A Rainbow of Hamentaschen

For most of my life, I had no love for hamentaschen, the triangle-shaped filled cookies eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim.  I always found the doughs dry and the fillings boring.  When I received my husband's family recipe, I had to change my tune.  The dough was easy to roll, shape and re-roll, and the cookies came out perfect and tasty every time.  I filled them with jam, prune and poppy seed fillings and chocolate for the kids.  After a few years, I was bored again.  


Last Thursday, as I was lying in bed in London at 3:00 am  suffering from jet lag, my mind drifted to what I needed to do when I returned home: Purim. Mishloach Manot. Hamentaschen.   I must have been inspired by the complete rainbow I saw in Edinburgh, Scotland earlier that day which appeared following 10 minutes of giant hail and sideways rain; I started to imagine tinted hamentaschen doughs that were flavored to match their fillings.


I returned to my laboratory and created raspberry, chocolate, apricot, hazelnut and pistachio hamentaschen. I filled the pistachio ones with pistachio paste and some with little triangles of good quality chocolate. I played around with the amount of baking powder in the recipe and found that less baking powder yielded crisper cookies.  My flat metal spatula was the perfect tool to lift the dough circles.  I discovered that chilling the dough for several hours or overnight made it easier to roll, but you can still roll right away if you want, just sprinkle more flour on your parchment and dough.  The chocolate dough can be found in The Kosher Baker, and I filled some with chocolate chunks and others with parve white chocolate chips.  My lemon hamentaschen recipe appears on the Joy of Kosher website.  


What is the most unusual hamentaschen you have ever tasted?  Any flavors you would like to see developed?  Let me know.  Happy Purim!

Pistachio Hamentaschen         Makes 4 dozen

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon orange juice

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4-5 drops green food coloring

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup shelled pistachio nuts, ground fine

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting parchment and dough

one 11-ounce can pistachio nut paste

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment.  In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, oil, and orange juice, and mix well. Add green coloring to achieve desired shade of green.  Add the baking powder, ground nuts and flour and mix until the dough comes together. You can chill the dough at least one hour or overnight or bake right away. 

Divide the dough in half.  Take another two pieces of parchment and sprinkle flour on one, place one dough half on top, and then sprinkle more flour on top of the dough. Place the second piece of parchment on top of the dough and roll on top of the parchment until the dough is about ¼ -inch thick. Every few rolls, peel back the top parchment and sprinkle more flour on the dough.

Use a glass or round cookie cutter about 2 to 3 inches in diameter to cut the dough into circles. Place a teaspoon of the pistachio paste in the center and then fold in 3 sides to form a triangle, leaving a small opening in the center. Pinch the 3 sides very tightly. Place on the prepared cookie sheets. Repeat with the rest of the dough and re-roll and cut any dough scraps you have.

Bake for 12 to 16 minutes, or until the bottoms are lightly browned. The baking time often depends of the type of cookie sheet used: cookies on darker sheets bake faster. Just watch the cookies until they look done—you do not want them to be brown on top because then they will be too hard. Slide the parchment onto racks to cool the cookies.

Raspberry Hamentaschen    

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon raspberry extract, Bakto Flavors 

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4-5 drops pink food coloring

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting parchment and dough

1 cup seedless raspberry jam

6 ounces fresh raspberries

For the dough, mix the eggs, sugar, oil, extracts and food coloring well and then add the baking powder and flour and mix until combined.  After you roll out and cut circles according to instructions above, fill each circle with 1 teaspoon jam and one fresh raspberry.  Follow instructions above to shape and bake. 

Macaroon Marathon

I am dreaming about macaroons.  No, not those canned coconut chocolate ones that serve as snacks on the New Jersey Turnpike while driving to Passover Seders.  I dream of a rainbow of light, chewy, colorful French macaroons with delectable fillings. I imagine the macaroons I saw in Europe last summer that are flavored with caramel and salt, green tea, passion fruit, licorice, rose and litchi, and grapefruit, and wonder whether I can create them with Kosher ingredients. 

