Recipe: Vegetable Parmesan Bake

I saw a beautiful Vegetable Parmesan Bake photo on Pinterest and was so disappointed to find that the page was no longer available. So I searched for a similar recipe and made it on Friday, with a few adaptations (the original recipe called for so much pasta that we’ll be eating it the rest of this week).

This dish is just a variation of the Provencal tian, with pasta added to turn it into a one-dish main course. You could omit the pasta and substitute leftover cooked rice. Or stir in a cup of cooked chickpeas or black-eyed peas. That’s the beauty of these dishes — they’re really a method rather than a recipe. Omit vegetables that aren’t in your fridge or add ones that need to be used up.

Vegetable Parmesan Bake
Yield: 6 servings

250 gm (= 4 oz) thin spaghetti (spaghettini)
Omit for low-carb variation.

Vegetables
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion; chopped
3 cloves garlic; minced
1 red pepper; cored and diced
1 cup white mushrooms; sliced
2 medium zucchini; diced
3 cups fresh spinach; chopped (Israeli equivalent: 1 bunch alei selek)

Sauce
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp. thyme
1 cup cheese, grated (your choice)
2 eggs; lightly beaten
salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp Parmesan cheese; grated

Lightly spray 8 x 11″ ovenproof casserole dish with cooking spray.

Cook thin spaghetti according to package directions. Drain pasta and
arrange in pie plate or casserole. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

In large pot, heat oil over low flame. Add onion and garlic and saute until
soft. Add bell pepper, mushrooms, zucchini, and spinach (alei selek or
Swiss chard) and cook until moisture has mostly evaporated.

Sprinkle vegetable mixture with flour. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Remove
from heat. Whisk in milk, a little at a time. Return to medium-low heat,
stirring until sauce thickens. Remove from heat. Cool mixture slightly;
stir in herbs, cheese, and eggs. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour
mixture over pasta and sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese.

Bake until filling is set and heated through and top is golden, about 30
minutes. Serve hot.

Notes:

This is a soft casserole. If you want it firm, like a kugel, add extra
cheese to the vegetables and 3 eggs to the pasta.

The vegetable mixture and pasta can be cooked in advance. Run hot water over the cold pasta and drain well if it has hardened into a block.

Peeled diced tomatoes would be a good addition.

You can substitute 400 gm cottage cheese for the milk and flour. Stir it in
with the grated cheese and eggs.

Almost Rosh Hashanah

Quick photo of one of the eight (!) challahs that I’ve baked and frozen for Rosh Hashanah. When the two days of Rosh Hashanah come right up against Shabbat …., well, all I can say is that’s a lot of cooking! I’m always paranoid about guests showing up at the wrong meal, so I called one of our guests to confirm the date and time, despite my husband’s protests that he’d written the times correctly. Our guest hadn’t, so it was a good thing I called him. The other guests already confirmed our invitation for another meal.

This paranoia began years ago when I had a really bad bout of stomach flu just before Rosh Hashanah. The two closest doctors, both women, were in the midst of their holiday cooking, so one of them sent her husband, also a doctor. He checked me out and said there wasn’t much I could do except drink fluids and try to rest as much as possible (yeah, right, try doing that when you’ve got lots of guests coming!). I consoled myself with the fact that the first visitors, a family of six, would be coming for lunch on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, so I could get some rest over the first day. My son ran up to tell me that they were coming up the stairs. They thought they were invited for lunch on the first day. I rose from my sickbed, threw food on the warming platter and asked our guests, who lived nearby, to come back in half an hour. So now I always double-check the times when guests are coming if there’s an opportunity for a mix-up.

I don’t often use recipes for bread because I’ve been baking since I was 10 years old, but this is my go-to recipe when I want to bake challah without thinking, so I can focus on other things. It makes a wonderful bread. I add honey for Rosh Hashanah.

Foolproof Challah
Yield: 2 medium loaves (= 2 pounds of dough). Or 4 small loaves or a dozen rolls

2 1/2 cups warm water
2 tbs yeast
2 tbs sugar
(opt: 3 tbs honey)
5-6 cups flour
1/4 cup oil
2 large eggs
2 tsp salt
1 egg yolk + 2 tsp water (for glazing)

In a large bowl, mix water yeast, sugar, and honey, if using. Add half the flour, oil, eggs, and salt.

