Tea for Two

An almost black beauty - because I'm worth it!

2011-08-17T16:55:00.004+02:00

No, not L'Oreal :) This is a lot more "natural".

These last three weeks I have been on diet, no wheat, rye, oat, nor rice, potatoes or corn. It went quite well, it's easier in summertime I reckon, because all the delicious sallads you can eat. The hardest was -and still is- not to be able to eat a good sandwich or an afternoon cake and tea. I'm an inveterate tea drinker and I'm sure that a tea-and-cake addiction is comparable with coffee-and-cigarettes :) So yes, I miss my cake.

This sunday we had our neighbours visiting and it was a good reason to bake a cake. I made a redcurrant cake (yummy, I'll post the recipe soon) for them and Nigellas flourless chocolate orange cake from Feast for myself. (Careful, I can hear what you're thinking :D "A whole cake for one person?" Phleeeeeze, I'm on diet because of my health, not because I'm lacking appetite!)

My friends at Nigella.com and later on Vi's Pantry have been raving about this cake, I don't know why on earth I've never tried it.

Chocolate Orange Almond Cake

Ingredients

2 small thin-skinned oranges

6 eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

200 g ground almonds
250 g caster sugar

1 dl cocoa

orange peel, for decoration

Directions
*Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft.
*Drain, and when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips.
*Then pulp everything - pith, peel and all - in a food processor.
*Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, butter and line a 20cm springform tin.
*Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but slightly knobbly with the flecks of puréed orange.
*Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.
*Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.
Enjoy!

the almost-black beauty

It turned out to be a cake that was delicious, moist, morish, that could be eaten without any remorse. I used Green & Black's Organic Cocoa Powder, the taste was great but it wasn't a black beauty as Nigellas. It was just a tiny bit too orangy, next time I might not use all the orange peel, perhaps one and a half. This is definitely a cake I'll make again and again, no matter diet or not.

Oh, one more thing. A book recommendation: Diane Setterfields The Thirteenth Tale. I bought it a couple of years ago but somehow didn't read it before now. It is written in best classic storytelling tradition and goes perfectly well with the almond cake and a cup of spicy tea with almond milk.

Chicken with sweet potato, lemons and olives

2011-08-03T17:02:00.005+02:00

This weekend we spent on a beautiful little island in the northern part of Gothenburg Archipelago, visiting some very nice friends. We had a good time of course, but what else does one expect when there is nice weather, good food and even better company?
Our hostess is interested in food and is capable of creating the most delicious meals in a laidback manner that I admired very much. When we are expecting guests, I'm running about like a crazy hen, totally stressed up, wanting everything to be perfect and in the end everythig turns to pancake anyway:) She was so cool about cooking, just chopped a bit here and a bit there, went out to the veranda for a bit of sunbathing, went back to the kitchen for a few minutes, then came out again, sawing and spiking a bit and after a while voilá! there was a gorgeus seafood soup on the table!

Anyway, when we were there I promised her to give the recipe for Diana Henry's (who is btw my absolute favorite foodwriter) chicken with smoked paprika and pickled lemons and lots of other good stuff. Here you go.

Chicken baked with sweet potato, smoked paprika, olives and pickled lemons

serves 4

Marinate 8 chicken thighs in 4 tbs olive oil, 1 tbsp smoked paprika, 5 crushed garlic cloves and the finely sliced flesh of 1/2 preserved lemons plus 2 tbsp juice from the jar of lemons. (If you don't have preserved lemon it'l go just as well with a whole fresh lemon cut in wedgs and tucked in between the chicken thighs) Put into a roasting tin with 900g sweetpotatoes cut into big chunks, 2 red onions cut into wedges and salt, pepper. Bake for 45 minutes, until cooked through in an oven preheated to 200C, adding a handful of stoned black olives and the shredded rind of the lemon 15 minutes before the end. Scatter with chopped parsley and serve.
Bon Appetit!

closed

2008-07-22T17:02:00.001+02:00

secret garden..., originally uploaded by vonsachsen.

sicilian meatballs and no-knead bread

2008-07-16T21:13:00.006+02:00

It´s been more then three weeks since I came back from Sicily and my tan is already fading...I´m afraid the memories would too but I am trying very hard to keep them alive. I have eaten Caprese quite a lot with the fresh Mozarella, the not-quite-as-sweet-as-in-Italy tomatoes and the peppery scent of the basil instantly transferring me back to Sicily. ...all I have to do is to close my eyes. I have also had melon with prosciutto, Penne alla Norma (my way) with the Ragusano I brought back home.

Last weekend I made Tessa Kiros´ Budino di semolina from Twelve and it was very popular with my friends, although the consistency wasn´t really what I expected. Tessa wanted me to cook the budino in bain marin and I just hate that. I don´t have the "real stuff" so I just place a large pan filled with water in the oven and I place the actual pan with the pudding in it. The Silver Spoon suggests that you bake it in the oven without any bain marin, so next time I´ll try the easy way, because I liked the taste very much.

I haven´t mentioned yet, but - of course - I bought a cookbook in Sicily, quite a touristsy one. I am not very fond of these kind of books, but this was the only type of cookbook I found in English.

This weekend I made my first dish from it and it turned out surprizingly well. I made the meatballs in tomato sauce and served it with some no-knead bread that I made for the first time.

Sicilian meatballs in tomato sauce
Polpette al Sugo

meatballs:
500g minced beef
1 clove of finely chopped garlic
1 egg
3 tbsp of chopped parsley
2 spoonfuls of oil
4 toasted rusks (I used 4 small handfulls of ströbröd)
salt, pepper
1/2 cup of flour (I omitted that - too much starch)
1 pinch of cumin

tomato sauce:
4 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled
2 spoonfuls of oil 1 clove of garlic
1 small onion
2 tbsp chopped parsley
2 pinches of cumin
1 bay leaf
salt

Prepare the sauce: in a pot, sauté the whole garlic and onion in oil for five minutes, them ermove them and add the chopped tomatoes, bay leaf, parsley, cumin and salt. Reduce to medium heat for around 15 minutes and keep aside.

In the meantime, crumble the taosted rusks into a large bowl and moisten them with a little warm water. Leave to stand for about half an hour, then press with a fork to eliminate any lumps and add the minced meat, egg, garlic, chopped parsley, cumin ans salt and pepper. Mix well with a wooden spoon until perfectly smooth. In the palm of your hand, roll into meatball the size of an apricot, press lightly and flour.

Heat the oil in a pan and cook the meatballs for about 15 minutes on a medium heat, turning twice. Pour the tomato sauce over the meatballs and cook on a medium heat for a further 7 minutes. These meatballs may be served either hot or cold.

The no-knead bread (Jim Lahey/Mark Bittman)was great, of course I didn´t succed to 100%, but being a novice bread baker, I was satisfied anyway. I used a way too large Römertopf, so the bread was a bit flat, but rose perfectly and had a wonderful crust. I used 1 1/4 of tsp of salt, which I found too little, it might have been the sea salt I used...I definitely must use more salt next time. And yes, I am going to make this again, as it is a no fuss bread. Umm...did I tell that I also swapped 1 cup of plain flour to Graham flour?

No-Knead Bread
From NYT Dining & Wine

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

So, finaly the bibite (yes, I am showing off a bit ;P), the latte di mandorla. All the time
I was thinking that it was made of ground almonds (and it sort of is), but every recipe I came across was using pasta di mandorla. Since I haven´t bought any in Sicily, I used some Swedish mandelmassa, that should be close to the original. Of course, the Swedish ones are surely not made of Sicilian almonds, also they contain things I could easily live without, so I am still to find a recipe I am satisfied with. Here´s a tutorial video on YouTube that can be usede as inspiration or guiding lines. I suggest you turn down your speakers on your computer if you don´t want that stupid background music to drive you totally crazy...

It is best served sweet and well chilled.

Also, in a previous post I have been telling about the modest owner of Bar Manzoni in Catania, who - in my opinion makes the best latte di mandorla. He learned me a little trick how to recognize good quality latte di mandorla even before tasting it. If the bottle the latte di mandorla is being poured from remains too clear, that means that the beverage is too thin. If it remains white even after being emptied, then it should be OK.

I made the test with my own bottle and here is the result:

pretty good for a beginner ;)

chocolate strawberry jam

2008-07-08T13:18:00.025+02:00

I know I have promised more from Sicily but right now there are other things wanting to be blogged :D

Few weeks ago a friend and I went to a newly opened café in Haga, Gothenburg. It is a very cosy cafe in scandinavian-shabby-chick-cottage style with (mostly) vintage tables, chairs and stacks of white and blue plates. Everything is apparently home made, from the pies, tarts, sandwiches to scones and jams. It was a delight to be able to choose from so many different jams, rhubarb, pear, walnut, raspberry and the one that really got me going: strawberry chocolate! I am not a chocolate person (according to David Lebowitz “there are two kinds of people in this world, the lemon people and the chocolate people ” ) but this combo blew me away.

The weekend after the visit I bought the pale blue plates too...

I could hardly wait to come home and ask my friends on Vi´s Pantry if they have heard or made or had recipes for jam with chocolate, because I knew that I just have to reproduce this delicacy at home. (The main reason was that they have silver knives in the various jam jars that made it hard to have generous helpings and I am a greedy but polite person...)

Carlotta from Vi´s Pantry had several recipes for different jams with chocolate, so I changed the raspberry chocolate jam just a tiny bit to fit strawberries.

It was a hit! This is going straight into my favourite recipes file! It is good to pancakes, scones or just plain on a slice of buttered bread with a nice cup of hot tea. Mmmm...
As I think it is my duty to share the recipe with you, here it comes ;P

Strawberry Chocolate Jam

(Adapted from Christine Ferber´s "Mes Confitures")

1 kg strawberries

700g granulated sugar (I would use 650g with a sweeter strawberry)

juice of 1 lemon

225g bittersweet chocolate ( 68%- 70%)

Day 1:

Hull the strawberries and give them a hasty rinse. Divideberries into two, mash one half with a fork and chop roughly the other half.

In a preserving pan, mix the strawberries with the sugar and lemon juice. Bring to the boil and cook 5 minutes, stirring gently and skimming carefully. Add the grated chocolate (I used a food processor) and stir until it melts. Pour into a ceramic (or china) bowl. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2:
Next day, return the mixture into a preserving pan. Continue cooking on high heat for about 5 minutes, stirring and skimming if needed. Return to a boil. Check the set. Put the jam into sterilized jars immediately and seal.
The reason for this technique of cooking the jam twice is that the chocolate and the fruit will combine more thoroughly and the tastes "ripen" together.

Thanks Carlotta, this jam rocks!!

Not much left from the first jar...

tablecloth

2008-06-29T22:04:00.004+02:00

I´ve bought a tablecloth on a market in Taormina. I mostly have whites and blues - kind of Scandinavian style - so it is fun to have something more "rustic". This lemony cloth is 100% pure cotton, cost me 2,50Euros and will remind me of Sicily every time I use it:)

morning prayers ;)

2008-06-29T10:13:00.005+02:00

morning prayers ;) in front of The Duomo in Catania. I wish I was there now.

I loved how these guys gathered on the steps of the church early every morning to talk about politics and God knows what and how later in the evening their places were taken by younger men and boys watching people on their evening passeggiata.

Sicily - under my skin

2008-06-26T20:08:00.027+02:00

The Duomo in Catania

I´ve been back for six days now but I am still suffering from post-holiday-depression. I´m sitting in front of my laptop and watching the slideshow with photos I took in Sicily. I take the Sicily guide with me to read on the tram on my way to work...
I have already found two cook books on Amazon about Sicilian cookery that I am ordering as soon as my economy allows it.
Do I have to say more? I am in love.

It wasn´t love at first sight and that´s why I know this is going to last. It wasn´t all perfect, all gorgeous. When we arrived to Catania airport after ten hours on three different planes, we were standing and waiting for our luggage in the small (ish) arrival hall and stated fact that it looked and felt like Romania. Well, actually it also sounded like Romania, the first person I heard talking there was in Romanian :) So we were waiting and waiting and waiting for our luggage and I was telling laughingly the story when Anthony Bourdain arrived to Sicily (in No Reservations) and his bags were missing. I was sure it was all set up for the filming. The smile on my face faded when the belt (?) stopped and our bags never showed up.

These were our first minutes in Sicily. After an initial threatening stroke, I recovered quickly and started to appreciate that we are going to travel light. We ran to catch the bus already standing there but unfortunately we missed it as we forgot to buy tickets for it.

Lesson nr1: when taking a bus in Sicily, you always always buy the ticket before. You also need different tickets in different cities, so you can´t buy them in bulk and think you are safe for the rest of your stay. You can buy tickets in stores that have a black T-sign.

So I became obsessed with black T:s.

Another black "thing" I became obsessed with was Mount Etna. Before actually seeing it (I call it "her" for myself) I thought it was such a tasteless thing, every tourist taking pictures of it and buying loads of kitschy postcards, but when I finally laid my eyes on it, I couldn´t stop staring. It kept me spellbound. I was looking at her while eating my breakfast, I was gazing at her from our hotel window in the afternoon and especially in the evenings when we could see the still glowing streams of lava.

It was first then and there it started to get real to me. It was first then and there I started to understand how this vulcano gave and took life. I can´t even imagine what it would feel like to live and sleep with that mountain over my head for the rest of my life.

But since this is a food blog I should here mention that the territory on the lower slopes of the mountain is extraordinarily fertile. In the cultivated zone there are oranges, lemons and tangerines, and on the higher slopes are planted with groves of olives, apples, pears, pistachios (the famous Bronte pistachios!), hazelnuts and vineyards. It is also one of the most important honey-producing areas of Italy, known for its citrus blossom honey.
I am not going to bore you with more talk, it feels like I could go on forever. Of course I just have to mention that I have never had such excellent bread in my life then in Sicily. The food (or shall I say our choice of restaurant or trattoria) wasn´t the best one every time, but the bread was.
Also a beverage I fell in love with is the latte di mandorla. Quite sweet but so refreshing! I made a test tasting in Catania, Taormina, Modica and Siracusa and I must say my favorite latte di mandorla was made by a very kind and modest man in Catania. I picked the place because it didn´t look "touristy", it was a simple place with a few green plastic chairs stacked upon each other.

We had Pasta di Mandorla and Cassata at the famous Bar Pasticceria Chemi in Taormina, but dare I say I was disappointed? I have had Cassata at every place I could but the best one I had at a little taverna in Catania. The Cassata at Chemi was overly sweet, as was the marzipan covering on it, and that made it impossible to detect even the slightest taste of ricotta.

The marsipan fruit was a piece of art!

More coming another day.

Theme orange for human rights - again

2008-06-04T21:27:00.018+02:00

Last night I recieved an update from The Color Orange about 2 june: Press release :Give the Chinese students their history back! TheColorOrange.net appeals to everybody to wear the orange color on 4th June, the 19th anniversary of the crackdown on the students in 1989 on the Tiananmin Square, Gate of the Heavenly Peace.

So on the menu I had Diana Henry´s Thyme, oregano and citrus roasted chicken from Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, liked it very much and I am going to meke it again. I am also going to use more orange zest in my cooking, it gives an interesting flavour to food.

For dessert I made George´s Golden Delight loaded with oranges too. George is about to publish a cook book and is looking for test pilots around the globe :)

The cake is made with oil that makes it moist and I simply loved the filling. I didn´t have the orange blossom essence George used, only an ordinary orange blossom water, so I added some grated orange zest both to the cake and filling, and it was incredible! This is a keeper recipe, although - since this is Tea for ONE - I would halve the recipe because this makes enough cake for at least 12 people! I made the cake just before leaving to Sicily (wasn´t too smart) but luckily I was invited for a grill party so I took the cake with me. Yum!

Note: Even if I halved the cake I would leave the amount of filling as it is ;)
Previous post on The Color Orange http://vonsachsen.blogspot.com/2008/02/color-orange.html

mediterranean mood

2008-05-27T13:56:00.005+02:00

I´d like to believe that I most often cook what I crave but seeing my latest posts and even if I look back a bit longer, I see that what I cook often depends on available ingredients. What I mean, is that cooking for one often leaves me with leftover ingredients and it develops into a chain.

In my last post I cooked the lamb tagine, so I needed dates. Of course I couldn't use up all the dates in the tagine so I found a desert that used mainly dates, the stuffed dates. To be able to make the stuffed dates I needed pistachios that came in a package of 400g that left me with a few handfuls of pistachios that needed to be used.

This last week I have been leafing through Cucina Siciliana ( see my previous post on this book) by Clarissa Hyman as I have booked a trip to Sicily and I was about to plan which places to visit and there I saw these wonderfully grass green lamb chops with pistachio pesto. They were quick and easy to make, flavourful and colorful, especially if you like pink lamb chops. Of course I couldn´t resist to make some tzatziki on the side and they went very well together. Don´t be misled by the name Pistachio Pesto because this dish has very little with the well known pesto to do. Here we are talking about a paste made of chopped or ground pistachios, breadcrumbs, lemon zest and olive oil that you spread on the chops one minute before they are ready.

The tzatziki doesn´t need any presentation I guess, it´s Greek yogurt, grated cucumber, garlic, dill and a little lemon juice. You can add mint too, but I prefer it without.

moroccan flavours

2008-05-20T16:19:00.018+02:00

After finishing The Caliph´s house by Tahir Shah I went straight to my laptop and started searching for cheap airline tickets to Marrakech. I was spellbound by the thousand-and-one-night atmosphere in the book for more then a week, but finding the prices far too high for me, I eventually realized that the closest I´ll come to Morocco this year will be a bowl of tagine and some strong, sweet peppermint tea.

Since my mother was visiting, I chose to cook her favourite tagine with shallots and dates from Hilaire Walden´s The Moroccan Collection.

Having bought a whole box of "fresh dates" (fresh dates from a box?? I don´t think so, but that´s what the label said) I wanted to use up the rest so they wouldn´t go all dry on me. I recalled having seen a recipe for stuffed dates in my new Middle Eastern book called Orient - food and culture . I really love this book, it´s both beautiful and informative but I haven´t cooked anything from it before now, so I was happy to finally start using it.

beautiful color!!! - ground pistachios

I thought this would be awfully sweet but to my surprise it was edible-sweet and went perfectly with the peppermint tea. The filling is made of ground pistachios, butter, icing sugar and rosewater, so obviously this is not a low-carb or low-fat recipe :)

gooseberry tart

2008-05-11T22:33:00.010+02:00

It´s not like I´ve taken an oath to produce tart tarts solely from now on, I promise you this was only a coincidence. I craved something summery for my afternoon tea but didn´t have any other summer fruit but a litre of red gooseberries in the freezer. I have been looking for a recipe to use them for quite a time now, but I couldn´t really find anything that appealed to me. When searching in my Hungarian cookbooks I found a sauce that goes well with rich steaks and the Swedish cookbooks "promoted"recipes for stewed gooseberry purée served with milk for breakfast. I found a recipe for clafoutis in Nigella´s How To Be A Domestic Goddess but I craved something more substantial so I decided to make a tart.

I made a shortcrust pastry with

300ml of flour

1 egg

1 tbs sugar and

150g butter

Let rest in the fridge for about 1 hour. I knew about the gooseberry elderflower combination but I wanted to try something new, so I surfed the web in English, Swedish and Hungarian but found very little. There was a recipe where cinnamon was used, then another one with lemon zest but then that was about it. I decided to use Nigella´s idea from her clafoutis recipe (the orange flower water) and the lemon zest, just because I absolutely love the flavour.

I baked the pastry shell for 15 minutes on 225C degrees then filled it with the

gooseberries (1 litre)

sprinkled 100ml sugar

1 tbs potato starch

some vanilla sugar

few sprinklings of lemon zest and

1 tbs of orange flower water over the fruit.

(You could also stew the fruit first by crushing the gooseberries and cook i´t with the other ingredients for a few minutes) but I like a bit texture, so I just used the raw fruit.)

I baked it for another 25 minutes and served it with Greek yogurt (yes, I know, I use Greek yogurt to everything but it actually went very well with this tart). You can serve it with cream, custard or like Delia Smith, with a nice elderflower ice cream.

Note: I couldn´t wait for the tart to cool completely but I would advise you to make your very best and wait, because my second slice tasted so much better! It really makes a difference. The tart was perfectly sweet-and-sour, if you like rhubarb you will love gooseberries. I couldn´t taste the orange flower water at all but the lemon zest complemented the gooseberries perfectly. This time I only used 1 tbs of orange flower water as I didn´t want my tart to taste soapy, but I´ll might give it another try with at least 2 tsp next time. Also I can imagine using orange zest, it should be delicious.

I made myself a nice cup of tea on my new PG loose tea that I bought yesterday at the English shop and I was happy and contented for the rest of my Sunday afternoon :)

tart leek tart

2008-05-09T19:40:00.009+02:00

The next recipe that I´ve tried from Twelve was this Leek Tart. It sounded delicious on reading through it as it contains several of my favourite ingredients in food: booze (this time white wine :D), nutmeg, parmesan and cream. Oh, and of course our main character: leek! I was really looking forward to this treat and even "Feng-shui"d it a bit: I put two pastry hearts on top to attract The Knight.

Well, after tasting it I realized that this tart tart won´t attract any Knight if they have the same palate as I :) The wine and nutmeg didn´t harmonize with the leek, I can´t say why but it just didn´t taste good. It tasted as if it has turned sour. I won´t give a recipe for this one as I don´t feel I can recommend it, but if you are brave enough or just want to give it a chance and cook it anyway, it would be nice to hear another opinion. Also, if anyone has a tried and tested leek tart recipe, would you please share it with me?

Oh, and another thing! I am sooooo happy that I finally have Tamasin Day Lewis´ West of Ireland Summers- Recipes and Memories from an Irish Childhood ! I have been on the hunt for this book for at least two years but couldn´t find it for a reasonable price. It is out of print and on Amazon there are three copies right now for £42 and four copies for £118,48!!!!! Crazy people... I happened to check in last Saturday and found a copy for £10, bought it the same second and yesterday the book has moved into my bookshelf :)

lamb stew with egg and lemon sauce

2008-05-03T19:32:00.014+02:00

It started with a friend not wanting her copy of World Food Cafe, because it was the English edition and she wanted it in Swedish. I offered her a swap, she kind of liked Tessa Kiros´ Twelve and I have only cooked from it once (the plum cake) and wasn´t too satisfied. The book simply never inspired me (before!!) opposed to her Falling Cloudberries that I adore. My friends said she will think about it and tell me the next day, so that night I went to bed with Twelve.

