The P Word

Before I start my discussion of the P word, the good and the bad of it, I just wanted to mention that yesterday was one year since Miriyummy came into being, all because Ju-Boy got trapped in England due to a volcano.  So if you love or hate my blog, you can all Blame It On The Volcano.

Don’t Pass Over These Recipes

 

Okay, the house is clean, you are exhausted, the table is set, the guests are hungry, what are you going to serve?

Foodie Fridays #5

I spend a lot of time (some may say too much time) reading foodie blogs. They are always good for some entertainment, inspiration and it fills my need for food porn.

Here are some of the posts that have sparked my interest lately…

Risa over at Isramom is hosting the Kislev edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival.  I totally agree that it’s so weird that we’re now entering the month of Chanuka, with visions of latke parties while it snows outside, yet here in Israel we’re baking in the longest Indian summer on record.  Lots of great postings over at the Carnival, so check them out.

Hadassah of In the Pink is taking a school lunch poll.  In elementary and junior high we ate whatever the cafeteria served up that day, slowly dragging our feet when mystery noodle casserole was served, speeding up on Fridays when we had tuna sandwiches with potato chips, cutting the line for pizza and felafel day.  What did you take to school for lunch?

My favorite Cooking Manager, Hannah, regularly interviews bloggers on a Monday morning (I even got interviewed a few months ago).  This week she spoke with Sara Melamed who blogs Foodbridge.  Sarah actually made melouchia, and all I can say about that is better her than me!

The Nana10 webportal is always full of interesting recipes.  This week I found a recipe for Chicken Patties with Tehina in Silan Sauce.  Silan, for those of you who have yet to taste this ambrosia, is date honey.  I use it instead of bee honey many times, and it’s great with chicken.  This is going to be on my table this Friday night!  The recipe is in Hebrew, so for those of you that lo medabrim hasafa (don’t speak the language), if you really want the recipe, contact me and I’ll translate.

Image via CrunchBase

While not a foodie blog per se, Life in Israel has a very interesting post about someone who is trying to sell their leftover cholent on eBay!  Starting bid was $2 and someone eventually bought it for $4!  At the Miriyummy household we never have leftover cholent because we don’t eat cholent.  Or rather, Ju-Boy and progeny don’t eat cholent.  I love the stuff.   Maybe next time I should just buy a portion on eBay?

Baroness Tapuzina paid a visit to the Organic Farmers Market in Tel Aviv.  The market is situated down at Hatahana, the renovated Ottoman train station near Jaffa.  We’ve been going more and more organic at home, but for the time being have bought our produce and dairy products at the new “Green” section of our Supersol Deal.  But Michelle’s pictures are just so tempting, we just might give up a precious Friday morning and stop by.

And now for a subject close to my heart:  pizza, and New York pizza specifically.  Serious Eats takes their pizza, well, seriously.  I always enjoy their pizza articles, and was not disappointed with this one either.  I always try to make a good slice at home, but until I invest in a real pizza oven with a pizza stone, I’m going to have to try to settle for the Miriyummy version (coming soon to a blog near you).  But one very interesting thing I learned is that you get a much better dough if you make it up in the food processor.  I’ve been touting the wonders of my Kenwood Major, and what I really should be doing is bugging Ju-Boy and the kids for a really amazing food processor to replace the pitiful one I’ve been working with now.  Hey, it’s my birthday this Wednesday, help me nag Ju-boy!  Just comment on this blog and maybe it will sway the unswayable (he’s bought me perfume, again, I just know it…).

You know how you can tell Chanuka is on the way?  When the sufganiyot (jelly donuts) start showing up in the bakeries and supermarkets.  Just as the Christmas decorations start hitting the stores in the States sometime after Halloween, the jam-filled calorie bombs are showing up earlier and earlier.  I think I saw the first ones right after Rosh Hashana.  Now Roladin, that mmmmmmmmm bakery, has the 2010 parade of donuts up on their website.  Check them out, you can’t gain weight just by looking (or can you?).

