Beef pot roast and potato hash

Serves 4 generously

10 to 12 ounces leftover beef pot roast (or roast beef) cut into 1/2-inch cubes (see Kitchen Notes)

 2-1/2 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes (see Kitchen Notes)

6 tablespoons chopped shallots

2 stalks celery, finely sliced crosswise

2 or 3 tablespoons ketchup

2 or 3 tablespoons sriracha (see Kitchen Notes)

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped (see Kitchen Notes)

2 teaspoons salt

freshly ground black pepper

olive oil

butter (optional)

Special Equipment: Two 12-inch skillets ovenproof to 400 degrees F. This volume of ingredients makes two skillets worth of hash.

Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks about 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch in size. Put into a pot, cover with cool water, bring to a boil and simmer until tender. Immediately drain, rinsing with cold water. Put in a big bowl. Mash the potatoes briefly and gently – you want most of the cubes to be broken down, but still retain a bit of “cubiness.” Add the cooked beef to the bowl.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In an oven-safe skillet, heat up 2 teaspoons olive oil over a medium flame. Add the shallots and celery and sauté for two minutes, until the shallots are clear and limp. Add this to the potato and beef mixture. Also add a good grating of black pepper, the salt, the fresh rosemary, ketchup, and sriracha. Mix everything together until it is pretty uniform.

To each of the two skillets, add 1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil and a teaspoon of butter (which is optional, but adds a nice buttery touch) and heat to medium low. In each skillet, put half the hash mixture and spread out so it is even and uniform. Press down all around with a sturdy spatula to encourage it to form a cake. Turn up the heat a bit to medium. Sauté until the bottom begins to turn golden, about 3 or 4 minutes. Transfer the pans to the oven and bake until the top begins to brown, about 10 minutes depending on your oven (see Kitchen Notes).

You may also prepare this as an individual serving. Cut the recipe in 1/4 and prepare in a small (10-inch) ovenproof skillet. This is a hearty eater serving – very generous. When the pan emerges from the oven, flip the hash onto the serving plate so that the well-browned bottom shows. Or you may cut the recipe in half to serve two or three people, cooking it in one skillet. If you fix this in big skillets, then serve wedges of the hash straight from the pan.

Kitchen notes

Choice (of) meats. I used leftover beef pot roast. You can use pretty much any simply prepared leftover meat or fowl – roast chicken, roast turkey or, of course, corned beef.

You say potato… I used Yukon Gold because that is what we had in the fridge. Russets would also work well.

Ketchup and sriracha. If you prefer no spiciness, then omit the sriracha and replace with the same amount ketchup. Alternatively, instead of sriracha, substitute oyster sauce. Also, once you have mixed everything together, if the mix seems dry or like it needs more punch, then add another tablespoon of either sauce.

Rosemary, fresh or dried. Yes, if you do not have fresh, you may use dry, but sauté it along with the scallion and celery. Also, use about half as much. Alternatively, substitute tarragon.

Oven time. Our rental apartment oven is so fickle that I never can be sure what kind of timing I may expect – the same gingerbread recipe, for instance, may take 28 minutes or 35 minutes. Thus my eternal reminders about oven dependability. Use an oven thermometer, if you have one, to check the temperature. Otherwise, just know your oven and/or start checking your food’s progress early and often.

Corned beef and cabbage

1 corned beef brisket

Carrots, peeled and chopped (or substitute baby carrots)

Red potatoes, chopped

1 head of cabbage, cut into wedges

Place the corned beef brisket in a large pot. Sprinkle with the packet of seasoning included with the brisket. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the brisket. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 3-4 hours, until fork tender. Add the cut potatoes and carrots to the pot during the last 20 minutes of cooking time and the cabbage during the last 15 minutes. Remove the corned beef from the water and cool for 10-15 minutes before cutting against the grain. Remove the cabbage, potatoes, and carrots to serve on the side.

Corned Beef Tip #1 - Remove excess exterior fat before slicing and serving for a more appetizing presentation.

Corned Beef Tip #2 – Your tender corned beef is likely to fall apart while you slice it. This works fine when served as a corned beef dinner, but if you’d prefer to thinly slice the brisket for sandwiches, allow the corned beef to cool in the refrigerator before slicing and reheating. Cooled corned beef slices easier than hot corned beef.

