Cafe Liz

The next best thing to going to Italy and learning to make pasta from an Italian mother is having your cousins go and then teach you. (And the next best thing after that — hopefully — is learning about it on my blog.) Paul was my friend before he became my cousin — my cousin-in-law, really. I suppose I’m to blame for that, because I’m the one who introduced him to my cousin, and they haven’t separated since. Eitan calls [...]

What’s driving me to bake in the middle of this infernal summer? Maybe it’s heatstroke. Or maybe it’s the surplus of overripe fruit in the house. And it just might have something to do with the cute new cupcake wrappers I ordered off eBay. I had three mushy bananas sitting on the counter that needed to be dealt with. I had the idea to toss them into a muffin of some sort. Since I didn’t have a tried and trusted [...]

Much like we westerners like Japanese food, but alter it to suit our tastes, Japanese people like western food, but often with a Japanese twist. At the Uomo subway station in Tokyo, there's a little bakery full of western-style breads (OK, there are actually tons of such bakeries), where you take a tray and neatly fill it with pastries from the display (with tongs, of course). Here it is that we discovered green bread -- green tea flavored, to be [...]

I’m not entirely sure where my mom got this recipe, but I got it from her. It’s a surefire way to impress at a Friday night dinner. It has this warm, yeasty flavor in the hours after it’s baked that dissipates as the hours pass, turning it back into just another regular bread (very good bread, nonetheless). Oh, and it’s downright massive. It’s also quite forgiving. Last time I made it, I let my dough rise too much the second [...]

One of our friends, Gil, contributed 4 liters of fresh juice to our Rosh Hashanah meal — a great solution for a person with a juicer who doesn’t cook. The side effect? Massive, massive amounts of leftover fruit pulp — those 4 liters took about 15 kilos of fresh fruit to make. I have a hard time seeing food being thrown out, so we asked him to bring us the pulp. We’d find something to do with it.

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 [...]

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 [...]

This Saturday brunch included fresh-baked lahoh, a purple salad with ginger-dill dressing, a cheese-herb omelet and a random assortment of roasted purple vegetables. The lahoh was great, and is noteworthy because I don't think many recipes for this Yemenite pita appear in English

It’s Saturday again, and time for another Saturday brunch. I usually spend several days in eager anticipation, and when I woke up this morning, I decided to turn to my “Muffin Lady” cookbook for inspiration.