Great News + Cauliflower Tomato Bake with Basil & Parmesan

Good morning!  I hope ya’ll are doing wonderfully.  I am currently enjoying the decadence that is a chocolate croissant from Aroma Espresso Bar so obviously, I’m doing great. Sure, I have a cold and deadlines and I missed work yesterday and I’m under a bit of stress but, did I mention the chocolate croissant!? Sometimes a delicious chocolate croissant really does make it all better.

I’m going to keep this post short and sweet as I am THIS close to unveiling the new Jewhungry redesign so needed to take a break from posting new content so as not to interfere with the unveiling.  However, a few exciting things happened this week in my world o’ blogging and food and I just couldn’t NOT share, Jew know?

 

First things first, I received the most beautiful, HUGE, ruby red Le Creuset Dutch oven (see above) yesterday as a result of winning This American Bite’s Most Inspiring Recipe of 2013.  I was so dang excited when the UPS guy dropped it off that I gave him several freshly baked cookies that had just come out of the oven.  I honestly would have hugged him but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.  Yesterday also brought a feature of Jewhungry on My Jewish Learning’s site, The Nosher (see the full interview here).  And today brings the accompanying recipe to the interview.  Here are a few pictures to get you drooling so make sure you head on over to The Nosher for the full recipe.

See you at the Redesign Unveiling, I hope!

xo

Happy Anniversary Kosher Connection + A GIVEAWAY: Peas + Shells (and baby bellas!) with Vegan Alfredo Sauce

Cauliflower: My ultimate food frenemy

Happy anniversary Kosher Connection!  It’s been one year since a few kosher cooking blog folks decided to get together and create a connection; a place for kosher food writers/creators could get together to share ideas, recipes, mazal tovs on success and to gain advice.  Some of us are more ‘seasoned’ (please, pun COMPLETELY intended) than others (read: me).  I discovered the Connection late Fall.  At the time, I had just come back to work after 3 months of a very tough and emotional maternity leave.  I was battling undiagnosed (though I’ve diagnosed it) Post Partum Depression, lack of sleep and lots of stress.  I was trying to find my place in this new world of parenthood meets full-time employment and felt I needed something more.  Jewhungry had been on the back burner for roughly a year.  I stopped cooking when I got pregnant and the intense food aversions set in and just never got back into it.  But all those nights spent trying to keep myself awake by the light of my iPhone and the Pinterest app., while attempting to not-so-successfully breast feed, got my creative cooking juices flowing (again, pun COMPLETELY intended).  So I found this Connection, sent a few emails and then the next thing I know, I’m in.

I am so incredibly grateful for this group of people.  As a social worker with a concentration in community organizing, I believe in the power of connectivity.  I always have.  I have found incredibly support and advice from this Connection and though I have never met any of the members in person, some I feel like I’ve known for years (I’m talking to you Yosef, Hindy and Sarah).

In honor of this most auspicious occasion, we are giving away two beautiful prizes from Emile Henry: A Bread Cloche valued at $130 and a 4.2 qt Dutch Oven valued at $170! Use the Rafflecopter below to win- you can enter up to 23 ways! Two winners will be chosen at random. Click on the “A RAFFLECOPTER Giveaway” link below for your chance to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It’s a lot easier to cook when the little one has her bestie over to play.

For this very special Monday Round-Up, every member of the Kosher Connection who decided to participate in this month’s ‘Round Up”, was randomly assigned the blog of another Connection member. We could pick ANY recipe from that blog to recreate in your own kitchen and most importantly, we needed to make the dish our own.  I was lucky to be assigned More Quiche, Please.  Tali, the adorable creator of More Quiche, Please, was born into a vegetarian family and is still (to my knowledge), a vegetarian so she has a lot of delicious recipes to choose from.  It was a little piece of heaven to go through her recipe index.  It was also really intimidating–there were so many amazing recipes to choose from!  In the end, I decided on pasta shells with peas in a creamy Alfredo sauce.  Now, since I cook for a Paleo and a vegan client, making it ‘my own’ meant making it so that it would roughly fit into their dietary needs, which means no dairy.  For the sake of maintaining the integrity of the dish, I kept the real pasta shells but if I was making it for my sweet little Paleo client, I would have substituted it for quinoa pasta.  The result was the creation of a vegan pasta shells with peas and because I had them on hand and I just love their flavor, I had to add baby bella mushrooms.  The dish is really flavorful but, I have to admit that because I boiled the cauliflower in vegetable broth, it doesn’t look like Alfredo.  It does however, look like a delicious cheddar sauce.  More than anything, it tastes delicious.  So, happy anniversary Kosher Connection and bitayavon!

Pasta + peas

My family is, in fact, NOT vegan so we added parmesan to our dish and it was phenomenal.

