Meat Bourekas

Meat bourekas

You can make these in advance and freeze raw baking directly from oven. This is another wonderful double up and freeze for another day idea.

Ingredients

2 rolls ORIT's puff pastry

½ kg lean mince meat

3 potatoes boiled and mashed

1 onion grated fine

½ tsp crushed garlic

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

1 tsp parsley ( fresh is always best but if you don’t have dry is also fine)

2tsp paprika

Method

1.       In a frying pan saute the onions until golden

2.       Remove and fry the mince till almost cooked through

3.       Add the onions again and all the spices.

4.       Add the mashed potatoes and mix together until well combined.

5.       Roll out puff pastry and cut out squares about 10x10 cm or to your preference.

6.       Spoon the filling into the puff pastry and fold over.  At this point you can freeze for baking another day.

7.       Place on baking dish

8.       Brush with some lightly beaten egg and decorate with sesame seeds if you would like.

9.       Bake in oven preheated to 180C for 30 minutes.  Make sure It’s baked through by checking the bottom of the bourekas.  They should be dry on the bottom and flaky.  If not then lower the temperature to 160 and bake for another 15 minutes.

Shakshouka

Shakshouka

In order to make Shakshouka, you need to start off by making a Matboucha.

Matboucha

I use this matboucha as my base for many recipes that require a tomato based sauce.  My kids love making it without the chillies as a pasta sauce.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg Roma tomatoes-chopped or Rosa tomatoes-halved   (if you can’t find these any other tomato is fine just make sure they are fully ripe)
• 1 onion diced
• 1 sweet pepper diced
• Chilli- use to taste- I like to put about 5-6 chillies in but if you prefer less heat use less- or none at all! (I prefer using the medium sized chillies that have a lot of flesh on them and don’t have too much heat.  I fry them, peel the skin off and slice the chilli.  I usually use different colour chilli to pepper so my kids don’t mix them up and bite into the chilli thinking it’s a pepper)
• 2 tbls (heaped) paprika
• 1 tsp chopped parsley- fresh is best but if not available use dry
• ½ tsp garlic (powder or freshly crushed- sometimes I just crush 2 fresh cloves with the flat side of a knife and add that to the pot
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Oil to cover bottom of pan

 Method

1.       Saute onion until starting to brown

2.       Add peppers and chillies.  Keep stirring for 5 minutes.

3.       Now add the spices stir continuously- you don’t want to burn the paprika but you do want it to fry a little bit

4.       Add the tomatoes and stir

5.       Reduce heat to medium heat and let it simmer until all the waters from the tomatoes evaporate, stirring every once in a while making sure the bottom doesn’t stick.

For the shakshouka, cover the bottom of a frying pan with the matboucha you made.  Break eggs and drop them on top.  Cover pot and cook on high for 5 minutes.  When serving, make sure to serve both the egg and matboucha with a LOT of bread- or what we love is with Challa.

Roasted Toamato and Basil Soup with Cheesy Croutons

Theres nothing better in this cold weather than a warm bowl of soup and of course croutons dont hurt either!  I love this tomato soup as the roasting in the oven brings out the flavours. The cheese from the croutons work so well with this soup.

Ingredients

2 kg Roma (Jam) Tomatoes
1/2 kg cherry or baby roma tomatoes
30 grams fresh basil
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
Aprox 1L vegetable stock (you can either use a soup powder mixed with water or make your own using this recipe.

Method

1.  Cut the tomatoes in half, place on baking pan, sprinkle with aprox 3 Tbls oil and salt.  Roast in oven preheated to 180C for 45 minutes.

Before...

...After

2.  Allow the tomatoes to cool and remove the peel from the large tomatoes.  They should peel off easily by just pinching them off.  Its not necessary to do this with the cherry tomatoes.

3.  Slice the onions into rings.  

4.  Heat a large soup pot on the stove on medium high temp. Put about 3 Tbls olive oil and saute the onions until starting to go golden.  this could take about 20 minutes.  Keep stirring to avoid burning the onions.

5.  After 15 minutes of sauteing the onions add the garlic cloves and keep stirring for the last 5 minutes.

6.  Add the tomatoes, basil salt and pepper and the stock. Bring to a boil and allow to simmer for 30-40 minutes.

7.  Remove the cloves of garlic and blend the soup.

For the Cheesy Croutons.

1.  Slice one left over ORIT's Bakery Challa

2.  Make grilled cheese sandwiches.

3.  Once ready, allow to cool for 5 minutes and slice into croutons

...And serve with your soup!

Enjoy!

xxx

Orit

Vegetable Soup Stock

Its always healthier ,not to mention tastier, to make your own soup stock than to use the store bought powders.  The best part is that its so easy!

Ingredients

3 large baby marrows sliced
3 large carrots peeled and sliced
3 large leeks sliced
3 stalks celery sliced
2 onions peeled and cut into quarters
handful mushrooms
1 turnip
handful fresh parsley
3 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic peeled and smashed to release flavours (do this by pressing the flat side of a knife over the clove and hitting once hard)


This list of ingredients is just a suggestion.  you can really use any vegetables you have lying around or leave out what you don't have.

Method

1.  Place all the ingredients in a large pot and fill with water until all the vegetables are covered.
2.  Bring to a boil and allow to simmer on medium high temp. for approximately 2 hours.
3.  Drain the vegetables keeping the liquid.
4.  The liquid left behind is the stock.  The vegetables are pretty much useless at this point.  you can eat them as is, discard or even use as compost.