Allora, Sderot Rothschild 60, Tel Aviv, Israel

The captivating and alluring Allora, hearty Italian cuisine in the heart of Tel Aviv.


Prepare to leave giddy and satisfied from this quaint Italian experience capable of sweeping you out of the funk you might be in. Allora might be one of many delicious eateries, but it’s the only one with a brick-stone pizza oven in the centre of the restaurant. Allora’s classic menu is seasonal, local and varied – the perfect trifecta. Start with the crispy focaccia and Labneh (yoghurt), then dig into the Balkan pizza. Sit back, unwind and watch the people of Rothschild Boulevard enjoying their evening a little less than you.

Irish Potato Cakes

kes 12 – 16 

2 pounds (3 to 4 large) baking potatoes

3 spring onions, white and light green part, chopped

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

4 tablespoons butter

Heat the oven to 200 degrees F. and line a baking sheet with paper towels.

Peel two of the potatoes and cut large pieces. Place the chunks in a large saucepan, salt generously, and cover with cold water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook the potatoes uncovered until fork tender, about 10 minutes.  Halfway through the cooking time, drop in the chopped green onions.  When the potatoes are soft, strain them through a colander and return to the pan. Mash them with 1/4 cup of the buttermilk until they are smooth. Set aside to cool slightly.

While the potatoes are cooling, peel and grate the remaining potatoes on the large holes of a box grater. Toss with 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and place on a clean teal towel. Gather the towel into a ball and squeeze out as much moisture from the grated potatoes as possible.

Beat the remaining 1/2 cup of buttermilk and the egg together in the measuring jug. Fold the grated potatoes into the mashed potatoes and green onions.  Fold in the buttermilk mixture, flour, and salt until incorporated. You should have a pretty stiff batter. You can add a bit more flour if needed.

Heat a large nonstick frying pan or griddle over medium heat. Add enough butter to lightly coat the bottom when melted. Drop 3 mounds (about 1/4 cup each) of the batter into the pan and flatten each to about 1/4 inch thick. Cook until the pancake bottoms are golden brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Flip and cook the other side until golden brown, about 4 to 5 minutes more. Place on a baking sheet and set in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with the remaining butter and batter.

Serve warm.

Irish lamb stew

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Serves 4

2 tablespoons canola oil (plus more, if needed)

1 tablespoon butter

1-1/4 pounds lamb, cut into bite-sized chunks (see Kitchen Notes)

Salt, freshly ground black pepper

1-1/2 teaspoons dried thyme, divided

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons flour

1 bay leaf

12 ounces dark beer, such as a stout [can be omitted]

12 ounces chicken broth or stock

1 cup water (plus more, if needed)

1 turnip, peeled and cut into chunks

3 carrots, peeled and sliced on diagonal into bite-sized chunks

5 red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite-sized chunks, but not peeled (1-1/2 to 2 pounds)

For roux (optional):

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon flour

Season lamb with salt, pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme. In a dutch oven, heat canola oil and butter over medium-high flame, swirling to combine. Brown lamb in batches, 3 or 4 minutes per batch, transferring to a bowl as it is done. Reduce heat to medium and sauté onion until translucent, about 3 or 4 minutes, adding more oil if necessary. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add flour and remaining thyme, stirring constantly until flour is slightly browned, about 2 minutes. Add beer and stir, scraping up any browned bits in pot. Stir in broth, water, turnip and carrots. Return meat to pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to very low, cover pot and simmer stew for 1/2 hour.

Add potatoes to pot and cook covered until potatoes are almost tender, about 1/2 hour, adding water by 1/4 cups, if necessary (it probably won't be). Uncover pot and continue cooking until lamb is tender, another 15 minutes or so. Meanwhile, check the sauce. It will probably be fairly soupy; some people prefer it this way. If you’d like your sauce a little thicker, make a quick roux. Heat a small skillet over a medium-low flame. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of flour, stirring with a whisk. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to brown. Add a scant 1/4 cup of water, stirring to blend. Stir resulting roux into stew pot and let it cook a few minutes longer. Adjust seasonings and serve immediately.

