Mock Chopped Liver

When I got married and my mother started serving sheva-brachos style suppers every time we came, this foorshpyze became a staple. It's delicious and can be plated simply and attractively. This doesnt have to be an appetizer necessarily; you can serve this for lunch, melaveh malkah, whatever. Trouble is, it's  big patchke, and making half the recipe makes little sense because then you're left with half open cans of vegetables. Recently my mother has started making this almost weekly and then dropping off the extras to my sister, who then sends some to me. It's a wonderful, filling appetizer - to some, even perhaps a main dish. It's not HARD to make, but pretty involved. I serve it with bread or crackers, on a bed of lettuce with little cherry tomatoes.

The yield for this recipe is huge. It freezes okay, although the texture is a little off when defrosted. Use the full recipe when making this for a party or melaveh malka; you can make half the recipe, but you gotta figure out what to do with the half used cans afterwards.

Let me know how yours turns out.

8 hardboiled eggs

1 can green beans

1 can sweet pea

2 onions sauteed

1 cup breadcrumbs

2/3 cup ground almonds

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the eggs, sautee the onions, open the cans, measure the crumbs and almonds, and mash everything up together in a food processor or culinaire hand processor (which is a household staple in this house.)

!!!א הארציגן אפעטיט

 (I dont own either of these two, for the record)

Vegetable Cutlets

This recipe is a slight patchke, but it's so delicious and pretty nutritious too. You will have a LOT of batter, so you can form additional cutlets and put them away in the freezer double wrapped. This recipe goes VERY WELL with 'chipkelech', or mashed beans, which is a patchkeh in itself, but I will post that recipe upon request.

Here goes the recipe for VEGETABLE CUTLETS:

1 potato cut up
1 zucchini squash cut up
1 sweet potato cut up

Bring to a boil and cook for about 25 minutes or until youre sure it's soft.

Add 1 bag of Bodek California mix (16 oz I believe) and continue cooking for another whiile until the cauliflower, broccoli and carrots are well cooked through.

Drain, and mash well. Some people use a processor but I find that it becomes extremely liquidy. I just mash it with a potato masher.

Take 1 envelope of matzah ball mix (whole wheat is fine too) and prepare according to instructions, which usually involves an egg and oil. Let stand for a few minutes so it begins to harden. Mix well with the vegetable batter. Add salt and garlic powder to taste - I'm sorry that there are no measurements here, but I usually just sprinkle in a little and taste it. Mix the whole batter well.

After the batter has stood for a while - refrigerated is even better - form cutlets. You can either fry it or bake it - I dont have the temperature or duration for baking as I always fry them, which gives it its delicious flavor. I can ask my mother, who gave me this recipe, how long she bakes them for. If you choose to fry, make sure oil is really hot so you drop in the cutlets and it begins to sizzle and form color right away. Again, I don't have exact written instructions on how long to fry it on each side for; when I start noticing it looks nice and brown around the edges I flip it over. If you've fried latkes before you should know how the frying business works :). If you want temperature and duration for baking this, please request.

ENJOY - B'TAYAVON!

Vegetable Turnovers (hidden in the middle of my entire recipe box's index....)

It's Thursday night, I'm thoroughly exhausted, and I haven't even started cooking for Shabbos yet. (Okay, I'm only cooking fish; cholent and soup are in the freezer and my husband buys the rest at the butcher takeout.) But this blog has gained some momentum lately - thank you ladies - and there have been requests. Yes, actual requests!! Ladies have asked for the recipes for Vegetable Cutlets, Vegetable Turnovers, and someone asked me to post the Two Tone Spiced Baked Potatoes already. I must admit that the recipe title was an exaggeration; it's simply cut up potatoes and sweet potatoes tossed in spices and baked. But I'll post it some other time.

Tonight, I'll post the recipe for either vegetable cutlets or vegetable turnovers, whichever my not-so-nimble fingers locate in my 16-year-old recipe box. Along the way I'll list the titles of recipes I found on the way, and if there's anything in particular you want me to post, let me know!

So lesseeee...