Needless to say, I have leafed through this book several times before, but now that I was about to "loose" it, I suddenly found more than a few recipes that looked interesting that I somehow have missed before. (The Lemon Tart, Ricotta Tart, Apricot Ice Cream, Leek Tart, Chicken in Lemon, Green Nettle Frittata and the Green Nettle Gnocchi are on my "to try" list now)

I have asked for recipe recommendations from this book before, both on n.com and Vi´s, but nobody seemed to have cooked that much from it. For those of you who don´t have the book, the photography and layout is beautiful, as all of her books´. It is called Twelve because it is divided in twelve chapters, one for each month, so in a way it is seasonal cooking, although it doesn´t translate well to Sweden...we are a bit late up here :) There is also a chapter called The store cupboard with tips on useful ingredients, then Wine notes (unfortunately totally wasted on me) and my favourite: Basics. In Basics you find recipes for fresh pasta, white country-style bread, anchovy sauce, Béchamel, Ragù, Pasta brisée, Crème anglaise and mascarpone cream.
There is a short chatty-informative intro to each month, although it becomes a bit qualmish from time to time - in true Tessa style. (sorry! but thankfully that doesn´t affect her recipes)

So today I made the Agnello in Fricassea -lamb stew with lemon and egg sauce and although it´s not a good-looking dish and therefore not a first choice blogging stuff, I just couldn't not share it with you. Very often when I try new dishes, they are nice, they are OK, but they are very seldom fantastic. Well, this one is. Fantastic. If you like lamb, I urge you to try it.

My first thought when I saw the egg and lemon sauce was the Greek Avgolemono but this was a Tuscan cookbook ?! As Tessa mentions in the introduction of the recipe the sauce is a popular Mediterranean feature, so that explains the usage of it.

The recipe calls for rosemary that I didn´t have, I just threw it out the other day, as it seemed to have caught some strange disease just a few days after I bought it. So instead of the rosemary I used thyme and Greek oregano that I bought on Alonnisos last summer. I made another minor adjustment, I added a few lemon rinds because I love the citrusy freshness it gives to the dish. I used more spring onions and also bayleaf.

If I were to grade this dish, I would give it a ten out of ten.

Lamb stew with egg and lemon sauce
serves 2

about 500-600g shoulder or leg of lamb trimmed and cut into chunks
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 pinch of dried oregano
1 pinch of dried thyme
2 bay leaves
80 ml of white wine (or more ;P)
350ml water
1 egg
juice of 1 lemon (I used 1/2 lemon 1/2 lime)
2 tbsp of chopped parsley

Heat olive oil, brown lamb on all sides. Add spring onions and sauté for a little longer.
Add herbs and season with salt and pepper. Pour in the wine and cook until it has evaporated then add the warm water and cook for 45-60 minutes until the lamb is very tender. Add more hot water if necessary so that you have about 250ml of sauce in the pan at all times.

Lightly whip the egg in a bowl, add a little of the hot sauce from the pan to the eggs and whisk to prevent them from scrambling. Whisk in the lemon juice.
Make sure the lamb is on a very low heat when you add the egg mixture to the pan, very slowly, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon. Heat through for a couple of minutes carefully not cooking the egg. Remove from heat, stir in the parsley and serve.

I have also made the Tiramisu from the same book, but no photos or verdict yet because it is still in the fridge.

Shall I add that my friend haven´t mention the swap yet and even if she will, it´s too late now. The deal is off :D This recipe alone makes it worth owning this book and of course I am hoping for more fabulous discoveries.

Update: here is the Tiramisu made from Twelve. Delicious! The only change I made was that I was using STROH rum instead of the Marsala and I must say I prefer this dessert with the rum. Also I couldn´t find Mascarpone, so I used homemade Mascarpone from Ursula Ferrigno´s book Trattoria.

greek food

2008-05-02T09:25:00.009+02:00

Just a short note about a new blog I found the other day, called Greek Food. Most of you know about my almost-obsession about Greece and Greek food, so I was more then happy when I saw that this blog unites many of the elements I love: food with recipes, family stories, history of food and mythology of course!

I have a few previous posts about Greek food, but I look forward to cook more of that, gaining inspiration from Sam, the host over at Greek Food. So if you, like me, like Greek food, then you will absolutely like Greek Food (I know, that last sentence became more twisted then usual) :D

the cutest general store on my beloved Alonnisos

wasp nests (darázsfészek)

2008-04-28T22:08:00.006+02:00

Darázsfészek is a typical Hungarian roll and there are a few different versions out there - as always - but I am giving you my mothers recipe. Last Easter we had all kinds of "new" things, but this year I asked my mother to cook up a traditional Easter breakfast/lunch/dinner. Of course I couldn´t resist to bake brioches that we ate warm with homemade mango ice cream (a winning combination!) but baking the wasp buns was (IS) my mother´s thing.

The wasp nests look a bit like Swedish cinnamon buns but there is no cinnamon involved in these, only a sweet butter filling. Another difference is that while the buns in the oven, you "sprinkle" (can´t find the right word for that, feels like it´s more then sprinkling...if you have a suggestion, please tell me, don´t hesitate, I would like to use the right term. thanks :)) them with sweetened milk so they get a crispy caramely surface, remaining soft and moist inside.
Yesterday a kind soul enlightened me so now I have the word: it´s baste!!! Thanks again, Anonymous :)

From Merriam-Webster: (this is a note for myself and other non-english speakers)
2baste
bast·ed; bast·ing
: to moisten (as meat) at intervals with a liquid (as melted butter, fat, or pan drippings) especially during cooking

Darázsfészek - Wasp Nests

15g yeast
2 tbsp flour
200ml lukewarm milk
pinch of sugar
pinch of salt
500g flour
3 egg yolks

Filling:
200g butter
150g sugar
1tsp vanilla

For the basting:
250-300ml milk
add sugar and vanilla to taste

Start with combining the yeast, sugar, milk and the 2tbsp flour, cover and set aside until it starts to bubble. Measure up the flour in a large bowl, make a well in the middle and add the egg yolks, salt and the yeast mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon or your hands and turn the dough onto a floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic.

Place in a floured bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it into a rectangle (about 1 cm thick). Spread with filling and roll up from a long side. Cut into 3cm slices and place with cut side down in a greased baking pan. Cover and let rise again, until doubled, about 30 minutes.

Bake at 200 degrees C until golden brown (it takes about 30 minutes). Now, here comes what makes the difference. When the rolls start to get a slight color, take out from oven and baste with the sweet warm milk. It´s the same thought as with a steak here, you don´t want it to dry out, so you can "ladle" 2-3 tbsp of milk on every roll. Put back in the oven and when the rolls start to have more color and start drying out, you take it out again and repeat the sprinkling procedure a second time. And don´t be shy with the milk! :)

Best eaten warm!!! (Umm, not for your tummy, but it´s the best thing you can have with a glass of cold milk)

First basting

Round two

Note: This is the original taste, then there are several varieties: you can add 100g of walnuts or shredded coconut to the filling or 2 tsp of cocoa.

turnip soup - karalábé leves

2008-04-25T23:53:00.011+02:00

Today I worked afternoon and evening and I needed something quick, easy and springy to eat before leaving. Yesterday when buying rocket for one of my favourite salads, I noticed the shop had fresh turnips and couldn´t resist to buy just a few. At that point I didn´t know what I will make with it but I knew I´ll come up with something.

So, today I remembered a spring soup that is quite common where I come from, and these tender turnips are just perfect for it. There are several versions, you can make a cream soup and serve with tiny meatballs but that recipe uses both milk and flour and that´s too much for my stomach. Then there is another version that contains many typical Hungarian elements: you don´t saute the turnip, just start cooking in water, then use roux (it is frequently used in traditional Hungarian cooking) with paprika (gives you a guaranteed heartburn if you have a week stomach :D)and is served with galuska (dumpling). Of course you can add other vegetables too, like green peas or/and carrot, parsnip but then it becomes a vegetable soup, according to my opinion. Finally I settled for a lighter version that tasted lots of turnip and spring.

What you need for 2-3 bowls of soup:

1 tbsp lard (or vegetable oil)
3 smallish turnips, diced
1 tbsp flour
a handful of rice
salt
one good handful of parsley (or more)
1-2 tbsp Greek yogurt
broth or water

My mother uses one egg yolk and sour cream (of course) instead of the yogurt. I found that the creaminess of the yogurt made up for the lack of the egg and I was perfectly satisfied. I tried this version because: first, I didn´t want to use one egg for such a small portion (yes, I am a bit economic;P) and second, I don´t have access to organic eggs and then I rather pass on the raw egg yolks.

Melt lard or butter over medium heat. Add turnip, salt and half the parsley and saute until the turnip is translucent. Sprinkle with the flour, stir it until smooth, add the broth or water. Bring to boil, then Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until vegetable is half done, add the rice and cook til rice is ready too.

Combine egg yolk, sour cream and remaining parsley if you are making this version, otherwise just the yogurt and parsley, take 2 tsp of this creamy mixture in a bowl and ladle hot soup over it. Bon Appetit!

The tender turnip has got a wonderfully sweet taste that I love, especially when it blends with the tartness of the yogurt or sour cream. Oh, I love spring!

Just an observation: I see that this recipe is one of the most popular ones and it only got three comments...feel free to give feedback, it's always fun to read :)

e for excellent

2008-04-23T21:25:00.014+02:00

Two days ago I received my first blog award (see the optimist here? am I unconsciously hoping for more? ;)) from Kitchen Goddess over at Culinary Travels of a Kitchen Goddess...Usually I have difficulties with accepting things, favors, gifts and compliments and this time was no exception. I didn´t feel that I have been doing my best lately and so on, but somewhere deep inside it feels just wonderfully warming and energizing :) Therefore I decided to accept AND thank George for this award, I know it´s not an Oscar or something but I do feel honoured ;P

Also, I would like to forward the baton to some bloggers who inspire me:)

Lisa at The Chambermaid
Paula at In My Life
Eszter at Fûszer és Lélek (Spice and Soul?)
Shaun at Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow
Pistachio at Pistachio en la Cocina

Yay!!! This feeeeeels good! :D

new cookbooks and ugly bagels

2008-04-21T21:49:00.016+02:00

I know I haven´t been posting for a very long time but I guess I should aim for 2 posts per month and then I wouldn´t disappoint anyone :D

For Valentines day I did a Mr Bean...I ordered myself a few "gifts" and then I pretended surprised every time the postman came with a book. I know Valentines day feels far away now, but some books came all their way from the US, so it took time.
So here´s my spring harvest:

During this time I have been cooking and taking photos, just didn´t have the time to blog about them, but I will eventually. This weekend I had lots of energy so I have been cleaning the house, the closets, parts of the pantry (or is it larder?...don´t know the difference unfortunately) AND have been cooking and baking. I have been thinking of baking bagels for a very long time now, but this weekend I did it. I didn´t use one of my many cookbooks of course, but I chose a recipe from the King Arthur Flour Bakery´s site.

I started on Saturday evening (does this sound pathetic? Perhaps that´s the reason for me still cooking for one ;P) and finished it off on Sunday morning. I followed the recipe slavishly...ummm...with a little exception: I mixed the wheat flour with rye. Everything went well, I loved my bagels! Of course I feel that I should mention one tiny detail: I have never had "real" bagels, original bagels, so I don´t have the slightest idea what they should taste like:D These bagels were chewy (as I read they should be) were slightly crispy on the surface (that´s from boiling them is sugary water before baking them) BUT they didn´t look great. In fact they look strange. Of course, as I read later on a blog, one shouldn't´t use the "poke-a-hole-in-the-bun-with-your-finger"-method, because it´s not great for a Bagel´s look. So I noticed.

You see, uneven and kind of bad skin :)

Anyway, whatever bagels should taste like, I loved these ones. I am already planning on baking a new batch withing two-three weeks, trying a different recipe and method. Also the idea that you boil them before baking them makes me believe that it is healthier for my stomach, as it stops rising and I am guessing that it affects the starches forming in the bread. Don´t know if this is true, but if not, then it had some kind of placebo-effect on me, because I didn´t feel a thing after eating 2 still-slightly-warm bagels ;P
I did forgot to take a photo as I had so many other things to do, but I have a strong feeling that I would have remembered if they came out gorgeous... I´ll see if I can take a reasonable pic tomorrow as I take them out of the freezer. Yes, from the freezer. When I read that bagels are best eaten fresh, I put most of them in the freezer as I couldn´t possibly eat a dozen bagels all by myself. This way, I´m hoping to have fresh bagels every morning for a week.

Sunday afternoon I got a sudden craving for something sweet and recalled a pear & walnut muffin I´ve seen on Pistachio´s blog. I didn´t think twice, they looked and sounded great, now was the time to make them. They were delicious!!! The thought of using wholewheat flour was appealing but I only had graham at home, so I went with it and it came out great. I was a bit doubtful, whether they would be heavy or compact but they weren´t. They were soft and juicey inside but crunchy on top, actually just perfect. Thanks Pi for the inspiration:)

Tonight I cooked meatballs in pomegranate molasses and a thick ground almond sauce after a recipe that I got from Julie P over at MrX Cooks. This was another success and it is also perfect for Passover.

MEATBALLS WITH POMEGRANATES & ALMONDS

1 kg chopped/minced meat
1 medium onion grated
1 tsp. salt
dash of pepper
1 tbsp. oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cups of ground almonds

sauce:
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1/3 cup pomegranate molasses
2 cups water
1/2 cup tomato paste
1 cup dried apricots, soaked in water for 2 hours
1 tsp. allspice

Mix the meat, grated onion, salt and pepper and shape into small meatballs. Brown the meatballs in the oil so they retain their shape; remove. In the same oil, saute the onions till golden. Add the almonds and the meatballs.
Add the sauce ingredients to the pan and bring slowly to a boil. Mix occasionally so the bottom doesn't burn. Lower the flame and cook, covered for one hour stirring gently now and then. Serve hot over rice.

Not a great photo but the dish certainly tastes good

And then I started to think. With all those new cookbooks around me I was using recipes from virtual friends, other blogs or just surfing the web for new ideas. It IS fun surfing around on Amazon and try to have a peek into some book I don´t own. It is fun imagining the wonderful recipes and stories I am going to read about and cook when I have the book. But then very often I get disappointed. Either no stories in the book or no pictures I like or great photos but uninspiring recipes...
So I´m asking myself, why I need new cookbooks? Is it the hunt? Or is it just greed? :D

happy easter!

2008-03-23T11:15:00.002+01:00

muffins with sundried tomatoes and basil

2008-03-17T07:16:00.009+01:00

From time to time my energy level drops dramatically and those days I prefer to be alone, just pottering in the kitchen, reading a book, magazines, listening to music and eat something sitting on my balcony doorstep. Last weekend I decided to lock myself in, turn the internet off and just be.

Saturday went very fast, I´ve finished Toni Morrisons Song of Solomo and on Sunday I decided to bake savory muffins, in trying to find an alternative for my everyday sweet treats. I remembered a recipe I tried years ago from a Swedish vegetarian cooking magazine Gott och grönt (Delicious and Green) but I couldn´t recall what I thought about it. When I found the recipe, on the same spread there was a nice-looking carrot soup too that I instantly decided to cook as I thought it would go nicely with the muffins.

The kitchen was warm and smelling deliciously from the muffin, and the soup was happily bubbling on the stove top when the phone rang. To my surprise, it was my ex husband who was in town and having a couple of hours to spend he wondered whether I wanted to invite him for a cup of coffee. I told him he was welcome and as soon he came inside my apartment the phone rang again. This time it was a Freundin who was on her way home from the gym but didn´t really feel like going home. In five minutes she was knocking on my door and instead of the tea/coffee I offered them soup and muffin which they happily agreed to.

It was a very nice afternoon, we sat there and talked until late in the evening (they got several cups of coffee and tea too:) ) and I was surprised how quickly my batteries were recharged, in spite of having people around me! I felt relaxed in company of old friends and simple but warming food and I learnt a new thing.

...with Meredith Grey´s words:
"Boundaries don't keep other people out, they fence you in."

Muffins
12 muffins

100g butter
250g cottage cheese
3 eggs
200ml milk
700ml flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Tomato and basil filling
200ml sundried tomatoes
2 handfulls of basil
200ml cheese, grated

Corn and squash filling
200ml corn
100g squash, chopped
1 tbsp dill
200ml cheese, grated

1. Choose filling. Grate cheese and chop vegatables.
2. Melt butter and mix with cottage cheese, egg and milk.
3.Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and the chosen filling.
4. Mix dry and wet "ingredients" and fill a greased 12 muffin tin with the batter.
5.Bake for 20 minutes on 225C.
Serve with hot soup.

Carrot soup with dill
2-4 pers

1 onion, chopped
1/2 stick of cellery, sliced
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp sugar
1 potato, in cubes
5 carrots, sliced
1/2 tbsp dill
500ml vegetable cube or hot water
3/4 tbsp lemonjuice
50ml cream
1/2 tsp salt
pepper

1. Melt onion and cellery on butter with the sugar.
2.Add carrots, potato, dill and water (vegetable cube, optional), let simmer for 20 minutes.
3.Pour the soup in a blender and when you have a thick, smooth liquid, you transfer it back into the pan.
4.Add lemonjuice and cream (I used slightly more cream...), salt and pepper and simmer for a few minutes.

Didn´t have time to take a photo of the soup as we jumped at it at once, but next time I make it I promise. There is nothing to see anyway, looks like a regular orange soup, but it taste great.

tarragon lamb - back to my roots

2008-02-20T21:29:00.005+01:00

One of the things that is eating me from inside is whether I´m on the right place or not. I have been hasitating posting this, as I know a few people might take offence... Coming from Ceausescu´s Romania I was pretty narrow minded, naive but full of hopes and dreams. I have always liked to believe in Santa and in fairy tales.

wild mallow, we used to eat these as kids

After a few years here I started to change. I didn´t want to be "the crazy Hungarian"anymore, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be "normal". I wanted to belong. Unfortunately, I didn´t fully succeed. I became a stanger in my old country while I remained a stranger in my new country. I am somewhere in between. In limbo land. This is not poor me, poor me. I am only trying to figure out who I have become and where I would fit in as I am. It is a bit scary to think like this at the age of 39, one would expect that I have come to terms with these issues by now.

I´ve always considered myself as a world citizen but I realize that I yet have to conquer the safety that knowledge about my people, their culture, the country and it´s history gives - to be able to fly. To be able to lift, I have to know and nourish my roots. And what better way could I find to nourish my roots, if not cooking? Couldn´t you guess that all roads lead to Rome? ;P

Székely cooking is part of Transylvanian cooking and has been impregnated by the Hungarian, Jewish, Armenian, Romanian and Saxon people and their cuisines. Székelys have always been living close to nature and being poor inspired them to use ingredients they could find in the forest and on the fields. Dill, tarragon, rosmary, basil, marjoram, caravay, lovage, "wild"thyme and juniper are some herbs that are frequently used and are found in every flower-bed on the countryside or hanging from kitchen ceilings in dried bunches.

my father´s kitchen garden with spring onions, beans and dill

Székely people are famous for their hospitality but I find it more of a burden than something overly positive. From time to time it can be very tiresome to turn down all the food you are being urged to try. I own a few Hungarian recipe books and a Transylvanian one, but I wanted to learn more about the history of food and cooking, so I ordered (read: asked my father to buy and post) two books on the subject. One of them is called Erdélyi lakoma (Transylvanian feast) written by a former owner of Four Seasons (London) Pal Kövi. The other one is called Székely ízek (Székely flavours) and written by János Pataki whom I´ve never heard of, but I´m looking forward to recieve the books anyway.

traditional székely porch in Csíkszentgyörgy

So, what I started with was lamb. The tarragon lamb soup is a famous Transylvanian dish, but in wintertime I prefer something thicker, something more filling. I pulled my old cookbook out and found within minutes a recipe for tarragon lamb stew with vegetables. It reminded me a bit of irish stews with the carrot, parsnip and cellery but there are a few differences :) But let´s start with the recipe:

Tarragon lamb with vegetables
serves 4

800g lambsteak in cubes
200g carrots, thickly sliced
200g parsnip, sliced
1 larger celleriac in cubes 2-3 tbs flour
lard (or sunflower seed oil)
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
tarragon*+tarragon vinegar*
salt, pepper
sour cream
*Tarragon is not dried for winter usage as other herbs, but vinegared (is there such a word?) Pack tightly a little jar with fresh tarragon and pour pure vinegar over so you fill the jar. Put a lid on and keep it in a cool, dry place and use it during the winter. You can actually use it for up to two years, then the flavour starts to fade away... (If you don´t want to make this, I´m sure you could use fresh tarragon and then add some ready made tarragon vinegar)

Roll the meat in the flour, then brown it in the heated lard until it gets a nice color. Pour 200ml of water on it and cook under a lid for 30-45 minutes. You have to check every 10-15 minutes, stir and add more water if needed, but don´t start with too much water because that´s the trick here. You don´t want to cook a soup, you want a stew, a kind of pörkölt. When the meat starts to get tender add the vegetables, lemon juice and zest and the chopped tarragon and cook for 20-30 more minutes until both lamb and vegetables are cooked.

When ready, add sourcream, stir, bring it quickly to boil and taste. If you think it´s tart enough, then that´s it. If you would like to add more tartness and tarragony flavour, add some tarragon vinegar. Traditionally this dish is served with mashed potatoes.

Enjoy!

Of course, I have a long way to go...and this is just the beginning.

the plank leading to my father´s house

from beetroot patties to red velvet cupcakes

2008-02-14T12:33:00.000+01:00

Have you been secretly hoping that my beetroot days were over? No, no, no, I have just been experimenting with different dishes with more or less success.

First thing I made was a beetroot gratin wich I was very pleased with. I cooked the beets until almost done, peeled and sliced thinly.

