Bread & Babka at GoldStone Farms

When people talk about produce, Summer comes to mind; however, the end of the Summer and beginning of Fall bring treats to the local Farmers' Markets.  Look for gorgeous broccoli, cabbage, apples, pears and figs. I used 1.5 lb of fresh figs to make this tart, 2 lbs would have been better. It helps that we have a neighbor with a fig tree, and better yet a young fig tree of our own that will, hopefully, begin to fruit next year This recipe is adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook, Plenty More.   Extravagance aside, the tart is amazing: beautiful and impressive to look at and even more delicious. The dough is a buttery yeast dough flavored with thyme, lime, lemon and a bit of sugar. The resulting taste is not quite cake, a bit savory with an earthy undertone. I used fresh thyme today, as my garden is still full of beautiful fresh thyme, but I'm sure dried thyme will work well. These figs I used were the last of the season and on the smallish side The frui

Re-purpose the left-over holiday challot and make a challah bread pudding (AKA:bread kugel) Don't throw out the left over sweet, fruit stuffed holiday challah - it may not be suitable for breadcrumbs, but you have the base of a great bread pudding. The "recipe" is more of a guideline, improvise as you go. Choreography: Gather the left over challah. This year we had stuffed pumpkin, apple and strawberry/apple challah, use whatever challah you have on hand. Cube into bite-size pieces Mix  milk (pareve or cows milk), eggs , sweeteners and spices  Bake until firm, serve warm or at room temperature Equipment: breadboard , knife mixing bowl a large mixing cup or a mixing cup and bowl mixing spoon, measuring spoon  9x9 or 8x8 baking pan (the size to make a batch of brownies) Ingredients:  Note: this is a guideline. Measurements are approximate - improvise and be creative! 8c bread cubes (you can use white bread, but challah, with or without f

Our family loves dumplings of all sorts. At their most basic, dumplings are dough wrapped around a filling. Easy enough, right? The filling reflect everything imaginable and represent the flavors of every culture.  I grew up on cheese and potato blintzes (also think: pirogi or vareniki), but I recently expanded the filling potential by wrapping the dough around pastrami   and corned beef hash . Other Eastern European Jewish-style dumplings include meat kreplach (see my vegetarian variation ) or knishes  .  Asian steamed buns are made wheat dough with a leavening agent (see Asian style steamed buns ) and in the Middle East and Muslim influenced cultures wrappers are usually wheat and oil based ( Samsa    or sambusak).  Savory and sweet, the variety and variations of dumplings are endless. Whenever I made dumplings guests think of them as a complicated treat; however, they really are, at their root, a comfort food and can be prepared at home. They do take a bit of time to make - I