Mafroum - fried stuffed veggies in a spicy tomato sauce

Mafroum is a sephardic dish that originated in Tunisia, it is comforting and filling and goes great with couscous. It is traditionally made with potatoes but I did a combination of potatoes, eggplant, zucchini and a few onions. You can use whatever vegetables you like.

Patties:
1-2 pound ground beef
2 eggs
1 bundle of parsley chopped
Large onion, peeled chopped
salt and pepper
Oil for frying
Matzo meal or breadcrumbs or panko

Coating the patties:
Flour
4 eggs (at least)
1 small tomato paste
Salt and pepper

the rest:
5-6 potatoes
1 large eggplant
1 onion
a few zucchinis

Sauce:
can of tomato paste
celery
salt pepper
oil (from fry pan)
jalapeño

Wash and dry the veggies and the slice them into a V...you can slice about 3 cm thick then slice them in down the middle leaving the end attached to form little pockets.

Mix everything under the meat ingredients together and stuff into the vegetables as in the picture above, coat them with flour then dip in the egg tomato paste mixture and fry until golden.

In a large pot make the sauce by mixing all of the ingredients together and let boil. Once that is ready, put the fried vegetables in the pot or in a baking dish with the sauce (covered) and place in the oven for about an hour on 350. Uncover it for the last 20 minutes so it can get golden and then garnish with celery leaves or parsley.

Stuffed Peppers

My friend Shirly came over the other day and made me these amazingly delicious and simple stuffed peppers. It is a simple and hearty meal that takes minutes to make.

What you'll need:

You can use any vegetable you want but I love the red peppers, I also added a couple yellow zucchinis I had in the fridge...

8-10 peppers (top sliced off and cleaned inside)
about 1 1/2 cups of rice
1 1/2 lbs of ground beef
salt
pepper
chicken powder
1 can of tomato paste
some boiling water
parsley for garnish

Clean out the peppers and arrange them in a pot like in the picture. In a separate bowl, mix the rice with the meat and season with salt, pepper and chicken powder (about 1 tbsp). Fill each pepper about 3/4 of the way full and then poke your finger in each one to get all the filling down and leave some room for the rice to expand. In a separate bowl, add about 3/4 of a small can of tomato paste, about 2 cups of boiling water and season.
Pour a few spoons of the mixture into each pepper and the rest slowly around the peppers into the pot. Place in med-high heat and bring to a boil for about 30 minutes. Then put it the oven at 350 degrees for an additional 30 minutes or until golden and broiled. Garnish with parsley and enjoy!

Kube - Delicious Beet Soup

This Soup is hearty with it's meat filled dumpling, and super lemony and sour...You can freeze the balls and put them in pretty much any broth, but this one is my favorite, enjoy!

meat:

1 pack of ground beef

1 large onion diced

1 cup of chopped cilantro

salt and pepper

1 tbsp chicken powder

3tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp cumin

dough

2½ cups of farina

⅓ cup bulgar

¼ cup olive oil
Pinch of salt

soup
1 tsp sugar

1 large onion diced

6 beets peeled, halved and sliced

5 garlic cloves crushed

1 bunch of cilantro chopped

4 stalks of celery chopped (leaves and stalk)

2 tbsp chicken powder

1 tbsp cumin

salt and pepper

2 tbsp paprika

juice of 3-5 lemons

Meat:

Heat olive oil and cook the meat with a few tbsp’s of water to help separate as it cooks. Keep stirring to break apart large chunks.

Once it has broken down and the water has dried out, add the rest of the ingredients and continue cooking on medium until everything is golden. Add a little more olive oil if necessary. Then let cool and you can refrigerate if you want to make this a day ahead.

Dough:

Mix the oil with the farina and stir. add the bulgar and mix. slowly and while mixing add the water until all the farina is moist and forms a doughy consistency. If there is excess water empty it out and let the mixture set for 10 minutes to absorb.

Soup:

Sauté the onion, garlic, cilantro, beets and celery in the olive oil for about 10 minutes. Then add the water and the spices and bring to a boil. Once boiling add the lemon and lower heat to simmer

Meanwhile to make the balls take about a tbsp of the dough, lay it flat on your hand and fill it with a spoon of the meat and fold it over to form a ball. Roll it in your hands to make sure the dough has sealed. set it aside and finish the rest. once you’ve rolled out all the balls you can either put them one by one into the BOILING broth or you can freeze them for another time.

Let the soup with the balls boil on high for about 8 minutes and then you can lower the heat to low and leave it for another 15-20 minutes and then serve