A confession: my dinner menu hits quite a rut in the last long, cold stretch of winter. Tired of heavy foods but without fresh spring produce, it’s a struggle to find inspiration in the kitchen. When the weather does finally turn warm (or jumps straight to 90 degrees, as it suddenly was this past week), the produce at the farmers markets still isn’t quite ready. Fortunately, I received some new cookbooks for Christmas that I finally cracked open to plan our recent holiday meals. I’m particularly smitten with Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. (I’m not the only one — the book was just named cookbook of the year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).)

Between the pictures and the background stories I could spend many a evening curled up on the couch reading it — but it wouldn’t be long before I’d feel driven into the kitchen to try a recipe. Not content to try just one, I made two recipes for our Passover/Easter weekend: Saturday night’s seder featured the Marinated Sweet & Sour Fish (pictured above) and for Easter dinner the next day, Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts.

The fish recipe starts with a flavorful red and yellow pepper, onion and coriander sauce — and there was far more sauce than needed for the amount of fish I used. (I used hake, which looked fresher than the cod at the supermarket that day. I’d probably try it with cod next time though.) So for lunch the next day, I reheated some of the pepper sauce, spooned it over toasted bread and topped it with sliced hard boiled eggs, olive oil and sea salt. It was so good I’m actually considering making just the pepper part again to keep on hand.

The lamb-stuffed eggplant gave me a new way to prepare lamb on Easter when it was just the family and I didn’t have an excuse to cook a whole leg of lamb. The recipe is definitely company-worthy, though, and not too labor-intensive. The eggplant is roasted first, then topped with ground lamb and pine nuts and baked some more, until it is tender and saturated with the paprika-infused sauce. Delicious.

As an added endorsement, the colorful pictures also caught the eye of the littlest foodie tot — who likes to flip through the book with me and was eager to help mix the spices to season the eggplant dish.

I will definitely be making the eggplant many more times, especially when local eggplant arrives at the markets later this year.

There are so many more recipes I’m eager to try. Do you have Jerusalem yet? Let us know what we should make next. (Or get your kids in the kitchen and let’s cook Jerusalem together! Need more inspiration? Mardi of Eat Live Travel Write recently made the book’s turkey and zucchini burgers — with her middle school boys’ cooking club. Love it!! And OMG! Yummy hosts a monthly “Tasting Jerusalem” cooking event, with a recipe contest going on right now.)

I still can’t believe how early strawberry season began this year. We got our first Virginia berries of the year at the Falls Church Farmers Market last weekend, and a few more this weekend. The foodie tots have been ecstatic. The first week, they downed a pint at breakfast as soon as I returned from the market. This past weekend, the toddler went with me and somehow managed to leave strawberry stains on the front and back of her t-shirt, and stroller seat, just while snacking on a few as we shopped. (She was also a big fan of the fresh mini cider doughnuts from Mama’s Donut Bites, new at the market this year. Also spotted: asparagus, ramps & morels — the locavore’s holy trinity of spring.)

I’ve been wanting to make horchata, a frothy rice-based drink I first tasted in L.A., for an embarrassingly long time. Like, since my last trip to L.A. In 2009. Ahem. Anyway, the drink is simple enough to make but requires advanced planning and patience as the ground rice and water must soak overnight. So it’s a good opportunity to give the kids a lesson in delayed gratification. It’s a fun recipe for kids who enjoy pressing the buttons on the blender, too. It’s lighter than a smoothie and its sweet, refreshing taste goes well with spicy tacos.

While some recipes call for almonds, I chose one that used only rice to keep things simple. I added fresh strawberries which helped sweeten the drink, so it requires less added sugar. (If your berries are very sweet, you may get away with using even less sugar.) You may be tempted to taste the preliminary soaked rice concoction …. (I confess, I did it.) If you do, don’t despair. The drink vastly improves once sweetened. I don’t plan to let another three years pass before making this again — in fact, I’m already envisioning sipping a watermelon version on the deck later this summer.

Recipe: Strawberry Horchata
adapted from A Wooden Nest

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup long grain white rice
• 4 cups water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1/2 cup cane sugar
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled
• 1 cup whole milk

Instructions:

1. Place rice in blender and grind to a fine meal. Add to water in a pitcher, drop in cinnamon stick and stir to combine. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.

2. Pour mixture back into the blender and blend until cinnamon stick is finely chopped. Pour through a fine mesh strainer, pressing on the rice solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard solids.

3. Return strained mixture to the blender and add sugar, strawberries and milk. Blend on high speed until well combined and frothy. Chill before serving.

Makes 4 servings.

Can’t wait overnight? Try our Strawberry Agua Fresca recipe.

Sure, I may not have seen many of this year’s Academy Award nominated films, but there’s no reason to let kids keep us from celebrating Oscar night. Most kids are natural performers, after all — so invite some friends over, let the kids walk the red carpet (complete with parents-as-paparazzi, of course), and make some kid-friendly foods. Call it an Oscar Pre-Party (especially if you’re on the East Coast like us) and you can send the kids off to bed well before the good awards are handed out on television.

For this menu, I took my inspiration from the animated film nominees: A Cat in Paris, Rango, Puss in Boots, Chico & Rita, and Kung Fu Panda 2. Fortunately, they are set in some great food locations! The recipes below can be made by older kids, with supervision, and they’ll especially enjoy mixing up their own batch of mocktails.

