Rehovot

I keep meaning to try andiesenji's recipe for microwaved candied citrus peel; other eGers have had great success with it...... You might give it a try.

I made Ling's brownie recipe, after a glance through recipegullet, yesterday. I thought I would eat them for dessert, this week... I'll be lucky if they last through tomorrow.... These brownies deserve a medal.

I just bought some Hatcho Miso in the hopes of making miso soup. The Hatcho is the only kind of miso I could find, here. No dashi in sight, though... So what should I use as the soup base? Vegetable stock, or just water?

I tried that once and got major complaints about soggy bread. One thing I have started doing about sogginess is lightly buttering the bread before adding mustard or mayo. ← My husband and I both brown-bag it to work (or plastic-box it, I guess), and somewhere we picked up this tip: toast the bread before assembling the sandwich, and it won't get soggy. It helps to have seriously sturdy bread, too, of the crusty variety. You can also toss a sandwich like roast-beef-and-cheddar in a nonstick pan for a minute or two, or grill the sandwich. Mmmm, melty cheese.

Homemade caramel sauce. Great spooned over a piece of pear-shortbread tart, and in coffee. Best of all, the saucepan survived!

I never bother to weight pie crusts when blind-baking; just dock 'em all over, and get on with life. I refrigerate chocolate...and tomatoes. Otherwise, I suspect they'd both go to mush in my 85-degree kitchen.

Here's what I'm dying to make: Mahogany Beef Stew Potatoes Robuchon. Chicken soup with dumplings. More soup! Enchiladas. The tiny kitchen in our apartment was designed by a masochist ; in summer, it's brutally hot (*without* the oven/burners on); in winter, it's freezing.....which is why it's much more enjoyable to cook then. Frankly, I'm tired of summer food!

I'm addicted to burekas. I thought there was a recipe somewhere in here, but now I can't find it....(Daniel Rogov's Israeli wine and dining pages) Well worth a visit, though.

Grilled eggplant sandwich with basil, pesto, fresh mozzarella, and tomatoes ...on thick whole-grain bread. Eaten in a heavily air-conditioned cafe!

Ok, this isn't about cooking--don't hit me--but I couldn't think of where else to put it, since the question seems absurdly stupidly simple. Where I come from (southwest U.S.), whenever my family had friends over for a casual dinner, everything was set out family-style; I did the same in college and the same when I had friends over, on my own. I no longer live in the U.S., and when my (non-U.S.) husband and I have friends over, it seems weird to say, "Help yourself!" When we eat as a family with my husband's family in Prague, his dad always plates everything. Here, in Israel, when we go over to friends' houses, they plate everything. Does the American family-style, bowl-and-platter way strike other cultures as weird? So...what would you (or do you) do? Should I learn to plate? Or stick to family-style? Only fellow eGulleteers will understand why I'm obsessed with this sort of question.

I can't remember if someone has already said this....but quiches are cheap, and last for a while. You can make a bazillion different kinds, and all it takes is dicing 4-5 slices of deli meat and cheese and some veg.... If it's a really tight week, we'll have cabbage-caraway quiche (w/ ham/bacon) or leek quiche. Cheap, but decent.

Right...but I thought there was a problem with milk, for those who will have had a meat dinner less than 2 hours earlier.......... Guess I'll just offer both. Thanks for the help, everyone--

I'm really clueless about kashrut, but I need to make sure I know what's ok when I have observant friends over.......Is it ok to serve the following things together at an after-dinner meeting? That is, are they all kosher individually...and/or does having a random assortment of combined snack/dessert things violate an aspect of kashrut? Cake (kosher), crackers, nuts, dried fruits, non-dairy creamer, coffee, tea, sodas, juices. Anything you'd add? Or subtract?

Wild boar in Prague. I didn't chase him down and then roast him on a spit in the woods, or anything exotic like that....just picked him off the menu.