Preheat the oven to 200C .

Layer the beetroot in a buttered baking dish w/ salt, pepper, grated parmesan and grated horseradish. Pour in dubblecream, about half way up the beetroot and beke for about 15-20 minutes.
Had it as a side to porkchops with oregano, but if you are vegetarian, you can just have it as a main course. Very nice.

My (secret) new year resolution was to cook and blog about more Swedish and Hungarian recipes, as it might be more appreciated than the ones everybody has access to (read: Nigella, Jamie). This was a good opportunity as beetroots are supposedly big in Sweden. I was lucky (or not?) because first thing I found in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter was a recipe for Beetroot Patties with horseradish and yoghurt sauce. Sounded good to me! The recipe called for minced beef, grated beetroot, onion, egg, salt,pepper and capers (optional).

Grating the beetroot raw has left me with a large amount of beetjuice with a beautiful color and I just couldn´t throw it out. While forming the patties I got an idea. Ever since I have read about the Red Velvet Cake for the first time , I have been fascinated by it. Then in December when in London, I got a reminder because of a gourgeos one I saw at the Hummingbird Bakery. As a was a bit suspicious to the usage of such large amounts of foodcolouring, I thought I will use the beetrootjuice to substitute at least a part of it.

... I finished the beetroot patties, tryed some... blend, no character, nothing special. I mustn´t forget chucking out that recipe not to get confused in the future and make it again!

After that marvellous (not) lunch and disappointment I went on with my red velvet project.

As I have none to celebrate Valentines Day with, I figured I should feel depressed and bake and demolish a whole layercake but I just didn´t feel like it. I felt absolutely fine, so I was going to make some pretty velvet cupcakes instead. As a single person I find it more practicalwith the individual "mini-cakes", I can freeze a part of it while still slightly warm, and then taking them out one and one and frosting them before I eat them. This way they keep "fresh" for a longer time and I don´t have to stuff myself into a sugar coma.

I found a recipe for velvet cupcakes here, then "consulted" The Lee bros recipe here and decided to halve the first recipe and add some orange zest according to the second recipe.

I also altered the frosting, I didn´t find it necessary to add the butter at all, it tasted great!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

about 30 cupcakes

1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
2 1/3 cups of cake flour
2 tablespoons of Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of buttermilk*
1 1/2 tablespoons of red food coloring
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of distilled white vinegar
Frosting ingredients
1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), room temperature
8 oz of Philly cream cheese (1 package), room temperature
2 - 3 cups of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
*You can make your own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of distilled white vinegar to milk and letting it stand for about 10 minutes.

The cupcakes
1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer for 3 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy.
2 Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is fully incorporated. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing.
3 In a large bowl, sift together the cake flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl whisk together the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla extract, and red food coloring.
4 Add a fourth of the dry ingredients and mix, then add a third of the wet. Continue adding in a dry, wet, dry pattern, ending with the dry ingredients.
5 Scoop into cupcake papers, about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Rotate the pan after the first 15 minutes of baking to ensure even baking.
6 Allow to cool for one minute in the pan then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The Frosting
1 Cream the butter and cream cheese together, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure even mixing.
2 Add the vanilla extract and mix.
3 Add the powdered sugar, continually taste to get to desired sweetness. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

Happy Valentines Day!

morning wisdom with your cuppa...

2008-02-11T08:25:00.000+01:00

I love Yogi tea in the winter. I like the colour, the flavour and the warming aroma of cinnamon and black pepper. But I especially appreciate the small messages that come with the teabags...

I would also like to tell you about a blog that I found recently because it really did have a great impact on me. It was a particular post that really made me thinking, it felt like an eye opener.

"...can you admit failure and know you yourself are not a failure?"

Therapists and "learned people" ;) were not able to trigger that aha-feeling in me as this short little sentence did, when you recognize either what the problem has been/is or even better, what you could do about it how you could work with it.

I´m aware that things that touch me won´t necessarily touch you, but there might be somehting there for you too, so...here is the link to the eggbeater Oh, and of course, it is a foodie site too, eggbeater herself is a chef located in the SF Bay area.

"...it takes humility to admit you haven't been who you suppose to be."

the color orange - cooking for human rights

2008-02-08T18:57:00.002+01:00

Two nights ago I recieved an e-mail from a dear colleague about a global manifestation to highlight the violations of the human rights in China on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Beijing August 2008. The Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot is the initiator of the manifestation 'The Color Orange'.

The strict censorship can ban the use of obvious symbols of human rights, but the use of The Color Orange cannot be banned. By using something with the color orange during the Olympics - both inside and outside of China - you are sending a signal to the world that something is wrong in China. It can be anything, like an orange hat, camera bag, tie, pen, paper, dress, suit, bag etc. Even pealing an orange will be considered a pronounced statement. On the web site http://www.thecolororange.net/uk/ they are also encouraging people to support the project with various creative ideas, like writing songs, poems, blogging about the case or whatever idea one could have that comprises the color orange.

The Color Orange is inspired by what the painter Kandinsky said when he stated that the color orange is in fact red that has been made more human by the color yellow. The Chinese color is exactly red so maybe we can support the humanistic forces in the country by introducing the Color Orange. The selection of the Color Orange is however also inspired by the color of the prison uniforms in Guantanamo, the monks in Tibet and Burma and so on.

First I thought I won´t "do" politics on a food blog but then again, I grew up in a communist dictature and know what that does to peoples phychies. I have memories about our food being "regulated" by the gouvernment, not being allowed to decide what you want to eat, but you had to eat whatever you could lay your hands on...those were desperate times. No free television, radio, news were "filtered" so we didn´t really knew what was happening in the world.

I am out of there now but I may not forget that many people around the globe are still living like incapacitated and there human rights are violated on a daily basis. Cooking orange things and blogging about it is not going to help them, I am well aware of that. But if I do think about those people and sending them positive thoughts, good vibes or prayers while planning, cooking and blogging about orange things, that might make a slight difference. And if many other people with me are sending their positive energies towards this cause, that would make a real difference. To be able to change things, first we have to acknowledge them, to recognize their existence. I´m doing it here and now. Please, join me.

We could of course organize a cooking event in August, during the Olimpics, but we could also start right now. My first orange dish is a very simple one from Diana Henry´s Cook Simple but it is so good! I had it as a quick lunch yesterday and I intend to put it on my staples-list.

Spanish Sweet Potato w Chorizo
serves 1

1 small sweet potato in chunks

1 small red onion halved, cut into half-monn-shaped slices

1/2 or 1 red paprika, deseeded, slice into broad strips

olive oil

3/4 tsp smoked Spanish paprika

1/8 tsp ground cumin

salt and pepper

100g chorizo, cut into rounds

50g bacon, cut into chunks

1 garlic cloves, finely chopped

coriander or parsley leaves for serving

1 large egg

Put sweet potato, onion and peppers in a small roasting tin. Add 1 tbsp olive oil, smoked paprika, cumin, salt pepper. Stir vegetable until coated in oil and spices. Roast in preheated oven (200C/gas mark 6) for about 30 minutes.

Heat 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and cook the chorizo and bacon until coloured. Turn the heat down, add garlic and cook for another minute. Add all this to the cooked vegetables. Stir in the chopped herbes.

Heat a little more olive oil in the same frying pan and fry the egg. Serve the vegetable mixture topped with the fried eggs.

Bon Appetit!

Edit: If you feel the least thing by reading the above, please, spread the word. I´ve made up an improvised logo that we could use to draw attention to this case. There is a rosemary on the photo, I just happened to buy it yesterday and loved the wrapping, that´s why I took a picture. When I looked up the meaning of rosemary, I found that it has an old reputation for improving memory, and it has been used as a symbol for remembrance. I think this is a nice coincidence...or perhaps it´s not a coincidence at all? ;)

You find more orange posts here

custard cream hearts

2008-02-05T22:03:00.001+01:00

Everything around me seems to be pink right now except my sunglasses and I could really use a pair of them. I´m not a fan of pink but it just ingratiates itself into my life. The other day I found myself fiddleing with the settings of this blog and the next day I was about to scold myself with my morning cuppa; for a moment I thought I have signed in to someone else´s blog. When I tried to describe for a friend what it looked like, the closest I came to was something from Barbie´s Tea Party.

Recently I have bought a pink scarf and hat, was given a cactus with pink flowers and found an old pink checkered tablecloth and a pink angora pullover that I totally forgot that I had. Now, thing is, that I don´t belive in coincidences, everything has got a meaning. According to the chakra theory pink (and green) is the color of the heart and love. Few weeks ago I started going to a therapy called the Rosen method and it is supposed to open up my frozen, lonely heart ;) Could all these pink things have something to do with that process?

("Rosen Method is distinguished by its gentle, direct touch. Using hands that listen rather than manipulate, the practitioner focuses on chronic muscle tension. ...the practitioner responds with touch and words which allow the client to begin to recognize what has been held down by unconscious muscle tension. As this process unfolds, habitual tension and old patterns may be released, freeing the client to experience more aliveness, new choices in life, and a greater sense of well-being.")

So when last weekend I was invited to a moving-in party I thought baking Nigella´s Custard Cream Hearts for the hostess will be just perfect. They are very cute but not nauseating enough for my recent mood, so I needed to make a small adjustment and add a touch of red food colouring to the filling.

Custard Cream Hearts

Biscuits:

175g Plain Flour

3tbsp Custard Powder

1tsp Baking Powder

50g Unsalted Butter (I used 100g butter and no vegetable shortening)

50g Vegetable Shortening

3tbsp Caster Sugar

1 Egg

1tbsp Milk

Custard:

1tbsp Custard Powder

100g Icing Sugar

50g Soft Unsalted Butter

1tsp Boiling Water

few drops of red food colouring (optional)

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/180c.

To make the biscuits, put the flour, custard powder and baking powder into a processor and pulse to mix. Add the butter, cut into smallish cubes and the vegetable shortening in mounded tsps and pulse to cut into the flour to create a crumbly mixture.Tip in the sugar and pulse again. Beat the egg and tbsp milk together. Pour down the funnel of the processor with the engine running until it clumps into a ball. Form the dough into a ball and press down into a fat disc, wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 4mm. Dip a 5cm heart shaped cutter in flour and cut out your shapes. You need an even number of hearts to sandwich together.Prick the outside edge of each heart all the way around on one side with a corn on the cob holder. Cook on a lined baking sheet for 15 minutes, and then leave to cool before sandwiching them.

To make the custard cream, put the custard powder and icing sugar into the processor and pulse briefly to combine and de-lump.Add the butter and blitz together until you get a smooth cream. Add the tsp of boiling water and pulse again.Sandwich each biscuit with about 1tsp of custard cream by gently spreading a layer of cream over the unpricked side of a biscuit and then wiggling a matching top on it.

They were easy to make, not that they came out perfect but I´m starting to become less critical and more gracious about my cooking and baking skills. People (read: 16 single women) were all excited about the cute hearts, they were sending the box around and asking the hostess if they were allowed to try them. There were different opinions: some thought she shoud save them, others were more eager to demolish the lot.

Within ten minutes the box was empty and I decided that was a good sign. I didn´t get any at the party, the only one I had before leaving was one without a "pair" and that was quite nice but not enough to make up my mind. I am still not sure wether they tasted great or they were just sweet looking?

Summing up: I must make another batch to be able to review them properly and I also believe the pink filling would be/IS an essential part of my healing process ;)

"This work is about transformation – from the person we think we are to the person we really are."–Marion Rosen

zucchini pancakes

2008-02-03T11:52:00.000+01:00

Every year at end of February or first week in March there is book sales in Sweden. Yes, of course it is a sale after Christmas and one after the summer holiday but this one is THE booksale of the year. It starts 12 o´clock (midnight) and it´s a bit fun to stand there in the middle of the night with lots of other book- interested people and just look at, feel, browse through mountains of books.

Last year I found 7 cookbooks and one of them was Donna Hay´s The new cook. I love the layout, very clear, simple but elegant, lightyears from let´s say Tessa Kiros´ Apples for Jam... (not that I don´t like Tessa Kiros but they are just very different) As soon as I got the book and leafed through it, I remember trying the Zucchini Pancake...with not so good result. The picture in the book showed a nice, relatively thin pancake, while following the recipe I ended up with a very thick batter that couldn´t possibly result in thin pancakes. Optimist as I was, I went with it and waited for the miracle that just didn´t happen and I had a thick, grayish fritter-like thing that remained uncooked.

The other day I was looking for recipes for beetroots (now you are surprized, aren´t you?) and noticed this recipe for pancake again. The idea that I will just use some milk to make the batter more liquid came to me so naturally that I felt stupid not thinking about it last time. Most often I just trust the cookbook writer without questioning the accuracy of the recipe and thank God most often they do work :)

Zucchini Pancakes
2 pancakes
breakfast for 2 or brunch for 1

250ml zucchini, grated
1 egg
1,5 tbs melted butter
100ml flour (depending of the size of the egg, you migth need just a tbsp more or so)2 tbs grated Parmesan
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 slices of Brie
50g sundried tomatoes
100ml milk

This time I was pleased with my zucchini pancakes, they were nice, they were COOKED through and they became flavourful with the Camembert and the sundried tomatoes. The recipe calls for Brie but I had some Camembert that had to be used and I don´t think it made a huge difference. I will definitely make these pancakes again, as it is perfect as brunch on a weekend.

not all beetroot soup is borscht

2008-02-01T21:49:00.001+01:00

I seem slightly compulsive in my usage of individual seasonal items, but I must defend myself with the statement I made in my previous post: it depends on the fact that I´m cooking for one.
Few days ago I bought a 1000g package of beetroots and has only used 2 of them for making Diana Henry´s beetroot salad.
Being the weather as it is, stormy and rainy, I felt like soup, but not as strong as I find borscht can be sometimes. I was in the mood for something smooth and velvety and most of all comforting. I couldn´t be bothered roasting the beetroots wrapped individually in foil, so I cooked them in salted water to wich I added olive oil and marjoram.

Marjoram used to be my grandmother´s favorite herb, she added it a bit here and there to several dishes, not too much, just a touch. I wish I could say I was interested in cooking as a child (as many real foodies seem to have been) and learnt from my granny but I wasn´t the least interested , I didn´t even like to eat. In fact, I dreaded mealtime. It was an ongoing war between the "grownups" and I as I was never hungry...oh well, now I´m always hungry but can´t eat because of this starch-allergy or IBS...how ironic ;P

Back to the soup. Peeled the beets while still warm, stuffed myself with two of them as they were, plain with plenty of butter, cut the rest (4 middle-large beetroot) in thick slices and melted a smallish chopped onion with olive oil that I added the beetroot slices to. One more pinch of marjoram went in there and also 1/2 of vegetable Maggi cube and about 200-300ml of water. I let it simmer for a while (about 4-5 minutes) and poured everything down in the blender. When everything was smooth I transferred it back to the dish I cooked the beetroots in, added about 150ml of cream, brought it to a quick boil and served.
It was exactly what I was yearning for: sweet, warming, flavorful in a mild way and really, really comforting.

While looking for something to use instead of potatoes, I came across some interesting data about the starch content in potatoes and beets. While the starch content of 100g raw potatoes is 15g, raw beetroot contains only 0,6g starch!!!! That´s an enormous difference! Since then I have been serving cooked beets to fish and meat dishes, a lot better than eating everything with dark bread, as I did for a while.

[OK, I do realize that most of you are not interested in facts about starch content in food (lucky you!), but there are many people out there with IBS who might have some use of this... It took time and research before I could identify my problem and also find the connection between IBS and starch content in diet...]

Also, the comparision with the potato gave me the idea to try making the "French potato" soup next time, using beetroot instead! I´m totally enthusiastic about this!

Oh, and while in this "besser-wisser" mode, I would like to remind you about all the good things the beetroot is loaded with: the vitamin C, vitamin A, folate, antioxidants, potassium, dietary fiber and something new that I´ve just learned. Beetroot is also rich in betaine that helps us fight the development of different cardiovascular diseases.

Wow! I just found something very interesting. Just have a look at the Cuisine chapter...Stephen Nottingham has made a thourough research and geathered suggestions from foodwriters like Nigel Slater, Sophie Grigson, Claudia Roden, Elizabeth David and Simon Hopkinson.

I can already see more beetroot posts coming...sorry folks ;P

a tin of condensed milk

2008-01-27T12:13:00.000+01:00

Part of the problem - or shall I say the challenge - when cooking for one is what to do with the rest? With the rest I mean if you use a few spoonfulls of anything, what to do with the rest of the tin or jar?

In this particular case, I have had my eyes on the Creamy Avocado Milkshake from The Traveler´s Lunchbox for quite a while, but didn´t want to open a tin of condensed milk, only to use 2 tbs of it. Ummm, not until yesterday evening anyway, when I felt in the need for some comfort and moral support. As I didn´t have access to a nice comforting hug, I felt entitled to make the milkshake to compensate :)

With the recipe comes a warning that the drink is quite rich, so I prepared myself for that, but I must say I found it only thick, nice, yummy and even refreshing!!!

Of course, since it was only me, myself and I, I halved the recipe (very hard when you feel like I did yesterday evening ;) and used
Avocado Milkshake
1/2 Haas avocado
2 large tbsp of sweetened condensed milk and
150ml milk, a bit more then in the original recipe
crushed ice
few drops of vanilla essence (optional)
I took a sip before adding the vanilla essence and decided to leave it as it was. This might have been the reason to the difference between the drink being rich or refreshing, actually...

MY WARNING: This drink is addictive!
I intend to make again, and I think if I won´t have condensed milk, I would go with a tbsp of runny honey for similar result.

Well, that was done, but it left me with an almost full tin of condensed milk that had to be used. Also I had 6 egg yolks in the fridge since making the Pavlova last weekend, and they needed to be used urgently before going to waste.

When I did the math, it gave:
So, today's assignment became Key Lime Pie, that I have seen, read about, heard of lots of times but have never actually made or even eat before. I started to look for recipes and found too many. I noticed the main difference between the recipes was that you could either cook the pie with the filling or not. I guess it was only a coincidence that all the recipes I found in Swedish books used the uncooked version while in my American cookbooks the filling was cooked, but this was enough for me to decide that the "original" Key Lime Pie recipe was the cooked filling one. Please, if you have an opinion about this, don´t be shy, share it with me :) Thanks!
Also, it feels safer to eat cooked eggs...

So here is the recipe I finally used (from a book called The Best Pies of America by Jane Whitman Tierney who owns a coffee shop called Wishing Stone Farm in Maine ) :

Key Lime Pie
yields: one cakemonster or 8-10 normal people

Crust:
13 digestive biscuits
100ml melted butter
1 tbsp brown sugar

Filling:
4 egg yolks
1 tin sweetened condensed milk (397g)
110ml lime juice
1 tbsp lime zest

Crush the biscuits and mix with the butter and sugar. Press it into a spring form (23-25 cm diam.) and bake for 10 min on 150 C. Let it cool slightly on a cooling rack. Increase oven heat to 175C.

Beat the egg yolks with an electric hand mixer until starting to thicken, add the milk and keep on whisking until thick. Mix it carefully with the lime juice and zest and pour into the pie crust. Bake for 10 minutes and let it cool on a wire rack. Put it in the freezer for 3 hours.

Note: I used about 3 1/2 limes and as I didn´t have Key limes (obviously...), I added the juice of 1/2 of lemon. As I didn´t have any place in my freezer, I just put the Pie in the fridge overnight, and I found it very nice. Most of the recipes garnish or serve the pie with whipped cream or ice-cream but I love the tartness of the pie and would never dream of sweeten it up with any of the above mentioned serving tips.
This was the first time I made Key Lime Pie and I must say it is both quick and delicious, something to make over and over again.

beetroot in my lunchbox

2008-01-25T22:05:00.000+01:00

I have been away from the pharmacy this week and if it was up to me, I wouldn´t go back. Well, of course, it IS up to me, but then I´m not ready to loose my job and live on...what? Today I went to see my patients though, that part of my work I love. I wasn´t really up for cooking a lot, so I made my "usual" dish with beetroots. It´s a Diana Henry recipe from her Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, and I never get tired of it. It´s tasty, it´s healthy and it´s easy, perfect for someone as lazy as I am.

For one person you need a large orange, 2 medium beetroots, 5-6 walnuts, a good handful of ruccola and either goat´s cheese, or if you don´t have it just use regular Feta or if you don´t have that either, try some slices of Camembert. When I´m feeling too chilly for cold food, I grill a few slices of Halloumi, and that´s fine too. The secret of this simple lunch dish is lying in the dressing (I reckon): mix some olive oil, 1/2 tsp runny honey, 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Another take, with Feta this time...which I prefer for the contrast between the sweet of the beet and the saltiness of the Feta, then the tart from the lemons in the dressing...perfect combination!

Oh, and it was my birthday last Saturday. I had a few friends at my place, I invited them for an Afternoon Tea. I bought clotted cream at The English Shop, Strawberry Jam and Apricot Jam with Armagnac for the scones, made cucumber- and egg sandwiches for the first time in my life and they were very nice. I preferred the cucumber ones, very refreshing.

I made Nigella´s Christmas Pavlova with pomegranates and made some fairy cakes. It was my very first Pavlova and I was very nervous for how it will turn out, but everything went fine. The only thing is that mine went a bit beige, even though I covered it with baking parchment after half an hour...Is there any trick that I don´t know about? Or is it only my oven? How do I make beautiful white Pavlovas?

I was a bit disappointed with the colors though, they didn´t turn out too well...the supposedly baby blue cakes had some strange 50´ies mint green color and the pale pink was more salmon colored. Oh well, people liked it, that was the main thing. I used Nigella´s basic fairy cake recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess and made the butter icing from the back of an icing sugar box (Tate+Lyle). 75g softened butter, 175g icing sugar, 1 tbsp milk. I added 2 more tbsp´s of milk and a few drops of coconut essence, and it turned out unexpectedly well.

chicken with grapes and apricots

2008-01-13T22:29:00.000+01:00

I don´t like fruit in my food. What am I saying? I hardly eat fruit at all. I know I should love fruit. But no, I love Coke. I don´t drink it that often anymore, but I love it. Right now I have a chicken casserole type of thing on the hob and it is with grapes and apricots. Strange.

