Category Archives: Recipes

Batata Ben Lamoun-That’s Potato Lemon Soup to you!

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Batata Ben Lamoun soup in a Fire&Light dish, next to coasters made by Paul Barchilon
Batata Ben Lamoun soup in a Fire & Light dish, next to coasters made by Paul Barchilon

Ingredients: for a large pot of soup, you can cut in half for a smaller soup, but it freezes well and most folks want seconds and thirds. This recipe was adapted from Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India by Copeland Marks (in my top ten cookbooks list).

  1. 4-6 carrots (large)
  2. 6-8 stalks celery
  3. 6-12 Yukon gold or other yummy potato (peeled and sliced or cut into chunks so that they will cook fairly quickly and mash down)
  4. olive oil
  5. 8 or more cloves of garlic (prepared properly with the centers removed)
  6. juice of 2-3 lemons
  7. 1/2-1 tsp turmeric
  8. salt to taste (use good salt)
  9. Several quarts of water or if you have time make Roasted Root Veggie Stock (see recipe for this nested in my post for Brazilian Sweet Potato, Tomato and Carmelized Onion soup).

Fill your soup pot 3/4 of the way full with water, or stock. Place on stove and start the heat. In a food processor grind up the carrots and celery. Add them to the water and let the whole shebang boil vigorously. Skim the scum off the top and discard.

Serious scummy stuff
Serious scummy stuff

 

Removing scummy stuff from the soup
Removing scummy stuff from the soup

In a small saucepan heat the oil on low and add the garlic, cook until foamy. Don’t let the garlic get brown. Add this to the scum-free soup, turn the heat to medium, let cook for 5–10 minutes. Add potatoes and cook on low to medium for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. Soup is ready for the other ingredients when you can mush up the potatoes in the soup with a masher. Mash up the potatoes in the soup, then add the turmeric, lemon juice and a salt. This soup is better with mashing then with food processing. You want to have small bits of potato and carrot and celery, occasionally engaging with your spoon. My daughter doesn’t food process the celery and carrots, she just cuts them really tiny. I do prefer my version, but go ahead and try hers if you want. Let the flavors blend together and cook at least another ten minutes after you’ve mashed the potatoes in the soup, serve with other yummy foods, Esti’s Parsley, Garlic, Lemon, Jalapeno Supremely Special Sauce or by itself with bread.

Sapta Rachel’s Eggplant with Balsamic, Black Pepper and Parsley

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Balsamic Parsley & Black Pepper Eggplant
Balsamic Parsley & Black Pepper Eggplant (four layers of rounds)

This dish is fairly quick, can be made hours or days ahead, and will bring you and your guests within inches of Heaven. You can only get to Heaven, once you’ve left your body, which we don’t want this recipe to precipitate. If anything, this dish, reminds you of how great it is to have taste buds and be ALIVE!

I learned this recipe from my daughter who got it from her Israeli-Italian grandmother (Sapta Rachel Heller). She is an amazing artist and cook and all credit should accrue to her for this dish!

  1. 1–3 eggplants, not Japanese–style, un–peeled and cut into ¼– ½ inch rounds
  2. A lot of good olive oil
  3. One bunch or more of fresh parsley (Italian flat leaf is preferred) minced finely
  4. Good salt (see my Let’s Talk Salt post). Current favorite salts are Maldon and Himalayan Pink Salt
  5. Freshly ground black pepper (optional, I love pepper, some folks don’t)
  6. Your favorite balsamic vinegar (not cherry or fruit flavored, just good balsamic vinegar and not balsamic syrup)

If the eggplant is fresh you can skip this step, if not, you need to do the following: Salt the eggplant rounds in a strainer and let them sit for a 1/2 an hour or so. When you salt them ahead of time make sure you pat each piece dry of the sweated salty liquid before you fry them in the oil. You will need to use less salt in between your layers if you do this step.

Have all your ingredients ready and in bowls nearby before you begin. Heat  ½ an inch or more of good olive oil, a fairly liberal amount, in your heavy cast–iron skillet or in a good non–stick one.

Sauté the eggplant circles until they are reddish/dark brown on both sides. You may have to heat up more oil to finish all your eggplant slices. Have an attractive glass serving dish with a rim of at least an inch on it, or a small sort of casserole or round deep dish pie plate next to your stove.

Remove each piece of eggplant, once it is cooked, and place it in a single layer on the bottom of your dish. Add a sprinkling of the sea salt, a liberal sprinkling of the parsley, freshly ground black pepper, and sprinkle each round with balsamic vinegar, so that each round is getting a light shower of the stuff for each single layer. Repeat this process with each layer until all of your eggplant is cooked, and layered. On the final layer, drizzle a little bit more olive oil. This dish should marinate or sit for at least 1/2 hour, and is best served warm or at room temperature. If you are going to put it in the fridge please remove it a few hours before serving. Keep it covered with a plate or lid when it is in the fridge. Serve with a summer tomato salad, rice or on good bread. It’s hard to stop eating this one, you’ve been warned!

