Good Shabbos, Shabbat Shalom! If you’re looking for quick and easy ways to prepare special dishes for Shabbat that look gourmet but are made with everyday ingredients, Sarah M. Lasry can definitely help you. Her cookbook, The At Home Gourmet: Everyday Gourmet Kosher Cooking for the the Home Chef (Israel Bookshop Publications), contains scrumptious and flavourful recipes that she’s made for her friends and family throughout the years. Sarah’s first cookbook, a bestseller, is The Dairy Gourmet: Secret Recipes from Tastebuds Cafe.

In The At Home Gourmet, Sarah shares some of her delicious recipes for classic dishes, including Chicken Soup, Crusted Veal Chops, Chicken Curry, Asian Pot Stickers, Great Aunt Titi’s Biscotti and Red Velvet Cake. She displays her creative view on what’s new on the menu for the regular “at home” cook and opens the door to her home kitchen, providing the reader with over 100 recipes, all fully illustrated and easy to follow.

Sarah shows you how to elevate everyday ingredients to gourmet cuisine level, and includes helpful hints in nearly every recipe. If you’re a cook who loves to prepare food for friends and family, The At Home Gourmet will be a welcome addition to your cookbook shelf!

Look for her articles at www.joyofkosher.com. These include Tuscan Eggplant, Tomato & Chickpea Stew and Kosher Italian Wedding Soup. The following recipes have been adapted from The At Home Gourmet:

 CABBAGE AND MEATBALLS

Sarah shares: “Of all the yummy things that my aunt Rochi makes, this is by far my favourite dish. I literally eat the sauce from this dish like it was soup, that’s how much I love this dish. It is the lazy man’s version of gefilte krout “stuffed cabbage”. Now, whenever I need to make a quick and delicious appetizer for Shabbos or Yom Tov, this is always my first choice. This dish freezes beautifully and can be made in very large batches ahead of time.

1 lb ground beef

1/2 cup matzo meal

1 egg

1 tsp kosher salt

Pinch of pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

2 bags shredded white cabbage

1 cup ketchup

16 oz can tomato sauce

2/3 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp salt

4 cups water

In a large mixing bowl add your first 6 ingredients; blend together well. This is your meatball mixture. Set aside. Add the rest of the ingredients into a large soup pot and onto a medium low flame.

While your cabbage sauce is starting to boil, form meatballs and add to the cabbage sauce mixture. Let meatballs and sauce cook on a medium low flame for about 1 1/2 hours. Remove from flame and serve hot over rice, or as is.

 BAKED CHICKEN LEGS WITH COLOURED PEPPERS

This dish is a great quick supper or Shabbos meal dish. It’s part of Sarah’s ‘prep it and forget it’ repertoire of dishes that she loves to make.

4 chicken quarters

1/2 cup favourite brand honey mustard

3/4 cup teriyaki sauce

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 large Vidalia onion, sliced into thin strips

3 yellow peppers, sliced into long strips

3 red peppers, sliced into long strips

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 clove fresh garlic, minced

1 tsp sugar

6 whole pieces of fresh garlic cloves (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Lay your chicken quarters, skin side up, in a large baking pan. In a small bowl, mic the honey mustard and teriyaki together. Pour generously over the chicken, coating them well. Set aside.

In a large skillet, over medium-high heat, sauté the onions for about 1 minute. Add all the peppers and the sesame seeds and mix well. Sauté for anther minute and then add the soy sauce, garlic and sugar to the peppers, mix very well and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Remove peppers from flame and pour them over the top of chicken, smothering them completely. Sprinkle in the whole pieces of fresh garlic, cover pan and place in oven.

Bake for about 1 1/2 hours. Uncover and bake for an additional 20-30 minutes or until chicken browns on top. Serve hot.

Serves 4

• Sarah loves to serve this over Jasmine rice for a main course dish that has a great Asian flair.
• If Sarah makes this for a Friday night meal, she purposely adds 1 or 2 extra peppers to the recipe, and before she serves the dish, she sets aside a small amount of peppers. These peppers are super delicious eaten cold, and she adds them to her Shabbos leftover salad the next day.
  

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CHAYA’S SALAD (WITH A TWIST)

Sarah writes: “One of my dearest friends, Chaya C., was the first to introduce me to fruit in my salad. Every time I would go to her for Shabbos, she would bring out a version of this salad, which I found so appealing that I have shamelessly ‘borrowed’ her idea. I don’t think she even realizes the impact it has made on my culinary repertoire! My one contribution is this awesome garlic sweet dressing that I eat with everything – even sushi!”

For the Salad:

2 lb bag fresh spinach leaves, washed

2 ripe avocados, diced

1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved

2 mangoes, sliced into thin wedges

1 pint fresh blueberries

1/4 whole or halved walnuts

1 pint fresh strawberries, sliced thin

For the Dressing:

3 fresh garlic cloves, crushed

1/4 cup teriyaki sauce

1/3 cup mayonnaise

2 Tbsp apricot jam

1 1/2 tsp white distilled vinegar

Pinch of kosher salt

In a large salad bowl, combine all your salad ingredients and mix by hand to ensure even distribution of fruit to spinach.

In a separate bowl, combine the fresh garlic and teriyaki sauce; mix well and let stand for about 5 minutes. Once the teriyaki has been infused with the garlic, add the rest of the dressing ingredients and mix well using a whisk or fork.

Serves 4-6

• If you are serving the salad in a bowl and not individually, leave the spinach out initially and mix the dressing only with the fruits, avocado and nuts. Then add your spinach and hand toss. This way, your spinach will not be too wilted and soggy when it hits your guests’ plates.
• For this recipe, Sarah likes to use the pre-crushed garlic that comes in frozen cubes at your local grocery. This saves a lot of time and is a little more pungent than fresh garlic; 2 to 3 cubes would suffice for this recipe.

Norene Gilletz is the leading author of kosher cookbooks in Canada. She is the author of 12 cookbooks and divides her time between work as a food writer, food manufacturer, consultant, spokesperson, cooking instructor, lecturer, and cookbook editor. Norene lives in Toronto and her motto is “Food that’s good for you should taste good!” For more information, visit her website at www.gourmania.com or email her at [email protected]