Cafe Liz

Braised hijiki salad, and a Japanese-Israeli picnic

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 Japanese food is rather hard to find in Israel, let alone Japanese home cooking — the majority of the restaurants paint themselves as upscale, with prices to match. I think the large majority of the country’s Japanese home cooks were present in the park that afternoon.

Who attends a Japanese-Israeli picnic? Aside from our little group, everyone there was intermarried couples and their children. Needless to say, most people were fluent in both languages and cultures. As one 12-year-old girl explained to us, she was born in Israel, and is completely Israeli, except that she’s Japanese.

So, what does Japanese Israeli picnic food look like? Continue reading Braised hijiki salad, and a Japanese-Israeli picnic…

Rice noodles in coconut rhubarb curry

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 curry, and everything just fell into place. The rhubarb wound up being a great addition; its tart flavor nicely offset the coconut, lemon juice and cilantro, and it looked great sliced into thin sticks along with some purple carrot.

The end result isn’t exactly Thai, but more importantly, it tastes good. Continue reading Rice noodles in coconut rhubarb curry…

Cold sesame noodles with cucumber and wakame

It’s getting a little too hot to eat warm food. Fortunately, these sesame-coated noodles are cold and refreshing. This preparation is vaguely Japanese-inspired, due to the wakame and soy sauce, but with a local twist of tahini. To the best of my knowledge, you can’t readily find tahini in Japan, because if you can, I’m not sure why our friends there asked us to bring a kilo of it with us when we came to visit. Continue reading Cold sesame noodles with cucumber and wakame…

Pad thai

When I discovered the Thai House’s recipe for pad thai, I felt like I was discovering the dish anew — with a sauce of only soy sauce and sugar, this recipe was amazingly simple, produced way better results than any other pad thai I had ever made in the past, and tasted great. In fact, the pad thai I was making at home was so good that I didn’t even bother to order the dish on my first few days in Thailand — after all, I knew how pad thai was supposed to taste, so I might as well try other things, right?

So I was all the more surprised once I finally got around to trying the Thai version of “Thai stir-fry” to discover just how different it was from what I made at home. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that Israeli pad thai is made from ingredients available locally, while the Thai version has a base of fish and oyster sauce, and often contains garlic chives, bean sprouts, different kinds of Thai tofu, shallots (I’d put shallots in everything, too, if I could get them for 50 agorot a kilo), Thai garlic (sweeter than the garlic we use in the West), tamarind, lime juice, palm sugar and shrimp.

OK, so maybe this version isn’t authentic, but it brings rave reviews and recipe requests whenever I make it, and it quickly became one of my (and my friends’) staples. Plus, you can expand on the basic concept to add some more “Thai” ingredients, if you can find them. Continue reading Pad thai…

Vegan potstickers

There are lots of gorgeous recipes for potstickers online. The problem? Most are filled with pork, or shrimp, or a combination thereof. There’ll be none of that here. I was inspired to make these dumplings after viewing some beautiful potsticker photos, and was inspired to create some fillings based on the wonderful assortment of vegetables in our fridge.

More of my vegan recipes.

I filled half with a mushroom-ginger filling, and the other half with a garlicky mix of greens and bean sprouts. Quite good indeed. Continue reading Vegan potstickers…

Crunchy tofu stir-fry in soy-maple sauce

I like it when my tofu has a crunch. In this dish, I fried the tofu separately first, so that the outsides would be crispy while the insides stayed soft. The maple sugar, which I picked up in the U.S., added a nice roundness to the mixture of wine and soy sauce. Continue reading Crunchy tofu stir-fry in soy-maple sauce…

Green curry

This is my favorite kind of Thai curry. Luckily, it’s not too complicated — most of the taste comes from the basil-rich green curry paste. You can think of it as a kind of Thai pesto — in Thailand they pound the spices together by hand, but here you can just buy the curry paste ready-made, in a jar.

And since I’m no longer in Thailand, I had to adapt the dish to the vegetables available locally (bottom right photo). Continue reading Green curry…