Quick Rice Wraps

Great as a starter or as a quick lunch this light and flavorful Thai dish might get you addicted. Adapted from Doi Kham Cookbook.

Rice Paper Wraps

Ingredients
package of rice sheets
2 eggs
2 tbs. fish sauce
vegetable oil
5 shitake mushrooms
2 scallions, chopped
a small bunch of sweet basil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
salt and pepper to taste


The Recipe
Make the egg sheets: beet the eggs and season with the fish sauce, pour a thin layer into a frying pan, remove when cooked and set aside. This should yield 4/5 sheets.
Prepare the shitake: heat a bit of oil in a frying pan, add the chopped garlic and then the shitake mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and saute for a few minutes. Be careful not to let the mushroom turn too soft. Set aside.
Prepare the rice paper: (follow the instructions on the package) soak in lukewarm water for one minute, 2 sheets at a time (they tend to tear otherwise). Spread the sheets on a flat surface, top with an egg sheet, some shitake, scallions and chopped basil. Roll tightly and slice into bite size pieces. Delish!

Red/Green Tahini (Techina) Spread

Tahini (or techina as it is called in Hebrew) is a basic ingredient in the Israeli kitchen. It is eaten everywhere and by everyone; smeared with a pita, spread on a sandwich, as a salad dressing or in our kitchen, on soba noddles. Tahini cookies are favorite sin of mine too. The core to a good tahini recipe is a good raw tahini paste (or techina golmit). You can find very good options in Israeli grocery stores, but the best raw tahini paste we found was in the Machane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem.

For the Red (Roasted Pepper) Tahini Spread
Ingredients
1/2 cup raw tahini paste (i like to use Harduf Organic Tahini from whole sesame, but any good tahini paste, like Yona or Gamal will do)
10 roasted and peeled red peppers
juice from 1/2 lemon
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 piece ginger, the size of a garlic clove, peeled
1 chopped red chili (use half if you don't love spicy)
salt and pepper to taste

The Recipe
Blend all the ingredients in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste. The spread can easily be turned into a salad dressing by thinning it out with a little bit of water.

For the Green (Herb) Tahini Spread
Ingredients
1/2 cup raw tahini paste
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of coriander
10 basil leaves
juice from 1/2 lemon
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 piece ginger, the size of a garlic clove, peeled
1 chopped red chili (use half if you don't love spicy)
salt and pepper to taste

The Recipe
Blend all the ingredients in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste. The spread can easily be turned into a salad dressing by thinning it out with a little bit of water.

Pistachio Cherry Trifle

It's CHERRY SEASON! We were invited to a small dinner party where the guests all cooked a number of small dishes each. We thought it best to make a smaller dessert, since we could not imagine having enough room in our stomachs to eat an entire tart after the feast (or maybe we could, so it's best we did this instead). Dorie Greenspan had us salivating over Pierre Herme's Streusel Tart with Pistachios and Cherries from The Cook's Book. This served as our inspiration as we decided to deconstruct the dessert and turn a tart recipe into a trifle recipe.

Well, the original recipe called for a pastry tart filled with almond pistachio cream and cherries and topped with an almond streusel. We applied our architects' mind, developed over many years of intense study and carefully crafted individual pistachio cherry trifles.

See the recipe after the jump.

Open Face Tahini and Roasted Veggie Sandwich

When faced with a serious brunch dilemma, we decided to make an Open Face Tahini and Roasted Veggie Sandwich. After a couple of days of intensive cooking we tired out and opted to piece together a sandwich made from the week's leftovers. Bread+ homemade tehini + leftover roasted vegetables, made for a very yummy brunch.

Baked Split Banana

So.... after a two week hiatus, we have decided to start posting our recipes back on The Royal Kitchen and to keep our two blogs separate. More recipes to come... 
The Royals
 

Baked Split Banana

Ingredients
1 ripe banana
1/2 tsp. light brown sugar
cinnamon for dusting

The Recipe
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Split the banana in half, lengthwise. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Dust with cinnamon and serve.

Feeling the love

Yesterday we were featured by the folks at The Kitchn.

Some Changes

In an effort to consolidate our blogs we started posting our recipes on our lifestyle blog The Royal Excursion. Hope you continue to check in to see what we are cooking! Lately we have made homemade granola, an open face tahini and veggie sandwich and baked split banana.

The Royals