Months ago, while I was still reading blogs, I got inspired by Shaun´s enthusiasm for Feast, Silvena Rowe´s Eastern European recipes. Ever since then I have been wanting to either try some of the recipes from Shaun´s blog or buy the book. Until this date I haven´t done any of these things, but I will do both. The other day I remembered the book and googled Silvena Rowe and found a few recipes at UKTV Food. I wanted to try some recipes before buying the book as I have been disappointed a few times lately ordering books from Amazon, and now I have severalbooks standing on my bookshelf unused. One of the recipes caught my eyes because I had some lovely grapes that needed to be used...just a minute, I have to stir...

...yummy! Nice, very nice. I think Pistachio would like this, it´s sweetish, but in a very warm and cosy way. I know I shouldn´t write cosy about food, but that´s how I classify them. I like my winter dishes to be cosy.

I have been trying to take an acceptable photo, but I couldn´t . The dish has got a boring beige colour with bits of orange and green from the fruits, but it doesn´t look appetizing at all. I must think of something (pommegranates?) for the next time to cheer it up with, but taste-wise I like it very much and I can highly recommend it .

Here are some of the ingredients...of course this wine wasn´t going into the dish...

Chicken with Grapes and Apricots
by Silvena Rowe
Servings: 4

1 tbsp clear honey
1 tsp grated ginger root
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
100ml white wine
1 large chicken, about 1.8kg, quartered
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 cinnamon stick
100g seedless grapes, halved
100g apricots, pitted
2 tbsp toasted black sesame seeds
boiled rice, to serve

Method
1. In a large mixing bowl combine the honey, ginger, ground cinnamon, pepper and wine, and stir together. Rub this mixture over the chicken pieces, then add the chicken to the bowl, cover and leave it to marinate in the fridge overnight.

2. When ready to cook, drain the chicken and reserve the marinade. Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan or casserole, add the onion and fry until it has just turned golden. Add the drained chicken and brown all the pieces over a medium-high heat, turning them to ensure even colour. 3. Add the chicken marinade to the pan, along with 300ml of water and the cinnamon stick. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the liquid has reduced by about half and the chicken pieces are cooked.

4. Add the grapes and apricot halves to the pan and continue simmering for 5-8 minutes. Serve almost immediately, sprinkled with the sesame seeds and accompanied by plain boiled rice.

Notes: I used two large chicken breasts but kept the amount of onion, wine (of course :)) , liquid and grapes, used slighly less cinnamon, 50 g dried apricots and only 1 tsp of honey. Cooking time wasn´t affected seriously, it took about 20-25 minutes, but you can check easily when the meat is ready.
I would use the same amounts next time as it fitted my palate perfectly...

Oh, and I´m definitely buying the book! Cheers! :)

p is for autumn...in january

2008-01-06T12:27:00.001+01:00

I haven´t been writing or reading blogs for a very long time. It started with a flu that went over into a sinusitis that didn´t seem to react on either homeopathic medicines nor antibiotics. Yes, against all my principles, I tried antibiotics...nothing I was or am proud of, but I needed to get back to work. The sinusitis made that I couldn´t read at all, neither could I use the computer. Then I got tonsillitis and a middle ear infection. Why am I telling this? I´m feeling fine now, so it´s not that I need the sympathy. It´s just that, during that period of time when I had to "relax", without the myriads of activities to occupy my mind with, I came to a few insights. I realized, that I´m dependent of the Internet.

Earlier I felt, that I don´t have time to do anything (else), because I had to choose recipes, cook, take pictures, blog about the dish, read and comment other people´s blogs, to be up to date with what is happening on different forums and so on. I was stressed, I was pressed, depressed and unhappy. I had constant backache, headache and sciatica. I felt like an old car, ready for the scrapyard, with pain in my body and bruises in my soul.

I know that the best way would be to find the golden path, not to close down everything or open up too much, but that is something I can´t do. Yet. I´m on my way though...

I have been considering to close down the blog but I haven´t made a decision about it yet and I might not decide anything either. I don´t think I´m "back" but I don´t want to just disappear, there are far too many truly wonderful people that I don´t want to lose contact with...totally.

In case I´m keeping the blog, I might change the contents. I´m not a foodie. Although I love new tastes and I love to eat, I´m not really a natural cook and food is only a tiny little part of me. I´m very interested in health, yoga, spirituality, arts, literature and I feel like I´m limiting myself when blogging only about food. And having several blogs isn´t an option for me either, it takes too much time. I might as well take a time out. But first, let´s see what I have made while away.

My last entry that I have been preparing without ever publishing it (don´t even remember why I just didn´t push the button) was about autumn and the three P´s that make/made my autumn.

lums

umpkins

omegranates...

Words don´t come to me...so this will be a photo post. Love Diana Henry and I´m sure I´ve told this before so here comes a very good Pumpkin Tart recipe that I just adore, from her Roast Figs, Sugar Snow.

Why am I amazed every time I use fresh spinach? I bought a whole bag full of green leaves and after wilting it, there was no more then a handful left...

Already when you read through the ingredient list, you get a feeling that this is going to taste great. Fresh spinach, Gorgonzola, roasted pumpkin, cream, Parmesan, yum! Also, only by reading through it, you feel your waistline increasing a few inches :D

Pumpkin Tart
serves 6

for the pastry:
225g plain flour
175g butter
good pinch salt
a little cold water (I didn´t need any)

for the filling:
450g pumpkin or squash
olive oil
450g spinach
2 large eggs
250ml double cream
50g Parmesan, grated
freshly grated nutmeg
150-175g Gorgonzola

I had some plum compote left, so, inspired by Diana Henry´s Plum Sorbet I added a few tsp of Amaretto, which I found married well with the cinnamon. Because I don´t have an ice cream machine, I can´t really make a smooth sorbet, no matter how much I mix and whip and live all my aggressions out, so I decided to call this Plum Granita :D The texture is icey, but the taste is very good and refreshing.

I love plum jam a lot, so the last plums of the autumn I used for cooking a batch of jam. I didn´t use any particular recipe, just added some cane sugar, cinnamon and cloves. Heaven, with a glass of warm milk.

Another favourite of mine is Diana Henry´s Plum cake from Cafe Sperl in Vienna. I usually make this every autumn, following the recipe from Roast Figs, Sugar Snow but I always add a few sprinklings of cinnamon over the plums. Perfect!

OK, starts to get boring with all this photos, so here are the last ones.

Every December around the 13th I bake Swedish Lussekatter. This year I thought I would be smart and plan ahead, make them earlier and have them in the freezer until it´s time to pull them out on Lucia day´s morning. Well, I almost managed. I made them way too early and by the 13th of December I hardly had anyone left :)....so I had to bake another batch that lasted until Christmas.

I tried two different recipes, both quite "traditional", one with, the other without cottage cheese.

Although it´s quite late, but we have the whole year in head of us, so I would like to wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR and may all your dreams come true...

roasted salmon w/ pomegranate and avocado salsa

2007-10-31T20:39:00.000+01:00

Now that we are flooded with pomegranates I started to look for recipes with these gorgeous sin red seeds. I must admit I´ve never really given it an honest chance and I have been living in the terrible misconception that I don´t like pomegranates. It has always sounded a bit mysterious, I wasn´t really sure how to open it, how to eat it, but I have always been intrigued by it´s many jewels to seeds. I have already noticed with other things (say Gorgonzola) that it takes time for my palate to "grow up". Things that I didn´t like a year ago, if I taste them again, and do it with an open mind, I find them either better, really good, or still as bad as a year ago :D Therefore I decided to give pomegranates and myself a new chance to discover something great. I found them real cheap on the beforementioned arabic openair market, cost about €1,4 for a kilo!!! Otherwisw it´s about the same price for one piece of fruit! So I bought two kilos and started to look for recipes and experiment.

I use Nigella´s technique to get the seeds out and then I just eat them with a spoon...yum! I found a recipe that I would call a lukewarm salad, but thanks to the good fats in the avocado and the fish it really is filling in a nice way. So here´s the recipe that fills all of my criterias for good food at the same time: healthy, quick, easy to prepare, filling, looks nice and tastes great.

Life is a Pomegranate

Full of juicy ruby grains

Taste them fully

One by one

Before

It is suddenly

No More

(Ada Aharoni)

Roasted Salmon with Pomegranate and Avocado Salsa
adapted from http://www.pomegranates.org/
serves 1

1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp sugar
Salt, as needed
1/2 pomegranate, seeded (really it´s enough with a 1/4, but I like it too much)
1 thinly sliced green onion
1 tbsp fresh lime juice (I only had lemon, but it was fine)
1/4 tsp finely chopped jalapeno pepper or to taste (more if you like it real hot)
1/2 small clove garlic, chopped finely
1/2 avocado, preferably Hass, cut in 1/2-inch dice
1 head hearts of Romaine
1 center-cut Salmon fillet, 6 to 7 ounces
1/4 lime, cut in two wedges to garnish (didn´t have this at all)

To prepare the salmon, rub it with the mixed coriander, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Put the salmon on a baking sheet, skin-side down.
Roast at 275˚ C about 11 minutes for medium rare (salmon should be spongy when pressed with a finger at its thickest part.) and 13 minutes for medium-well (salmon should be just firm when pressed with a finger at its thickest part.)

Up to 4 hours before serving, mix pomegranate seeds, onion, lime juice, jalapeno, and garlic; gently fold in avocado. If holding more than 30 minutes, put plastic wrap against the surface of the salsa, then tightly cover; store in the refrigerator. Remove about 30 minutes before serving. Separate the romaine leaves; wash, then dry thoroughly.

While the salmon cooks, mound the shredded romaine on a serving plate. Top with the salsa. When salmon is done, let it cool slightly-- it should be warm but not hot. Put the salmon on the plate; garnish with the lime wedges.

hungarian szilvásgombóc (plum dumplings)

2007-10-21T17:21:00.000+02:00

Yes, plums again. It´s not that I´m apologizing but I feel that plum-season is very short and every autumn I want to eat for a whole year. I want to eat as many plums that I feel sick of them so that is easier to wait until they come around the next time.

On weekends I go to the Arabic open air market and buy my fruits and vegetables for the coming week. It´s very convenient to do your shopping there as you find both "western" and more "middle eastern" veggies and herbs on the same place.

As soon as I have some nice ingredient I sit down on the floor in front of my cookbook shelf and start looking for nice, new recipes to use them in. This year, after looking and looking and not finding anything satisfactory, I just realized that the reason is that plums for me always mean szilvásgombóc in the first place. You just say the word to a Hungarian, and immediately and guaranteedly you see a new, happy spark in their eyes. Some of them start talking about granny´s plum dumplings, because Hungarian grandmothers are always famous for them. (Attention! In the case of szilvásgombóc it´s not Mother´s dumplings!!)

This is said to be a typical Hungarian dish and the "authentic" recipe calls for cooked potatoes for the daugh. However, I have a cookbook that is a collection of hungarian, székely and a few Armenian and Romanian dishes that are cooked in Transylvania and there I found a different recipe. The author says, that this recipe is better for those with a "weak stomach, as it doesn´t cause as much heartburn as the one with potatoes". That was interesting! Also she claims that these dumpling won´t get hard when cold, as opposed to the potato ones. Well, that was all I needed and I was up for the new(ish) adventures.

Plum Dumplings ( a non-authentic one :P)

12 large ones

1/2 liter water

salt

2 tbsp oil

1/2 liter flour

2 eggs

a knob of butter

breadcrumbs

sugar

cinnamon

Boil the water with the salt and oil, turn off the gas and beat in the flour with a wooden spoon. When the dough has cooled a bit, work in the eggs, one at a time.

On a clean floured surface, roll dough out to 1 cm thick. Cut dough into 8-10 cm squares (depending on the size of the plums) and put a plum into center of each square.

Place 1/2 tsp sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon in the hole of the plum.

Fold corners to the middle and roll the dumpling in your hands till round.

Cook a few dumplings at a time in salted water for about 10 minutes or until the dumplings surface and start rolling over several times. Remove with a slotted spoon.

Place in a pan in which bread crumbs have been toasted in butter and mixed with sugar and cinnamon. Keep warm.When all the dumplings have been cooked and are in the pan, gently spoon the bread crumbs, sugar and cinnamon mix over all.
Serve warm with bread crumb topping and a dollop of Sour Cream if desired.

Note:

If you (like me) are not able to roll out the dough to a perfectly square shape, you´ll have some dough left. Don´t throw it out, make gnocchi shaped nudlis, cook, mix with breadcrums and serve. As a child I remember I loved these little treats, I found them very cute...

I don´t mix in the sugar with the bread crumbs, but serve separately as everybody has different tolerance or need for sweet.

I use brown sugar as I find it goes well with cinnamon.

Enjoy!

cinnamon plums and french toast

2007-09-29T11:09:00.000+02:00

It´s Saturday morning and I wake up to the raindrops smattering on the windowsill. As soon as I open my eyes, my first thought is that there is a large Congress going on in the city. Should I go? I´ve been invited to take part and also to this evenings festivities. Yaaawn! It´s warm and cozy in the bed and I love the fact that I don´t have to get up and run if I don´t want to. I´m stretching and yawning again, don´t know when I did it last time. I have a strange theory about me being too tense to yawn, so for a moment I feel happy for being able to yawn. Are you yawning yet? Because there are theories about yawning being contagious ;) I think I just set a record in using the word yawn ...let´s see...seven times in six sentences.

The fact that it will be food involved in tonight's meeting is rather tempting, notwithstanding that one of the guests lecturing is quite a wellknown homeopath from Norway and he will be presenting a case that interests me.

I´m looking out of the window again and see that the trees outside my house are starting to look a bit...stripped. They still wear most of their leaves but there is more yellow then green ones left. They hold on for their lives but the wind has been quite strong last night and many of them just let go... I am saying myself a loud Good morning and still in bed I start thinking about breakfast.

A bright smile is spreading on my face as I remember that I have bought some plums and a smallish baguette last night to make Nigella´s Cinnamon Plums With French Toast.

As soon as I got up and took a look at the recipe I realised that I´ve done it again. What´s wrong with me not reading through recipes carefully enough? First ingredient on the list was cranberry juice and - of course - I didn´t have any. It´s not that common in Sweden unless you have urinary tract infection, so it is nothing I have lying around in my fridge. I remembered that I had some verjuice left from poaching peaches for another of my favourite breakfasts, and I just made up my own recipe from there. Don´t have the measurements exactly, but then it´s nothing complicated either. I thought it was way too much sugar in the original recipe, I prefer to taste the flavour of the plums, so I used less. Nigella uses brioches for the toast, and that I can´t find here either, so I used plain white baguette.

I don´t know what Nigella´s version would have been like, but I must say I was very contented with my concoction :)

Cinnamon Plums With French Toast

Adapted from Nigella Lawson At My Table

NYT 11-10-04

1 large serving or 2 small ones

For the plums:

4 large plums

1 stick of cinnamon, about 4 cm

100 ml verjuice

about 2-3 tbsp brown sugar

100-200 ml water

For the French Toast:

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

a dash of cinnamon

1 tsp sugar

butter

6 slices of baguette, sliced diagonally

If you would like to make Nigella´s version, here is the original recipe:

serves 5-6

For the Plums:

2 cups cranberry juice

1 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

2 pounds plums, halved and pitted

For the French toast:

2 large eggs

1/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons butter

6 half-inch slices brioche

1. In a wide saucepan, combine cranberry juice and sugar. Place over low heat, and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add cinnamon stick, and raise heat to bring to a boil; boil for about 2 minutes.

2. Add plums, and reduce heat to low. Simmer until plums are tender but not disintegrating, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside. (Plums may be served warm or at room temperature; reheat if desired.)

3. In a large bowl, whisk together egg, milk, ground cinnamon and sugar. Place a large skillet over medium-low heat, and add butter, spreading it in the pan. Dip three slices of brioche in the egg mixture, so they absorb the liquid but don't fall to pieces. Place in skillet and cook until golden brown on both sides, about 2 minutes a side. Transfer to a plate and keep warm. Repeat with remaining three slices brioche.

4. Place a portion of French toast on each plate with a serving of plum halves and their syrup.

prawn and pumpkin curry and breakfast bars

2007-09-26T19:47:00.000+02:00

Today it was Nigella Express day. I had her Red Prawn and Mango Curry and with my afternoon cuppa I had a Breakfast Bar.
Breakfast Bars in the afternoon...I know, but I had a cinnamon bun with my 10 o´clock tea and I tried to maintain some balance. This week I felt like compensating. I am a bit low at the moment, I don´t know if it´s the autumn light and the damp, slightly foggy mornings or if it´s just sheer loneliness. Usually I handle it quite well, but then sometimes when I relax it just sneaks in under my skin and makes me feel uncomfortable and itchy. Nothing serious though, forgive me for whingeing, it will pass after demolishing a few packets of pralines, perhaps a big lemon cake and a few nice books.

Talking about books, I ordered four books from Amazon two nights ago. I have been salivating for Jake Tilson´s The Tale of 12 Kitchens ever since it was published sometimes last autumn. Then I found a novel called Pomegranate Soup about a Persian family that moves to Ireland and opens a cafe. Every story starts with a recipe and this way the recipes become more personal. I hope. I also hope they will be inspiring and that it will be a good read. Third book is Chocolate and Zucchini, not a new one either, but now was the time for me. Also a book with stories from the life of a Parisienne and 80 recipes. Forth book...eeh...what was the forth book? Oh, yes, A nice cup of tea and a sit down. As I love tea and everything about and around tea, I thought this sounded like the perfect autumn book to read with a nice hot cuppa.

Back to the curry then. It was very nice but it reminded me of Nigella´s Sweet Potato and Chickpea curry from "At my table". (Articles published by the NYT) I found it a bit too much with both pumpkin, sweet potatoes and mangoes. Also the mango I found was a bit unripe, so every time a got mango in my mouth, I made funny faces. You would think that the sweet and sour tastes were melting together nicely, but not with my mango, not. Next time I won´t even consider using a mango, sour or not, I just didn´t think it added anything special to this curry. Recipe you find at Pistachio´s kitchen, also a proper write up about this dish. (Seems like I´m a copycat, huh? You could say that, but I choose to express it as "inspiration";))

Now, about the Breakfast Bars, they were really nice. I don´t know what I expected, not much actually, but they were very nice. It´s not like I could eat few of them with a cup of tea for breakfast and that´s it, but I rather eat it when I feel like munching on something and want to have a healthier variant. Nice and almost crunchy the day of the baking, perhaps next day too, after that they got a bit soft. I don´t find the right word here, not soft, but they were not crunchy anymore...

They are very easy to make, you just mix all the dry ingredients and then add the warmed condensed milk with a spatula. Spread the mixture in the pan and press down to even the surface. Bake for 1 hour, then remove from the oven and cool for about 15 minutes. Cut into 16 bars and leave to cool completely in the tin.

Breakfast Bars
16 bars

1 x 397g can condensed milk
250g rolled oats (not instant)
75g shredded coconut
100g dried cranberries (I only had fresh ones)
125g mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame)
125g natural unsalted peanuts (don´t like peanuts so I substituted walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 130c/gas mark 1/2 and oil a 23x33x4cm baking tin

lamb tagine express

2007-09-22T14:31:00.000+02:00

I hope I didn´t fool you to believe it is one of Nigella´s new dishes;)

I found this recipe on Almost Turkish Recipes and what made me interested was the mode of preparation. (Do check out Burcu´s blog, you´ll find many good recipes there.)

This is a dish cooked in a pressure cooker, which means that after working the steam up (let´s say about 15 minutes) cooking time is only 15 more minutes and voila, you have a delicious lamb stew on the table!

I love lamb, as you can see by looking at the labels, but tagine takes a long time to cook (I see how the title of the post tagine express is a paradox, as tagine is a slow cooked dish), and it´s not often I have that time. I remembered that I had a pressure cooker somewhere on the attic, a wedding gift I received - but never used - for about 17 years ago... I have always felt a bit intimidated by pressure cookers as I´ve heard terrible stories about them exploding when I was a child.

When I finally put the pot on and heard the well-known sound of the steam, it brought back memories. My mother used to cook a lot in her pressure cooker in the 70´ies and 80´ies, and I was suddenly transferred into my childhoods kitchen on a Sunday morning. I must admit I ran out of the kitchen every time the sound from the pc changed and was only peaking in from behind the door...but it went well and I definitely have the intention to start using this wonderful pot again.

I was thinking about trying this recipe and then if it works, adapt favourite tagine recipes for the pressure cooker.

Middle Eastern Lamb Stew

(yields: 3 pers if served with pita, but I imagine it would be enough for 4 if served with couscous)

500g boneless lamb, cut into 2,5cm cubes

2 medium onions, chopped

2 medium Chinese eggplants, peeled lengthwise in stripes and diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 medium tomatoes, diced

3/4 cup vegetable broth

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp crushed hot pepper

salt and pepper

2-3 cups plain yogurt

2 tbsp fresh mint leaves, very finely chopped

*Heat the oil in big pot and brown the meat on all sides.

*Add onion, garlic, and eggplants. Cook until onion is soft.

*Add the remaining ingredients (except for yogurt and mint leaves). Season to taste.

*Cover pressure cooker and first bring to full pressure over high heat and then reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes. Remove from burner and release the pressure.

*In a bowl mix yogurt and mint leaves.

*Serve the stew with minty yogurt on the side or on the top.

There were no oohs and ahhhs when I took the first mouthful of stew, no flavour explosions, wasn´t too exotic, but then I tried it with the peppermint yogurt and it really did the difference (as Burcu stated on her blog). This is not a dish I would choose if I had a Middle Eastern theme for guests, but this is something I would cook for family and close friends a cold and foggy autumn evening, and that says a lot.

metro soup

2007-09-19T21:48:00.000+02:00

This morning on my way to work, sitting on the tram, I was too tired to read my book, so I just listened to music and picked up a Metro. It´s a free newspaper, if I´m not totally wrong you can read it in all larger cities around the world. I´m a bit like an ostrich, with my head in the sand, I don´t like to start my day with bad news, so I just took a quick look at the fashion and music articles and by an accident I noticed a recipe for "Carrot Soup" by Weight Watcher´s.

