Great Kitchen Tips
Check out these food hacks. Good tips to save time or money in the kitchen. I think I have to watch this a couple times.
Cast-Iron Fried Eggs
For the past year I've been learning and perfecting cooking on cast-iron in a way that doesn't stick. For a long time I thought that was not possible but after seeing some videos showing me just how wrong I was, I began to experiment.
The break through came while I was camping during sukkot. The campfire I had my pan on was very hot. I was frying some diced potatoes and scrambled eggs. As they fried I saw they were not sticking just as I had seen and been trying to replicate. My error was the pan was not hot enough.
Potatoes and scrambled eggs seemed not much of a problem to do on my range at home. Now I must try fried eggs. Nope stuck on that pan and made a mess. Why? The pan was hot.
The secret for that elusive cast-iron fried egg was a really hot pan and enough oil in the pan to keep it off the bottom. It fried very fast. I had to be quick to season it and turn it before it burns but that little bit of crisp really makes it taste good. Different and dare I say better than the non-stick pans I have been using.
I think I don't need teflon for my eggs anymore.
Top Recipes 2022
I know this is a little late but I wanted to make a list of the top recipes in 2022 the family asked for again and again.
In no particular order:
- Poblano Chicken Spaghetti
- Buttermilk Pancakes
- Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
- Green Pozole
- Carne Guisada
- Rice Pilaf
Lessons on Matsah 2022
This year I learned a lot about making matsah. Still won't be winning any prizes. I learned that fried matsah is much easier and tastier than trying to make it very thin for baking.
I thought I'd been fancy this year and mix the All Purpose Flour with some Barley Flour for a bit more flavor. Turns out the flour I thought was Barley was actually Spelt. It tasted fine but the texture of the Spelt flour was fiberous and not very finely ground. Probably would have made a fine cracker but it's still hard to roll it thinner. Need much more practice. Ended up a thick cracker that sometimes wasn't crunchy. Tasted good anyways.
I also tried fried unleavened bread. Frying was definitely the way to go as you don't have to make it so thin and it still gets a nice crunchy fried texture. It was really good fried!
Next year I'll definitely be frying my matzah but I'll still try my hand at rolling that dough thin enough for a good baked matsah too.
Making Matzah
Looking at a lot of matzah recipes I realize there isn't a big difference between them. Maybe one overall recipe will do that has lots of ideas and subtle differences to try out is better than a hundred individual recipes.
There is a theme in all the recipes I read. Seems a 2:1 ratio of flour to water or 1.5:0.5 ratio is common. A very hot oven reaching temperatures of 475-500degrees is needed as well. A few called for a hot broil setting for a nice brown crisp on top. A pizza stone or the like gives good results as well.
Some differences I noticed, not all recipes used oil in the dough and the toppings varied a lot from nothing, to salted, to seseme seeds and more. Salted being the most common. Some traditions fry the dough instead of baking it.
Kosher tradition attempts to mix, knead, and cook the dough before 18minutes. The thinking is any longer and the wild yeast in the air will start making the dough rise. Does it really? I don't know. Nothing in scripture says you must make it in a certain time.
With all this information let's see if we can come up with an all purpose recipe.
Matzah
- 2Parts Flour
- 1Part Water
- Salt
Instructions
Tips
Preferably use fresh stone ground flour of type: wheat, barley, einkorn, spelt, or rye. Other flours could be used if the tradition you follow allows.
Be sure to pre-heat your pizza stone.
Can be helpful to roll dough on parchment paper to make it easy to transfer.
If using kosher standards set timer 18minutes after pizza stone has pre-heated.
Mix 2 parts flour with 1 part water. Some recipes use a 1.5:0.5 ratio. Also some recipes add 1Tbsp of oil.
Mix and knead until a dough ball forms. You may need to add a little extra flour to get the right consistency.
Cut ball into equal parts. Roll thin. If dough is sticky dust with flour. Dust rolling pin as needed.
Salt the dough if desired. Add any other toppings at this time. Poke the rolled out dough all over with a fork.
Baking
Put rolled dough on pizza stone or baking sheet with parchment paper.
Bake for 3-4minutes at 500° or until browned. Some recipes suggest turning half-way through.
Pan Frying
Get your pan hot with couple Tbls of olive oil. More if you like it crispier. Transfer to hot pan. Fries fast so keep close eye on it. Remove when browned on both sides.
Can add Italian seasoning or your favorite seasoning after it's cooked if you didn't add it before.
Ragout of Lamb, Next Recipe to Master
The French Cooking Academy has many very tasty dishes. Ragout of Lamb, Poulette Style has got to be the next recipe I master as it has many things I like in a dish. I especially like one bowl dishes. Stephen takes you step by step through the recipe.
