Sping break

One of the many religious families taking advantage of the holiday to go hiking. Strangely they wore their best cloths for the dust and mud.  

Pesach holiday is over. As usual there were many hikes, picnics and family get together.  We visited sites North and South of the country along with most of Israel's population. The kids homework and school assignment were left for the last minute so we could have a bit of family fun. Though some of the days we  managed going to work, the past couple of weeks were mostly dedicated to our favorite amusements namely lots of great food while enjoying Nature. We had a lovely weather and spring brought with it an abundance of flowers which some I've photographed. Here are a few for your enjoyment.  

From left upper corner: Judas tree, sage, Jerusalem sage, cyclamen, cistus, orchid, chrysanthemum, buttercup, orchid, anemones and buttercups. 

Mega gluten-free chocolate cookies

Passover is the not just the holiday of freedom or spring, it is a known fact that here in Israel it is the holiday of the Celiac inflicted. Except for matzo and matzo flour, everything in Passover is gluten-free: from pasta to wafers. We sometimes stock up gluten-free provisions for the whole year because it is available cheaply only in Passover.  There is also the issue of eating and cooking for the Seder night where the best part is the desserts; they are all gluten-free for Passover (unless they're made with matzo).  

Now some recipes make the transition to non-gluten flour very easily and some fail entirely but the cookies I present here pass the gluten-free test in flying colors. This is due to the fact that they comprise more than 1kg of chocolate and not much more. In my household of severe chocoholics these cookies are a huge success and they are quick and easy to make. They will also impress people very much because homemade cookies are not that common anymore. The best thing about them besides their divine taste in that the house smells like a Parisian patisserie for hours.

Here is the recipe. It is based on Carin Goren (a baking guru here in Israel and admired by my daughters like a rock star.) 

Ingredients:

450gr dark chocolate chopped

300gr dark chocolate chips

300gr white chocolate chips

170gr butter or butter tasting margarine

 4 eggs

300gr sugar

70gr (half a cup) gluten-free flour (cornflour)

1/2 tea spoon baking powder

1 tea spoon salt

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 centigrade
2. Line 3 to 4 baking form or trays with baking paper
3. Melt in the microwave the butter and dark chocolate and mix well.
4. Whip in a mixer the eggs and sugar for about 5 minutes until a light fluffy mixture forms.
5. Fold the chocolate and butter into the eggs.
6. Sift the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and add them to the batter, mix till all is unified but not too much.
7. Add the dark and white chocolate chips, fold them gently into the mix, the consistency will be quite liquid but that is okay.
8. Form the cookies with an ice-cream spoon or a small cup: place a dollop of mixture and leave sufficient spaces between the cookies because they expand.
9. Bake around 15 to 20 minutes, until the cookies appear shiny and solid.  If you don't have enough trays, bake the cookies in turns, keep the batter in refrigerator and cool the tray before lining them with another set of cookies.
10. Wait till the cookies cool and then separate them from the tray and store them in cool and dry place. They're supposed to last a few days but they disappear in a blink of an eye.

Matzo brei version 2.0

Balkan style matzo brei with spinach and Cascaval cheese

Disclosure: the writer was a guest of Landver Coffee in Givataim.

Here in Israel during the week of Passover holiday, practically no bread is sold or any similar baked goods. The people of Israel have to do with matzo, a form of unleavened bread made only of wheat flour and water.  Now in my family we are not religious and we stack our freezer with bread to last us the whole week, but we still eat the obligatory matzo. The best way in my opinion to eat them is in the form of matzo brei; when you take the matzoth soak them in either water or milk and then crumble them into beaten eggs and fry the mixture with either butter or olive oil or margarine or any type of fat that'll make you happy.  Every ethnic group has a version of the dish but the basic ingredients are the same.

This week I've ate a completely new and tasty version of the traditional matzo brei. It was an upgraded version which I like to call "matzo brei version 2.0."  This new and improved version of the traditional dish is a part of a Passover menu that will be served in the Café Landver chain of coffee shops.  Landver is an old company of coffee vendors here in Israel; I like their coffee shops because they serve unsophisticated but good food and excellent coffee so I was really pleased to be invited to the menu launch in the newly opened Café Landver branch in the city of Givataim, a few minutes' drive from Tel-Aviv.

Landver Cafe in Givataim

The café is a neighborly venue; its interior décor in brown and yellow retro style gives it a cozy and inviting atmosphere. The food was excellent: from the breakfast menu of omelets with mushroom and goat cheese or the rustic pasta pesto with chicken and broccoli. The highlight though was the different types of matzo brei served in the new Passover menu.  There were two savory kinds; the Balkan with spinach and caşcaval cheese and the Greeck one with eggplants and goat cheese both really delicious. The best one in my opinion was the dessert dish of matzo brei with apples and cinnamon with whipped cream on the side, very decadent!

Eggplant roles Greek style matzo brei 

   

Viennese style dessert with matzo and apples

So if you're here for the holiday visiting or traveling try one of  the Landver Café branches for a delicious leisurely branch and don't forget to order matzo brei, the price range in between 27 to 29 NIS (about 7 US dollars) per dish.

Happy Passover!

  

Back to blogging: My little organic garden

suprisingly i got busy. once i got back home from the course in Vienna, suddenly work begun piling up and there i was once again working, being a mom and going to sleep at 22:00 every night. so not much time was left for blogging. this left all my thousands of fans in tears, but now I'm back with this little post. i have much to say about the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach) and the Seder night that is a fertile ground for family drama or comedy (depends on your view of life). But since i have so much to say its totally incoherent, so i gave it up for now.
i want to write about my little project. My vegetable garden. this was part of our holiday activities since during the Pesach holidays we don't get out of the house. during this holiday every piece of national park, sea side or shopping mall in Israel is packed with families on vacation. since standing in lines and sitting in traffic jams with 3 impatient kids is not my cup of tea, Pesach is time for the indoors or rather for the backyard. this holiday we recruited the kids to work in the backyard and recover the lawn from the winter damages. The kids helped us to uproot weeds, scatter compost and plant  flowers beds. we have a very small backyard but we try to keep it nurtured. in our attempt to turn our home to an autarkic farm in the future we grow vines, olives and pomegranates. we try to make it our haven with lots of hammocks and rocking chairs and little places to hide and be surrounded by vegetation.

our house has also a huge porch that is connected to our bedroom. i know, it sounds great, and we had great plans for the place but somehow they always dissolved to neglect. the only thing that survived a year of not opening the door to the porch were our pear trees.

but i decided that this holiday we'll turn this unused plot to my own organic (no pesticides or herbicides) vegetable garden. working with mud and soil is great fun, (my two year old adores it) and i found that physical work in uprooting weeds and grooming trees is more relaxing then Yoga. the establishing of the "bedroom porch organic vegetable garden" was lots of fun to kids as well, we planted in 4 planters tomatoes, pumpkin, coriander, and eggplant.

 i think it's good to show the kids that food grows and comes from soil and mud and not from sterile supermarkets. the inspiration to my little project came from a book i recommend: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Now I'll need to be dedicated and hope that in a few months I'll eat my own grown tomatoes in the sandwich I'm taking to work.