Category Archives: experiment

Beet Pasta

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Beet has once again appeared in my CSA box, and I tried to use it, given the fact I don’t really like it. I decided to try fresh pasta with beet incorporated in the dough. I failed to take any good pictures of the process or the result.

Last time I made fresh pasta I used durum semolina flour and it was great. I went out to buy some but mistakenly bought Type 00 soft wheat flour instead. It turned out well, and I guess all-purpose flour would do fine too.

Here’s the recipe for the dough (for about 6 servings):

  • 300gr flour
  • 2 1/2 eggs
  • 2 tbsp pureed roasted beet
  • pinch of salt
I roasted the beet unpeeled wrapped in parchment paper and tin foil with some olive oil and sea salt. Then it was peeled, chopped and pureed using a hand blender. I used my stand mixer for the dough, kneading until smooth and then let the dough rest in the refrigerator for an hour.
Work the dough through the pasta machine a small piece at a time. My best advice for making pasta is to flour the dough generously, and let it dry a little while working the pasta machine. Also watch out for cooking time as it cooks real quick (my pasta was a little overcooked).
I finished the pasta with toasted pine nuts, olive oil and crumbled goat cheese. I loved the taste – pine nuts are amazing. I wonder what sauces would go well with it. The beet taste isn’t very strong, but the aesthetics could be problematic.

Egg and Tomato Noodles

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The nature of blogging is quite problematic. When you start writing a blog, it is very easy to create content. Mainly because you’re inspired, which is what led you to open a blog in the first place. But besides being inspired, there are also no expectations whatsoever of your content. After a while, even if you still don’t have readers, you become much more critical of your posts. It’s like drawing – when faced with a blank paper it is very easy to create the first few lines. When you make some progress though, it becomes harder to put down the extra strokes that refine the picture.

During the past two months that this blog wasn’t updated, I was cooking as usual. I even had some planned posts in mind, some of which were also prepared, but it didn’t work out. I was too critical of the end result, or I would forget to take pictures of the progress. When the pictures were ok, I had no inspiration for a text, or an exact recipe.

But I have not given up on this blog, and I will counter those issues with a simple approach: lower self expectations. I’ll try to publish everything I make, even If I’m not happy with it. I will also attempt to make posts short and simple, so that it will be easier to make them right away and move on.

Today I was trying to recreate a pleasant childhood memory. At some point during my childhood, my parents hired a young Chinese student who was then living in Israel to be a nanny for me and my sister. She happened to also be a very good cook (and believe me, I was critical about food even as a child) and as a result this was one of my happiest times growing up. Sadly she had to leave after several months, but years later I still remember the great Chinese food that I had had on a daily basis.

My favorite dish was noodles with egg and tomato sauce. I could eat it several bowls of it a day and never have enough. For years this dish sat in the back of my mind, yet I never encountered it again anywhere. It’s just some kind of Chinese home food, not something you will see in a restaurant’s menu (besides, real Chinese food is rare). There’s a page on wikipedia about it, but it doesn’t say much.

I don’t know why it took me so long to try it. I followed this video more-or-less:

I did not plan to make my own noodles, but it is quite simple and rewarding, so I did make them myself. I like somewhat thick noodles which hold a bite, but mine were a little too thick. The result had hints of that taste that I remember from childhood, but it wasn’t just that. I think I cooked the tomatoes for too long, and I think the garlic should be omitted. Still, it’s a quick and satisfying dish to make – try it! I will continue to experiment and get closer to my target taste.

Fig Tartlet – An Experiment

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I have been consuming many many figs recently. Though very tasty on their own, I wanted to try making a tart with figs and pastry cream. Searching online I only found recipes for either fresh tarts or tarts combining figs and frangipane. I thought that frangipane would overshadow the figs, so I decided to try it with pastry cream anyway and see what happens.

I made some pie dough and pastry cream and prepared myself to conduct a scientific experiment to determine which tart would be superior.

The tart shells were both blind baked at 190°C for 5-10 minutes, and then uncovered for another 5 minutes until slightly brown. The one to be used for the fresh tart was baked a few minutes longer, as it was not to be baked again. The oven was then lowered to 160°C.

Next, I filled both tarts with pastry cream and figs. I should note here that perhaps I should have used the same slice size for both tarts.

The baked tart was placed back in the oven for 5-10 minutes, until the figs darkened just a little bit and the cream appeared to be stiff. I would have liked to bake it longer but was afraid that the cream would be ruined. The tart was allowed to cool a little and then they were both examined.

The results are clear: 1 of 1 participants agreed that the baked tart was superior.

Baking the fig intensified its flavor, which was accompanied by a velvety bed of cream. On the contrary, in the fresh tart, the figs were almost non existent and everything was overshadowed by the buttery crust.

All in all a great way to conduct science.

Bourekas

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I am half Turkish. My father’s parents were born in Turkey and moved to Israel in their adolescence. I grew up on my grandmother’s Jewish-Turkish cooking, and it remains a prominent part in my present identity. In the seventh grade, kids in Israel are required to research their family’s background, and present it in some form. My research was about the culinary heritage of Jews in Turkey and the Balkans.

