Shabbat food

[magid]

For some reason, the things I was most sure of turned out not as well as usual, while the experimental stuff worked reasonably well. C'est la vie...

• Challah. I used a mix of flours (white, wheat, rye, and buckwheat), with some flax seed meal, but no multi-grain flakes; I'd forgotten to get any at Trader Joe's. Restocking staples after Pesach can be hard to remember (plus expensive, if I replace everything at once). For sweetener, I used molasses, to go with the rye flour. And it would've been perfect, if I hadn't spaced and left out the salt. I've had salt-free bread before (my mom used to make it, sometimes), and I don't care for it much. Perhaps there will be bread pudding in my future...
  
• Dandelion-kopita. In other words, sort-of spanikopita, using dandelion greens instead of spinach (I'm sure I'm mangling the Greek. Sorry about that.). I sauteed a lot of greens with a small onion or two, then added dill, scallions, black pepper, farmer cheese, some herbed sea salt (to compensate for the cheese not being feta; I didn't have time to go to Brookline), walnut pieces, and some eggs. I'd planned to make individual triangles in phyllo, but I was running out of time as it was, so I made a couple of trays of this with phyllo above and below, and it came out rather well. (Thanks to Pheromone for the links to dandelion greens recipes, and to Ruthling for the suggestion of nuts with greens.)
  
• Quiche. Sort of. I layered cheddar, dill, dried garlic slices, and chives in a pie crust, then added eggs. Unfortunately, I had no milk, nor any soy milk, so it was just eggs, which was a mistake, I think; I overbaked it a bit, and the eggs got tougher than I'd like. Not horrible, but certainly far from ideal. It did puff up impressively in the oven, however.
  
• Broccoli with garlic and ginger. I steamed broccoli, then sauteed it in oil in which I'd already browned a head of garlic and a lot of sliced ginger. I put in too much oil, but otherwise this came out well. (Thanks to Gnomi for the recipe I didn't quite follow.)
  
• Eggplant. I sauteed cubed eggplant (after salting and draining) with some onion. Once it reached the early mushy stage, I added some pinjur (a spicy eggplant and red pepper sauce), and let it meld together.
  
• Green salad. With the mixed baby salad greens, I added scallion, slices of apple, slivered almonds, and a basic balsamic vinaigrette. It's pretty much what I've been making since Pesach, except without the hearts of palm, and I'm not tired of it yet. I can't quite bring myself to put tomatoes in the same salad as apples (I don't know why), so I'll have to find another use for them.
  
• Orange cake. I tinkered with a Joy of Cooking cake recipe, not entirely successfully. In other words, what I got tasted decent, but the texture was much more... dense than is preferable with cake. Still, it tasted citrusy, from the marmalade in it, and I served it with a yogurt-marmalade sauce and fresh raspberries, which are always good.
  
• And three things I didn't cook: the wine (a "golden" wine, which really did taste rather golden brown), some olives, and Trader Joe's frozen truffle bites ("flourless chocolate cake topped with a rich ganache, enrobed in chocolate"; why don't they make that for Pesach?)

There would've been roasted potatoes, except somehow a couple of hours before Shabbat I tasted them a bit... and then a bit more... and then they were gone. Oops. No one was hungry after dinner, though, so there was enough other stuff :-)

Comments

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> Dandelion-kopita. In other words, sort-of spanikopita, using dandelion greens instead of spinach (I'm sure I'm mangling the Greek. Sorry about that.).

I'd suggest hortakopita. Wild greens are usually referred to as horta in Greek -- well, at least the modern Greek I know. (The literal meaning is "grass".) I don't know if there is a specific word for dandelion greens, but I have had wild greens in pita before. Quite good if done well.

As long as I'm being pedantic about the Greek, I'll mention that pita made with spinach and cheese (usually feta) is spanakotyropita (emphasis on the second syllable) -- spanakia (spinach) + tyri (cheese) + pita (pie). Strictly speaking, spanakopita has spinach but no cheese.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hortakopita... thank you. Is that the same word root that gives us "horticulture"?

And thanks for the clarification cheese/no cheese. (It was hard for me to parse for a moment, since "pita" is always the pocket bread first, which didn't quite fit here...)

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

>> Is that the same word root that gives us "horticulture"?

Yep, so far as I know ...

>> (It was hard for me to parse for a moment, since "pita" is always the pocket bread first, which didn't quite fit here...)

I see what you mean. I tend to take Greek etymology for granted after having learned the language -- there's a clear mental separation in my head between pita (bread) and pita (pie), but that's where context comes in, I guess.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Even with the typing, I guess I was having a hard time 'hearing' the ital...

PS

[magid.livejournal.com]

On further thought, wouldn't the cheese in what I made change it to something like hortatyropita</>?

Re: PS

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually -- hortakotyropita. The ko- turns horta into a compound/quasi-adjective form. (Yay! I get to start my day by being a language nerd.)

Re: PS

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hee!