no melon, nor did I have cucumbers or peppers with which to make regular gazpacho. What I did have though was carrots- in abundance- because I had been meaning to write about Kim Boyce's Carrot Muffins from Good to the Grain, which are spectacular, but really, asking anybody to turn on their oven in this weather is just cruel, so I did not write about about them. Chilled carrot soup it was. After a bit of research, I decided I wanted something just a little gingery and sweet, but nothing that would overwhelm the carrot flavor, so I went with a recipe from Food and Wine Magazine, that was pretty much nothing more than onion, carrot, ginger, water and a little sweetener and acid.  It was perfect. Just what I wanted. Just what I want, until the heat is gone.

Chilled Carrot Ginger Soup

Adapted from Food and Wine Magazine

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 pounds of carrots, sliced
2 1/2 cups water or stock
2 inch long knobs of ginger, peeled
2-3 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
salt and freshly ground pepper.

1. In a medium sized pot, warm the coconut oil until melted. Add the onion and cook about 5-10 minutes, until translucent. Add the carrots, water (or stock) and ginger. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer about 25 minutes until the carrots are tender. Remove from heat.

2. When the soup has cooled a bit, remove the ginger and add the lemon juice, honey salt, and pepper. Blend until smooth (a hand blender is useful for this). If the soup is too thick, you can add a bit of water to thin it down. Chill. Serve cold.

A Bowl of Comfort

I apologize for the long absence. It has been a long, hard month. As some of you may know from Facebook, my cat (the very same bread-thief) had been quite ill. Thankfully she's been getting better, and hopefully she will continue to improve, but it was touch and go there for a bit. Anyway, long and hard, as I said, and I'm only just now starting to feel like I'm getting back to myself. 

Sometime between when my cat got ill and now (read: this week) winter arrived. This November was one of the warmest Novembers I could remember and I think I was sort of in denial about the onset of winter. I kind of hate Jerusalem winters. Rather, I hate the lack of insulation and heating and being wet and cold in my bones. So the cold and rain kind of took me unawares and I seem to have picked up the bad cold that has been going around the office and all and all I'm pretty miserable at this very moment. All of this, is a slightly roundabout way of saying that the time for soup has arrived. Soup (and tea) are my default states during the winter and I'm always on the lookout for new delicious soups to make. Luckily, my sister-in-law did not let me down when she pointed me to Mark Bittman's Roasted Chestnut Soup. Roasted chestnuts always remind me of long winter Friday nights, the difficulty of the cracking open their hard shells, the warm low light inside and the bright snow outside. There's little to no bright snow where I live now, but in my mind that is always the association roasted chestnuts will hold for me.  

Roasted chestnut soup. For winter.

Roasted Chestnut Soup

Adapted from Mark Bittman Recipe of the Day, The New York Times

Bittman suggests roasting your own chestnuts for this soup, but vacuum-packed roasted chestnuts are just so much easier. Use them. 

10-12 roasted chestnuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped onion

4 cups stock (chicken for a richer soup, vegetable for something lighter)

salt and pepper

1. Heat the olive oil in a stockpot, or other soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and then the celery with a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Saute until the onion is soft and translucent- about 10 minutes. Add the chestnuts and the stock. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat. Simmer, partially uncovered for a half an hour, until the chestnuts are mushy. Use a hand blender to puree the soup. Add water, if too thick, otherwise re-heat, taste, adjust seasoning and serve. 

Jerusalem in Jerusalem: Tomato and Sourdough Soup

It's been unseasonably cold here lately. In fact, tonight as I'm writing this, it has just stopped raining. Its the kind of night that should be long- spent under a blanket watching a bad movie and eating popcorn. But it's not. We've changed the clocks already. On most nights this time of year, my windows would be open. They're closed tonight. And though I'm not eating popcorn, or watching a bad movie, I am huddled under blankets, thinking at the cat that she should get up and come cuddle, because there's nothing like a cat cuddle on a cold night.

