domestic sensualist

rainbow cupcakes!

2012-01-24T22:40:00.002+01:00

if you've been on pinterest at all in recent months, you know that rainbow cakes and cupcakes are all the rage. since it's sabin's 11th birthday tomorrow, i just had to jump on the rainbow bandwagon. today, we baked rainbow cupcakes to share with her class (thank goodness in denmark, it's still ok and even encouraged to bring homemade treats to school) and with our friends at the riding club. sabin's best riding buddy actually shares the same birthday, so it's even better!

i had been dutifully pinning rainbow cakes for some time, but was a little shocked to find that most of them called for a box cake (oh the horror!). i guess that would make it slightly easier, but honestly, when a scratch cake is as easy as it is, why on earth settle for box?

i found this recipe and modified it (of course) to fit my local ingredient availability (there's no such thing as self-raising flour in denmark) and the size of the eggs my chickens produce. it's also a remarkably small recipe, so i not only doubled it, i ended up making FOUR batches of the doubled version. i give you my revised rainbow cake here:

rainbow cupcakes

250 grams butter (i always used salted, but you can go with unsalted if you like)

1 cup of sugar (fill your 250ml measuring cup to the top, my metric friends)

5 medium eggs (fresh from under the hen if you can get 'em)

1 generous glug (that would be the technical term) of vanilla

2 cups flour (again, fill your 250ml measuring cup to the top if you're doing metric)

1/2 C (120ml) milk

2 tsp. baking powder

pinch of salt

cream the butter in your mixer, then add the sugar and further cream until it's smooth and light yellow. add your eggs, one at a time and then the vanilla. then add flour (+ baking powder and salt) and milk, alternating until they're well mixed.

separate into 5 smaller bowls to make red, yellow, green, blue and purple - i actually used two full batches for this, to have a good amount of each color and because i was making a lot of cupcakes. because i was making 60 cupcakes in total, i actually made four batches of the above recipe in total - but my cupcakes are pretty tall, so you could get more out of this recipe by putting less of each color in each cupcake. but i started with combining two batches to get started. then, as we worked and realized it wouldn't be enough, we made another batch of batter and added to our existing colors - twice.

the original recipe gives how many drops you should add of food coloring. with the liquid food colorings that are available in denmark, these amounts were FAR too little. and adding red and blue together did not result in purple, but to our horror, an awful shade of grey. luckily, i had a stash of wilton paste colors and we got the beautiful vibrant hues you see here (only slightly enhanced by instagram on my iPhone). i HIGHLY recommend using the proper wilton colors - you only do a rainbow once in awhile, so go all out. it's not THAT poisonous. :-)

once you've got five colors - put a spoonful of each into your cupcake papers. i started with purple on the bottom, tho' we experimented and tried it on top once, but it goes awfully dark and doesn't show how prettily purple it really is if it's exposed to the heat on top. my color order was purple, blue, green, yellow, pink. we also tried with yellow on top, but then they look a bit like an ordinary cupcake. bake them 10-12 minutes at 180°C/350°F.

see how in the heat of the oven, the colors even out? tho' you can make them as messy as you like, it's really up to you. i really think you can't go wrong with this recipe.

as i write this, i haven't frosted them yet. but when i do, i will use my best and favorite white buttercream - the one that started with a cooked milk/flour combo and ends up a bit lighter than regular buttercream. sprinkles (rainbow of course) on top and we'll be good to go. i expect when i get home, it will be with an empty tray and a whole lot of these....

new nordic inspiration

2011-11-13T10:54:00.001+01:00

"we do not stop the world when we eat, we go into it a little more deeply." - olafur eliasson

dandelion, nasturtium, seakale fruit and yellow beetroots

noma is the world's top restaurant. i've been reading their beautiful cookbook published by phaidon - NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi. (it's so wonderful that i actually had to use capital letters.) :-) i'm not sure i'll actually try make any of the beautifully photographed recipes, as they are very advanced and some require special equipment (liquid nitrogen, smokers), but i will be using some of the raw ingredients they use. and i simply i can't remember the last time i got so much pleasure and inspiration from a cookbook. it's completely sumptuous and very thought-provoking.

truffle dessert

noma is a combination of two danish words "nordisk" and "mad" - nordic food. they use only fresh, seasonal ingredients from scandinavia and the book explores the early days of the thinking behind the restaurant. rené and claus meyer (another purveyor of new nordic cuisine) went on a voyage of discovery around scandinavia - from the farøe islands to iceland to greenland to norway, sweden and back to denmark - to put together the thinking and the menu. the cookbook includes excerpts from rené's diaries of the trip and is an inspiration.

radishes in a pot

the notion that our diet should be composed of things that are available and seasonal in our surroundings is at once both retro and revolutionary. our ancestors surely ate like that, but we've become accustomed to the availability of tomatoes and strawberries year-round. we can have what we like, whenever we like, because it's there on our grocery store shelves. but what if we returned to seasonal eating? what we ate more root vegetables and cabbage in the winter and only ate tomatoes in the summer? what if we used wild plants from our forests and ditches? what if we ate more game? more fish? what if we were more closely bound to our surroundings in our diet?

pork neck, bulrushes, violets and malt

i heard on the radio that there's a study going on that's focused on new nordic cuisine and tho' they aren't finished yet, one early result has been that those participating have lost 3-6 kilos, which wasn't one of the goals - but more wild, lean meat like venison and more vegetables from the area instead of pasta and rice have had an effect.

dessert of flowers

it might initially seem that to use only seasonal, local ingredients is limiting, but once you start looking around, there is a bounty all around us. and we are left feeling more connected the world that we inhabit. as olafur elliason says in his introduction to the book, "Whether we like it or not, what we eat affects how the world looks. And that affects the way we understand it. When we look at a plate of food, we should see the greater ecosystem too. If we find out where the food comes from and where it goes to, maybe this knowledge can be made into a different kind of flavor-enhancer. ... Food can be political. Food can be about responsibility, sustainability, geography and culture."

if you get the chance, at least borrow this book from your local library.

egg-cellent

2011-10-18T12:36:00.002+02:00

i never really saw myself as a chicken person - oh yes, i eat it, but i never thought i'd have chickens myself. i remember being a little bit surprised when i visited bee and found she had chickens, tho' they were posh, with fancy feathery feet, so i decided it fit quite well with her home in the english countryside. but me? have chickens? no way. fast forward nearly two years and we have 12 - 3 proud little roosters and 9 hens. and they've begun to lay eggs (well, the hens have anyway). and now i think i won't ever be without chickens again. the pleasure of going out and gathering the eggs (we're getting 2-3 a day, as they've just begun) and even just watching them is not to be underestimated. chickens are funny little characters. and the eggs, oh the eggs. they're just about the most magical cooking ingredient of all, aren't they?

squash, sage & bacon soufflé

despite that they only lay 2-3 eggs a day, that rather quickly ends up being a lot of eggs. so i've embarked on making soufflés and other egg-related dishes (we already eat an omelette at least once a week because they're so easy on a busy schedule). i was a little worried the first time, but already with the second one, i started to get a bit creative. and i can tell you that soufflés aren't nearly as temperamental as you've heard.

the first one i made, i used molly wizenberg's classic cheese soufflé recipe, which she adapted from one by julia child, following it pretty much to the letter. it came out perfectly and gave me the confidence i needed - it didn't even threaten to fall, it was light and gorgeous and even stayed up after we had taken it out a bit early, spooned into it, discovered it wasn't quite done, and put it back in the oven. a very forgiving soufflé. and a great base recipe, which i gave an autumn twist last night.

cheesy sage and squash soufflé

2 T finely grated parmesan

1 C whole milk

2 1/2 T butter

3 T flour

1 C baked squash

1 small package of bacon, diced and fried to crispy perfection

4-5 fresh sage leaves, sliced into ribbons

6 eggs, separated

1 C grated cheese (gruyère or something similarly meltable is perfect)

salt and pepper to taste

cut a small squash in half and de-seed it. bake it in the oven with a lump of butter in the cavity, until it's soft and done. allow it to cool and spoon it out. i used a hokkaido squash and it resulted in about a cup (metric folks, just fill a 250ml measuring cup) of squash. if your squash is larger, safe the rest for another purpose (an autumn soup perhaps?).

