Deli Roll Cook-a-Long

May 23, 2008 · by ·

I had never heard of or seen this popular Shabbat food until I was 21 or so and spending a Shabbat in Far Rockaway. Upon seeing this strudelly thing, I was a bit skeptical. I wasn’t quite sure what was wrapped up in the dough…and I am not usually a big fan of the old heimish food thing. It was either that, cholent, or kishka, so I opted for a slice of deli roll to accompany the salad on my plate. I was impressed by how good it was. Who knew you could do that with deli meat. Of course this dish is by no means healthy food.

I had no idea it was so popular until joining up on some Jewish message boards where people posted their assorted recipes for deli rolls. There is even a facebook group that shows off their love of deli roll. I recall one trip back home to the Midwest where I made a deli roll for my parents. I think they were a bit scared of it.

There are many different variations of deli roll and no exact measurements.

I start out by sautéing some onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika

Roll out some puff pastry dough, either store bought or your favorite recipe. Spread some honey mustard and half of the sautéed onions on the dough. I have heard of some people using Thousand Island Dressing in place of the honey mustard.


Lay out turkey pastrami slices on top of the mixture. Spread another layer of honey mustard and the onions. Lay out slices of beef pastrami

Roll up into a log. Cut slits in the roll, bake at 375 degrees. Drain fat from the pan.

Slice when cooled down

Shabbat Shalom!

Filed Under: Appetizers, meat, shabbat · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Pamela’s Gluten Free Pizza Crust

May 16, 2008 · by ·

This is dedicated to my wonderful curly-haired family. Love you all!

A weekend in May found me back in my Midwest hometown. It was the first weekend in a few years that my sisters and I were all together. We tried to make the best of a stressful weekend.

A preface to this is that we all come from a bad gut family. Making a meal that works with every gut can be a challenge. On the menu for a home cooked Saturday night meal was wheat-free/gluten-free pizza. The one sticking point is it had to taste good. You may ask how this is possible. Thank the bad-gut lords that smile on us, that there are now numerous companies and aisles of grocery stores devoted to bad-gut, allergy crazed families.

Pamela’s baking mixes and finished products are a great asset to the hypoallergenic food network. We used Pamela’s wheat free bread mix to make the pizza dough. The recipe for chewy pizza crust, found on the side of the package is as follows:

 

Chewy Pizza Crust

1 bag Pamela’s Wheat-Free Bread Mix
1 yeast packet (enclosed in mix)
1/4 cup oil
1-1/2 cups warm water

Optional: Add 2 tsp Italian herbs and/or 1/2 cup grated cheese to dough

Dough makes two – 12 to 14-inch crusts.

Combine Pamela’s Wheat-Free Bread Mix, yeast packet, oil and water (no eggs are used).

With a Heavy Duty Stand Mixer mix on medium for 2 minutes. Our mixer decided not to perform for us. We were able to mix it by hand easily.

We also chose to add Trader Joes Pasta Seasoning Blend.

Pour 1/2 dough onto greased cookie sheet or pizza pan (for added texture sprinkle corn meal on pan). Use oil or non-stick spray on dough and fingers to keep fingers from sticking when spreading dough into pizza shape. This mixture is pretty gloopy and sticky. It will never get to be pizza hut style dough. Check out N’s beautifully manicured nails!

Let sit for 1 hour. It just barely rises.

Add your sauce and other toppings. We made up a sauce of canned chopped tomatoes, spices, sautéed shallots and garlic, and some jarred sauce. We used a combination of fresh mozzarella, goat milk gouda, and some “parmesan like cheese” found in the depths of my parents generously stocked fridge.

Bake in a preheated 375º oven for 25 to 30 minutes on a lower rack. Dough will puff when baking. For a crispier crust bake at 400º.

We finished off the finished pizza with some drizzled on truffle oil. Yum!
In the future, I would pre-bake the crusts for 15-20 minutes and then add the toppings. Our crusts were a bit under done. The crust did taste good, a little sweet though. We were impressed with the results and I would consider playing around with it further.

 

Filed Under: Gluten Free, product review, Vegetarian · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Creole Chex Mix

May 14, 2008 · by ·

I love chex mix, but I don’t like the pre-packaged commercial stuff. I don’t like the taste of the foil bag, preservatives, and chemicals. I also don’t like the additional crunchy stuff put in like pretzels, bagel chips, and breadsticks. So whenever there is a sale on chex cereal, I bundle up my coupons and buy a few boxes for when I get the munchies.

If you look at the cereal website, just about anything can go into chex mix. I was impressed by their huge range of recipes. Everything from a curry chex mix to Hawaiian chex mix. I go for basic.