Kitchen Notes

Selecting lamb for stew. You can sometimes find lamb stew meat, pre-cut. If not, look for boneless lamb shoulder or bone-in lamb shoulder chops. If you opt for the chops, cut into chunks before cooking and trim away some of the excess fat (but don't go crazy here – a little fat adds flavor). Reserve the bones and brown with the meat, adding them back to the pot along with the browned lamb for added flavor. Remove bones before serving.

Chef to the Popes

Cooking for the Pope


Bartolomeo Scappi, the Renaissance’s most innovative chef, revolutionized the culinary arts.


GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO, VERTUMNUS (DETAIL), 1590–1591, OIL ON PANEL, 28″ X 23″.


Daniele da Volterra’s most lasting mark on the world was a commission of dubious honor: retouching—or defacing, depending on one’s point of view—a fresco inside the Sistine Chapel created by his late mentor, Michelangelo. Artists had hailed The Last Judgment on its unveiling in 1541, but its depictions of a beardless Christ and wingless angels, all of them nude, outraged papal officials, who ordered that Biblical modesty be upheld by the addition of loincloths. Daniele was in his late fifties, with an illustrious career behind him; it would surely have pained him to know that four and a half centuries later he would still be known as Il Braghettone—“the trouser-maker”—the man whose job it had been to splodge moralizing graffiti over his friend’s masterpiece.

It was a sign of the times. In recent years, censoriousness had crept into Roman public life. Formerly, the spirit of the Renaissance had reigned inside the Holy See; the papacy regarded its task as celebrating the delight of God’s creation, and many of Rome’s highest clerics had taken that notion to an extreme degree. Now, assailed by Protestant criticisms of clerical wantonness, the Vatican curled its lip at anything that appeared playful or unchaste.

In a way, Michelangelo was lucky: his works were embellished, not destroyed, and he didn’t live to see the revision of The Last Judgment. Others faced the prospect of looking on as their lifetime’s work was erased from collective memory. One such unfortunate was Bartolomeo Scappi. As head chef for popes and cardinals throughout the middle decades of the sixteenth century, he prepared unashamedly decadent banquets for the most powerful men on earth. For thirty years, his art embodied the thrilling, brief moment when the papal court was one of the world’s leading patrons of artistic expression and intellectual enquiry. But no sooner had he hit his peak than he was forced to lay down his ladle: reform had gripped the Vatican.



Realizing that his life’s work would soon be only a memory lingering on the taste buds of a chosen few, in the last years of his life he recorded his genius in Opera dell’arte del cucinare. Published in 1570, the year of Scappi’s seventieth birthday, it was the world’s first illustrated cookbook, a colossal nine-hundred-page tome that includes a thousand recipes and serves as a treatise on cooking as an art form, a courtly pursuit, and a domestic science. It’s virtually the only record of Scappi’s existence; a fragmentary account of his lifelong enchantment with food, and a veiled lamentation that the old sensibility of sensory delight was being mashed to tasteless pulp under the weight of puritanism.

Scappi was born to modest circumstances around the turn of the sixteenth century, probably in Dumenza, a tiny town about forty miles north of Milan. At the time, medieval tastes still dominated elite dinner tables. In the Ancient world, the cuisine of the Mediterranean, based on bread, oil, and wine, was held up as a marker of its innate superiority over the Germanic peoples, with their supposedly barbaric fare of meat, milk, and beer. After the fall of Rome, the two traditions slowly merged until, in the late Middle Ages, the food served on the tables of the mighty across Europe was broadly similar: heavily spiced sweet-and-sour combinations, given layers of earthy complexity with great heaps of garden herbs. Many of the dishes Scappi chose to record in his magnum opus retain that sensibility, such as his recipe for an omelette made with pig’s blood goat cheese, spring onion, cinnamon, clover, nutmeg, marjoram, and mint—the kind of concoction that would nowadays be considered inedible just about anywhere on earth. Yet, among these forbidding relics of the medieval world, the Opera abounds with innovation that put cooking—perhaps for the first time—on a plinth next to the other creative arts.

*

We know nothing of Scappi’s childhood, or his private life; there are few facts about him of which we can be certain beyond that he was obsessed with food, and ordered his adult existence around it. By his midthirties, he was running the kitchen of Cardinal Campeggio of Bologna, preparing meals for him and his guests, including, on one occasion, the Holy Roman Emperor. It was here that his reputation as a great pioneer began to take shape.


