Tag: sukkot

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!!!

Sukkah Onigiri

2 cups sushi rice
3 cups water
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 sheets nori
1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds
soy sauce, for serving

Method:

Rinse the sushi rice until the water runs clear. Place the sushi rice and water into a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover with a tight-fitting lid, reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and steam for 10 minutes.

In a small saucepan cook the the rice vinegar, sugar and salt until the salt and sugar dissolves. Pour the mixture over the cooked rice and stir gently.

To make the onigiri, form the sushi rice into a rectangular shape. Cut one sheet of nori into fine shreds and cut the second sheet of nori into strips. Fold the strips around one side of the sushi to resemble a door, and dip the opposite side into the nori shreds to resemble schach. If desired, dip the sushi rice into sesame seeds.

Serve with soy sauce for dipping.

 


sushi salad
Asian kani bites
sushi hamantaschen
snowman sushi

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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!

Sous Vide Roasted Eggplant

1 eggplant, cut in half lengthwise
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

For serving: pistachio dukkah (recipe follows), tamarind tahini (recipe follows), pomegranate seeds and fresh chopped parsley.

Method:

Set the water bath of your sous-vide machine to 185 degrees.

Season the eggplant with salt and pepper. Fold the top of the vacuum-bag over itself to form a cuff. Slide the eggplant halves into the bag and add olive oil. Unfold the edge of the bag and vacuum seal.

Place the eggplant into the water bath and use the rack or a heavy dish to keep the eggplant from floating. For best results, make sure that the eggplant is fully submerged in the waterbath. Cook for 90 minutes.

OPTIONAL: For added smoky flavor, pat the eggplant dry and place flesh-side-down on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and broil until the skin is charred.

To serve, place the eggplant on a serving dish and sprinkle generously with pistachio dukkah. Drizzle with tamarind tahini and garnish with pomegranate seeds and parsley.

ROASTING (NON-SOUS-VIDE) OPTION: Place the eggplant flesh-side down a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season, to taste, with salt and pepper, Broil on high for 20 minutes, until skin is charred and the flesh is soft.

QUICK & EASY OPTION: roast the eggplants, sprinkle with pistachios and za’atar, drizzle with store-bought tahini and garnish with pomegranate and parsley.

Pistachio Dukkah
Dukkah is an Egyptian spice blend made up of nuts, sesame seeds, cumin and coriander. You can add your own mix of spices to customize and make it your own.

1/2 cup raw pistachios
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup coriander seeds
1/8 cup cumin seeds
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp kosher salt

Method:

In a dry pan, toast the seeds and set aside. Toast the pistachios and add to the seed mixture. Pulse the spice blend in a food processor until desired consistency is reached (I like it with a bit of texture). Add the thyme, oregano and salt. Store in an airtight container.

TIP: For long term storage, I recommend storing in the freezer as this keeps the nuts from going rancid.

Tamarind Tahini

1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup water
1-2 tbsp tamarind paste, or, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste

Add all the ingredients to a bowl and whisk to combine. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.



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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Zucchini Mechshie with Tamarind & Prunes

I’ve talked a lot about mechshie (a Syrian dish of stuffed vegetables) on my blog, especially around the holidays. I decided to keep up the tradition, and for the third year in a row, I’m sharing a stuffed vegetable recipe in honor of Sukkot. The tradition of eating stuffed foods on Succot is symbolic of an abundant harvest season. Since the wheat is harvested in Israel during the fall, we stuff foods to symbolize our desire for an overflowing harvest. This is popularly done with stuffed cabbage, or holipches, which some say are also made to resemble the scrolls of a Torah.


Ever since I married into a Sephardic family, I can’t get enough of my mother-in-laws delicious mechshie dishes! I’m slowly learning to cook different variations, adapting my favorite recipe with the additions of tamarind, pomegranate molasses and different types of vegetables and dried fruit.