Creole Chex Mix

8 Tbsp. butter or margarine (I used Earth Balance Buttery Sticks)
3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp. creole seasoning
2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
3 cups Corn Chex
3 cups Rice Chex
3 cups Wheat Chex (my fave flavor in chex mix)
3 cups Cheerios

Heat oven to 250°F. In a large roasting pan, melt the butter in the oven. Stir in seasonings. Gradually stir in cereals until evenly coated.

Bake 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Spread on paper towels to cool, about 15 minutes. Store in airtight container.
Happy Snacking!

Filed Under: snack, Snacks · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Chana Saag Aloo

May 13, 2008 · by ·

Lunchtime at work can be rough. The combined smells of a hundred or so employees heating up and eating their home cooked meals can be rough. I do have one colleague who tends to have nice smelly lunches. So my dinner idea was stolen from her lunchbox.

After a long week of Passover with no rice, I was craving basmati. What better to go alongside, then a curry? Chana Saag Aloo is a very simple and cheap dish made up of ingredients that I usually have on hand in my pantry and freezer. Extra bonus is that there was plenty left over for lunches the next day.

There are many recipes for this dish; this recipe is based on what I had on hand.

Chana Saag Aloo

2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp ginger, chopped
2 tsp. of curry powder – rough estimate, truth is I shake it all in and guesstimate when it’s enough
1 tsp. turmeric
Salt
1 potato, diced
1 can of chickpeas
1 block of frozen spinach
can of diced tomatoes
cup of vegetable broth
cup of half & half or coconut milk

Cook some basmati rice as instructed on the package. The rice cooker works wonders. Start by sautéing the garlic, onion, and ginger in some olive oil. Sauté.
for 5 minutes. Add in your spices and the diced potatoes. Cook for 5 minutes. As that starts to soften, add your chickpeas. After 5 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients, stir and simmer on low until ready to eat. Serve over the yummy rice. Enjoy!

 

About the picture…curries don’t always look pretty and appetizing. They just don’t. They are really yummy though…so please partake in this adventure.

Filed Under: curry, Gluten Free, indian, Main Course, Vegan, Vegetarian · Tagged: , , , ,

French Onion Soup

May 1, 2008 · by ·

I love soup. It’s the perfect meal for me at the end of the day. I eat French onion soup as an indulgence maybe twice a year. I love it, but most restaurants don’t get it right. I have resisted making my own as I didn’t have the special crocks. I finally bought two of the soup bowls at The Bowery Restaurant Supply store. They were only $4 each – score! I got to work.

The soup itself is very easy to make. I like using a variety of onions to get the taste just right.

French Onion Soup
Ingredients:

2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. olive oil
3 small yellow onions
3 shallots
4 garlic cloves
1 Vidalia onion
2 small red onions
1 tbsp. thyme
1 tsp. sugar
7 cups vegetable broth
1 cup white wine
tbsp. vegetarian Worcestershire sauce

Sauté the onions in a small amount of butter and some olive oil along with a teaspoon of sugar.

Sauté just until it starts to brown. Some people add flour to make a roux, but I don’t.

Add beef or vegetable broth, white wine and a few tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce.

Let it get to a boil on high.

Switch it to medium low and then cover it while it cooks for 45 minutes.

While the soup is cooking, slice up a crusty baguette. Toast it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. I rubbed a little garlic and olive oil on it before toasting.

Slice up some swiss cheese.

Taste the soup for doneness.

Ladle the soup into the special bowl.

Put the bread croutons you just made on the soup.

Lay the cheese on top. Put in the oven at 425 for 10 minutes. Soup Heaven!

Filed Under: dairy, Soups, Vegetarian · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Braised Brussel Sprouts

April 3, 2008 · by ·

Brussel Sprouts get such a bad rap. They are always ragged on as the demon vegetable of youth. I don’t remember eating them as a kid. Probably because they are not so gut-friendly. Regardless, I love me some brussel sprouts. They are super easy to prepare and take on great flavors.

Always use fresh brussel sprouts. The frozen kind gets too gummy. Take your brussel sprouts and peel the messy looking outer layers. Slice them in half. Wash them off. Get your sauté pan ready. Chop up some shallots and garlic and sauté in olive oil spray or a drop of olive oil. Add in the brussel sprouts. Saute a few more minutes. Add in equal parts white wine and vegetable broth. Around ½ cup each. Cover with a lid and let steam for 10 minutes or until most of the liquid evaporates. Done! You have a yummy veggie side dish with no fear. Don’t forget the glass of white wine to drink alongside!

Filed Under: braised, Gluten Free, Side Dish, Vegan, vegetables, Vegetarian · Tagged: , , , , ,

Chicken Soup

April 2, 2008 · by ·

I am sorry I have been neglectful. I have been cooking. I just got back from a mini-vacation to The City of Brotherly Love. It was a nice trip. After 4 days of eating in restaurants though, I wanted something comforting and home-made. It had to be soup. There is something so comforting and warming about the perfect chicken soup. Throw in a matzo ball and a few egg noodles, and I am in soup heaven.