dice your bacon and fry it to crispy perfection, set it aside. just before it's done, throw the ribbons of sage into the bacon fat and allow the heat to crisp them and release the sagey goodness. grate your cheese and set it aside.

separate your eggs. my eggs are still very small, so i used 6, if yours are the jumbo size from the grocery store, you can probably do with 3 or 4. molly's recipe calls for 4 egg yolks and 5 egg whites, but i used all of all 6 eggs with good result (and no waste). set your kitchen mixer to whipping the egg whites until they're glossy and have high peaks. reserve the yolks.

preheat your oven to 200°C/400°F. butter a ceramic soufflé dish and coat the buttered edges with the grated parmesan. this makes the most lovely outside crust, so don't skip this step. gently warm the milk in a pan.

in a heavy saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour, whisking to make a roux. cook it 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, taking care not to let it brown, but getting rid of that raw flour-y taste. remove from the heat and allow it to stand for a minute. return it to the heat, add the warm milk and keep whisking it over the heat until it's very thick - this should again take 2-3 minutes. remove from the heat and whisk in the squash and the bacon and sage. whisking constantly, add the yolks one at a time. set the mixture somewhere to cool to room temperature. season with salt and pepper to taste.

once the mixture is cooled, fold in a good-sized dollop of the egg whites and gently mix it to lighten up the yolk mixture. then gently fold in the rest of the whites and the grated cheese. transfer immediately to your prepared soufflé dish and pop it into the oven immediately. bake it for 25-30 minutes, taking care not to open the oven during at least the first 20 minutes. it's done when it's golden brown on top and has just the slightest jiggle visible in the middle. serve it immediately with a simple salad.

our salad consisted of a box of mixed leaves, diced cucumber, some of the last of the garden tomatoes, diced and the popping, ruby seeds of half a pomegranate. i made a simple creme fraîche dressing to accompany both the soufflé and the salad - just with a bit of chopped, fresh sage and some garlic pepper. it didn't last long, as you can see.

be adventurous, make a soufflé for dinner tonight. i guarantee it will impress your family and friends.

a berry good year

2011-10-16T12:26:00.000+02:00

red currants (and proof that there was the occasional bit of sunshine this summer)

our rainy, cool weather this year was a boon for the berries. our strawberry season lasted a month and the red and black currant bushes were loaded with berries that i made into bottles and bottles of cordial for the winter. the blackcurrant cordial might be the best one of them all, tho' the more recent one i've made of elderberries is a close second.

blackcurrants

berry cordials

4 cups (1 kilo) of berries (red currants, blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, elderberries)

2 cups sugar

if you want to give it some zip, add some slices of fresh ginger root, or throw in a vanilla bean. i also mixed them occasionally - red and black currants together. strawberry and rhubarb (it's a classic), tho' i kept raspberries and elderberries alone, because they're so outstanding on their own. the elderberries have the faintest undertone of their spring version - the elderflower, but with layers of autumn on top. mixed with hot water and a dash of vanilla vodka (see below), they make a gorgeous, warming drink, for a nippy but clear autumn day. i made several batches using honey instead of sugar, since we've also got our own bees and i had a lot of honey on hand - the result was a deeper, more complex cordial.

autumn raspberries - they produced from august - october!

elderberries

"rumtopf" - with vodka, red currants, black currants, strawberries and sugar

i've been throwing a handful of whatever berry is in season into this jar and topping it up with vodka all summer - it will make a lovely fruity tipple come christmas time - filled with the echoes of summer during that dark time of year. all you do is take a cup of organic sugar, all the berries you have at hand and keep them covered with vodka. whenever you add more berries, if they're not submerged, add more vodka. this one was started in june and i added the last berries in october (photo from the beginning). you can also use rum (hence the name - rumtopf), but we're vodka drinkers around here, so that's what we used.

black currant cordial

the cordials can be mixed with fizzy water for a sparkling drink. they're great with white wine or a dash of vanilla vodka. they can be quite tasty with lemon schweppes. they're also just fine with plain water - hot or cold, depending on your weather. the limits are only those of imagination.

thanks to my buddy chris, who is a co-contributor over on the sustainable life blog, i ventured into making my own vanilla vodka. she was making vanilla extract and i've got a batch of that going as well, but decided to make some vanilla vodka for drinking as well - it tastes more natural than the absolut version. it's a very nice companion when you're using these cordials as the base for a cocktail. if you check eBay, you can find great prices on vanilla pods in bulk - i got 30+ for €11 including shipping. speaking of which, it's time to order them again, in preparation for winter baking.

green hummus and a garden bounty pasta

2011-09-26T08:10:00.002+02:00

the garden is winding down, but it has been a bountiful summer - borlotti beans (that's the red pods here), tomatoes, small delectable aubergines, tasty cucumbers (so much more flavor than the store-bought kind), artichokes (none visible in this photo), small succulent squash, broad beans and autumn raspberries coming out of our ears for more than a month. the bounty from the garden has been so good that it's almost turned us vegetarian without any effort (tho' we haven't given up bacon - can one be a bacon-tarian?).

with tomatoes and cucumbers as plentiful as they've been, we've tossed them together with feta or mozzarella and a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and some fresh, chopped parsley (it's been a good year for parsley with all of the rain we've had) or sometimes mint for salads nearly every night.

but the real revelation has been a nigel slater-inspired broad bean hummus. we've experienced the entire spectrum of the broad bean...from tiny little green and nearly pealike ones, to the large mature kind that you have to boil and then peel away the grey outer husk before pureeing them into a delicious green hummus.

green hummus

20-25 large broad bean pods (these may be called favas in the US or hestebønner in denmark)

2 cloves garlic

1 big spoonful of tahini

salt & freshly-ground pepper

olive oil

handful of parsley or mint

shell the broad beans - it should result in a generous cup or so (you don't have to be that exact), boil them in salted water until they're tender (about 20 minutes). drain the water, allow them to cool and remove the greyish outer covering (it comes off easily after boiling). throw the beans into your food processor with the garlic, tahini (nigel doesn't use tahini in his, but i liked it better with tahini - it gives it that hummus kick that it otherwise lacks) and the herb of your choice (sometimes we wanted the freshness of mint, sometimes the brightness of parsley - use whichever, according to your mood), add a generous sprinkle of salt and a good glug of olive oil. whirr it up in the food processor. if it doesn't go smooth, add more olive oil until it's a smooth, hummus-like consistency. serve it with freshly-baked bread.

if you make a simple chopped tomato, garlic, basil mixture with a bit of olive oil and balsamic for bruschetta, you'll have a meal with simple ingredients from the garden paired with a loaf of bread lovingly baked.

i made this at least once a week, all summer long. the beans give you the protein you need so you don't have to eat meat. it refrigerates well and tastes even better the next day, once the garlic and tahini have melded with the broad beans.

* * *

very often this summer, i would wander out to the garden around 5:30 or so, with nothing much in mind for dinner. the day i gathered the veggies you see above, i brought them in, washed them and just started chopping, not sure where it would take me.

garden bounty pasta

handful of borlotti beans

125g bacon

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 small aubergine, diced

1 small zucchini/courgette, diced

handful of swiss chard leaves, chopped

2-3 small/medium tomatoes, diced

salt & pepper

chili (optional)

chopped, fresh parsley (or oregano or marjoram or basil if you have it)

1 package linguini (or spaghetti or shells or whatever pasta you like).

freshly grated parmesan to garnish

boiled up the pretty pink-spotted borlotti beans and crisped up some chopped bacon with some onion and garlic while they were boiling. add the diced aubergine and zucchini (courgette) squash. when the beans are done, drain them and turn them in the bacon and veggie mixture. boil up some fresh linguini noodles, or whatever pasta you have on hand would be fine. once the pasta is nearly done, add some chopped tomatoes and chopped swiss chard to the vegetable mix at the last minute, so that the tomatoes are just warmed, but keep their structure and the chard wilted, but retains its green brilliance. salt and pepper to taste and it is ready to serve over the pasta. garnish with freshly chopped parsley and fresh parmesan. you could also sprinkle some toasted pine nuts on top if you had some on hand.

this became a fast favorite and has also been on our table, with slight adjustments for what veggies were ready, for much of the summer.

