Kofta b'siniyah

I am having a very busy week and my plan to post earlier this week did not happen. Still, I do want to post because my promise to myself this year is that I will post once a week. I made this dish weeks ago when I borrowed Jerusalem from the library. It is a beautiful cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The book has since been returned to the library and these meatballs are long gone but I still crave for it. I am thinking about purchasing the book. Though currently I am doing a low-fat-vegetarian-diet, but I do crave meat every now and then. If you like middle eastern dish, you should check this out. It has a range of recipes from appetizer, salad, soup, meat, and dessert.

Jamaican Ginger Beer

I have not made a lot of drinks in my life but I think it is safe to say that this one would rank at the top for the strangest one.

It is very good. And healthy. It is basically a ginger juice so it is a very concentrated flavor. I do not recommend if you don't like ginger. But if you do or kinda do, I suggest that you try it. You can also really dilute it with some water or seltzer so the ginger taste is a background flavor instead of it being a full-on concentrated ginger juice.

No-Knead Bread

I have tried this bread before, back in 2009 when I first started baking. It turned out terrible! I can't remember the specifics now but it was bad enough to make me think that this is not the bread/method for me. I'm sure I did something wrong. Yes you may laugh here. This is supposed to be the easiest bread and I mess it up. I do have a tendency to mess up easy things.

But I didn't have enough knowledge to know what it was and at the time I was more concerned about finding a recipe that works for me. I want a good bread that I could make every week so we don't have to buy bread from the store anymore. A bread baking friend once told me that homemade bread is so good and so much better than store bought. I always wonder about this and secretly jealous. The bread that I made does not taste as good as the store-bought.I am talking about hearth type breads, bread that has only a handful of ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, water.

ABC: Boston Cream Pie

For this week's ABC selection, I decided to make 1/3 recipe. The full size of this cake uses a 9 inch pan. I was too lazy to measure by volume. I do have 7 inch, 6 inch, and 4 inch cake pans. So I went with 6 inch. The size turned out to be perfect. The cake rose pretty high. However, if you look at the picture above, the cake sunk in the middle. When I took the cake out of the oven I was so sad. I didn't know why it sunk and it looked terrible. I only baked this for 20 minutes since this is a smaller size. I thought maybe I bake it a few minutes too long, but it should still not sink in the middle. Hubby cheerfully suggested that I should cut a hole in the middle and call it a bundt cake :). If you have seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding this comment should ring a bell.