bastille day in montpellier

morning: a giant macaron, tarte citron and caramel ice cream cake

for another big day on july 14th; lisa's birthday!

also: those little yellow things are NOT tomatoes. they are actually

tiny apricots. we bought a big sack of them without actually

asking, tasting, or looking for a sign telling us what they were

because, well, they looked like tomatoes. 

nope. apricots. tart, squishy, actually quite addictive apricots.

 

you can never have too many flags...

 potluck picnic on the esplanade just outside of the place de la comédie

our landlords, french "parents", and dear friends jean-marie and claire

with anna and me. they made a gorgeous birthday dinner for lisa!

olives, champagne, cauliflower soup (pictured below), a

fruit and salmon salad with indian spices, and a cake that

absolutely took my breath away...

the birthday girl with her cake of ladyfingers, peaches and cream. ♥

happy birthday to my dear friend lisa, and happy bastille day to

all of my lovely french friends! (and francophiles everywhere...)

bonne fête!

strawberry rhubarb shortcake

This July 4th, I went to my friend Anna's lakehouse in Maine.

It's a good place. 

I went fishing for the first time! It was fun. I did not

catch anything, but as you can see, Anna certainly did.

July Fourth cocktails: Watermelon, strawberry, blackberry, pineapple

juice, ice, vodka and Malibu.

 The best lobster I've ever had...

And, a surprise visit with my other friend, Dora! 

It's so funny. I met Anna in Israel, and I met Dora in Italy.

And here they both are now in Maine, living a half hour

from each other.

I love when faraway worlds collide.  

Fireworks over the lake...

There are dozens of pink rhubarb plants in the 

lush wooded area by the lakehouse.

I picked some and brought them home with me.

Anna also bestowed me with loads of bags filled

with frozen blueberries and chopped rhubard.

It's fantastic, and perfect for baking. So...

expect quite a few rhubarb or

blueberry filled baked goods in the near

future...

Strawberry Rhubarb Shortcake

I think I will always eat this instead of strawberry shortcake from now on. 

I love rhubarb... 

The recipe for the biscuits comes from the best cookbook ever; The Gourmet Cookbook. 

You may notice that the biscuit recipe has no butter in it. This actually

means that it is technically NOT shortcake, since the "short" implies 

that it's made with butter. However, these cream biscuits are 

absolutely delightful, a breeze to make, and still produces

a great "shortcake" so I have no problem with that. I mean,

when has Ruth Reichl ever led me astray? 

Ingredients

For the cream biscuits:

2 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups heavy cream 

And the rest... 

6 stalks of rhubarb, chopped

1/4 cup sugar, plus a pinch or two more

1/2 of a lemon

10 strawberries, hulled and quartered

About a cup or so of heavy cream

A splash of vanilla extract, or, even better, the scrapings of one vanilla bean...mmm

Preparation

First, begin the biscuits. Preheat your oven to 425f/220c.  Butter a baking sheet.

Sift your flour, baking powder and salt together into a large bowl.  Slowly add your cream and gently work together just until you've formed  soft dough. The trick with these biscuits is to work the dough as little as possible, otherwise the texture will be completely off and you'll be disappointed. 

Get your dough into a ball. Again, use the lightest touch possible.

Lightly flour a work surface and knead the dough six times. Yes, six. 

Using your fingertips, spread the dough so it's about 1/2 inch thick. 

Lightly flour the rim on a glass and use that to cut rounds from the dough. When you've run out of space, gather the dough again and repeat. You should have about 8 biscuits. 

Brush the tops with some cream and pop into the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. 

Transfer to a cooling rack and move on to your topping!

In a medium saucepan, combine 1/4 cup sugar, rhubarb, and the juice from a wedge or two of lemon. Keep over medium/low heat, stirring occasionally, until liquidy and jamlike. Remove from heat and let cool.

In another bowl, crush your strawberries with a fork. Add a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of sugar. Then, stir in your rhubarb. Let sit for a bit.

