Cafe Liz

When we were in Japan, one of the things we ate on a daily basis was mochi -- the squishy, sticky, gooey sweetened rice snack, generally filled with azuki beans. That was one of the things that we missed, since you can't get it anywhere in Israel, so lo and behold, what did we bring back from our last trip to the U.S.? Mochi from Chinatown. Anyway, lucky for us, I've since learned that mochi is pretty easy to make. [...]

I was inspired to buy sweet dried peppers after reading up about chili. Mind you, these particular recipes happened to be packed with meat, so I wasn’t going to make them anytime soon, but the peppers in and of themselves seemed like a good idea. So they sat on our kitchen table for a while, and I’ve been randomly adding them to things. Such as today’s pumpkin soup. This is a very simple, mild soup with very few ingredients, and [...]

This burst of cold weather we’ve been having is making me want heavy, sweet foods for breakfast, which we eat at an hour that others would consider lunch. Hence, brunch. I recently bought a bottle of amaretto, and I’ve been looking for ways to use it — I bought it with baking in mind, far be it from us to actually drink liquor. So I added a bit to my french toast. By adding amaretto and milk, I came up [...]

I started making these because they’re the ubiquitous dessert in restaurants around here, and we really enjoyed finishing our meals with a steaming burst of molten chocolate. Who wouldn’t? In any case, I’ve never seen any reason to leave all good things to restaurants; I’d much rather enjoy them here at my house. This allows me to correct what would be the restaurant souffle’s most common fault: way too much solid cake and way too little liquid inside. While I [...]