I got a few email inquiries from US readers asking what ful was. After much botanical immersion (basically, googling “ful” and “fava bean”) I struck gold. Ful is fava bean! And there are several varieties. Read all about it.
And, folks, if you have questions about terms, or measurements, or temperatures, please, please do not hesitate to ask in the comments to the blog. That’s what it’s there for. This way, others can benefit from the answer to your query, and I get to know that my writing is being read somewhere on the blog, too. 🙂
I was hoping to post about the farm day, when I got to see the organic farm and meet the vegetables, and their growers, face to face; it was a lovely morning. But the camera, with the farm pictures, has gone with Chad to Colorado, so we’re left with stuffed zuccini.
Stuffed Zucchini
4 zucchini or summer squashes
1/2 white onion
5 mushrooms, or 10 mushroom stems (if you’re stuffing the rest of the mushrooms)
1/2 cup crumbled goat feta cheese
3 garlic cloves
Cut each zucchini to about four pieces of equal size. With a small knife, remove some of the inside, leaving a little “cup” with a bottom.
Grate the stuff you took out of the zuccini; chop the mushrooms.
In a pan, sautee chopped garlic cloves and onion; then, add grated zuccini and chopped mushroom. Sautee all this together until soft and aromatic.
Then, mix in a bowl, with cheese. This is the stuffing.
Now, hear your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Scoop some stuffing into each of the zuccini “cups”. Organize in a baking dish and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until the zuccini is cooked but still firm. Enjoy!
The other day I had lots of beautiful ladies of all shapes and sizes over here for a clothes swap, and had to serve them something to eat.
The original concept was of finger foods, but then things got complicated; some of the stuff I was planning to make required vegetables which were unavailable from our Chubeza delivery, and some of the ingredients simply called to make them into something else. Eventually I settled on a different, but fun, menu, and it got rave reviews from the ladies.
So here it is, for your cooking pleasure; part I includes recipes for cabbage rolls and stuffed mushrooms. Tune in tomorrow for stuffed zuccini.
Shavuot Cheese Suffles (see below)
Cabbage Rolls with Quinoa
This one, in its meat version, is an old Mennonite favorite, and Chad’s family has been eating it for years. Chad and I have been working on a vegetarian version, and recently we discovered that a combination of quinoa and lentils for the filling works wonders. The following version, however, has only quinoa – but is equally delicious.
1 white cabbage 1 cup quinoa 1 onion 5-6 cloves of garlic 3 tbsp of rosemary, or herbs-de-provence, or any other mixed herb 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth 1-2 cups of your favorite homemade tomato sauce
In a pot, fry up the onion and garlic. Add the quinoa and herbs, and 2 cups vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature, cover pot and cook for about 20 minutes. Drain any excess broth and set aside.
In another pot, place cabbage in water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes, or until cabbage becomes slightly translucent and leaves are soft. Drain and let cool.
Using a small, sharp knife, remove the core of the cabbage. Then, carefully peel each leaf at a time (this requires practice), and remove the white tough middle of each leaf (so the leaf remains complete, but can be easily bent).
Heat up your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Pick a nice, deep, wide baking dish and oil it lightly with olive oil. Pick up every cabbage leaf, and using a spoon, place a healthy spoonful of the quinoa mix in each leaf. Fold the sides and roll all the way. Place in baking dish. The idea is to put the leaves in the dish quite snugly. When the dish is full and you’ve run out of usable cabbage, mix the tomato sauce with the broth and pour on top of the cabbage. Put in oven and bake for 45 minutes.
Mash-rooms
25 champignon mushrooms 3 large potatoes 1/2 onion olive oil black pepper and chili flakes to taste
Carefully remove stems from all mushrooms. Chop up the stems and the onion, and fry in olive oil until brown and fragrant. Meanwhile, bake, boil or microwave the potatoes. Mash’em with the stems and onion. Then, stuff some of the mash into each stemless mushroom, place in a lightly-oiled baking dish, and put into a hot oven (200 degrees celsius would work) for about half an hour (or more, if you really want a crispy top).
Yesterday, while talking to a student about the food festival, I finally managed to realize and verbalize what was so bizarre for me in the whole experience. There was stark contrast between the survivalist, let’s-eat-’cause-tomorrow-there-ain’t-gonna-be-any-food attitude of the folks and the luxurious, toy-like dishes served. It was, at the same time, a feeling of apocalypse and decadence which made the festival into a military operation of fast gorging of delicacies, rather than the sort-of-Roman-feast it was supposed to be.
Hiya, all; not much cooking this week, yet, except for some organic mashed potatoes. The reasons for this absence from the kitchen are quite complex, but they certainly include our visit to the Tel Aviv food festival, Taste of the City.
The idea is quite fun: many of the city’s wonderful restaurants open large booths, where they sell small portions of the best dishes in their menus for a relatively inexpensive price. For example, a set of four Dim Sum dumplings is sold for 20 NIS. The booths are located around Hayarkon park, and the very many visitors (more than three hundred thousand last year!) walk between them, making a meal out of various interesting entrees.
For the most part, folks behave in a civil manner and don’t push each other on the way to the food, which is also facilitated by the large number of service people on each booth. It is, however, a strange feeling to be part of a large picnic where everyone, including you, is stuffing their faces and standing in line for more. I can see how this pastime can really turn off those of us with more delicate tastes. It also raises the question of garbage, as this festival is based on a huge amount of plastic and paper plates, and there is no recycling structure in sight.
