Persian Rice

When I first came to Israel two years ago, I was absolutely chocked about how they always flavor their rice here. I couldn't understand why they would do such a terrible thing to the rice. Being Swedish and all, I was under the assumption that the main dish, such as a meat stew, should give flavor to the side dish, not the other way around. I'm coming from a very culinary family, so I thought I knew a thing or two, but no. Flavored rice is not something we are familiar with in Sweden. It took me a long time to adjust, but once I tasted a good Persian rice, I immediately understood why they don't eat so much plain rice in this country. At first I thought that they had it all wrong, but it turned out to be the other way around. It was I who had it all wrong. Flavored rice is the best thing ever and should be eaten by everyone. Trust me, once you go flavored rice, you won't go back!

This is a simple recipe for a good Persian rice that I make. Inspired by my boyfriend’s Persian grandmother (we will return to her food later on, that woman makes amazing things with food). The cardamom mixed with dill is giving this dish a very interesting twist.

Ingredients (serves 6-8)
3 cups of Persian rice or basmati
Chicken stock
1 onion
A handful of coriander, chopped
A handful of parsley, chopped
A handful of dill, chopped
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp oriental cumin
A dash of turmeric (to give a lovely yellow color)
Oil
Black pepper, finely ground
Salt

1. Cover the bottom of a pan with oil. Add the onion and fry until golden brown.

2. Add the rice and fry until it turns white. Add the herbs and spices and mix well.

3. Add 4 1/2 cups of chicken stock. As soon as the water starts boiling, turn the heat down and let simmer until all the water is reduced.

4. Let the rice rest for a while. Mix all the herbs with the rice, using a fork (they float up to the surface when the rice is boiling).

Enjoy!

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserve 

La Café

Nir

In the heart of Shuk Hacarmel (Carmel market) there is a little gem. La Café is a delicious and quick spot where you can get your kebab and shakshuka fix. The prices are great, the food is fresh and the owner is cute. Nir is 25, and he's had the place for a year. The focus is on fresh, quick Israeli food.

Channa and I ordered the vegetarian shakshuka (eggs in tomato sauce), which comes with lafa bread (big flat breat) and salad. We also shared the beef kebabs, and they come with grilled vegetables, onions and fresh salad. I ordered a refreshing limonana (lemonade with mint), and we finished our meal with black coffee. Although you are in the busiest part of the market you don’t feel it at all. So, if you are in the shuk, stop by La Café and get a quick bite to eat or sit at the bar for a while and enjoy the shuk.

Location: The Shuk Hacarmel and Shefer street intersection

Shakshuka (eggs in tomato sauce)

Channa taking a break from cooking

A loyal customer

Limonana

Kebab

Beetroot Salad with Nuts

This is a salad that my mother makes at home in Sweden, and we all love it. She actually discovered it by mistake, because there were leftover beetroot and beans in the fridge. It's a really good and healthy salad with nuts, beans and carrots. It's perfect with a grilled steak in the summer, but also as a side dish for just about any occasion.

Ingredients

Salad
1/2 cup of assorted nuts (sunflower seeds, cashew cores, pumpkin seeds)
1/2 can of kidney beans
1 carrot, finely diced
3-5 rosted beetroots, finely diced
A handful of chopped parsley
Olive oil
Sea salt (for the nuts)

Dressing
3 tbs pumpkin seed oil (olive oil is also ok but not the same)
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
Sea salt
Black pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp garlic powder

1. Grill the beetroots in the oven for about 45 minutes (or until soft all the way trough) at 225°C.

2. Put some olive oil in a frying pan and fry the nut mix until it gets a nice golden color. Season with sea salt.

3. Take the nut mix from the pan, save the oil and fry the beans for a couple of minutes.

4. Place the diced carrot, beet roots and chopped parsley in a bowl. Add the fried beans and the nuts and mix.

5. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing and mix it with the salad.

Enjoy! 

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserve 

Beetroot and Mozzarella

We like beetroot and think it's a very misunderstood vegetable that should to be used more often. There is so much you can do with beetroot, from tasty salads to warm soups, pancakes and fun starters. In the Middle East it's a very commonly used vegetable.

