Tag: sukkot recipes

Sukkah Onigiri

One of my kids is obsessed with sushi. You might call him a sushi monster. He’s 7 and he makes his own avocado rolls because he just loves it that much. Every Friday, when I shop for Shabbat, i buy him a sushi roll for lunch and he devours it.

Sushi salad is also a staple in our house. Especially when I have leftover cooked salmon or kani. Sushi salad is a real #oldiebutgoodie around here, and I’ve since adapted the recipe so many times!

These days, our favorite is layered sushi rice, flaked salmon, kani, julienned carrots, julienned cucumbers, edamame, sesame seeds, french fried onions, and a generous drizzle of sweet sauce and spicy mayo. Every time I serve it for Shabbos lunch, the guests go gaga all over again – and I often set up a build-your-own-bowl on a lazy Susan so everyone can make their own.

When it comes to Sukkot, “Sushi in the Sukkah” is a favorite theme of mine, and not just because I like alliteration! I’m all for any meal in a bowl and sushi is really so filling, it makes the perfect lunch.

Years ago, I made these onigiri hamantaschen here on the blog, and the other night, this fun Sukkah idea came to me. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out! Of course my sushi-loving son started building tons of different Sukkot out of the leftover sushi rice – he pressed some into a ice cube tray to make a 3D version and then topped it off with mashed avocado and a nori “door”. And then he ate them, of course. I took the leftovers and made some of these for breakfast the next morning – a very happy and sushi loving family indeed!

Happy Sushi in the Sukkah!!!

 


sushi salad
Asian kani bites
sushi hamantaschen
snowman sushi

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Bourbon Peach Meatballs

Is it just me or is time just getting away from us this year? Everything seems to be moving so fast – the somber days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are already behind us, and it’s party time!

Succos is one of my favorite holidays. I love the smell of autumn in the air, the sound of ruffling leaves as we sit outside to eat and the cool breeze that blows through our little hut as we gather to celebrate. What I don’t love, is the exorbitant amount of food that seems neverending as we roll from one meal to the next for eight days straight! No matter how much one loves cooking, we all get sick of prepping, and even eating, that much!

So…. here are some tips to help us all manage and get through the cookfest:

1. This seems pretty obvious but DON’T. COOK. SO. MUCH.! Let go of the stereotypical meal of fish with dips and salads + meat and/or chicken with several sides + dessert. Instead, lighten things up with a composed meal that consists of a small plated appetizer – fish, if you’re traditional, or something vegan, if you’re not. Then move onto the main course – a large salad, festive roast or chicken with one starchy side, one vegetable and something kid friendly. For dessert – spruce up some Duncan Hines brownies with some tahini, oreos, frozen cookie dough or whatever you wish and serve with ice cream.
2. Plan themed menus! This keeps things exciting instead of boring and repetitive. I love to do a Mexican, Israeli, or Asian meal over Succos. Check out this post for some ideas!
3. Reinvent leftovers! Instead of throwing out that leftover chicken soup, why not make chicken pot pie? Or repurpose your leftover roast into a Shepherd’s pie. If you think outside the box and try to repurpose your leftovers, you can make a whole new meal without having to cook much at all.
4. Cook once, use twice! When prepping for the first days of the Chag, prepare a double portion of things like pulled beef, grilled chicken or hummus and use them a bunch of different ways.


Here are some suggestions:

Pulled beef: scroll to the bottom of this post for my super easy pulled beef recipe. It freezes great so make a double portion and freeze for later – pull and freeze in the sauce.
Serving suggestions: pulled beef sliders, nachos, tacos, bourekas, Shepherd’s pie, serve over hummus or mashed potatoes.

Grilled chicken: prepare a large portion and wrap smaller portions and freeze.
Serving suggestions: chicken salad, chicken wraps, fried rice, lo mein, ramen bowls, summer rolls, eggrolls.
Recipes:
grilled chicken wedge salad with carrot ginger dressing
grilled chicken fattoush with za’atar ranch
grilled chicken salad with jalapeno honey mustard
grilled chicken shawarma salad
sheet pan chicken fajitas 5 ways
farro grain bowl
sesame linguini with grilled chicken
Asian chicken salad
curried chicken lettuce wraps

Hummus: make a large portion of hummus and repurpose with different toppings.
Serving suggestions: hummus bassar (you can also use baharat, taco seasoning, shawarma spice…), humshuka – hummus with shakshuka on top, hummus with shawarma chicken, hummus with falafel, hummus with chickpeas, hummus with beets, hummus with roasted eggplant and pomegranate seeds, hummus with olives…

Grains or Pasta: make a large batch of pasta or grains of choice like quinoa.
Serving suggestions: pasta salad, pasta bolognese, lo mein, baked ziti or quinoa salad, quinoa patties, quinoa chili, quinoa stuffing.


