Roasted Pepper and Olive Dip PLUS Purim Baskets

One of the mitzvot (commandments) of the Jewish Holiday of Purim is to give gifts of food (at least two types of food) called "mishloach manot" or "Shalach Manos."  There is an idea that it should be ready to eat food that can be enjoyed for the festive Purim meal. However, the most popular gifts are candy and cookies. I just moved my oven and fridge into my new kitchen yesterday (I'll post details of my kitchen renovation on Sunday.) so I had a last minute idea to make dips and give them with a pack of crackers. I also made a few packages of nonperishable packages for unexpected visitors, because the dips didn't stretch as far as I expected.

Each package had three of the following:
- Roasted chickpeas (recipe to come)
- Eggplant & Tehina/tehini
- Avocado salad with tomatoes and garlic
- Roasted bell pepper dip with olives and roasted garlic (instructions below)


1.Wash bell peppers and take excess paper off garlic.  Cut and seed peppers if desired. Alternatively, you can roast them whole, flip them half way through and seed them when you peel them.

2. Roast until the peppers are very soft and the tops are black.

3. Remove skin when they are cool enough to handle and squeeze a few cloves of garlic out of the skin.


4. Hand chop a little bit of the peppers and a few olives to top the dip.

Chicken in Mushroom Shallot Sauce

I have made some version of this dish many times.  Use your best judgment to substitute and tweak my directions as they work for your tastes.  For a prettier presentation, leave the chicken on the bone or use whole breasts.  I prefer to use dark meat and take the bones out in the kitchen to save them for stock.  Whether or not the bones make it to the table, I still have to cut my kids food, so making bite size pieces ahead of time means we can all enjoy our food with less table work.

1. Pan cook chicken legs, turkey, or chicken or beef cut of choice.  Remove meat from pan, but leave oil and bits.
2. Fry sliced shallots (or onions) and mushrooms in ample oil and/or margarine in the same pan.
3. Sprinkle generously with flour and continue cooking on medium-low.
4. Add white wine, beer, or broth and scrape up yummy bits. 
5. Add green olives, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, or other ingredients (optional) and return chicken to the pan.
6. Continue cooking if necessary or cover and keep warm until ready to eat.

Serve over brown rice or bulgur.

Our Olive Aventure Part 5: Fix Salty Black Olives

I was planning to have a few guests for brunch this week, so I did a little olive taste test.  The green olives are nice.  The black olives are awful!  My first reaction was good, then I got to the overly salty core, and I gagged.  I attempted to fix them by stabbing them with a fork, soaking them in water for 24 hours, then drying them and putting them in fresh oil.  I hope it works.  Additionally, the front runners so far, in my opinion, are the oil cured olives with lavender.  I can't wait to reuse my lavender infused oil when the olives are gone!

Also see Part 4: Dry Cure.

Our Olive Adventure Part 4: Dry Cure

Were you wondering what happened to the black olives I separated after Part 1 of our Adventure?  I started the process of dry curing them.  To learn more, watch the video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjw1AIEQrKY

Here's a picture of olives in the market:

Also see Part 1: Find Olives, Part 2: Pit and Soak,  Part 3: Brine, and Part 5: Fix Salty Olives.

Our Olive Adventure Part 3: Brine

Also see: Part 1: Find Olives and Part 2: Pit and Soak.


Video URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/CookingOutsideTheBox?feature=mhum#p/u/3/bTcgMNQJzBU

Our Olive Adventure Part 2: Pit and Soak

Part 1 challenged you to find olives.  The first step toward making your fresh olives into tasty, edible olives is to remove the oleuropein, an extremely bitter compound.  It's a miracle anyone figured out that olives are edible.  I challenged my poor, innocent, son to try one of the raw olives, and he swore he would never eat my olives and there was nothing I could do to make them tasty (see video below).  We'll just see about that!


My friends' mom says that the minimum time it takes to get tasty olives is about four years.  I've come across a few options for speeding up the process.  You can crack olives with a mallet or stone, like Sarah of FoodBridge or slit them open with a knife.  I chose to try pitting my olives.  I haven't seen anyone do this.  I'm not sure if it will lead to mushy olives, or if it is just considered less gourmet, but I happen to own a cherry pitter, which was itching for some excersise this winter.  I have tried to use it on olives from a can, and it works much better on firm, raw olives.



My pitted olives began in a baking soda bath.  I used 4 tablespoons of baking soda per cup or 1/4 liter of water. 

The video cut out, but I went on to pour some water and baking soda into the tall jar, put the olives in, fill the jar to the top with the solution, then shove in a silicone cupcake/muffin cup to keep the olives submerged.  I covered the jar loosely and changed the solution four times over a week.  After that I switched to plain water, which I changed every other day.  The olives are currently still in plain tap water while I wait for an opportunity to buy more salt.  (I used all my salt for curing my black olives.)