if you don't have a garden, just visit your local farmer's market or the fruit and vegetable counter of your local grocery store, and see what's in season.

baking for bunnies (and horses)

2011-08-20T20:49:00.002+02:00

somehow, we've ended up with four pet rabbits at our house. and it occurred to me that i was spending a small fortune keeping them in bunny treats. and then one day, i tried to read the ingredient list on the bunny treats i've been buying in the pet store and i got a little concerned when i saw vague words like "cereals" and "derivatives of vegetable origin" not to mention a big list of preservatives. i realized that i was paying a premium for something that probably wasn't all that great for our bunnies. so i decided to try making some treats for them myself.

whole grains, lots of nuts and plenty of fresh carrot, with a bit of honey and some sunflower oil were thrown together in my mixer and baked. the first batch i made was a bit more cookie-like in form. before i could tell him they were for the bunnies, husband accidentally ate one, thinking they were healthy cookies. they're a bit boring to humans, since i kept the honey minimal not to make them too sweet for bunnies. for the second batch, i decided to make them smaller and more treat-shaped. and i also realized that our horse would love them, since they're full of things she likes too - oats and carrots. i will not be buying the iffy and expensive kind in the pet store anymore.

bunny/horse treats

2 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup honey (from our own bees, of course)
1 cup graham flour
1 cup plain white flour
2 large carrots, grated
1/2 sunflower oil
1/3 cup flaxseeds
1/3 cup sunflower seeds

mix it all together in the mixer and add enough water to bring it to a thick cookie-type consistency (i'm not sure how much water i added, as i didn't measure that...maybe about a 1/2 cup).

spread it out in a baking pan and bake it at 180°C/350°F for 20 minutes (not all the way). remove it from the oven and slice it into "treat size", then pop them onto a cookie sheet and into the oven and bake another 20 minutes or so. voila. happy bunnies and horses.

our pets mean a lot to us, so it only makes sense to me to give them quality food, just like i would my family.

marshmallows & nutella: homemade stylie

2011-08-10T22:27:00.003+02:00

it's been raining this week (again, again) and watching the news this week has been positively depressing - riots all over england, stock markets down, people starving in africa. i found myself in need of comfort. escape. something sweet.

so i decided to make nutella. and when that didn't feel like enough, i also made marshmallows. the nutella is good, but not yet The Business, but the marshmallows? fluffy clouds of heaven, i tell you. i found the nutella recipe via instructables.com, but strangely, the site is down as i write this, so i can't give you the original link. and, as usual, i didn't entirely follow it anyway, so i'll give you what i did and you can check instructables later (i'm sure it's temporarily down).

chocolate-hazelnut spread (ala nutella) - take 1

250 grams hazelnuts (about 1 cup)

250 grams good quality dark chocolate (i actually used a combo of dark and milk because a certain someone in this household doesn't like dark chocolate and she's the primary consumer of this in this house)

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

a pinch of salt

a drizzle of good quality sunflower oil

toast the hazelnuts in the oven for about 10 minutes at 180°C/350°F (watch them, as you don't want them to burn). put them in the food processor and whiz them up as fine as you can get them. add a drizzle of sunflower oil to help it out. this is where i think the recipe i followed was off...i found it very difficult to get the hazelnuts ground finely enough in my food processor - next time, i might try a coffee grinder. but my advice is, grind them longer than you think.

while they're grinding, place the chocolate in a double-boiler and melt it over medium heat. once it's melted, stir in the salt and the sweetened condensed milk and mix it well. once they're smooth and the nuts are as finely ground as you can get them, tip the chocolate into the nuts and whizz it up in your food processor until it's smooth and creamy. if you think the texture isn't quite right, you can add a drizzle of sunflower oil.

this made two and a half half liter jars. i sterilized them, but am keeping them in the refrigerator, as i'm not sure about how well they'll keep. they taste delicious, but the texture isn't exactly nutella-like. it's not smooth enough. on the other hand, it has a much more hazelnutty depth to it and i actually like it quite a lot better than the real thing. i'm not done, tho' i'm trying to perfect this, so expect me back with further experiments on this front.

and now onto the marshmallows, which worked far beyond expectations. my recipe comes from karen solomon's jam it, pickle it, cure it, tho', of course, i adjusted the gelatin because it comes in leaves here and not in powdered packets.

marshmallows

2/3 cup of water

6 leaves of gelatin (or 3 envelopes unflavored gelatin)

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of light syrup

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

confectioner's (powdered) sugar

coat a medium-sized pan (8x8 or 9x6) in vegetable oil and generously coat with powdered sugar.

combine the gelatin and 1/3 cup of water in the bowl of your stand mixer.

meanwhile, mix the other 1/3 cup of water with the sugar and light syrup in a medium saucepan. whisk them until they the sugar is nearly dissolved. place it over a medium heat and without stirring (this is the bit i couldn't believe, but it's really true) heat it up to 115°C/240°F. use a candy thermometer. it takes about ten minutes. don't be tempted to stir, the bubbles will effectively stir it as it begins to boil.

once it reaches the correct temperature, remove from the heat and pour it carefully into the gelatin mixture in your mixer. turn it up to medium-high, add vanilla and mix until it becomes fluffy white and stiff. this takes about 10-12 minutes (tho' if it's humid, it could take longer).

pour them into the prepared pan and allow them to set for at least an hour. then slice them into bite-sized squares and roll them in powdered sugar (or cocoa or flaked coconut) and enjoy. our weather is a bit humid and i'm keeping them in the fridge, as they seemed a bit soft. i think in normal, dry weather conditions, they'd stay firm and lovely and you'd even be able to toast them over the coals like you would a store-bought marshmallow. but actually, they're just perfect as they are...sweet, fluffy, light and melt-in-your mouth. i will definitely be making them again.

the ruby goodness of rhubarb

2011-07-13T22:08:00.001+02:00

awhile ago, i promised to do a rhubarb post. i love rhubarb. it's one of the first things to appear in the garden in the spring and it just keeps on giving all summer long, especially if you keep picking it. our place came with about a dozen rhubarb plants and once we moved them from the grassy area where they were being choked out and separated them a bit (into more like two dozen plants), they have thrived, as you can see above (in fact, i need to get out there and pick).

one of the most delicious things i've made is a rhubarb-vanilla cordial. as you already know, i've gone a bit mad for cordials this year. they're just so much nicer to serve to your guests than a regular old purchased soda. with all of these good things in the garden, it gets my creative juices flowing and i've been trying all sorts of combinations of things (coming soon, berries). but this rhubarb-vanilla one is one we reach for again and again.

rhubarb-vanilla cordial

20-25 stalks of rhubarb

1 vanilla pod

a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan, just to get started.

500 grams sugar (2 cups)

clean and slice the rhubarb into manageable chunks. place it in a pot with the vanilla pod (split it open to release the little black flecks) and put a little water in the bottom of the pan, just to get things started. gently heat it and simmer until the rhubarb has gone completely soft. i usually wander away at this point, so i'm not sure how long this takes - maybe between 20 and 30 minutes. remove from the heat and let it cool down a bit. strain through a cheesecloth, collecting the beautiful pink juice. squeeze out the cloth, getting all of the good juices. you should have about a liter of juice, but if you don't, you can add water to get to that. if you have more than a liter, even better. return the juice to the pan and add sugar. i used organic sugar and as you can see above (my rhubarb cordial is next to the honey), my cordial is a bit dark. if you use regular white sugar, it will stay a bright pink. bring it to the boil again and then pour it into a sterilized, prepared bottle.

i often fish out the vanilla pod to be used again in another batch, as there's lots of goodness left in it and they're too precious to just throw away. you can also rinse it off and stick it in a jar with some sugar for a fragrant vanilla sugar. and i give the rhubarb mash that's left over to the hens - they gobble it right up.

this week, i'm going to make a batch with a hunk of ginger instead of vanilla - i think rhubarb and ginger will be very nice together.

in my opinion, the most perfect companion to rhubarb is the strawberry and i've made this rhubarb-strawberry crisp half a dozen times during the month our strawberries were in season. it's just as good with rhubarb by itself, but rhubarb and strawberries are a match made in heaven. in contrast to many crisps (or crumbles - not sure of the difference - do any of you have an opinion?) it has the topping on the bottom as a sort of crust as well. that makes the dish. it's a variation of a recipe my mom sent to me and i'm not sure where it originated.

strawberry-rhubarb crisp

1 cup flour
3/4 cup oatmeal
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup melted butter

mix together and place half of the mixture in an buttered baking dish (i use one that's ceramic and rectangular, but you could use a round tart dish as well).

