DIY projects - Homemade Labneh

I like cooking experiments. I like them so much that sometimes when I'm looking for something to eat, I realize I've spent my time in the kitchen on projects that peaked my interest that week, rather than cooking a sensible meal. What can I say, I'm a sucker for the urban homesteading trend just as much as any Brooklynite. I really like learning to make jam, baking treats, and pickling. This can lead to a strange mix of things to eat when you're hungry, but I also kind of enjoy the mad-scientist look of the contents of my fridge at times. I think of it as just one of the perks of being an grown-up kid, along with eating dessert before (and after) dinner. Recently, when considering my next DIY cooking project, I decided to attempt one that was simple, and not readily available, as opposed to butter or something. After my trip to Israel, I'd become obsessed with labneh - eating it for breakfast, and using it to compose simple open-face sandwiches in lieu of a proper dinner. As I was getting tired of trips to the mega-kosher grocery near my Grandma's house in Queens to find labneh, I learned to make my own. It's easy, it's super adaptable, and the waiting period is much less painful than a 45-minute subway ride to suburban Queens on an otherwise perfectly good weekend day.

Labneh, a kind of spreadable "cheese" made from yogurt, is eaten all over the Middle East. It's is relatively unknown here, and I think that's an even better reason to attempt it on your own, because chances are it'll be a lot easier than trying to find it at your local grocery. And, of course, the homemade one I had was better than the pre-packaged one. When I started my experiment I had no idea that the likes of Heidi and David had already shown the hungry people of the Internet that this was something worth trying. But, check out their posts for more ideas of what to do with it once you have it.

To say this classifies as an "easy" recipe, might be an understatement. Go get yourself some Greek yogurt, cheesecloth, a strainer and two bowls. Mix the yogurt with the salt, dump the mixture into a bowl lined with cheesecloth, and squeeze into a tight ball. Set the cheesecloth ball into a strainer that is set that over a deep bowl. Keep the bowl in the fridge for 24-36 hours. Check on it after 24 hours, to see how much has drained out. I waited the full 36 hours. Once you have waited the proper amount of time, the yogurt will appear thick and spreadable. Voíla! You have Labneh. Spread it on anything crunchy, layer sliced cucumbers or tomatoes on it, and sprinkle with za'atar. It's also really good mixed with preserves for a sweet version (if you haven't already sprinkled za'atar all over it). The best part is knowing you didn't have to get on a plane, or a train, to eat what you were craving.

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Homemade Labneh

Recipe inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. Incredibly simple as long as you start the process two days in advance. It will keep in your fridge for two weeks or a tad longer. It goes with anything you can imagine mixing it with over bread.

4 cups Greek yogurt (or a mixture of half cow's milk, half goat's milk yogurt) combined with 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt.

Mix together, place in a cheesecloth. Leave wrapped tightly in a ball in a strainer set over a bowl for 36 hours in your refrigerator. When ready, transfer to an air-tight container for storing.

Coffee cake - a little square of comfort

I bake for lots of reasons, but one of them is to give thank-you gifts. My Grandma is generally the most frequent recipient of such things, as she is often the one I find myself needing to thank. I've gotten in the habit of baking for her whenever she dog-sits, if she patiently and selflessly hangs on the phone allowing to me to vent about the day, or at times because she's coming over for lunch. It also helps that baking is my cure-all. I bake when I'm sad, when I'm happy and when I'm procrastinating - three states I fluctuate between. This week, just back from a trip to Israel, I found myself feeling like I was on a merry-go-round of all three emotions. I was sad to leave my little cousin, happy to be back in my own home, and definitely procrastinating from facing a few big decisions ahead of me. Maybe I just wanted a reason to bake, so I found one  - a coffee cake for a belated Mother's Day. I quickly planned an impromptu lunch date.

