Preparing Salad

so...while I still try to cope and adjust to life with 2 children, my 2 1/2 year old daughter is taking care of us ;-) she is really into "helping" with all sorts of chores around the house. And lately she is asking almost daily to prepare "salat katan" (=a small salad). She can do it (almost) all by herself. I usually stay close by just to make sure she won't jump off the chair with the knife in her hand. She is really careful when cutting and so far only cut herself in the finger once.

This is how I set it up:

I put a small amount on olive oil in a small cup.
I have an all natural spice mixture for this salad and I open the shaker on the smallest hole.
A piece of feta cheese, washed cherry tomatoes and cucumbers pre-cut in long sticks.
And of course a cutting board, knife and bowl.

And here's how she prepares the salad:

See how well it works to cut the cucumber sticks into smaller pieces?!

and onto the tomatoes

they are more tricky because they are round...

but she can do it

and put it in the bowl.

than crumble the feta cheese

pour the olive oil (I tried before to let her pour it from the bottle, but she wouldn't stop pouring because it's so much fun. expensive and very oily fun.)

and add some spices... you see why it's necessary to only open one of the smallest holes.

one proud little cook with her delish' salad

never mind we are still in our pajamas and have a bed head... after all it's saturday morning ;-)

(sorry for the strange exposure in the pictures... the early morning light in our usually dark kitchen makes for hard photography conditions.)

How to open a pomegranate?

I just made these addictive double dark chocolate pomegranate cookies. The recipe is from Dana. Click here to go directly to the recipe. I can't stop eating them. OMG!




So anyways, while I  had to open a pomegranate for the recipe, thought I might as well snap a few shots and show you how to open a pomegranate without creating a giant juicy war-like scene mess in your kitchen. Most people just cut the pomegranate in half (and inevitable also some of the seeds who than start "bleeding" their juice for happy mess-making). Here is how I do it.

STEP 1: Cut of the top and the bottom of the pomegranate.

STEP 2: Examine from the top. You can see where the natural borders of the clusters are. Cut into 3-4 of the broader white spaces. Don't cut deep into the pomegranate just into the outer shell. The deeper you cut the more seeds will spread there juice!.

STEP 3: Pull the pieces apart along the cuts. That should go easy, since you are breaking the pomegranate apart along its natural sections.

4 pieces. Some seeds fell out on there own. You could already do this step over water, so the mess is even less. I just forgot it in the whole cut-snap a picture-pull-snap a picture-process...

STEP 4: No work section by section over a bowl of water and remove all the seeds... the remaining white skins will float on top for easy removal. The seeds should more or less fall of on their own if you work along the sections.


STEP 5: Take out the skins from the water and rinse.

STEP 6: Enjoy your heap of pomegranate seeds in a clean kitchen.



Bonus information: The darker red the pomegranate on the outside, the sourer the taste. If you prefer the sweeter pomegranates don't get tricked by the nice red color... buy the pale looking ones. They taste sweeter!

Yummy Colors!

Middle Eastern cooking is pretty colorful in general and I am regularly inspired by the variety of fresh veggies and fruits that are all growing here in Israel (yep, we almost don't import any food!)

My latest favorite is baked vegetables. It couldn't be easier to cook a bunch of veggies for many guests - and we had plenty guests for the Passover holidays and Shabbat dinners lately.

How to do it? Just peel/clean/cut up any vegetables you like into smaller chunks (the bigger the chunks the longer the baking). Brush with olive oil, spread some herbs - I usually only use fresh thyme, parsley and rosemary and bake for 40 minutes at 250°C/480 F.

It works with almost anything. Potato, sweet potato, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, purple onion - whatever you like. You can add also some halomi cheese on top for the last 15 minutes of baking.

Here some yummy colors. Enjoy!