My obsession is not new.  I fell in love with macaroons in pastry school in Paris.  Even then my French teachers declared them “temperamental” because they require precision, no extreme temperatures in the kitchen and patience. 

I was assigned by the fabulous new Kosher Inspired Magazine to write about French macaroons for their Purim issue.  Thus began a macaroon marathon for two weeks straight.  Don’t you wish you lived in my house?  The truth is it was hard work.

Although I have recipes for vanilla, cinnamon and raspberry macaroons in The Kosher Baker, I wanted to see if there was a way to improve on the recipe. These cookies present many challenges, such as how to achieve great colors without weighing down the batter with food coloring.  The answer?  Add the color to beaten egg whites and then add the almond/powdered sugar. 

I tried different oven temperatures, different rack positions in the oven; I varied the standing time for the cookies and used different colored baking sheets.  Essentially I was running a laboratory.  If baked too long, the cookies crumble.  Too short, they are too gooey in the center and you cannot remove them from the cookie sheet.  Too high a rack, the tops burn and all the color you worked so hard to achieve disappears. Too low an oven rack, the bottoms burn and you lose the chewiness. 

I baked small batches to see how each adjustment worked. The rejects may not look as pretty or be as chewy, but they are certainly edible and I ate them all as the kids were not home during my experiments.  Ultimately, I learned that more food coloring is better than less and you need to use your best, unbent cookie sheets so that the cookie batter doesn’t slide.   I discovered that Bakto Flavors extracts are great, especially their raspberry flavor, which added extra flavor to the pink raspberry macaroons featured in the Kosher Inspired article. 

 If I thought that baking perfect macaroons was tricky, that experience was trumped by the photo shoot.  Oh, the days of placing a cake slice on a plate and turning it left and right.  Every adjustment of cookies required the precision of astronauts repairing the International Space Station to avoid cracking and cross contamination.  It took many hours to get them right.  

After two-weeks I created gorgeous AND delicious cookies and only put on a few extra pounds—but nothing my Spanx can’t handle.  I am now confident that I can tame these formerly moody cookies and, rather than let them get the upper hand, tailor the flavors and colors to my own mood.

Have you tried baking these at home?  They are  worth the effort.  Let me know if you have discovered any great tips.   

Look for the article, baking tips, step by step photos by The Kosher Baker photographer, Michael Bennett Kress, and the recipes for mojito, raspberry and mocha macaroons in the current issue of Kosher Inspired, found at Judaica stores, kosher supermarkets and newsstands, but not on-line yet.

Lemon Macaroons              Makes 30-40  cookies

Cookie

1 cup almond flour (can grind 1 ½ cups slivered almonds in coffee grinder)

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

4 large egg whites, at room temperature (set out at least 1 hour,  3 is best)

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

6-10 drops yellow food coloring to achieve a bright yellow color

Lemon Cream

3 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 3 lemons)

Zest (grated outer peel) of 1 lemon

5 tablespoons parve margarine

Line 2-3 cookie sheets with parchment, making sure the parchment fits perfectly flat on the sheet; trim if necessary.  Lighter-colored cookie sheets work best.  To make the cookie batter, place the almond flour and confectioners’ sugar in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process for 3 minutes. Sift into another bowl, discarding any large almond pieces.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites with a stand or hand-held electric mixer on high speed until stiff. Turn the speed to low, add the sugar slowly and the turn up the speed to high for 3 minutes. Add the lemon juice and food coloring and beat 30 seconds.  Add the almond and sugar mixture and mix on low speed to combine.

Place the batter into a pastry bag fitted with a ¼ -inch round tip. Squeeze out circles onto the prepared sheets until they are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Leave 2 inches of space between each circle. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

While the cookies are sitting, prepare the lemon cream.  Place the eggs, yolks, and sugar in a heatproof bowl and set over a medium saucepan with simmering water (or use a double-boiler). Add the lemon juice and zest to the bowl and whisk. Cook the lemon cream, uncovered, whisking occasionally, until a thick mixture is formed. This takes approximately 25 minutes. Be patient and do not stir too much.

