Bear Cuisine

Say Cheese

I originally made this labneh to use with Michael Solomonov's Slow Roasted Sweet Potatoes, but I discovered that it is very versatile and has any number of uses. This recipe comes from the wonderful Diana Henry and is found in her book,Salt Sugar Smoke. how to preserve fruit,vegetables,meat and fish.

Labneh in Olive Oil

For the Labneh and Oil

1. 1 container 2 lb. 4 oz. container of Greek Yogurt
2. 1 tsp salt
3. olive oil
4. dried chilies, sprigs of tarragon,thyme or rosemary black peppercorns and slivers of garlic (all optional)

For Spiced Labneh

2-3 TBS ground cayenne, paprika or ground sumac (or a mixture of these)

For Herbed Labneh

handful of chopped tarragon flat-leaf parsley, chives, coriander or mint(or a mixture)

 

Line a sieve with a double layer of clean cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Mix the yogurt with the salt. Tip the yogurt onto the fabric and place the sieve and bowl in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours. The yogurt will lose excess moisture during this time leaving a firmer mixture.

Unwrap the labneh and break it into chunks a bit larger than a walnut and gently roll into balls with wet hands. Sprinkle each with cayenne, paprika or sumac for spicy labneh or roll them in herbs if you want herbed ones.

Pour some olive oil into a sterilized jar. Start putting the cheese balls in, adding more oil as you go so that the balls don't stick together. Pour in enough to cover completely and add any other flavorings you want. Cover and refrigerate for two days.

Bring the labneh and its oil to room temperature before serving. The labneh and oil will keep for two weeks in the refrigerator and you can use the oil for salad dressings or for drizzling over warm vegetables.

 

This wonderful on toast or crackers. Use it in place of sour cream or butter on baked potatoes. You can use it in a salad or on pasta. Really, I think its  uses are only limited by your imagination.

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Breakfast,Lunch or Dinner

I first read about Shakshuka in a New York Times' article by Melissa Clark in 2013. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like a great dish for an easy weeknight supper, although in Israel it is most often served at breakfast. Several years later, Yotam Ottolenghi published a recipe in his wonderful ode to vegetarian cooking, Plenty. Finally, I was sufficiently motivated to try the dish. What had I been waiting for? It has beautiful smoky, slightly spicy notes in the vegetable base; eggs never had it so good.

Shakshuka

 

I used Ottolenghi's recipe as the base, but made some changes as I went along.The recipe is originally designed to serve 4 people, but it can be easily reduced to by half.

SHAKSHUKA

(serves 4)

1. 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2. 3/4 cup olive oil
3. 2 large onions, sliced
4. 2 red bell peppers, cut into 3/4-inch strips
5. 2 yellow bell peppers, cut into 3/4-inch strips
6. 4 teaspoons brown sugar
7. 2 bay leaves
8. 6 thyme sprigs, leaves picked and chopped
9. 2 TBS. chopped parsley
10. 2 TBS chopped cilantro
11. 6 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
12. 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
13. pinch of Aleppo pepper
14. salt and black pepper
15. up to 1 1/8 cups of water
16. Feta cheese
17. 8 eggs

In a very large pan dry-roast the cumin seeds on high heat for 2 minutes. Add the oil and onions and saute for 5 minutes. Add the peppers, sugar and herbs and continue cooking on high heat for 5 to 10 minutes to get a nice color.

Add the tomatoes, turmeric, Aleppo pepper and some salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. during the cooking keep adding water so that the mix has a pasta sauce consistency. Taste and adjust the seasoning. (You can make this mixture in advance.)

Remove the bay leaves and make gaps in the pepper mix and carefully break an egg into each gap. If you like Feta cheese, you can crumble some over the pepper mixture at this point.Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover the pan with a lid. Cook on a very gentle heat for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the eggs are just set. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

Absolutely delicious!

 

 

 

Eggplant Perfection

I was looking through Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty the other day and re-discovered an eggplant dish that I had noted previously. So, it's been on my cooking to-do list for some time. Then there were these beautiful, smooth-skinned eggplants in the market. . . . You know the rest.  Ottolenghi suggests these as a starter, but we found that they made a wonderful full meal. Served slightly warm the combination of the creamy eggplant and the buttermilk sauce was ...well,perfection.

EGGPLANT WITH BUTTERMILK SAUCE

(serves 4 as a starter)

1. 2 large and long eggplants
2. 1/3 cup olive oil
3. 1 1/2 tsp lemon thyme leaves, plus a few whole sprigs to garnish
4. Maldon sea salt and black pepper
5. pomegranate seeds
6. 1 tsp za'tar

Sauce

1. 9 TBS buttermilk
2. 1/2 cup Green yogurt
3. 1 1/2 TBS olive oil, plus a drizzle to finish
4. 1 small garlic clove, crushed
5. pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut the eggplants in half lengthways, Make three or four parallel incisions in the cut side of each eggplant half, without cutting through to the skin. Repeat at a 45-degree angle to get a diamond-shaped pattern.

Place the eggplant halves, cut side up, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush them with olive oil until all of the oil has been absorbed. Sprinkle with the lemon thyme leaves and some salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, at which point the flesh should be soft and nicely browned. Remove from the oven and allow to cool down completely.