4 cups fresh rhubarb (cubed) and strawberries.
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 T. cornstarch
1 t. vanilla

in a saucepan, cook the fruit, sugar and water until softened and gently boiling. mix the cornstarch with a couple of tablespoons of cold water and stir it into the hot fruit mixture. add the vanilla and pour into your pan. put the remaining crust mixture on top.

optional: sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped walnuts. bake at 180°C/350°F until the top is golden and crispy.

serve in a bowl with a bit of fresh cream on top.

whether it's an everyday evening treat or for guests, it can't go wrong.

Eat/Drink more Yogurt

2011-06-26T12:36:00.000+02:00

Did anyone see the Harvard study which was published, and widely reported on, this week?
After 20 years of monitoring which foods seemed to be most associated with weight gain, the study revealed the following list of baddies:

french fries!
potato chips
sugar-sweetened soda
unprocessed red meat
processed meats . . . like bacon
trans fats
potatoes
sweets and desserts
refined grains
fried foods
fruit juices
butter

There are no huge surprises here, but it is still a bit deflating (or, rather, the other way around) to see that potatoes have made the list three times! I wouldn't dream of making french fries at home, but in restaurants I have been known to order a meal just because it offers fries on the side. My favourite meal in the world? Probably steak frites. Still, I regard them as a treat -- and really, we eat very little red meat otherwise.

The main conclusion of the study is that we should all be eating food that is as minimally processed as possible . . . and with the odd exception, Julochka and I have already been preaching (and eating) that gospel. I may need to rethink my loved of baked goods, but in my defense, we hardly ever eat any dessert/sweets that aren't homemade with good-quality ingredients.

One of the most helpful aspects of the study was its revelation of the five foods most associated with weight loss -- and the fab five are:

yogurt
nuts
fruits
whole grains
vegetables

I've been trying to eat more yogurt for several years now, but for some reason I find it a bit tedious in solid form. I do like greek yogurt with blueberries and a squeeze of honey, but it's not something that I can talk myself into eating every day.

I think that smoothies are going to be the answer -- at least for me. This summer, I finally broke down and bought a blender -- despite my lack of counter space -- and now my children and I are obsessed with it. With all of the great fresh fruit that's around these days, it is such simple work to drink several servings of the good stuff. I never make the same smoothie twice, but my basic blueprint is to throw in a banana, a handful of strawberries and/or raspberries, blueberries, pineapple or peaches, between 4 and 6 ounces of yogurt and a handful of ice. You will need some liquid to get things going, and I add either orange juice or skim milk -- depending on whether I am the mood for something creamy or juicy. You may also need a squirt of honey, depending on your sweet tooth.

Sadly, there's nothing more American than french fries and a Coke -- and America has the obesity rates to prove it. Julochka and I were laughing about an article about the fried foods which will be offered up at State Fairs around the country this summer. Doesn't that just sum up some of the most dreadful (and wonderful, of course) aspects of American eating? I love the creativity and the sense of humour, but the sheer decadence and gluttony isn't as admirable. Does anyone really need to be eating Fried Kool-Aid? Who even dreams this stuff up?

As for my summer eating, I'm thinking more along the lines of a yogurt smoothie and a handful of raw almonds every day . . .

lemony roast chicken salad

2011-06-21T22:00:00.001+02:00

most of the cooking i do is by the seat of my pants. recipes are but a suggestion in my mind and i don't do all that much planning ahead unless we're expecting guests. very often, it's 5:30 p.m. and i wander into the kitchen, bleary-eyed from the computer and open the refrigerator and take out a few things that look inspiring. and sometimes the result is worth writing down. of course, the secret to this kind of cooking is having good ingredients at hand. i can tell already that the garden is going to really help me on that front. the weekly box i have delivered helps a lot too - it means i've always got interesting vegetables and things like quinoa and couscous around. i'm also a sucker for good buys on interesting or unusual ingredients when i'm at the grocery store, so the staples in my cupboards include things like a jar of grilled artichokes or roasted red peppers. i thought i'd share with you a recent invention. i made it for the second time today, adding a bit to it from the first round and it was wonderful. it's a chicken salad made from your roast chicken leftovers.

lemony roast chicken salad

the remains of one roast chicken, diced into bite-size pieces

1 jar of grilled artichokes in seasoned olive oil, roughly chopped up on the cutting board

save the seasoned olive oil from the jar to use as your dressing

1 lemon, sliced thinly and cut into little wedges

1 60gram package of pinenuts

1 package of brown mushrooms

100 grams of quinoa, cooked as directed on the package (20 minutes in twice as much water as quinoa)

1 bunch of green onions, sliced finely

handful of spinach or kale, cut into ribbons

juice of one lemon

dice your roast chicken leftovers into bite-sized pieces (i specially-roasted a chicken for the purpose today, as we have a couchsurfer here, so it was not just going to be the three of us). remove the artichokes from the jar and roughly chop them into bite-sized pieces. save the seasoned oil from the jar to use as a seasoning. slice the lemon into thin rounds and then chop cut them into little wedges, throw them in, peel and all. clean your mushrooms and slice them in halves or fourths if they're large - sauté them off in a pan with butter and a little olive oil, then sprinkle liberally with soy sauce until they've lost their rawness (but not 'til they're shrunk down to nothingness). chop the green onions. toast off the pinenuts. put all of these ingredients into a large, flat bowl and keep tossing it together (i do it with my hands as i add each ingredient). lastly, sauté off the spinach or kale (i used fresh-picked tuscan kale from the garden). while you're chopping, cook up your quinoa - a highly nutritious and delicious grain that gives body, texture and loads of nutrition to the dish. dress it all with the seasoned oil from the artichokes, juice of a lemon and a bit of salt & pepper. can be served immediately or refrigerated and taken on a picnic. serve with plenty of fresh bread. and you can never miss with a crisp white sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio.

serves 6 - 8 (if you use a whole chicken and not just leftovers). people may leave little piles of lemon rind on their plates, but that's ok. make this for a cool lunch on a hot summer day. you won't regret it.

found flowers: cordially speaking

2011-06-19T23:43:00.009+02:00

rhubarb + vanilla, violet and elderflower cordials
a few elderflower blossoms, which we were using in our pancakes.
and some freshly-harvested honey from today (not ours yet, but soon)
oh, and those strawberries? from our garden.

i've been going a little bit mad around here on the cordial front. it started for me earlier this spring with violets. they were the first flower around here that came in something like abundant quantities. as you can see from the post over on the sustainable life blog, i started with jelly, but soon switched to cordial. my family likes it better - they're not jelly people, it seems (perhaps because the actual violet flowers i put in the violet jelly looked a little bit like flies, but just leave those out). but the violet cordial has been brilliant. i mused a little bit about the actual picking of violets here - it takes an eternity to pick enough, but it's a bit like meditation, and i definitely need that, so i've made 5 batches. you can see that there's not much left in the bottle above, so i suppose i'll be out in the field, meditating again soon.

violet cordial

2 cups of violets (the flowers only)

2 cups of boiling water

4 cups of sugar

juice of one organic lemon

place your violets in a glass or ceramic bowl (don't rinse them, you'll be straining, so it doesn't matter if there are small bugs in with them) and pour two cups of boiling water over them. cover the bowl with a plate and place it somewhere to steep overnight. it will turn a lovely shade of teal, but don't worry, the lemon will fix that. strain the violets - i use a metal strainer lined with a clean tea towel. then add the sugar. stir and place on the stove and begin to slowly heat to boiling. pour in the juice of one lemon and watch the liquid magically turn from teal to brilliant purple. my batches have actually varied in shades of purple as my violets have varied - some days there were more white ones and variegated shades of purple, so some batches have been more purple than others. once it boils, let it boil only for a few minutes and then pour into prepared bottles.

i prepare mine by running them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle, pouring boiling water over (for good measure), rinsing with a preservative product called atamon (which i then completely pour out). for several of these batches, i've skipped the atamon because i knew we would use the sirup right away.