Of course everyone has their own version of chicken soup. Some like it packed with stuff, some like broth, some like lots of chicken parts in it, some even add meat to it (the horror!). I like my soup simple. I like it with some veggies, but with the broth strained. I like minimal chicken parts in the soup.

I was never given a recipe for soup. I am sure if I asked my mom, she would give me a rundown of what needs to go in soup. What I learned about soup, I learned from watching – except my mom does her chicken parts differently.

I used a huge stock pot, so I can freeze several meals of soup for later. I gather carrots, 3 yellow onions, 1 head of garlic, 3 parsnip, 2 turnips, celery, and some fresh dill, salt, pepper, a bay leaf, and of course – the chicken. This batch was made with a couple pounds of chicken wings, but any bone-in chicken parts would work. My mom uses a “soup chicken,” but I can’t get those at my local store.

I chop up the veggies.

Sauté the chopped onions, carrots, and celery. When the veggies are soft, add in the root veggies. I sometimes will add some sweet potato to the mix. Fill up the pot – not too full so it boils over, with cold water. I then put the chicken parts in a cheesecloth bag and deposit it in the soup-to-be. Add in the bay leaf and dill. The stove should be set to medium-high. The lid should be off. Let the soup come to a boil, this can take 30 minutes or so, depending on amount of liquid. I like to let the soup boil down a bit with the lid halfway on, so that the soup flavor is more concentrated. After slow boiling it for an hour, I let the soup simmer on low-ish overnight – the way my mom does it. In the morning you have an amazing wonderful smell coming from your kitchen.

Let the soup cool. Place the soup in to containers for eating later, or dig in. As far as the whole matzo ball/noodle part of the soup, those should not be frozen. Matzo balls and noodles should be made the day of soup eating. I buy my noodles. I like the thin egg noodles. I like the matzo ball mixes just fine, but the recipes that are on the back of the matza meal boxes work just fine. If you want your matza balls extra fluffy, some like to add a little bit of seltzer to the mix. Enjoy!

Filed Under: chicken, passover, poultry, shabbat, Soups · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Hamentashen

March 17, 2008 · by ·
Purim is coming. What does that mean to you? To me it is the megillah reading, dressing up in full costume, shalach manot, and of course the 3-cornered delicacy, the hamentash, or the plural – hamentashen. Hamentashen, in Hebrew – Oznei Haman, is a reference to the evil villain of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Haman, the bad man that we drown out with groggers during the Megillah reading, was said to wear 3 cornered hat. So from that, we make the triangular cookies that we call Hamentashen.
I don’t think I have made hamentashen in over 20 years. I am embarassed that I am old enough to be able to reference the events in my life “20 years ago.” I do remember early spring days at kitchen tables cutting out dough circles and forming them into the yummy hamentashen.
Ever since I have had my own kitchen, I have passed hamentashen by as being a job that is too time consuming – too much of a patchka (a bother in Yiddish speak). I don’t like the cakey hamentashen at my local bakery…and my daughter has been begging me to make them, with her as my dutiful assistant. She was wonderful as a chef’s assistant and I am very picky over who I let share some control over the kitchen when I am in it.
I looked over cookbooks to see what looked reasonable. I chose an easy to please recipe from Alphabet Soup, a Jewish cookbook put out by a Solomon Shechter school in Chicago. I pulled out the ingredients and got to work. The ingredient demo pictured below has a typo. I pulled out the baking soda and clicked away, before I realized that I needed baking powder. Oops!

Our hamentash fillings of choice this year were Israeli chocolate spread, and Strawberry Preserves. You can really experiment with a multitude of fillings. Poppy seed (mohn) and prunes (lekvar) are historical favorites. The hipper kosher bakeries are now filling hamentash with chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, and other good sweet stuff.

You will need: 2 sticks of earth balance or butter or transfantastical margarine; 2 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla, 4 Tbsp. orange juice, 4 cups of flour, 4 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt, and your choice of fillings.
Mix together the butter/eggs/sugar/vanilla/OJ

Add in the dry ingredients. Mix well. I used a hand beater.

 

 

Get your prep area ready.

Roll out the dough to 1/4″ thickness. You will need extra flour on hand…on the board, on your hands, and on the rolling pan. Cut out circles of dough with a small glass.
Fill the dough circles and pinch dough into triangles around the filling. Place on cookie sheet.

Bake in 375 degree oven until done, around 10-15 minutes.

