End of a cooking season...

We think that our Jerusalem Sundays have come to an end--Last week was probably our final installment. We had a stew with beef, potatoes, rutabaga, and a bunch of spices. Swiss chard fritters on the side. 

It's been a good winter of cooking. But the sun is starting to return, and there are many Sunday hikes in our future!

Having said that, last Monday we received a not-so-funny April Fools' surprise, in the form of an inch or so of snow.

This week, we also met with a group of people to discuss what has become one of my favorite novels, Corrmac McCarthy's The Road. We ended up talking for over two hours, and I suspect we could have kept going.

On Friday, Mom and Abe were away, so Ruth and I decided to sample the local fish fry.

It was CROWDED!

But totally worth it!

 Just a random candid shot of Mommy and Ruth.

And a video of Abe, swim testing like a boss.

Catching up.... Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 9 and 10

 I have some catching up to do, beginning with our own Shrove Tuesday meal--Cuban Chicken and Black Bean Bowls. I'm not sure why, but in my mind this was an appropriate meal for the day. Perhaps it's because we rarely eat meat during the week.

On to Jerusalem Sundays... This one was a spiced ground meat recipe, with tomatoes and a tahini sauce. We thought that it had a certain chili vibe.

Kate made a really interesting and excellent rice pudding.

This past week we did a chicken recipe that involved essentially steaming the chicken in its own juices. The end result was... meh. Dry chicken. But the potatoes were good, and Kate made a tasty roasted cauliflower salad.

No dessert this time, or at least, we didn't prepare one. Girl Scout Cookies covered for this week...

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 7

I missed updating the blog last week so, here a week later, is what we had last Sunday...

The name of the recipe is "Kofta b'siniyah," which is a kind of seasoned meatball. We had a fresh vegetable salad as a side as well as some of my famous white bread.

Probably the highlight of this recipe was the tahini sauce that the meatballs are baked in, as well as the added crunch of pine nuts that are baked in and added on top.

This was a relatively quick one, which I had prepared mostly in the morning because we went roller skating--yes ROLLER SKATING--in the afternoon.

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 6

Grandma and Grandpa decided to make the trip for our Sunday in Jerusalem, and they picked a good one to join us....

You can't really see it under the parsley, but the main dish was roasted chicken with clementines & arak. From what Dr. Google tells me, arak is a West Asian is an anise liquor. So I substituted in ouzo, our favorite Greek spirit.

Overall, the recipe was quite simple--a marinade with the ouzo, fennel, oranges, orange juice, and oil. Then bake it for 45 minutes. 

Meanwhile, Kate made a dessert dish of semolina, coconut and marmalade cake. She even made a fancy yogurt spread!

All together, enjoyed with a side of fattoush, for another fantastic Sunday meal!

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 5

The cooking celebration started early this weekend, with the kids deciding to make a pot pie on Saturday. 

Since we don't have the fancy bowls to cook this recipe, the kids did what good cooks do... they improvised! 

On Sunday, it was nice enough that we could take a hike in and around Ebensburg. It's snowing now, so it looks like we made a good decision to get this in...

Finally, it was on to the cookbook. For our "main course," we had Saffron Rice with Barberries and Mixed Herbs. So as it goes with these recipes, I had never heard of "barberries" until now. After some Googling, it seemed that apricots were a good substitute.

Going in, I wasn't expecting much from this one. It seemed pretty standard. But the mix of dill, tarragon, parsley, and saffron really makes for a unique flavor profile, balanced with the sweetness of the apricots and the crunch of the roasted pistachios.

 Once again, Kate took on the salad duties and delivered up this wonderful creation--Spiced Chickpeas and Fresh Vegetable Salad. This one included a good bit of chopping, which made for a colorful and tasty side. 

The final product...

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 4

This was a slow cooking kind of weekend...

It started on Saturday, when we roasted a chicken for the explicit purpose of making chicken noodle soup for "Soup-er  Bowl Sunday" at church. 

Get it? Soup-er? Like "Super." It works at many levels.

Anyway...

After roasting the chicken, I put the carcass in the crockpot over night. By morning, I had a nice, thick broth to make the soup with.

Not to put too find a point on it, but once people tasted my broth the secrets of the universe were revealed to them. 

After church, we returned home and started in on our Jerusalem cookbook. As with previous weeks, we had to improvise. This one called for veal, which I couldn't locate at Wal-Mart. So we went ahead and made "Slow-Cooked Beef with Prunes and Leek."

The title pretty much tells you all of the ingredients, which cooked in the crockpot all afternoon.

Meanwhile, Kate made this wonderful mixed bean salad, which also features roasted red peppers.

Then there was the bread... 

Late in the afternoon, I decided that we needed something light and easy to go with our dinner. So I Googled a quick bread recipe, and with our new oven that is actually reliable, we had bread... 

Not to over-state it, but the mere smell of my bread made a choir of angels sing throughout our house. 

The meal, finally, at the end of our Sunday. No doubt, we will be enjoying leftovers all week.

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 3

In order to make Spicy Freekeh Soup with Meatballs, you would need to have freekeh. And in order to have freekah, you probably want to know what exactly that is.

Well, after consulting Dr. Google, I learned that it's a grain--a "super grain" that might (I said might) even rival quinoa. 

Anyway... here's what a bag of freekeh looks like... 

According to the description, it's a wheat similar to bulgar but the taste is "earthy, nutty, and slightly smoky." 

So there you have it.

Uncle Steve was in town, so he shared Sunday dinner with us while Cousin Marcus was off skiing. 

The stew, stewing....

Kate made a spinach salad with dates and almonds, which required some roasting along with chunks of pita bread.

The final dish...

  And there was much rejoicing 

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 2

For this week, we picked out another stuffed stuff recipe called Ruth’s Stuffed Romano Peppers. Like last week, it required some improvisation. For starters, Wal-Mart had no Romano peppers, so we just went with red peppers. And lamb remains an elusive find in these parts. I went to Aldi's hoping that they might have some, but no luck. So back to beef... 

It's relatively straightforward as recipes go--rice, meat, onions, spices, all steamed for an hour or so in some tomatoes and onions. 

For this, we made a fattoush, or Arab salad. This would be a common salad in Jerusalem, made up of tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and mixed with a buttermilk dressing and bread.

As always, smiles all around!

Sundays in Jerusalem: Installment 1

OK, so I think I need to do a better job of documenting our Sundays this year. Last year, I kinda fell off. So let's get started!

Originally, we were going to cook Italian this winter. We had two--yes TWO--cookbooks. But then Kate located this exquisite cookbook.....

There are so many recipes that we are eager to try, but for our first adventure, we went with stuffed pears. Yes, pears. Actually, the recipe called for something called "quince," which is similar to a pear but, surprisingly, not at Wal-Mart in Ebensburg. This also uses lamb, which again, called for some improvisation so we went with beef.

As you can see, the pictures in this cookbook are remarkable.

Basically, these are seasoned meatballs stuffed into the pears and slowly simmered for an hour or so. I think our end product looked a lot like the picture above. #NailedIt

So this ended up being a suitable introduction to our new cookbook. We are all looking forward to what's next!