I hope these ideas helped you manage the cooking frenzy ahead! Wishing you a Chag Sameach!

Related Recipes:

bourbon apricot BBQ chicken
drunken hasselback salami
bourbon honey cake balls
turkey meatballs with red wine cranberry marinara
2 ingredient lazy meatballs

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Old Bay Fish Tacos

Yom Kippur is thankfully behind us, and Thank God I survived the most brutal of all fasts, fasting while nursing. Just barely. But I’m here and I’m thinking about food. Again. We’ve got an 8-day holiday ahead, and I love the idea of serving up different cuisines throughout the Chag to break up the monotony of it all, and to give us something to look forward to! I served up these amazing fish tacos for my Mexican Fiesta meal last year and I’m happy to share the recipe with you, plus 8 International menus for the 8 days of the Chag, including kid food! Enjoy and Chag Sameach!

MEXICAN
appetizer: fish tacos, tropical guacamole with plantain chips
entree: chorizo chocolate chili with pareve cornbread
for the kids: tortilla crusted chicken fingers with creamy salsa dipping sauce
dessert: mexican hot chocolate brownies

ISRAELI
appetizer: hummus with pita chips, stuffed eggplant, falafel cauliflower poppers
entree: pomegranate roast or za’atar chicken with dried fruit with rice vermicelli
for the kids: shnitzel and potato bourekas (fill with mashed potatoes)
dessert: halva krembos

ITALIAN
Dairy:
appetizer: salmon cakes with lemon caper yogurt, panzanella salad
entree: spinach pappardelle with feta or linguini lasagna and zucchini parmesan chips
for the kids: roasted tomato soup with muenster breadsticks (or grilled cheese)
dessert: torah cannoli

Meat:
appetizer: pesto salmon or corn beef arancini, spinach matzo ball minestrone soup
entree: chicken cacciatore or veal marsala bolognese or short rib ravioli
for the kids: lazy meatballs
dessert: tartufo (any colors work!)

ASIAN
appetizer: sushi salad or sushi burritos or sweet chili salmon, asian big bowl soup
entree: pepper steak with plum sauce, fried rice, teriyaki portobello mushrooms
for the kids: sweet and sour pineapple chicken
dessert: nutella banana wontons

AMERICAN
appetizer: gefilte crab cakes and BBQ potato salad
entree: burger bar or beer braised brisket with mashed potatoes and green beans or brussel sprouts
for the kids: hot dog eggrolls or corndog hamantaschen
dessert: oreo cheesecake

INDIAN
appetizer: tandoori fishmulligatawny soup with naan
entree: peanut chicken curry with coconut rice
for the kids: potato pea samosas
dessert: chai chocolate pots de creme

FRENCH
appetizer: salad nicoise, french onion soup
entree: boeuf Bourguignon or coq au vin, herb-roasted potatoes
for the kids: salami quiche
dessert: fig tarte tatin or apple tart

MOROCCAN
appetizer: Morrocan gefilte fish, carrot saladmatbucha, marinated olives, charmoula eggplant
entree: harrisa chicken or lamb chops and 6 spice morrocan stew with couscous
for the kids: lamb kebobs
dessert: apricot baklava or makroud

I’m not native to all these countries so feel free to share some of your favorites in the comments below!

Shout out to some of my family favorite Sukkot recipes not included above:

Bubby’s cabbage soup with flanken
mushroom barley stoup
cream of chicken soup in bread bowls
smoky split pea soup with thyme dumplings
pumpkin pot pie
meat and rice stuffed vegetables 
zucchini mechshie with tamarind and prunes
meat and rice stuffed baby eggplants
Levana’s chocolate espresso mousse (freezes great!)

Related Recipes:

red snapper fish tacos with broccoli slaw
coconut crusted fish tacos with savory plantain tortillas

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Sous-Vide Stuffed Eggplant
with Pistachio Dukkah & Tamarind Tahini

So I’m sitting on board a Jetblue flight en route to Florida, noshing on my Terra Blues, drinking a diet coke, and working on my blog post via (free!) Fly-Fi. We were lucky enough to score an empty seat, so my very active 23-month old (who’s on the last free flight of his life) is all buckled in and on his way to a white-noise nap. You gotta love Jetblue!