Finally, in a large bowl, combine cream, a pinch of sugar, and vanilla. Get either an electric mixer (heaps easier) or a whisk, and whip it up! 

To serve, cut a biscuit in half, and top with your fruit and cream. Replace top like a sandwich. 

 

Chag Purim! Chag Purim!

Anybody who doesn't love Purim has not celebrated properly. It has all the elements of being the best holiday ever. A quick checklist.

• Dressing in costume? Check.
• The consumption of cookies, chocolates, cakes, sweets and everything delicious? Check.
• Rabbinically encouraged drunkeness? Check. 
• Parades, parties, and general revelry? Check. 
• The tradition of putting on a PLAY! Check! (If any of you don't know, I was a theatre major...) 
• Gift giving... Check!

Yes, my friends. I love Purim. It may be my favorite holiday to celebrate, although I unfortunately do not partake every year. This year involved me coming home from work, having a little nap, and making cookies. But last year I was in Israel and it was spectacular. It was my second Israeli Purim and one of the most fun weeks I've ever had. 

The kibbutz volunteers all got together in the kitchen and made hamantashen. These delicious treats are made either with a yeasty or a cookie dough, and are filled with countless versions of sweets. The versions I've seen most often are usually strawberry jam, orange marmalade, and poppy seed. I personally love the poppy seed ones, although I don't think everybody agrees with me. Making the cookies on the kibbutz was so much fun, and it was great because we had hundreds to snack on the whole week. Making costumes was great fun, and all the members, volunteers and other groups on the kibbutz took it very seriously! A bunch of us went into Eilat to buy costume pieces and facepaint...my friend Anna (pictured as Wilma Flintstone!) made her dress out of a tablecloth! My costume was decidedly easier...I was supposed to be Sally Bowles. Because, as mentioned before, theatre geek.  I did craft an old fashioned cigarette holder out of a mechanical pencil.

  Our little group of volunteers also did a secret buddy game with mishloach manot; Purim gift baskets filled with sweets. The children paraded around the dining hall in costume, the members put on a Purim play... (it wasn't in English, so sadly I didn't understand much...hopefully next time my Hebrew will have improved!) There was a giant party on the Saturday night of the week of Purim in the kibbutz "pub". (A converted garage with a bar and a dance floor- which I miss more than I can possibly express...) Everybody living on the kibbutz pitched in to decorate for it's theme of movies. It was amazing! The whole pub was covered in stars, recreations of film posters, and other fabulous decorations. We even had a wooden limo in front of the pub and a red carpet! Everybody worked so hard and it was worth every second of time. The pub was completely packed, there was an open bar and a champagne toast, great music...one of the best parties I've ever been to. Wow...feeling so nostalgic...
I made hamantashen today, but I didn't take a picture. Honestly, they didn't turn out so beautiful anyway, so it's not much of a loss. The pictures I am showing were taken by my friend Shayna, from last year's hamantashen making session on kibbutz, so all credit goes to her!  The dough recipe I used, and use every year,  comes from Joan Nathan's The Jewish Holiday Cookbook.

Hamentashen!

Dough recipe courtesy of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen

Ingredients

2/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

a pinch of salt

Fillings of your choice (I used raspberry rhubarb jam and Nutella!) 

Preparation

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat in until smooth. Add the vanilla, and then the dry ingredients until a dough has formed. Wrap and chill for at least two hours, or even overnight. (I never plan well enough to chill overnight, but if you're more organized than me...)

After your dough has chilled, flour a surface and roll out your dough.

Preheat your oven to 375. Spread baking paper over two baking sheets.

Using a cup, cut out circles from your dough. Lay on your sheets.  Drop about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each circle. Any sort of jam works really well. I've used lemon curd and that was awesome. In Israel, we used Israeli chocolate spread and that gave me the idea to use Nutella today. Anything goes! Also, if you want to do the poppy thing, I think you can buy the poppy filling in the baking isle of most grocery stores.