Don’t leave the whisk in the bowl with the lemon mixture while it cooks; it may get too hot to touch. If the water in the saucepan boils too fast, turn down the heat.

Remove bowl from the heat and whisk in the margarine a tablespoon at a time. Cool for 10 minutes and then cover with plastic and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight. To use that day, place the bowl of lemon cream in a larger bowl of ice water (below the level of the bowl with the lemon cream) for 20 minutes, or until the cream is chilled.

To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 300ºF. Do not bake more than two cookie sheets at a time.  Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the cookies have puffed up, switching the cookie sheets halfway through baking. Do not let the tops brown. Slide the parchment off the cookie sheet and let cool at least 45 minutes.  Use a metal flat blade spatula to remove from the parchment.

To fill cookies, make pairs of them about the same size. Place about 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of the filling in the center of the bottom of one cookie, place the other on top so the tops face outside, and then press gently so you can see the filling from the sides.  Store in the fridge for up to two days.  

Chocolucias

I learned how to do nothing for seven hours a day. I didn’t think I had it in me. When I was on bed rest before my twins were born, I decided that doing nothing was entirely overrated, after aspiring for boredom for a decade. This past December, my family, known for shlepping vacations where we sightsee and fly/drive from place to place every two days (Argentina last year), decided to try a resort vacation in St. Lucia.

The one day I was persuaded to abandon my perch at the beach, we went on a boat with three other families to Soufriere, hot springs and a cocoa plantation. The otherwise boring explanation of traditional cocoa bean processing caught our attention when a man in bare feet climbed into a large urn with the fermented and dried beans to polish them with his feet. My three sons jumped at the chance to have their turns, never boys to pass up chocolate or a silly experience.

While on the boat, two of the moms were embarrassed to tell me that they were baking brownies from a mix that night in their villa. The next day, I learned of their "success."  They had completely burned the top while the interior remained batter, apparently some confusion over oven temperature. They decided to turn the brownies over out of the pan so the burnt part was on the bottom and the goo was on top. They announced to their families they were serving chocolate molten cake. They were proud of their delicious creation. I was impressed by the clever marketing.

After landing stateside, we went to our friend’s house in Westhampton, New York for Shabbat. To continue the chocolate theme from St. Lucia, I baked a double batch of these chocolate cookies and we ate them non-stop for two days. We all secretly hoped that no feet had touched the cocoa.

Cracked-Top Chocolate Cookies                            Makes 6 to 7 dozen

These cookies can be baked two ways: with or without a coating of confectioners’ sugar. I like to bake half the dough one way and half the other as I like the way the two kinds look on a platter.

2/3 cup canola or vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

1 cup parve unsweetened cocoa

4 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, for coating cookies (optional)

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, and cocoa. Add the eggs, one at a time, and whisk well after each addition. Add the vanilla and whisk again. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula.  Place the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Line three baking sheets with parchment, or bake in batches. Use a tablespoon to scoop up the dough and roll into balls about 1 inch in diameter. If you’d like to coat the cookies in confectioners’ sugar, place the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl. Roll the cookie balls in the confectioners’ sugar until they are heavily coated with sugar. Place the cookie dough balls on the prepared baking sheets about 1½ inches apart. Place the sheets in the freezer for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Bake for 12 to 16 minutes, depending on how chewy or crunchy you like your cookies. The cookies will spread and crack on top when they are almost done. Slice the parchment onto cooling racks and let cool.

To Chocolate or Not to Chocolate

My mother is personally offended by any dessert that isn’t chocolate. She firmly believes that no non-chocolate dessert can ever be worth the calories. When she eats my mocha pecan pie every Thanksgiving, I can tell that she considers it some distant cousin of a chocolate dessert – nice, but not familiar enough.

This Thanksgiving, I decided to create a chocolate dessert but it had to fall comfortably within the pie, tart, or galette world. I had been ruminating about flavored tart doughs but didn’t want an all chocolate tart. I wanted something happier, less dark. I chopped up chocolate and carefully kneaded it into my sugar cookie crust. I achieved a butter-color crust with chocolate specks.

