Cafe Liz

Thai red curry

In the back of my fridge is a slowly shrinking bag of green mush that I've been guarding jealously. It's the remainders of the half-kilo of handmade green curry paste that we purchased from our favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai, longer ago than I should probably admit (OK, it was a year and a half ago). How could I use it generously when I knew that once it was gone, the only replacement I'd find was something imported in little plastic tubs whose quality and flavor were complete unknowns?

Now, the biggest barrier to making fresh Thai curry in Israel has been lifted -- fresh galangal is here, and I've bought a nice, fat root that should last me a while.

Mind you, there are still other challenges, as there are whenever you try to prepare a foreign cuisine. Beyond the question of whether foreign flavors meet local tastes, there's the whole matter of ingredients -- looking at this list of Thai vegetables, you'll probably notice a whole lot that you'll never find here (well, not yet, at least).

But negatives aside, we now have access to nearly all the main aromatics, the things that set the taste. So I whipped up my very own batch of curry paste, and while they might do it a bit differently in Thailand, it happened to taste quite good. And that's the most important thing. Continue reading Thai red curry ...

6 Comments | |

Brandied loquats

All it takes is one ingredient to turn loquats (or any other stone fruit) into a sweet, alcoholic concoction: sugar. This fabulously simple preparation comes from my sister-in-law Ora, who got the basic concept from the Encyclopedia of Country Living. Ora presented us with little containers of brandied loquats for Purim. We couldn’t stop eating them, and we couldn’t believe they were that easy to make. Now that loquats are finally coming into season, I gave it a try myself. [...]

Continue reading ...

22 Comments | |

Chocolate Passover biscotti

These biscotti have a tendency to vanish. Biscotti are twice-baked cookies, once into a loaf, and the second time after being sliced, and until crunchy. Something about the denseness means they don’t lose much — if anything — from being made with matzo meal instead of flour, and thus kosher for Passover. I got the recipe from my mother, who explained to me that she never bakes the full batch at once, because however much you bake, it immediately disappears. [...]

Continue reading ...

5 Comments | |