it would be excellent over ice cream (if one had a freezer - don't ask and don't mention the smeg) or even pancakes. but we use it almost exclusively as a soda. about an inch and a half in the bottom of a glass and the rest filled up with sparkling water (and ice if you have it) and you'll never want to buy regular commercial sodas again.

like bee, i've also been making elderflower cordial. yesterday, i counted no less than 21 elderflower trees (they are not bushes around here, no siree) on our property and then husband saw five more down in our forest, which is a couple of kilometers away from our main property. i could practically go into making commercial quantities if i had enough large pots.

i make mine the same way i make the violet cordial, by making a "tea" using about 30 of the flowers and hot water first. i used to add the sugar to that water, like bee's recipe suggests, but i had several batches begin to mold on me before i thought they had steeped long enough (the sugar speeds this along, especially if the weather is warm and humid). with the elderflowers, i let them steep for 48 hours, rather than only 24, to get all of the perfumed goodness out of the blossoms. then, i strain them and add sugar in the same quantities recommended by bee. i use 3 teaspoons of citric acid (available in both pharmacies and the grocery stores here) and the juice of four organic lemons as well. i used to use slices of lemons, but now i just juice them and add them to the elderflower "tea" when i boil it with the sugar. these are the best batches i've ever made (and i've been trying now for ten years).

i have made batches both with organic sugar and regular white sugar this year and there is a big color difference. regular white sugar gives a gorgeous yellow that will make you think of liquid sunshine. the organic sugar results in a darker, more brownish, honey-colored elixir. i'm not sure which i like best, tho' i lean towards organic on principle. i know tho', that next winter when we break into the golden ones, we'll feel a much-needed direct connection to those long, golden danish summer nights.

our elderflowers are still in full bloom and i've got batches 6 and 7 brewing as we "speak." i want to lay in a good supply for the coming months.

chive flower vinegar and olive oil

and last, but not least and not at all a cordial, thanks to the inspiration from chris, one of my partners on sustainable living, i used all of the chive flowers i found around the garden (discovering a load of hidden chive plants i didn't know were there) to make an absolutely beautiful chive vinegar and olive oil. all you do is pick the chive flowers, rinse them very well and pop them into clean bottles (at least half full, but preferably 2/3 if you have enough chives), then fill to the top with good quality white vinegar in one and a good extra virgin olive oil in the other. within a couple of days....instant salad dressing. i have repurposed tomato sauce bottles and they work just great, so there's no need to go out and buy something fancy.

* * *

and as for the rhubarb + vanilla cordial? i'll do a rhubarb post in the coming days, so stay tuned for that.

* * *

for more inspiration on what to do with found flowers, check here.

Elderflower cordial

2011-06-12T22:37:00.001+02:00

For me, hedgerows are the quintessence of life in the English countryside. I grew up with wide open spaces and barbed wire; how different and mysterious are these living fences. They line every narrow road, and make a secret garden of every neighbour's property. They divide up the countryside like the embroidery thread of a patchwork quilt.

All year long, the hedgerows brim and buzz with life . . . and edible things. After many years in England, I mostly don't recognise the different kinds of greenery until it actually presents its treasure of blossom or berries. I still have the constant feeling of surprise.

Unlike me, my youngest daughter is an observant person -- and it was she who pointed out that the elderflower had come into bloom. It's one of those things that I mean to look for, and pick, every year; but most years, I miss it. First comes the blackthorn blossom, then comes "the may" (hawthorn), and for about three weeks in June, you can find the creamy-yellow elderflower blooming.

Last week, I seemed to spend most of my week in the car . . . and everywhere I drove -- through Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey -- I saw masses of elderflower blossoms on the roadside verges. (It thrives in sunny, open places, but it obviously doesn't mind a bit of car exhaust, either.) I kept wanting to stop the car and gather up armfuls of the stuff. Blink, and it will be gone; and that's a shame, because homemade elderflower cordial is delicious stuff.

You want to pick your elderflower just as the blossoms are opening . . . if they are still green, the elderflower won't have much scent or flavour, and if they've gone a bit brown it will tend to bitterness. A perfectly ripe elderflower will be rich with scent -- a somewhat lemony, but otherwise indescribable, smell all its own. Elderflower is one of the flavours of English summer -- and unlike the sun, which is being highly temperamental at the moment, you can bottle it.

Elderflower Cordial
Ingredients:
1.3 litres/2 1/2 pints water
1.8kg/4 lb granulated sugar
25 elderflower heads
2 lemons, sliced in rounds
65 g/2 1/2 oz citric acid (in England, this can be purchased from the chemist)

Method:
First, give the elderflower heads a good shake (to make sure they are free of dirt and tiny bugs) -- but don't wash them, as that will dilute their flavour.
You want to strip off the flowers -- leaving as little of the green stem as possible.
(If you are like me, give this job to a willing child.)
Then, place the water and the sugar in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a boil. When all of the sugar is dissolved, remove from the heat.
Place the elderflowers, slices of lemon and citric acid in a large plastic or glass container and pour the sugar syrup over the other ingredients.
Cover, and leave the mixture to infuse for three days. You should stir it once a day.
After infusing, you need to strain your mixture -- ideally, through a muslin-covered colander into a clean bowl. Then decant into containers (plastic or glass containers with lids) and store in the refrigerator.

It should keep for months . . . but only if you don't actually offer it to anyone!
We had an (indoor, sadly) barbeque last weekend and I passed around the elderflower cordial with an arguably too-lavish hospitality. Hopefully, I can steep another batch of it before the end of its short season.

I like elderflower cordial as a drink -- made with sparkling water (but still water is good, too). Fill the glass with ice, and then add approximately one part cordial to three/four parts of water. (It depends on how sweet you like it.) A slice of lemon, and maybe a sprig of mint, makes a nice garnish.
You can also add elderflower cordial to spirits -- like vodka or gin.
Or, splash your ripe June strawberries with it.

grilling season

2011-05-27T14:00:00.004+02:00

it's that time of year at last! time for meals on the grill. time for laughter and a whimsical summer rosé and for lingering in the garden 'til dusk (which is how we learned we have a hedgehog).

because of the reality of our weather (evenings can be cool, even in summer), we had a grill table made by a blacksmith - then husband repurposed some old palettes as the actual table bits. it has a grill down the middle of it, which both means people can grill their own food and keep warm, as the metal boxes holding the charcoal warm under the table. even the cats have noticed and come and flop down under there as the evening starts to get chilly.

we find ourselves grilling most anything we have at hand and even learned that grilling mussels works very nicely! you just pop them on the grill and they open right up when they're done (if they don't, throw them away!). i stirred up a homemade aïoli (garlic mayonnaise) to go with them.

aïoli (garlic mayonnaise)

2 cloves of garlic, crushed in a pestle and mortar with a pinch of salt

1 tsp. vinegar

1 egg yolk

1 T warm water
canola oil (at the beginning)
a good fragrant olive oil

whirr this all together in a food processor until it's frothy and bubbly, then, while the processor is running, begin to VERY slowly (i cannot stress the very enough) drizzle in oil - i almost always use a combination of a good quality rapeseed (canola) oil (i owe you all a post on how the danes have made canola oil posh) and a fruity extra virgin olive oil. i start with the lighter canola, as it helps the mayonnaise come together (it can be temperamental and i have had many failures) before adding the heavier olive oil, once it has begun to look like mayo. i'm not really sure how much oil i add, but somewhere around a 1/2 cup makes a good batch.

this pork tenderlion, i browned on the stove, then wrapped in ramsløg (those wild garlic you get in the spring) and bacon, then wrapped it in foil and we finished it off on the grill. once the wild garlic season is past, you could use any other herbs...sage would be lovely, as would spinach or even just coating it in a nice pesto before wrapping in bacon.

a standard part of virtually any grilled meal at our house includes sliced eggplant (aubergine), zucchini (corgette), sweet red peppers, onions (small ones, leave the skin on and slice them in half), asparagus - whatever is tasty and in season. we even grilled some small artichokes (cut in half). i make a bowl of olive oil filled with minced garlic, salt, pepper and chopped, fresh herbs to brush over them while they're on the grill. we eat them as soon as they're ready. sometimes, i bake some small potatoes on the grill - scrubbing them well and wrapping them in foil.