I have always thought they must be boring recipes, but I noticed the word carrot, and I know I had loads of carrots waiting to be used up, so I gave it a shot. I was surprised, because it´s easy peasy but flavourful, I´m guess the garlic added that final twist to the otherwise sweetish soup.

So, here´s the recipe, I do recommend it to all working girls :)

Metro Soup
(1 hungry working girl)

3 carrots
1 medium parsnip
1/2 l vegetable broth
1 clove of garlic (a small one if you eat the soup at work)
salt
1 tbs parsley
1 smallish broccoli

Peel and chop parsnip and carrots and cook until soft. Whizz it in the blender, pour it back into the pot and bring it to the boil. Season with salt, parsley and mashed garlic.
Serve soup with the separately cooked broccoli and bread if you like. And as I´m not watching my weight, I served it with a dollop of Creme Fraiche. Yum!
Oh, for those of you interested, it says that uhhh...point per serving:0. (It would be without the bread and Creme Fraiche :D)

dense chocolate loaf cake and blueberry tea

2007-09-17T08:42:00.001+02:00

After not wanting chocolate for about two-three years, suddenly a huge craving set in. Now I eat chocolate in every shape and colour, and this rainy afternoon I felt the urge to bake something chocolaty for tea.

Since it was already rather late, I didn´t chose any fancy recipe, I just needed a chocolate fix, so I picked Nigella´s Dense Chocolate Loaf from the Kitchen Goddess. There were other recipes with cocoa powder (Tessa´s chocolate bread) but this one felt more like the real thing with melted chocolate in the mixture.

It started with me noticing that I was out of butter, so after a quick tour down to the grocer I was ready to start. Or at least, so I thought. But then, I realized that the muscovado I had at home won´t be enough! Hehe, I really was in need of a cuppa, I should have just sat down and read the recipe first and then see if I had everything at home...but I didn´t.

I was too lazy to go shopping again, so I used about 80 g´s of lavender sugar and 3/4 tsp of dried lavender. I have never used it before, though I made the lavender sugar more than half a year ago, so I was a bit careful, as I didn´t want to end up with soap.

Well, I didn´t. Within an hour I was having my first, still hot slice of chocolate cake and a cup of Earl Grey. Nigella says that this loaf becomes better after a few days, so it just makes it perfect for one person, as I don´t think I´ll finish it in one day :) ...I hope I won´t.

I liked the introductory chat and the way Ms Lawson describes the finished product as sunken in the middle, but that´s the way it should be, since the cake is so dense and moist. It was very reassuring for me, because otherwise I have a tendency to whinge over my insufficiency in the kitchen, as soon as my cakes, cookies or slices look too "homebaked"...

The overall verdict is that this is the perfect cake, easy and satisfying when you have a big craving but little time. There aren´t any peculiar ingredients involved, you should have everything in your pantry. Oh, except for the butter, of course, that could be a tricky ingredient;)

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

225 grams soft unsalted butter

375 grams dark brown sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

100g best dark chocolate,melted

200g plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

25oml boiling water

23x13x7 cm loaf tin

Preheat the oven to 190C/gas mark5 , put in a baking sheet in case of sticky drips later; and grease and line the loaf pan. The lining is important as this is a very damp cake: use parchment or one of those loaf-pan-shaped paper liners.

Cream the butter and sugar, either with a wooden spoon or with an electric hand-held mixer, then add the eggs and vanilla, beating in well. Next, fold in the melted and now slightly cooled chocolate, taking care to blend well but being careful not to overbeat. You want the ingredients combined: you don't want a light airy mass.

Then gently add the flour, to which you've added the baking soda, alternately spoon by spoon, with the boiling water until you have a smooth and fairly liquid batter. Pour into the lined loaf pan, and bake for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 170C/gas mark 3 and continue to cook for another 15 minutes. The cake will still be a bit squidgy inside, so an inserted cake tester or skewer won't come out completely clean.Place the loaf pan on a rack, and leave to get completely cold before turning it out.

(I often leave it for a day or so; like gingerbread, it improves.) Don't worry if is sinks in the middle; indeed, it will do so because it's such a dense and damp cake.

On the weekends I try to go for a walk in the forest and just relax, let go of the problems of the week that has passed and charge my batteries. Also I like to pick flowers, berries, mushrooms or whatever I find useful. This weekend I gathered some blueberry leaves to dry for tea. When I was a child we drank blueberry tea all winter long, it didn´t cost us anything (we were actually quite poor) it was naturally caffeine free, and it had obvious health effects. (My father always loved the forest, the nature, the animals and I carried this on with an interest in natural and herbal medicine)

So next time, have a cup of blueberry leaf tea with your cake ;)

In folk medicine, blueberry leaf has been used to treat a number of conditions including urinary tract infections, diarrhea and diabetes. Limited evidence from a few animal studies shows that it may have a decreasing effect on blood sugar. In at least one study, an extract of blueberry leaves may also have lowered cholesterol levels in laboratory animals. It has been shown in clinical studies to decrease some of the retinal damage caused by diabetes or high blood pressure. Additionally, blueberry may help to make the walls of blood vessels stronger by increasing collagen linkages. If you are lucky to find some leaves with berries on, than you have a tea rich in antioxidants .

This is a bad pic but the tea has a wonderful red color and tastes refreshing.

quick lunch or supper

2007-08-29T20:52:00.001+02:00

Last year we had a wonderful summer and I have been using my Crazy Water Pickled Lemons a lot. This summer it has been raining five weeks in a row (I don´t have to tell you guys, especially you from UK will know, unfortunately) with only two days when the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for a few hours. That meant that Ms Henry has been neglected big time...Anyway, in my the quicker it goes the cooking the better mood I remembered her filled sweet potatoes that I have been preparing a few times last year. On the Traveller´s Lunchbox there is a variation on this with onions and chopped capsicum, but after trying it that way, I decided to keep the capsicums and dismiss the onions. I felt that it killed the fennel and coriander and I loved that taste as it was. The capsicum on the other hand made the dish a bit more filling, crunchy, colorful and ...do I dare saying healthy (with all that vitamin C in it) ?

Sweet potatoes are full of vitamin E without containing lots of fat, that other foods rich in vitamin E tend to have, so it´s very good food. Also I have noticed, that although I don´t tolerate "normal" potatoes, I don´t have any problems with sweet potatoes.

Oh, too much talk and the dish is not really a dish, it´s very simple and you can turn it into a quick lunch if you "boil" the potatoes in the micro oven. (Takes about 10 minutes, of course this could be the start of another discussion about how healthy is using a micro... ;) but...let´s turn it into something positive and say that we are very conscious of nature and our resources and to save some energy we use the micro instead of the oven...)

I didn´t take a picture as I "microed" it at work for lunch and only had the filling with me that I prepared the evening before, so I am using a pic that I had taken last year... I see that I only had green olives than, but use nice black olives, it´s both more aesthetic and of course tastes much better.

Baked Sweet Potato w Marinated Feta and Black Olives
serves 1

1 medium sweet potato
a little olive oil
black pepper
1 large tbs or 2 black Kalamata olives
a few leaves of coriander, chopped
1/4-1/2 (depending on the size and your taste) red capsicum, chopped

for the feta:
75g feta cheese, in cubes
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 red chilli, cut into fine slivers
1/4 garlic clove, crushed
a good pinch of coriander seeds, crushed
EV olive oil

Mix the feta with the other ingredients and set in a cool place.
Bake the sweet potato in it´s skin in a preheated oven on 180 C (350F) for about 50 minutes, but check with a skewer.
When the potatoes are cooked, split them open lengthways, sprinkle with oil and pepper and fill with the marinated feta. Garnish with olives, chopped capsicum and coriander.
Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche, sour creme or creamy yogurt if you like. Last summer I tried it with the tzatziki recommended on Traveller´s Lunchbox but it was a bit too much of a mix of tastes for me...

sexy ramiros for inspiration

2007-08-27T08:21:00.000+02:00

I found these sexy Ramiro paprikas and just couldn´t leave them in the shop. AnnaAUS, you were absolutely right! Wonderful ingredients do give inspiration! :)

I tried to do my best and blog about my holidays but there were too many other things and too little food in them. It´s about how my holiday was, really, this time it wasn´t about food but more about people. Old friends and their children, old boyfriends and their new OH´s, relatives, my dad, teahouses, music festivals. Altogether a very nice holiday but not many foodpics.

I´m still in don´t-want-to-cook mode, but I hope it has something to do with the weather. I want to do other things, be outdoors as much as possible, so the cooking I have done were real quickies.

I started to feel a bit ashamed about not using my "latest" books (the Bill Granger one and Tessa Kiros´ Apples for Jam) so I tried to find very simple recipes.

The Bill Granger´s Caramel Chicken I´m sure many of you will recognize, it has been mentioned several times on n.com . I don´t know if it´s only me, but I didn´t think it was anything extraordinary. I mean you don´t need a recipe to throw together something that would taste like this dish. It was a bit sweet, a bit spicy, a bit of everything and nothing. I might have done something wrong, but this is such a simple recipe, that not even I could mess it up. Or could I? ;)

Apples for Jam I have been browsing through many times and I enjoyed the pictures that presented a somewhat idealised, simple, country life of Tessa Kiros and her family, but I have never felt inspired to try anything from that book. Honestly I was surprised to see the amount of fried food (mostly chips in different shapes) and cakes and ice-cream she was feeding her daughters! Isn´t she supposed to be a chef with a basic knowledge in nutrition?

Anyway, I had a chicken breast pulled out from the freezer and didn´t know what to do with it so I chose Tessa´s Chicken Escalopes with Tomatoes and Capers. I didn´t have any expectations at all and guess what? I was surprised by the juicy, tasty result! This is a dish I will most definitely cook again. I didn´t make any potatoes that she suggests, as I can´t eat potatoes (still), so I used two large tomatoes instead of plum tomatoes and served it with a small portion of bread. Yummy! Now I feel more tempted to try other things from this book, because although the dishes look simple, I have a feeling that there are quite a few hidden treasures to be discovered here.

Another Tessa recipe I tried these last weeks was the Cinnamon Buns from the Finnish section of her Falling Cloudberries. I found the finished buns a bit crispy and that´s not what I wanted. I want my buns to be soft, moist and comforting. I put a few in the freezer and when I took them out I found them tough.... Oh well, I think I´ll just go back to the Cinnamon buns that you find on the back of every flour package in Sweden.

Another thing I tried was inspired by my Greece-holiday. As I am avoiding potatoes and rice, I had to order starters as side dishes. Poor me :) I had such feasts this time in Greece as never before. Anyway, one of the starters/side dishes that I just loooved, was grilled paprika filled with feta. Don´t have any recipe, so I just mixed the feta with some greek (or should I say hellenic?) oregano, filled these gorgeous paprikas with it and grilled them in the oven with a few drops of olive oil. It tasted wonderful, served with oregano-seasoned lambchops. The only "problem" with it was that a lot of fat oozed out during the grilling...don´t know what I should do the next time to avoid this. Because it will certainly be a next time ;) Any ideas please? AnnaUK perhaps?

Before going into oven

Not quite as gorgeous after coming out of the oven, but very tasty...

Didn´t have the time to type in any recipes, but is there any intereset, just let me know. Also ,most of you guys from n.com do have these books :)

braised lamb shanks

2007-07-16T08:18:00.000+02:00

So I´ve been away for a very long time :) Just before leaving for Greece I´ve posted about having lost my mojo. Well, haven´t found it yet, unfortunately. I have been cooking but nothing new or nothing that I found interesting enaugh to blog about.
Since I´ve came back three weeks ago, we have had rain almost every day. It´s not just that it´s raining but it´s also quite raw and temperature is down on 14 C, so this weekend when my mum was visiting, I thought I´ll cook something warming for the two of us.

I have been meaning to try Tamasin´s Braised Lamb Shanks for a year or so (shame on me :) ) but finally, time has come. Originally I´ve found the recipe in her West of Ireland Summer´s book that I borrowed from the library and I copied a few recipes, but when I looked at it, it said 150 ml balsamic vinegar to cook the 4 lambshanks in! First I thought I wrote the recipe wrong, so I checked whether I found it in my own Tamasin´s Kitchen Bible and I did :)
Same there, 150 ml balsamic vinegar. I must say I was a bit intrigued but I decided to go with it. Also I made the Champ as a side, because I wanted to make it completely Irish.

In Tamasin´s Kitchen Bible she recommends orange rind instead of the lemon, and also bay leaves. After about half the cooking time I decided to add some bay leaves myself, the end result was delicious! It wasn´t too strong from the vinegar either, in the end (after 2,5 hours cooking time) it only smelled wonderfully of wine and herbs. I liked this dish a lot and I intend to make it many more times towards the autumn and winter.

Someone on another blog mentioned that it is impossible to get lambshanks and stew look great on pic, and I couldn´t agree more, but here you go a pic anyway.

Braised Lamb Shanks with Champ serves 4

4 lamb shanks, 8-10 cm long

2 tbsp plain flour

salt, pepper

2-3 tbsp olive oil

onions, sliced

6-7 cloves garlic, crushed

2-3 sprigs of rosmary and thyme, finely chopped

300 ml white wine

150 ml balsamic vinegar

Optional: 2 strips lemon rind, bay leaves

Turns the shanks in the seasoned flour, and shake off any excess flour. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed casserole. When hot, add the lamb shanks and brown all over. Remove the meat with a slotted spoon and put aside.

Add the rosemary, onions, garlic and thyme, sauté until golden and softened. Raise the heat and add the wine and vinegar together. Bubble furiously for 2-3 minutes to reduce.

Return the shanks to the casserole and cover with greaseproof paper and a lid. You can add a couple of strips of lemon rind if you like. Lower the heat and simmer very gently for 2 hours or more. Turn the shanks from time to time, and add more wine if the liquid is evaporating. Longer cooking won´t hurt them, the meat should fall off the bone. Half an hour before you want to eat, start cooking the champ.

Champ serves 4

1 kg floury potatoes

300 ml creamy milk (I mixed milk and cream)

50-85 g butter

6 spring onions, finely chopped

salt, pepper

Cook potatoes, drain water, cover the pan and let sit for a few minutes.

Put milk and 50 g butter in a saucepan and heat to boiling point. Add the spring onions, turn off the heat and let them infuse the milk.

Mash potatoes, then add the milk-butter-onion mixture, stirring until smooth. Season to taste. You can make a well in the centre and add an extra lump of butter to melt into the champ, if you like.

the last supper

2007-06-10T20:52:00.000+02:00

Hehe, not the Biblical one, though. This is the last supper before I´m off tomorrow veeery early in the morning. I hate getting up too early, like 2 or 3 a m , it´s actually killing me.

Anyway, couldn´t be bothered to make anything fancy, so I cooked Nigella´s Crispy pork chops with baby spinach and garlic tomato salad. Yummy!! I made an extra batch so that I could have some tomorrow, because I´m not on the island before 4 pm, and as we all know, there are many things that are better than airplane food...

OK, kitchen closed! I´m off to Greece.

lost my mojo

2007-06-08T07:41:00.000+02:00

The 6th of June is Sweden´s National Day that I´ve spent with a very good friend. We were just talking and eating the whole day, I have even taken a few pics.

She arrived for breakfast so we started with a zucchini frittata, inspired by Claryssa Hyman´s Cucina Siciliana. No way that I would serve it like this usually, I was just fooling around with the tomatoes :)

And that was about it. The rest of the pics were blurred. Arrrgh! Of course, there wasn´t anything special , my dear friend being a vegetarian we had mostly simple dishes, but there was a very nice potato salad with coconut milk (I looove coconut milk) amongst others.

Thai Potato Salad
serves 2

300g potatoes

1 red capsicum, chopped

1 scallion, sliced

1/4 frisée salad, torn

Dressing:

50-60ml coconut milk

1 smallish clove of garlic

1/2 lime juice and zest

salt

Cook the potatoes, let cool slightly and cut in thick slices. Mix with the trimmed and chopped vegetables and dress while luke warm.

If you like, you can serve it with hardboiled eggs and bread. For a non-vegetarian alternative, serve with grilled chicken breast and bread.

These might have been the reason why my hands were a bit unsteady :) I don´t need much, I´m not used to drinking so after a glass I was all bubbly myself.

I can´t really call this a drink, as they weren´t any particular ingredients just fresh, mixed strawberries with a sweet, sparkling wine (Asti). Yummy!!

Today I was going Greek. It was unusually warm and I´m never hungry in hot weather. I pulled out Falling Cloudberries and throw together the Chickpea salad with coriander.

For dessert I chose the Mahalepi with milk, rice flour and rose water served with rose water syrup. Quite sweet, but nice and creamy.

my weekend - in food

2007-06-04T22:08:00.000+02:00

It´s nice to be back but I´ve had such a nice weekend! Friday night after my last patient I headed to Halmstad with a can of Coke (I reeeeally needed it!) and a turkey bagel as only company. As it turned out, it wasn´t that bad, in fact I loved the combination of cream cheese, turkey, roast paprika and fresh herbs. I´ve never thought of roast paprika on a sandwich before (OK, don´t kill me :)) but this is something I am going to cultivate frequently in the future.

My mother was waiting for me with stuffed paprika, which I guess is a legacy after a 250 years long Turkish occupation. I´ve never made this dish myself but I usually "order it" when I come down to visit her. I haven´t had time to compare this dish to the Turkish or Greek ones, so I don´t know how close or far away from those it is. The Hungarian version is made on Hungarian white paprikas (of course!) and is stuffed with minced pork, rice, salt, pepper and onions caramelized in lard. The filled paprikas are cooked in salted water and when almost done transferred into a tomato sauce. The latter is made of tomato paste and juice, paprika, celery leaves, carrots, salt, pepper.

Later that evening I visited some old friends and there I had some Swedish cinnamon buns and Hungarian kifli. Well, not only the paprikas, but I was getting really stuffed as well.

Next morning my mother had another "surprise" for me, the Hungarian version of Baba Ganoush. The Turkish legacy, again... of course with Hungarian seasoning. We use salt, pepper, finely chopped red onions, vinegar or lemon juice and touch of sugar. I must admit, probably because I grew up with this, I still prefer this version and I am still not able to season it as my mother does...Her "Baba Ganoush" has got a smoky flavour without being bitter, and mine is either too salty, too sour or just blend. It´s no big deal, I know, but I just can´t get it right.

After the breakfast we went to see the festivities. Lot of people all over the place, of course, lots of activities and entertainment but no food!! The only food-related things I found were the Bosnian stand, where they were offering coffee made of freshly roasted coffee beans. Unfortunately I don´t drink coffee, so I couldn´t try it but this was the first time I saw coffee being roasted this way.

Medieval music, medieval clothes, music and artillery were the theme in and around the castle. We have listened to an ensemble called Mare Balticum, which specializes in different types of music from before 1700, primarily from the countries around the Baltic Sea – the Mare Balticum. Wonderful music, I was standing there with tears in my eyes, as usual, and feeling embarrassed about it, as usual.

We took a break and had a hideous ice cream that tasted all artificial. After walking 4 hours in the city, we just had enough and sat down in the park to have a rest. If I´ve known there will be this scanty food, I would have brought something for a picnic...

Greetings from Halmstad and three women:) The lavenders are in full bloom, the sculpture is a 14m/45ft-high piece in reinforced concrete, "Woman's Head" (1971), created by a Norwegian sculptor on the model of a figure by Picasso; my mom is catching her breath (hmm, or waiting for me to do that...) and that´s me. No, I´m not drunk, believe me, I´m just shy :)

Next day we took a long walk in the forest and gathered some elderflower. Our Bev on n.com posted some info and recipes with elderflower and I wanted to try the fritters, having heard of them but never tried before. Usually I´m too greedy to use up the flowers just like that, and I always want to make cordial in a try to bottle up some summer. These were and interesting but nothing that I would become addicted to :D

Elderflower Fritters served with a dollop yoghurt and honey

Elderflower Fritters

50g plain flour 50g cornflour pinch of Salt 50g Butter, melted 150ml water groundnut oil, for deep-frying 1 egg white 12 heads of elderflower, with the main stalk part cut off caster sugar, for sprinkling icing sugar, for sprinkling

Make the batter for the elderflower fritters a couple of hours before you wish to serve them. In a mixing bowl, sift together the plain flour, cornflour and a pinch of salt. Stir in the melted butter. Gradually whisk in the water forming a smooth, creamy batter then set aside for 2 hours. Heat the groundnut oil for deep-frying in a wok or deep fat fryer. Meanwhile, whisk the egg-white until stiff peaks form and fold into the batter. Dip the elderflower heads into the batter then fry in batches in the hot oil, frying for about 1 minute until golden and crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon.

Mom had other things waiting for me. She baked Hungarian kalács (Hungarian sweet bread). I always get nostalgic when having these and I must have it with milk and "coffee" made of roasted chicory root.

Then she made greaves. I would never make that at home but I love it! It´s great with bread and raw red onions. Very simple and very székely.

My Sunday didn´t turn out quite as I thought as I got two unexpected patients, a friend of my mothers and my friends daughter. I didn´t charge any of them and already the next day I experienced "one hand washes the other" being a very true saying... Just before heading home on Monday, I discovered that my windshield whipers were out of function. First patients husband is a mechanic, so... I was on my way home withing an hour :)

Home sweet home...

weekend off

2007-05-31T21:47:00.001+02:00

I´m off for the weekend, tomorrow after work I´m heading south to visit my mother. There will be celebrations, the town she lives in is 700 years now. I´m looking forward having some festival food and walk around markets and car boot sales. I hope it will be fun. I´m back on Monday evening.
Have a nice weekend everyone and take care :)

http://www.halmstad700.halmstad.se/h700/en/

fish saltimbocca

2007-05-30T20:28:00.001+02:00

I was reading another blog this morning where the blogger stated that she would never bore her readers with the food she eat every day. I was feeling bad for about 5 seconds, because that is exactly what I am doing, but then I thought there must be other people out there who want to have tips of what to eat every day. I know I am one. There are different kind of blogs, some are updated once or twice a month and they are really glamorous with beautiful pictures and well written essays. It´s inspiring and feels like reading a coffee table book. I love those blogs! But then, there Í am with my stomach rumbling and me wondering what to eat. That´s why I appreciate food blogs presenting everyday food even more.