Orange, Garlic & Herbed Butternut or Delicata Roasted Squash Supreme

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Roasted Butternut Squash

Roasted Butternut Squash with sage and parsley

  1. One or Two Butternut squashes, peeled, seeded, halved and sliced into 1/4 to 1/2 circle slices or double this amount of delicata squash, similarly prepared. You can leave the skins on if you want, but most folks prefer to eat their squash without the skins. I like them both ways, but find that my guests prefer no skins and eat around the skin, so I’ve taken to peeling these so that all of the squash gets eaten.
  2. Juice of one or two fresh oranges (if you have to use orange juice concentrate that is okay, but fresh is always better)
  3. Fresh herbs, whichever ones you have on hand or prefer (cilantro, parsley, tarragon, thyme and sage are the ones I use most frequently)
  4. Five to six cloves of garlic or more (as you wish), prepared with the centers removed as per all of my recipes using garlic
  5. Olive oil (1/4 cup – 1/2 cup, depending on how much squash you are making)
  6. Good Salt and White Pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl so that all the sliced squash is coated with the herbs, olive oil, orange juice and garlic. Arrange the squash half-circle slices on a cookie sheet. You can either line the cookie sheet with parchment paper or just put them straight on it.

Squash rounds on baking sheet ready to go into the oven, covered with garlic, oil, herb and orange juice marinade
Squash 1/2 circle rounds on baking sheet ready to go into the oven, covered with garlic, oil, herb and orange juice marinade

 

 

 

There is no need to add more oil, the oil already coating the squash is sufficient. Bake for 1/2 an hour to forty-five minutes, depending on the squash. Turn the slices once, half-way through the cooking. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven to do this, so you do not lose all the heat in your oven while turning all the slices. This dish goes great with everything and is a different way to enjoy winter squashes. If you bake the squash longer they will get roasted and dryer or take them out when they are soft. Either way they are great, slightly different ways to enjoy the same dish. These are sweet without any sugar, vegan and flavorful. You can omit the garlic for folks who don’t like garlic (but, who can imagine such a thing??!!!!)

As always, ENJOY!

A Good Egg

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Free Range Chicken Eggs, multicolored and cracked open, this is the color you want your yokes to be
Free Range Chicken Eggs, multicolored and cracked open, this is the color you want your yokes to be

My favorite way to eat a Good Egg

(a free range organic one)

A good egg is one that has a yoke bordering on orange, on strong orange. It is not a pastel yellow. A good egg has heft and weft and will make your mouth water when prepared properly. It can be from any particular fowl, but if you don’t like to feel or interact with your food, then you should just stick with chicken eggs. I only get eggs from friends, my local farm-share or I buy the ones that I know are free range and allowed to roam. This means they are more expensive, a real meal in a small container. If I cannot get good eggs, I don’t bother eating eggs in the following way. I only recommend this recipe with a GOOD egg. This recipe is for ONE person, just increase amounts of stuff if you are doing this for a friend. Slice an onion in half and cut the half into thin slices. Sauté it up in butter* until the onion is soft.  Throw in a few leaves of fresh basil or parsley or tarragon and only sauté for ten seconds. Put more butter in your pan if you need to. Move the onions over to the side of your frying pa and then crack your egg or eggs over the butter. Cook them either over–easy (how I like mine) or over hard (how Kevin likes his). Sprinkle some good salt and pepper on top of your egg. Toast up a piece of really good rye bread, the dark stuff or some other favorite bread or a half a baguette.* Spread white goat cheese or cream cheese on the bread and put one chipotle chile over this and spread it all around. You can buy canned chipotle chilies in most stores if you aren’t the home chile canning kind of person. These are smoky flavored spicy peppers. If you aren’t a pepper lover, omit the chipotle. My parsley sauce or my pesto also work well if you don’t want the chipotle flavor. Place your cooked egg on the bread, put the onions and the basil over it and enjoy with your hands. This is a messy egg, a yolk spilling over the onions and bread and your fingers kind of egg. It’s an egg I engage with my whole being and I feel it in my blood and in my tummy saying yummy, yummy, yummy!

The Good Egg, with onions, goat cheese and chipotle peppers, gooey, messy and perfect!
The Good Egg, with onions, goat cheese and chipotle peppers, gooey, messy and perfect!

*Dairy-free option is to omit the cream-cheese or goat cheese and instead of frying in butter use olive oil for onion and egg cooking. Gluten-free option is to omit the bread. I love this egg with fresh kale, so you can make the sloppy mess and put it over your lightly sautéed kale.

Lemon Pesto or Pistou

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Etrog, an ancient Israeli relative of my best cooking friend the lemon
Etrog, an ancient Israeli relative of my best cooking friend The Lemon
  1. a blender cup’s worth of fresh basil leaves
  2. juice of 1–2 lemons
  3. ½– ¾ cup of olive oil
  4. 5–10 cloves of garlic (with the center’s removed, see photos below)
  5. ½– ¾ cup of roasted walnuts or pine nuts
  6. ½-1 tsp of good salt (see Let’s Talk Salt)
  7. (Optional) ½– ¾ cup of Parmesan cheese

 

Combine all these ingredients in the blender, turn it on and let it get really mixed up. You can add more oil if it isn’t blending properly. Store in a glass container. It will keep for about a week. Use it on sandwiches, with pasta, as a soup garnish, over veggies and even on a fried egg it truly makes a green egg, but NO HAM! allowed ever, anywhere in my kitchen or near one of my recipes! Actually, if you are a ham eater, of course you can use this with ham, I just don’t know how that would actually taste. The trick to almost all of my cooking, is to not skimp on the oil, the lemon or the salt. Do not be afraid when you are cooking, make mistakes, take risks, that’s how you learn. One more thing, don’t cook pesto, use it cold, fresh out of the blender or the fridge, you can put it on hot things, but my recipe doesn’t cook well, although I have occasionally used it as a marinade, but it is best fresh, not warmed up or cooked.

both garlicBetter Garlic