Wednesday night, when Naomi came over for our weekly Ottolenghi cooking club, was also cold, if a bit less blustery than tonight. Still, it was a good night for the tomato and sourdough soup we had planned. We planned for soup since it was the day after Yom Ha'atzmaut- Israel's Independence Day-and we knew that after a day of consuming nothing but grilled meat, accoutrements and beer, we would want something light for dinner. It was a fortuitous piece of planning due to the aforementioned cold, and because the news coming out of Boston had left me confused and sad and angry. I needed something warm and comforting.  Fortuitous, indeed.

And since we were doing tomato soup, it seemed that grilled cheese would be in order as well. אם כבר,אז כבר, as they say in these parts- if already, then already.

Naomi can get a little bit tyrannical about cooking club. She refuses to let anyone else cook with us. Friends are welcome to eat with us, but cooking is reserved for me and her exclusively, which is, frankly, kind of nice. Then again, when Naomi suggested that we eat our sandwiches before the soup, I may or may not have emphatically and vigorously insisted that we cannot under any circumstances eat the tomato soup separate from the grilled cheese. (Spoiler alert: I insisted). So, maybe Naomi is not the only one who can get a bit tyrannical. But when it's cold and miserable and the news from far away makes you want to curl up and hide under a rock until humanity gets it shit together, sometimes you need a little warmth. Sometimes you need a friend to cook with and bowl of tomato soup (with grilled cheese, of course) to get you to the other side of the dark.

Tomato and Sourdough Soup
From Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 cups vegetable stock
4 large tomatoes, chopped
1 14-oz can of diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
1 slice sourdough bread
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper

1. In a saucepan, heat the oil and add the onion. Saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and the garlic, saute for another 2 minutes. Add the stock, tomatoes sugar and some salt and black pepper. Bring the soup to a simmer. 10 minutes in, tear up the slice of bread into the soup. Cook for another 10 minutes. Add the cilantro. Using a hand blender, blend the soup, leaving it a bit chunky. It will be thick.

2. Serve with a garnish of cilantro, a drizzle of olive oil and a grilled cheese sandwich on the side.

Soup, Beautiful Soup

R is the co-head of the kitchen, along with C. I don't get to cook with R. much since our schedules don't match up very often, but I feel privileged to work with her every time I do. R has a booming laugh, a sure hand and wide breadth of knowledge. She's also an excellent and inventive cook. The food she makes is a marriage of the Old World and New. She once asked me to taste piece of kubbe that she had filled with sun-dried tomatoes and walnuts instead of meat. It was probably the best kubbe I had every tasted, and I don't even like sun-dried tomatoes.

It was R who explained to me, as I was chopping a mound of cauliflower, that cauliflower leaves are edible. Like the stems of swiss chard, cauliflower leaves can be chopped and sauteed, or steamed. They are slightly bitter and have intense cauliflowery taste. There's no need to waste them. These are things I have learned in the kitchen, from women like R. and C.  If you can avoid waste, do so. Be creative. Use your cauliflower leaves.

You don't always have to eat your cauliflower leaves in order to use them.  You can also do with them what I did as I was making this soup- toss them in a pot with the core of the cauliflower, some onion scraps and what ever else you've been chopping, cover with water and make a quick vegetable stock. Then, throw 'em in the compost.

North Africanish Roasted Cauliflower Soup

Adapted from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home by the Moosewood Collective

I've been thinking about this soup for a while. Ok, well, not really a while- since I decided to write about cauliflower.  Long enough for it to be on my mind. I used to make it all the time, and then, for no reason at all, I just stopped. But I missed the soup and was thinking about. More specifically I was looking for ways to make it deeper. Then, a few weeks ago, I was at my uncle's house nibbling on a plate of roasted cauliflower as if it was popcorn, and it hit me. In the original recipe you cook the cauliflower along with the potatoes. That's lovely and all, but there is very little in the world that beats the taste of roasted cauliflower. So then next time I made the soup I roasted the cauliflower and reveled in the results. Here is a soup that is both light and deep. It will serve as first course, or, if served over couscous, as a meal all on to itself. Yes, it's summer, and who wants hot soup? But I promise you actually do want hot soup. Really, you do.

2 1/2 cups chopped onions
2 tbl vegetable oil
2 potatoes (about 2 cups, diced)
1 medium head of cauliflower (about 5 cups chopped)
olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp ground fennel
5 cups hot vegetable broth, or water

2 tbl fresh lemon juice
salt, pepper

chopped tomatoes (optional)
chopped green onion (optional)


Preheat the oven to 400 F. Break the cauliflower into florets. Toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread on a roasting pan in one layer and roast for 20-25, until brown and crispy along the edges.