Tomorrow I plan to transfer the olives to a brine in small jars using Sarah's curing method.  I've done a lot of research, and her formula seems the best for my purpposes.  However, I'm not interested in having spicy olives, so at least for the time being, I'm going to stick to just salt and vinegar.  Stay tuned!

Sun-dried Tomato Basil Pasta Salad

This pasta salad has been a fail-proof winner with picky eaters and gourmets alike.  You will need black olives, fresh, clean basil and sun-dried tomatoes or sun-dried tomato spread.  If you are starting from dry tomatoes, not packed in oil, you will want to soak them in warm water (or use some pasta water.)  Choose a pasta that has a lot of surface area and no interior (no shells, penne, or rigatoni).  My favorite is tri-color rotini.  Tortellini would be a real treat.  If your tomatoes are not too salty, add a generous amount of kosher salt to the pasta water.
 
Chop basil, slice black olives, slice or chop sun-dried tomatoes (your choice, and time permitting).  Drain pasta when it is done and put it in a large bowl.  If your tomatoes came packed in oil, add as much of this flavorful oil to the pasta as your jar can spare.  Put your fixings on the pasta while it is still warm.  Add extra-virgin olive oil, or another flavorful oil of your choice, if needed, and spices if your tomatoes are not seasoned.  Be careful, some tomatoes are already full of salt or other flavors.  Mix, taste, and assess.  If you went overboard on the salt, you can balance saltiness with a little vinegar or white wine (but it won't lower your blood pressure.)

Want to kick it up a notch?  Blend a reconstitued dry chili pepper (seeds removed) and garlic with some tomatoes, then add to the pasta.

Going to a pot-luck?  Don't bother getting a bowl dirty.  Mix all the ingredients in a large zip-top bag and transfer to a bowl when you arrive.

This salad is awesome with feta or sheeps cheese.  But I think you can never go wrong by adding cheese.  Brie, fresh mozzarella...

In America, I love the big jar of seasoned, sliced sun-dried tomatoes sold at Costco.  In Israel I dig the spread sold by Pereg.  With the excesive heat and drought, the prices for sun-dried tomatoes were looking pretty reasonable.  Maybe when tomatoes are in season and cheaper than dirt, we'll dry our own tomatoes!

Our Olive Adventure - Part 1: Find Olives

Last week at the shuk, Hannah K. and I purchased one kilo of fresh olives and decided we would cure them in a joint project between CookingManager and Cooking Outside the Box.  If you would like to embark on this adventure with us, start saving jars and large containers and look in your local markets on you your trees for fresh olives.  Make sure you also have lots of kosher salt on hand.  This is not a difficult process, but it takes patience.

Stay tuned!  Subscribe to this blog by inputting your e-mail address on the right side of this page so you won't miss an post!

Chicken with Pears and Prunes

Yes, I heard, the term "prunes" is out, "dried plums" is in. Either way, I finally made yummy moist and tasty chicken in Israel! I've been in a little chicken rut since moving to Israel. It might be the chicken or it might be me, but it keeps coming out tough and not very tasty. I went a little overboard this time. But it was delicious and pretty easy.

I think a lot about food.  I think about an ingredient I have at home or a delicious dish I once had (in this case Hannah's "Chicken with Tomatoes and Black Olives") and let my mind wander and string together ingredients I have available or am in the mood for.  I woke up in the mood to do some real cooking.  I was in the mood for something sweet and I've been wanting to try cooking with some prunes I bought.  This is how it goes:

1. Mix flour with spices like salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and a little curry.
2. Coat chicken pieces in flour.  In this case I used 6 skin-on thighs and legs.

3. Lightly brown chicken pieces in a large pot.  (I did this in two rounds.) Then remove chicken and lower heat until you get the onions in the pan.

4. Use wine or other liquid to "de-glaze" the pot:  Add enough wine to barely cover the pan, then scrape up all the tasty brown chicken flavor stuck in the pot.

5. Add to the pot chunks of 2 onions (I used one red and one yellow/sweet onion) followed by 4 quartered pears.  You can dip the pears in flour if you have extra flour mixture.

6. Raise the heat and add olives, chicken, 14 prunes, and about 1 liter or 4 cups of a liquid of your choice, or enough to almost cover the ingredients.  (Fresh or canned tomatoes - optional.)  I used liquid I had drained from canned tomatoes last week, plus water.  I also added 4 "baby bella" mushrooms I had left from making lentil soup.

 

7. Continue cooking on the stove or for 1.5-2 hours in the oven at 175 C or 350 F.

8. Serve over rice or in a bowl with crusty bread.

I took the chicken off to bone before serving and we ate it on top of brown rice with fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes:

I also froze a two-person portion for a future lunch: