This recipe is the ultimate comfort food in a pot!! We tried it last night and it was a success. Cold night? try it. Hot day? try it. It will make your house smell amazing and will make you happy…
Our friends from Israel came to visit us and bought us local Israeli cooking books! YAY…the best present. One of them is by a Beni Saida, One Pot Meal. It is written in Hebrew, and I checked, there is no English translation out there. We’ve made a few adjustments to the recipe and wrote it here for you to enjoy.

1/4 cup oil- any kind will work.
2.5 pound chuck meat- cubed
3 onions- sliced
6 garlic cloves- sliced
1 tbs. flour
1 tbs. brown sugar
2 tbs. Dijon mustard
2.5 cups lager beer
2 tbs. red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 cup chicken stock
salt & pepper

10 slice of baguette (whole wheat or white will work)
Dijon mustard to spread on slices.

Preheat the oven to 320° F (160° C).
In a cast iron pot or a dutch oven, brown the pieces of meat on all sides with the oil for a few minutes and remove to a plate. Do not over crowd the pot, do it in batches if necessary. Add the onions and garlic and until they are soft and golden. Add the flour, sugar and stir for a minute. Add the mustard, beer and vinegar and bring to a boil. Scrape with a wooden spoon the bottom of the pot, Add the meat back in the pot. Add the chicken stock and season with nutmeg, salt & pepper and mix well. Cover the pot, and transfer to the oven for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, heat the oven to 375° F (180° C). Uncover the pot and add the sliced baguette with the mustard to the pot. With a wooden spoon, dunk the slices a bit so they will get soaked from the sauce. Let it cook for another 10-15 minutes, until the bread gets a golden color. That’s it. It’s ready.

We also cooked brown rice as a side to soak all the great juices. All you need at this point, is a glass of chilled beer.

Enjoy!

Our friend Allie came over, and we cooked all day…it was so much fun. Allie always inspire me to think about healthy, vegetarian cooking and she found this amazing biscuits recipe by Heidi Swanson’s. I would recommend anyone who would like to expand their vegeterian recipe box to check out her book.

It was very easy and FAST to make those biscuits, and as you can see from the pictures, they look pretty precious…

2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup amaranth flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons fine-grain sea salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 1/2 cups milk, plus more as needed
1 egg white
1/3 cup mixed seeds (such as sesame, poppy and nigella)
butter, for serving

Preheat the oven to 425° F, position a rack in the middle of the oven, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Into a large bowl or food processor, stir the flours, baking powder, and salt to combine. Add the butter and use a pastry cutter or 25 pulses of the food processor to blend until the mixture resembles tiny pebbles.

If using a food processor, transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Use a fork to incorporate the 1 1/2 cups milk. Keep in mind that you don’t want to handle the dough too much or you’ll end up with tough biscuits. The dough should be dry enough that you can roll it out with a rolling pin, yet moist enough that it doesn’t crumble when you shape the biscuits. If the dough is on the dry side, work in a bit more milk, 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time.

Dust a dry countertop with flour and turn out the dough. Gather it into a mass and press it out into an oval shape 3/4 inch thick. Using a 1 1/2-inch biscuit or cookie cutter, stamp out as many biscuits as possible. Gather the scraps together, roll them out, and continue stamping until you are out of dough. Arrange biscuits at least 1 inch apart on the prepared pan. Brush the tops and edges with the egg white and sprinkle generously with the seeds.

Bake the biscuits for about 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges start to turn golden. Enjoy them split open, with a modest slathering of butter.

Makes 18 biscuits.

A few weeks ago, we asked if you can share with us your favorite recipe, something that reminds you of home. This is the time to thank you all for sharing them with us.
This recipe comes from our friend, Eva, or more specifically from her parents Tutu is a classic dish from Netherlands Antilles, kinda reminds us of polenta but much better. Yes, we know. It sounds funny, but believe us…you will learn to crave tutu and all the variations you can make to it. We never combined those ingredients together before, and it sounded very intriguing…that’s why we gave it a shot, and loved it.

