Maple Hamantaschen

Saul & Aliza made hamantaschen with the Sweet Tart Dough from the Tartine cookbook. Parfait. Some had apricot butter, others had this whipped maple syrup spread that you can buy in a jar at Fairway. A freylekhn purim!

Grace Food

I made my first foray to Park Slope Monday to eat lunch with Grace and have her stick me full of pins and needles. Before I turned into a human voodoo doll in the name of healing, she fed me a delicious meal of miso soup with wakame, tofu, and barley; stir-fried carrots, kale & almonds with black sesame seeds; roasted butternut squash, and brown rice. With an umeboshi plum on the side! All organic from Park Slope Coop. How I'd missed Grace! How I'd missed her cooking! Then she gave me a taste of her acupuncture skills, and now I feel all better. Thanks Grace!

Easter Brunch

Andrea Hill and I hosted a knock-em-dead (or resurrect them?) brunch last Sunday. Sandra Kister helped us cook and cook and cook the afternoon before and Sara Sani helped us finished up the morning of. On the table, we had Niman Ranch smoked ham and mustard, roasted lamb and tzatziki, deviled eggs, quinoa-chayote-edamame salad, lentil-beet-preserved lemon salad, segmented citrus-berry salad, green salad, roasted fingerlings-fennel-carrots, deviled eggs, cheese, bread, choco bunny, choco eggs. Not pictured: shortbread, Andrew with the meyer lemon ice cream - anyone have that to share? Me and Andrea... please post if you've got them!

Just another night at 140 Chapin Ave...

looks like we were eating marinated tempeh, steamed veggies, salad. The roasted squash we were eating is visible at the far L and brown rice not pictured.

Fish Friday

I'd been wanting to cook something substantial for a while and wanted to have Yagmur over for a relaxed evening, so a few Fridays ago, I baked some cod on a bed of roasted potatoes, leeks and fennel just like Mommy does and then made Aliza Cohen's unbelievably delicious 20-minute (prep time) apple tart. Here's the recipe:

Crust:
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs sugar
1/2 unsalted butter
1 tbs white (or maybe apple cider) vinegar

Filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 cups coarsely grated apples

Combine flour, salt and sugar lightly with a fork.

Cut in butter, and then blend with a fork until mixture looks like a
shortbread dough.

Stir in vinegar with a fork. Spread dough thickly on the
bottom of a 9 inch tart pan, and thinly about 1 inch up the sides.
(I had a 10-inch tart pan so I made a 5/4 portion of the crust)

Combine ingredients for filling and spread evenly over dough.

Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour.

Cool and remove from pan.

Sift icing sugar on top or pipe with whipped cream at
serving time, if desired.

Et voila!

Sara (and Eli's) Manhattan

I popped into the city at the end of February. It had been three months since I'd seen Sara and most of my other NYC friends. MEK was hosting a leap year party and Josie and Lynn had another party planned; Caolan was in town. How could I stay away?

So Sara and I ate most of our meals that weekend from the salad bar at Eli's Manhattan. I don't remember all of what we went for, but there was some disappointing salmon niçoise. Most of the rest of the stuff was delicious, though.

And can you believe the bags?!

Grading Party

piles of exams to grade + Heather + Hil + piña coladas + lychees + grass jelly + Mana = A+

Debbie and Rick's Dinner

My very first blog post. Wish me luck.

I made a nice Shabbot dinner last Friday;
Roast Chicken with a glaze of Raspberry Jalapeno ambrosia which I found on my refrigerator shelf (and which must have been there since jalapenos were discovered as a trendy food item). The chicken was made in a new convection toaster oven. Accompanying were some spinach, some homemade applesauce with raisins and some raisin Challah.

I got inspired and made a Coconut Flan. It has a bit of dark rum. As for the still life, the avocados are from the tree in my back yard, and the lemons are from my neighbor's tree. Note the joined lemons.

If you have relatives in LA who would like an avocado, they can contact me during the next month. If you're in LA, come and pick!

Greetings from Venice! The food here is very expensive, so I've spent lots of time visiting markets and cooking at home.Highlights include cleaning and gutting sardines, mozzarella bi buffala, and the snail who rode home on my broccoli

what was i thinking?

i bought entirely too many vegetables last week and realized that i had to cook them ALL tonight or never, since this week is packed with exams. i turned my cabbage, potatoes, onions and cauliflower into some bready approximation of knish. (note: a knish without the buttery dough just isn't a knish!) i'd write y'all a limerick about the silly girl who baked all her vegetables into knishes but forgot the butter and ended up with something far from delicious, but i best be studying...

at least they look pretty.