Cafe Liz

Saturday brunch with spinach bake and Italian salad

This Saturday brunch included a personal-sized baked spinach shakshuka, an Italian-style chopped salad, chocolate chip cookies made with the New York Times’ recipe, and more. Brunch is always a pleasure. Continue reading Saturday brunch with spinach bake and Italian salad…

Latke bonanza, part 2

This Hanukkah, we wound up making more than 7 kilos of latkes. Indeed, the holiday isn’t even over yet, but I think I’ve had enough fried food for oh, say, the next year. Anyway, in the course of these 7+ kilos, we quite refined our latke-making technique, and came out with some pretty good results. I’ve edited the recipes in the last post to reflect our fine-tuning, and I’m adding a few more here: Sweet potato latkes with Chinese spices, and Carrot cilantro latkes. Continue reading Latke bonanza, part 2…

Zucchini soup

This is a nice, sunny yellow soup for dreary days. A roommate of mine in Haifa used to make something similar. I should note that what we call “kishu” (קישוא) here isn’t actually what the rest of the world considers zucchini — it’s a pale, light green, squash shaped like a miniature baseball bat. Continue reading Zucchini soup…

Latke bonanza

I could never really get that excited about latkes, which I’d mostly experienced as patties of fried mashed potatoes. After all, I wouldn’t eat oily, soggy potatoes on other days of the year, so what made Hanukkah any different? But this year, I decided it didn’t have to be like that. Why not make latkes with other vegetables, seasoned like I season most anything else that comes out of my kitchen?

So I brainstormed a list of interesting taste combinations. In the end, I was limited by the amount of latkes we could possibly expect to make (and eat) in one night, and managed to make only four of the ideas I’d thought up: mushroom ginger latkes, pear sage latkes, eggplant shallot latkes and zucchini dill latkes. Continue reading Latke bonanza…

Saturday morning buttermilk pancakes

We usually make waffles instead of pancakes, and I remembered why when I poured my first batch of pancakes into the pan, and they promptly burned. My waffle iron produces tidy, consistent results, but pancakes take a little practice. In any case, once I stopped burning them, the pancakes tasted great. And to tell the truth, the burnt ones weren’t even that horrible. Continue reading Saturday morning buttermilk pancakes…

Onion vegetable soup

I guess I got a little overexcited at the shook today, because now the kitchen floor is covered with bags of vegetables that won’t fit into our fridge, including 6 kilos of potatoes for our planned latke bonanza (among many, many other things). In any case, there’s no better reason to use lots of fresh vegetables, so I scratched the surface and whipped up this onion vegetable soup. Continue reading Onion vegetable soup…

Pappardelle with pumpkin seed oil and herbs

Since I think my coconut pumpkin soup recipe inspired at least one person to go out and buy pumpkin seed oil (hi mom!), I figured I’d offer a few more suggestions for how to use it. Continue reading Pappardelle with pumpkin seed oil and herbs…

Cardamom coffee, or whatever the הל you call it

Black coffee in Israel gets its distinctive taste from cardamom, that spice you put in pie. It can be either ground with the beans, or added as an afterthought. Coffee with cardamom (cafe im hel) is also known in Hebrew as "mud coffee" (cafe botz). It's the type of thing you drink at Middle-Eastern restaurants, but also in offices, because when faced with a choice of instant coffees, the one made from actual coffee beans inevitably tastes better.

Here are a few anecdotes about the feisty drink, and if you still want to make your own afterward, the instructions are at the end. Continue reading Cardamom coffee, or whatever the הל you call it...

Singapore-style noodles

Last week I bought an iron wok, and I decided to try it out today with Singapore-style noodles. I get a craving for them sometimes, so fortunately they’re easy to make. Continue reading Singapore-style noodles…

Cheesy stuffed peppers

These cheese-filled peppers are quick and easy, and since this blog seems to be reading like a travel log, I should probably mention that we were served similar stuffed peppers at our hotel in Bulgaria. Continue reading Cheesy stuffed peppers…