Gradually add the rest of the flour until the dough is too stiff to stir, and comes away cleanly from the bowl. You want a non-sticky dough but soft enough so that it is not hard and dry. Knead for 15 minutes. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for 1 1/2 hours in a draft-free place.

Punch down, knead briefly, and divide into two balls for two loaves. Shape and braid. Place in greased pans or on cookie sheets. Cover with a tea towel and let rise 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (around 200 degrees C). Carefully brush the egg yolk and water mixture over the loaves. Bake for 35 minutes or until the loaves are golden and sound hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.

If you want to freeze the loaves, wrap tightly in foil and seal in plastic bags.

Dough Slapping

I have a confession to make. I never knead bread dough. Check out this video of Richard Bertinet slapping sweet dough. I find this technique very fast and much easier than using both hands to knead. I clean the counter, turn the dough onto the counter, pick it up with one hand, and slam it down on the counter. I fold it in half with the same hand, pick it up, and slam it back on the counter. It conditions the dough much faster than regular kneading and I find it less tiring. One of these days I might ask my downstairs neighbour whether she can hear it because it is a noisy process.

Keep a small pile of flour nearby on the counter for coating your fingers if the dough gets sticky. Don’t slam a ball of dough onto a floured surface unless you want every inch of your kitchen and your clothing covered with flour. The dough will seem unusually sticky after the first few slaps because you’ve worked in quite a lot of flour on the outside, while the core is still wet and sticky. Keep a plastic scraper handy to clean your hands if the dough sticks to your fingers and to scrape the dough off the counter if it sticks there. You want to reach a state where the dough is still soft but would rather stick to itself than to you and the counter. Don’t try to force in as much flour as the dough will hold! You want the dough to be pliable and easy to handle, so that it doesn’t turn into a brick in the oven.

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year! May we merit to be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Wouldn’t be Shavuot without Cheesecake

Son is at his yeshiva high school for Shavuot and I wasn’t sure I wanted to make a cheesecake for just the two of us. After all, I had no trouble passing up lasagna! But it doesn’t seem like Shavuot without a cheesecake and cheesecake is so simple to make. Shavuot (the name literally means “weeks”) celebrates the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. It is observed on the 50th day after Passover, after counting the period of the omer, which is 49 days (you count a “week” of “weeks,” i.e., 7×7 days).

A lot of customs are associated with Shavuot:

• Learning the entire night. Many communities and synagogues set up schedules of lecturers for the entire night, followed by morning prayers and a light breakfast.
• Reading the Book of Ruth at the morning service
• Decorating the synagogue with greenery
• Eating at least one dairy meal (hence, the cheesecake). Blintzes and lasagna are also popular

For explanations about the customs, meaning, family activities, and recipes, see the Aish haTorah page (in English). They have a recipe for a Snickers cheesecake. I kid you not. Too sweet for me but if that’s your thing, go for it. I don’t have a very strong sweet tooth, so I prefer a simple cheesecake that tastes of cheese and cream, not nuts and chocolate.

Simplest Cheesecake

500 grams cream cheese
200 grams sour cream
2/3 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Start with the ingredients at room temperature. Preheat oven to 300 F/150 C.

With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. Add the sugar gradually, beating thoroughly. Add the eggs individually, beating after each egg so that it is incorporated. Add the vanilla and continue beating until the mixture is thick. If you are using high-fat dairy products, you will get a rich, thick batter. If you are using low-fat, you will get a wimpy-looking milkshake.

Pour the batter into a buttered 9″ springform pan or baking pan (I used a quiche pan because my springform pan started leaking too badly to seal with foil, I tossed it out, and haven’t replaced it yet). Bake for 1 hour or until the cake is just set in the middle (bang the oven gently to see how much the cake ripples) and the sides start to pull away. Let the cake cool in the oven with the door ajar. (This helps prevent the cake from cracking.) When cool, cover loosely with foil and refrigerate.

Serves 10.

