If there’s one word that doesn’t come up much on this site, it’s GORGEOUS. That’s because I’m all about flavour and convenience. If something tastes great, it’s not too much potchke to make, and it comes out reliably every single time, then it’ll go on my list of favourites. If it’s a hassle and never quite succeeds – well, it’s not one I’ll try more than a couple of times, let alone share with you here. You might think these Florentine cookies are the exception. They certainly LOOK potchke-dik, especially if you garnish them up with drizzled chocolate, sprinkled icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar), or whatever frou-frou touches you care to add. But that’s the thing – they’re not . These are startlingly delicious and easy to make! And DEFINITELY fall into that magical category of “I can’t believe they’re really pareve.” (Or vegan, or whatever your food choices are…) Why Florentine cookies? I grew up eating Florentine cookies, which we’d buy at Yitz’s (not-kosher) del...

     What’s your go-to chicken recipe? One you can use for any given weekday or even, in a pinch, for Shabbos? One that just takes a few minutes to throw together? One you feel good about sending to other families in the community - or just keeping it and eating it yourself? Do you even have one? I didn’t used to, but I do now! And I'd love to share it with you. Many years ago, I was given Norene Gilletz's cookbook The Pleasures of Your Food Processor as a wedding present. Like a few cookbooks from this beloved Canadian food writer, it was actually

Pareve shortbread???? Vegan shortbread? Shortbread that showcases the unique, lovely, and delicate flavours of the Land of Israel? And hey, while we're dreaming, a fast, easy shortbread that comes together in a few fuss-free minutes? Have I got a recipe for you! This Lemon, Rosemary, and Olive Oil Shortbread recipe from Cookie and Kate combines just a few simple and unlikely ingredients, and the result is a great big sophisticated thumbs up.   Let me say right up front that while I love lemon desserts, I am not a massive olive oil fan, and naturally shy away from using it in desserts, except for this amazing Pesach olive oil mousse , which I make, in which the chocolate almost totally masks any olive-oily flavour.   So if you're not an olive oil fan

Cabbage rolls… I admit it, they used to be a big YUCK from me, but they’ve really grown on me over the years. Think of them as Jewish sushi… heated up… in tomato sauce…? Okay, maybe not.   But I hope these quick tricks will have you thinking twice about maybe throwing some cabbage rolls into your family’s mix.   This post is exactly what it says: two tips that will save you a ton of time. Cabbage rolls are so totally forgiving, I'm not even going to give you a recipe. To make them, just mix up a bunch of meat with some parsley, salt, pepper, eggs, maybe rice if you like that sort of thing, and roll it into balls. (Omit the meat and just roll up rice for a veg/vegan version, as I do for NR!). Wrap balls in cabbage leaves, place on a bed of cabbage leaves in the pan (these don't get served or eaten, they're just there for flavour / moisture), and bake with your choice of tomato sauce / ketchup / brown sugar / ginger ale / garlic / sweet & savoury combo in ...

Are you making your chicken soup all wrong??? If you're like me, you've always believed chicken soup has to cook low and slow -- the lower and slower the better.  Who doesn't know that? But after I shared here about my recent experience using the pressure cooker to create a dish that I might ordinarily have used the crockpot for, I went back and read the article by food wizard Kenji Lopez-Alt about why pressure cookers totally knock slow cookers out of the water . And his main example is... chicken soup.  Well, stock, but hey, you say potato, I say po-taaaaa-toe.  Because what is our trusty Shabbos soup if not stock with some veggies and kneidlach tossed in? For about 20 years now, Wednesday has been Soup Day around here.  Bones go in, cooking low and slow.  In Toronto, we did the soup overnight on Wednesday and fridged it Thursday morning (or, in the winter, set it out on the porch to freeze!).  Here in Israel, we do it on Wednesday afternoon after ou...

Is there anything better than the taste of lime in the summertime?  If you've read many of my posts here, you'll know I'm obsessed with lime flavoured anything, especially after a few years here in Israel with NO LIMES (waah!). Now that they're readily available and seasonal, I make sure to take advantage, gorging on amazing fresh Israeli limes before they're gone for the rest of the year. (We do freeze some juice as cubes to use in sauces, salads, etc.) I know what you're thinking, though.  It's NOT summertime.  By now, mid-October, we're well into fall.  But here where we live, temperatures are still in the 30s (celsius, I guess mid to high 80s F?) and we haven't really had our first good rain.  So it's still summer in my mind, though to be honest, I often forget what season it is. In any case, the air conditioning is still running -- and that's what really counts. And when it's hot outside, there seriously is nothing like l...