I really wanted to get in this last post before Sukkot because I started a trend a couple of years back where I post a STUFFED recipe in honor of Sukkot and the harvest festival. Traditionally, holipches/holishkes (stuffed cabbage) is served up on Sukkot because we want to celebrate the abundance of the harvest season. Fall is when farmers harvest their wheat in Israel, and stuffing vegetables with filling symbolizes their desire for a year of overflowing harvest. Any stuffed recipe is well suited to honor this custom, including my “ratatouille” mechshie, savory eggplant mechshie, globe zucchini mechshie and of course, stuffed cabbage!

This year, I really wanted to take it up a notch, and since stuffing eggplant is one of my favorite things, I decided to give stuffed sous vide eggplant a try. I recently met a talented chef who was touting the benefits of sous-vide vegetables, and when he told me that sous-vide eggplant is literally soft as butter, I just had to give it a try! I had just got my new Sous Vide Supreme and what better way to use it than to test this technique!

Truth be told, my first try at sous-vide eggplant was an #epicfail. The eggplant was tough and not altogether cooked and after some research, I learned that since veggies tend to float in the water bath, you need to weigh them down to ensure proper cooking. My second try was successful and the results were soft-as-butter-delicious!

Now if you’re going to sous-vide eggplant, you have to have a sophisticated stuffing to match the modernist cooking technique. Roasted eggplants stuffed with Israeli salad is a regular in my house, as well as my
roasted eggplant parmesan, but as delicious as those recipes are, they are still homey comfort foods that wouldn’t do justice to my sous vide eggplant. I really wanted the eggplant to be the star, so I wanted to accessorize it, but not fully outfit it, to borrow some fashion terms :)

If we’re talking food fashion, there’s nothing more fashionable than nut and seed blends right now, so pistachio dukkah was just the thing! I recently did a #myspicerack spice roundup on my Instagram feed, and when I posted about the pistachio dukkah that my sister sends me all the way from Aussie, I got lots of recipe requests! I decided to make my own version from scratch with fresh cumin and coriander seeds from Holon, my favorite Middle Eastern market in Brooklyn. The results were incomparable to the blend my sister had been sending me. It was just so amazingly fresh, crunchy and and nutty, I don’t know why it took me so long to make my own! And you don’t even need a fancy spice grinder, a simple food processor works just fine!

Now that my pistachio dukkah was done, I needed a creamy sauce to bring it all together, but just plain old tahini wouldn’t do the trick. After visiting the amazing tahini store in Shuk Machneh Yehudah in Jersualem, I knew that you could mix so many things into tahini – both savory and sweet, so I decided to go with tamarind. Tamarind paste is both sweet and sour, so it’s a great balance to the salty dukkah spice and sweet pomegranate seeds. Top it off with some chopped parsley and you’ve got it all – color, texture, and balance, just the way food should be. Happy Stuffing!



This post was sponsored by Sous Vide Supreme. All opinions are my own. 

Other Eggplant Recipes:

Roasted eggplants stuffed with Israeli salad
roasted eggplant parmesan
roasted eggplant parmesan with feta
za’atar eggplant chips with harissa whipped feta
miso-glazed eggplant

Other Stuffed Recipes:

“ratatouille” mechshie
savory eggplant mechshie
globe zucchini mechshie
stuffed cabbage!

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Savory Pomegranate Roast
with Garlic & Cipollini Onions

I’m not really one of those people that goes into the butcher knowing what type of roast I want to make for the holidays. I just look for what’s on sale, or which roast is going to give me the most bang for my buck and I take it home. Once you understand the basics to purchasing and preparing kosher meat, you don’t have to feel stuck on a certain cut and you can feel free to choose.

It was a few days before Rosh Hashanah when I unwrapped my square roast, wondering how I would prepare it. I had so many sweet side dishes that I wanted to go for something savory – but I also wanted to play on the Jewish New Year concept. I decided to work with pomegranate molasses – a tangy condiment that’s made by reducing pomegranate juice, and pair it with savory ingredients like garlic, onions and rosemary.

When you’re preparing a new recipe and testing it on a roast, it’s always a guessing game on just how tender it’s going to turn out. I usually like to use wine or tomatoes to help tenderize my meats, but I was shocked to see how soft and buttery this roast came out without it. It was so tender, you could eat it with a spoon! And the gravy – oh my! It was thick and delicious, with a hint of tang, filled with creamy pieces of garlic and cipollini onions that practically melted into the sauce. I’d definitely call this a winner, and that’s why I’m posting it! Chag Sameach!

Other Roast Recipes:

tzimmes roast
Rosh Hashanah roast
beer braised brisket with onion gravy
crockpot pulled BBQ brisket

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