Spinach has a somewhat sacred place at my grandma’s house. It was always promoted as very healthy and tasty. Meals received a place of honor on the table if they contained spinach. It was the trump card of any occasion, a magic ingredient mentioned to get everyone excited.

To mitigate any chance that any one of the grandchildren will grow not to like spinach, we were all brainwashed with videotapes of Popeye The Sailor Man since early age. However, I can’t say I’m not pleased with the results.

Bourekas (or Börek in Trukish, as Wikipedia tells me) is a kind of pastry (usually salty) made with either puff pastry or Phyllo. It is very popular in Israel and is found everywhere, either in supermarkets or special bourekas bakeries. Popular fillings are cheese, potatoes, spinach, mushrooms and pizza sauce. My grandma still makes bourekas herself, mostly filled with ground beef, or an eggplant based mixture.

Anyone with some baking experience must have heard about how hard and time consuming is the process of making puff pastry. It is usually dismissed as something not worth the effort because it can be bought frozen. I must debunk that myth. Yes, it’s not the most trivial thing to make, and yes, it does take time, but it’s far easier than many other things I tried before. Many other things that people with some kitchen milage tackle without much hesitation, while they still won’t try to make puff pastry.

I guess store-bough puff pastry is good and easy to use, and that’s perfectly fine. I’d still recommend trying it out yourself at least once. It cost me one third of the price of frozen pastry, and it didn’t take longer than the defrosting time.

I started taking pictures of the dough making process, but then I realized that the recipe I used had better pictures than what I could provide. It’s in French, but it’s really all about the technique, and the pictures describe it very well.

Oh, and if it wasn’t clear by now, I was making Spinach Bourekas, though that wasn’t the only goal that puff pastry was meant to achieve… (more on that soon…)

A key ingredient in bourekas-making is what we refer to as Bulgarian Cheese in Israel. Wikipedia told me it’s also called Sirene, and I guess in Bulgaria they just call it “Cheese”. It’s a salty white cheese, similar to Feta yet different in taste and texture. It is the most common filling for bourekas, though Feta would work very well too, and even Ricotta when aiming for a sweeter taste.

I made my filling by mixing steamed spinach, bulgarian cheese, kashkaval, and an egg, with a ratio of roughly the same volume of each item.

I then experimented with three different shapes: triangular, “snail”, and “square” (rolled like pain au chocolat). The bourekas were then brushed with egg and sprinkled with sesame.

Ten to fifteen minutes in the oven and they were ready. The triangles were very crispy and flaky, the snail was softer, had more filling and was moister inside. The square one received neither of the benefits of the other shapes and was mediocre.

It was a great breakfast and I was happy with the success of the puff pastry. Looking at those pictures I am now hungry again…

 

Spring Gorgonzola Salad

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I was asked to make a salad for a family picnic. Salads are one of the best playgrounds for culinary creativity, as it is a very tolerating setting. Usually tasty ingredients will combine to form a tasty salad, and there’s no complex technique involved.

I’ve wanted to make some Gorgonzola salad for a while, so this was my immediate choice. Gorgonzola is often paired with fruit, like apples, pears and figs. However, I wanted to try something different and just looked around at the market for the fruit of the season. I ended up choosing apricots, cherries and nectarines. I also took lettuce for a base, walnuts for crunch and mint and rocket for offsetting the sweetness of the fruit.

I sprinkled the halved apricots with some brown sugar and broiled them a little to enhance their color, soften them and bring out some tartness. I was a bit in a rush and so the oven was not fully heated, and they did not broil as expected, but they were fine.

I then pitted the cherries using a simple technique I picked up on youtube. Just crush the cherries like garlic cloves with a chef’s knife. The pit will then comes out easily.

I then combined everything, and prior to consumption added some honey, salt and balsamic vinegar that were mixed together thoroughly. Overall I think it was a great salad, based on a great cheese, but perhaps the apricots were a bit too bold or too many. Might tone it down next time. I thin I’d also love the same combination on a pizza ^_^

Vanilla Ice Cream

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I just got a new ice-cream maker attachment for my Kenwood mixer and this was my first shot at making ice-cream. I tried David Lebovitz’ recipe but I probably did something wrong, as the ice-cream was still too soft after 40 minutes of churning.

After a night in the freezer it became stiff, but the texture is a little icy, which is quite annoying. It’s also a little too sweet for my taste. However that hadn’t stopped me from having the outrageous breakfast pictured above.

You can expect more ice-creams showing up here soon.

 

Beet Kubbeh

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I don’t really like beet, and so I was not sure what to do when it started appearing in my CSA box. The first time it arrived, I used it for making grated horseradish for Passover dinner, which I really love. This time however, I was stricken with the idea of making the classic Jewish-Iraqi beet Kubbeh. It’s a dish with some mystical appeal, and quality samples of which are quite hard to come by without an Iraqi grandmother.

The dough for Kubbeh of the soup variety is made of semolina, salt and water. I did not measure the amounts, I just mixed and kneaded until it felt right. It should be left alone after some initial mixing though as the semolina absorbs more water after a while. Eventually it reached a pliable consistency, while still being just a little moist and sticky.