Make the sauce by whisking together all of the ingredients. Taste for seasoning, then keep cold until needed.

To serve, spoon plenty of buttermilk sauce over the eggplant halves without covering the stalks. Sprinkle za'atar and plenty of pomegranate seeds on top and garnish with lemon thyme. Finish with a drizzle of oil.

 

Favorite Cookbooks of 2015

One of the best weeks of my life was spent with Kate Hill at Camont located near Agen in southwest France. We spent the days poking around local markets and cooking what we found in her farmhouse kitchen. When we weren't cooking, we were eating and talking about food and drink in France. It was absolute heaven. I was in one of my favorite places in the world with a most charming and knowledgeable host and teacher. So you can easily understand how happy I was to see her self-published book, Cassoulet, make its appearance at the end of December.

Having actually made a cassoulet under Kate's watchful eye, I know there is no one better to instruct us about how a cassoulet should be made. In this small volume, she explodes common myths and misconceptions. She explains the ingredients and introduces us to the people who provide them. Happily, she provides recipes that are simple, clear and straightforward. If you have any interest in French food, especially the food of Gascony, this is a book you must add to your library.  You can order a digital edition from Kate's website or a softcover copy from Blurb.

 

The second book that won my heart this past year is Michael Solomonv's Zahav.

We ate at his restaurant Zahav in Philadelphia this past summer and that meal was a great way to celebrate my birthday. Zahav is a happy, energetic place and I hope to have the pleasure of eating more meals there in the future. In the meantime, this cookbook will let me recreate  some of my favorite dishes from the restaurant. Solomonov's hummus is absolutely the best I have ever eaten. The four of us- one my dining companions doesn't even like hummus- ate this stuff as if  we hadn't eaten in a week. We ate every bit of a very generous bowl. I dream about it sometimes. But the secret is here and it can be yours. The other dish that we adored was the roasted lamb shoulder. That recipe is in this book and is worth every bit of the time and attention it takes to cook it. There are other great recipes in here and the remarkable story of the man who created them. This book is a good read and,it would seems, a reliable guide to modern Israeli cuisine.

 

 Diana Henry has made this list several times in the past and this year scored another hit with A Bird in Hand.

Her subtitle is Chicken Recipes for Every Day and Every Mood and that is exactly what she delivers. Most of us , who are omnivores, eat and cook a fair amount of chicken. Here are recipes that will add to your repertoire and your reputation as a wonderful cook. You can trust her recipes to work and even if you don't follow them precisely, they offer inspiration that will send you confidently off on your own. I agree with Yotam Ottolenghi who said "Everything Diana Henry cooks I want to eat." When I cook from this book, I am hoping to garner the same kind of compliment.

So,this is my list for 2015. I would love to know who made it to your list of favorites.

Cracking Good Crackers

Jonathan Perno

Chef Jonathan Perno of Los Poblanos recently taught a class on bread. My favorite recipe  was for Lavash Crackers. It was revelation to make these from start to finish. Chef Perno writes his recipes for other professional cooks and sometimes his directions are, for home cooks, a little sketchy. But I found virtually the same recipe with more detailed instructions in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. What follows is a combination of these two sources. These are fairly easy to make and they taste great. If your guests are anything like the students in this class, they will snarf these down in seconds.

LAVASH CRACKERS

(Makes one sheet pan of crackers)

1. 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2. 1/2 teaspoon salt
3. 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
4. 1 tablespoon honey
5. 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
6. 1/3 to 1/2 cup water, at room temperature
7. Poppy seeds,sesame seeds paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds or kosher salt for topping

 

Mix together the flour, salt, yeast, honey, oil and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

Lightly flour the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. [If you are mixing in a stand mixer, mix for approximately 5 minutes on medium speed.] The dough should be firmer than French Bread dough, satiny to the touch, not tacky and supple enough to stretch when pulled. The dough should pass the stretch or windowpane test.*

Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover it with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled in size, about 90 minutes. Or put in a covered container and store in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you need to to accommodate your pasta machine, divide the dough into  sections. Roll out the dough, a section at a time, in a pasta machine until you have very thin sheets. Roll the dough in successively smaller numbers until you reach #2 on the dial of the pasta machine.

Rolling out the cracker dough with the pasta machine

When the dough is the desired thinness, let the dough relax for 5 minutes. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment.Carefully lift the sheets of dough and lay them on the parchment.

If you want to pre-cut the crackers, use a pizza cutter and cut the dough into whatever shapes you desire. Diamonds or rectangles work well. Brush the dough with olive oil and season with salt and seeds. Remember that a little seasoning goes a long way.

Crackers pre-cut on the baking sheet.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top.

When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool on the pan for about 10 minutes. If you have not pre-cut the crackers, you can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.

Finished Lavash Crackers

*The Stress Test

The stress test is performed by cutting off a small piece of dough from the larger batch and gently stretching and turning it to see if it will hold a paper-thin, see-through membrane. If the dough falls apart before it makes this window pane, continue kneading it for another minute or two and test again.