You may notice that I did not specify what kind of cream cheese or sour cream. There are so many different types available, with high and low fat content, and you probably know what kind you will buy. All I can say is that the smooth, rich texture and creamy taste come from fat, so if you make your cheesecake with diet products, you’re not going to get the same results. Cheesecake is not a health food, but you probably don’t eat it very often unless you’re one of my coworkers (dry, tasteless cheesecake is one of the standard desserts in the dairy cafeteria). Try to use real vanilla, rather than a synthetic extract.

Chag sameach!

Leftovers: Steak for Dinner, Date-Nut Loaf for Dessert

I had a lot of dates and walnuts left over from Passover, so this was the result. I combined a couple recipes because I wanted a loaf that was easy to make and not too sweet.

Date-Nut Loaf

8 ounces dates, chopped
1 cup boiling water
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 170C / 325F. Grease a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan. Put dates in a heatproof bowl and pour boiling water over them to soften. Set aside to cool.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt thoroughly. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, egg, and vegetable oil. To the sugar mixture, add cooled dates with liquid and flour mixture alternatively. Do not overmix. Combine just until you no longer see large dry patches of flour. Stir in the chopped walnuts. Scrape the batter into the loaf pan.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and top is firm and golden-brown.

Notes: a) You can use white or whole-wheat flour or a combination. If you use whole-wheat flour, keep an eye on things during baking and lower the oven temperature if the loaf browns too quickly. b) Dates are easier to chop if you dip the knife in boiling water, which keeps them from sticking to the blade. c) If you don’t want to chop walnuts with a knife, put about a quarter cup in a plastic bag and bash it with something hard, like a rolling pin or a small pot. d) I used a longer, narrower cake pan called an “English” pan in Israel. The baking time is about the same. e) My recipe has a lot of walnuts because I’m nuts about nuts. The original quantity was 3/4 cup.

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Steak and Vegetables

The sliced steak and vegetable dish below was also made from leftovers. I froze a few small pieces of entrecote that I’d barbecued on Yom Atzma’ut/Israel Independence Day. In the fridge I found one and a half roasted red peppers that I’d grilled with the steak. They weren’t being eaten and they had to be cooked with a meat dish, so this is the result.

Quantities aren’t given because this is more of a suggestion than a recipe. Sauté chopped onion and minced garlic in olive oil until tender. Add sliced fresh mushrooms and sliced roasted red pepper and cook over medium heat until tender. Add sliced steak and any red wine lurking in the fridge. Cook until the liquid is reduced. Serve with rice.

World’s Most Delicate Lemon Squares

You can’t tell from the photograph but these lemon squares are still warm. They are so delicate, they make other lemon squares look like soggy bits of lemon meringue pie without the meringue. They literally dissolve in your mouth. They freeze well and are incredibly easy to make. What could be better?

Lemon Squares
Yield: 40 squares

Base:
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup powdered sugar (icing or confectioners sugar)
1 1/2 cups flour

Filling:
3 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tbs flour
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
Powdered sugar for sprinkling on top of filling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use a heavy 9″x13″ baking pan (I use a heavy, non-stick, metal Farberware pan, which doesn’t need greasing).

In a food processor fitted with a steel blade, pulse the butter/margarine, powdered sugar, and flour until crumbly. Press evenly into baking pan. Bake 20 minutes or until light golden brown. It should look like a huge shortbread cookie.

While the base is baking, mix filling ingredients in food processor until well blended. Take the base out of the oven and pour the filling onto the hot crust immediately. Return pan to oven and bake 15 minutes, just until set.

Cool for 10 minutes. Sprinkle powered sugar evenly over filling, using a fine-mesh sieve (if you buy icing sugar in 100 gm bags, you will only need 1 bag and you will have plenty to sprinkle on top). Loosen around the edges of the pan with a thin knife and cut into squares (5×8) while still warm.

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Update from Jan. 10, 2011: They also freeze well. Arrange them in single layers with parchment paper or plastic wrap between. Wrap in foil or a freezer bag. Then hide them very well because some people actually prefer eating frozen lemon squares.