For the filling I mixed ground beef with mint, parsley, Baharat and toasted pine nuts. I chose not to cook it before filling the Kubbehs, which I think was a mistake. I think it would have gotten stronger taste and softer texture. Filling the Kubbehs was really fun, and went surprisingly well:

The soup itself was kept pretty simple, as I was already not sure of how the different tastes would combine. I sautéed several beets and celery stalks in olive oil, to which I then added chicken stock, water, some grated beet, salt and pepper. I wanted to add some squeezed lemon too but I forgot it. Perhaps some sugar should be added too.

When the Kubbehs were ready they all went in the soup until they were cooked on the inside. However, seeing how they got much better the day after, I think I should have cooked them longer. They also went from being red to purple, which is the color they should be.

All in all it was fun, but I still have a lot to learn about Kubbehs. Perhaps I should find an Iraqi grandma to take me as an intern.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

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Chicken Cordon Bleu is probably one of the first non Kosher foods I’ve tried as a child. I remember being so excited by the idea of putting cheese and ham inside a chicken breast, that I had some kind of fixation for a while, about discovering the ultimate decadence. I wonder why it took me about 12 years to try it myself.

It’s fairly simple to make (yet hard to master, as anything). I started by parting a whole chicken, because I only needed one breast, and also had plans for the rest of the chicken. I followed a video by the amazing Gordon Ramsay:

I then cut pockets in the breasts, filled with salt, pepper, ham and Gruyere cheese, and used toothpicks to close it up. I also decided to try filling the two tenderloins by rolling them and it worked quite well.

Usually for breading I use only egg white and breadcrumbs, but this time I tried flouring the breasts before coating with egg white. Eventually the breading fell off a little, and I blame it on the flour.

The breaded pieces were then fried in shallow oil until brown, and then arranged on in a pan for final baking in the oven at 180°C. The picture was taken before baking, as you can see the chicken wasn’t cooked through:

It was ready after about 15 minutes in the oven. Turned out quite nice, but the filling/chicken ratio was a bit off, with too little filling. Next time I’m going to try it with spinach and ricotta.

Buckwheat Crêpes (or Galettes)

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I’ve recently been to France, for a ski trip in Val Thorens. It was at a crêperie over there, where I tried buckwheat galettes for the first time, and I really liked it. I think the texture and taste are superior to those of regular crêpes (which are still amazingly tasty if done right), perhaps its just the effect of it being novelty for me.

When I made Blini in the past, I wanted to use buckwheat flour but couldn’t find any. Omer was the one to point me to a reliable source, and we both tried to recreate the great galettes we have had in France.

I read the post on David Lebovitz’s blog about his attempt at making true Breton galettes. He wrote about a crêperie where he tried to learn this difficult art, and his failure when trying to do it at home. Apparently, a true Breton galette is made using only buckwheat flour, salt and water. So I mixed about 100gr of buckwheat flour with 1/2tsp salt and added water until the consistency seemed right. The batter waited for two nights in the fridge until it was time for crepes. I then had to add some water to make it more liquid.

The first crepe was horrible, the pan was not hot enough and I used too much butter. But then it got better and I was happy seeing the laced texture being formed nicely on the mini-galettes. I wonder if I had a bigger pan I would not have messed it all up, as small crepes are easier to handle. 

It was breakfast time so I had my galette sweet with butter, squeezed lemon and caster sugar on top. Simple yet majestic. Lemon works really great here and I never thought about that combination before that creperie in Val thorens.

For early lunch I broiled the leftover crepes with butter, tomatoes and Savoyard sausage and cheese. It was decadent but not that great, partly because the crepes were too small to hold it all inside, so they were left open and dried in the edges.

All in all I was very happy with the results, and will definitely make it again.

Sourdough Pancakes

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My sourdough starters weren’t fed for about two weeks. I was afraid they may have gone bad, so after feeding them last night, I left them out of the fridge to see if they are still active. This morning they were all bubbly and foamy and so I was assured they were alive.

I was going to make bread, but it would take a few hours and I needed some baked good for breakfast. I decided to make sourdough pancakes, which I was planning to try for some time. I checked some recipes online and then improvised a bit to come up with these thick, fluffy, Blini-like pancakes. The starter I used is my rye-fed starter. I was very pleased with the deeper taste it gave the pancakes.

Ingredients (makes about 5 pancakes)

1/2 cup sourdough starter at room temperature
1/2 cup lukewarm milk
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup plain flour
1 egg
1 tbsp sour cream
1 tbsp water
1 tsp baking soda

Mix all the ingredients except the water and baking soda, which should be mixed in a different bowl. Heat up a non-stick pan and when it’s ready, pour the soda mixture in the pancake batter and combine gently. Pour a ladle of batter on the heated pan (I got better results when the pan wasn’t buttered) and cook until bubbles appear. Flip over and cook for another 30-60 seconds on the other side.

Top pancakes with ANYTHING. This time I chose the pretty standard fake-maple syrup and sour cream.