SPRING BLUES

The end of winter, even before spring arrives in full, is usually one of the most beautiful seasons in Jerusalem. But as isolation takes hold this year, these are the strangest, most solitary days I have lived through here.

I feel lucky to live in this village, well I always do, but in these days it is a total blessing to go to the nearby wadi and walk through fields of wildflowers without seeing a soul, except for dogs and goats and the occasional donkey. Beauty in the time of Corona.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

I live alone, if you can call anyone with 3 dogs alone, so for me this time is about coping with solitude. I want to reach for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with titles so apt for this time - One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I have been reading about the 1918 Spanish flu and am about to start on the Black Death. You can see why I’m going slightly mad…

For others stuck at home with family, and in much of Europe and Israel, in small apartments with no outdoor space like a balcony or a garden, it’s about personal space, family tensions and getting in each other’s way.

Either way, these ‘isolation’ days are crazy-making, especially for people out of work, with the added real pain of distance from our parents and grandparents.

I have noticed that one activity that is making a comeback is cooking, especially as take-away becomes less attractive, plus there is time to fill.

A couple of people have asked me to share some recipes for pantry food, as well as what you should have in your pantry so you can cook healthy meals, bearing in mind the Just Add Love grandmothers mottos - Cook it Yourself, Waste not, Want not, and Delicious & Nutritious.

So that’s what I’ll do from today. I’ve also started collecting some of the articles I’ve written about the Israeli reaction to the virus – you can read them here.

And a cake to brighten any confinement: Earl Grey Cake, with a Chai Massala option too.

LOCKDOWN LARDER

I began writing this on 15 March - Beware the ides of March – when restrictions in Jerusalem were already tightening. My sister in Sydney said she knew a lockdown was coming there too, but she didn’t know how to shop for it.

“I found myself standing in the supermarket, holding a tin of three bean mix and thinking, I hate this, but maybe I should buy it now?” Orley said.

I don’t think you should buy things you hate, you’re unlikely to use them. What do you need to be able to prepare a range of tasty, healthy food from scratch at home? This is not an exhaustive list, but it helps me to be ready to cook. Living in a village means that you get less take-out, so in a way I have been preparing for this for a while. 

Everyone has their weak spot, for Australians it seems to be toilet paper and pasta. For me it’s definitely coffee and I also find myself panic buying lentils – you know, just in case. Am pleased to report that hand sanitiser is back on the shelves here.

And confession, I did order Nespresso capsules and my fancy-pants imported dog food, in case a time would come when imports might be restricted, or they might not be able to do deliveries any more. So, overprepared? Underprepared? I’m aware there is less panic buying here in Israel, where the public feels its leaders are in firm control, than in Australia and the UK, where the public doesn’t have that sense and seem to feel they’re on their own.

MY PANTRY BASICS

I don’t cook meat, and far less chicken and fish recently, so my pantry definitely skews vegetarian / vegan, which is also good at a time like this.

Tins – tomatoes, tuna, chickpeas, white beans, (for when you don’t have the patience to soak) tomato paste, in small vacuum packs, not large ones, coconut milk (good in long life vaccum packs too)

Basics - flour, semolina flour, baking powder, sugar, pasta, raw tahini, honey or silan, peanut butter, olive oil, vinegar, soy or tamari sauce, seasalt, pepper and tea and coffee of course

Nuts and legumes - almonds, and also ground almonds; lentils, yellow split peas, barley, kasha (buckwheat) white beans, chickpeas, oats, burghul, rice,

Extras – jam, capers, olives, anchovies, rose water, vanilla paste, dark chocolate, cocoa powder

Seeds and spices – fennel seeds, cumin, paprika, chili, cardamom, cinnamon, sesame seeds, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, shredded coconut, dried fruit including dates.

Frozen – peas, spinach, artichokes, endemame beans, chopped onions, home-made stock (see below under Grandmother Wisdwom)

Dairy - hard cheese for grating like parmesan or pecorino; butter for baking; yoghurt for everything.

Fresh - lemon, chilli, garlic, ginger, turmeric, onions, cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes and of course eggs, fish, meat and chicken if you eat those. Also any green herbs and seasonal fruit and veges you can get hold of. Fresh herbs make the taste of everything sing. Let’s keep adding them to every dish for as long as we can!

grandmother wisdom

The freezer is the grandmother’s friend. When I lived in Moscow, there wasn’t much importing of fresh food and the locals certainly tended to eat food in season.

The babushki (grandmothers) would squeeze lemon juice into ice trays in the summer and store it in the freezer for use in winter. (A journo mate used to do that in Jerusalem with limes, which only appear for about 2 weeks a year, for use in mojitos! We called him Babushka Craig.)

