A Visit to Jerusalem

 I purchased the book Plenty several years ago when a number of friends had it on their Christmas lists and it was well-reviewed all over the place. I particularly liked the photograph of the eggplant with the pomegranate seeds, even though my husband and son won't eat eggplant. The critical attention paid to Jerusalem: A Cookbook was not to be ignored, so when Laurie Perry suggested it as a pre-Passover/Easter selection for the Cook Book Book Club, a majority of our members agreed. We met on March 26 for a wonderful feast and several of the recipes (and one new one) went on to a Passover seder not long after.

 

Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Jerusalem was written by chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, who were raised in different parts of Jerusalem but met in London where they are now business partners. Yotam's father was an Italian Jew whose family relocated to Jerusalem, and Sami's family is from the Muslim area of eastern Jerusalem. The book gives a strong sense of the culinary traditions of both cultures, and how Jerusalem has changed over the years. It's a fascinating read, and there are photographs for every recipe given.

Menu

Ka'ach Bilmalch with Parsley-Garlic-Yogurt Sauce

Raw Artichoke and Herb Salad
Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds
Pistachio Soup
Herb Pie 

Lemony Leek Meatballs
Fish and Caper Kebobs with Burnt Eggplant and Lemon Pickle
Chicken with Clementines and Arak
Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pinenuts
Poached Pears in White Wine and Cardamom
Clementine and Almond Syrup Cake

Ka'ach Bilmalch with Parsley-Garlic-Yogurt Sauce

My favorite over-achiever Susan Avallone, who loves to bake and also brought dessert, made Ka'ach Bilmalch (which sounds like a Klingon threat) with a Parsley-Garlic-Yogurt Sauce, on which we nibbled as everyone else arrived and dishes made it to the table. They are almost like teething bagels, or perhaps the savory version of the Italian biscuit tarella, but we did enjoy them, with or without the sauce.

Raw Artichoke and Herb Salad

We began the sit-down lunch with a pair of salads. Crystal Armstrong made the Raw Artichoke and Herb Salad, while my sister T Valada-Viars made the Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds. Following the rule that we should try to follow the recipe and not increase proportions, because we're just looking for a taste, poor Crystal did not get a serving of her own, wonderful, salad. Kudos to Crystal for cleaning those fresh artichokes to shave into the salad.

Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds

T's salad was equally appreciated, and she modified it to take it to a seder on the first night of Passover by substituting matzoh for the pita "croutons."

Pistachio Soup

Michelle Resnick had a go at the Pistachio Soup recipe. By using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, she was able to make a soup our vegetarian would have eaten (she had to cancel at the last minute) and one she could (and did) serve at her seder to the vegans who attended. 

Herb Pie

The Herb Pie, a variation on the feta pies found all over the middle east, was made by Sharon Baker. When she explained some of the issues she had in putting the pie together because of the fragility of filo, Laurie recommended that next time she take two sheets at a time. Sharon reported back that the trick worked well when she made the pie again.

Quick Pickled Lemon

My contribution to the meal consisted of Fish and Caper Kabobs with Burnt Eggplant and Lemon Pickle. The first step in this entree involved making a batch of the Quick Pickled Lemons because there was not enough time to make Preserved Lemons. The pickled lemons require about two days of advanced planning, but the preserved lemons need at least a month (I now have a jar of them in the cabinet, too.) The lemon is really a garnish for the eggplant.

I took advantage of my kitchen grill and prepared the eggplant that way, charring the skin all over on the flames and then letting the flesh drain and cool well before chopping it up and adding the other ingredients. The book discusses whether this eggplant rises to being called baba ganoush or if it is just an eggplant salad (tahini appears to be the decisive factor, and this recipe doesn't have it.) I personally don't care, because I will eat any eggplant dish that is put before me.

A plate with a bit of everything, with the Burnt Eggplant and Lemon Pickle at the bottom, and the Fish and Caper Kabob above them to the left.

The fish "kabobs" were more like oval-shaped patties, and weren't on any kind of a skewer. They were rather fragile, and I think they needed more oil for frying than I prepared. I was rather disappointed, but everyone else pronounced them good. I would probably try making them again sometime.

Yogurt with Cucumber

Because I will take any excuse to make tatziki, or whatever the equivalent dish is in the many countries surrounding the Mediterranean, I prepared the Yogurt with Cucumber from Jerusalem. The combination of fresh and dried mint may have been what I was missing when I tried to replicate the version from my favorite local Lebanese restaurant. I could eat it for lunch any day. 
 

