Lemon-Garlic Sauce for Green Beans

A perfect summer dinner! Green beans this way are great on their own, or would be excellent with fish.

Lemon-Garlic Sauce for Green Beans

1 lb green beans

1 lemon, juice and zest (Note: this makes a VERY, VERY tart sauce. If you're not up for that, use only half the juice and add a couple spoonfuls of water.)
1/4 cup almonds
6 saltines or club crackers, or one slice stale bread
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 tsp plus 1 tbsp olive oil

Start the water boiling for your green beans. Meanwhile wash them and pick them over. While they're boiling (this should only take a few minutes), fry the garlic in 2 tsp olive oil over medium-low heat until it begins to color, about a minute; turn and cook another minute or so. Turn off the heat.

Combine almonds and crackers/bread in your mini-chopper or food processor and pulse until they are reduced to crumbs. Add lemon juice (and water if using), lemon zest, garlic, the oil the garlic cooked in, and remaining 1 tbsp oil. Pulse until combined -- should be quite thick; should still have some texture.

Arrange green beans on a platter. Spread sauce over them decoratively -- each bean should have some sauce on it, but only a little.

Serves 4 with a meal or 2 if you really like green beans or are not eating much else.

Cherry Cornmeal Cake

Finally there are cherries! I got too many (of course). I'm saving the Queen Anne cherries for eating, but the Bings I wanted to bake into a not-too-sweet kind of cake. This is a good cake (though not photogenic) -- crumbly, interesting-tasting, studded with cherries. Some people might think it was too close to cornbread to be called cake, but I disagree. The crumbliness does make it difficult to transfer out of the pan -- take care when inverting it!



Cherry Cornmeal Cake

1.5 - 2 cups pitted Bing cherries
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 oz. bourbon
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup oil (half olive and half canola is good; all olive was too pronounced an olive flavor)
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
about 1/4 cup skim milk

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and sugar together. Add the cherries and bourbon; boil two minutes. Strain out and reserve the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease an 8 inch square cake pan.

Pour the reserved cherry liquid into a measuring cup and add enough milk to equal 1/2 cup. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, sugar, and milk/cherry liquid mixture. Fold in flour, baking powder, and cornmeal; mix just until blended.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and sprinkle the cherries evenly over. Bake until lightly browned, 25-30 minutes.

Best.Challah.Ever

This is it. This is the best. I was never routinely successful with challah before this recipe... and now I am / we are. I say we are, because this is a team effort. I make and knead the dough on Thursday night, and my associate Ben shapes, proofs, and bakes it just before Shabbat. It's the workingman's or workingwoman's challah: since it rises over night, it just needs 15 minutes of your time on Thursday and another 45 minutes or so on Friday. It's tender, elastic, full-flavored (thanks to the long rise!!), and chewy without being gummy. It's perfect.

This recipe makes two large loaves. If you have people over, I guarantee both loaves will be gone by the end of dinner.

Best.Challah.Ever

7 cups all-purpose flour (I've successfully done about 5.5 cups white and 1.5 cups whole wheat, when I ran out of white).
2 rounded tsp active dry yeast (about one packet).
2 eggs, beaten (plus one more for glaze, the following day)
scant 1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups warm water

On Thursday night (ideally around 10 pm but it's flexible):

Combine the yeast and warm water; stir until dissolved. Once it is well-dissolved, add it to the sugar, salt, and 3.5 cups of flour in a large bowl. Mix well. I use a wooden spoon, but you could probably use a dough hook in a mixer too. Add the beaten eggs and oil; mix thoroughly. Slowly start mixing in the rest of the flour in 1/2 to 1 cup increments, mixing each in before you add the next. Whether you need to add all of the flour (or need to add a little more) will depend on the weather -- you're looking for a workable but somewhat sticky dough. You can always add more flour bit by bit as you're kneading -- if you add too much, the challah will be dry and stiff.

As soon as the dough is workable (won't stick more than a little bit to your hands), turn it onto a floured surface (I use a large cutting board) and knead vigorously about 10 minutes, until it passes the windowpane test. Add more flour as necessary to keep the dough manageable, but as little as possible. Once the dough is ready, clean out your bowl, oil it lightly, and put the dough ball back into it, turning once so that the dough is oiled on all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap (or a garbage bag if like me you don't have plastic wrap) and stick in the fridge.

Friday morning:
Punch down the dough with about three good punches. Re-cover with plastic wrap.

Friday evening:
At least an hour before you want to eat the challah, remove the dough from the fridge. Grease two medium cookie sheets. Divide the dough in two. Divide each half into four pieces. Roll out three of the pieces into snakes about one foot long or as long as you want your challah to be. Braid them, pinching the ends so they stick together. Divide the remaining fourth piece into three pieces; braid them, and set that braid on top of the larger braid. Place this challah on the cookie sheet, and repeat with the other half of the dough; place on the other cookie sheet. Let rise about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

After 30 minutes, brush the dough thoroughly with beaten egg. (Sprinkle with sesame seeds or poppy seeds if these challot aren't intended for Ben.) Bake the challot for about 20 minutes, rotating them halfway if you've put them on two different levels of your oven. Turn off the oven and let the challot sit for another 5-10 minutes -- check on them to see how brown they are. Do not overcook!

That's it! Best.Challah.Ever.