but the very best thing we've been making on the grill is homemade tortillas. the recipe comes from the river cottage bread book and has me so convinced that i will never buy store-bought tortillas again. they are easy and outstandingly delicious.

tortillas

2 cups flour

1/3 cup of water (you may need a little more or a little less, so don't add it all once)

1 T salt

mix well, using the dough hook on your mixer. if it's too dry, add a bit more water (flour can behave differently depending on the grind and frankly, the weather). put it aside in a bowl and let it rest for at least half an hour. then form into golf ball size balls and roll them out with a rolling pin. then put them in a hot pan - i use a bit of olive oil, tho' the original recipe doesn't - we find it makes them a bit more pliable. we usually flip them and then put them directly on the grill at the end, where they puff up wonderfully. we also make quesadillas right on the grill, by filling with cheese and pesto and other yummy things and folding them over as they cook.

as an accompaniment, i nearly always make a big bowl of creamy tzaziki

tzaziki

1 C (250 grams) greek yogurt

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 a cucumber, grated

salt and pepper to taste

a few leaves of chopped, fresh mint if you have it

grate the cucumber, salt it and put it in a sieve to let some of the moisture drain out. squeeze it well and add it to the yogurt and garlic, stir it well.

now if the sun would just shine this weekend...because writing this made me quite hungry.

Royal Wedding Whoopee Pies

2011-05-06T20:14:00.001+02:00

A few years ago we visited New Hampshire and I discovered, for the first time, whoopee pies.
Once again, America brings you a delicious (albeit decadent and dubiously named) baked good.

When I was a child I used to be mortified by that old song, Makin' Whoopee.
(Did they think that kids couldn't figure out what that meant?)
If you can remember the lyrics, you will also recall that the direct result of makin' whoopee is marriage. (It was a different time, of course.)
In Maine, the state which has made them its offical state "treat," they are spelled whoopie pie . . . so maybe it's only in England that they have gotten confused with sex. I really don't know. Maybe no one in America has that association; just me.

At any rate, they are definitely something to get excited about. And as soon as I saw this recipe, I knew that they would be the perfect treat for our Royal Wedding tea party last Friday.
Was it only a week ago that we were glued to our television screens . . . happily mocking Princess Beatrice's hat, and cooing over the perfection of Kate Middleton, and singing along with all of the hymns?

We were also drinking tea and eating whoopee pies . . . and believe me, the wedding coverage lasted a lot longer than the whoopee pies did.

While whoopee pies have been common fare on America's East Coast for a while now -- and East Coasters love their doughnuts, too -- they are just starting to catch up with the rest of the foodie world. In the last few months I've spotted a whoopee pie cookbook . . . AND they have been added to the Starbucks menu.
Clearly, their moment has arrived.

This is an English version of the recipe -- and much improved for it, in my opinion.
They are miniature, instead of fist-sized. And instead of a sickly sweet filling (containing vegetable shortening, no doubt), you add clotted cream and jam.
They are perfectly proportioned for snacking -- and they are lighter than a scone and much less sweet than a cupcake. I predict that they are going to be our preferred treat all summer long.

Whoopee Pies
with clotted cream and jam
(from the Waitrose weekly newsletter)

Ingredients:
50 grams of softened butter
50 grams of caster sugar
1 medium egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 grams of self-raising flour (or, the same quantity of plain flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder)
50 ml whole milk
clotted cream and jam (raspberry or strawberry)
icing sugar for dusting

Note: this quantity will make 20 halves -- or 10 miniature whoopee pies. It would, and could, easily double.
That would probably be a good thing as they are very MOREISH.

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and light -- at least 3 minutes.
Beat in the egg and vanilla. Fold in the flour in 2 batches, alternating with the milk to form a soft mixture.

Drop the dough, with two teaspoons, onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
Slightly level the surface of each blob with the blade of a knife or the back of a spoon.
Bake for 12 - 15 minutes until risen and firm to touch. Remove carefully!
Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
** I made these night before and kept them in a sealed plastic bag. Once cool, they aren't very delicate.

Just before serving, slather them with the cream (you could substitute thick whipped cream) and jam and sandwich the two halves together. A dusting of icing (powdered) sugar makes them look nice.
Lemon curd would also be delicious, I'm sure. Next time I make these, I'm going to try that variation.

Also on the tea party menu: sugar cookies, chocolate covered strawberries and miniature "wedding cakes."
The cakelet tin was purchased from Williams-Sonoma (as was the wire cupcake stand).
There were also finger sandwiches, and meringues with fresh berries and cream.

Instead of champagne, the girls drank elderflower cordial and sparkling water.

Taking the party out into the garden . . .

Like the Queen, my daughter wanted a blanket for her lap. (It was a rather chilly day, but at least -- big sigh of relief! -- it didn't rain.) Unfortunately, you can't see her strapless white lace dress . . . as it is covered by her gray hoodie. The first rule of eating al fresco in England: bring a "cardie."

CONGRATULATIONS to the winner of the Mad about Bread giveaway.

To Michelle in Madison: We are giving the official title of Bread Baker back to you!

blueberry muffins

2011-05-04T10:07:00.005+02:00

these blueberry muffins were characterized as "to die for" on the website where i found the original recipe. in its original state, which was lumpy and far too thick (needed more liquid and more eggs), i think dying of them would have been closer to the truth. however, i adjusted the recipe and they were quite good, tho' i think it would take an awful lot for me to die for a muffin. use fresh, plump blueberries, they're what makes it.

blueberry muffins

1.5 C flour

3/4 C sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 C sunflower oil

1/2 C buttermilk

2 eggs

1 C fresh blueberries

topping:

1/3 C flour

1/4 C butter, cubed

1/3 C sugar

preheat your oven to 180°C/375°F. place the dry ingredients in your mixer bowl. in a large measuring cup or another bowl, mix together the oil, buttermilk and eggs and pour them slowly into the dry ingredients, mixing on low speed. when it's well-blended and the lumps are gone, gently fold in plump, fresh blueberries.

in a separate bowl, mix the topping mixture together (i found it was good to do this with a fork, but you can also get in with your fingers) - you can add a bit of cinnamon as well if you feel like it.

pour the batter into prepared muffin tins and sprinkle a bit of the topping on top. bake for 20-25 minutes and serve the hot muffins immediately with a fresh pot of tea. fresh from the oven, they don't even need butter, tho' it's quite yummy to butter them later once they're cooled down. if any of them survive the first round of serving, that is.

* * *

and don't forget to enter to win the river cottage bread book!

we're drawing the winner on friday!

mad about bread and a giveaway

2011-04-29T07:38:00.000+02:00

i've been pouring over these these two bread books for the past few weeks. one is danish chef claus meyer's baking book. claus meyer is a passionate advocate of nordic cooking, using locally-sourced ingredients and there has recently been a 6-part series of his nordic cooking programs on television. i am utterly smitten by his passion and enthusiasm as well as his knowledge of the traditions and ingredients in our part of the world. the other is one of the wonderful river cottage handbooks. i've got this one on bread, the one on mushrooms and the one on preserves. i can highly recommend the books as very useful, accessible, well-written and inspiring (and no, i have no vested interest in saying that).

both books cover the ins and outs of everything from all of the baking accessories you need (i've got to get my hands on some of those proving baskets like the one pictured above) to the different aspects of the grains and how they behave in their various ways of being ground. i found myself hanging on every word and generally being fascinated by the whole chemistry of baking. wishing now that i'd paid a bit more attention instead of reading dostoevsky during science class in high school. and both books sold me on the notion of making my own sourdough starter.

so, about two weeks ago, i did exactly that. for the first stage, you take 150g of good strong wholemeal flour (rye, spelt, wheat are all fine) and 250ml of water and beat them up well with a whisk in a container with a lid. i used a large tupperware container. it would be ideal and a bit more aesthetically-pleasing to have a crock of some sort, but i felt all of the ones i have were a bit large for the task, so tupperware it was. then you leave it sit on the counter somewhere out of the way and you begin to check on it. the natural yeast that's all around us will begin to work its magic (perhaps within a few hours, but for sure within a couple of days) and you'll start to see bubbles coming up in the mixture. once you see those little bubbles, it's time to feed the starter, which you do by adding 150g of flour and 250ml of water (that's approximately a cup of each for those using american measurements). you don't have to be exact about this, just use roughly equal portions of flour and water.