Some people chop onions and freeze them, which might also be practical during this time. Making stock is something I now do automatically, gathering up all the vege ends when I am making a salad or cooking a vegetable dish. Into the pot they all go, including the parsley and coriander stalks, cauliflower leaves, carrot tops, the white bits of the mangold leaves, the wilted bits of cabbage, the stringy bits of fennel and celery. You get the picture. Boil with salt, and when it’s cooled, strain into a plastic container and you will always have stock in the freezer when you need it.

Just Add Love grandmother Baba Schwartz, may she rest in peace, kept lemon rinds ie lemon halves from which she had squeezed the juice, in the freezer so that she would always have lemon zest for her rich yeast cakes, “in case the urge to bake should arrive unexpectedly” as she put it dryly. “Just remove from the fridge 5 minutes before you need to grate.”

RECIPES

Here are some ‘pantry food’ recipes from the Just Add Love archive

1.     Turkish Bride Soup

This is a cheap, sustaining and delicious meal in a bowl made with tomato paste, burghul (bulgur wheat in the US) chili and stock.

There are 3 stories for how this story got its name: that it was fed to the bride the night before the wedding to give her strength (not so convincing); that it was the dish every bride had to know how to prepare from ingredients in her cupboard (more likely); that it was named after a particular bride, a real person, Ezo, who was unhappily married and made this soup to try to win over her mother-in-law. (Hope that isn’t it!)

https://www.justaddlove.net.au/blog-1/salad2592016

2.     Kasha

aka buckwheat, something I learned to love when I lived in Russia, where it’s almost the national dish. Three recipes: traditional Jewish dinner, classic Russian breakfast, or colouful super healthy salad.

https://www.justaddlove.net.au/blog-1/kasha16122017

3.     Warm Barley & Rocket Salad

Barley is one of my favourite grains and this salad is a winner. There is also a lentil dish in this blog post which is great too.

https://www.justaddlove.net.au/blog-1/grains24102017

4. Chickpea soup with Mint & Garlic

Here’s a soup I discovered in my hand-written cookbook. It comes from the time I’d been injured on a story and could ony eat soup. It was made for me by Ian and Wendy, Australians who lived in my village at the time, who were great cooks. I’m sure they still are …

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cans chickpeas - 400 g /7 oz

• 6 cloves garlic

• 6 tablesppons olive oil

• 4 tablesoons lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon of your favourite spice – fennel, coriander or cumin all work well

• 100 g fresh parsley, mint or coriander or a combination, or 2 teaspoons dried herbs

• 1 can chopped tomatoes - 400 g /7 oz ie medium, not large

• 2 chilies

• salt and pepper to taste

• a vegetable to jazz it up - roasted capsicum or fresh spinach; whatever you have in the house. For the sake of this blog post, to see if it could be prepared enitrely from stuff I had at home, I used frozen spinach.

 METHOD

1.     Drain liquid from the chickpea tins. You need 900 ml / 1 ½ pints. Use water or stock to make up the remainder. (I don’t like the chickpea water from the tin so I used stock for the entire quanity instead.)

2.     Reserve ¼ of the first can of chickpeas. Leave them whole and add them to the pot in which you plan to cook the soup. Puree the rest of the chickpeas with the liquid, garlic, olive oil and lemon. Do this in 2 batches. Process the first batch till it’s smooth, and the other so it’s more textured and less ‘done’.

3.     Add these to the whole chickpeas in the pot. Add tinned tinned tomatoes and chilli. Cook 10 minutes over a medium heat till tastes mingle. Add dried herbs, if using, now. Cook for another 10 minutes. Taste and add adjust seasonings.

4.     Add your extras: diced, roasted capsicum, or torn leaves of fresh spinach or frozen spinach  –  best add just before serving if the spinach is fresh. You want it just wilted.

5.     Add chopped fresh herbs, mix through and serve.

Earl Grey

I was thinking about baking an Earl Grey cake, since there’s usually tea in the pantry and it sounded unusual, but not too threatening for this challenging time.

On the same day that I had 3 recipes open in my browser, Simy Matthew posted a photo of the Earl Grey cake she’d just baked! Since she is the source of my current favourite, the Lemon Turmeric cake, I took it as a sign I had better get baking too. She has added what I think of as Chai Massala spices, and so naturally I had to make it both ways :-)

Since I am still without an oven, I baked both versions in the wonderful Wonder Pot. I think I’ve finally cracked it, both turned out beautifully!

