Xmas in the holy land

My non existent attitude towards religion doesn't stop me from celebrating religious holidays as any chance is good to cook, have friends around and eating an insane amount of crisps (why the hell am I running my ass off otherwise?). Ok, next year we will be more prepared about what we are actually celebrating and won't spread false news about the 20 days pregnancy of mary, but quoting a friend of us, perfect is the enemy of good :)

SALMON AND BROCCOLI PIE

Prepare the besciamella sauce melting 50 gr of butter and 50 grams of flower in a pan, then add up to one litre of milk and stir until it boils. When it is ready, add nutmeg and salt. Boil the broccoli in water for few minutes and then add them to the besciamella. Take one sheet of puff pastry and place it in a baking tray, add the broccoli besciamella and the smoked salmon in thin strips to decorate. Cook in the oven for 30 mins @180 degrees.

 

SPICE BRAD STICKS

Evergreen. Taken from here.

PASTA SCEMA

As the chef (that wasn't me) defined it :). A very nice pasta with roasted breadcrumbs, sundried tomatoes and tuna.

Ribollita im pita

Winter in Tel Aviv means a week with some rain and some 7 degrees. Ok, readers from abroad, no room for complaining but please understand that the apartments here are damn cold and the only way of heating them is either rivers of cava (and yes, we VERY reluctantly did it) or a hot soup. 

And now that the winter is already gone, the sun shines high in the sky and the parka coat can rest in peace into the closet until I move to Maastricht, Silviot are left with ribollita soup for the whole week and for the whole building :) 

But ribollita without bread is like peas without carrots, like AS Roma without Totti, like, to come back to the main point, TLV without sun. I had mini pitot in the kitchen and no will to go fetch more suitable bread, so here we go:

RIBOLLITA IN THE PITA POCKET

I started with the celery-onion-carrot mix chopped and fried in a big pot with two spoons of oil evo. I then added cannellini white beans, a whole peeled potato, one can of crushed tomatoes, mixed herbs and filled the pot with water. I let it cook for a lot doing a bit of catch up with my online spanish classes, until the potato was soft. I mashed the potato, took out some of the beans (40%) and blended them, hence added everything back into the soup. I also added a package of unknown green vegetables (I dreamed about finding black kale, then hoped to be surprised by regular kale, sincerely wished to find a cabbage but eventually settled for this weird 7 shekels dark lettuce). I served it with the vegetables inside a pita pocket and the soupy part outside, and I will serve it again, and again, and again….

A siculoisraeli salad

One of the most heart-warming rituals I take part since I am living in the holy land is the pomelo break: during the pomelo season, my boss comes in the morning with this giant heavy orange and we all gather after lunch to have a piece of the holy citrus, amen. As passionate as he is for italian cousin, the idea of exporting pomelo (unknown to most of Europe, as far as I know) into italian food came naturally, so hey, challenge accepted :)

POMELO, FENNEL AND SYRIAN OLIVES SALAD

I peeled the pomelo (which is already quite a challenge, as this obese orange has a very thick skin :) ), squeezed half of it and cut the rest into pieces. I sliced the fennels keeping the small leaves for decorating the salad. I took the seeds out of a bunch of green bitterish olives (yes, sometimes I buy food only because it has a fancy packaging!) and mixed them with the pomelo pieces and the fennels. I made an emulsion with half lemon, oil, the squeezed pomelo, salt and pepper to season the salad. Nice :)

SICILIAN LINGUINE WITH CARAMELISED CHERRY TOMATOES

As refreshing and patriotic as it was, a salad is not enough to have two young and sporty people still in their 20ies satisfied (me and A), so I stayed on the track of Sicilianness and made this linguine with breadcrumbs, anchovies and caramelised tomatoes. 

I cut the tomatoes in halves and place them in a baking tray with some caster sugar, salt, oregano and oil EVO. They need to dry in the oven @ 150 for about one hour. I boiled the linguine; in the meanwhile, I took a large pan and add oil EVO, two garlic cloves and the anchovies. When the anchovies were melted, I take the garlic cloves out and add breadcrumbs (a shame I didn't have real bread!). I fried the breadcrumbs in the pan for a couple of minutes and seasoned the linguine with this mix and the cherry tomatoes.