 

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower
Coconut oil
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 carton of baby Portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp of white cooking wine
2.5 cups of vegetable broth
1 cup of frozen peas
1 carton of pasta shells
Sea salt
Pepper
Thyme
Juice of 1/2 of lemon
*Vegan, unsweetened almond milk

Can you smell the yumminess?

 

How:

Place 3 tbsp of coconut oil in a large frying pan.  Add the onions and most of the garlic to the pan and saute over medium heat until onions are translucent and garlic is smelling up your house nicely.  Remove from heat and place in a separate bowl.  In the same frying pan, add the rest of the garlic and saute for one minute.  Add the mushrooms and continue sauteing on medium low heat for an additional 3 -4 minutes. Add the white wine and 2 tsp of thyme.  Saute for an additional 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and place in a separate bowl from the onions and garlic.  Next, place the chopped cauliflower together with the vegetable in a large stock pot and bring to a boil.  Once the broth has come to a rapid boil, turn heat down to medium low and continue to boil until the cauliflower is tender.  Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the instruction on the packaging in a separate pot, careful not to over cook. With about 1 to 2 minutes left to cook, dump frozen peas into the boiling water with the pasta and stir.  Let cook for an extra minute or two and drain in a colander that will keep the peas in the colander and set aside.  Meanwhile, back to the cauliflower — once cauliflower is tender, add the onions and garlic to the cauliflower pot plus salt and pepper to your taste.  Using an immersion blender, blend the cauliflower, remaining broth (what hasn’t boiled out), onions, and garlic until smooth.  If you feel that you need a bit more liquid, add some almond milk to the mixture.  Make sure you taste along the way, regardless, and add spices to your liking. Combine the cauliflower alfredo with the noodles, add the peas and the mushrooms and stir a bit to combine (we added parmesan cheese to ours and it really kicked up the flavor).  Enjoy!

Wait, what? I have a kid?

Has this ever happened to you? You have a baby, you are sent home from the hospital with said baby and then for several weeks you wonder aloud, “So, when are this child’s parents coming to pick up their baby?”  No? Just me?

Our baby is starting school on Monday.  Yes it’s really daycare but they have a curriculum.  We toured the place again on Thursday and the Director asked us if we wanted to go through their curriculum and in my head I thought to myself, “Wait, curriculum? Don’t you just make sure they’re fed, happy and rested?”  And then it hit me, this is our child’s first step into school.  She’s going out there in the world without us.  She’s going to meet other kids and make little art projects and we’re going to be invited to parent-teacher conferences.  Now, granted the first year or so will focus on her poop and nap schedule development but seriously, this parent thing is getting real!

They don’t call it the ‘happy baby’ pose in yoga for nothing.

So rather than freak out, yet again, this shabbat we tried to focus—-focus on the fact that we’re not sending our 5 month old off to baby boarding school but to daycare.  We still get our little love back every night and of course, on the most important day–shabbat.  We focused on answering those important kosher questions like, ‘what age are we going to have to start caring about Siona eating meat after milk? What will our stance be when she inevitably tries a cheeseburger? Will we stop eating dairy at non-kosher restaurants because it could be confusing or maybe it’ll ease the kosher thing as it could be less restrictive-feeling?’  We have some answers and some we’ll have to wait and see how our family life evolves as it’s easy to be kosher in Miami, but not so easy in a city like Raleigh-Durham (it’s on our short list).  Regardless, my ability to give a poop about some of the parenting things I gave a poop about for the last 5 months has most definitely decreased.  I’ve come to terms and even found peace in the fact that our baby is a formula baby. I’ve found peace in the fact that I have to work full time in order to help provide for my family.  There’s just no time or even brain space for holding on to that stuff because dang it, no one’s coming to pick up that baby.  She’s ours and thank Gd for that.

Talk about multi-tasking

This week’s recipe is a staple on our shabbat table.  It’s often requested when our friends, the Whislers come over, and it’s soooo easy.  One of the biggest changes will be the fact that the hubbs will still be at work when I need to be cooking for dinner.  I’ll probably have to just suck it up and do the majority of my cooking the night before, which will SERIOUSLY get in the way of my 8:30 bed time.  But, in the end, it might save my sanity.

Roasted Cauliflower with Tehina

What!?

2 heads of cauliflower1/2 cup of tehina (recipe below)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Tumeric
Parsley and cilantro for garnish

For the Tehina:
1/2 cup of sesame paste
1/2 juice of lemon (or more depending on your taste)
Dash of kosher salt
Dash of garlic powder
Hot water to thin tehina

*Add all tehina ingredients EXCEPT water to a deep bowl and stir.  Slowly add the hot water until desired consistency.  You want it to be pourable but not runny.  Season to taste.

How’s That Now!?

