Canapés and the thin difference between puff pastry and shortbread

Last week I hosted a lab night to warm up out new flat and the task to accomplish was to feed 11 hungry neuroscientists (just to give you a picture, one of them spontaneously compares herself to a truck driver when it comes to food), luckily hungry AND very talented in the kitchen so it was not only because of Silviot that the night was a success :)

Actually, one of the Silviot (me) did her best to sabotage the night misreading the package of frozen puff pastry, that turned out to be frozen shortbread, hence I had to make a great story up about the long-standing italian tradition of using sweet pastry in association with cheese and curry to create a unique combination of flavors in the mouth. Not sure I persuaded them but they still hold me in the lab so it is fine!

I will not describe in details the recipes but I'll give the idea. I made canapes with roasted cauliflower and tahini, canapes with roasted red peppers and dill, red pepper muffins, a sort-of quiche with broccoli besciamella and salmon, S1 made the tuna roll with potatoes and capers and my colleagues made two delicious desserts, a meringue with halva and cream and the balcanic version of the pannacotta. As the queen of aubergines, the main was of course pasta alla norma :)

Tuna spaghettoni in aubergines mugs, AKA the Aubergines Queen

Like a small child I cannot wait until my next bus ride for posting this, so I reckon my keyboard will be very dirty with oily fingerprints coming from my lunch by the end of it (clear indication than women are indeed multi-tasking but, sadly, not without unpredictable consequences for surrounding objects).

Please, let the bottom line of my epitaph be "Aubergines Queen", because I am sure I can establish a spiritual connection with the chatzilim/eggplants/aubergines/melanzane so that they are proactive in reaching perfection. So let's quit small talking and get straight to the point: yesterday we had a dinner with 6 girls in total, that turned out to be an excellent combination of very different people, all interesting in a different way. The menu was inspired by my secondary never-ending source of inspiration, the blog giallozafferano, and my primary never-ending source of inspiration, mum's pasta with swordfish. I decided to combine the two for this:

TUNA SPAGHETTONI IN AUBERGINES MUGS

I took one aubergine per guest and cut them in halves. I cut the upper end in cubes and emptied the lover end, also making cubes out of the inside. Sprinkle some lemon and coarse salt inside the halves and put the cubes all together to rest into salty water, so that they lose the bitter taste. After at least 30 minutes, place the halves in a baking tray and bake until tender but still in one piece (30 mins in my case). Dry the cubes and fry them in a pan with enough sunflower oil (don't be cheap with oil!), then place the cubes on paper to dry and eventually in a colander with some stone on top of them, so that they release the oil in excess. I pan-fried cherry tomatoes for five minutes with a garlic clove and EVO oil. Separately, I pan-fried tuna cubes (I could not find swordfish, and apparently it is not kosher, god knows why... literally in this case) with EVO oil for two minutes adding a glass of white wine for the last 30 seconds. Mixed the boiled spaghettoni with the aubergines, the tuna and the tomatoes, adding thyme leaves. I placed the spaghettoni inside the aubergines mugs, decorated with some more thyme and EVO oil. 

Shavuot gnocchi

Statistics is kind of giving subtle hints about the fact that I love gnocchi (2 out of 8 posts are about gnocchi, which using the resources of my PhD means 25%). Gnocchi is the food my mum cooks when she wants to cuddle me, and her recipe is so scrumptious that I am constantly challenged to invent variations of gnocchi, as she is the only one that is allowed to make the original one. Combine this with the Israeli cheese-based holiday, Shavuot, and you end up with thyme gnocchi stuffed with cheese (after a loooong queue at the supermarket as everyone in the entire country is willing to purchase cheese)

THYME GNOCCHI STUFFED WITH ASIAGO CHEESE

... or as in this case, given the Asiago is hard to find and given my recently-developed deep love for Spain, Manchego cheese :)
Follow the recipe of the other gnocchi (but without the basil) and add nutmeg to the dough. I also added one egg because I wanted it to be solid enough to hold the cheese. Cut the cheese in cubes and insert a cube in each gnocco, rolling the dough all around the cheese. Cook the gnocchi in boiling water until they float and stir for a couple of minutes in a pan with some butter and thyme (if you do not have sage) leaves. Add a few friends, an Israeli holiday and enjoy :D

Roasted cauliflower, chicken and crunchy quinoa salad

This post might as well been called "a wrong day, that eventually, as many wrong days, turned out to be not totally wrong (except for my tiffany earring lost somewhere between ramat hasharon and dizengof... that still sucks)"

