A Unique Purim Twist

Do you love eating mooncake skin during the Chinese Mooncake festival? Well, here's a twist for you! Mooncake skin, sweet apple/honey filling, and haman's-hat-shapes. These triangular confections are sweetly unique - appropriate for any festivity, but especially for Purim.

A Passover-Inspired Meal

Here's my first experience cooking a kosher for passover meal. It was kosher for passover - inspired, except for the  kosher part ;) I really cannot blowtorch the whole kitchen and boil all the utensils.(Read this article for the modern history of Matzo... really interesting!) 

We had every part of the seder, and improvised, except for the shank bone, which we did not manage to obtain. 

The boiled egg (beitzah) broke into pieces :) We had some REALLY bitter chinese herbs for maror, lettuce with salt water as dressing for karpas. 

I made flour+water round matza, and that was the most authentic part of the meal (100% atta flour) I made my own charoset with apples, almonds, cinnamon, honey, and raisins - really tasty, and really looks like mortar.

For the main meal we had a Ashkenazi staple - latkes! Potato pancakes, with nothing dairy and absolutely no flour inside. In fact, there was absolutely no dairy in the meal. I made beef patties for meat - yum! And I deepfried crisp potato skins as a special treat!  Ribena substituted kosher wine (hee hee).. 

Below is the improvised matzo bag with compartments - a large napkin. 

Here's the recipes I used: 

Matzo

3 parts all-purpose/atta flour

1 part water

Heat oven to 220C or higher. Stir flour and water until well combined. The dough should be soft but not sticky, the texture of modelling clay. Flour rolling surface well. Roll a portion the dough out very quickly with rolling pin, into a thin sheet, as thin as possible, use the cake/pie pan bottom to cut to shape. Invert dough onto the pan bottom and pierce with a cake comb/fork all over. Grease the cake/pie pan lightly with oil and bake. If you are making square/rectangle matzo, you can use a pasta machine to roll out the shapes. Bake until golden brown but not burnt. The matzo will be crisp and hard. For a more tasty matzo, add olive oil, salt, or even honey. You can use egg, if you wish - use a recipe for egg-based pasta.

Latkes

6 potatoes- washed and peeled

3 eggs

1/2 large onion, peeled

Salt and pepper to taste

Grate onions in your food processor using the smallest grater. Grate potatoes using the largest grater. Transfer to a mixing bowl and stir to combine. Break in eggs and season with salt and pepper. Stir well and fry heaped spoonfuls with oil over low fire until golden brown. 

Meat patties:

1 kg beef

2 eggs

Salt, Pepper, grated onions, and worchestershire

Mix ingredients, and fry a test patty (to ensure that there is enough seasoning.) Shape meat into balls/patties with hands and gry. 

Charoset (which makes a really good raw, vegan, parve, jam)

A sprinkle of cinnamon    

A handful of almonds

2 soggy, yucky, apples

A handful of raisins,

A drizzle of honey

A splash of wine (I did not use this)

Blend almonds in food processor. Add in everything else and blend. (Feel free to improvise your own recipe with whatever you have on hand.) This goes really well with toasted bread and butter. 

 Fried Potato Skin - Take the potato peels from the latkes, examine them to remove bad spots and greens (there were none) and then deep fry. I stir-fried them again before dinner to make sure they were crispy enough

I hope these recipes may be help to you!

Shalom,

Beka. 

Challah for Shabbat

The joy of Shabbat dinner is one of sharing, and breaking the bread of fellowship. 

We had and a milchig-free dinner! All meat and no milk ;) parve challah served with honey, or balsamic vinegar, rosemary and olive dip. Mummy whipped up a colorful salad, and baked roast chicken (seasoned with herbs (esp rosemary olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon, etc. - no butter ;0 )

A milchig dessert, Dream Whip rose, a chocolate ice-cream cake (Rose Levy Beranbaum's cocoa souffle roll layered with banana, nestle choc ice cream, and drizzled with hersheys ). Daddy, as usual, made double shot espressos. 

This is our second "kosher" meal. We cannot keep kashrut laws (even Cold Storage has few items marked "K"), and we cannot observe the 613 mitzvot, nor do we strive to, but it is fun and natural to share our table with love, hospitality, and kosher-inspired food :).

Read more about Challah here:

Mini Cakes

Shalom! I've recently baked two of these little cakes and decided to share them here on the blog.

Both are 4-in wide brownie cakes, one with coffee custard the other banana custard. (No recipe, just whipped up). I have made some amendments and improvements to the brownie cakes - tastes better every time but still long way to go.

Chocolate fondant (cocoa powder + sticky BWY fondant), and chocolate plastic. This design is based on a family heirloom belt bought by my grandpa in the US a long time ago. Cocoa gave it a tarnished and rusty look that I wanted.

And this cake is a simple miniature cake with red fondant flowers. I am still practicing basic things like covering a cake with fondant...

Lots of Country Seed Bread - 10 Loaves

Really Easy to make Country-Seed Bread Recipe. We make them in bulk for our family, and freeze them to last. 

Frosty Apple Peel Roses

Leftover apple peels, cooked and boiled until soft, shaped, and frozen until frosty :)