My Grams is a serious connoisseur of all types of coffee cakes, though she does not discriminate between them. She loves them in any form, so I decided this would be the perfect thing to surprise her with. I pulled down the first cookbook that really changed the way I thought about cooking, The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook. I devoured this book, and even if I haven't actually cooked all the recipes in it, I still know what's in there when I'm looking for an idea. After finding an open container of buttermilk in my fridge, I recalled there was a simple recipe in my old reliable that I had never tried. It wasn't one with a crumb topping, like I had in mind, but it was the perfect fix for it's recipient. It's a little different than ones I've had (maybe West Coast coffee cake is different than East Coast?), but really moist and all the cinnamon and nuts make it undeniably a coffee cake, but it stops short from turning into a spice cake. As I waited for Ma to drive from Queens to Brooklyn without getting on the highway (double the time, but twice as safe for Sunday drivers), I popped the cake in the oven. As it baked it infused the kitchen with a smell that reminded me that the farther I roam, the sweeter it is to come home.

Cafe Beaujolais Coffee Cake

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup oil (your choice, just not olive oil)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease your baking pan (8x8 or 9x9).

Combine the flour, salt, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon, ginger, sugars and oil in a bowl. Mix well. Set aside 3/4 cup of the mixture for a topping. Add the nuts and remaining cinnamon to this bowl.

To the bowl with the cake base, add the baking soda, baking powder, egg, and buttermilk. Stir to combine. Pour the batter into your pan. Sprinkle the flour-but topping evenly across the top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a tester in the center comes out clean. This cake is great served warm. 

What I do with apples besides baking with them...Waldorf Salad

I recently took a ride about an hour and half north of NYC, through bright fall foliage, to Warwick to go apple picking with my family. Masker Orchards, is a pick your own orchard is a huge orchard that's very kid friendly (think petting farm, pony rides and very short trees). Too bad the only kid with us, was sleeping. That didn't stop me from filling up my bag with Jonagolds, Ida Reds, McIntosh, and various others. As I picked, I had visions of apple strudels and apple tarte tatins in my head. I even thought about trying to make apple butter when I got back to Brooklyn. But instead, after too much obsessing over the end of Mad Men, and how to dress as Joan for Halloween, an old retro-classic popped into my head, Waldorf Salad.

I have always been intrigued by the name of this salad, but I do not recall ever eating it. It was the kind of thing I saw in the yellowing pages of my grandmother's cookbooks, and frankly something I thought was the epitome of dated cuisine. Still, to me (and my overactive imagination) the name alone, evoked images of days long gone and ladies who lunched (I hear those ladies still exist somewhere) and lettuce leaves filled with salads with fussy names served on fine china.

But, to my surprise, I found a little version from the classic vegetarian cookbook, The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen that made me think this simple salad with the fancy name might actually be tastier than I had assumed. I consulted my trusty Fanny Farmer, just to see if a more original version of the recipe differed much. It didn't, with the exception of blue cheese. My thought process went something like this, "Blue cheese? Apples? Sold!"

This salad is a breeze to put together once you chop up the few ingredients, mix the dressing and then toss together. Cooking 101, except these flavors mixed together are nothing to brush off as simplistic, or dated. I want to bring it back. Give it a try, serve it for lunch, serve it as a snack, or part of an appetizer spread, just don't serve it in a lettuce cup, and I think you'll see that this salad should come back into fashion.

Waldorf Salad Adapted from The Moosewood Cookbook.

3 apples, tart ones are best 2 stalks celery, chopped 2 green onions or scallions, chopped 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped juice of one lemon 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used Greek yogurt) 1/2 cup mayonnaise 1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese (I used Gorgonzola) 1 tablespoon honey (optional)

Chop apples, celery and scallions. Toast the walnuts. Mix together.

Crumble the blue cheese, or break it up using the back of your fork. Mix with yogurt, mayonnaise, and honey.

Toss salad ingredients with dressing. Feel free to add more apples or even pears if the dressing to salad ratio is too heavy.

I have always been intrigued by the name of this salad, but I do not recall ever eating it. It was the kind of thing I saw in the yellowing pages of my grandmother's cookbooks, and frankly something I thought was the epitome of dated cuisine. Still, to me (and my overactive imagination) the name alone, evoked images of days long gone and ladies who lunched (I hear those ladies still exist somewhere) and lettuce leaves filled with salads with fussy names served on fine china.

But, to my surprise, I found a little version from the classic vegetarian cookbook, The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen that made me think this simple salad with the fancy name might actually be tastier than I had assumed. I consulted my trusty Fanny Farmer, just to see if a more original version of the recipe differed much. It didn't, with the exception of blue cheese. My thought process went something like this, "Blue cheese? Apples? Sold!"

