1 sweet potato
1-2 carrots
2-3 cups butternut squash or pumpkin or both
1 onion diced
3 cloves of fresh garlic diced
1 tsp mark off
salt and pepper to taste
1. Wash, peel and chop up the vegetables.
2. Use a 5qrt pot, fill 3/4 way up with water
3. Put all the cut up vegetables into the pot, on medium heat and allow to boil
4. After about 30 minutes or more, the vegetables should be soft, remove from the heat
5. Add salt, pepper and marak off to the soup
6. Meanwhile, saute the chopped onions and garlic and set aside when nice and brown
7. With a hand blender, blend all the vegetables in the pot, add the onions and garlic and mix until well blended
8. Keep tasting the soup and adjust the seasoning as needed
Hagit's Chicken Soup
2 small zucchini
2-3 carrots cut up
1 onion cut into 4
2-3 potatoes cut up
2 stalks of celery plus the celery leaves cup up
2-4 pieces of chicken
2-3 tbsp marak off
1 tsp salt, pepper to your taste
(Dill and parsley is optional)
1. Place the raw chicken pieces in a big pot. Add water to cover the chicken and boil. The idea is to boil the chicken and remove the scum the comes to the top of the water....sounds gross but it's an essential step for a clear soup
2. Remove the boiled chicken from the pot and either wash the pot out to reuse or use another 5 quart pot to make the soup
3. Fill the pot 3/4 way with cold water, add all the cut vegetables, the chicken pieces, marka-off (chicken stock powder), the salt and pepper, on medium heat
4. Cook for an hour until the chicken is totally cooked and the vegetables are soft
5. If using this soup for the gondi, remove the chicken and vegetables to make room for the gondi
6. The vegetables can be added back later. The chicken can be shredded and returned to the pot too
Gondi Soup
1 pound of ground chicken, dark meat is best for this recipe
2 medium/large onions, grated on fine
8 oz of chickpea flour, from Persian deli or ask Dafna
1 tsp ground cardamon (essential)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt, 1 tsp of pepper if you like pepper
1/3 cup oil (can be left out if you wish)
1. Mix the ground chicken with the chickpea flour, turmeric, cumin, salt and cardamon
2. Grate the onions into the above mixture and mix really well, by hand is best
3. Add the oil now if you are going to use it....a must if using ground white meat
4. Form golf ball size balls....keep your hand wet so that the meat does not stick to you, they should look like matzah balls, round and smooth
5. As each gondi ball is made, drop gently into a boiling pot of soup
6. Let the gondi cook for an hour....actually the longer the better
Kubeh Soup
This is Hagit's all time favorite soup. It reminds her of home and brings back beautiful Holiday memories surrounded by family in Israel. Her husband's aunts Kohavah and Dalia use to make this soup several times a year and Hagit used to watch them as they tenderly prepared this labor intensive soup.
When Hagit left Israel she missed this soup very much and wished that she knew how to recreate the recipe. One summer, when she was back in Israel on vacation, she asked the aunts to come and show her how to make this special soup. Kohavah and Dalia came over to Esther's house (Hagit's mother-in-law) brought with them all the ingredients and showed Hagit step by step how to prepare the Kubeh soup.
Since that summer Hagit has been making this soup every Rosh Hashanah and shares the soup with other Israeli families. Anyone who has tasted this soup is brought back to their childhood when their mother, grandmother or aunts would make this for the holidays....that's the magic of the Kubeh Soup.
We won't trick you into thinking that this is a simple throw together soup. It does take time and effort but you will really appreciate the results if you follow this recipe.
Dough
2 lbs semolina
1/4 lb matzah meal
4-5 cups warm water
2 eggs
Add the semolina and matzah meal together, add a cup of warm water at a time and constantly mix
the dough with a spoon. Add an egg at a time and now use your hands to continue mixing well. Knead the dough for about 5-10 minutes then flatten it in the mixing bowl and poke holes all over. Pour 1/4 cup of warm water over the top, mainly to keep the dough moist. Let it rest and go put the soup together.
Filling
1 1/2 lbs of chop meat
1 1/2 cups of leaves from top of celery
2 tbs oil
4 onions grated and drained
salt and pepper to taste
Grate the onions into a mixing bowl and drain away the juice keeping the pulp only. Add the meat, salt, pepper, oil and the finely chopped celery leaves. Mix by hand really well.
Soup
1 whole celery cut up
1 big onion (keep it whole just for the flavor)
2 cups of beet leaves
2 cups of big chunks of pumpkin
6oz tin of tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp Sour Salt (more if you like it more sour)
1. Using a 5qt pot, fill it up 3/4 way with water and boil all the vegetables
2. After 10 minutes, add the tomato paste, oil, salt, pepper and sour salt
3. When the soup boils for another 10 minutes, drop in the kubeh one at a time
4. Let it cook with the lid on for 45 minutes and watch for the kubeh rising to the top which
indicates that they are done
5. Keep tasting the soup and adjusting the seasoning as needed
Assembly of Kubeh
1. Take a full tablespoon of the dough into the palm of your hand and flatten it out into a small cup like shape ready to add a teaspoon of the meat. Your hands should be wet at all time.
2. Add the filling to the middle of the dough and then using small motions bring the edges of the dough together and using just a touch water help the dough stick together and form a small ball around the meat filling
3. This is the part that could take you some time to master, just keep doing it and you'll get better
4. We made a ton of kubeh, we placed them on a flat tray on top of parchment paper and put them into the freezer. You can make the kubeh a few days before and freeze them
5. Another trick is to let the balls freeze flat on a tray and then transfer them into freezer bags for easier storage in your freezer
This recipe make a tremendous amount of kubeh so you can either make them and freeze them or you can reduce the recipe by half to feed 6-8 people. Either way, we feel once you are making them you might as well make a huge amount and then use them as you need them for any size soup you wish to make.