Lemony Leek Meatballs

The cucumber and yogurt was also a good accompaniment to the fish and the beef Lemony Leek Meatballs which Amie Brockway-Metcalf made. She had arrived home from a family vacation the day before and thought it was a recipe she could pull together with limited time. She was correct (and they looked so much nicer than my fish.)
 

Chicken with Clementines and Arak

Just as I tend to look for fish recipes to prepare, Laurie Perry seems to make a number of the chicken dishes we've eaten. This time, her submission was Chicken with Clementines and Arak. So moist, so delicious, and, apparently, so easy. She planned to make it for Passover. I'm impressed by how good chicken thighs can be when chicken breasts tend to become very, very dry. I can't make this for my family, since my son is allergic to oranges and their variations, but I would consider making this dish if I were making dishes for a large dinner and there would be something else for him to eat.  

Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pinenuts

As I have said repeatedly, I will eat eggplant in pretty much any form it comes in. Kim Gottlieb-Walker made the Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pinenuts. This is another dish which would be ideal for making for a large dinner party, and Kim brought a huge pan of it to the lunch. Each half of the eggplants above could easily serve two people. Add some bread and an salad and it would be a perfect lunch on its own.

Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas & Chile

Although it was removed from the menu when Liz Mortensen said she couldn't attend the lunch, I decided we needed a starch and Laurie and I made the Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile Liz  was going to do for us. It turned out to be easy, and made a huge amount of pasta, easily a meal on its own on another day. It was also very pretty. I think it would probably be better while still hot, before the yogurt was soaked up by the pasta.

Poached Pears in White Wine and Cardamom

We had two wonderful desserts. Catherine Fleming made Poached Pears in White Wine and Cardamom and Susan made another fabulous cake, this time Clementine and Almond Syrup Cake. 
The pears were served with a spoonful of creme fraiche, and also had some saffron coloring the wine syrup. A dessert like this is perfect note for ending a meal.

Clementine and Almond Syrup Cake

Susan's cake used finely ground almonds, which she took the time to do herself, but pre-ground almond flour from someplace like Bob's Red Mill would probably make it easier. The dark chocolate ganache is a perfect finish to the moist cake underneath, which was soaked in the clementine syrup. I saved another piece for a later snack. So did my sister.

A piece of cake for later.

I expect that recipes from this book will have a regular rotation in my kitchen. I look forward to June, when it will be the Food52 Cookbook Club selection and I will have 30 days of excuses to cook from Jerusalem.

Pickled Lemons for next time.

Cook Book Book Club Meeting #2

The Cook Book Book Club met for the second time in March 2016 and prepared recipes from Mediterranean: Food of the Sun by Jacqueline Clark and Joanna Farrow.

It is not a new book, but it has amazing recipes and good photographs. It covers the entire range of the countries rimming the Mediterranean sea, focusing on fresh ingredients with which it is a pleasure to work.

The menu: 

Hummus Bi Tahina
Sweet and Sour Onion Salad
Couscous Salad
Turkish Salad
Moussaka
Vegan Moroccan Curry with Couscous
Grilled Sea Bass with Fennel
Egyptian Rice and Lentils
Chicken Thighs with Lemon and Garlic
Risotto with Spring Vegetables
Walnut and Ricotta Cake
Honey and Pinenut Tart

Because of the time-lapse between our meeting and getting this written up, I'm not sure about some of the dishes, and I am pretty sure I don't have all of them actually in photographs. 

Clockwise from lower right: Hummus Bi Tahina, Egyptian Rice and Lentils, Turkish Salad and Sweet and Sour Onion Salad

 Front to back: Sweet and Sour Onion Salad and Turkish Salad

Grilled Sea Bass with Fennel

 I made the grilled sea bass, and probably came close to burning down the house with it. The whole bass is gutted and cleaned, rubbed all over with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then covered inside and out with fennel seeds. It is placed on a hot grill until cooked through, so we fired up the outside gas grill to cook it. The fish was a seven-pounder, which is about twice the size called for in the recipe. I had no luck finding sea bass at any of my grocers, so Laurie Perry recommended I try a wholesaler of which she knew in the Valley. Eureka, but not much choice as to size. The bass is finished by dousing it in heated Pernod, a French licorice flavored liquor. That's where I nearly burned down the house: I forgot I had it on the stove to warm and went to my down-stairs refrigerator. Before I came back, the fumes had caught fire. Good thing we have a metal awning over the stove! The fish was amazing.

Vegan Moroccan Curry with Couscous (center) and Risotto with Spring Vegetables (back)

We have vegetarians and pescatarians in our club and allergies to eggs and nuts and a few other things, so a wide range of recipes each meeting means everyone can find something to eat even if they can't try everything. Going away hungry is not likely.

It is generally the intention that everyone makes one dish as laid out in the cook book we've chosen. Kim Gottlieb-Walker decided that she likes her own take on moussaka better than the one in the book, so she brought both versions along for people to try. Eggplant is a big favorite, so she was accommodated. 

Two versions of Moussaka (front) and Chicken Thighs with Lemon and Garlic

Honey and Pinenut Tart

Walnut and Ricotta Cake

11 members of the club; front: Kim Gottlieb-Walker, Mary DeLongis, Lisa Klink; standing/rear: T. Valada-Viars, Michelle Resnick, Maria Alexander, Jess Cail, Laura Brennan, Kerry Glover, Liz Mortensen, Sharon Baker

Two desserts were shared by twelve attendees that day, and the makers had some to take home with them.

Looking back over the past year, this was definitely one of our favorite cookbooks, and I think everyone left the lunch with the intention of revisiting it. I have made the bass again, using smaller fish.

Edible Superheroes

My husband had a birthday last week and we celebrated with some of our Sunday Super Supper Squad on, well, Sunday. My husband Len Wein created Wolverine (and Storm, Colossus, and Nightrcrawler), so buying the cake pan that Williams Sonoma sells was a no-brainer. (If Len had created Wolverine for DC Comics, there would have been no need to buy the merchandise because it would have arrived in the mail, along with royalty checks, but that's another story for a different blog.)

We've been using the six-character cakelet pan for wall decoration, since so much of the rest of the house is all about superheroes. On Sunday, my son Michael baked and one of our "adopted daughters," Dani, decorated 13 (two pans plus one extra Wolverine) of the cakelets and everyone got to eat at least one. Dani had plenty of samples on display around the house to get the coloring close.

If you are thinking about buying one of the pans, it does come with a recipe but a box cake mix makes enough batter for the six heads with a bit left over (which is why two boxes had enough left over for an extra Wolverine.) Using the cakelet pan is an excellent idea if you have young comic book fans, but the decorating does take a bit of time and patience. I could see having a kids party and providing the baked cakelets and letting each child decorate his or her own. I also think Williams Sonoma and Marvel should get together and do some women superhero molds (starting with Storm.)

Making Cakes Special

I know it didn't start with Ace of Cakes on Food Network, because I had booklets showing how to make cute cakes when I was growing up. In fact, I think I remember cakes that incorporated dolls for birthdays or showers. I insisted that most of the sections of my own wedding cake, a zillion years ago, be chocolate (scandelous!) Imagine what the people who went to my first, long-ago wedding would think about the armadillo on the top of my friends Lisa Jane and Andy's wedding cake.

Yet today, cakes look more interesting than they used to. There's an extreme cooking challenge show that had a bigger-than-life sized sock monkey cake with pyrotechnics on it this season. We went to our friend Mel Gilden's birthday party last summer, and he got a cake that looked like a volcano with all kinds of dinosaurs around it. By mixing a little dry ice and water in the tube in the center, smoke rose out of the cone and down the sides of the mountain, an effect lost on the still shot I've got here. It was still fun, especially for a 60th birthday. We and our friends have never grown up.

I haven't really seen one in person, but there's a printer that can print on a cake with edible inks. My husband has gifted me with several such cakes: one had a photograph of my horse on it, another had Len's variation on last year's Harry Potter title, which was released on my birthday. In our area, Bea's Bakery in Tarzana can print from provided photographs.

I had a very simple cake made for Len's birthday earlier this month. Yellow cake with chocolate icing celebrating his 60th birthday. It wasn't until it was too late that I actually thought of some interesting graphics to pull together in Adobe Photoshop--although I might run into some copyright problems when I go to the bakery. There was a sign at the counter of the Von's bakery that indicated there could be no changes in the superhero cakes because of licensing restrictions. My choice would be a cake with both Wolverine and Swamp Thing on it, and that's an unauthorized Marvel-DC crossover, I'm afraid.

Marilyn (a.k.a. "Fuzzy") Niven was absolutely inspired when she ordered a cake for her husband's 70th birthday party, which we attended on Saturday. Using the cover of one of Larry's books, the spine celebrated the 70th edition and the opened cover of the book revealed spun sugar creatures and worlds based on Larry's stories. It was quite wonderful, as you can see from the photographs. The spun sugar elements had been sprayed with some sort of preservative, so they weren't actually edible. They might make an interesting addition to someone's crystal figure collection until they melt in the forthcoming heat.













West Valley Occupational Center, which is located in a block between where I live and where I work, has a cake-decorating class which a couple of my friends took. I don't have the time to do it this summer, but it might be a temptation when I have a little time. It's just that I'm so clumsy and I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist to want to take on something at which I'm likely to be miserable.