When I spotted beautiful globe zucchini in the market, I just knew I had to turn it into some kind of mechshie. The small, round zucchini were perfect for filling, and I decided to work in some tamarind paste, an ingredient essential to Sephardic cooking. It adds a hint of sourness to the sweet dish, a perfect pairing with the plump dried prunes.

So let’s get stuffin’!

Stuffed Zucchini Mechshie with Tamarind & Prunes

8 globe zucchini or 2-3 large zucchini cut in thirds

Filling:

1 lb ground beef
1/3 cup basmati rice
3/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp water

Sauce:

1 15oz. can tomato sauce
1/2 can water
1/4 cup tamarind paste (available in Middle Eastern markets)
1/4 cup brown sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
1 10oz. container dried prunes

Method:

To prepare the filling, combine the meat, rice, allspice, salt and water in a bowl and mix well to combine (I like to do this by hand, using gloves). Try to handle the meat gently, don’t squeeze it too much as this tends to toughen it up.

Cut the tops off the zucchinis and scoop out some of the pulp with a spoon, leaving a thick border. Place all the pulp in the bottom of a greased wide saucepan.

If using regular zucchini, use a paring knife (or a long vegetable corer, known as a ma’vdeh), to core them.

Stuff the zucchini with the meat filling, taking care not to fill them too tightly as the rice will expand during cooking. Place the stuffed zucchini’s in the pot, and place prunes all around.

In a bowl, combine the sauce ingredients. Pour the sauce over the zucchini. Cover the pot and bring the liquid up to a boil over high heat. Lower the flame and simmer for 1-2 hours.

NOTE: If you have leftover meat filling, roll it into small meatballs and place in the pot alongside the zucchini.

More Mechshie Recipes:

stuffed baby eggplant mechshie
zucchini and tomato mechshie “ratatouille”

More “Stuffed” Recipes:

corned beef arancini
Passover stuffed cabbage (replace potatoes with rice)
collard stuffed sweet potatoes
sausage and apple stuffed butternut squash
spinach stuffed mushrooms
stuffed chicken roulade
Israeli stuffed eggplants

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Meat & Rice Stuffed Baby Eggplants

As we approach the last days of the holiday of Sukkot, I wanted to share a nontraditional “stuffed” recipe, for those looking for a change from traditional holipches/holishkes (stuffed cabbage). If you’ve always wondered why Hungarian style stuffed cabbage is served up on Sukkot, it’s 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. Although it is customary for many to eat stuffed cabbage, any stuffed recipe is well suited to honor this custom. You can stuff grape leaves, zucchini, peppers, or even fruit for dessert!

As I mentioned in this post, I was first introduced to the idea of mechshie when I married into a sephardic family. My mother in law taught me to prepare various dishes of meat & rice filled vegetables – each with it’s own unique flavor. Having grown up with these traditional Syrian dishes, my husband loves when I surprise him by making them. Although my twist on tomato & zucchini mechshie (which I’ve dubbed “mechshie ratatouille”) is my all time favorite, this lighter stuffed eggplant version is a close second.

If you want to go the traditional route, but you’re overwhelmed by the idea of making stuffed cabbage, try my Bubby’s cabbage soup with flanken. It tastes just like stuffed cabbage, without all the work! You can even leave out the flanken and make mini meat & rice balls instead.

Meat & Rice Stuffed Baby Eggplants

6-8 baby eggplants

Filling:
1 1/2 lb ground meat
2/3 c rice (I prefer basmati)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp allspice
kosher salt, to taste

Sauce:
3 cups water
juice of 1 lemon
1 head garlic, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
kosher salt, to taste

Method:

To prepare the filling, combine the meat, rice, allspice, salt and water in a bowl and mix well to combine (I like to do this by hand, using gloves). Try to handle the meat gently, don’t squeeze it too much as this tends to toughen it up.

Slice the eggplants at both ends and core them using a paring knife (or a long vegetable corer, known as a ma’vdeh). Place all the pulp from the insides of the eggplants into a strainer and sprinkle generously with salt. Allow the pulp to rest for 20-30 minutes (this draws out the bitter liquid). Rinse the pulp with water to remove salt and add to the bottom of a wide saucepan.