This is a simple recipe for a beetroot salad with mozzarella that we make and love. This dish is a perfect starter for a dinner party instead of the traditional salad with tomatoes. Our advise is that you get rid of beetroot fobia and try this tasty recipe.
 
Ingredients
4-5 beetroots
250 g mozzarella cheese
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Black pepper, freshly ground
Salt (I prefer sea salt for a dish like this, but it's not a must.)
A handful of basil

1. Grill the beetroots in the oven for about 45 minutes (or until soft all the way trough) at 225°C.

2. Peel the beetroots.

3. Cut the beetroots into big chunks and place it together with pieces of the mozzarella cheese on a serving dish and mix gently. Sprinkle some olive oil on the dish and just a few drops of vinegar. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

3. Garnish with the basil leaves in a nice pattern and serve.     

Enjoy!

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserve 

Principe Alberto Cake

This is an amazing cake that Jill's aunt makes for every Pesach in Vancouver when the family meets for the holiday. Chocolate cakes without flour can and should be made all year around, they are not only for Pesach. This kind of cake is also perfect if you are looking for a gluten free cake to make for any occasion. We believe this is one of those cakes that everyone will love. It has an intense chocolate flavour, perfect texture and a creamy chocolate frosting (this is what I’m going to bring for our Seder dinner this year). We LOVE this cake and think you should try it, Pesach or not!   

Ingredients 
250 g of butter (soft)
300 g of sugar
7 eggs
150 grams of melted chocolate
1 tbs corn starch
3-4 squares of chocolate (shaved)

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.
 
2. Beat half the sugar and all of the butter and add the egg yolks one by one.
 
3. Beat the egg whites hard with the other half of the sugar (see pic).
 
4. Add the melted chocolate to the yolk mix and then fold in the egg white mix.

5. Prepare a rectangular tin with butter and matza meal. Put 3/4 of the batter in the tin and place it in the oven for 40 minutes. Add the corn starch to the other 1/4 and refrigerate.
 
6. Let the cake cool completely, and then pour the rest of the batter on top of the cake.
 
7. Decorate with shaved chocolate.
 
Enjoy! 

The egg white mix is ready when you can turn it uppside down!

Leikaj de Pesaj

For Pesach we don't eat chametz (anything that is leavened). So we don't eat anything good dessert wise. Instead of regular flour we substitute with matza meal, which to be quite honest doesn’t taste that good. There is of course ways to go around (like the amazing Principe Alberto Cake) but we are supposed to suffer a bit because of our ancestors that walked out of Egypt, and therefore we eat matza.
 
This is a good Pesach cake with cake meal (finely ground matza meal) and orange. This is a big batch, so if you have a lot of people coming over this is a perfect cake to make.   

Ingredients
11 eggs
1 cup cake meal
1/2 cup orange juice
Peel from one orange
1 1/4 cup of sugar
3 tbs vegetable oil (not olive oil)

Topping: icing sugar

1. Line a round pan with butter and matza meal.

2. Separate the yolks from the eggs whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients (except for egg whites).
 
3. Beat the egg whites separately and then mix gently with the batter, so the air stays.

4. Place in oven for 50 minutes at 180°C. This is a big cake, so it can be put into a big round pan or two medium ones (we put a pan underneath because it sometimes leaks). If you use two medium ones, let them bake for 30 minutes instead of 50 minutes. 

Yummy!

Enjoy!
 

Eggplant with Feta Cheese

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Eggplant and feta cheese love each other. This is an easy-to-make dip for any occasion or "not occasion". It is perfect as a side dish on the dinner table or as a simple snack in the afternoon with fresh bread. It's very important not to forget to buy good bread to serve it with, or if you are ambitious, why not bake it yourself? In this recipe you can see that we added sumac, which is a commonly used spice in the Middle East. Don’t worry If you can't find sumac; it's not a must. If you have zatar at home you can use it as a substitute. But it will taste as it should also without sumac or zatar.
  
Ingredients
2 medium size eggplants
150 g feta cheese
1 tsp sumac
Olive oil
Salt
 
Topping: parsley
 
1. Heat the oven to 225°C.
 
2. Grill the eggplants for a few minutes on the gas stove (see picture) to give it a smoky flavor.
 
3. Place the eggplant in the oven and cook until soft all the way through, approx. 20 min. Let cool.
 
4. Peel of the charred skin and cut of the stems.
 
5. Mix the eggplant with feta cheese, some olive oil, and sumac. Season with salt.
 
6. Top with some chopped parsley, and drip some olive oil on top of the dish.
 
Enjoy! 

Step: 2

   

Step: 4

Apple Cake with Cardemom and Cinnamon

Here is an easy to make, delicious cake with apple, cardamom and cinnamon. You won’t be disappointed, I promise, this is a cake that doesn’t just taste good – it also looks good. The secret ingredient of this recipe is the cardamom that makes the cake exceptionally good. Cardemom is a commenly used spice both in Scandinavian cooking and Middle Eastern cooking. Try it, it's my favorite apple cake! 

Ingredients 
3 eggs
1 cup casted suger 
75 g butter, melted 
1,5 tbs baking powder (don’t be afraid of using baking powder, it makes the cake pop)  
1 tbs vanilla suger 
1 tbs ground cardamom 
150 ml milk 

Filling 

3 large apples, peeled and sliced 
3 tbs cinnamon 
3 tbs dark brown sugar 
 
Topping: icing sugar
 
1. Warm the oven to 175°C.
 
2. Grease a round baking tin with loose base, and sprinkle with bread crumbs so that the cake won’t stick.
 
3. Beat egg and sugar pluffy. Add flower, baking powder, vanilla sugar, cardamom, melted butter and milk.  
 
4. Place the sliced apple pieces, dark brown sugar and cinnamon in a plastic bag. Close and shake until all the apple pieces are covered. 
 
5. Place a little piece of the batter in baking tin just to cover the bottom, place a layer of apples and then put in the rest of the batter. Press down the first layer of apples, and then add another layer on the top in a nice pattern (see step-by-step pictures). 
 
6. Bake in the oven for 40 min. Don’t worry if it’s a little sticky in the middle. 
 
7. Let the cake cool and sprinkle icing sugar on top of it.
 
 Enjoy! 

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserve 

step by step: how to layer

Vanilla Ice Cream with Tahini and Granola

Tahini is not only used for food and cooking, it’s also a very popular ingredient in desserts and sweets in Israel. We will return a lot to this subject on the blog as, it’s very possible that we are a bit obsessed with tahini (and sweets). We are starting the tahini and sweets series with a very simple and tasty tahini ice cream. This is a dessert you’ll make in a flash, without a lot of preparation. This dessert is perfect when friends are coming over and you don’t want to invest too much time but still want everyone to LOVE it. 

 
Ingredients  (4 servings)
Vanilla ice-cream (good quality)
1 cup granola 
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds 
1/4 cup raisins (if not in the granola)
8-9 dates, sliced into small pieces

Tahini 
1 cup raw tahini
1 cup water
1 lemon

1. Mix the granola with the pumpkinseeds, raisins and dates. 

2. Mix all the ingredients for the tahini. 

3. Place ice-cream in a serving dish and pour the tahini on top of it (use a lot), and then add the granola.

Enjoy! 

Tahini

Tahini is a very common ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking. In Israel you will not find a single home without a jar of raw tahini in the fridge. It’s most commonly used as a flavouring ingredient in dishes such as humous and baba ganoush, but it’s also frequently used for other dishes with meat, fish and vegetables. We just ate the yummiest soup with eggplant and tahini. The bottom line is, you can use tahini for almost anything.
 
So what is tahini? Tahini is a thick paste made from ground sesame seeds, it has a very strong sesame flavor. Combined with food and sweets its special flavor provides an interesting twist. Tahini might be tricky to find outside Israel. You probably need to go to a well-stocked store or an Arabic store. You can also buy it online. In Sweden Willys carries tahini. If you don’t already have a jar of raw tahini in your fridge, we strongly recommend that you to get one.