Every once in a while I get the opportunity to make a restaurant-style meal for dinner. Mostly this involves bedtime cooperation from the younger kids, the absence of the older ones, and the availability of ingredients. In other words, it doesn’t happen too often.

On this occasion, I happened to have a number of chicken breasts as a basis. You don’t always need crazy ingredients to make a new dish. Sometimes, the combination of what you have is crazy enough. A quick rummaging through the pantry and refrigerator turned up some white wine, leeks, potatoes, and panko breadcrumbs.

Sounds like dinner to me.

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Yom HaAtzmaut is the National Day of Grilling Meat in Israel. It’s a holiday celebrated in backyards with the family barbecue, or with portable grills in green spaces throughout Israel, a day dedicated to spending time outdoors with family and friends, a true Sunday with no work, all play, beers, cake…

There is a joie de vivre felt throughout the country, a simchat chaim for all foods grilled. There are parades to honor the brave men and women who tend the grills, political speeches dedicating the day as the first official day of the grilling season, military air shows and more.

Oh yeah, it’s also Independence Day.

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Fresh garlic has been flooding the market for a few weeks now. I look forward to it every year around Pesach time, and this year was no disappointment. I lugged home six kilo of full garlic stalks, and with a little trimming, I had a basket of garlic and a fridge full of fresh garlic stems.

Sadly, the photos of the enormous palettes of garlic and the garlic garlands hanging in Machane Yehuda were erased from my camera, as well as the photos of how I cleaned the garlic up. Which explains why I was a little light on the posting these last few days. I was upset, and kept looking for the photos, and kept postponing.

There is a silver lining though; I haven’t seen a vampire all month.

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Before Gilberto Escobar, the head baker at Bibi’s Bakery and Cafe, starts preparing the pita, cinnamon rolls, challah or anything else that comes out of the kosher bakery’s ovens, first he has to get through what he called…
 
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As I mentioned in my post on freezing salmon, sometimes you have more than you need, and you wind up freezing for later use. The same thing is true for chicken breasts, beef, and so on.

Have you ever forgotten to pull out the chicken Thursday night you meant to cook for Shabbat? What happens Friday morning? You have a huge, frozen lump of twisted-up chicken that is never going to defrost in time to cook. So you plunge the whole thing into hot water. Now you’re poaching the outside pieces while the inside is still rock-solid. The shnitzels you were looking forward to are slowly turning into something that’s going to resemble a bag of wet laundry.

Let’s resolve to avoid this unpleasant scenario from ever happening again, shall we? Because now, you have no excuse. Read on…

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