How do you feel about coleslaw??? I’ll be honest – I’ve always hated it.  I just found it bland and uninspiring.  Of course, I was used to the KFC style of coleslaw, which is essentially pureed or finely chopped-up cabbage with a ton of mayonnaise.  Just not much to get excited about there. This one’s from Popeye’s, not KFC, but I’m sure you get the idea: One more complicating factor in our coleslaw lives was this:  one of our kids hates mayonnaise with a passion.  Cannot stand to be

I wasn’t a big meat cook in Canada.  We ate a lot of chicken, but I was kind of shy about beef.  Still, I managed to make some acceptable roasts from time to time – meat that was tender enough and tasty enough that we could enjoy it together on special occasions. All that changed when we moved to Israel, where all the meat cuts are different from what I was used to and nothing, it seemed, was tender and tasty except the most expensive bits, like steak (which always seems to turn out tough when we make it at home, but we don’t mind because it’s delicious). But some of the English speakers here were chatting on our WhatsApp group last week about roasting beef, and it made me really want to try it again –even after having been burned numerous times.  So on Thursday evening, we bought a nice little #6 roast, which according to this indispensible meat chart is called Fillet Medumeh (פילה מדומה), petit tender, or foreshank.  The page's owner, Marc Gottlieb, says i...

If you’re like me and cook by intuition, it can be hard to know when a kugel is just right to go into the oven.  How do you know you’ve added enough salt and other seasonings?  You don’t want to accidentally go overboard, but how much is enough?  And you certainly don’t want to invest all that effort and bake the thing for an hour or whatever only to discover that it tastes bland as paste. Of course, you could just take a taste of the raw mixture, but somehow, that option has never seemed appealing to me. So what can you do? This isn’t a fancy tip, but it’s one has helped me so much over the years.  I think it will come in handy for you in all sorts of ways – not just with kugels, but also with gefilte fish, cakes, cookies, breads; anything you don’t want to sample raw for whatever reason. (Lots of real bakers eat raw bread dough, even sourdough, and claim to love it… I am not one of them, and the thought of eating raw flour products seems just icky to me....

One of the things I missed most when I started keep kosher was JELLO.  Ooey, gooey, jiggly jello.  Mmm, mmm, good.  And totally, totally not kosher. A few years later, I discovered a REAL and delicious brand of kosher gelatin, which we used to buy often enough in Toronto to keep me happy. However, here in Israel, there’s no such thing, just the insipid brands of kosher jello, which are based on vegetable gel and don’t – in my limited experience – set up properly to a shiny crystal-clear texture. So I’ve started playing with real gelatin since we’ve been here, because it’s cheap and plentifully available – and, as I think I’ve commented before, mysteriously pareve.  There are two kinds; the red package is meat-source and the blue is fish-source.  From bad experience in Toronto, I’ve found that fish gelatin gives a weird tangy taste to everything you use it in.  This would probably be fine in a citrus-themed dessert (as shown on the box), but defini...

It may not be summer yet, but we’ve had a few days so far that have really hinted that it’s on its way.  And for summer Shabboses, what’s really nice is an easy no-bake dessert that isn’t tremendously patchkedik (involved, preparation-wise). These truffles capture the “cookie dough” vibe perfectly – they’re soft inside and not too sweet for a grown-up palate, but not too peanut-buttery and healthy-tasting (okay, they’re not healthy at all!) that kids will turn up their noses.  In other words, they’re just right.  And you can make them with just FIVE things you probably have sitting around your kitchen the week after Pesach – at least, I did.

Are you sick of kugels but aren’t sure what else you can make to serve on the side of a Shabbos or Yom Tov meal?  Here’s something that’s just as EASY as a kugel, only in tasty, crunchy, bite-sized morsels.   Last week, I wanted something like the Alexa brand sweet potato “tater tots,” which by all accounts are absolutely delicious.  We can’t buy them here, so I knew I had to make something from scratch.  My puffs came out totally different, but utterly delightful in their own right.  They’re a great way to sneak even more of that sweet potato goodness onto your family’s menu. Plus, they’re terrifically simple: Bake or boil the sweepoes (I boiled mine), puree them with egg yolks, cornstarch and seasoning, and then coat the mixture with panko before baking.  I added a little melted coconut oil to the sweet potatoes; you could probably leave it out OR substitute canola if you wanted something subtler (there wasn’t a strong coconut taste, however)....