Cafe Liz

Patatas bravas with vitelotte potatoes

I fondly remember my time in Madrid, which was marked by many a visit to various tapas bars, frequently for the ubiquitous patatas bravas — gently crispy potatoes in a hot tomato sauce. In fact, I liked the dish so much that I still have a bottle of salsa brava that I brought back from a trip more years ago than I’d like to admit. The brand is “Uncle William,” a subsidiary of Heinz. Authentic? I think not.

Lo and behold, like many ethnic comfort foods, patatas bravas are not hard to make yourself. I found a simple description on a Spanish blog, Directo al Palador (in Spanish), which explains that while this dish can be found all over Spain, the most authentic version is in Madrid, where they forgo the mayonnaise. The discussion that follows is about how the dish is served in Mallorca, Valencia, etc. It’s interesting to observe these regional variations in cuisines, where a region is often less than a 2-hour trip for the busy traveler. But how convenient when authenticity is also better for you. Continue reading Patatas bravas with vitelotte potatoes…

Tomato sauce with spinach, wine and pine nuts

This is a simple tomato-based pasta sauce with wine, spinach and pine nuts. We tend to have open bottles of wine around, since we never finish them. One word of caution regarding the tomatoes: Since the sauce is based on them, they need to be ripe and sweet; otherwise the sauce will be lacking. Fortunately, tomatoes are just starting to come into season. Continue reading Tomato sauce with spinach, wine and pine nuts…

Pad thai

When I discovered the Thai House’s recipe for pad thai, I felt like I was discovering the dish anew — with a sauce of only soy sauce and sugar, this recipe was amazingly simple, produced way better results than any other pad thai I had ever made in the past, and tasted great. In fact, the pad thai I was making at home was so good that I didn’t even bother to order the dish on my first few days in Thailand — after all, I knew how pad thai was supposed to taste, so I might as well try other things, right?

So I was all the more surprised once I finally got around to trying the Thai version of “Thai stir-fry” to discover just how different it was from what I made at home. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that Israeli pad thai is made from ingredients available locally, while the Thai version has a base of fish and oyster sauce, and often contains garlic chives, bean sprouts, different kinds of Thai tofu, shallots (I’d put shallots in everything, too, if I could get them for 50 agorot a kilo), Thai garlic (sweeter than the garlic we use in the West), tamarind, lime juice, palm sugar and shrimp.

OK, so maybe this version isn’t authentic, but it brings rave reviews and recipe requests whenever I make it, and it quickly became one of my (and my friends’) staples. Plus, you can expand on the basic concept to add some more “Thai” ingredients, if you can find them. Continue reading Pad thai…

Garlic greens paste with romano and walnuts

On the advice of friends, we are now the proud owners of eight massive heads of garlic, stems still attached. Apparently this is garlic season, so now is the time to stock up for the year. There are several reasons to do so, our friends told us — the garlic that we usually buy, which comes neatly packed in little plastic nets, is grown in China and processed with chemicals. Now, I couldn’t confirm that, but it turns out that China produces 77 percent of the world’s garlic supply, so the claim is entirely plausible. We’re also big proponents of buying local.

You can currently buy fresh garlic heads at the Carmel Market — we saw the heads alone selling for 20 shekels a kilo, while the ones with the stems attached, which our friends recommended, were going for 8 shekels a kilo in the Gaza shook section. There, we found a huge, smelly pile of garlic, with robust bulbs attached to several-foot-long stems and somewhat decaying leaves.We bought 8, for 22 shekels.

Most people who buy garlic this way leave the plants to dry (the garlic heads shrink in the process) and then braid the stems. Now, while it’s quite pretty to have a garlic braid hanging in your kitchen (and supposedly good luck to boot), that seemed like an awful waste to me — why not cook the greens instead? Continue reading Garlic greens paste with romano and walnuts…

Vegan potstickers

There are lots of gorgeous recipes for potstickers online. The problem? Most are filled with pork, or shrimp, or a combination thereof. There’ll be none of that here. I was inspired to make these dumplings after viewing some beautiful potsticker photos, and was inspired to create some fillings based on the wonderful assortment of vegetables in our fridge.

More of my vegan recipes.

I filled half with a mushroom-ginger filling, and the other half with a garlicky mix of greens and bean sprouts. Quite good indeed. Continue reading Vegan potstickers…

Quick soda bread with zaatar, sun-dried tomatoes, and more

In honor of St. Patrick’s day, apparently there’s been a debate raging about soda bread. The conclusion is that once you start adding things beyond flour, buttermilk and baking soda, it’s not traditionally Irish. Well, that’s fine with me. I added zaatar and sun-dried tomatoes to mine, and I make no claims of Irish authenticity. This is the Levant, after all.

Soda bread has a major advantage — it’s quick and easy. I wanted bread for breakfast, and this took max 30 minutes from start to finish. No kneading, rising, kneading rising again …. With that, I should note that since it uses baking soda and not yeast as the leavening agent, it has a taste of baking soda, not yeast. That means it comes out slightly salty. This is either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending how you look at it. But have I mentioned it’s quick? Continue reading Quick soda bread with zaatar, sun-dried tomatoes, and more…

Beet salad with bay leaves and wine vinegar

This beet salad was inspired by a very enjoyable dish we had at Mitbahon, a cute little restaurant behind the Carmel Market. I do believe our friends call it “the best-tasting beets ever.” Needless to say, I liked it enough to try to make something similar at home. The Mitbahon version was seasoned with bay leaves and allspice, but for some reason, allspice is one of the few spices I don’t actually have, so I went with cloves and peppercorns instead.

The result was mild, lightly seasoned, and quite good. As a bonus, I used the seasoned water from cooking the beets to make rice. Continue reading Beet salad with bay leaves and wine vinegar…

Majadera

I learned how to make majadera from Naifeh, one of my roommates when I lived in Haifa. Majadera is a relatively simple dish — it has very few ingredients, which happen to combine to make a whole protein.

Majadera is prepared in stages — first you fry the onions until they’re nearly burnt. This is what gives the dish its flavor. Then you cook the lentils until they’re soft. Finally, you add the rice, which absorbs the rest of the water (if you’ve measured your water properly). This is why the premade majadera mixes sold at our health food store give me pause — you really can’t mix all the ingredients together in advance. I react the same way to restaurant majadera where the rice is white. If it looks like they cooked the rice, lentils and onions separately, and mixed all three together after the fact, it may come out looking tidier but it just won’t have that much flavor. Continue reading Majadera…

Carrot pumpkin soup with ginger and cilantro

A while ago, while we were eating out at a restaurant that shall remain unnamed, we ordered a soup that was listed on the menu as carrot soup with ginger, cilantro, coconut and peanuts. What we got was carrots pureed with instant soup powder, topped with a token peanut and a cilantro leaf. This was disappointing not only because we’d paid 30-plus shekels for a bowl of baby food, but also because the combination of ingredients promised by the menu had sounded quite good. So I made my own. Continue reading Carrot pumpkin soup with ginger and cilantro…

New photo-based archive of posts and recipes

After much struggling with PHP, I’ve finally made a photo-based archives page, where you can find all my food photos with links to the corresponding recipes and posts. After all, my suspicions tell me most people are here for the photos anyway, so what better way to enjoy them than to have them all in one place, as colorful little icons? Kind of like a tapas bar. Enjoy.