Cafe Liz

I came to the market a little too late on a recent Friday. It was all of 4 P.M., but half the stands were closed. Discarded vegetables lined the path, as greengrocers dumped unwanted produce before the weekend. Piles of lettuce leaves that came to my waist. Boxes of mushy tomatoes, being picked over by foreign workers. Oh, and a small pile of fresh thyme and oregano. So I admit it: I picked them out of a box in the [...]

Coconut cream makes lentil stew a little bit less good for you, but a lot better tasting. However, I sprouted my lentils, which makes them a little bit better for you — I figure it fully counterbalances the coconut. Anyway, I’m not seriously concerned about a bit of extra fat. Coconut milk gives this otherwise simple lentil stew a creamy, even sweet taste, and certainly makes it more fun to eat.

The combination of sprouted lentils and herb-infused oil produces a dish with a rich, nutty taste. I was inspired by a very similar dish we had at a brunch in Zichron Yaakov.

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.

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 [...]

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 [...]