Once every circle has a filling, carefully pinch into triangles like so:

Be sure to pinch the corners well so the filling doesn't explode out.

Bake for 11-14 minutes, or when they smell like cookies. 

If you've never had these before, you are in for a real treat. 

Enjoy! Chag Sameach!!!!

Happy Valentines Day!

I actually like Valentines day. Chocolate, hearts, and celebrating love? Count me in. Sure, it's commerical, bla bla bla, and I know it is, but it's fun and I've always enjoyed it. I'm hoping/assuming that this one will be better than last, as I was on the kibbutz last year and a really nasty flu happened to be going around the volunteer crew that week. I spent Valentines Day in bed feeling wretched. But you know what? All my healthy friends came in and looked after me, and brought me water and made me tea. I think one of them even made my bed for me!  So really, it wasn't that bad of a day. I felt the love.

 But this year, there will be none of that flu nonsense. 

Anyway, I made a delightful dessert tonight in honor of the holiday. It feeds eight, so if you're having a little get-together, perhaps you could serve this! I got the recipe from BBC Good Food (the October 2010 issue). I made a few reaaaaaallly minor adjustments, but really I just followed the recipe. It turned out really nicely! Check it out.

 Self-Saucing Jaffa Pudding

Courtesy of BBC Good Food

By the way. I had no idea what Jaffa cakes were until I went to England. I have tried them, however, and they were excellent. They're named for the lovely Jaffa oranges, which, incidenally, are Israeli. (Jaffa is an ancient port right outside of Tel Aviv, and it is fabulous. Eventually, I will blog about it...)

This is quite different from a Jaffa cake, obviously. But the chocolate orange element is there. I did not use Jaffa oranges (can one even get them in the US?) I used, in spirit of Valentine's Day, blood oranges (well, really, because I saw a bag of them at the market and was so excited I just had to buy them...guess who's having red orange juice tomorrow for breakfast??) I also used pink salt, just because it felt more valentinesy to me, but I know that's ridiculous.  

Oh. Okay, one more thing. The recipe specified self-rising flour, and since I rarely bake, I didn't want to buy a whole bag of that. I read in a Nigella Lawson cookbook that you can make your own self-rising flour by adding two tablespoons of baking powder for every cup of flour you use, and if the recipe also involves cocoa (or buttermilk, or yogurt), to also (on top of the power) add a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda to every cup as well. The recipe also calls for baking powder, and I used it. It was a lot of baking powder, but it turned out great, so, no worries. 

Ingredients

1 stick (8 tbsp) butter, melted

250 grams or 2 cups of self-rising flour  (or see above)

140 grams/5 oz sugar 

50 grams/2 oz cocoa 

1 tsp baking powder

zest and juice of one orange (try blood oranges if you see them in the store! mmm)

3 eggs

150 ml or 2/3 cup milk

100 grams/4 oz chocolate (orange chocolate, if you find it), broken into chunks 

FOR THE SAUCE

200 grams/7 oz sugar (light muscovado,  if you have it. I didn't.)

25 grams/1 oz cocoa

Preparation

Grease a 2 litre baking dish and heat oven to 360f (180c). Put the kettle on. Combine the flour, sugar and cocoa for the cake, baking powder, orange zest and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. 

Whisk together the orange juice, eggs, melted butter and milk until smooth. Add the chocolate chunks, stir to incorporate. Pour into the baking dish.

Mix about a  cup and a quarter of the boiling water from the kettle with the sugar and cocoa for the sauce. Pour it over the pudding batter. It will look water, slightly lumpy, and unattractive.  (BBC Good Food even warns this!) 

Slide into the middle rack of the oven and cook for 30 minutes. When you serve, you will find a spongy, delicate, chocolately cake and a rich beautiful sauce underneath. No idea how it works but it's fantastic. 

Serve immediately!

It would be a crime not to serve this with ice cream, or even just cream.  

♥ Happy Valentines Day! ♥