When you’re working with cauliflower in a kosher kitchen, you want to soak your cauliflower for several hours in hot water with a little salt at the bottom. 

Pre-heat oven to 400.  Once cauliflower have been soaked, chop so that the pieces are a decent size as they will shrink in the oven.  Spread chopped cauliflower on the baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with kosher salt, pepper, garlic powder and tumeric. Bake cauliflower for 45 minutes or so making sure to toss every 15 minutes or so.

Drizzle roasted cauliflower with tehina right before serving.  Top with chopped parsley and cilantro for garnish

When All Else Fails . . . Soup

Yesterday the hubs and I went to our first kids birthday party with our baby.  It was filled with the usual—an insane amount of sugar, 4 year-olds running around with foam pirate swords, more sugar—-it wasn’t so bad.  It was actually a beautiful day and I could relax in the fact that since my kid is too young to eat solids, I didn’t have to deal with the bargaining and tears that come with trying to temper your child’s sugar intake at a birthday party.  At some point I swear I was in a Judd Apatow movie when I overheard a father ask his 18 month old, “Is that poop I smell? Did you poop your pants?”  All in all, it was a lovely day.  Then I got home and received word that my beloved dog, Teddy, isn’t doing so well and the end might be near.  Before there was hubby, before there was baby, it was just Teddy and me.  As a twenty-something in Chicago, Teddy was my buddy.  Every Saturday morning, when the weather allowed us, we would take incredibly long walks around the city.  Sometimes I would stop in our favorite coffee shop, Central Bark, and I’d get a latte and he’d have a biscuit; it was really lovely.  That little man went everywhere with me.  When my grandfather unexpectedly passed away a few days before Thanksgiving, my cousin, his then fiancée (now wife), Teddy and I  jumped in the car and drove to Louisville in a blizzard.  At one point on that drive he ate dinner with us in a Burger King, B. K. (Before Kosher) as it was too cold to leave him in the car for a few minutes and too snowy and dangerous to drive while eating.  He just sat there eating chicken fries (sorry PETA and other concerned pet-lovers.  At least it was food. He was fine. Calm down.), happy as can be.  He was truly my little buddy and I will be forever grateful for his companionship.  When it came time for me to move myself to Israel for the year Teddy moved into my mom’s place in Asheville, NC and lived the life of a retiree in the mountains and he’s been there ever since.  He complained, he went on long walks, he slept a lot, he was happy.  Now he’s dealing with some yucky cancer and we’re not sure how much longer it’s going to be.  Mom took him to the emergency vet yesterday in the evening and while I waited to hear the news of his condition I made soup.  What else are you supposed to do when you need to be busy while waiting to hear about your furry friend?  The soup decided upon was a roasted cauliflower soup.  I found the recipe on Pinterest and tweaked/added a few things and I really feel the result was the taste and comfort I was looking for.   The original recipe did not call for smoked paprika or dill but I really felt like the paprika and the dill would compliment the cheddar nicely while not over powering each other.  However, the paprika is definitely more of an ‘ingredient’ while the dill is more a garnish, if that makes sense.  Also, it’s important to taste and taste often with a heavy recipe.  I ended up adding the squeeze of lemon at the end because it just needed a bit of acid to balance that cream.  Anyway, I hope you find the soup just as comforting as I did while making it under happier circumstances.

Ted with some awesome friends the day after my wedding.

Oh! Before I write out the ingredients/how-to I wanted to list all of Ted’s nicknames given to him by myself and various friends throughout the years.  You know, one last time.
1. Tedward
2. J. Tedgar Poover
3. Tedgar Allen Poo
4.  Theo
5.  Teddy Ruxpin
6. Teddykins

Ted and I in Chicago keeping each other warm.

What?

• 1  head cauliflower, cut into florets
• 2 tablespoons oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 teaspoon thyme, chopped
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 1/2 cups aged white cheddar, shredded
• 1 cup milk or cream
• 1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
• juice of half a lemon
• A few sprigs of fresh dill for garnish

How’s That Now?

1. Toss the cauliflower florets in the oil along with the salt and pepper and arrange them in a single layer on a large baking sheet.
2. Roast the cauliflower in a preheated 400F oven until lightly golden brown, about 20-30 minutes.
3. Heat the oil in a large sauce pan over medium heat.
4. Add the onion and saute until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
5. Add the garlic and thyme and saute until fragrant, about a minute.
6. Add the broth and cauliflower, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.
7. Puree the soup until it reaches your desired consistency with an immersion blender.
8. Mix in the cheese, let it melt and season with paprika.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste.
10. Mix in the milk and remove from heat — MAKE SURE TO TASTE AGAIN
11. Add squeeze of half a lemon to balance out the heaviness of the soup.
12. Garnish with dill.

Bottom of the delicious, delicious soup pot