Salmon veggie patties (oops, that was supposed to be posted yesterday... oh well)
Tri-colored pasta with mixed veggies (oops... was also supposed to be posted yesterday)
Fancy 2-tone vegetable kigel (which I made once for yomtov and was such a patchkeh I never made it again)
No-mixer Chocolate Chip Squares
Fruit Ambrosia
"Chipkelech" - Mashed beans (goes very well with vegetable cutlet)
Brownies
Tomato Dip (already posted)
Easy Honey Cake (so easy I dont think I made it more than once... lol)
Goulash (quintessential Hungarian fare!)
Sauce for breaded chicken cutlets (also made just once, no one likes it)
Mock Chopped Liver (Delicious! but lots of work)
Blueberry Pie (for yomtov)
Cheese Blintzes (it never comes out good - I stopped making it, too much work)
Challah Recipe (I havent baked since before Rosh HaShana...)
Baked Apple with Strawberry Sauce (now that's a yummy appetizer I haven't made in too long!)
Mushroom Sauce (I have no idea when I made that...)
Chicken, Franks & potato stew (boy is that delicious, I should make it sometime! See, it pays to dig through the messy recipe box once in a while...)
Chicken Cutlets in Dough (probably also known as Wellington Fleish...)
Marinated salad (those were the balabuste days... sigh, I used to make such good stuff...)
A blank index card
An index card titled "Mashed vegetable turnovers" with no recipe
Another blank index card
And another blank one
And another
Kneidlach
Yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Sunshine on Imamother
Meatballs, Fushirt, and Meatloaf
Krote Lukshen (Cabbage and Noodles)
Tomato Pasta (Yuck)
Unstuffed Cabbage (Already Posted)
Squash in Tomato Sauce Appetizer
Chulent
Parve Ice Cream
Blintz Recipe #2 (another abandoned Recipe)
Cheese Turnovers (Delicious appetizer for milchigs)
Iced Cappucino (YUMMMM)
Sesame Chicken Nuggets (delish)
Bean Soup (I probably havent made this since 2005)
Shlishkes (I probably havent tried this since 2004)
Marinated Cucumber Salad
EUREKA!!!! yoogateee mootzoosee!! VEGETABLE TURNOVERS!!!!!!

2-3 onions, diced
4 red peppers, diced
4 green peppers, diced
8 mushrooms, diced
sautee until soft
optional: 2 stalks celery
1 kohlrabi, grated

When it's all soft and delicious fill flaky dough triangles with a spoonful of vegetables. Use a slotted spoon to first drain off the copious liquid dripping off the vegetables. Close triangles and flatten edges with a fork or twist to make sure it stays closed during baking. Brush with egg and put sesame seeds on egg. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes until dough looks baked through and no longer raw (nice brown color but not burnt).

It is a LOT of vegetable filling and you will likely stay over with a lot. So either make half the recipe, like I do, or save them in plastic cups in the freezer so that you have a really easy half-ready supper for next time; All you need to do is defrost a cup or two of filling and fill dough squares and bake them.

Stam for fun's sake, I'm going to continue going through my recipe box so that if there are any particular requests for any particular recipes.

Spiced Baked potato wedges
Simcha Fruit Entree (boy is that a lot of work!)
Easy Appetizer Fruit Salad
Another Easy Fruit Entree
Tomato White Fish with Vegetables
Broccoli Kigel
Letchow
Yerushalmi Kigel
Honey Cake Supreme
Marinated Peaches (this was my shlach monos of choice for a few years)
Baked Salmon
Fricasee (a favorite appetizer of my husband)
Potato Knishes
Euro Salad
Shabbos Fish
Apple Compote
Fruit Punch
Stir Fry Vegetables
Marble Cake
Paprikash Chicken
Potato Kigel
Marinated carrot celery salad
Cheese Lakes (already done)
Tropical Fuit salad
Grated Chocolate Cake
Yet another abandoned Cheese blintzes recipe
Iced Coffee #gazillion
ColeSlaw
Mushroom letcho
Italian Vegetables on a Roll
Kimpeturin Farina (check)
Tomato Squash Soup
Shabbos Liver
VEGETABLE CUTLET!!! - MY NEXT RECIPE, let me put it where I'll find it....
Breaded fried white fish tails
No Cook Fruit Soup
No Mixer Bakery Style Soft Mini Cookies
Yes Cook Fruit Soup
Vegetable Muffins
Chicken Chow Mein (check)
Potato Soup
Pastrami Knishes (check)

Hubby just asked me how you cook fish for shabbos - he isn't trusting me anymore to still cook it tonight. So I have to get up off my posterior in this comfy couch potato position. Groan, my joints! catch ya later.

