Mushroom and Barley Soup

Ingredients:
Barley - Pinhead or Regular
Mushrooms
Onions
Fresh Garlic
Salt and Pepper
Oil

Soak the barley by putting it in a container or bowl and covering it with boiling hot water. Cover well and leave to soak for at least an hour. (The longer you leave it for the better, as this reduces the stodginess in the soup making it nice and light). If you cannot soak the barley before you can still make the soup but it will be more stodgy and will need top ups of water during cooking.




Dice and fry onions until they are translucent and slightly golden.


Add chopped mushrooms and chopped garlic.




Fry until the mushrooms go soft.

Add the drained barley and fry over for a couple of minutes.


Add salt, pepper and enough to water until almost the top of the pot.

(If you use boiling water, it will come to the boil a lot quicker). Cover and bring to a boil. Lower flame and cook for 1 hour if barley is pre soaked or 2-3 hours if barley is not pre soaked.

Et Voila!

Tzimmes

Ingredients:
Carrots - either fresh or frozen
Oil
Salt
Sugar
Honey
Cinnamon

I used frozen sliced carrots. If you are using fresh, peel them and slice them.

Fry the carrots with a generous amount of oil so all carrots are covered, but not too much.

Fry for as long as the carrots need until they are quite soft and shrunk quite a bit.

Season with a sprinkle of salt and cinnamon, a couple of tablespoons of sugar and honey. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Fry over for a few more minutes.

Once cooked, tzimmes can be frozen.

Serve hot.

Et Voila!

Apple Crumble

Ingredients:
1lb Self Raising Flour
8oz Sugar
8oz Margarine

Apples
Sugar
Cinnamon

Mix flour, sugar and margarine together to make crumbs. You can do this by hand or even easier in the machine.


These crumbs freeze very well so I like to do a batch and keep some in the freezer so I could always throw together a dessert lastminute.com! Even after making a batch I still had leftover crumble so I've frozen it!

The official recipe uses cooking apples, but I like to use golden delicious because they aren't as bitter.

Peel and core apples. Leave them in cold water whilst you are preparing the other apples so they dont go brown.

I used 20 apples and this was enough for a medium crumble and 24 small ones.

Once you have peeled and cored all the apples, you can either chop them or grate them. (By hand or machine).

Sprinkle a generous amount of sugar on apples and a small sprinkle of cinnamon (more if you like more). Mix well. At this stage the apples will be a bit brown because of the cinnamon but you need to work quickly so that the apples dont go brown themselves. Make sure you have done your toilet break etc before you start grating the apples.



Put a little bit of the crumble mixture at the bottom of each container.

Next, put some of the apple mixture.

Top with a generous amount of crumble mixture. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.



A large one:




Bake uncovered for 30-45 minutes. (smaller ones shorter time, larger ones longer time).

These freeze very well, just defrost and heat up when ready to serve.

Serve Hot!

Et Voila!

Challah for Rosh Hashanah

Ingredients
Any Challah Dough

On Rosh Hashanah we use round challah, this challah is much nicer then the traditional plain round ones.

Take 4 equal pieces of dough. I used 9oz pieces for the large challah and 5oz pieces for the medium challah.

Roll each piece of dough. Once you have rolled all 4, re roll the first one and continue with all pieces (this is because the dough stretches back after you have rolled it initially).

Lay 2 rolls lengthways and then weave the other 2 pieces across.



This whole method is weaving, but rather then go under - over - under - over etc, first go over for a whole circle, and then under a whole circle and then over again etc.












Once you have used most of the roll and its hard to go another round because the pieces aren't long enough, tuck all the end pieces underneath the challah.


Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and cover with a tea towel.

Leave to rise for 30-40 minutes.

To make one challah that is split into a few small ones so easy to break off for motzei:

Take equal amounts of challah. I used 1oz pieces.

Roll each piece and make into its own challah.




Turn over.


In a round dish, place one challah in the middle and all the others around the middle one so they are all next to each other and as they rise they will stick to one another. Cover with a tea towel.


If you don't want to knot each challah, you can use plain round balls of challah and place in dish in the same way.

Leave to rise for 30-40 minutes.

Brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame/ poppy seeds. If you want you can sprinkle brown sugar on top - it gets caramelised and tastes delish!



Bake uncovered on 200 for 30-40 minutes.

Et Voila!