you continue this feeding for a good ten days. after the first two rounds, you should discard half of your dough when you do the feeding (or it will become a VERY large batch rather quickly), which is again 150g flour/250ml water, well whisked in, because you want to get as much air (and thus bacteria) into the mix as possible. the whole process is quite fascinating and daniel stevens (who wrote the river cottage book) is not wrong when he says that the starter will become almost like a friend - which indeed it will become if you keep it going endlessly like many bakers do (daniel knew bakers who had had their starter for 30 years!). you'll constantly be checking on it to see how the fermentation is coming along. it will develop different smells along way. mine currently smells like apples. but it could smell vinegary or malty or even like sour milk. get to know yours.

after about ten days, it's ready to use. both books have a variety of sourdough bread recipes and claus meyer's book actually advocates using the sourdough starter together with a pinch of regular yeast in any bread you make. i have yet to try that.

it requires a bit more planning ahead to make sourdough, as it requires more proving time, but it's totally worth it. i used the river cottage sourdough recipe, which is as follows:

before going to bed, mix (using the dough hook of your mixer) well:
650 ml warm water
500 grams strong white bread flour
and a good ladleful of sourdough starter

remember to feed your starter after you take some, otherwise you'll deplete your supply.

the next morning, pour the bubbly, rather soupy mixture back into the mixer and add:
600 grams strong flour
25 grams of salt

that may sound like a lot of salt, but bread needs the salt (tho' it does interfere a bit with the rising) to get the right crispy crust. claus meyer is a big advocate of plenty of salt in the bread. mix this in your mixer with the dough hook - once it's combined, turn it up on high and let the mixer knead it for 10-12 minutes. or knead it by hand if that's what you like (i'm lazy, so i let the mixer do it). plus, this dough is rather soft and sticky, so it's difficult to knead by hand.

for mine, i used a mixture of a couple of flours, but you can use a regular high quality wheat flour, or mix in a bit of spelt or whatever you'd like. my starter itself has been subject to my flour whims in its feedings, so it has had snacks of good wholewheat flour, some of the nordic grain sorts - emmer, ølandshvede and svejderug along the way, so it is very wholegrain. but you can be as purist as you like, or use what's available in your area. whatever you choose, the starter will have the personality you give it.

next, the bread requires four provings (according to the book). i actually only gave mine two, because i had to go away during the day. and let's face it, four is rather intimidating.

the bread is baked at a very high temperature - 250°C/480°F when you first put it in the oven. there are a lot of instructions about spraying it with water and about putting a pan of water in the oven, but i'll admit i didn't do that (it was too overwhelming, but i will try it another time, especially after i sat down and read how that makes a good crusty crust). you turn down to 200°C/390°F once it puffs up (which it will do rather alarmingly) and the crust starts to brown. the recipe actually should make 2-3 loaves, but i made one giant loaf. mine baked for about 40-45 minutes, but it may take longer (i always think my oven is fast). you will know it's done by knocking on it. it just sounds done (vague of me, i realize, but try it, you'll see what i mean). we ate it, fresh from the oven, with a fresh batch of hummus and i utterly neglected to photograph it.

this book can be yours!

and my adventures in sourdough will continue as i intend to keep my starter going for a long time to come. the best part about an established starter is that you can give a bit of it as a gift. plus, as it matures, it just gets better and better.

and to encourage you in your own baking adventures, we're going to give away a copy of the river cottage bread book right here (i somehow ended up with two - undoubtedly in a confluence of bad memory and amazon order button madness). just leave a comment about your most memorable bread experience and we'll draw a lucky winner on friday, may 6.

Favorite Cookbooks: A Homemade Life

2011-04-27T16:30:00.000+02:00

I’ve recently returned “home” to England after three weeks in Texas (my native home) – and frankly, I’ve been struggling with re-entry. We take pretty much the same version of this trip every year and flying there is so easy. We get off the plane in the afternoon, and even though we’ve been travelling for twelve hours, sunny skies, Mexican food and friends are waiting for us. It’s like an instant shot of adrenalin to the system. We feel revved up and full of energy for what is, basically, several weeks of pure pleasure. Flying back to England is a different story, though. We arrive in the early morning: dirty, exhausted and with a crick in the neck from trying to sleep on the plane. At home, there are a million things that need to be done . . . not to mention the piles and piles of dirty laundry that tumble out of our (many) suitcases.

Getting back into the kitchen is always a bit of a problem after a long trip. While we are in Texas, I positively revel in eating out. The trip becomes a checklist of all of our favourite foods at all of favourite places. I can identify with this quotation: “The only reason I travel is for an excuse to eat more than usual.” (A Homemade Life, p. 260) And let’s be honest: Every now and then a person just needs to be liberated from the demands of dinner – not just having to make it, but having to think about what to make, too. I make about 98% of what we eat in our “normal” life in England, and I usually enjoy it, but it does always take me a little while to get back into the routine. And sometimes I feel that way about eating, too. After a couple of weeks of stuffing myself with Texan specialties (steak, hamburgers, Mexican food), I don’t feel like eating anything but the plainest sort of food. A baked potato, maybe; or a boiled egg with toast.

Just before I left Houston, I picked up a copy of A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg. (You might know her from the Orangette blog or her food essays in Bon Appétit .) Wizenberg’s book is a foodie memoir – just the sort of thing that I like best. Her writing has warmth and wit; qualities which remind me of Laurie Colwin, one of my most beloved food writers. Interspersed with gracefully told essays are the recipes, which lean heavily towards soups, salads and baked goods – the food that I most want to cook, and eat, when I’m at home. With the exception of her potato salad and pickled carrots, which no one in my family but me would eat, I was tempted to earmark every single one of her recipes for immediate experimentation.

I guess that some people can draw inspiration from ingredients alone, but good stories always work best for me. It’s part of why I love to eat out when I go home to Texas. It’s not just the food; it’s also the memories lingering around the food. Reading A Homemade Life is just what I needed to rekindle my enthusiasm for my own kitchen. Although I’ve only been home for a handful of days, I’ve already made her blueberry-raspberry pound cake and her buckwheat pancakes. I’m got bananas ripening on the counter for the delectable sounding banana bread with chocolate and crystallized ginger. And I'm eyeing up the leftover Easter ham to make her version of a frisee salad with ham, eggs and mustard vinaigrette.

Funnily enough, the only meal that I made in Texas was a breakfast of pancakes and bacon when we were staying at a friend’s ranch. Although I can’t recapture the warm Texas breeze coming through the window, or the cups of good coffee, or the collection of friends, Molly’s buckwheat pancakes were really good, too. As recommended, I added blueberries to the mix. I doubled the recipe, and that was enough to feed me and three jet-lagged teenagers with bedhead. I had the two-day-old leftovers this morning and they were still surprisingly delicious.

** One thing that I can share from my Texas trip is my Mom’s tip for bacon. Instead of frying it or microwaving it, try baking it in a hot (400 F/200 C) oven. (Does everyone else know about this?) Just arrange it on a slatted baking sheet (with a pan/tin underneath to catch the grease) and bake for 20/30 minutes or until it reaches the desired colour and crispiness. It cooks evenly and crisply, and doesn’t shrink as much as with other cooking methods. It also makes less of a mess, although there will be a dirty pan to clean up. But hey, it’s worth it.

friday night food

2011-04-16T19:19:00.000+02:00

friday dinner is always a very relaxed affair at our house, often consumed a bit late in front of friday evening television. after the efforts of the week, friday calls for something easy and relaxed, but also something a bit nibbly and tasty and suited towards stretching it out a bit, grazing over dinner, if you will. i often make something that we can spread out on the coffee table in the living room and everyone can nibble and pick at it, rather than sitting down to a proper dinner. often, it's some nice hard sausage, several kinds of cheese, olives, oven-dried tomatoes, smoked almonds or salty pistachios and a loaf of good bread. whatever else we have, friday evening always revolves around a good loaf of bread - whether homemade or a long baguette or two purchased from the bakery at the grocery store. luckily, we live in a place with a good bread culture, as a loaf of ordinary sliced bread just won't do.