I wanted the filling to be bittersweet and ganache-like, but thicker, like custard, so it needed some eggs. The result is definitely a rich tart. I was down to the last slice on Shabbat and ended up cutting it into 1-inch squares and handed it out to 10 people like little candies. They were happy with their bites. It was, however, much too small a piece for my mom.

I would love to conduct my own survey about preferences for chocolate versus other desserts. What percentage of the time do you choose to bake chocolate as opposed to fruit, nut or other desserts? I imagine chocolate will prevail, but I am curious to see by how much. Let’s see if everyone thinks like mom.


Chocolate Tart with a Chocolate Chip Crust       Serves 8, or more

Pastry Dough

1 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

5 tablespoons parve margarine, frozen 30 minutes and then cut into tablespoons

1 large egg yolk

2 tablespoons cold water

¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

Filling

¾ cup parve whipping cream

1/3 cup soy milk

½ vanilla bean, scraped

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate

2 egg yolks

To make the crust, place the flour, confectioner’s sugar and margarine into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process for 10 seconds, until the mixture resembles sand.  Add the egg yolk, water, and vanilla and process just until the dough comes together. Do not mix too much. Place dough on a large piece of plastic wrap. Gather into a ball, cover and then flatten. Chill in the freezer one hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Place an 8-inch tart ring on a parchment-covered cookie sheet. Grease the ring with a little margarine.

Remove dough from freezer and let sit until it softens a little so it can be rolled. Place a piece of plastic wrap larger than the ring on the counter and sprinkle with flour. Place dough on top.  Cover with a piece of parchment and roll on top of it to roll out the dough until it is at least one inch larger than the tart ring. Place your hand under the plastic, lift the dough and place in the tart ring using your finger to gently press the dough into the corners. Remove plastic and use a rolling pin to roll over the top to trim off excess dough.

Freeze 10 minutes. Line dough with foil or parchment and beans or pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes. Lift up the edges of the foil or parchment to remove it and the weights and bake another 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven. This can be done in advance and frozen until use.

Bring the cream, soymilk and seeds of vanilla bean to boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat and add the chopped chocolate. Let sit for 5 minutes. Stir with a whisk. In a separate small bowl, whisk the eggs. Add ½ cup of the chocolate mixture and whisk in. Place this mixture into the saucepan with the chocolate and cream and whisk well. Scoop into the tart shell and bake for 25 minutes. Let cool and then chill in the fridge for 3 hours or overnight.

The Designer Turkey

Thanksgiving is an even more special holiday when you are living far away from all things American. My husband Andy and I were posted in Geneva, Switzerland years ago and we had a handful of American friends with which to celebrate. I went searching for my kosher turkey.


We were lucky to have a kosher butcher only a few blocks from our apartment in the city, unlike in Washington, DC where we had to drive 40 minutes into the suburbs for a kosher chicken. I went to the butcher and asked for a whole turkey in my broken French. He said that no one ate whole turkeys in Switzerland but would see what he could do. I checked in with him every few days to see how his search was going. Maybe I seemed a little desperate.

He announced one visit that he would have a fresh, whole, large turkey for me. In the meantime, I planned the rest of the meal. I bought orange-skinned yams that when peeled were completely white. It took several visits back to the store and sore fingernails to learn that in Geneva, all the sweet potatoes were white inside. I will have to admit that they did taste the same as the orange ones, but looked rather drab in a dish in which they were combined with white granny smith apples. I never found fresh cranberries.

I picked up my enormous, beautiful turkey. It was the Dior of turkeys, with the designer price tag of $140. Yes, you read that right. I thought that by living in the land of watches and banks I would be immune to sticker shock; I wasn’t. I paid the butcher and carried my baby home. It was delicious, tasting and smelling of America and enjoyed by all.  The next year, I drove to the kosher butcher just over the border in France and bought two scrawny turkeys, that looked like big chickens, for $45 total, and they were just as good.