 

Zucchini and Tomato Tian

Cold stormy weather is expected to move into our area tomorrow, so this recipe may represent the last gasp of summer! I associate tians with summer because they’re so light and easy to prepare with summer vegetables. I’m still hobbling around with a surgical shoe on my foot, so I’m not spending a lot of time in the kitchen. My husband was starting to chafe under the steady diet of leftovers, rice, chickpeas, and other pulses. He doesn’t like meat all that much, so my mid-week cooking tends to be vegetarian. Yesterday I made a sweet potato and zucchini soup, a walnut and raisin quick bread, and this zucchini and tomato tian.

A tian is really more of a method than a follow-the-recipe dish. If you have other vegetables that need to be used up, toss them in. If you’re watching your weight, substitute toasted breadcrumbs for the grated cheese (there’s only 2 ounces of cheese on top, just for colour and flavour). But please don’t try to leave out the olive oil!

You may be wondering why I put egg in the rice. The rice is there to add substance, absorb the juices of the vegetables, and I happened to have a couple cups of cooked rice left over. The egg turns the rice into a lovely, delicate, creamy crust under the vegetables, so if the combo seems odd to you, try it just this once.

Zucchini and Tomato Tian au Gratin

1 large onion, sliced into half moons
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbs olive oil (plus a little extra for drizzling)
1 large red pepper, thinly sliced
2 large zucchini, very thinly sliced
2 large tomatoes, cored and very thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
2 eggs
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Oregano
2 oz. hard cheese, grated (whatever you have will work but Gruyere would be wonderful)

Sauté sliced onion in olive oil until starting to brown. Add red pepper slices and cook until tender. Add garlic and cook until aromatic.

Put the cooked rice in a bowl. Add the sauted vegetable mixture and mix thoroughly. Lightly beat 2 eggs and stir into the rice mixture. Season lavishly with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Oil a 1.5 liter gratin dish. If you don’t have a gratin dish, any shallow casserole will do. Smooth the rice mixture on the bottom of the dish. Add alternating layers of zucchini and tomato slices. Season with oregano, salt and pepper, and drizzle olive oil over the vegetables. Sprinkle grated cheese on top.

Bake in a preheated 400° oven for 45 minutes or until the zucchini is tender when you prod it with a knife.

Chicken Salad Improv

The time: Shabbat morning
The weather: Bloody hot
The menu: Um, can we change the subject?

My original plan was to heat some chicken for Shabbat lunch but it was just too hot. So I threw together this chicken salad using ingredients I had in the fridge and served it with rice. It was very popular and I’ll definitely make it, or a variation on the theme, again. This salad was made with the hind quarters of a roasted chicken.

A couple comments : Don’t forget to remove the bits of gristle and cartilage from the chicken. I recently ate a chicken salad made by someone who chopped the ingredients without removing the inedible bits. Everyone was chewing very carefully…

Do take the time to chop the carrot and pepper finely. It gives a much better texture to the salad, even though it’s more work. Raw carrot, in my opinion, is too coarse in a salad if the pieces are large.

Curried Chicken Salad

4 servings

1 1/2 cups diced chicken
1 1/2 tbs. mayonnaise
1 medium carrot, peeled finely chopped
1/2 red pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 cup raisins

Combine ingredients and chill.

Variations (what I would have added if I’d thought of it or had them in my fridge): 2 finely sliced green onions. A sprinkling of chopped pecans or slivered almonds would add a nice crunch, but then I’ll eat almost anything if it’s covered with nuts. I adore nuts on almost everything. Maybe everything.

Wheat, Beet, and Walnut Salad

Note to self: Take photo of food before breakfast, not after.

This salad was splendid with a big dollop of plain home-made yogurt. Unfortunately, I only remembered to take the photo after  I had eaten the last of that batch of yogurt, so I had to settle for a photo of the unadorned version.

As far as I know, this is my own invention. It’s very much a “according to your taste” recipe, so if you prefer lots of walnuts or lemon, feel free to alter the quantities.