This salad is a breeze to put together once you chop up the few ingredients, mix the dressing and then toss together. Cooking 101, except these flavors mixed together are nothing to brush off as simplistic, or dated. I want to bring it back. Give it a try, serve it for lunch, serve it as a snack, or part of an appetizer spread, just don't serve it in a lettuce cup, and I think you'll see that this salad should come back into fashion.

Waldorf Salad Adapted from The Moosewood Cookbook.

3 apples, tart ones are best 2 stalks celery, chopped 2 green onions or scallions, chopped 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped juice of one lemon 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used Greek yogurt) 1/2 cup mayonnaise 1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese (I used Gorgonzola) 1 tablespoon honey (optional)

Chop apples, celery and scallions. Toast the walnuts. Mix together.

Crumble the blue cheese, or break it up using the back of your fork. Mix with yogurt, mayonnaise, and honey.

Toss salad ingredients with dressing. Feel free to add more apples or even pears if the dressing to salad ratio is too heavy.

Holiday Lace Cookies

You know these cookies. You've seen them in the cookies by the pound section of the bakery case. You've even eaten them before and loved them, most likely without knowing their name. They're an old-fashioned cookie, generally known as Lace Cookies because of their porous looking appearance. It appears there are lace cookie variations from one European country to another (like most cookies). French lace cookies were traditionally made with almonds, while Irish lace cookies were made with oatmeal and milk or cream, and German lace cookies are also oatmeal-based cookies, but with ginger, cloves and cinnamon added. My recipe came from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, originally written to help bring some consistency to our young country, by creating recipes that were formulas. Fannie (as I like to call her) Americanized things in the process by removing any country of origin, and simply called them Lace Cookies. Additionally, many newer American versions today call for corn syrup, but I prefer to bake with butter when I can.

I'm entering this into the Share Our Strength, 12 Days of Sharing cookie jar. (A great cause, read more about it at In Jennie's Kitchen).This cookie recipe should be categorized under, Stupidly Simple, because it is. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour melted butter over it, then a beaten egg and some vanilla. Drop onto a cookie sheet and bake. Nothing more too it. It's the kind of recipe you'd be well-served committing to memory to whip up off the top of your head while visiting family, or away for the weekend skiing. The results would impress your onlookers and fool everyone into thinking your a culinary whiz in the kitchen. Sit back, smile, and think, "Ha, ha."

There's only a few tricks to know how to pull this recipe off without a hitch. First, you must must space the cookies at least 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches apart, depending on the size of your cookies. Second, you should stay close to the oven while these babies are baking. They go from well-done to slightly burnt quickly. My suggestion is to keep the oven light on (if you have one) and keep an eye on them after they've been in there for 3 minutes. Plus, it's fun to watch the cookies bubble away and bake. Third, you really must use some patience and give them a few minutes to cool before you try to move them off the cookie sheet. If you slide your spatula under one while it is still hot it will squish into the middle and resemble a piece of caramel. That is an irreversible error. Obviously it will still taste good, but baked goods should also look good too.

This being a holiday cookie, you should consider some options to gussy up your cookie creation. Consider shaping the cookies into a tuille by bending them around the handle of a wooden spoon while still warm (not hot). Then let them cool in that shape. This is a pretty example of how a tuille shape makes a more impressive presentation. My personal favorite is the way I had them as a kid, where the bottom is coated with melted chocolate. Yum. And, coating things with chocolate seems like a good task to include the kiddies in on. (Personally, I wish someone had let me do that as a kid, rather than play with a dreidel. I'm just saying.)

Holiday Lace Cookies Adapted from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook

1 1/2 cups uncooked oatmeal (not anything instant or quick-cooking) 1 1/4 cups brown sugar 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup (about 10 tablespoons) melted butter 1 egg, lightly beaten 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a big bowl. Melt the butter. Add to the dry ingredients and mix to combine. Add the egg and the vanilla and mix until all incorporated.

Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper. Drop cookies about 1/2-1 teaspoon at a time onto cooking sheet. Take care to keep them spaced about 2 inches apart. They will look small but will spread as they bake. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes or until firm. Watch them closely after 3 minutes, depending on how well done you want them. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before you touch them. Carefully, using a spatula lift off baking sheet to cool completely.