Lessons from my mom: --Dinnertime is social. Come prepared to converse and be civil, even if you had a lousy day and flunked your seventh-grade Pre-Alegebra quiz for the umpteenth time. --Christmastime without panettone and torrone is unthinkable. --Cooking and baking are forms of creative expression. --Rinse those before you put them in the dishwasher (whywhywhy?!). --Ye of Italian Descent Shall Not Add Sugar to Pasta Sauce. --Clean as you go. (Also known as, leave the kitchen the way you found it.) --Seasonings and spices are your friends. --Food is a doorway into other cultures and parts of the world. --Those who cook for you love you; pass it on. Yay, Mom!

I'm usually too annoyed that there are forty people in my checkout line, and only two lanes open (out of eight) to strike up a conversation with those in my line....who look pretty peeved, too. Oh, right, and I don't speak the language too well. But even in the U.S., I don't think I've ever heard a conversation between people asking each other about the contents of their carts or baskets. Maybe I've just lived in the unfriendly parts of the country!

Wow. That epic Salmon Wellington is downright inspirational. I made poached chicken on green beans with tomato and olive relish. French bread and huumus za'atar. Turns out poached chicken doesn't taste nearly as good as....fried!

Or there's duty-free at Ben Gurion... Then again, I'm a cheapskate and find the Golan winery's reds to be pretty nice. For New Year's, we had champagne from Yarden; in a word, GREAT!

Pam, this is so interesting. It's amazing that you're doing this, with so much to do. (Most of my neighbors have been cleaning furiously for the last week or so, in preparation for Passover. Wow, and I thought my 30 minutes with a vacuum cleaner once a month-- --were exhausting. I had no idea what keeping kosher really involved until we moved here; then again, since we're not Jewish, we'll probably never know!) There are all kinds of KLP cookies appearing in shops and bakeries, here, and I am now addicted to the macaroons--and intend to try the rest of the pastries in the next couple of days. What kinds of desserts or pastries do you have on the menu for your clients? Thanks for blogging! edited to clear up a typo

Thanks, Chufi! Have fun planning your menu!

it's the 26th, and I'll be 36.. can I also sigh, even if I'm not turning 40? ← Mine is the 27th, and I'll be 29.... though I tend to act my shoe size, rather than my age.... Those muffins look lovely. Do you work from a standard muffin recipe, and just add in what you like? Or is there a savory muffin recipe out there? Happy Birthday(s)!

Maybe this has been asked/answered before, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.... How do you freeze cubed (uncooked) potatoes without them going brown? I want to just cube some potatoes and throw 'em in the freezer, then haul them out, defrost them, and have a fry-fest. But when I tried to thaw them in the fridge overnight, I had a ziplocked mess of brown, raw potatoes. Should I soak them in acidulated water first? Or should I just cook them, and *then* freeze them? There's gotta be a way!

Wow. How exactly do you enforce this? I mean, if a customer wants to pay the $16.95 flat fee and just order a martini, do you still insist he/she order an Entree? And what if a customer thinks (or hopes) that the appetizers will arrive before the entree? What do you mean by "it's expected"? The idea that I "must" do something, as a customer--in other words, it's the chef's way, or the highway--leaves me a little cold. But I guess this depends on why you go to a restaurant: if you go with a very open mind, hoping the chef will teach you something, this setup caters to you. But if you go, hoping to enjoy exciting, tasty food--on some of your own terms, with a few preconceived notions--then this setup leaves a lot to be desired. IMHO. Now, where's my appetizer??

Wow, I haven't seen Pocky since I was a kid, growing up in southern California. We used to have them as after-school snacks. Maybe my brother and I should have lobbied harder to have them for breakfast! Look forward to more of this blog!

Wow, fascinating community, great food, cool blog. And the cubes of baby food are ingenious! Maybe someone already asked this question (if so, sorry), but I wondered if you could clarify how quickly the cubes defrost...? Or if they're teethable? They don't defrost and ooze inside the baggies? (A Kidless One, speaking here, but wanting to stash this info away for future reference.)