1 cup coconut milk
1.5 of water
1 can of black eyed peas
1/2 to / 3/4 cup of gouda cheese
9-10 tablespoon of precooked cornmeal (make sure
it doesn’t have yeast in it and it’s not
the coarse ground cornmeal)
2 table spoons of sugar
walnuts
salt to taste
optional- turkey, ham, cooked shredded chicken

boil the water, coconut milk, sugar and salt.
Afterwards pour the corn in slowly. Keep stirring with a whisk, for about 12-15 minutes. Then add the beans, stir and final step is to add walnuts and cheese (optional meat if you want). Stir until it becomes a little thicker than polenta. It will all come together very quickly.
Pour onto a plate, place another plate on top, let sit for a few minutes, and flip (think like flipping a cake to a plate).
Grade more cheese on top, just for extra flavor.

Keep sending us more of your favorite recipes that remind you of home! and thank you for letting us be apart of it!

We finally got our Le Creuset pot, which we had our eyes on for a while now… We got the 5 qt oval dutch oven, which makes sense for us as we want to also use it for slow cooking of big pieces of meat such as leg of lamb. We thought, what would be a good first use for this pot… MMMM, short ribs!!! This is one of my favorite meats for slow cooking… Our friend Angela, told us about this recipe. She said she used it and it was great! Well, I can tell you one thing, she was so right… However, we would try making the following adjustments the next time we’ll make it:
1) We used a nice Spanish wine. We think a good Marlo would be better.
2) We think doubling the veggie part might do good for both the meat and the sauce, it would make it more thick when it’s ready and would be better used on the plate.

We use a mash potatoes side, which was great. Another great side would be potato Gratin. Here is a picture of how it looked.
We can honestly say, there are a few things that fill your house with great smells and warm fuzzy feelings, like chicken soup, cakes, bread AND slow cooking dishes.
It’s a great dish just for 2 or when you have guests over.

Really! you should try it…

When it’s cold outside, the best thing is soup… So after shoveling the snow (14″ of snow) we have started to make it… Actually we started by soaking the lentils in water (you need at least 8 hours).

1 lbs dry red lentil
1 onion – chopped
2 1/2 tbs tomato paste
1 tbs vegetable oil
Water
1/2 tsp Salt
1 1/2 – 2 tbs Chicken Consume (optional)
1 tsp Paprika
1/2 tsp Pepper

Like I said before, you need to soak the lentil for at least 8 hours. But before you do that you need to do two important things:
1) Make sure no foreign objects are mixed in the lentils (like small rocks).
2) Wash the lentil really really good. It usually takes 10 rinses until you get rid of all the dirt.

After you soaked them for 8 hours, you want to wash them again (3-4 times) to get rid of the rest of the dirt that comes off when they double in size while soaked. Now you’re ready to make the soup.

We use pressure cooker for this soup. You can use a regular pot but it will take you about 3 hours to make it. Heat the pot, pour the oil and add the onion. Saute for 2 minutes until translucent and add the tomato paste, water (until the low marking on the pressure cooker). Bring to a boil while mixing, add the spices and close the pot. After the pot is locked, lower the heat to allow simmering and set the timer for 50 minutes. Once it’s done, take off heat and let stand for at least 10 minutes before trying to release pressure. Once the pot is open, fix the seasoning to taste and server hot…

Recommendation: Serve with thick slices of Challa bread, it so good to dip it in and eat together!

So it took Kitchenaid much more than a week, but we’ve finally got a new oven! We’re sorry we’re too busy/depressed to write anything on the blog, but don’t worry, we do have a few posts we’ve prepared, we’re going to post them this weekend…

For today, we’ve decided to celebrate our “return to modern society” with a lasagna (which we’ve already posted)! Yam!

We always talk about how much we love our family favorite dishes, and how much we love our moms cooking. We have already shared a few of our favorites with you, but we are going to try and create some of the more complicated, time consuming but OH-SO-GOOD ones in the upcoming weeks. In a mission to switch things up and try some new things we are turning to you!
We would love to hear from you and get your favorite recipes. The one your mom used to make and you crave, the one you can just can’t wait to eat, the one you eat right out of the pot, pan, fridge, the one you savor every moment, the one with the secret ingredient. yes, we know, we are asking for a lot…to reveal that one special recipe. but we promise, we are going to try it, take pictures of it and share our thoughts with all of you, and if you let us, publish the recipe right here.

Please use the contact us button on the right to email us. We can’t wait to hear from you!

We met a couple of friends today for lunch in the city. We decided to go to a restaurant we know from back when Liron lived in the city. The Cookshop is located on 20th st and 10th Ave. Their food is great, we ate there both lunch and dinner, both were fantastic! Our friend is vegetarian, and this restaurant offer a lot of options.
We ordered the special pork sandwich plate and the Huevos Rancheros dish. Both were excellent. Liron liked the Huevos Rancheros better and I liked the sandwich better, but you know what, they were both so good, it doesn’t even matter which one was better.

We give this restaurant 9

A few days ago, we were about the insert our chicken into the oven, we discovered that our oven is not working! We have moved to our house a few months ago, and bought all brand new kitchen aid appliances. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seam like we’ve been having a lot of good luck with them. Now, we have to use only our gas top and forget about our stove for at least a week until they fix our oven!
We decided to make Paella. It is very versatile. If you don’t like an ingredient just swap it up with something else. The only thing that’s important to remember is the water/rice ratio and the nice thing about it is that it is kind of a one pot meal.

1 cup brown rice
2 1/4 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup white wine
4 pieces of chicken (we used drumsticks)
8 shrimps- peeled and deveined
4 tubes calamari-cut to rings
1 link spicy turkey/chicken sausage-sliced
1 red pepper- chopped
1 onion-chopped
1 celery stick- thinly sliced
1 carrot- thinly sliced
1/4 cup frozen peas
1 tbs. paprika (any kind you have will be fine)
1/2 tsp. caynne pepper
dash of saffron
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 lemon juice
3 tbs. parsley- chopped
salt & pepper
2 tbs. olive oil

In a bowl, create a rub for the chicken. Combine the olive oil, little bit of salt, pepper, 1/2 tbs. paprika, 1/4 tsp. cayenne. Use your hands to “massage” the spices to the chicken. Cover and let sit for about an hour to absorb the flavors.
Meanwhile, prepare all the veggies. Cut all the vegetables and have them ready on the board. After an hour, heat a big wide pan and add the chicken and sausage. Brown for about 3 minutes on each side and remove to a plate. Add the vegetables and saute. When they get to be a bit translucent and soften add the wine and deglaze the pan. Add the rice and mix for about 2 minutes. Pour in the chicken stock, the pepper flakes, saffron, turmeric, 1/2 tbs. paprika, and 1/4 tsp. cayenne, salt & pepper. Add the chicken and sausage back in and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and cover the pan for about 40 minutes. During that time, open the and stir every 10 minutes.
In a bowl season the shrimp and calamari with the same mix as the chicken rub and add a squeeze of lemon. After 40 minutes taste the rice, it should be soft but with a little bit of bite to it. Add the seafood and the frozen peas and cover for 7 minutes. Serve hot with a little of chopped parsley on top for color and fresh flavor.

Enjoy!

The combination of soy sauce and wasabi is not a new one. When we go out for sushi, we always dunk in a big piece of wasabi in our soy sauce to make it extra spicy. In NYC there is a restaurant called Blue water grill. They serve a dish with a Wasabi Vinaigrette glaze which we really love. Yesterday we were craving this combination and whole food had a great looking piece of wild salmon, we decided to try and come up with our own sauce.

For 2 salmon pieces:
1/2-1 tbs. wasabi paste
4 tbs. soy sauce
1 tbs. seasame oil
1 tsp. honey
1/2 tsp. brown sugar

In a ziploc bag combine all the ingredients and mix. Add the salmon and massage the bag so the fish will soak all the marinade. Marinade for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake on a sheet pan for 13 minutes.