As far as vegetarian options go, things looked quite good. Almost each restaurant had some sort of a vegetarian option. Sushi places offered vegetarian sushi and agedashi tofu; various rice and noodle dishes, with vegetables, as well as veg and tofu stir-frys, were offered at the Thai and Chinese places; pasta places had vegetarian pastas; and there was plenty of fresh squeezed juices and smoothies for those who preferred to pass on the many beer varieties. The best part was a small and modest booth, bearing the sign “sun soya” or “soya sun”, which offered “meat” based on tofu and wheat gluten, with vegetables, silver noodles and brown rice. I think we’re going to experiment more with fake meats at home. And, of course, the nice neighboring booth sold little boxes of raspberries, so we had our breakfast for the following morning in hand. All in all, quite an entertaining way to pass the evening. The one thing that spoiled some of the fun was the commercial megacorp booths, with noisy music, dancers, and incessant flier-handing. As we were heading off (by foot – you would not believe the traffic!), a lady handed us some sugar-free gum samples, to finish off the experience.
When we got home, we found our vegetable box awaiting us, with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, beets, zuccini (in four different colors!), kale, parsley, cabbage and red peppers. It’s vegetable salad day, today, for both of us; but we promise to be more creative over the weekend.
The other day, a few of us were having lunch at a Tel Aviv cafe. One of us was telling a story about her grandfather, originally from Russia, who can’t stand a few local foods, such as Tchina. A great wave of sadness washed over the table. “Life without tchina“, mumbled another friend. “Fancy that. How sad”.
Yes, we Israelis love our sesame. We like it on our bread crust, we like it as sweet halvaof various flavors, we use it to coat our schnitzels (breaded chicken meat) – but most of all, we love it as that fabulous paste, out of which we make a dip, a sauce or a spread, according to taste. Americans call this divine paste “tahini”, which has always made me giggle; the word tchina comes from the verb litchon, to grind. And, indeed, raw tchina is nothing more than ground sesame seeds.
I confess I’m not a big fan of halva, though Chad loves it very much and always keeps a box of a local, Jaffa-made variety, that looks like an old lady’s hair. I’ve given up sweets, and I don’t really miss them all that much. My fandom of sesame is almost entirely due to the fantastic tchina I eat everywhere.
There is, however, one exception; the wonderful and crumbly tchina cookies I tasted, for the first time, at YAFA – a little cafe/bookstore in central Jaffa, and our local peace oasis. YAFA is devoted to the understanding between Jews and Palestinians, offers a variety of interesting books about the Middle East, and hosts an impressive curriculum of classes in spoken and literary Arabic. They also serve fragrant herbal tea, accompanied by these little delicacies. After tasting them in the company of my dear pals Shachar and Amit, we all sought to recreate them; Amit, who is vegan, loves them and makes them often to our delight. The recipe I’m posting today, however, has a few small changes, which I think improve the cookie’s rich texture and allows vegans to skip the use of margarine (yuck).
The following two recipes – one for stir-fried vegetables with tchina, the other for the cookies – are my entries for a fun event, organized by Barbara at Tigers and Strawberries, called The Spice is Right: Sweet or Savory? I guess sesame, as well as sesame paste, are spices but also ingredients, and that’s how they’re used in these recipes. Enjoy.
Stir-Fried Vegetables and Tofu with Tchina Sauce
1 tablespoon olive or canola oil 1 package extra-firm tofu 4 garlic cloves 3 carrots 3 zuccini 1 package forest mushrooms, or fresh shiitake, or dried, pre-soaked shiitake 5-6 large leaves of kale or chard 1 inch piece of peeled and chopped or grated ginger 4-5 tablespoons soy sauce 2 tablespoons raw tchina
black pepper or chilli flakes to taste
Mix soy sauce and tchina; cut tofu into 1/2 inch cubes and soak in the mix. Chop all vegetables into 1-inch cubes, and tea the kale or chard to large but edible pieces. While tofu is happily soaking, heat up the oil in a large wok. When the wok is very hot, add garlic cloves and ginger, and stir a bit until fragrant. Then, add the vegetables: first the carrots, then the soy-tchina sauce from the tofu (keep the tofu aside for a while). Let the carrots sit in the wok a bit until they start to soften, then add the zuccini, mushrooms, tofu, and finally the kale. Add black pepper or chili flakes to taste and enjoy.
Tchina Cookies with COconut Milk and Spices
1/2 cup raw tchina 1 1/2 cups whole wheat or whole rice flour (I used the latter) 5 tablespoons coconut milk 4 tablespoons canola oil 1 teaspoon of each: cinnamon, ground clove, nutmeg 3 heaped tablespoons brown sugar (optional)
Heat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Knead to a dough. The dough comes out crumbly and a bit on the dry side, so do not be alarmed; if it’s very dry, add some more coconut milk or tchina. Now, make small (less than 1 inch) cookies; due to the dough consistency, you can’t exactly roll it, but rather squeeze it into a little ball. If you want to go fancy, one of these cookie presses might come in handy, will make your life easier, and your cookies prettier. Amit has one; yet another kitchen appliance which seems to be a refugee from the 1970s and works like a charm. Place on baking sheet and bake for about ten to fifteen minutes. Remove when cookies are slightly golden and no longer soft, but before they brown (they don’t taste as good when very brown). Consume with herbal tea or fragrant Turkish coffee.
