What Are You Eating This Shabbat?

What do Israelis cook for Shabbat? The vendors at the shuk tell Mimi.

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Check Out My Guest Blog

…on Cooking Manager, a great new blog about efficiently managing your kitchen resources and time. My post is all about chickpeas.

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Should I Put Commercial Yeast in My Sourdough?

A reader (“Q”) left a question on my How To Make Light Sourdough post. As her dough didn’t double in size, should she have added some fresh yeast?
My answer was so long it turned into this post.
I don’t advise boosting the sourdough starter with commercial yeast. That’s because I’m a sourdough snob. Commercial bakers sometimes [...]

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Cherry Cobbler

Jam, clafoutis,  ice cream,  pie…visions of home made delicacies crammed with cherries floated through my mind as I searched my cookbooks for recipes. While I hesitated, the cherries sat in a bowl looking plump and juicy and radiating crimson sweetness. Everyone passing through the kitchen just had to pop a few of them into their [...]

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Cherry Picking on a Hot Friday

…another Israeli Kitchen/Baroness Tapuzina adventure.

Picking cherries is so easy. You just slip your fingers  between the stems, tug a little, and the dark crimson, heart-shaped fruit separates from the branch. It’s a sensuous delight, compared to say, picking hawthorns. Lots of shade, and all the sweet fruit you can pop into your mouth…better than a [...]

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How To Make Light Sourdough – SD Walnut Herb Bread

Sometimes I want a loaf that has only a little tang, one that’s much lighter than the typical sourdough loaf.  I get a SD bread that’s positively fluffy following these five steps:
1. Refresh your starter before making the dough. In other words, remove about half of the starter in your jar, and refresh it. Let [...]

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That Lentil Salad…My Way

I had only vague guidelines to make this salad as Adir gave them to me. The lentils I had in the freezer were a different kind, too – smaller and browner. What the heck, I made the salad. And while it had to be different from the one I tasted in Rosh Pina, it was [...]

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The Dining Corner: Pinat Ochel, Rosh Pina

This week I took one of my periodical trips up north, and stopped for a while in the quiet village of Rosh Pina. It looks sleepy but for the new commercial center just off Route 90, at the entrance to the town. There are the usual historical sites, of course; beautiful views and attractive eateries [...]

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Fruit Soup

The problem with summer’s delectable soft fruits is that they spoil before you can blink. Cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, the short-lived berries…they’ll last longer stored in the fridge, but their flavor deteriorates. So I was looking at a bowlful of mixed fruit and thinking that they wouldn’t last before they get eaten. My usual strategy [...]

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Fresh-Corn Muffins

“Wait till you see what Mami made,” I heard my husband tell the Little One. He’d seen the corn muffins cooling off on the kitchen table.
Corn is in season now. I like to buy it still in the husk to steam, cut off from the cob,  and mix up a colorful corn salad. Or get [...]

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