The French Cooking Academy is a great channel to learn cooking techniques. It has helped me get much better at cooking in general and sauces and gravies specifically. And if you like butter then french cooking is something you are going to like!
Ragout of Lamb, Poulette Style
- 1Kg Cubed Lamb Shoulder
- 20g Butter
- 2 Thinly Sliced Onion
- 200g Thinly Sliced Leek (white part)
- 1Tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 200ml Dry White Wine
- 200ml Water
- 1 Branch Thyme
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 300g Thinly Sliced Mushrooms
- 2 Egg Yolks
- 100ml Cream (at least 30% fat)
- 1tsp Fresh Lemon Juice
- to taste Salt and Pepper
Instructions
Brown lamb in a large wide pot with butter. Set aside in a bowl when browned on all sides.
Add onions and leeks to pot on low. Sweat onions for about 5minutes without stirring. After 5minutes stir onions cooking for another 5minutes.
Add flour and stir in. Increase to medium low heat.
Add wine, water, mushrooms, and bouque garne (tied up thyme and bay leaf). Stir. Let simmer about 10minutes.
In another bowl add cream and egg yolks. Mix them together with lemon juice.
Add a bit of the cooking liquid to the cream mixture and stir. Add the cream mixture to the pot and continuously stir not letting it boil for a few minutes. Reduce heat if needed.
Salt and pepper to taste and serve
Cooking Hacks Debunked
In the last few years and probably longer I've seen many cooking hacks being passed around fakebook. These hacks are often terrible or don't work. The creators of these websites and videos have been caught faking many of them sadly.
I came across the channel of a lady that likes to debunk these hacks as well as give good cooking and baking tips. How she includes her husband in her videos is funny too! Her channel is How to Cook That Ann Reardon.
Add A Recipe
The Recipe Submission Form is done. It was done before Sukkot but I got busy and didn't add a link to the form. Oops! That's fine, Sukkot was more important.
Recipe Submission Form. Share a recipe with the community! I'll be adding some more soon myself.
18th Century Hushpuppies
The Townsends is one of my favorite channels. It's interesting how people used to live and eat prior to modern conveniences. These meatball recipes that they found in an old cookbook show you can make a good meal with meager resources.
The first meatball recipe is a good way to stretch a small amount of meat and use up some bread thats getting hard. In the video he uses beef but I'm sure this would be good with lamb or bison. The recipe calls for suet, a type of fat around the kidneys. This isn't to be eaten according to lev. 3:14-17. Fortunately, the recipe says you can substitute with butter.
The second recipe is a meatless meatball. Chef Ryan compared this to a really good hushpuppy. That sounds really good!
Both of these recipes use a pennyloaf that you turn to crumbs. A pennyloaf is a loaf of bread that cost a penny. It was a small loaf whose size changed with the price of flour.
Out of these two I'm most interested in trying is the hushpuppy like, meatless meatball.
Meatless Meatballs from 18th Century
- 8oz Bread Crumbs
- 8oz Grated Butter, plus some for frying
- 1Tbsp Minced Lemon Peel
- 2Tbsp Minced Parsley
- ¼ Minced Onion
- 2 Eggs
- Pinch Ground Nutmeg (optional)
- to taste Salt and Pepper
Instructions
Crumb a small hard loaf of bread about 8oz weight and add eight ounces grated butter, some lemon peel, parsley, and minced onion. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Add the eggs and mix well. If too dry add another egg.
Roll balls about the size of a quarter. fry in browned butter.
New Torah Observant Recipe Resource
After coming to the realization that keeping Torah was a big part of belief in Messiah Yahusha I started changing my diet. When searching the web for recipes that don't call for bacon or canned ingredients or other shortcuts that contained questionable or unclean ingredients in them, I didn't find any good resources. So, I decided to put my website building skills to use and create a place without those ingredients and try to build a site that focuses on scratch made recipes and recipes for ingredients to other recipes. Recipes written in such a way that if you did find a trustworthy shortcut or cooked up some of your own you are covered either way.
In my search for recipes I found many websites that have good and thorough articles and tutorials for the beginner, so I wanted to do something for the more experienced cook. Not being overly wordy in the recipe and assuming some level of basic cooking skill. Some references of terms and conversions will be linked in the future.
I'd like to do an old school link share with other relevant websites. It would have been nice to come across one in my search to see other resources vetted or liked by other believers.
One very annoying thing most other popular recipe sites do is bother you for your email address or add a million ads in the recipe or article to the point there is hardly an article visible. I'm not opposed to some advertising but I want to do it better, less obtrusive and more relevant. Only food, kitchen tools, etc. relevant stuff.
This site is three sites that mirror each other. Hebrew.Kitchen, RecipeYahu.com, and HebrewEats.com. I couldn't decide what name to go with so I did them all.
I hope this will be a good resource for the community and others. Soon I will add a way to have community recipe submissions. Shalom!