Adventures in Eclectic Home Cooking
Posted in Recipes on Jan 9th, 2012
When I was a child, every party the family threw had “spinach cupcakes” for the kids. We all loved them, probably because we thought they were cupcakes and not healthy grown up food. As an adult I make them because they are a huge crowd-pleaser and are pretty quick to throw together. I’m too lazy [...]
Posted in Recipes on Dec 8th, 2011
**So it’s not a pie in the usual sense, but baklava is pastry stuffed with nuts, sweet syrup, and butter. The pie spirit is there. And really, who would complain about getting baklava?** Growing up I never knew that there was more than one kind of baklava. The sticky, crispy, little diamonds with pistachio and [...]
Posted in Recipes on Jun 6th, 2011
We were recently invited to a potluck lunch with an ingenious theme: “New Foods.” The host wanted guests to bring foods that would most likely be new to him, and hopefully the other guests. I gave the challenge a lot of thought. I eat a lot of weird things, so I had plenty of options. [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes on Mar 25th, 2011
I’ve clearly been on a bit of baking kick lately. I think it’s been because by the end of the week I’m out of fresh goods but I always have basic baking ingredients in my pantry. A lot of people bake bread to be frugal. And I’d like to say that I made these pita [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes on Sep 19th, 2010
The Kosher Foodies just wrote about Spanach Jibben which we used to call Spinach brownies or cupcakes when I was a child. This spinach, egg, and cheese dish was a great way to make sure us kids had something green without too much fussing or complaining. Tacking “jibben” after a vegetable pretty much means you [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Oct 22nd, 2009
This post has been a long time coming. I really wanted to make sure I liked these little guys before posting them. Last night, we finished the jar of lemon pickles we made around the time we had Iron Chef Lemons at work. That’s how many lemons there were – it took over three months [...]
Posted in Recipes on Aug 10th, 2009
With very little effort, this dish reminds me of a Syrian dish my grandmother used to make with lamb, Swiss chard and chick peas. Collards are an amazing leafy green that are relatively easy to find in the frozen section of grocery stores all year round in my region. This hearty side is packed with [...]
Posted in Recipes on Mar 19th, 2009
Sauces are perhaps my favorite type of food to cook. They can be so versatile in flavor and texture. They liven up ordinary ingredients. This velvety lemon mushroom sauce can be used as an ingredient in many recipes, simply poured over a bowl of pasta, or served aside a warm cut of meat or a [...]
Posted in Recipes on Mar 14th, 2009
My favorite cookies growing up were Syrian butter cookies called “greybeh” in Arabic. My grandmother would serve them for dessert on a doily sprinkled with powdered sugar. The delicate cookies were shaped like bracelets and would usually have a pistachio pressed into the area where the two ends of the dough overlapped. They would melt [...]
This recipe was adapted from Jeff Nathan’s “Syrian Lemon Chicken Stew” from his Adventures in Jewish Cooking. I’ve shortened the process by using chicken breast and played around with the seasonings a bit. This dish combines Mediterranean flavors of cumin, lemon and olive to create a savory but light stew. I love this because it [...]