So why cauliflower, why chicken and why crunchy quinoa? Well, my neighbor, colleague, friend and mate in the NYC trip, that after a few months already falls in the "Ireallylikeyou" category, introduced me to Miznon in Ibn Gabirol, aka art within a pita. In the holy pita temple I had a taste of the Gods' food, that happened to be pita stuffed with roasted cauliflowers, served with tomato juice and tahini. That's why roasted cauliflower (and tomato and tahini). Two more to go.
Chicken, well because if you do not like chicken you do not want to go to Israel, unless you are vegetarian or know a reliable pork pusher.
Why quinoa? Because quinoa is soooo cool, bro. I mean, it is not a cereal, it is a PSEUDOcereal, how cool is that? And comes from south america, like the best soccer players and the best white powder (ofter they come together too). And finally, crunchy.... well, many things become crunchy if you leave them on the stove while you are trying to fix a portrait to a wall, and the portrait falls on the (supposedly) empty bottles of red wine, and the wine that was not supposed to be there is magically all over your pants, and so on and so forth until the stink of burned quinoa.

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER, CHICKEN AND CRUNCHY QUINOA SALAD

I boiled the cauliflower cut into small florets for few minutes and then placed them into a baking tray and baked until golden (adding some of the water when dry). I cooked the chicken on a grill adding lemon juice when the meat changed color, then cut it into small stripes. I (over) cooked one cup of quinoa in one cup and a half of water for 15 minutes after boiling and then left the lid sealed for other 10 minutes. I mixed the cauliflower, the chicken, the quinoa and some fresh celery chopped in stripes and seasoned with oil and lemon. Serve on top of blended cherry tomatoes and S1's plain tahini.

Ready in 10 minutes!

Yesterday I was very pleasantly delayed by a phone call coming from far away, hence when I got @arlozorof73 there was really no time for cooking with slowness :) still we had a very nice quick one with S1 and another super funny girl belonging to the Italian crew, who will be thanked forever and ever for sharing her quote "ci si affeziona pure ai cani" (literally: one grows fond even of dogs) that surprisingly fits to describe many social interactions we had here in the holy land!

SALMON BURGERS

I made 6 mini burgers by mixing two salmon slices chopped in small cubes with one egg, chopped spring onions, dill, breadcrumbs and salt. Grilled in the pan for two minutes/side and served with Israeli salad (cherry tomatoes, cucumber and carrots).

The scent of Venere

Given the recurrent analogy between food and sex, I wonder if trading a fancy homemade dinner for some DIY service could be somehow considered a sort of culinary prostitution? Anyway, yesterday our cooking skills pleased two very kind handy men that came with a drill and a lot of patience (a girl can be opinionless towards the position of a bracket as much as a boy in front of the friday night dilemma: red lipstick and natural eyes or pink lipstick and smoky eyes?)

Yesterday I had a very stimulating challange: a pack of italian Venere rice from Azienda Agricola Falasco (NO). Apparently there are many other benefits arising from S1's north-italian origins, aside her excellent capacity of holding drinks :)

And I failed. You cannot perceive it from the picture but the risotto was SALTY! Thing is that Venere rice takes ages to cook and thus gets thirsty very easily. But my name still shines high in the sky thanks to the second main, the legendary fish-in-a-bed....

VENERE RICE WITH STONE BASS, PETIT SANMARZANO TOMATOES AND DILL

I made a fish stock with salmon bones, tomatoes and onion, but in non-kosher countries (where shrimps are easy to find) I would use the shrimps heads. I chopped one onion, put it in a pot with EVO oil and let it get blondinit. Then I added the rice to toast (one handful per guest plus one handful for the pot, they say) and after few minutes I started adding the fish stock one spoon at time.
When the rice was almost ready (ages later for Venere), I stirred for literally 2 minutes the stone bass minced in cubes with EVO oil and a whole garlic clove (that I eventually removed), one glass of white wine and in the last 20 seconds, the mini Sanmarzano tomatoes peeled (30 seconds in boiling water) and chopped. With the fire turned off, I added fresh dill.

FISH-IN-A-BED

This is way the best way to bake fish in the oven, because the salt creates a hard shell that makes the fish cook in its own juice. And it is supereasy, no one can fail, S2 guarantees!

I mixed 1 kg of coarse salt with 1 kg of fine salt and two whipped egg whites. In this case I also mixed chopped fresh herbs (thyme, dill, basil, rosemary) and chopped garlic. I put one slice of lemon, chopped garlic and mixed herbs in the (emptied) belly of each fish (sea breams) and then make the bed with a layer of salt in a baking tray, then the fish and eventually the salty blanket to cover all the fish. This one of the few moments in which also someone like me, whose parents forgot the maternal instinct app while installing the operating system, gets overprotective: is he covered enough? will he be cold in the oven? Let's put some more salt!

30 minutes @ 180 (more or less, numbers faded away in our stove) and the best fish is ready.

BONUS TRACK BY S1: ORANGE AND CHOCOLATE CAKE

For the recipe, ask her!