Wheat, Beet, and Walnut Salad

1 cup coarse bulgur wheat (can substitute couscous)
2 cups boiling water
2 large beets, cooked and diced
1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
5 tbs. olive oil
4 tbs. lemon juice
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Note on walnuts: I don’t honestly expect you to crack them yourself but do try to find a reasonably fresh bag of shelled walnuts. If they’re stale or rancid, you’ll notice the off flavour a lot more readily in this recipe than you would in a pan of chocolate brownies.

Soak bulgur wheat in boiling water until water is absorbed (about half an hour). Whisk olive oil and lemon juice together and pour over wheat. Stir in diced beets and walnuts just before serving. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I recommend adding the beets and walnuts just before serving because if you mix them ahead of time, the salad will be very red and the walnuts won’t be quite as crunchy. If that doesn’t bother
you or your family, then mix it ahead of time.

Variations: Plain yogurt is very good with this salad. If you want something salty to offset the sweetness of the beets, a few cubes of Feta or Bulgarian cheese would work.

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This salad is perfect for the heat wave we’re having in Israel this week. Jerusalem has been in the 90s during the day. It’s even hotter in Maale Adumim where I live. I’ve been sleeping in front of the air conditioner. Everything seems to slow down when it’s this hot.

My son left yesterday to accompany a Bnei Akiva trip as some kind of medic. He’s a Magen David youth ambulance volunteer, which means he gets a lot of experience taking blood pressure, pulse, and filling out forms. I nagged him to take sunscreen. I hope he remembers to drink plenty of water.

Last Thursday his band went to Ashkelon to play for a Bnei Akiva dance and spent the night there (the drummer lives in Ashkelon). In the morning, at 8:30, a Grad missile was fired at Ashkelon from Gaza. He took cover in a shelter at his friend’s house  — a tight squeeze with the kids, parents, and grandparents. They heard the Grad land and the house shook. He forgot to mention it to me when he came home and I only heard about it at Friday night dinner when my husband asked him where he was when the missile fell.

New Page on My Blog: Recipes

I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth! I’ve been busy with other things. I added a page to this blog to organize my recipes: Recipes page. I had hoped to add a tutorials page but I see that my tutorials are a bit sparse. (I’ll have to do something about that!)

I spent last Shabbat in Efrat with some of my husband’s oldest friends. This photo of grapes was taken in their garden.

Kimchee

A couple weeks ago I saw the biggest Chinese cabbage that I’ve seen years, and it was in our local minimarket. Faster than you can say “kimchee craving,” I bought the head for a mere 5 shekels. Now I’m sorry I didn’t photograph the cabbage before I cut it up.

I did remember to photograph it just after I “put up” kimchee, before it starts to look like swamp-in-a-jar.

And here’s the recipe, adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s apparently out-of-print book, Eastern Vegetarian Cooking.

1 kg (2.2 pounds) Chinese cabbage
3 tbs salt
2 tbs minced ginger
1 1/2 tbs minced garlic
5 green onions, thinly sliced
1 tbs cayenne pepper
1 tbs sugar

Wash and slice the cabbage into 3/4″ pieces. Dissolve the salt in 1 1/2 liters of water. Pour over the cabbage in a large bowl. There should be enough salt water to cover. If you need more liquid, dissolve 1 tbs salt in .5 liter water and add. Weight down with a glass plate and a cup. Leave for 12 hours, turning the cabbage occasionally. The cabbage will gradually wilt, so that the liquid covers the cabbage.

Put the ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, and sugar in another large bowl. Mix well.
Take the cabbage out of its soaking liquid with a slotted spoon (save the liquid) and put it in the bowl with the seasonings. Mix well.

Put this cabbage mixture into a 2 liter jar or crock. Pour enough salt water over it to cover the cabbage, leaving 1 inch of empty space at the top of the jar. Cover loosely with a clean cloth and set aside for 3 to 7 days. In the summer, fermentation takes place much faster. Taste the pickle after 3 days to check on the sourness. When it is done to your liking, cover the jar with a non-metallic lid and refrigerate.
To serve, remove about 1/4 cup per person of the kimchee solids. The liquid is left behind in the jar and may be used to flavour stews and soups.

One additional hint: some people find the odour of fermenting cabbage objectionable, so it’s a good idea to find another room to store it until it’s ready to be refrigerated.