Vegetarian Delight with Ottolenghi

By Libby Barnea for Hadassah Magazine

In the midst of the dog days of summer, slaving away in a hot kitchen—roasting or baking meats and preparing other rich dishes—just doesn’t appeal to the home chef. For vegetable and general summer cooking inspiration, who better to turn to than Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, the famed London duo behind the burgeoning Ottolenghi restaurant empire in England’s capital and the authors of several cookbooks, including Jerusalem and the upcoming Plenty More (due out in October; both books published by Ten Speed).

These two recipes—Fennel, Cherry Tomato and Crumble Gratin and Radish and Fava Bean Salad—come from the recent American reissue of the pair’s first tome, simply called Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. The chefs’ focus here on light dishes infused with herbs, olive oil and other layers of flavor—and no doubt largely inspired by their Israeli childhoods steeped in Mediterranean cooking—translate seamlessly to delicious summer cooking. Enjoy, and stay cool. Oh, and because I couldn’t resist a little something chocolate-y, try Ottolenghi’s Macadamia and White Chocolate Brownies, they are delicious.

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SUMMER VEGETABLE AND RICOTTA PASTA

From Jaime Geller on The Joy of Kosher

I call this MY DINNER IN A BAG. I park next to the Farmer’s market, grab my basket and pick whatever vegetables look good to me. Race home, boil water and 15 minutes later I have a healthy and homemade dinner. You can vary this dish by using whatever vegetables are in season. The creamy and rich homemade cheese all gooey and folded into the pasta is simply heavenly and is a perfect way to end the day.

Prep Time : 15 min
Cook Time : 15 min
Ready Time : 30 min

4 Servings

Ingredients
1 pound pasta, cooked al dente (I use whole wheat pasta)
Best quality extra virgin olive oil
2 cups grated zucchini, I use a box grater
1 cup grated onion
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup grated beets
2 cups kale
2 cups halved cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
½ cup torn basil leaves
¼ cup chopped flat leaf parsley
1 ½ cups ricotta cheese (see recipe)
Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper

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Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi's Basic Hummus

Every week -- often with your help -- Food52's Senior Editor Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that are nothing short of genius.

Today: Perfectly smooth DIY hummus in a fraction of the time -- thanks to a simple, brilliant trick.

You will go to picnics and barbecues this summer, and there will be that person who brings the laziest contribution this side of a bag of Doritos: the store-bought tub of hummus. Maybe a sack of wet baby carrots to go with.

And you won't judge them, because you're nice.

Tubbed hummus has become that friendly convenience food that everyone accepts -- it's the new, improved French onion dip. It's so popular, it even comes in guacamole flavor. (Now you can start judging.)

But that stuff in the tubs -- as healthy and quick and easy as it may be -- is never going to be as good as the real thing. The real thing is rich and sultry and alive. It is tumbling over with nutty tahini and pricks of lemon and garlic and salt. It tugs at you so hard you want to drink it, not pop it open as a sensible snack.

I have the real thing for you. And it's a hell of a lot easier to make -- and faster -- than you'd think.

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When It Comes to Food, Southerners & Israelis Have a Lot in Common

By Michelle Ferguson-Cohen for Raising Kvell

I am a southerner. My husband is an Isreali. On the outset, many people think it is a strange pairing, but in fact, our backgrounds share much in common. We are both from communities made up of tenacious people of faith whose circumstances inspire ingenuity and who are intensely tied to the land.

I was not raised Jewish, but my spiritual journey to Judaism began long before I met my husband. I converted on my own terms, yet my decision to go kosher was one that was venturing into a new and frightening territory. It was encroaching on the little piece of home that I had left, my kitchen.

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Gluten-Free Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese

By Rella Kaplowitz for The Nosher

I try to eat a pretty healthy and most unprocessed gluten-free diet, but I do love mac & cheese. This is my new favorite way to make it—a healthier cheese sauce that uses pureed butternut squash and milk as the base with just a bit of shredded cheese, topped off with cheese and buttered breadcrumbs, and baked in the oven until it’s bubbly inside and toasty on top. This is also a great way to get picky kids to eat vegetables—the sauce tastes cheesy, not squashy! For an extra bit of richness, use whole milk instead of 2%.

Gluten-Free Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese
Ingredients

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups cooked butternut squash
1 ¼ cup 2 % milk
½ tsp sea salt + more to taste
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 lb gluten-free pasta (macaroni, penne, ziti, or rigatoni are best)
1½ cups shredded mozzarella, divided
1/3 cup gluten-free breadcrumbs
2 Tbsp melted butter
Finely minced herbs for garnish

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Red, Delicious: How Paprika Became Jews’ Favorite Hungarian Spice

Sweet or hot, stewed in goulash or rubbed on chicken, this versatile spice is a staple of the Jewish-American kitchen

By Leah Koenig for Tablet Magazine

“I’ll have what she’s having.” Those five words, uttered during the infamous orgasm-at-Katz’s-Deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, are arguably among the most legendary to emerge from 1980s cinema. But my favorite line in the movie comes from a different scene, when Harry (Billy Crystal), on a stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, coaxes Sally (Meg Ryan) to repeat after him in a goofy, zayde-inflected accent: “Waiter, there is too much pepper on my paprikash.” The line itself means very little, spoken mostly as a means to a flirtatious end. But there is something so utterly charming about Crystal’s impish delivery—something so irresistibly New York, and undeniably Jewish—that I fall for Harry’s shtick every time.

I was a child of the 1980s, and that scene also first introduced me to chicken paprikash, or paprikas csirke in Hungarian. Since there’s no Hungarian ancestry in my own family, the country’s famous stewed chicken dish, which turns rosy under the heavy influence of sweet paprika, never appeared on our table. Over the ensuing decades, I have probably eaten the dish only half a dozen times. Still, I feel an unspoken connection to chicken paprikash as a food of my people. Like Harry, the dish—and a liberal hand with the paprika shaker more broadly—has always seemed implicitly Jewish.

In Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen, the memoir of the late New York restaurateur George Lang, he recounts leaving his parents’ home at 19 to report to a Nazi labor camp. Lang, who would eventually go on to direct the Four Seasons and resurrect the famous Café des Artistes on New York’s Upper West Side, maintained a deep connection to Hungarian food throughout his life. Tellingly, he writes about the supplies he took with him as he bid his childhood home goodbye: “Almost as important a part of the backpack inventory as my books, was a well-wrapped slab of paprika-coated ‘bacon,’ my mother’s rendition of the real thing … made out of the sides of a well-fed goose.”

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Sour Cherry Soup

A Hungarian favorite. Not JUST for Shavuot.

By Adeena Sussman for MyJewishLearning

The tradition of eating dairy products on Shavuot has ushered in an entire menu of delicious dishes. For Hungarian Jews, Shavuot often coincided with the country's prolific sour cherry harvest.

Ask someone with Hungarian ancestry about their favorite foods, and invariably sour cherry soup is among them. "We would eat it during the summer months," said Miri Abraham, a friend of mine who used to visit her Hungarian grandmother, Emma, in Israel during summer vacations. "It was always part of a dairy meal."

Most recipes use a thickened mixture of sour cream and flour to lend the soup its signature pinkish-purple color. Sour cherries are at their peak towards the end of spring, and have a shorter season than sweet cherries. Luckily, jarred varieties (which are better than canned) are available all year, and are relatively easy to find.

Serve this soup as a sweet first course, or as a refreshing alternative to heavier desserts.

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