In the meantime, saute the onions in the vegetable oil until translucent. Stir in the cumin, fennel and potatoes and cook for a minute. Add the hot broth/water. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer for around 10 minutes, until the potatoes are hot.  Remove from heat. Add the cauliflower, which, at that point should be ready.

In a blender, or food processor, or with a hand blender, puree the vegetables until smooth. Add the lemon juice, and the salt and pepper to taste.  Reheat the soup, if necessary

Serve garnished with tomatoes and green onions, if you'd like.

Kubbe I

Because kitchen shifts rotate, I'm never quite sure who I"m going to be working with at any given week. This is great since it gives me a chance to a) meet more of the women and b) figure out who I work with best and try and arrange it so they we work together often. One of my favorite cooking partners is A. A. reminds me very much of my aunt. I'm not sure why but it could be because she shares the same wide smile, perfectly manicured hands and air of competence. Or, it could be their shared habit of calling everyone "darling". For this reason alone, I took to her immediately. A. also taught me how to make kubbe, which made me like her even more.

Kubbe, for those who aren't familiar with the dish, are meat-filled semolina dumplings that are traditionally served in a sour, lemony soup. (There is also a type of kubbe that is made with bulgur and fried, but we'll get that a different week).  Kubbe is highly popular in Israel, but I had never tried my hand it. I just assumed that you had to be an Iraqi grandmother to make kubbe, otherwise you'd just get it all wrong. So when A. offered to teach me, I jumped at the chance.

Making kubbe is slightly complex, but once you get the hang of it it's not that bad. You first make a filling of sauteed ground beef, garlic and some celery. Set it aside and let it cool.  Then make a dough of semolina and water.Wet your hands. Grab a fist-full of dough and roll into an evenly shaped ball between your palms. Holding, the ball in the palm of one hand, press down with two fingers of your other hand, from the center-outwards to create an even, flat circle of dough. Place about a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the circle of dough and cup your hand, pulling the dough up and over the filling. Roll the dumpling between your palms to reshape into an even ball. Wet your hands again and repeat.

Kubbe is gossip food. It's slightly tedious and annoying to do on your own, but when you're sitting with a bunch of friends, talking and laughing and keeping your hands busy, it's a pleasure. The recipe below is not precisely the same one I made with A., but it's near enough. Also, note that the soup the kubbe is cooked in is quite tart. Don't fret. When eaten together the kubbe, the richness of the dough and the meat offsets the tartness quite nicely.


Kubbe Hamousta

Adapted from, The Book of New Israeli Food, by Janna Gur

The Kubbe Dough:
1 cup coarse bulgur wheat
1 cup fine bulgur wheat
1 cup semolina
Salt
1-2 tbl. flour

The Kubbe Filling:
1 3/4 lb beef, ground finely
4-5 stalks celery, finely chopped
3-4 cloves crushed garlic
Salt and pepper

The Soup:
3 tbl oil
5 large onions, diced
2 liters chicken broth
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
The rest of the celery stalk, chopped
1 bunch of Swiss chard, cut into strios
Salt and pepper


1. Prepare the dough: Mix the two types of bulgur and add enough water so that it is covered by at least 1 1/2 inches of water. Let sit for 45 minutes. It should remain covered in water at all times.

2. Squeeze the bulgur and discard the water. Add the salt and semolina and mix thoroughly. Add the flour and knead by hand to form a soft dough.

3. Prepare the filling: Heat oil in a large skillet and fry the meat slowly on a low heat until completely dry. Add the chopped celery, garlic salt and pepper and fry for a 4-5 minutes. Let cool.

4. Prepare the dumplings as described above.

5. Prepare the soup: Heat the oil in a large pot and saute the onions until golden. Add stock and bring to a boil. Add the celery and Swiss chard. Season with salt and pepper. Add lemon juice gradually, reduce the heat and cook for about a half an hour. Add the dumplings and cook for 20 minutes. Let the soup stand for at least an hour, reheat and serve.