BARTOLOMEO SCAPPI.

Stimulated by discovery and innovation, the young cook developed a culinary identity that embraced the whole of the Italian Peninsula at a time when the notion of an Italian cuisine was as distant as the notion of an Italian nation. The Opera overflows with references to a Bolognese sauce for this, a Genoese garnish for that, or a delicious dessert known and loved by the people of Padua but virtually secret from anyone else. It suggests he traveled a lot with the express intention of trawling markets, speaking to traders, and experimenting with every new ingredient that came his way. Though he hardly ever refers to something as “Italian,” in a rudimentary way Scappi’s recipes inadvertently assemble the nation that had yet to be made, sitting side by side dishes from the Veneto to the Kingdom of Naples in a single, sumptuous meal. This roving palate also encompassed the New World, the flavors of which are on every page of the Opera—especially sugar, which features in something like 90 percent of its recipes, including as a pizza topping, along with pine nuts and rosewater.

It was never enough for Scappi to please diners: he set out to amuse, astonish, and confuse them with vast menus of pungent flavors and retina-searing colors, presented in displays more akin to a performance art piece than a dinner party. His banquets were the talk of royal and ecclesiastical courts throughout Christendom; one of them comprised hundreds of dishes, including seventy-seven different desserts and edible statues of weird beasts from the Orient, Greek gods, and cavorting nymphs. Once their bellies had been filled, guests were presented with posies of silk flowers attached to stems of pure gold. Scappi specialized in elaborate visual jokes, such as salmon sculpted into the form of a glazed ham or a goat’s head, and everything was served on highly polished tableware of silver, gold, and exquisite Maiolica. Decorous restraint was not to be found in his kitchen.

The tone for his service in the Catholic church had been set early in the sixteenth century by Pope Leo X, the aesthete son of the Medici patriarch, Lorenzo the Magnificent. Leo measured up to every stereotype of the Medici and the Renaissance papacy; even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that he “looked upon the papal court as a center of amusement.” He inherited a strong treasury, stocked with a cash surplus of seven hundred thousand ducats; within two years every penny had gone. He blew a hundred thousand ducats on his first day, celebrating his investiture with a spectacular fireworks display and an indulgent feast before retiring for the night with his lover Alfonso Petrucci, whom Leo soon appointed Cardinal of Siena. His reign was an eight-year whirl of spending and sensuousness, during which he also sponsored dozens of artists and inquiring minds.

It was in Leo’s banquets that these dual turbines of his persona—debauched spendthrift and sophisticated patron—most powerfully coalesced. Cardinals arrived with courtesans in tow; young naked men emerged from giant puddings; nobody rose the following morning without a sore head. To his supporters, these banquets were an example of the best of the new papacy, celebrating the glory of God in all his forms. To his critics—and there were vast numbers of them—the bacchanalia showed that the Protestants had a point. A Venetian ambassador recorded a sixty-course meal that featured monkey brains, parrot tongues, Turkish fish and wines and fruits from all across the Mediterranean. More astonishing was Leo’s supposed rock-star insistence that all the empty silverware be tossed out the window at the end of each course. An official more sensitive to his Holiness’s mounting debts apparently arranged to have nets fixed beneath the windows to save them platters from the Tiber.

Scappi never mentions Leo in Opera, but he would’ve likely considered him a kindred spirit. Leo seems to have viewed his giddy ostentation as his central spiritual duty; frivolity was the only thing he ever took seriously—and Scappi knew just how much effort that took. Opera essentially tells a tale of a cook’s life from two perspectives. On the surface, there’s the performance laid on for the diners as outlined in the recipes. But Scappi also lets us peek behind the curtain to see the arduous graft. The book is packed with dozens of illustrations of the perfect layout of a kitchen, the range of pots, pans, knives, and other utensils needed to run a high-quality kitchen. A good cook and a good courtier are synonymous in Scappi’s scheme; “he should place his patron’s honor, along with his own, above all else.” At the same time, a good cook must be a serious creative talent, and always obey his instincts, in the style of “a wise Architect who, following his careful design, lays out a firm foundation and on it presents to the world useful and marvelous buildings.”