I will never forget the $140 turkey, but only as a reminder that celebrating an American holiday in a foreign country with friends and delicious food really has no price tag.

Here are two  favorite Thanksgiving recipes, my turkey rub and corn bread, from The Kosher Baker.


Shallot and Herb Turkey Rub
This rub was inspired by one I found in Bon Appetit 1993 and goes with any stuffing. There is enough for even a very large turkey.


½ cup (1 stick) parve margarine, softened                       2 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed                                                   1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage leaves                           Salt and pepper to taste

Cream the margarine with a silicone spatula. Add the shallots, garlic, thyme and sage and mix well. Put on some gloves and then rub mixture all over and under the turkey skin. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover with plastic and let sit until roasting. I like to rub the bird the night before, cover and place into the fridge.

Corn Bread                               Makes forty 2-inch squares

This recipe was designed for a crowd; it makes two 9 x 13-inch pans. You can also halve the recipe, but why bother? It freezes very well.

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups yellow corn meal

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons baking powder

4 large eggs

1 cup parve whipping cream

2 1/2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

2 cups parve plain soy milk

1/2 cup (1 stick) parve margarine, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9 x 13-inch baking pans.

2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, corn meal, sugar, salt, and baking powder. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, whipping cream, oil, and soy milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Add the melted margarine and stir until just combined.

3. Bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. The corn bread should be a little brown on top. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Dueling Desserts

My daughter, Emily had been begging for apple tart tatin, but those last peaches of the season were asking for inclusion in something. It was such a good peach season in Maryland that I kept eating and not baking them. This was my last chance before the Triple Crown season of apple/pear/pumpkin desserts began.

Tarte tatin can do no wrong in my world – apples too mushy -- who cares? Apples stuck to the pan and the tart patched back together –I’ll eat it anyway. Armed with confidence, I made the tart, center ring of pear, then alternating granny smiths and peaches with blackberries scattered around any holes I found in the pan.

It even looked like I had imagined in my head. The blackberries performed the task of paintbrush and lightly tinted all the fruit with a red pomegranate color. I loved the taste, but Tom and Padma, I mean Sam and Emily, said that they didn’t like tasting just one fruit in each bite, they would prefer a bite of apple, pear, berry and peach each time they cut a piece. So there was born round two of the tatin battle. The second method was a little soupy and messier to turn out of the pan. But the pool of syrup on the counter was easily removed with fingers and licked. The taste was precisely what the critics were after and the blackberries more uniformly colored and glazed the dessert in red. I will give you both options so you can decide.


Rainbow Tart Tatin                                           8 to 12 servings

Storage: Store covered with plastic in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

1 sheet parve frozen puff pastry (from a 17.3-ounce box)

8 tablespoons parve margarine

3 Granny Smith apples

3 small pears

3 unripe peaches

6 ounces blackberries

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Thaw the puff pastry at room temperature for 45 minutes.  You will need a deep, ovenproof skillet about 11 to 13 inches wide. Make sure the handle is ovenproof as well. Take a piece of parchment about 16 inches long and sprinkle some flour on it. Roll out the puff pastry sheet until it is 1 inch larger than your pan. Place the pan on top of the rolled pastry and use a sharp knife to cut a circle in the pastry the size of the pan. Remove excess dough and set the dough circle aside.

Place the margarine and sugar in the skillet and set over medium-low heat. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Meanwhile, peel and core the apples and cut into quarters. Peel the pears, halve and remove cores. Peel the peaches, halve and remove the pit. Add the pears to the center of the pan, cored side facing up with the stem end facing the center, so it looks like a flower. For the next ring outside the pears, alternate apple and peach halves, core and pit sides facing up to fill up the pan. Sprinkle the blackberries around and place in any gaps between the other fruit. Cook for 15 minutes uncovered without moving any fruit.

