This next recipe is along those lines. These crackers are made from whole wheat flour, plus an assortment of seeds. We’ve been munching on them all week, and though they are not low-calorie, they are certainly good for you, and quite filling. They are an enormous improvement on the store-bought equivalent, in both taste and price.

These are some of the ingredients that go into these crackers. Some of them I bought bulk, in nature markets, and others from the regular supermarket.

At this point, I decided to add a little more flavor, so I added some anise seeds and thyme to the dry ingredients. You can vary these ingredients however you like, just stick to the same proportions as the original recipe.

Now you mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. I just mixed them with a wooden spoon, happy to get a little upper-body muscle work in at the same time .

Now the dough needs to rest for about half an hour in the refrigerator.

Divide the dough in half, and make two balls. Each ball needs to be rolled very very flat. The easiest way to do this is between two sheets of baking paper.

Try to roll the dough as large as your baking tray. The thinner the dough, the crispier and tastier your crackers will be.

Before you bake the crackers, remove the top sheet of baking paper and cut them with a pizza wheel. You can do rectangles, triangles, whatever. I did diamonds, which turned out to be quite nice and fancy.

After the crackers are cut, cover them with the top baking paper again, then place another oven tray directly on that paper, so that it acts as a weight. Bake for 20 minutes with the tray on top, then remove both the top tray and top baking paper, to bake another 10 minutes, browning and drying the crackers further.

This was the first time that I baked these crackers, and they were pretty good. Next time I will roll them out to be thinner, and try different herbs.

Homemade Healthy (and Yummy) Crackers

1 cup rye flour

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup oats

1 cup sesame seeds

6 Tbl canola oil

1 cup cold water

Preheat the over to 180 C. Mix all of the ingredients together. Cool in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Divide into two balls, flatten each of the balls between two sheets of baking paper. Cut into crackers. Cover with baking paper and extra baking tray. Bake for 20 minutes covered, then another 10-15 minutes uncovered.

Tweak: I added dry herbs, and mixed in a bunch of different types of seeds. Also, I didn’t have rye flour, so I made the recipe using all whole wheat flour.

Thanks to my friend Liat who gave me the base of this recipe.

Which herbs, or other additions, do you think would go well in this recipe?

PASTICCIO

This is a meat and macaroni pie, which reminded me a lot of lasagne, but Maria, my teacher, said that the pasticcio was far superior. And incredibly healthy. As it happens, the Greeks believe that the higher the fat content, the healthier the food. They also have a very (read VERY) heavy hand when it comes to using olive oil. They apparently believe that olive oil is no less than the fountain of youth. And that the Greek olive oil is the best in the world. Tell that to somebody from one of the other Mediterranian countries… imagine if people could agree about olive oil, we could most likely reach world peace quite soon…

This is Maria Tsanakalioti’s version of traditional pasticcio. I’ve read a few other recipes on the web, and they’re all quite similar.

I present here what I saw today.

Macaroni: Cook the noodles as you would any type of pasta.

Meat: Heat a lot of olive oil in a pot (Maria used almost a cup, I can’t see myself using this much), add 1kg ground beef, 1 cup of water, 2 tsp salt and 1 grated onion. Cover and cook this mixture for 20 minutes, mixing often, and breaking up any large clumps of meat. Now add 1/2 cup red wine, a little chopped parsley, 4 large tomatoes grated (the skins should be left behind), and 1 Tbl tomato paste. Let cook another 15 minutes.

Cheese: Finely grate about 100 gm parmesan cheese.

Bechamel Sauce: Here Maria has a secret way of doing things that wavers from the regular way of making white sauce: Mix 1 liter milk, 1 tsp salt and 2 Tbl butter in a small pot. Separate one cup of this mixture into a different bowl. To the smaller bowl add 5 heaping Tbl flour and one egg. Mix well. Now heat the pot of milk until boiling, then whisk in the flour mixture and continue to heat until very thick.

Assemble and bake: In a large rectangular pan, sprinkle a thin layer of parmesan. Then a thick layer of pasta and a little more cheese. Now a thick layer of the meat mixture (all of the meat, if you can). Repeat with  another layer of pasta and parmesan. Now pour the thick bechamel sauce over everything. This needs to be thick enough not to seep down into the macaroni. That’s it! Bake in a 180 degree oven for approximately 40 minutes, until browned.

Thank you so much to Maria!

5 days of rolling, cutting, baking, tasting, measuring and producing great food that your kids will be proud to say that they made by themselves.

We will have:

• A day all about chocolate!
• Bonjourno! Italy!
• Cookies and baking day!
• Foods from the far-east!
• Celebration Day!

Each child will receive a recipe book that they can make notes in and use at home.