This is no incidental metaphor; in Renaissance Italy, there was no higher art than architecture. It was, after all, the remnants of ancient buildings that gave Roman artists and thinkers a constant reminder of the classical civilization that they strained to revive. Way ahead of his time, Scappi made the point that food is just as much a material of artistic creation as marble, and those who work with it are true artists. On the off chance that the point eludes anyone, he included a portrait of himself at the front of the Opera, one that—as John Varriano has spotted—looks eerily like the self-portrait that Giorgio Vasari included in the first edition of his Lives of the Artists a few years earlier.



The art on Scappi’s plates also mirrors the paintings appearing on canvasses and chapel walls throughout Rome during the same period; the gaudy elaborations of mannerism. Where the early Renaissance artists had attempted to imitate nature, the Mannerists of the sixteenth century sought to perfect it. It was the prog-rock of Renaissance culture, the stuff of connoisseurship that, as the art historian Diane Bodart explains, “praised studied difficulty rendered with apparent facility or ease.” Nothing could better explain the gastronomic designs of Bartolomeo Scappi. When Scappi presented a peacock stuffed, seasoned and cooked, but luxuriant in its feathers and reconstructed with metal rods as though still alive, he was offering an impudent improvement upon nature, a ready-to-eat bird that had never died. Explicit proof of Scappi’s link to the Mannerist moment can be found in Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s bizarre depictions of people made from plants, animals and inanimate objects. Some of them—especially Vertumnus, a portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor as a collage of fruit and veg—could have been lifted straight from the pages of Opera.

*

By 1564, his spit-roast goslings and smoked pike with cinnamon and saffron had hauled Scappi all the way to the top: he was master of the Vatican kitchen and personal cook for Pope Pius IV. He savored the role. Pius IV adopted the coat of arms of the Florentine Medici and shared some of their appreciation for the arts and for self-indulgence.

But even had Pius been a debauchee on the scale of Leo X, it was simply not possible to re-create those distant days of excess. In the middle of his reign, the Council of Trent—the ecumenical body convened to consider the church’s response to the rise of Protestantism—issued a list of measures to stamp out corruption and license, and to set the faithful back on the path of sober righteousness. Among these included strict rules on religious art. Subtlety, playfulness, and experimentation were no longer welcome in the house of God; art’s only purpose should be as visual catechism, inspiring moral decorum through clear and obvious imagery that would assist salvation. Just a week before his death in 1563, Michelangelo learned that the prelates had decided that they could improve on The Last Judgment, a work that Giorgio Vasari described as “that great painting which God has sent to men on earth.”

As Daniele da Volterra neared the end of his work on the fresco in December 1565, he was forced to stop: Pius IV had died and Daniele’s scaffolding was urgently needed for the grand ceremonies surrounding the election of the new Pope, Pius V, a man renowned for a strictness of doctrine and practice that hadn’t been seen in a pontiff for more than a century.

At first, Scappi perhaps thought it was business as usual. His banquet to celebrate the new pope’s investiture was in the tradition of those he had staged for decades; it proved to be a rare moment of jollity before the flogging of whores and adulterers began. As the one-year anniversary of Pius’s pontificate crept up, Scappi began planning the celebratory banquet. It would be one of his finest creations, featuring miniature castles containing live birds and an effigy of the pope made from gelatin in the red and yellow colors of his heraldic insignia. At the last minute, Pius canceled the whole event; there would be no pagan pleasures in the Vatican while the red slippers covered the toes of this pontiff. Thereafter, Scappi was often required to produce nothing more lavish than a boiled egg for the pope’s supper. It was like asking Michelangelo to paint all four walls of the Sistine Chapel in a single coat of magnolia.

Bereft of any other creative outlet, Scappi began work on his Opera. The world had never seen anything like it, and it was a sensational success. Between 1570 and 1646, the book went through eight print runs, an exceptional number for the time, and versions of his recipes were borrowed for other publications in England, France, Germany, and Spain. Yet, despite its popularity, Scappi’s book doesn’t appear to have had a lasting impact. In the seventeenth century plenty of books were published with detailed technical illustrations similar to those of Scappi’s utensils—but none of them were cookbooks. Neither, until the eighteenth century, did other cookery authors present themselves as artistic figures, rather than compilers of recipes. His restlessly cosmopolitan attitude toward food wouldn’t reappear until the twentieth century, when his enthusiasm for blending regional cuisines become commonplace.