Mushrooms with Rice and Peas

When I was a teen growing up, coming home from school meant being greeted by the aromas of delicious, Hungarian, home-cooked supper bubbling on the stove or in the oven. Supper was usually a bowl of yummy soup followed by a nice one-plate meal - protein, starch and vegetable. There usually wasn't an appetizer before the soup, although sometimes my mother whipped up something small for my father - letcho, carrot-and-tomato-salad, things I didn't care for and didn't need.

Suddenly, when I got married, she entered a whole new culinary stage. Now there was a scrumptious, simcha-worthy appetizer every night. I suddenly got used to eating vegetable cutlets with mashed beans, vegetable turnovers, baked apples with strawberry sauce, squash in tomato sauce, mushrooms with rice and peas, mushroom letcho, mock chopped liver, mini meatballs, mini franks with potatoes - it was crazy. I gained ten pounds in six months.

Having such elaborate suppers rendered my husband and myself spoiled. When I began cooking on Sundays shortly afterwards, I naturally also made some fancy appetizer as the first course. As time rolled on, an appetizer was a must-have and I never skipped it. Since I was working full time, I froze  a LOT of food; my freezer was always full of vegetable turnovers, vegetable cutlets, cooked mushrooms with peas, mini meatballs, and tons of soups. I had learned by then that you don't need an appetizer AND a soup in one meal; it was either or. Having soups frozen and ready to be microwaved or defrosted on the stove is extremely economical and easy. Unfortunately I don't enjoy cooking soups and find them time consuming, tedious, and boring fare taste-wise. Then again, whipping up an appetizer from scratch every night is far more time consuming and pressuring. So the past few years I've cut out the appetizer for the most part. Sometimes I'll buy a soup or a knish or blintz or cut up a fruit. But preparing an appetizer from scratch is a rare treat in this house, especially now when life is extremely hectic.

Today however, for some reason I was very rested. I had taken a midday nap, my cleaning lady had done a stunning job cleaning up the house, and I was in a good mood. I happened to have fresh mushrooms and celery in the fridge left over from the Chicken Chow Mein of two days ago, so I went for it, knowing that this is a dish my husband truly appreciates and it fills me up nicely if I'm not in the mood of the chicken dish that follows.

Even the kids like eating the rice with the peas; you can move the mushrooms over to the side if theyre not mushroom people. Personally I'm a major mushroom fiend - cook anything with mushrooms and I'll have it!

So here's the recipe!

1 small onion, diced
1-2 stalks celery
6-8 fresh mushrooms - or more, depending on your family size. You can also use canned mushrooms to save time but the taste is not comparable
Frozen peas
1 Tsbp flour
Pinch of salt
1 cup rice


Sautee the onion in oil. When soft, add the celery and let sautee for a while until it's transparent. Cut up the mushrooms into small pieces and add to the saute. If youre using canned mushrooms it will cook much faster, although the fresh tastes way better. When the veggies look truly soft and ready, add a tablespoon or so of flour, stir it, and add a little water - it doesn't have to be boiling. Stir it until the veggies and flour have thickened slightly. Add half a bag of frozen peas - or however much you like.  Add a drop of salt, cover, and let simmer until the peas are defrosted and cooked. Stir from time to time so it doesnt stick to the pot; add a drop of boiling water if/when necessary.

Cook a cup of rice in a separate pot according to package instructions. Serve it together. If the mushroom dish still has a sauce left, you can pour it in on top of the rice to make it extra delicious. Some people like to wash to bread and dip the bread in the sauce as well. Usually with flour there isnt much of a sauce left though; some people like to omit the flour and have the mushrooms more 'saucey'.

B'TEAVON!!!