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Kid-Friendly Oscar Party Menu

Mojito Mocktails (recipe below)
Thomas Keller Gougères (Cheese Puffs) — A Cat in Paris (Une Vie de Chat)
Nopales (Cactus) Salsa & Chips — Rango
Camarones a la Mexicana con Aguacate (Shrimp-Avocado Tostadas) — Puss in Boots
Mini Cuban Sandwiches – Chico & Rita
Noodle Soup — Kung Fu Panda 2

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Recipe: Mojito Mocktails

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Prepare mint simple syrup: In a small saucepan, bring sugar and water to a boil. Boil, stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes, until sugar is completely dissolved. Add mint leaves, stir, and remove from heat. Let stand 10 minutes. Strain into glass jar and let cool to room temperature. (Can make ahead and store in refrigerator.)

To make drinks: Juice one lime and divide juice evenly among four glasses. Add one mint leaf, 2 jiggers mint simple syrup, 2 jiggers coconut water and stir. Add ice cubes and top with seltzer. Garnish with lime slice and serve. Makes 4 mocktails, with plenty extra mint simple syrup for another round.

Set the table with gold organza and your sparkliest dishes and serve a bloomy-rind cheese and sparkling wine for the adults. Hostess with the Mostess has Oscar party printables to add more Hollywood pizazz to your table. And if you really want to go all out, make Oscar statue cookies for dessert — or stick with “golden” lemon bars.

My son has been obsessed lately with preparations for the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. They’ve learned songs and made decorations at school and will be having a family potluck next week. To kick things off at home, we made paper lanterns and egg drop soup yesterday. He’s also asked for “uncut noodles” (symbolizing longevity) and fried dumplings or egg rolls.

Eggs — specifically tea eggs — are served to symbolize wealth and prosperity. Check out last year’s post on PBS Kitchen Explorers for more on the food traditions of Chinese New Year and an egg roll recipe. The Williams-Sonoma blog has a traditional three-course menu if you’re feeling more ambitious.

Recipe: Egg Drop Soup
Adapted from The Kitchn
Serves 2-4

Ingredients:

• 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon miso paste
• 1 or 2 eggs (see note)
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• green onions, sliced

Instructions:

Whisk ginger into broth in a small saucepan. Turn to medium high and bring to a simmer. Lower heat to medium low, maintaining a gentle simmer, and whisk in miso paste until dissolved.

In a separate bowl, whisk together egg(s) and corn starch until smooth. Hold a fork across the bowl and slowly pour the egg mixture through the fork tines into the broth, using your other hand to whisk as you pour. Remove from heat and serve immediately, garnished with green onions.

Makes 4 small appetizer servings, or 2 larger bowls.

Note: I used two eggs which made a very thick soup. If you prefer more broth, just use one.

Cooking with Kids Tips: Little ones can help whisk together the egg and corn starch — older ones can whisk as you pour the egg mixture into the broth. It’s fun to watch the egg turn into little ribbons in the soup. And always let kids add their own garnish — my son doesn’t like extraneous green things, my daughter added some cheese. (And loved it!)

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For those of you in the DC/Northern Virginia area, there are two festivals coming up this weekend, the Chinese New Year Festival in Falls Church and the Lunar New Year festival at Fair Oaks Mall.

Are you doing anything with your kids to celebrate? Yes, getting take-out counts.

It’s hard to believe, but here we are at the start of the holiday shopping season. Oh, and Thanksgiving, too. As we surround ourselves with delicious food, friends and family, it’s too easy to stay caught up in our own little world. Of course, this is also the season for giving, and opportunities to do so are plentiful.

This year, I’ve tried to select methods that will resonate with my five-year-old son and help him begin to understand gratitude. Yesterday we dropped off our shoebox for Operation Christmas Child, a small selection of toys, school supplies, superhero toothbrushes and warm socks that will travel to a 5-9-year-old boy in a yet-to-be-determined country. We’ll be able to check our tracking number to see where it winds up, but naturally Africa came up as I explained to my son why there were kids who needed our kindness in order to celebrate the holiday.

It seems most people of my generation were raised with the stern admonition at the dinner table that “there are starving children in Africa who would love to eat your meal.” I remember cutting and pasting pictures of Ethiopian children from National Geographic for an elementary-school report about the famine. It’s almost incomprehensible that that saying, which we treat as a cliché, is every bit as true today.

A representative of the ONE Campaign (you know, Bono’s anti-hunger nonprofit) recently asked me to share this virtual recipe card with a Somali recipe for Date-Filled Sambusas, adapted by Sarah Commerford of What’s Cooking in Your World. The recipe is meant to help raise awareness of global hunger and the escalating famine in the Horn of Africa. You can view the recipe below, or download a PDF copy here. And click here to learn more about the situation in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and how we can help.

I’m not sure if we’ll get to it for Thanksgiving, but I look forward to making these with my kids soon. And I hope you’ll consider working it into your holiday baking plans this season as well. It can be hard to imagine that the food that connects us is so scarce for so many — but hopefully by sharing recipes like these we can spread awareness and band together to help others, at home and abroad.

Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours!
Colleen & the Foodie Tots