Just as every Scappi banquet had jokes woven into each course, so the Opera contains one bitterly ironic gag: this gourmandizing epic was dedicated to Pius V, nemesis of the mouthwatering. Never before—and rarely since—has there been a cookbook in which so much of its author’s personality and worldview have shone through. Although Scappi professed to be a humble courtier at the service of his master’s tastes and whims, maybe that was just rhetoric. As he advised those who hoped to follow in his footsteps, a cook’s ultimate criterion of success is whether he is satisfied that “he has done the best that he can.” As with any great artist, Scappi only ever worked to please himself.

Ess Gezint: “Jewish Soul Food,” “Kosher Taste,” and “100 Best Jewish Recipes”

Three new cookbooks have made their presence felt just in time for Sukkoth. With all the meals that have to be produced in and out of the sukkah for four days of yuntif , one Shabbat, and three days of Chol HaMoed, these books could not come at a better time.

Carol Unger’s Jewish Soul Food: Traditional Fare and What It Means (Brandeis University Press) recognizes that the Jewish preoccupation with food is “fundamentally human.” We all need to eat, and, since life is with people, there are few more convenient places to socialize than at the mealtime table. But Ms. Unger is convinced that many of our favorite foods carry “spiritual messages.”

For example, her challah recipes all have seven ingredients—and, boy, are there a lot of challah recipes in this book: three-braid; six-braid; the vav-shaped oval (because two vavs equal 12, the number of loaves of showbread); a bird-shaped challah for Kol Nidrei night (just as a bird flies from its captors, so, too, will G-d rescue the Jews from their foes); a challah in the shape of a hand for Hoshana Raba; a Torah-scroll challah for Simchat Torah; and maybe a dozen more.

The Frankfurter Goulash, she says, is an “Old Country fast food” that doesn’t freeze well, But not to worry, she says, “You aren’t likely to have leftovers.”

Amy Stopnicki’s Kosher Taste: Plan, Prepare, Plate (Feldheim) is in the popular tradition of beautiful cookbooks that are very useful as gifts. A mother of four and a successful event-planner, Ms. Stopnicki loves to entertain. Her love of planning can be a bit intimidating to those of us who fly by the seat-of-our-pants, but her organizational tips make sense (even to those of us who know we will never use them). You don’t have to use all her menus to enjoy them.

Her pumpkin loaf makes as good as dessert as it does a side dish, and the Greek potatoes are a great alternative to fried, even if you don’t peel and slice the potatoes in advance and leave the soaking in water in the refrigerator.

For many years, Evelyn Rose, the author of the very popular The New Complete International Jewish Cookbook, was the food editor of the London-based Jewish Chronicle. Just recently, her daughter, Judi Rose, also a food writer, took on the ambitious task of winnowing down the number of her mother’s best-loved recipes.

The result is 100 Best Jewish Recipes: Traditional and Contemporary Kosher Cuisine from around the World (Interlink Publishing Company).

“With over a thousand recipes in The New Complete alone, choosing just one in ten was no mean feat, but this selection represents not only some of her personal favorites—as well as those of her fans—but her conviction that Jewish food is a living, evolving cuisine, rooted in tradition, but inspired by the present, just as it has been for centuries,” says Judi Rose.


Carol Ungar’s Frankfurter Goulash
Ingedients

2 Tbs vegetable oil
1-2 medium-size onions
½ red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
8-10 all-beef franks (reduced fat is fine), sliced into rounds
4-5 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
16-oz can tomato sauce
2 Tbs teriyaki sauce
1 tsp paprika
Pinch of black pepper

Method
Heat oil in Dutch oven over a medium flame and sauté onions, pepper, and garlic. When onion is translucent (or even before if you’re rushing), add frankfurters and sauté everything for 1 minute, mixing with a wooden spoon. Add potatoes, tomato sauce, teriyaki sauce, paprika, and pepper. Cook covered on a low flame, checking occasionally to make sure potatoes don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. If they seem to be sticking, add more water. Taste and adjust seasonings. When potatoes feel fork tender, about 20 minutes, it’s done. Serve immediately. Serves 4

Carol Ungar’s Honey Cake
Ingredients

3½ cups flour
¼ tsp salt
1½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
⅛ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground ginger
4 large eggs
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 cups honey
½ cup brewed coffee
1½ cup walnuts or almonds

Method
Preheat oven to 325°. Spray two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans with non-stick cooking spray. Sift dry ingredients together into a large bowl. In a second bowl, beat eggs until light, gradually adding sugar, oil, honey, and coffee. Combine wet and dry ingredients and fold in nuts. Divide the batter between the two loaf pans and bake for 50 minutes.