Most of you know that I don´t like fish and I have a mission: to find recipes that makes fish taste less fishy. From the start my intention was trying to eat fish at least once a week but as I see I´m very bad at it. BUT then I found a new "candidate" that I could think of trying. It´s a Jill Dupleix recipe and comes from delicious. Aus Vol3 Issue3. Recipe says to use any white fish so I used cod, which is a fish that doesn´t taste too fishy from the start. Then comes the Prosciutto wrapping that I was hoping would add another dimension to the flavour of the dish.

fish saltimbocca with mashed peas

serves 1
1 x 160-180g skinless firm white fish fillets
1 thin, wide prosciutto slice
1 large sage leave
1/2 tbs vegetable oil
100g frozen peas
5g unsalted butter
snow pea sprouts and lemon wedges to serve

Season fish and wrap in prosciutto, secure sage leaf on the presentation side with a toothpick. Cook fish over medium heat sage-side down for 5 minutes or until prosciutto is crisp and golden. Turn and cook for a further 4-6 minutes, depending on thickness, until fish is cooked. Keep warm.
Cook the peas in simmering salted water for 5 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 tbs of the cooking water, Whiz peas with butter in a food processor until a coarse mash, then season. Return to low heat and gradually beat in water with a wooden spoon. Dollop peas on a plate, top with the fish, sage-side up, and serve with sprouts and lemon.

This turned out great! I loved the sweetness of the peas combined with the salty, crispy prosciutto wraps and the lemon squeezed over it. Yummy!
My only complaint was that it was too small a serving of the mashed peas. I didn´t have any carbs with it and didn´t really missed it either, but next time I´ll double the peas up. This is a keeper, and I think it would qualify to Pistachio´s "Quick midweek" . Check it out, it is very useful for a working girl!

table for one

2007-05-30T15:52:00.000+02:00

I found this article in The Guardian and just wanted to share. I dine alone quite a lot, especially when abroad. The article is written by Claryssa Hyman, whom I have previously been posting about, here.

Table for one

Once considered the preserve of travelling salesmen and those who had been stood up, eating out alone is now commonplace. In fact, says Julie Bindel, for committed foodies, solitary dining is a pleasure

Wednesday May 30,
2007The Guardian
'The best number for a dinner party is two - myself and a damn good head waiter," said the eminent British businessman Nubar Gulbenkian in the 1960s. A sentiment shared, though often not admitted, by a growing number of foodies.
Although one of my favourite pastimes is cooking for or eating out with friends, I positively love dining out alone. Whether travelling for work, or popping into Chinatown at the end of a busy day to savour braised pig trotters with star anise, it gives me a thrilling sense of being a proper, independent grown-up. Fish finger sandwiches make great lazy comfort food, but occasionally I want to indulge myself a little, undisturbed.
Food writer Clarissa Hyman often dines out alone, either as a restaurant reviewer or when work takes her away from home. "The quality of a restaurant can be determined by how lone diners are treated," she says, "so if you are put in a dark corner and ignored, standards are obviously low."
To the Oyster Bar at Bentley's, Richard Corrigan's new venture in London's Piccadilly, for dinner. From the moment I sit at the sumptuous bar, I feel comfortable and relaxed. I am the only woman - several businessmen tuck into their food and read books or newspapers. The waiter pays me just the right amount of attention so that I felt looked after but not patronised. After downing some delicious oysters, followed by haddock, crushed potatoes and cabbage, I strike up a conversation about the joys of black sambuca with my neighbour. He tells me that, as a man, he never feels self-conscious eating alone because, "everyone will assume I am a travelling businessman", which indeed he is.
Barrafina, an L-shaped 23-seat tapas bar in Soho, is also perfect for lone diners. There is usually a queue snaking out the door, which can make leisurely group dining feel somewhat selfish. Wines and superb sherries are served by the glass, dishes are small, and there is plenty to entertain, such as watching the chefs cook tortillas, shuck clams, and fry melt-in-the-mouth chicken croquettes. Tiny lamb chops cook on the plancha (flat grill) as my waiter delivers raw baby clams.
This has to be the perfect way to dine alone. I can watch everyone else, summon the waiter with a glance, and order several dishes all to myself without being stuffed to the gills or worrying about hogging a whole table to myself.
This solitary pursuit is not, however, without its pitfalls. One of the problems, says Hyman, "is that without the distraction of dining companions we eat too quickly." We can also drink too quickly in the absence of conversation or the need for decorum.
Hyman also says she would never ever take herself to a restaurant on a Saturday evening. "You are stared at as if no one wants you, and restaurants are always full of couples having a romantic meal."
For female diners, unwanted attention from men is not unusual. Friends have told me about lone male diners sending over drinks, presuming that any woman eating alone would welcome company. While this can be flattering, it can also feel intrusive. Waiters, too, can sometimes overstep the mark, such as the one who spent half the evening asking me where my husband was, and whether I wanted a drink with him later.
When foreign correspondent Rose George was working in Goa, she soon tired of eating alone every evening. "There's only so much room service you can take," she says. One evening she was taken pity on by two IT consultants from Australia and asked to join them. "I couldn't comfortably say no," says George, "but the experience did make eating alone seem preferable."
George felt that, alone, she was not treated equally to other customers. "When there was a blackout in the restaurant one night, every table was given a candle except mine. I was the only one eating alone, and my very nice meal was ruined by incandescent fury."
Perhaps waiters expect a smaller tip from lone diners? One waiter in a popular Cantonese restaurant in Soho says that women eating alone often leave very small tips. "Men are better, probably because they want to show off. Or maybe they have more money?"
Food lover Sandra McNeill often travels to continental Europe alone. In Italy she is often distinctly unwelcome as a female lone diner. "You get a look of disapproval from waiters if you order wine, and nods of approval if you don't," she says. (Hyman has found that waiters often assume lone females will know nothing about wine, and I have, on occasion, overindulged on the grape due to the restaurant having no decent half bottles on offer.)
As lone dining becomes more popular, technology lends a hand to those reluctant to enjoy their own company. American website solodining.com has a story of a diner who arrived at a restaurant with a portable DVD player and headphones, and watched an entire movie while eating an elaborate three-course meal. Meanwhile, some enterprising high-end hotel restaurants have even installed individual TV screens and headphones on single tables, so that female lone diners might feel less open to unwanted interruption.
"What a terrible idea," says Hyman. "One of the pleasures for women eating alone is to be able to eavesdrop. Recently I heard an entire conversation between an elderly married couple which was as good as an Alan Bennett play." Even worse, she says, is the latest trend towards communal tables, where you can be forced to talk to boring diners. Aside from restaurants such as Wagamama, where the communal table is simply for convenience of space and very few people talk to each other, restaurants such as Dish Dash in Soho positively promote the concept as a way to get lone diners communicating. "If you view yourself as a community restaurant," says a spokesperson for Dish Dash, "then what you're doing is giving the community you serve the chance to meet and get into conversation with one another."
As someone who believes that exceptional food needs no distraction - particularly from friends moaning about the cost - I take exception to the words of the novelist Henry James: "Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don't dine." News to me.

I too have actually been put , not into a dark corner, but to a table by the door where the waiters were running in and out all night and I had to share table with a nice, old gentleman. This was on another holiday in Greece, the gentleman was about 70 and I was 30, dreaming about meeting some nice guy to have a chat with, and here I was, politely listening to his story about how him and his wife, who has passed away, has been going to this same island and restaurant for the last 30 years. Don´t get me wrong, it was nice and occasionally I do enjoy talking to older gentlemen, but that evening I would´ve preferred looking deeply in someone else´s eyes and listening to completely different stories :) Also it is not uncommon being invited for drinks by waiters, by the owner of the island´s bakery (and "you really should accept it, Ms!!") or the gentleman sitting by the bar :D To accept or not to accept, that is the question.

So what do you think, Ladies? Do we have a tough life or what? ;)
How about you? Have you been dining alone? Any funny, sad, nice, boring stories to share? Please, join me at my table for one, and tell.

sweet life

2007-05-28T20:17:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was very naughty ;P I decided to live la dolce vita and get high on sugar. I started my day with making a stack of these, served with lashings of dark, smoky maple syrup

then made these and just had to try one, and then try one more, and then one more to be able to decide what I thought about them

so today I thought it would be on it´s place with a bit healthier food if I don´t want to buy a new bikini before my trip.

The pancake recipe I found on Kelly-Jane´s blog and since then I´ve made them twice. They are just perfect! The recipe works every time, you don´t have to fiddle with it. The pancakes are wonderfully fluffy and taste buttery, caramelly (is there such a word?).

Here is the magical recipe, from Dorie Greenspan´s Pancakes from Morning to Midnight via Kelly-Jane:

buttermilk pancakes

1 cup plain flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup (8 fl oz) buttermilk
1 large egg
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 oz) unsalted butter, melted

In a medium bowl whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl or jug mix the buttermilk, egg and butter. Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Fry pancakes.

I promised myself not to buy any cookbooks during the summer as I would like to squeeze in another vacation later in August and I´ll need all the money I can scrape together. (The cookbooks I might find in Greece or Hungary or Romania doesn´t count, of course!!) However, the first book I´ll buy this autumn will be one of Ms Greenspan´s. I don´t think I can go wrong with any of her books because I´ve seen lot of praise out there in the food-blogosphere.

My next stop was Nigella´s Cappuccino Cupcake. I´ve had my eyes on them ever since I bought the "Domestic Goddess" and now their time has come too. They looked great and they were nice but I was a bit disappointed,I guess I just expected too much. Somehow it´s my own fault, I built it up in my head several times, I thought they will be heavenly. Well, they didn´t do it for me. I won´t type in the recipe as I believe most of us has got the book but in case you haven´t and you would like to have the recipe, let me know.

So, finally to today´s lunch. I made the Saag Paneer with "fake" paneer. I wanted to use up the halloumi I had in my fridge and in Feast Nigella uses it in the Muttar Paneer, so I thought why not? This was nice but sadly it didn´t have any mmmm-factor... I based this on a recipe I found in World Food Cafe but last time I made it was a bit bland so this time I tried to spice it up a bit. I searched and found various recipes on the web, so I added cardamom, garlic, chilly powder, nutmeg, ground and fresh coriander but without a good result. Thing is that I like Saag eller Palakh Paneer very much when eating it in a restaurant, so I´ll just have to keep looking for recipes or be more attentive next time I have it and try to identify "secret" ingredients :)

kofta tagine

2007-05-26T10:36:00.000+02:00

I have had this recipe marked for ages and now it is finally time to try it. In two weeks I´m going to Greece and I want to use up as many things in my freezer and especially fridge as possible. I´m only going away for 14 days but last year when I came back from my holiday, I found my fridge and freezer melted-down and everything inside was mouldy. It was some broadband company working with installations and there was a power failure. You can imagine how happy I was...

Anyway, I had some lamb mince left after making Tessa Kiros´ moussaka and I thought it was time to use it up. I had about 365g so I adapted the recipe to serve 3. I didn´t know what to expect taste-wise but I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted so comforting, it was slightly sweet from the tomatoes and it was interesting to pair the meatballs with the eggs. I definitely liked it and this goes onto my list over regulars. this is very easy to make and I´ll give you the recipe for 4, because then it´s easier for you to halve or double.

kofta tagine
serves 4

1 large red onion
500g lamb mince
2 tbs chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tbs olive oil
800g canned chopped tomatoes
4 eggs

spice paste
1 garlic clove
1-2 tbs finely chopped coriander root
1/2 red onions, grated
1 tsp ground cumin
2 small pinches of saffron threads
juice of 1 lemon

For paste, pound garlic to a puree with a pinch of salt. Ad all other ingredients except juice, then work into a paste. Stir in juice. Set aside.
Mix onion, mince, parsley and ground coriander well with salt and pepper. Use hands to make 12 balls. Heat oil in a heavy based pan over medium heat, add meatballs and brown all over. Remove and set aside.
Add paste and stir for 1 minute until aromatic. Return meatballs to pan, add tomato and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes until meatballs are cooked and sauce has thickened. Carefully crack eggs on top for final 5 minutes. Serve scattered with coriander leaves and black pepper.

Yesterday for lunch I had Nigella´s Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry and I had some coconut milk left that I wanted to use up. I remembered that Ilana at I heart Risotto! has adapted a Tessa Kiros ice cream recipe and I went to look it up. I found the recipe, made it last night (it´s sooo easy, no custard involved, just whisk everything together) and I had this wonderful ice cream today after the Kofta Tagine.

dreamy coconut ice cream

250ml coconut milk

250ml heavy cream

125ml maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk together the maple syrup and heavy (double) cream. Add the vanilla and whisk in the coconut milk. Transfer to a measuring jug. From here on,either you churn into your ice cream machine or you start the boring work with putting ice cream into a container, in to the freezer, and then whisking ice cream vigorously every hour for 3-4 hours...and get your reward in the end! It´s so worth it!

I was a bit short of coconut milk but used cream instead and also to pump the coconut flavour up, I used a few drop of coconut essence. I omitted the vanilla flavour as I thought it would be too much. The end result was fabulous! I loved that smoky, burnt flavor of maple syrup and the coconut together and didn´t miss the vanilla flavour at all. Thanks Tessa and Ilana!

friday night snacks #2

2007-05-25T18:24:00.000+02:00

Seems like Friday nights I need a bit more relaxed food, after a long week I just don´t feel like cooking for hours. This time I found a nice little tapas and it is quick and easy and perfect with some tomato-rubbed bread and a glass of red wine. Or two. Because I just read in NY Times that "Mr. Right, It Turns Out, Does Not Take Classes". Bad news. Bad, bad news. Not that I´m taking evening classes but at least I had a good explanation to why I haven´t met Mr. Right yet. Yeah, yeah, I know that was NY, but if he doesn´t take classes there, why should he take classes here? He does not run, doesn´t go to tennis classes (oh, excuse me, he takes private lessons!) , he already knows how to sail, ride, knows good wine so you won´t find him on wine testings, not at the fitness boot camp or at scuba diving.

God, there was a poor girl taking all these classes hoping she would find Him. OK, so now I´m sad. And relieved. I know that there is no hope left but I can be spared from going to evening classes. It´s always good to have arguments when friends try to chase you to various activities so that you meet a guy.

Oh, sorry, here comes Mr. Bill Granger´s recipes for the tapas. It has been a lot of feelings lately, I´ll try to keep that down and come up with some nice recipes. Tomorrow I´m planning to have Kofta Tagine. For one. ;P

tomato & chorizo salad

serves 2

1/2 tbs olive oil
1 chorizo sausages, sliced 1 cm thick
125g plum tomatoes, halved
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced into rings
1/2 tbs chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tsp sherry vinegar
squeeze of lemon juice
Heat 1/2 tsp oil in a large frypan over medium-high heat. Add chorizo and cook for 1-2 minutes, turning, until crisp. Drain on paper towel, then combine in a bowl with tomato, onion and parsley.Whisk together the vinegar and remaining olive oil, then toss with the salad. Serve in little bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice.

tomato-rubbed bread with jamon and olives
serves 2

4 slices bread
a drizzle of olive oil
1 garlic clove
2-3 plum tomatoes, halved
Jamon (I only had Prosciutto)

Preheat oven to 200C. Brush bread with oil and place on a baking tray. Bake for 5-10 minutes, turning once, until golden. Rub one side of the bread with the garlic, then with the cut side of the tomato, allowing the tomato juice to soak into the bread. Serve with Prosciutto and olives.

Now I only have to choose a nice chick flick and my Friday evening is saved!

what´s the taste of heaven?

2007-05-24T19:25:00.000+02:00

OK, this is NOT a lecture. As you know I´m reading Angela´s Ashes (I have been doing it for a while now but I only read it on the tram) and it really makes me think, and thank God or whomever you believe or not believe in, that we have food in abundance. This wasn´t always the case for me but my childhood was a dance on roses in comparison with Frank McCourt´s (or my mothers, for that matter). Most of the time they didn´t have anything to eat but plain tea, often made from the morning´s leaves, and bread.

As I said, this is not a lecture. I´m not going to tell you to think about starving children all over the world, but I feel that sometimes we might just take food for granted. And of course not just whatever food, but we are chasing new flavour combinations and taste sensations, striving to reach new culinary heights, try new ingredients because we get tired of the same old.

I can hear you asking "OK, where is this going?"
I just wanted this to be a reminder for myself to be grateful for my everyday bread and appreciate the old and the simple more, and I want to share this wonderful part with you:

"I say to him ,Why can´t you go to England, Dad, so we can have electricity and wireless and Mam can stand at the door and tell the world what we´re having at dinnertime?...
...He sighs, Och, aye, och, aye. All right he´ll go to England after Christmas...
...The women stand outside the pubs talking. Mam tells Mrs. Meehan, The first telegram money order I get I´ll be in the shop buying a big breakfast so that we can all have our own egg of a Sunday morning.
I look at my brother Malachy. Did you hear that? Our own egg of a Sunday morning. Oh God, I already had plans for my egg. Tap it around the top, gently crack the shell, lift with a spoon, a dab of butter down into the yolk, salt, take my time, a dip of the spoon, scoop, more salt, more butter, into the mouth, oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than a fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?"

caesar cleopatra

2007-05-23T14:41:00.000+02:00

I have a confession to make. I have never had a Caesar salad as I can´t stand anchovies. As I mentioned earlier, I don´t like fish and particularly not anchovies. I have only tried it twice in Pasta Puttanesca but I think I´ll wait for another couple of years before trying it again. After eating it I scrubbed my hands and my mouth over and over again and I just couldn´t get rid of the smell. Horrible!

You can imagine how delighted I was when I found a recipe in Nigella´s Forever Summer on this "fake Caesar" with no anchovies in it. Nigella has omitted the croutons as well because she doesn´t like them but I love that crunchy addition to a salad so I made some croutons using a slice of brown bread, drizzled with olive oil and roasted in the oven at 200C for about 7-8 minutes. I fiddled a bit with the sauce and added a little mustard and one tiny clove of garlic. It was delicious! The mmmmm-factor was very high here, so Caesar and Cleopatra made a glorious entry onto my list over staples.

Caesar Cleopatra...and I
serves a couple or a hungry single :)

1/2 cos lettuce
1 egg yolk
1/2 tbsp mustard
1 small clove of garlic
2-3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
the juice of half a lemon
1-2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan
1 small grilled, cold, shredded chicken breast
1 avocado
handful of croutons

Make the dressing by whisking the egg yolk adding the mustard and then adding the oil slowly. Whisk again, adding the lemon juice and the garlic. Tear the lettuce into large chunks and dress it with the sauce. Sprinkle over the parmesan, add the chicken bits, avocado and croutons.

stew and polenta

2007-05-21T18:59:00.000+02:00

It´s still cold and windy here so I made my favourite stew this weekend. Lea at n.com has recommended Teresa Lust´s Pass the Polenta for me and I remember reading the first chapter on Amazon. Teresa Lust is telling us the story about how her parents met and how her father was liked and accepted by her mother´s Italian family after his second and third helping of this particular stew.

I fell in love with the story immediately and I wanted to try this dish so badly that I ordered the book at once. As soon as it arrived, I cooked the stew and it has been a staple in my house ever since. There are 14 recipes in the book and this is obviously not a cookbook - it´s more like Ruth Reichl´s or Laurie Colwin´s writings - but my favourite is still the stew and polenta.

I have a special "relationship" to polenta. My grandmother used to cook polenta every day (!) for more than 60 years as my grandfather loved it. He sat by the kitchen table and as the church bell struck noon my granny was serving him his polenta with cold milk or buttermilk. My father loved polenta too and eventually I grew to love this soft, comforting, happy-yellow dish too.

Every time I have this stew, I can´t help thinking of Ms Lust´s story. That, in combination with the tin bowls - like the ones my grandmother used to have - the whole meal turns into a nostalgia evening. It feels like all of her family and mine were sitting around the table, and that is so much nicer than having a meal by myself. This time I had my mother as company and although she is not too keen on polenta, she loved it served with cheese and stew.

In case you decide to read the story and you do get the urge to reproduce this warm and homey stew, here is the recipe.

Stew and Polenta
serves 4

for the stew
2 pounds/900g chuck roast or other stewing meat, trimmed and cut into chunks
2-3 tbsp oil or rendered fat from the meat
1 large onion, cut into thick crescents (I often use 2)
4-5 small cloves of garlic, peeled and slivered
1 bay leaf
1 good pinch each of oregano, thyme and rosemary
1 glass of red wine
16-ounce jar of canned tomatoes, roughly cut, including their liquid (this is 2 cups or 500ml)
2-3 stalks of celery, including their leaves, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
quartered mushrooms, 1 cup/250ml or so, optional (made both with and without the mushrooms, but I preferred it with, as it gave the stew a more rustic taste)
1 turnip, pealed and sliced, optional (sometimes I use parsnip or a chunk of celeriac)
salt and pepper to taste

Dredge the pieces of meat in flour. Heat the oil in a heavy stewpot, add the meat and cook over medium heat until the pieces are browned on all sides.

Stir in the onion, garlic, bay leaf and herbs and continue cooking until the onion is translucent.

Add the vine and tomatoes, and let the stew simmer slowly, covered, for about two hours.

Check the pot occasionally and add water if the liquid has evaporated.

Toward the end of the cooking time, stir in the remaining vegetables and continue braising gently until the vegetables are tender. Season with salt and pepper. Can be made ahead and reheated.

for the polenta
1 cup/250ml polenta
4 cups/1 liter cold water
salt and pepper
a few handfuls freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Stir water, polenta and 1 tsp salt together in a heavy saucepan. Place over a low flame and stir slowly with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot to keep the polenta from sticking. Cook until the mixture thickens and pulls cleanly away from the sides of the pot, and the cornmeal feels tender on the tongue, 30-40 minutes. Stir in the cheese.