Shabbat Shalom!

 

 

 

 

 

In Which I Become A Sous-Chef

Having churned out four daughters, you would have thought one of them had inherited my food obsession, both in cooking and eating.  But nooooooooo!  I should have seen it coming early on with Sassy, my oldest.  When she was born she weighed 2.3 kilos.  That’s a little over 5 pounds for those of you more comfortable in avoirdupois.  (I know, I’m being facetious.)  Today, 25 years old and married, she doesn’t weigh much more.  When she was little she would never eat, which was very frustrating to the Jewish Mother in me.  I would equate food with love, and she would be full up after just looking at a spoon of cottage cheese.  The other three didn’t weigh much more, and didn’t eat much more as well.

When I was a little girl I was also a picky eater (you wouldn’t know it from looking at me today), but I loved hanging out with my mother in the kitchen and watching her cook.  She would let me stir, she would let me dig my hands into the hamburger and squish things around, she would let me scramble eggs — I was in kiddie heaven.  I really have to thank my mother for letting me patchkeh around in the kitchen, wincing at the mess I would create and never letting that prevent me from making more messes.  I still have this picture in my head of her trying to extinguish the small fire I started by trying to fry an egg in a plastic cereal bowl.

Don’t get me wrong, my girls can cook!  Sassy married her soulmate, Sabraman (yes, he’s a superhero) and is trying to be more Yemenite than his whole family combined.  She has become the Queen of Hawaiij. Her sister, Tinky, makes a mean mushroom Alfredo pasta. My girls can cook, they just aren’t as obsessed with it as I am.  Sigh…..

Enter my stepson, Shy-boy.  He’s Ju-boy’s youngest, and he loves to cook.  Ju-boy loves bonding with his son while teaching him how to roast potatoes (he claims the secret is how much you sweat while making them), and I welcome having a sous-chef in the kitchen.  Except usually, Shy-boy ends up doing the cooking, and I am his sous-chef.  Which is exactly what happened today.

Carine Goren is the baking guru of Israel.  I love her recipes and her cooking shows on the Israeli Cooking Channel.  The recipe below comes from one of her books, אפייה זה משחק ילדים, which translates into Baking is Child’s Play.  Shy-boy has been chomping at the bit to try out a few of her recipes and today we did.

Pizza Cookie

This is a giant chocolate chip cookie topped with strawberry jam and white chocolate.  If you squint, it really looks like pizza.

Pizza dough:

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1/4 teaspoon salt

100 grams (1/2 cup) butter or margarine

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

Pizza sauce:

1 cup red jam (we used strawberry, raspberry works too)

Cheese:

100 grams (4 ounces) white chocolate, grated (we didn’t have any so I chopped up some white chocolate chips instead)

• Line an oven tray with parchment paper.
• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (320 in F)
• In a bowl, mix together the white sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla essence and salt.
• Melt the butter (marg) in the microwave and add to the mixture in the bowl.  Stir with a wooden spoon.
• Add the flour, baking soda and chocolate chips and stir until you get a uniform dough.
• Pat the dough down on to the parchment paper in the shape of a thin circle (pizza-shaped).  This will form one large cookie.  If the dough sticks to your hands wet them a bit and continue to pat the dough down until you have your pizza base.
• Place the tray in the oven and bake for 30-35 mintues.  The cookie should be golden and a little bit soft in the middle.  When ready, remove, and let cool completely.
• With the back of a spoon spread the jam as you would pizza sauce.
• Grate the white chocolate over the jam, until the entire base is covered.
• Cut your pizza cookie into triangular slices with a pizza cutter.  Come on, if you’re going to pretend this is a pizza, pretend all the way.

Mix the dough with a wooden spoon.

Pat the dough down to create the pizza base.

Spread the jam over the baked base.

Distribute the white chocolate "cheese" evenly over the "sauce."

Take the illusion all the way to the limit, cut into slices with a pizza cutter.