Amy Stopnicki’s Pumpkin Loaf or Muffins
Ingredients
1½ cups flour
⅔ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
⅓ cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin purée
⅓ cup water
⅛ cup roasted sunflower seeds
⅛ cup roasted pumpkin seeds

Methods
Preheat oven to 350°. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and ground ginger in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Add oil, eggs, vanilla, pumpkin purée, and water, and mix until combined. Pour mixture into a greased loaf pan (or muffin tin). Top with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. If a loaf, bake for 40-50 minutes. If muffins, bake for 20-25 minutes. In either case, top should be golden brown. Freezes well.

Amy Stopnicki’s Greek Potatoes
Ingredients
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 large lemon
2 Tbs dried oregano
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
8 large potatoes (Yukon Gold), peeled and cut into wedges, about 6-8 wedges per potato

Method
Preheat oven to 400°. Combine olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, garlic, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl. Dry the cut potato wedges with paper towels. Pour mixture over potato wedges and coat well. Spray a baking sheet with non-stick spray. Bake potatoes on the prepared baking sheet for 25 minutes, toss, and continue baking for another 20-30 minutes or until potatoes are golden. Serves 8-10.

Evelyn Rose’s “Fried” Fish
Ingredients
1½ cups breadcrumbs or matzoh meal
1 tsp salt, plus more to salt the fish
4 fillets or steaks of white fish (cod, haddock, tilapia, sea bass, flounder, red snapper, etc)
1 egg
¼ cup sunflower or vegetable oil

Methods
Preheat the oven to 400°. Put the breadcrumbs or matzoh meal in the oven to brown as it heats up, taking them out when they are well colored. Wash and salt the fish and set aside to drain. Beat the egg with the oil and 1 tsp salt and put in a shallow casserole dish. Have ready a piece of wax paper with the coating crumbs on it. Dry each piece of fish thoroughly with paper towels, then brush with the egg mixture, and coat with the crumbs. Arrange the coated fish side by side on flat baking trays (no need to grease then). (At this stage, the fish can be placed in the refrigerator until ready to bake). Put fish in the oven and allow to bake, without turning, for 20-25 minutes, depending on the thickness. Serve hot. Serves 4.

Evelyn Rose’s Fillets of Salmon with a Crushed Pecan Crust
Ingredients
Oil, butter, margarine, or non-stick spray for greasing
1⅔ cups shelled pecans
¼ cup snipped chives
2 Tbs unsalted butter or margarine, melted
1⅔ lb thick salmon fillet, cut into 6-8 pieces
Salt
White pepper
2 Tbs reduced-calorie mayonnaise

Methods
Lightly grease a shallow baking pan wide enough to hold the pieces of salmon in one layer. Then, make the crust. In a food processor, pulse the nuts until coarsely ground. Then mix with the chives and melted butter or margarine in a small bowl. Arrange the salmon pieces in the baking pan and season lightly with the salt and pepper. Then spread the surface of the fish with a thin layer of mayonnaise and cover completely with the nut mixture, patting it on well. Set aside until ready to bake. About 15 minutes before serving, preheat the oven to 425°. Put the salmon in the oven for 8-10 minutes or until the salmon flakes easily with a fork. Serve warm. Serves 6-8.

Evelyn Rose’s Cinnamon Balls
Ingredients
2 egg whites
½ cup sugar
2¼ cups ground almonds
1 Tbs ground cinnamon
Sifted confectioner’s sugar, for coating

Methods
Preheat oven to 325° and grease a cookie baking sheet. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gently stir in all the remaining ingredients (except the confectioner’s sugar), mixing until even in color. With wet hands, form into 20-22 balls and arrange on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until just firm to the touch. Roll in confectioner’s sugar while still warm and then again when cool.