RECIPE

I’ve adapted a recipe from Olivia a Vancouver gamer-turned-baker. What I like about her recipe is that she actually brews up some tea, as well as including tea leaves in the cake batter. I think tea is meant to be brewed, which is why I wanted to try this version. I cut down the sugar in the batter, and didn’t add any additional sugar syrup, it was quite sweet enough. (North Americans, who have a sweeter tooth, might like to increase sugar to 1 cup.) I also left it plain - I don’t like butter cream - and found that the cake was so moist, it didn’t need anything more than a dusting of icing sugar. And a cup of tea of course.

NOTE ON TEA: If you have loose leaf tea, use that. If you have tea bags, as I did, snip across the top and empty them to access the tea inside. I found I had 2 types of teabags, plain Earl Grey and Earl Grey with Lavender, so I used both - this is the pantry fod blog! - and that worked out well.

Earl Grey Cake

INGREDIENTS

Earl Grey Milk

• 1 ½ cups milk (plus extra)

• 1 tablespoon Earl Grey tea (4 teabags, 2 plain, 2 lavender)

Batter

• 2 cups plain or AP flour

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1 tablespoon finely ground Earl Grey tea (4 teabags, 2 plain, 2 lavender)

• ¾ teaspoon salt

• 180g / ¾ cup butter, at room temperature

• ¾ cup sugar

• 3 large eggs, at room temperature

• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

• 1 cup Earl Grey milk (see step one)

Method

1.     Bring milk and tea to a boil in a small pot over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Turn heat off and leave to steep for 10 minutes. Strain and measure out 1 cup. If you have less than this left, top up with milk as needed to reach one cup.

2.     Preheat oven to 350F / 180 C. Grease and flour a loaf pan or a 22cm / 8 inch round baking pan. (Or a 24 cm wonder pot!)

3.     If you are using coarse loose-leaf in the batter, grind it till it’s fine in a spice grinder. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, tea, and salt until well combined. Set aside.

4.     Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add vanilla.

5.     Add flour mixture and Earl Grey milk, beginning and ending with flour - 3 additions of flour and 2 of milk.

6.     Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. (Please watch - timing may be a little out of kilter here, since the Wonder Pot has its own rules!)

7.     Allow to cool, dust with icing sugar and serve.

Simy’s Chai Variation

It’s a simple variation. Everything’s the same, you just add spices to the dry ingredients in the bowl, step 3 above. Simy adds 2 tablespoons Thandai masala powder or you can substitute the following mix of spices:

• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• a few strands of saffron

Now that I’ve read some gorgeous recipes for Thandai Massala powder, I may try to make that next!

FEEDBACK

This Earl Grey Cake is perfect for the tea lover in your life! I’ve made it both ways, straight, and with Simy’s spices and I think I preferred the spiced up version. The chai taste wasn’t strong, but oddly it made the ‘tea’ taste more pronounced. It’s delicate, moist and very moreish. Everyone who tried it loved it and I highly recommend it.

I began baking during the Jewish festival of Purim, when people bake sweets and bring them to friends. How far away that simple act of generosity seems today when we are now social distancing. Inspired by the delcious things my neighbour and her daughter prepared, I took some of the Earl Grey cake to a colleague who was on a short-term assignment here from the UK and had to go into quarantine. And as is required during these days of isolation, I left it outside her door.

Anna received the first version and loved it!

“Oh goodness the cake! I already had a slice and it is delicious. So soft and moist, the wonder pot really lives up to its name. Huge thanks for your thoughtfulness and brightening my day!”

Well, she would say that wouldn’t she? Prisoners can’t be choosers… but she insisted!

“I confess I’ve already had a second slice. Can’t wait to try the next one, thanks again for such kindness, it’s hugely appreciated!”

Anna never did try the second cake with Simy’s spices as her flight was brought forward and she departed the moment her isolation ended. We’ve agreed I will make it again for her when she comes back – when this is all over.

SPARKLING ISOLATION

This is my meme du jour.

A pedantic friend pointed out that ‘quarantine’ actually comes from Italy, from the ‘40 days’ that the Venetians used to make sailors stay in isolation to see if they developed the Plague during the 14th and 15th centuries. But even the pedant admitted it was funny.

So I hope we all have a sparkling isolation, filled with cooking, and zoom chats with friends and family, as well as intenet yoga, pilates, and classes for kids. I have found the choirs and orchestras that perform ‘together’ from their separate homes incredibly moving…

Next week I will start a baking project - My Favourite Cake! – and will ask for contributions from you all. Remember to stay in touch and to stay sane. Hoping the days will soon return when you could go for a walk with the dogs and meet 2 little girls who want to pat them and it will all seem perfectly normal again.