Stuff the eggplants with the meat filling, taking care not to fill them too tightly as the rice will expand during cooking. Place them in the pot, sprinkling the garlic cloves all around. Drizzle the eggplants with olive oil, lemon juice and sprinkle with salt. Pour water into the pan, cover the pot and bring the liquid up to a boil over high heat. Lower the flame and simmer for 1-2 hours. For the last 30 minutes, uncover the pot and cook until the liquid reduces to a thick sauce.

NOTE: If you have leftover meat filling, roll it into small meatballs and place in the pot alongside the eggplant.

Related Recipes:

zucchini and tomato mechshie “ratatouille”
globe zucchini mechshie with tamarind and prunes

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{Mechshie} Meat & Rice Stuffed Vegetables

Growing up in an ashkenazic home, it just wasn’t succos without my mother’s holishkes (stuffed cabbage). I had never even heard of sephardic dishes like stuffed grape leaves or eggplants until I married into a sephardic family. My mother in law loves to prepare authentic Syrian dishes like mehshie (pronounced mechshie). She stuffs everything from artichokes to onions, each with it’s own unique twist.

After being married for a few years, I finally decided to learn how to prepare some of her signature dishes, so I could make them for my husband. She lovingly shared her family recipes, teaching me how to prepare each and every dish. When two of the recipes seemed similar, I asked her why I couldn’t combine them. I soon learned that the mere thought of combining two types of stuffed vegetables was deemed sacrilegious!

Of all my mother-in-laws mehshi recipes, stuffed zucchini’s is my favorite. It’s simmered along with dried apricots in a sweet tomato broth. The apricots become melt-in-your-mouth soft, and together with the zucchini pulp, create a delicious sweet and tangy sauce. Tomato mehshi is treated in the same way, and being my husband’s favorite, I decided to combine the two in one pot. I also opted out of the dried mint, because in my world, mint and meat just don’t mix. Although this dish is a heresy to my mother-in-laws traditional culinary roots, it is a delicious modern twist on a old world custom of eating stuffed foods on the holiday of Succos. So lets get stuffing!

{Mehshi} Meat & Rice Stuffed Vegetables

2 large zucchini, cut into thirds
6 plum tomatoes

Filling:

1.5 lbs ground meat
1/2 cup rice (I prefer basmati)
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 c water

Sauce:
1 15oz. can tomato sauce
1/2 can water
1/3 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups dried apricots

Method:

To prepare the filling, combine the meat, rice, allspice, salt and water in a bowl and mix well to combine (I like to do this by hand, using gloves). Try to handle the meat gently, don’t squeeze it too much as this tends to toughen it up.

Using a paring knife (or a long vegetable corer, known as a ma’vdeh), core the tomatoes and zucchinis. Place all the pulp from the insides of the vegetables in the bottom of a greased wide saucepan. Stuff the vegetables with the meat filling, taking care not to fill them too tightly as the rice will expand during cooking. Place the stuffed zucchini’s and tomatoes in the pot, and place apricots all around.

In a bowl, combine the sauce ingredients. Pour the sauce over the vegetables. Cover the pot and bring the liquid up to a boil over high heat. Lower the flame and simmer for 1-2 hours. If the sauce is still liquidy, uncover the pot and cook on high until it reduces to a thick sauce.

NOTE: If you have leftover meat filling, roll it into small meatballs and place in the pot alongside the vegetables.

VARIATION: For a sephardic version, add 1 tsp of dried mint to the ground meat mixture, as well as 1/2 tsp mint to the sauce. Alternatively, you can use a few tablespoons of tamarind paste instead of the tomato sauce.

Watch me make mechshie with TorahCafe here:


Watch on TorahCafé.com!

Related Recipes:

globe zucchini mechshie with tamarind and prunes
savory baby eggplant mechshie

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