Granola and Yogurt

This is my new favorite breakfast. In stores, a tiny, unsatisfying cup can be bought for 6 shekels. Larger, more satisfying cups cost upwards of 12 or 15 shekels from Cafe Greg. I figured if I want to eat this stuff every day, I'd better start making it myself.

The granola is homemade, the yogurt is not. My granola is based on a recipe from smitten kitchen, but anyone can make granola by following these vague guidelines:

Mix two parts dry oats, one part shredded coconut, and one part some other nut on a baking sheet. Toast for about 10 minutes. If you don't like coconut, leave it out. If you're on the fence about coconut, put it in; you will be rewarded with a seriously awesome toasty smell.

Next, stir in some pieces of whatever dried fruit you want. Then, pour in some honey. If you can't approximate it by eye, base yourself off a recipe. Lastly, bake it all together.

Since I plan on eating my granola loose, I don't care if my final product is sloppy. If you want your granola in bars, you should do more reading. This is my second batch of granola, and the bars fell apart in my first batch.

Stay tuned for a future post. When that store bought yogurt runs out I'm gonna try making my own...

Mocha Pops

Who doesn't love popsicles?  They're so easy and fun to make.  I used little espresso cups and wooden popsicle sticks for the mold but I plan on coming up with more creative molds soon!  The bottom half is coffee (instant coffee, milk, sugar), the top half is instant pudding mix (prepared with 3% milk).  Let the bottom freeze first before pouring the top half.  To get the popsicle sticks to stay in place, cover the rim of the cup with foil and poke a hole through for the stick.  Stay tuned for more ideas...

Mushroom Onion Feta Cheese Quiche

I love making quiche. Not only do I get to make my very own easy pie crust but there are so many variations I can try. And I'm pretty much guaranteed to have all the basic ingredients at all times. Plus, it takes no time at all to prep... This week's quiche - Mushroom Onion Feta. I highly recommend this one!

Ingredients:
Approx. 8 oz Mushrooms, sliced
1 Onion
1/2-1 cup Feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup Milk
3 eggs
Pepper
Olive oil
Pie crust

Directions:
1. Saute the onions in a little bit of olive oil till they're clear and soft. Remove the onions to a separate bowl and saute the mushrooms for just a minute or two until they start to turn darker in color.
2. Combine the milk, eggs, onions, mushrooms and pepper. Pour into pie crust.
3. Sprinkle the feta on top.
4. Bake at 375F/200C for about 30-40 minutes or until the the quiche is set.

Stuffed Peppers

Tiv'ol makes some veggie burgers that , while not as good as Morningstar Grillers, come close. We buy a package every time we do a major grocery run.

Sadly, Supersol was out the last time we went, and we had to suffice with trying Tiv'ol veggie chicken patties instead. Turns out, they leave much to be desired!

But tonight we found a use for them - stuffed peppers. By dicing and frying them up in oil with sauteed onions, these patties tasted a whole lot better. Add some black beans, a zucchini, garlic, a touch of vinegar and spices, and you've got a great pepper-stuffing. I sprinkled some dry rice over said stuffing and added maybe a cup of boiling water and stirred it all together. The peppers were laid on their sides and baked in a hot convection oven. The charring of the pepper skin was totally accidental, although totally awesome.

We ate the stuffed peppers with homemade Spanish rice (onions, tomatoes, green peppers), which I like, although to be honest I've never gotten mine to taste as good as Near East's.

Fantastic dinner, and plenty of leftovers, too.

Pea Falafel (and Burgers)

The problem with buying a kilo of split peas is that pea soup only needs about half a kilo. Fortunately, Alton Brown has a recipe for pea burgers. Those who want to try it can easily find it themselves. We made them, and we found them to be good, if not unusually good. Pretty much like solid pea soup with some extra seasoning and breadcrumbs.

With pea burger batter left over the next day, my mind turned to something I've often thought about: can one make falafel with legumes other than chickpeas? I think it would be cool to do a four color falafel dish, one regular, one black bean, one kidney bean, and one pea (brown, black, red, green). It made sense, therefore, to try and fry this pea burger batter into pea falafel balls.

It worked, too, as long as I kept the oil around 350 degrees (F). This is pretty hard to do on a ceramic electric stove, so sometimes the oil would be too hot and burn them, and sometimes it would be too cold in which case the falafel would sort of disintegrate into the oil.

We put the pea falafel in pita and ate it with vetegables, like regular falafel. I personally prefer regular falafel, but this wasn't bad. It was good to try once, though I don't have much desire to make it again. I'd sooner just make another pea soup, which is easier. Plus, anything you make with split peas is going to end up tasting like pea soup anyway.

Pizza Tart

You know what food is quick, delicious, easy to make yourself, and extremely unhealthy? Pizza bourekas!

Rachel and I were going to make some for dinner the other week since we had puff pastry and cheese. Then I got the idea of making this pizza tart instead. Same concept, less messy, more fancy.

Here's the recipe: it's puff pastry with carmelized onions, cheese, sliced tomatoes, and spices. Bake it. Serve it.

And if you're in Israel, do yourselves a favor and don't buy cheese that is על בסיס שמן צמחני.

Tuna Casserole

Sounds boring, right? Wrong. Tuna casserole is delicious, but it's all in the sauce

I start by making a roux; that is, equal parts butter and flour. Doesn't have to be exact and doesn't have to be much - maybe like a tablespoon of each. You cook them till it smells toasty.

From there I add milk about half a cup at a time, stirring until it gets thick, at which point more milk goes in. The idea is you keep adding milk until you have enough sauce for the pasta. In theory there should be a limit to how much milk you can add and still get a creamy sauce, but in my experience, the roux is one-size-fits all; in other words, whether you add 1 or 4 cups of milk, it will still thicken properly.

At this point, you can stop the sauce there and season with salt and pepper. It will taste like a creamy milk sauce, which would be kind of bland to just pour on pasta, but is good in this case as a base for the tuna casserole as a whole.

BUT, if you have cheese on hand, add it at the end, over the stove. Especially if you have a cheese that is otherwise not a smooth melter, like Cheddar. As a kid I used to get so disappointed, because although boring cheese like American would melt great in milk, really good cheese like Cheddar would form these rubbery clumps. But because of the starches in the roux, you can melt any cheese in this sauce.

The rest of the recipe is just mixing your sauce with some cooked pasta (for best results I'd recommend something that has lots of nooks and crannies to grab sauce - macaroni, ziti, penne, rotini, farfalle - all good choices), canned tuna, and seasoning with salt and pepper. We like ours with a little mustard and garlic powder too. If you're a ketchup fan that might work too.