B’teavon! Chag Sameach!
Filed Under: baked, cookie, Dessert, Purim · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Rosemary Bread

March 14, 2008 · by ·
I would like to remind you that I am not a baker. I baked. I experimented. It wasn’t all that bad. I am not ready to venture into cakes and cookies this week. I am tiptoeing into breadmaking. I decided to try my hand at a flavorful bread. I love rosemary and I love garlic…so I knew what was coming. I looked at all sorts of recipes that I wasn’t thrilled with. In the end, I used 3 or 4 different recipes to come up with my own creation.
I wanted at least one or two loaves. In the end, I got one large loaf and eight rolls.
Rosemary Bread
  • 2 cups warm water water
  • 3 tsp. yeast
  • 3/8 cup of olive oil
  • 4 tsp. sugar
  • 4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. italian seasoning
  • 1/2 tsp. cracked pepper
  • 1 whole garlic – roasted lightly then sliced (you could lightly saute it as well)
  • A handful of fresh rosemary – chopped
  • 5 cups bread flour
Pour warm water into the bowl of your mixer. Add yeast. Add sugar. Let sit until bubbly. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Knead the dough. Put dough into an oiled bowl. Let rise until doubled, about an hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shape into loaves or rolls. Let rise 30 minutes. Bake until done. Cut a thick slice. Dab with butter or olive oil. Eat. Best when eaten warm.
——————————–
So, I was quite pleased with the results above. I could have stopped there, except we were out of sandwich bread. So during the rosemary rising, I mixed up some sandwich bread. The two buddies got baked together and all was good with the world – until slicing.

I really should learn some knife skills and/or buy a bread slicer.

We only have Hello Kitty bandaids in the house. At least my finger is pretty, says the 6-year-old, who was jealous that I had a cut worthy of a bandaid. We are stingy about bandaids here.

 

————————
And you thought my evening was over. A look in my cabinet and freezer told me that we were running low on baby food. The shelf stable jarred stuff gives me the heebie jeebies. I worry about preservatives. I am not even talking about the baby food meat products. I won’t even go there. The jarred pureed fruits and veggies leave me queasy and I don’t even have to eat them.
Baby food is super easy to make. Anything can be pureed. Only combine flavors that you would eat yourself. Don’t just throw your leftovers in a bowl and have a go. On the evening’s schedule was butternut squash and sweet potatoes. Throw the goods into your oven at 350 and baked until soft. Peel the skin off the root veggies. Dump into a bowl and puree with a hand blender, cuisinart, and/or blender. You can add a bit of water if needed to reach the right consistency. I was happy with the outcome. The food freezes well and is quite portable.
Thank you for sharing the evening adventures with me!

Filed Under: baked, bread, Vegan · Tagged: , , , ,

Tarragon Chicken

March 11, 2008 · by ·

Happy Monday. I realized when I got home this evening that my fridge was pretty empty. A few veggies. Not much to work with. I usually do fruit and veggie shopping on Sundays, but it just didn’t happen yesterday.

I had taken out some chicken drumsticks to defrost last night – but had nothing planned for them. Drumsticks are always a hit with my daughter. When she was around 2, she decided to rename drumsticks with the name “poonie.” Not sure where it came from. She is creative like that. Mittens were called “pockins.”

Based on the contents of my fridge, or lack thereof, I came up with a menu of tarragon chicken, rice with peas, and steamed broccoli.

 

Hint: When cooking with wine, only use wine that you are willing to drink.

Most tarragon chicken recipes I have seen have some sort of cream base in it. Since we keep kosher, here is the recipe I came up with:

Ingredients

    • cut up chicken – I used a package of drumsticks

 

  • salt

 

 

  • fresh ground black pepper

 

 

  • olive oil

 

 

  • 5 Shallots

 

 

  • 1 onion

 

 

  • 5 cloves of garlic

 

 

  • 2 tbsp dried tarragon or a good handful of fresh tarragon – chopped

 

 

  • 1-2 Tbsp dijon mustard

 

 

  • 3/4 cup of good white wine

 

 

  • 1 cup of broth (chicken or veggie)

 

 

  • Chopped Plum Tomatoes (1-2)

 

Sprinkle salt and pepper on your chicken. Brown the chicken in olive oil about 5-10 minutes.

Chop up your garlic, onions, and shallots. Add it to the browned chicken. Let it saute 5 minutes.

Add in the liquids and the mustard. Stir a bit and bring up the browned bits. Bring to a boil, then turn the stove to low. Cover until chicken is done, around 20-30 minutes, depending on cut. Check on your chicken to make sure there is still some liquid in the pan. Throw in the tomatoes a few minutes before you are ready to eat. Yum! It is wonderful served with rice. Enjoy!

Filed Under: chicken, Dinner, Gluten Free, poultry · Tagged: , , , ,
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