My ragù (plus its kosher/pregnancy-friendly version)

One of the nicest person I ever met, who happens to be also my very first Israeli friend, asked me about ragù, and since my recipe (that we will call THE ragù) was proofread (proofeaten?) by a number of referees, and received only minor corrections, I am really happy to share it :)

The picture belongs though to its skinny version that we had the other night for dinner, adapted to be kosher-friendly (for my collegue who does not eat diary) and pregnancy-friendly (for his wife who is pregnant): a bit lighter in the taste but still yummy. And VERY yummy was the dessert, but that recipe is in the hands of S1, the chef patissier!

"THE" RAGÙ

Coc->vegetable stock. Chopped coc and oil in a pot until they are golden (soffritto) and then add minced beef and pork (half-half). When the meat changes color add one glass of red wine and, since the bottle is now open, pour one glass and sip it slowly. In a while add one glass of milk and let cook. Add the tomato concentrate melted in part of the vegetable stock and let it cook slowly for at least 1.5 hours, adding stock whenever the sauce gets thirsty. Add salt/pepper/nutmeg. Enjoy!

Don't you dare throwing that water away!

My third post seems like a good moment to reveal that the true leitmotiv of (90% of) this blog will be healthy dining. In the same way I started cooking when T and I moved in together, I started thinking about minimising the food impact on health (and not only in terms of calories) when he was into a mandatory and pretty strict diet. I took it as I take many things in life: a big challenge of cooking something tasty without pan-frying in oil (soffritto) and with a reduced amount of carbohydrates (bye bye pasta).
After a few months T was very skinny... and my stomach less complaining... so I decided to stick with this philosophy even @Arlozorof73!
Vegetable stock is now my best friend :) every time I cook some vegetable, I save the water, add celeryonioncarrot (coc from now on, in the interest of time, and luckily I do not use kale) and add it wherever I need to avoid pan frying. So I guess yesterday S1 learned something very important about me: if I really like you, I am very hard to piss off, unless you throw away the water in which some vegetable rested!

SWEET POTATOES FRITTATA AND GRATIN FENNELS

Boil cubes of sweet potatoes in water for few minutes and keep the water. Boil the fennel slices in the same water until soft. Mix eggs with parmigiano (that I did not use as S1 does not like it), salt, nutmeg, pepper and milk, then add the sweet potato cubes and chopped chives. Pour in a baking tray. Place the fennels in another baking tray, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and add a little of the stock. Place both trays in the oven and bake adding the stock to the fennels whenever they get thirsty.

Basil gnocchi with aubergines and strawberry sweet rice

First official dinner @arlozorof73, with brand new kitchenware bravely bought in post-Shabbat Ikea!
So proud of my homemade gnocchi. I enjoy adding different herbs to the dough (best success ever: gnocchi with thyme leaves and red pepper ragu, served for at least 10 people back in my first days in TLV).
This time I tried to please my Israeli friend that once defined my parmigiana "RTD" aka Ridicolously Tasty Dish: isn't it the sweetest (food-related) compliment on earth?
Post-dinner was also very busy with serious conversations about what a 30ish y o girl living abroad should ask to her life (a good start: a sensible alarm clock that understands when NOT to ring!)

GNOCCHI AL BASILICO CON MELANZANE E FORMAGGIO ISRAELIANO NON BEN IDENTIFICATO

Boil one large potato per guest and mash them when still very hot (the recipe is totally worth a blister or two). Mix enough flour to have a mushy dough, a pinch of salt an chopped basil leaves. Make small rolls adding more flour if needed and chop them to get 2cm worms.
Cut the aubergines in cubes, add salt and let them rest in a colander with a stone above. Fry them in sunflower oil and put back in the colander to dry. EVO oil and garlic in a pot, when golden add tomato sauce and let it go. Add the aubergines and some basil leaves, cook the gnocchi and serve with the closest cheese to the ricotta salata you can find in Israel :)

RISO DOLCE ALLE FRAGOLE

Cook the rice in boiling milk with lemon zest and sugar. Chop the strawberries and stir them in a pot with sugar until soft. Combine rice and strawberries in layers and add fresh mint.

Cooking with slowness

Whatever I am doing in my life, I do it quickly, but when I cook, I take all the time I need from choosing the ingredients all the way to composing the plate. Becoming a food blogger has been on and off in my mind for the last two years I spent in Wales, as I was playing the perfect housewife role, I never did it though; but recently I moved to Tel Aviv, I became single again and realised there is no time in life for procrastination! And here I am, using food to talk about my life inside and outside a kitchen in TLV :)

Today's recipe is not really a recipe, and already violates my first and only rule so far, as it is supaquick, but mind, it is the very first dinner I had in my new flat and so it deserves a post on its own!