Place the skillet in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven.  Take your pastry circle and, using your hand under the parchment, lift up and flip the pastry over on top of the fruit. Be careful, the skillet is hot! Peel off the parchment and use a sharp knife to cut a few holes in the pastry. Return skillet to the oven and bake for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is golden.

Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes. Use a silicone spatula to gently push any fruit poking out of the pastry back under the pastry. Put on oven mitts.  Place a large serving plate or platter over the pan and then flip the tart over onto the plate or platter. If any of the fruit get stuck in the pan, use a spatula to scoop them out and place where they belong on the tart. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Option #2

Preheat oven, thaw, roll and then cut the puff pastry as instructed above.  Cut the apples, pears and peaches into 1-inch pieces.  Place into a bowl, add the blackberries and toss gently. Heat the margarine and sugar in the pan, as instructed above.  After the margarine and sugar have melted, dump all the fruit into the pan and use a spatula to spread to cover the pan. Cook for 10 minutes without stirring. Place pan in the oven for 10 minutes.

Remove and then place the pastry on top, following the instructions above. Place back in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is golden.

Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes. Use a silicone spatula to  push any fruit poking out of the pastry back under the pastry. Place a large serving plate or platter (one with a rim works best) over the pan and then flip the tart over onto the plate or platter. If any of the fruit get stuck in the pan, use a spatula to scoop them out and place where they belong on the tart. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Thyme Flies

Hurricane Earl was a total bust in Westhampton Beach, New York. I came up here to do several cooking demonstrations to launch The Kosher Baker and stay for Labor Day weekend. Earl simply left us with beautiful breezes. So we opened all the windows and everything went flying, especially the fresh thyme leaves that were destined for the Dijon vinaigrette for my fresh tuna salad nicoise. At my dear friend Elena Lefkowitz’s exquisite home, all weekends are full of good friends, relaxing hours and most importantly, fabulous meals. Thyme usually moves very slowly.

Our unofficial weekend food theme was the final tastes of summer. I know that we are being rocket launched into brisket in two days, but for now, this weekend is all about grilled vegetables, colorful salads, fresh fish and barbeque. Lunch on Shabbat was tuna nicoise salad and quinoa with roasted sweet potatoes, dried cranberries and green onions.

To make the tuna, marinate it for 5 minutes in some olive oil, lemon juice and dried thyme. I seared it in a hot pan for less than 2 minutes per side so the center would be rare. I steamed asparagus and red bliss potatoes and found several varieties of olives in the fridge and cut fresh herbs from pots right outside the kitchen.

Place your favorite mixed greens on each plate, some asparagus, potatoes, olives, a few slices of tuna, sliced against the grain, and then the mustard vinaigrette. For a side dish, I made the quinoa salad that I taught at the cooking demos here in Long Island as a healthy Rosh Hashana side dish. Call this salad a bridge between bikinis and brisket.

Dijon Vinaigrette makes ½ cup dressing
¼ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano leaves
Salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste

Whish together the oil, vinegar, mustard and honey.  Add the juice, water and whisk vigorously.  Add the thyme and oregano and sale and pepper to taste.

Quinoa with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Dried Cranberries serves 8
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
1 medium sweet potato, cut into ½ inch cubes
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted, optional
3 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup dried cranberries
3 scallions, sliced thin

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Place the quinoa into a small saucepan and add 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes, covered, or until the water is evaporated. Turn off the heat and let quinoa sit covered for at least one hour, up to 8 hours.  While the quinoa is sitting, place the sweet potato cubes into a roasting pan and toss with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Bake for 25 minutes, stirring once or twice, or until you can just pierce the cubes with a fork. Set aside.

Place the pine nuts into a small pan over medium heat and cook until lightly toasted, stirring often. Watch carefully so they do not burn. Set aside.  In a small bowl, place the remaining two tablespoons olive oil, vinegar, honey, salt, pepper, cumin and cinnamon. Whisk well.

When the quinoa is dry, use a whisk to break apart the grains. Add the vinaigrette and mix with the whisk. Add the sweet potatoes, pine nuts, cranberries and scallions and mix gently. Serve at room temperature.