Add freshly ground pepper (I never do that) and more salt, if needed, to taste.

to assemble and serve at table

Put thin slices of mozzarella and Gorgonzola cheeses on a serving plate. (Gruyére, fontina or Roquefort work well in this dish, too) Place the cheese plate on the table, along with the pot of stew and the dish of polenta. Diners serve themselves by spooning a mound of polenta onto their plate, followed by slices of the assorted cheeses and spoonfuls of stew.

Enjoy!

friday night snacks

2007-05-18T21:44:00.000+02:00

I have my mum visiting so I´m not going to be long. I have given her some old Hungarian magazines so the crosswords in them will keep her busy for a while ;)
I just wanted to tell you quickly about a recipe I´ve found in delicious.October 1995, Aus edition.

I had a small piece of pumpkin left after making the Pumpkin Salad the other day and I wanted to use it up finally. We have been eating out today but it was about 4 pm and I couldn´t go to bed with an empty stomach but I couldn´t eat anything heavy either. I didn´t change a thing about the recipe but sprinkled some fresh sage leaves on top. Oh, and I used 50ml cream, as I only had a 6cm cutter and my pies would hold less egg-cream mixture. They were just great and I will be making them again.

Open Roast Pumpkin & Feta Pies
Makes 20

350g pumpkin, peeled, cut into 1cm cubes
2 tsp olive oil
3 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
2 eggs
100ml light thickened cream
100g low-fat feta, crumbled
fresh or dried sage leaves (optional)

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease two 12-hole muffin pans. Place pumpkin on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. drizzle with oil and season. Roast for 20 minutes or until cooked.
Cut 20 rounds from the pastry sheets using a 6.5cm cutter. Press into muffin holes to cover base and a little of the sides. Whisk eggs and cream together. Divide pumpkin among rounds, top with 1 teaspoon of egg mixture, then sprinkle with feta. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Cool slightly, then turn out.

drenched ginger & lemon cake

2007-05-15T20:00:00.000+02:00

Drenched Ginger & Lemon Cake

Weather has been quite cold and windy to be May and after a nice spring in April people are pulling out their late-autumn-clothes again. When I got Tamasin´s Weekend Food a week ago, I thought I might wait until next autumn or winter with trying this cake, but this weather "entitled" me to make it now.

Actually this was kind of a project, because I haven´t seen stem ginger in syrup in Sweden, so I started to look on the web for a recipe . I´ve found a pretty easy one that only uses sugar, sliced ginger and water and all you have to do is to bring it to a boil and then simmer until it thickens. And so I did. It´s just that I didn´t have a clue what it should look or taste like as I have never had that but in the end I did have some ginger syrup.

Made the cake yesterday evening and I couldn´t really wait but had to try. I expected it to taste more gingery and warming but instead it was lemony, tart and cool (keeping in mind that I loooove lemons). There is a possibility of course that my ginger syrup was a weakling, so would I get hold of some authentic ginger syrup, I think I would give it one more chance. I guess this won´t keep too well, as this evening the cake felt already a bit compact and dry. Would you like to make a nice, moist lemon cake, I would say give it a go. If you are looking for a ginger fix, keep on looking.

lamb mechoui with pumpkin salad

2007-05-12T19:03:00.000+02:00

Last time I made lamb chops I used one of Nigella´s recipes from Forever Summer. It was marinated in cumin and yogurt and then grilled in the oven. Unfortunately, it wasn´t my kind of flavour combination, so yesterday when it was time for lamb chops again, I wanted to try something new.

I ploughed through the indexes of my cookbooks and I finally I settled for the Lamb Mechoui by Sam and Sam Clark. I was happy to try something from Casa Moro as I´ve had that book for more than a year but only cooked one recipe from it (which BTW turned out great!). What cought my interest were the spices used, because they reminded me very much of the Hungarian kitchen. Just think of gulyás with salt, pepper, paprika and cumin and you can´t find anything more Hungarian! Now I was really curious, how could something taste Moroccan when you use a Hungarian spice combination?

I started to understand as soon I opened the cumin that I bought in a Middle Eastern shop. Smelled completely different from the cumin I was used to! I needed to investigate this, so I turned to my books for some help. It turned out that this misunderstanding was based on my ignorance. I took it for granted that the cumin was the same spice that is called kummin in Swedish, Kümmel in German, kömény in Hungarian. Well, it wasn´t.

Carum Carvi(Latin) = caraway seeds(Eng), kummin(Swe), Kümmel(Ger), kömény(Hun)
Cuminum Cyminum (Latin) = cumin(Eng), spiskummin(Swe), Kreuzkümmel(Ger), római kömény(Hun)

So this was the end of my theory about Hungarian spices in Moroccan food :D We use caraway seeds in Hungarian cooking and Moroccans use cumin. Are you still with me? I wouldn´t blame you if you got tired on the way to Cumin-land...now back to the recipe.

The Clarks first tried these chops in Marrakech when visiting an outdoor market few kilometres outside the city.

Lamb Mechoui with Cumin and Paprika Salt
serves 2

1 tbsp whole cumin seeds, freshly ground
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp hot paprika
1/2 tbsp seasalt, roughly crumbled
6-8 lamb chops
20 g butter, melted

Mix the spices and salt together in a bowl. When you are ready to grill the chops, brush them with the melted butter, sprinkle liberally with half the cumin mixture and throw them on a smoking griddle pan or a barbecue that is not too hot or place under a hot grill in the oven.

According to Sam and Sam you will need 5-8 minutes either side for pink, turning once or twice. I used a griddle pan and in 8 minutes the chops were well done!

Serve immediately with some of the remaining cumin salt on the side. This is delicious on it´s own with bread and/or with a Moroccan salad.

Since I am trying to cut down on farinaceous food (don´t say a word, cakes don´t count) I decided to serve this with salad, no bread.

I chose the salad from the same book, and really it was mostly because I did have a huge slice of pumpkin in my fridge that waited to be used.

Pumpkin Salad
serves 2

1/2 kg pumpkin or butternut squash, trimmed and cut into large chunks
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
a sprinkling of caster sugar (optional)
sea salt and black pepper

Preheat oven to 220C/425F/Gas7
Put pumpkin chunks in a large mixing bowl and add the spices and olive oil and toss the pumpkin pieces until they are lightly coated. Season with salt and pepper. Place on a roasting tray in the hot oven for a good 20-30 minutes.

Remove and cool a little before mashing. Check the seasoning, including the cinnamon. If the pumpkins are not particularly sweet, add a little caster sugar and if the mixture is very thick, thin it down with a little hot water.

I didn´t use any sugar, because although I have a sweet tooth I prefer my savoury dishes not too sweet. Also I didn´t add any hot water, just had the pumpkin as a mash. This salad is good with lamb or among a selection of cooked salads.

This was a very delicious meal, it really had a Moroccan feel about it from the first second I started to mix the spices. The chops were well done but still juicy and had a smokey flavour so I almost felt like standing up and pretending I am on a market place having a quick meal. This is something I will definitely make again, now that summer is on it´s way (in the northern hemisphere anyway) but next time I´ll have some nice, fresh flat bread to go with. Finish the meal with a glass of strong peppermint tea.

(These glasses I bought in a box and they were so strategically wrapped that I just didn´t see how over the top they were! LOL It´s crazy what you sometimes can find in Middle Eastern stores)

i´ve been tagged...

2007-05-12T10:15:00.000+02:00

I have been tagged by two lovely bloggers and virtual friends Lisa and Pistachio and I don´t know what the right procedure is in this situation. I accept both, thank you girls but I find it hard to come up with something that could be both interesting AND relevant for a food blog.
Anyways, here it goes:

1. My favourite comfort food has, as long as I can remember, been
softboiled eggs with a big knob of butter, salt and a slice of bread cut in cubes, mixed in a large mug.

2. I am székely by origin and in case you are wondering what that is, here is some info: The Székely people (German: Szekler, Latin: Sicul), are a Hungarian ethnic group mostly living in the counties of Harghita, Covasna and Mures in Romania.
The Székely are of uncertain origins. A widespread theory asserts that they descend from the warrior tribe lands, on which the Magyars soon settled, along frontier mountains to defend against invasions from Tatars and other menacing people from the east. (The above facts have left their imprints on our food habits)

3. I have 4 o´clock tea every day, a cuppa and a slice of cake, biscuit, muffin or whatever I have baked that week.

4. I prefer eating the main meal of the day at lunchtime, between 1-2 p m. In the evening I only have something light as poor knights with peppermint tea, fruit or yogurt with walnuts and honey. Hkrrrmmm....tea with a biscuit sometimes...but that IS light.

5. For the last three years I haven´t been able to tolerate any

other color then white in my apartment. Well, almost. The only other colors are a few items in light blue and other (not too sweet!) pastels, my plants and my books. However, lately it feels like I´m about to let in a little color into my life :)

Finally I would like to tag Caroline at Bibliocook, Shaun at Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow and Anna at Morsels & Musings. The other bloggers I would´ve like to tag has been tagged recently.

Here are the guidelines:

List five random facts/habits about yourself

Choose another five bloggers to tag and list their names in your blog

Leave your five tagged bloggers comments to notify them of their tagging along with directions.

fish all over the pla(i)ce

2007-05-09T12:08:00.000+02:00

I don´t like fish. It tastes too fishy. Strange, isn´t it? But whatever I do, I don´t seem to escape from them. Fish, I mean. I bought Elle Food & Wine yesterday, and there you go, a whole spread about fish and all kinds of fishy recipes. Fish is good for you, eat fish. As if I didn´t know that. The Ministry of Food in Sweden recommends fish three times a week for a healthy living! Jeez, all the fish I haven´t eaten during these years makes me wonder if I´m just going to drop dead any minute now ? Seems like I have very healthy neighbourgs though, because it smells fried fish every other day on the stairs of my house. Yuck!

OK, I´m joking, am not that scared, but it got me thinking. Why don´t I like fish? The very simple answer could be that I haven´t been eating fish growing up in a mountain town, besides some plaice and that only during the summer months. We don´t have lot of fish in our food culture. My mothers culinary skills - when it came to preparing fish - were exhausted in rolling the plaice in a mixture of flour, salt and paprika powder and frying it in sunflower oil. (Sorry Mum!) If she wanted to have some variation she used polenta instead of flour. Actually this is a good way to cook plaice, I still find it too fishy if prepared in another way. See Thai-style curried fish when I tried to do something else with the plaice...nice but not a winner.

I might have to put some anaesthetics on my taste buds or spice those little fishies up a bit and trick myself to eat fish at least once a week. So I decided to start a project and try to find recipes that make fish edible (for me).

I´m a bit chicken though, so I´ll start my fishy life with a safe card, an old favourite of mine (yes, actually I do love this particular fish-dish). Oh, I just looove saying fish! Fish, fish, fish, fishy fishes, fishie. Right.

This is very simple, you don´t even need a recipe. For 1 person you will need a generous knob of butter, 1 salmon fillet, 150-200ml cream and 1 smallish leek.

Take three

Melt the butter and brown the salmon fillet on both sides, it won´t take many minutes but it´s a bit up to you how you like it. Transfer salmon to a plate, try to keep it warm. Use the fishy :P butter to cook the leek until softened and it develops a wonderful sweetness. Then pour the cream over the leek and let it bubble away for a minute or so. Put the salmon back, let it be warm again and serve with plain cooked potatoes. Doesn´t look fabulous (in the contrary, looks very boring) but this is a great weekday meal.

I love the sweet taste of caramelized leek. Actually I reckon leek and cream is a winner combo, I used to make a quick pasta dish with fried bacon, leek and cream sauce with lots of pepper. Yum! Now I no longer can eat pasta, I do that sometimes anyway, but then I have to take the consequences...

So, what about you guys? How often do you have fish? Is there anyone having it three times a week?

a taste of yellow II.

2007-05-06T17:33:00.005+02:00

Limoncello Cupcake

I´m out in last minute - as usual. Few days ago I posted about a blog event called A taste of yellow when I made the Torta al Limone but that just wasn´t yellow enough. Since then I have been cooking a few more yellow dishes, like an asparagus soup and the Limoncello Cupcakes that will be my contribution.

I know that everybody is blogging about asparagus at the moment and that is not that peculiar really as the very short asparagus season has just started and everybody wants to exploit it as much as possible. I have seen various recipes for Asparagus soup (take a look at Freya´s from Writing at the Kitchen Table here) and I´ve also found one in my new Tamasin´s Kitchen Bible.

Most recipes use creme fraiche or sour creme but also shallots and even though they have only a very subtle onion taste, I was afraid that they will overpower the asparagus. After looking all over the net and my cookbooks and magazines, finally I found one that I thought I would like. I found it in a Swedish food magazine called Mat och Vänner (Food and Friends) and the recipe comes from a restaurateur on Gotland (a Swedish island).

The soup is absolutely delicious! I know I have been making lots of soups and salads lately (I should consider renaming my blog to Soup-girl :P) but this one is really a good one.

Asparagus Soup

serves 4 (yeah, right, if you serve it in small sauce bowls, it´s more like 2 for me)

150g green asparagus
200ml chicken stock (I used a very light vegetable stock)
200ml cream
100ml white wine
salt, pepper

Trim asparagus but keep four tips for garnishing. Cut the stems into 2-3 cm pieces and simmer in the vegetable/chicken stock and wine for 10 minutes.

Add the cream and reheat to just under boiling point. Mix it with a handmixer and sieve. Season to taste.

Steam the four asparagus tips for about 3 minutes. Whisk the soup with a cappuccino whisk so that it builds a thick scum before serving. (I don´t own one as you can see, so I tried with a handwhisk but without any success)

The Limoncello Cupcakes recipe I´ve found at 52 Cupcakes last summer and have been baking them a few times since. These cupcakes have the perfect combination of sweet and sour and they are a bit chewy somehow. I only made a half a batch this time because I find they don´t keep too well for more than three days. I seem to substitute buttermilk with yogurt a lot, as yogurt is what I always have in my fridge.

I wanted these cupcakes to be so pretty but the cupcake cases just didn´t want to stick to the cupcakes...

Non-stick cupcake cases :P

So, what is a poor girl to do then? Hmmm... either put them in new cases:

...or serve them on small plates:

Lemon Cupcakes with Limoncello Glaze

makes 10 cupcakes

240ml/1 cup flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

180 ml/3/4 cup sugar

60g unsalted butter, room temp.

2 large eggs

90ml buttermilk

60ml/1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp finely grated lemon peel

Glaze and topping:

90ml (or more) powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 1/2 tablespoons Limoncello

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3/4 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

3-4 large strawberries or 10 raspberries

Preheat over to 170 C. Line 10 cupcake pan with liners. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar and butter in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time.

Beat in dry ingredients in 3 additions alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions. Beat in lemon juice and lemon peel.

Divide batter among liners.Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 15-18 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to racks.

Glaze: Stir icing sugar, butter, limoncello, lemon juice, and grated lemon peel in small saucepan over low heat until butter melts and glaze comes to simmer. Whisk in additional powdered sugar by tablespoonfuls if glaze is very thin (I always need more). Spoon 1 teaspoon warm glaze over each warm cupcake. Cool cupcakes completely. Arrange 1 strawberry on top of each cupcake. Drizzle remaining limoncello glaze over them. Let cupcakes stand until glaze sets, about 2 hours. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.

tamasin x2

2007-05-04T18:12:00.000+02:00

Now I´ve had a bit more time to look into my new Tamasin books and I have to say that this far Tamasin´s Weeken Food is leading in spite of it´s only 140 pages as opposed to Tamasin´s Kitchen Bible with 510 pages.

I used to think that the more recipes and pics the better but now I see that that´s not always the case. To start with I like the layout of Weekend Food better, it´s somehow prettier, more romantic or perhaps the pics are more summery. The way the book is divided in chapters like Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday lunch, Tea time I find very appealing. It says a lot about what type of recipes you find in the respective chapter, whether it is time consuming or easy, quick dishes.

According to Tamasin her "bible" is more bold, vibrant, arresting, simple, elegant and sexy. Well, it might be all those things but I just don´t like it. And how many recipes do I girl needs for mayo and Creme Brulé ? No, I´m not being really fair here. This is what it states to be: a basic cookbook and a very versatile one actually, with Geranium Creme and Vietnamese Dipping Sauce in the Classic Recipes section. Hmm, I think I need to give it more time before deciding how I feel about it.

In the Weekend Food I have bookmarked at least ten-fifteen recipes!
To give you a taste there is Baked Cod with Romesco Sauce and Greek Potatoes, White Chocolate Tart with Raspberries, Kirkham´s Lancashire Cheese and Apple Tart, Almond and Orange Florentines, Cod Charmoula, Drenched Ginger and Lemon Cake, Daube of Pork with Apricots, Pineapple and Walnut Upside-Down Cake, Orange-Scented Ricotta Cake. Nothing groundbreaking perhaps but I find these recipes doable. I also like that she gives ideas what to serve the different recipes with. It makes my life so much easier, since I´m lacking fantasy when it comes to this matter.

The only negative reflection I have about this hardback edition is that this seems to be a miniature version of the first hardback and paperback editions. It´s really annoying and hard to read. So if you want to buy this book, I would recommend you to buy it in the original size.

I wanted to try something easy so I made Easy Roast Tomato Soup with Cheese and Thyme Scones from the Weekend Food. I used plum tomatoes instead of cheery tomatoes because I find it has more flavour.

Roasted tomatoes and garlic just out of the oven - smelled heavenly

While roasting the tomatoes I prepared the scones. I substituted milk for yogurt, I like the tartness it gives and it is healthier too.
The soup turned out nicely but nothing that rocked my world, however the scones were a hit! These I´m going to make again, they were very nice with a plain cup of tea. Since I can´t eat a whole batch in one day (well, actually I could...) I tried to freeze a couple of them. They freeze quite well, I pulled the frozen ones out in the morning, let them thaw for couple of hours and then put them in the microwave only for a few seconds just to warm them slightly. Very nice. Also at room temperature, without the microwaving part they were delish!

Cheese and Thyme Scones
Makes 12 scones

50g butter
225g strong white flour

a pinch of sea salt
1 tbsp baking powder

110g strong cheddar
1 tsp English mustard powder
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

a pinch of cayenne pepper
150ml of yogurt (or milk)

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Rub the butter into the flour, salt and baking powder. Add 2/3 of the coarsely grated cheese and the mustard, thyme and cayenne and the yogurt. You might not need it all but you want a soft dough. Roll it out into 1.5 cm thickness, then cut with an upturned glass or pastry cutter. Put the scones on a baking tray lined with baking parchment, sprinkle with the remaining cheese and bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for five minutes before you eat hot with lashings of butter.

Next time I make the scones, I´ll try to put in an extra 1/2 tsp of mustard powder as I think I would like it a bit more spicy but it was very nice as it was.

torta al limone - a taste of yellow

2007-05-01T23:50:00.000+02:00

There is something I would like to draw your attention to. You migth have seen it already, it´s about a blog event called A Taste of Yellow. Our fellow blogger Barbara over at Winos and Foodies invites food blogers to participate in LiveStrong Day by making some type of dish containing yellow food.

"LIVESTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's (LAF) grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the country. LIVESTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday, May 16."

I thought I will try to bake something if I´ll have the time somewhere next week but I guess this tart that I made yesterday wouldn´t be all too wrong either.

Main ingredient as yellow as can be

Four or five years ago I have been visiting restaurant Sassi´s in Gothenburg and all I could remember of the whole meal was a wonderful Torta al Limone. I have been trying to get hold of the recipe - this far without any luck - but I haven´t given up yet, having a friend who knows the owner of the restaurant, but he just doesn´t seem too willing to share...
Biggest problem is that there are numerous recipes for Torta al Limone and I don´t even remember what the cake looked or tasted like anymore, besides that it was divine.

Anyway, I decided to try different recipes until I eventually exclaim: "this is the one!". The first one I tried is from Carlotta - fellow forummer on nigella.com - who has kindly translated the fallowing recipe for me. Thank you Carlotta :)

Torta al Limone

For the pastry:
250g flour 100g sugar
125g butter, softened
pinch of salt
4 tbsp milk
1 egg

For the filling:

50g sugar
2 eggs, separated
50g butter
juice of 2 lemons

Place the butter, flour, salt and sugar in a food processor and pulse till the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg ans milk and process until the dough comes together. Gather into as ball, wrap in clingfilm and put into the fridge for 1-2 hours.

Lightly butter a 24 cm tart tin with a removable base. Roll out the pastry and put it into the tin. Trim the edge and with the trimmings make a edge all around. Preheat the oven to 180°. Line the pastry case with baking parchment, fill it with baking beans and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and the beans and cook for another 10 minutes. Let it cool.

Make the filling beating the sugar and egg yolks until light and creamy. Cook in a pan over barely simmering water at low heat for 10 minutes. Add the cubed butter and cook for 3 minutes. Add the lemon juice, mix and cook for another 5 minutes. Cool a little. Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff, then fold them into the cream mixture.

Pour the cream into the pastry shell, dust it with icing sugar and cook in the preheated oven to 250° for 5 minutes. Cool and serve.

Torta al Limone

Recipe says you should sprinkle with icing sugar and then put in the oven for 5 minutes at 250C. Well, that is exactly what I did but the top didn´t look very pretty, it started to burn very quickly and since the filling was still very soft I couldn´t even lay a bakind parchment on it. I guess you could just try is without the sugar-sprinkling part.

This lemon tart is very nice but this just isn´t IT... So the search goes on...

last week´s "smörgåsbord"

2007-04-30T15:23:00.000+02:00

This week and weekend I´ve been working a lot, same as last week. I´ve come home late every night, didn´t have the time to plan my meals and even less to do any shopping. So, what have I eaten this week? Anything to blog about but the absence of a proper meal?