Cost per child for the camp: 800 NIS

The camps are Sunday through Thursday, 10:00-13:00

There will be four sessions:

• July 18-22
• July 25-29
• August 8-12
• August 22-26

Space is very limited, so it’s best to sign-up early!

Call Edie if you have any questions, or to register: 0544-803-704

NUTTY NOODLES

This is the recipe of the month in the June 2010 edition of Al Hashulchan, where you can find the original recipe. In my quest for easy food for kids and their parents, this is the type of recipe that seemed perfect. It is very quick to make (under 30 minutes), calls for inexpensive ingredients, and can be adjusted to suit any palate, be it growing or aging! Also, Al Hashulchan calls it a salad, and suggests serving it at room temperature. Though I prefer it hot, this dish would make a really good buffet option, since you don’t have to worry about it cooling down.

Firstly, prepare Asian egg noodles as you would pasta, adding a little vegetable oil to the cooked noodles, so that they don’t stick. I used an entire 400 gm package of noodles, though the recipe calls for only 200 gm. Set the noodles aside while you prepare the sauce.

The sauce is made up of equal parts peanut butter to soy sauce, a couple of crushed garlic cloves, and some spicy chili. I didn’t use the chili, since my guinae pig for this recipe was Michael, my 9-year-old son. Mixing the soy sauce with the peanut butter is not as instant as it may seem.

This is what just stirring these two ingredients together looks like. Not great. The recipe does say to use a blender to mix them, but this seemed like a bit of over-kill to me. Getting the blender out of the cupboard for this small task, and also having to wash it afterwards is just not worth the time.

So instead I heated the mixture in the microwave for approximately 40 seconds. This melted the peanut butter enough so that it blended easily with the soy sauce.

This looks better. Now I added about 100 mls of water, to thin the sauce. Also, I added 2 tsps (instead of 1 tsp) of sesame oil to the sauce, instead of sprinkling it on the noodles at the end, as the recipe states. That ensures that it is spread evently throughout the dish.

Lastly, you can choose what you’d like to add to the noodles and the sauce. The recipe calls for roasted or cooked chicken, cut into strips. I had some chicken breasts waiting to become schnitzels (or cutlets, to be precise), so I quickly poached a couple, to keep things simple, and cut them into strips. The recipe calls for green onion and coriander to be added, but this time I left them out, for Michael.

The only thing left to do is mix the noodles with the sauce with the chicken. C’est tout!

This reheated very well, Michael loved it, as did the older members of our clan. On the table I placed chopped coriander and chili in a grinder for added flavor for those with slightly more sophisticated palates.

Altogether, a keeper. I’ll definitely be making this again. If you have leftover chicken or beef, this is a good way to use them cleverly.

As it turns out, Vered was at the right place, at the right time. Nir was an hour early. That is to say, the crew was out hunting for somebody to film the next episode of Surprise Chef with, and they found Vered on the beach, doing one of her millions of work-outs (she does triathalons for a hobby—nuts, koo-koo, crazy), and informed them that if they want to do it with her, they’ll have to wait for an hour while she runs. So they did. How’s that for style, hey? I, on the other hand, was an hour and five minutes late, because they could have stumbled upon me, and not my dear friend Vered, and then filmed me, in my house, and I would have been discovered as the next best thing to fried rice. As it went, gracious Vered told them how I love to cook, and teach cooking, do catering, etc, so they invited me to be her friend while filming, to spontaneously enter her kitchen while they were cooking, and do a bit of cutting and chopping too. Coolly and casually, again, I said maybe, waited a minute and a half, then raced over to her house, not changing or showering first, so as not to miss any opportunities I may have to be the next Emeril.

The morning was fun, Vered’s house is amazing, Nir is remarkably nice, and I did a cameo performance. The episode will be aired on Channel 10 at 6 PM Friday, January 15th or 22nd. I hope you can’t see my bum.

I am including here the recipe for Thai Green Curry with Chicken, which I cooked a version of that morning. Enjoy.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 300gm chicken pices (I use boneless chicken thighs–pergiot)
• 2 cans coconut cream
• 3 Tbl green curry paste (Very spicey, be careful. You may want to use less.)
• 1 large eggplant cut into small cubes
• 2 Tbl palm sugar (if you must, substitute with brown sugar)
• 2 Tbl fish sauce
• 2  kaffir lime leaves, cut into strips, discarding the stems
• 1 cup basil leaves
• 1 red chilli, sliced

Method:

Fry the coconut milk in a wok for about 5 minutes, stirring continuously, until the coconut oil begins to separate out. Add the green curry paste and fry for 2 minutes. Add the chicken pieces and cook until the outside of the chicken truns white. Then add the eggplant cubes, palm sugar, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves and half of the basil leaves.

Serve garnished with the red chilli slices and the remaining basil leaves.