Cafe Liz

I had the honor of being invited to the semi-annual picnic of the rather small Japanese-Israeli community this week. Aside from the dozens of interesting people and oodles of adorable children were plate after plate of fabulous food — several kinds of tamago, various onigiris and sushi rolls, iced roasted rice tea and uncountable stir-fries. In fact, this was probably the first picnic I’d been to in Israel where only one person brought pitas and hummus (guilty as charged). Good [...]

I needed an easy dish to bring to a vegan friend’s potluck dinner — something substantial, but also something that could easily be prepared in large quantities. Voila — seared lentil salad.

Most recipes for rhubarb involve turning it into mush, without taking advantage of the beautiful, red stalks’ appearance. Thai food often involves a mix of tart, lemony flavors. Hmm, I know! I’ll use the rhubarb in a stir-fry, with Thai seasonings! I was inspired to make a savory rhubarb recipe by the New York Times, which put the vegetable into an Indian-inspired curry. Meanwhile, as I was planning dinner, I had this idea of making rice noodles in a coconut [...]

I made this pumpkin stew because I had a block of pumpkin sitting in my fridge for close to a week, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I bought it out of habit, since all winter long I’d been making pumpkin soup — nearly a batch a week — but as the weather becomes warmer, the thought of soup isn’t always as appealing as it was a few months ago. Furthermore, I could have made it into [...]

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 [...]

This dish, with the cucumbers, carrots and wakame, resembles something I once had at a Japanese restaurant, but the green papaya is my own addition. I happened to have one sitting around, since I’ve been aspiring to make a spicy Thai papaya salad pretty much since we returned from Thailand. The papaya doesn’t add much in the way of flavor, but it does have a crunchier, firmer texture than the other vegetables. For some reason, I really enjoy the texture [...]

I wasn’t going to post another soup, since they all kind of look the same, but this one came out really well. The cinnamon adds a nice touch, and all that spinach adds good flavor. In any case, I think it’s great to show what you can do without soup mix or premade broth — it’d be nice if certain restaurants were to catch on that you really don’t need these things in proper cooking.

I’m back from my visit to the United States, back to the land of good, cheap vegetables. The first thing I did on the morning after we landed was to visit our neighborhood vegetable shop, the Ibn Gvirol Shook, where they had indeed noticed our absence (it’s nice to be missed, no?). In any case, I came home with an armful of fresh vegetables, for about half of what it would have cost me at that lovely grocery store on [...]