To start with I´ve had tons of rye crackers (the famous Swedish "knäckebröd"), one day I made Nigellas spaghetti carbonara with white wine and no cream (this is actually my favourite carbonara recipe and recipe is in How To Eat). I´ve had a Greek salad and also I´ve tried to get the most out of a piece of chorizo I´ve had lying around in the fridge for a while. (LOL That sounded really appetizing, didn´t it? )

First time I made this simple salad it was about two weeks ago and I liked it a lot so I made it again. It´s a Jill Dupleix recipe ( can´t really be called a recipe, I guess it´s more an idea) and it comes from her Simple Food. I´m not a real salad-person but I liked this because of the combination of the sweet, sour and spicy. Also, even though it´s "only" a salad but it felt more like a warm meal but lighter.

chorizo and sweet potato salad

Cut 1 large or 2 smallish sweet potatoes and 4 chorizo sausages (it would be fun to know how long that really is.I have a chorizo that is 30 cm long and somehow I don´t think she meant 4 of those...) thickly on the diagonal, brush with oil and grill until sizzling. Whisk 1 tbsp lemon juice and 2 tbsp olive oil with 1 tbsp chopped parsley, then toss with 200 g rocket leaves. Pile the potatoes and sausages on top.
Easy peasy and very tasty.

Another salad I tried was the Orange and Fennel salad from Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. I must say that I wasn´t too impressed. It looked nice and summery but I don´t think the flavours complemented each other very well and it was just blend.

nice but pricey

2007-04-25T17:15:00.000+02:00

I have been waiting for the asparagus season since the end of last summer! I know I should be enjoying the abundance of every season but I loooove asparagus. Leafing through Twelve by Tessa Kiros made me wish I lived in Italy, because down there the season starts already in March. (Actually, leafing through this book is all I´ve done, I just never seem to be inspired to cook anything. So any recommendations are more than welcome.)

After almost three weeks of flirting with those beautiful green shoots, yesterday I decided to buy a bunch of Spanish asparagus. They were a bit pricey but I just couldn´t resist anymore.
I decided to cook the marinated chicken on a bed of caramelized asparagus from an old Aussie delicious magazine.
I made the marinade and the parsley sauce last night and left everything in the fridge over the night and this evening when I came home from work, I just had to pull the chicken out, heat the griddle pan and within 15 minutes I had a delish dinner on the table. This is exactly how it should be all weekdays and my intention is to find recipes for real fast but flavourful food.

The recipe was originally for 4 servings but as this blog is about tea for one, I converted it to suit my needs. Also the marinade uses evo oil fro the marinade but I want that to burn on the griddle pan so I use frying olive oil there instead and evo oil only in for the sauce. I also used more asparagus than the original recipe - and it wouldn´t hurt with still more - since I want to have the veggie as a side, not only as decoration. I guess for many of you this isn´t really new, the lemon, parsley, garlic combination is a well proven one but I can warmly recommend this dish. If you are doubling it, it might still be enough with 1/2 garlic for the parsley sauce.

chicken marinated in lemon & garlic with asparagus
serves 1
by Curtis Stone

25 ml olive oil
zest of 1/2 lemon
1 garlic clove, roughly crushed
1 tsp chopped sage leaves
1 chicken breast fillet
7 thick asparagus spears, trimmed, halved lengthways
10-15g unsalted butter

parsley and lemon sauce

juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
25 ml evo oil

Combine olive oil, lemon zest, garlic, sage and chicken in a shallow dish, cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
For sauce, place ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine. Season to taste, then refrigerate until ready to serve.
Heat griddle pan or barbecue to medium heat and cook chicken over heat for 4-5 minutes. Turn and cook for further 8 minutes or until cooked through. Transfer to a plate and cover loosely with foil and rest for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, blanch the asparagus in a saucepan of boiling salted water for 30 seconds, then drain well.
Place the butter on the pan and top with the asparagus. Cook over medium-high heat for 1-2 minutes or until asparagus has lightly caramelised, then season to taste.
Carve chicken breast into 3 pieces and place on a serving plate with the asparagus. Drizzle some of the sauce around the plate and serve the remaining sauce separately.

retro cookies

2007-04-24T21:03:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, somehow I always want what I can´t get. Around Christmas last year everybody on nigella.com was posting about and baking Nigella´s Cranberry and White Chocolate Chip Cookies. I wasn´t too interested until it came to my knowledge that the German, Swedish and Norwegian editions of Feast are not complete (at least 15 recipes are missing) and then suddenly I became very greedy. I wanted to know which recipes I was missing out on and I wanted to have them. One of the forummers was kind enough to share the recipe and I decided to try it. To start with, I couldn´t find dried cranberries but my mother came - once again - to my rescue by bringing me around 400g of frozen berries.

Yesterday evening I just felt for something sweet and I came to remember the frozen cranberries. First problem was that I didn´t have any white chocolate and shops has already closed so I had to use milk chocolate. I didn´t defrost the berries as I didn´t want to crush them when folding into the mixture.

The cookies came out nicely but even though I halved the amount of caster sugar, I still find them too sweet. Next time - because it is going to be a next time - I´ll try to use dark chocolate to see how that alters the taste.

When I sat down to play around with the pics I just got the feeling of sitting
in a coffe shop in New England (whishful thinking?) back in the 40ies, 50ies and
that led me to investigate (not too deeply though) when the choc chip cookies
were "invented".
This is what I´ve found:

"Ruth Graves Wakefield was the woman responsible for coming up with the concoction. In 1930, Ruth and her husband Kenneth Wakefield purchased a Cape Cod-style toll house located halfway between Boston and New Bedford, on the outskirts of Whitman, Massachusetts. the Wakefields decided to build on the house's tradition, turning into a lodge and calling it the Toll House Inn. Ruth cooked home-made meals and baked for guests of the inn, and as she improved upon traditional Colonial recipes, her incredible desserts began attracting people from all over New England.
One of Ruth's favorite recipes was for Butter Drop Do cookies. As she prepared the batter one day she discovered she had run out of baker's chocolate. She found a semi-sweet chocolate bar that had been given to her by Andrew Nestle, and so she cut it into tiny bits and added them to the dough, expecting them to melt as the cookies baked in the oven. However, the chocolate did not melt. Instead, it held its shape and softened to a delicately creamy texture. Needless to say, the cookies Ruth had created became very popular with guests at the inn, and soon her recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, as well as other papers in the New England area."

For those of you out there who doesn´t own Feast or have a Swedish or other-than-english edition, here is the recipe.

cranberry and white chocolate cookies

140gr flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tbs salt
75gr rolled oats
125gr soft unsalted butter
75gr dark brown sugar
100gr caster sugar (I used 50gr)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
75gr dried cranberries
50gr pecans, chopped
140gr white choc chips

Preheat to the gas mark 4/180c. Measure out the flour, baking powder, salt and rolled oats into a bowl. Put the butter and sugars into another bowl and beat together until creamy-this is obviously easier with an electric mixer of some kind, but you just need to put some muscle into it otherwise-then beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the flour, baking powder, salt and oat mixture and then fold in the cranberries, chopped pecan and chocolate chips or white chocolate, chopped into small dice. Set the bowl of biscuit dough in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into a ball with your hands, and then place them on a lined or greased baking sheet and squish the dough balls down with a fork. You may need two baking sheets or be prepared to make these in two batches. Cook for 15 minutes; when ready, the cookies will be tinged a pale gold, but be too soft to lift immediately off the tray, so leave the tray on a cool surface and let them harden for about 5 minutes. Remove with a spatula or whatever to cool fully on a wire rack.

mastika ice cream

2007-04-22T00:34:00.002+02:00

Falling Cloudberries is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I´ve ever seen. I love everything about it: the recipes, the photography but even the quality of the paper is first class. The moment I open the book I am transferred to the places presented in it. Needless to say, my favourites are Greece and Cyprus and I have cooked most recipes from these two chapters. I love the Moussaka, although I prefer it with a bit more cinnamon, the Spanakopita where I would use a bit more Feta, the Pork in Red Wine with Dried Coriander Seeds. Oh, and not to forget the wonderfully smooth Buttermilk Pudding with Watermelon and Rose Petal Jam, I can really recommend it with or without the jam.
A few weeks ago I made the Yoghurt & Semolina Cake and Tessa recommends to serve it with the not-too-sweet mastika ice cream. The cake was delicious without the ice cream and I don´t even think I would have liked it with something that has such a distinct flavour - as it turned out - this ice cream has.

To come across mastic wasn´t an easy task, but fortunately I could locate a Greek grocery shop in the same city my mother lives and so she picked some up for me. It came in a tiny plastic bag and looked like small crystals. According to Wikipedia, the mastika is the resin of the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus) indigenous to the Mediterranean islands.
"The mastic tree thrives especially well in the southern part of the island of Chios, due to the mild climate and characteristics of the soil. Mastic trees found elsewhere, even in other parts of Chios, do not produce mastic gum. The plant itself is known for its lemony balsam-like smell, which can permeate the air of the 'Mastichochoria', the villages on Chios that produce mastic gum. Interestingly, the ancient Egyptians used mastic gum, imported from Chios, in the incense they burned as a tonic for exhaustion and to restore mental clarity. Many modern researchers have confirmed some of the traditional uses of mastic gum, including its roles in oral health and healthy digestive functioning."

This is a very simple ice cream recipe, no custard making involved. The recipe calls for mastic, milk, sugar and pouring cream. In Sweden we have coffee cream, cooking cream, "in-between-cream" or whipping cream with fat contents of 12%, 15%, 27% and 40% respectively. I figured pouring cream would be one of the low-fat ones but I decided to go with whipping cream. I don´t have an ice cream machine and very often the sorbets turn out as granitas, even though I´m whisking vigorously with an electric handwhisker. (I found this new brand of cream the other day and as I´m crazy about nice labels and packaging, I just had to buy it. This is soooo cute!)
After mixing all the ingredients I had to have a taste! Well, how should I put this? It was a very unfamiliar flavour to me so I couldn´t really decide how I liked it. I let it cool slightly and then tried again. Umm, still that hmm... interesting taste. After several spoonfuls I decided to divide the mixture, keep one part as it was and add some flavour to the other. Tessa suggests the addition of a few drops of rose water or liqueur, so I went with the rose water. I added 1 tsp to half the mixture, tried it but there was still something missing. I remembered seeing a mastika ice cream recipe by another chef but I just couldn´t recall who or where it was. What I think I remembered was that the flavouring there was rose water and cardamom, so I went with it. To be able to tell the difference between the two flavours easier, I added some purple food colouring to the rose water one. I would have preferred a pink one but I didn´t have any. I put it in the freezer and whisked it every hour, but it took three hours until it started freezing.
Finally the big moment came (drumrolls, please) it was time to try it. The verdict of the jury is as follows:
The mastika ice cream might be very good but I just couldn´t get used to the taste. The rose water flavoured was a much nicer. It was milder and a lot more enjoyable.
The texture however was nice, not too fat, not too icy, so what I would definitely try next time is something I read about on Ilana´s blog I love risotto, namely the coconut ice cream. Mmmm, looking forward to it and in the mean time, I´ll just have one more bowl of my very nice (not) mastika ice cream.

Some leftover mastic, anyone?

Edit: OK, now (a week later) I have finished this batch of ice cream and I´ve changed my mind. When I finally got used to the taste, I actually started enjoying the flavour.

Edit again: after beeing in Greece this summer, I had mastic ice cream again and I must say that now I love the flavour. Definitely worth making it and being more open when first tasting it than I was...

For those of you who asked for the recipe, here it comes:

Mastica Ice Cream

serves 8

1 flat tsp mastic granules

1 cup superfine sugar

2 cups milk

2 cups heavy whipping cream

Put the mastic with a tsp of the sugar into a grinder and grind to a fine powder. Heat the milk with the remaining sugar and powdered mastic, stirring until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat, let cool a bit whisking now and then, and mix in the cream. Transfer to a bowl, cover and put in the freezer. After an hour remove the bowl from the freezer, give it a whisk and put it back in the freezer again. Whisk again after another couple of hours. When it's nearly firm, give it one last whisk and let it set until it's firm.

Enjoy!

a sicilian love affair

2007-04-19T08:57:00.000+02:00

No, I haven´t met a Sicilian prince. I´m just being a drama queen. Today I found a recipe that made me go "mm" while eating. That is a kind of rating for me as the Michelin guide for a gourmet. A short mm is like 2 stars, long mm accompanying every bite is 5 stars.
Several years ago, the first time I saw Nigella Bites, I wasn´t impressed at all. All that mm-ing and finger licking felt a bit vulgar and in my opinion didn´t have anything to do with food. Back then I didn´t enjoy eating either, I thought eating was something you did to survive. Well, times are changing and so do we. Today The Goddess is one of my greatest inspirations and today I understand that food and cooking can be a passion and eating a pleasure.

Two months ago I bought Cucina Siciliana by Clarissa Hyman along with six other cookbooks and I haven´t really had time to explore it properly. I browsed through all seven books the same day but it was like overeating on candy, I couldn´t really enjoy it towards the end. Last weekend I pulled out the book again and started to read. I´ve never heard of Clarissa Hyman before but she has obviously been writing for Food and Travel, Country Living and The Times. I found this and I think it says a lot about what to expect of her books:
"It is a way in which to understand different peoples and societies: why they eat, what they eat, how they eat, when they eat all contributes to a picture of a certain society at a certain point in time. That is why I find writing about food eternally fascinating, never boring, always revelatory. You take a slice of bread, for example, and can end up learning about religious practices, superstitions, botanical classifications, farming methods, chemistry or social history. And that's before you even begin to butter it!" - Clarissa Hyman
The book starts with wonderful pictures and the author presenting the geography, history, food-history and culture of Sicily studded with anecdotes about monks and Mafiosos and proverbs that reflect the Sicilian mentality.
The recipe part is divided in sections like Breakfast Pastries and Ices, Lunchtime, Street food and Snacks, Dinner and Basics where she gives recipes for Tomato Pasta, Roast Peppers, Fresh Ricotta to name a few. She is not as chatty as Nigella but every section is introduced with a bit more history and most of the recipes with some story about either ingredients, the market, whom she got the recipe from and under what circumstances. Some of the recipes come from "regular" housemothers, others from restaurant owners and there are even some adaptations from other food writers. After looking through this book, I added her other two books - The Jewish Kitchen and The Spanish Kitchen - to my Amazon wish list.

Today I made the polpette with white wine, lemon and bay leaves. As I already revealed, I loved it! I´m not a big meatball eater but these were so delicious. There wasn´t any serving suggestions and if I´m not totally wrong, Italians don´t often mix proteins with carbs. But hey, these people are not Italian, they are Sicilians! And I am not Italian, and I need carbs to feel that the meal is complete. I haven´t had potatoes for several months because of a stomach condition I had but now it was about time to try it again. I remembered that Nigella has got a mash with potatoes and sweet potatoes in Feast, so I decided to do something like that. I cooked and mashed potatoes, mixed with salt but didn´t want to add milk, butter or olive oil, also I didn´t want it to overpower the meatballs since I didn´t know what to expect taste wise. I just added a few tbsp of the "sauce" that I served the meatballs with and some salt. This meal was a success and it is definitely going to make it to my " Top 10".

meatballs with white wine, lemon and bay leaves

250g minced beef
50g grated Parmesan
50g dried breadcrumbs
4 tbs fresh parsley, chopped
Zest of 1/2 lemon
Salt
1 medium egg
25g plain flour (I used spelt)
4 bay leaves, torn
Olive oil
1 glass of white wine
Hot water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Lemon slices and bay leaves, to decorate

Place minced meat,cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon zest and salt in a bowl and mix together with the egg.
Form the mixture into small balls, each about the size of a plum (some Sicilian cooks dip their hands in white wine before they roll out the polpette). Gently roll in the flour until lightly coated all over.
Heat a thin layer of oil in a pan large enough to take all the meatballs without over-crowding. Fry the meatballs over a medium heat for about 10 minutes until nicely browned on both sides. Give them a gentle shake now and then to make sure they're not sticking either to the pan or each other.
Add the wine, turn the heat up a bit, shake the pan so the wine distributes itself fairly evenly and let the alcohol burn off for a few minutes. Then pour in enough hot water to just cover the meatballs. Add the bay leaves. Leave to bubble away over a gentle to medium heat until the sauce is well reduced and starting to become syrupy.
Add the lemon juice and cook a few minutes more.
Remove the meatballs with a slotted spoon. Place in a serving dish - spoon over some of the sticky pan juices if wished - and decorate with whole bay leaves and wafer-thin slices of lemon.

Note: It took a bit longer for the sauce to thicken, it might have been that I used spelt instead of plain flour (although I´ve used less water), so I removed the meatballs a bit earlier, let the sauce simmer for a while and then put the meatballs back and let them be warm.

thai-style curried fish

2007-04-16T22:20:00.000+02:00

Today I´m - thank God - not in a philosophical mood. Today I will tell you strictly about my lunch. My freezer is packed with vegetables and fish and meat and ice-cream so I thought it would be nice to make some place in there. Also, it wouldn´t hurt to use some food up so that I could stuff the freezer with fresh things again. It must be my eastern European upbringing that makes me such a hoarder but I don´t feel good until both my freezer and my fridge are full. The fact that I´m single and don´t eat that much doesn´t even cross my mind.
So yesterday I pulled out some nice plaice fillets with two different recipes in mind. The first one I´ve found in Tessa Kiros´ Falling Cloudberries and the other one in an old issue of delicious. Since Tessa´s recipe is an oven baked story, I didn´t want to start the oven only for one portion. Anyway, I decided to go with the delicious.recipe. I tinkered a bit with the recipe, halved the fish and reduced the sauce with one quarter but kept the amount of vegetables.
I see people with chronic complaints on a daily basis and very often one of the main problems is a very low ph value. I don´t want to become obsessed about my food but there are many shortcuts that you can use. Both zucchini and carrots are basic (as in ph) so those are good vegetables to eat more of. Also I substituted caster sugar with brown sugar.

thai-style curried fish

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 tbs vegetable oil
2 carrots, cut into wafer-thin strips
1 zucchini, cut into wafer-thin strips
1-2 tbs Thai red curry paste
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
200 ml coconut milk
2 quite large boneless fish fillets
Coriander leaves, to garnish
Pearl barley, to serve

Method
Heat oil in a fry pan. Stir-fry vegetables for 1-2 minutes, then set aside. Add curry paste to pan, stir for 30 seconds. Add sugar, fish sauce, coconut milk and fish, then simmer for 3-4 minutes until cooked. Return vegetables to the pan to warm through. Garnish with coriander and serve with rice.

I decided to serve the fish with pearl barley instead of the steamed rice. I love basmati rice but barley has got a very low GI index with slow carbohydrates. I started to think about things like this for several months ago, when I noticed that my abdomen would swell like a balloon after the meals. After dieting for a while I realised that my worse enemies were my beloved potatoes, pasta and rice, the common denominator being the high starch content and all of them having high GI indexes).
This was a nice meal but I would have preferred it a bit more spicy.

productive self-pity

2007-04-15T12:09:00.000+02:00

Yaaaay! Spring has come! It´s time to fall in love!

Spring is the time for hope, new beginnings, a fresh start. Since I haven´t been able to locate a subject for my spring ardour, I was sitting in front of my computer on a sunny Sunday morning, all alone, no one to cook a nice breakfast for and I was bored. I have already checked my mail - twice - checked the usual forums where I occasionally participate (yes, most often I´m just lurking) but I found nothing to lift my spirits. I was feeling sorry for myself, thinking about how unfair the world is. What do you mean global warming? Or people who doesn´t have food or water for the day? No, no, I´m talking serious stuff here. It is sooooo unfair that Mr Right hasn´t knocked on my door yet. And, sadly enough, I´m not too interested in Mr Right-nows.
Right, so I was bored to tears. I went to ebay and searched for cookbooks that have been on my wish list for months, actually found three of them, I´ll tell you more about them if I win the bids. Then I started to check out all the food blogs I visit daily, for possible updates and that was when it happened. I suddenly noticed the button on the top of the site: "start new Blog". I heard a loud "reeeeetsch" sound in my head (that was my consciousness splitting) and I heard a new voice in my head: "Must start blog. Must start blog." No, I thought, this is crazy. Me? "Must start blog! Must start blog!"- I heard again, louder this time. Ooookaaay but what for? What am I going to blog about? Sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat, work?
This stirred up a flood of thoughts and made me think of another conversation that I ´ve had not so long ago - this time with a real person - about blogs. (BTW, he is over here trying to save the world and spread some light with his music)

So, why do we blog? Why don´t we see people and talk to them? Yeah, yeah, I´m aware of the fact that this way you can make friends all over the planet in no time at all but don´t we miss the personal contact? And is it possible for the new to coexist with the old? Or does the old have to die to create a breeding bed for the new?
Do we blog because of our egos, our need to show off? Or should I put it in another way? We might do this because we need to find an outlet for our creativity? Like to cook, like to take photos= start a food blog? Or do we just simply need to share our successes and failures, the events of the day with someone?
OK, who has got some answers? I´ll make you a strawberry smoothie if you give me some nice, not too uncomfortable answers :)

Here you go! I have blitzed a big handful of fresh strawberries, 1 tsp brown sugar, 250 ml plain yogurt and 1 tsp rose water to bring out the strawberry flavour. Yum!
I remember my grandmother telling me about how different things were in her youth. She lived in a small village in Transylvania without electricity or any asphalted streets. But she was happy. Never bored. Never contemplating the meaning of life or whether the grass was greener on the other side. I´m not saying that all those things are wrong, I just wonder why we feel like we do today, why so many people are compensating an unhappy life by eating too much, drinking too much, buying too much stuff without needing it? Oh, I almost forgot, must see how it goes with my bidding on ebay! I really need a new cookbook!

Back to my granny. Back then, it wasn´t too unusual not being able to read and write. When someone in the neighbourhood received a letter, they came to my granny and she read it for them. She told me about those long, cold winter evenings when she used to read aloud for the neighbours. These were pleasant but unpretentious gatherings, where my granny sat on the table and read one chapter from some novel every evening and afterwards the women were chatting and the men playing cards. There was also tea, made on herbs they were gathering in springtime in the outskirts of the village or the meadow. Every evening it was someone bringing a cake or cookies for the tea. There were times in the 30ies when they didn´t have food because of the drought. Then they would only have tea. But they went on with their gatherings and I do believe that it was like SPA for their souls.
Perhaps the key was that people were dependent of each other. Today we manage to do everything by ourselves and we take a pride in it. It is a good thing, of course but at the same time it is easier to just turn your back on others with an " I don´t need you!" Need? But what about love ? What about it? Looks like every road leads to Rome :)

Spring has come! It´s time to fall in love! Or start a blog.