clockwise from 12 - creamy eggplant, classic tomato, portabello, roasted pepper

yesterday evening, i lazily stirred up four different toppings for bread - none of which involved meat. and they were each so tasty on their own, that we didn't miss the meat at all. i had to have two rounds of each one before i could decide which one i liked best. the base of each is a slice of good bread, dipped in olive oil on one side, with just a strafing of grated cheese on top and toasted 'til golden brown in the oven.

creamy eggplant

creamy eggplant bruschetta

1 eggplant, diced, salted, allowed to drain in a colander, rinsed, then browned in a pan

1 small onion, diced - sweat off the onion while the eggplant is draining

5-6 springs of fresh thyme

1/2 C of cream

1 tsp. of chili flakes for kick (optional)

salt & pepper to taste

dice your onion and sweat it off in the pan with a bit of olive oil. dice the eggplant, salt it and leave it in the sink in a colander to drain off the bitterness that eggplants can have. rinse and add it to the onion, tossing it around 'til it's a bit browned. season with chili, salt & pepper and add the thyme and the cream. allow it to simmer until it's a thick, creamy sauce.

classic bruschetta - tomato, garlic, oregano

tomato bruschetta

4 roma tomatoes, diced
handful of fresh oregano, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced.
olive oil
salt & pepper

dice your tomatoes and place them in a bowl, mix with chopped oregano and garlic, salt & pepper to taste and drizzle over a bit of olive oil. for a bit of extra bite, add a dash of balsamic vinegar.

portabello

portabello bruschetta

4 medium portabello mushrooms, diced

4-5 springs of thyme

olive oil

butter

salt & pepper

warm olive oil and a bit of butter in a pan and then add the roughly diced portabellos. sauté them until they are soft and don't look at all raw, add the thyme, salt & pepper. this is sublimely simple and tastes sublime. a bit of garlic wouldn't be wrong, but since i had garlic in a couple of the other toppings, i left it out.

roasted red pepper

roasted red pepper bruschetta

2 red peppers, sliced in half, seeds and stalk removed
8 cloves of garlic, peeled
olive oil
white wine
at least 8 springs of thyme
salt & pepper

prepare a baking dish with a bit of olive oil in the bottom, lay in the red peppers, throw 2 cloves of garlic and a bit of thyme in each one, put in a bit of olive oil into the bowl of the pepper itself. a glug of white wine in the bottom of the pan to prevent the peppers from drying out. stick it in the oven at 180°C/350°F for 20-30 minutes, until nicely roasted. remove and slice into strips.

i put the toppings into each their own little rectangular dish, gave them a last bit of heating in the oven, with the bread while it finished toasting. pop the bread into a basket, pour a couple of glasses of wine and you have a bruschetta feast for 2-3, maybe even 4. and seriously, don't worry about the cream in the eggplant - you do need some fat in your diet and so it may as well come in small, good-tasting elements that involve quality ingredients.

and as for which was my favorite...as i was eating each one, i thought "this is it." but in the end, i actually think that the red pepper was my favorite. which actually surprised me a little bit. roasting a red pepper just makes it sweet and wonderful. but the creamy eggplant was a close second. the only one there was something left of was the tomato, the rest of it was all eaten, down to wiping down the bowls with the last of the bread. yummy.

lunch in the garden

2011-04-10T22:48:00.000+02:00

take one sunshiney sunday with no wind at all, add daffodils in bloom all over the garden, and warm to temperatures approaching 20 (upper sixties for those in the US). put a pretty tablecloth over one outdoor table and add cushiony pillows to outdoor chairs. make sure there's some cold white wine in the fridge.

springy shrimp salad

400 grams small shrimp (ours come from greenland and are in a plastic container with slightly vinegary - salty water, but you can use big lovely precooked tiger shrimp or whatever shrimp you can get
1 ripe mango, diced
1 bunch of green onions, sliced into pretty rounds
1/2 a cucumber, diced
1 handful of ripe cherry tomatoes, sliced

dressing:
juice of one lemon
handful of fresh thyme (preferably from your garden), slid neatly off its stalks
good glug (my favorite measurement) of olive oil
salt & pepper

chop all of the ingredients and mix them with the shrimp in a pretty bowl. whisk up the lemon juice, thyme and olive oil and season with salt & pepper, pour over the shrimp mixture.

serve immediately with a loaf of fresh bread. either from the bakery or your own oven. basic bread recipe here.

i mixed up a pitcher of lemonade - using the juice of 3 lemons, about 1/2 a container of honey and sparkling water. the adults added a dash of white wine to theirs and the child drank it as it was.

and there you have the recipe for a perfect sunday lunch in the garden.

what's for dinner? - burgers

2011-03-31T16:37:00.000+02:00

i know, i've blogged the burger thing here on domestic sensualist before, so this isn't exactly news. however, this week is about what we're really eating for dinner, and last night, it was burgers.

a homemade burger is a most satisfying dinner. if you pile on enough tomatoes and greens and onions and cucumbers and avocado, you don't even need anything to go with it - meat, bread, veggies, bacon - it has something from all of the essential food groups. and although burgers can be a bit mundane, it doesn't take that much to step them up a notch.

500 grams of organic ground beef
3 cloves of garlic, minced
shake of fajita seasoning

mix the seasonings with the ground beef thoroughly, then form into patties. i make a fairly thin burger, mostly because i usually pile so much stuff on it that if the burger is also thick, i've got issues. plus, a thin burger gets done faster, so you fast track your time from stove to table.

do try to buy (or make, if you're ambitious) some posh buns (a harder crust italian one or a focaccia) instead of normal hamburger buns. it tastes better, but it also makes the everyday seem less mundane.

we always have avocado in some form with our burgers - either sliced or as guacamole - its green butteriness is just the perfect complement to the garlicky beef.

the burger above has a bit of a sesame dressing from a japanese place drizzled over it, but use what you've got around the house - a zingy citrus olive oil, some teriyaki, salsa, whatever's in the cupboard.

everybody likes a burger, so it's a great way to feed the family when inspiration lags.

what's for dinner - risotto & potato focaccia

2011-03-30T13:52:00.001+02:00

late yesterday afternoon, i had just turned on the oven to preheat before putting in the bread for a little dinner party we were having on a tuesday, since friends from manila were in town. suddenly, everything went dark. i thought that in this old house, since i had the dishwasher and my mixer going, that turning on the oven was too much and i'd blown a fuse. i went out to the new fuse board and flipped a few switches. nothing. the four guests would arrive in just over an hour and i had nothing finished to feed them. so i called husband in a panic. while i was photographing the electrical board for him and getting ready to send it through, the neighbor came by to ask if our electricity was out too. turned out it was the whole area and not my fuses at all! yay! or not, because who knew how long it would take before it came back on?

my planned menu was pretty simple - a potato focaccia, chicken risotto and a big salad. happily, husband recently built me a gas stovetop, so i didn't electricity to get on with the risotto.

risotto is my go-to dish at least once a week, especially in the winter. it's warming, hearty and lends itself to whatever you have at hand - you can add leftover chicken, peas, asparagus, leeks, mushrooms, safran - whatever you want, really. it's filling and all it really needs to go with it is a salad. plus, it makes great leftovers. the first couple of times, it can be slightly temperamental, but once you get the hang of it, it's easy.

chicken leek risotto

3 C of chicken broth (preferably homemade, but it's ok to use a bouillon cube and hot water)

1 C good quality white wine (if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it)

1 C risotto rice

3 leeks, finely sliced and rinsed well

olive oil

butter

2 C chopped roast chicken

1/2 C creme fraiche (optional)

fresh parmesan for grating over the top

put the broth in one pan and heat it up to simmer. meanwhile, melt a good knob of butter and a glug of olive oil and sauté off the leeks. it's ok to have more oil than you'd normally think is ok, because next you're going to add the rice and it should be well-coated in the butter-olive oil mixture. stir until the rice goes a bit translucent, then add the white wine. stir and once the rice absorbs the white wine, begin to add the warm bouillon one ladle at a time. stirring frequently, but not necessarily constantly. once you've added all of the bouillon and it's been absorbed (which takes 20+ minutes), stir in the chicken and creme fraiche and allow them to warm through. serve with fresh parmesan grated on top. it will be quite creamy, even without the creme fraiche, so that's optional.

the focaccia recipe was posted here. this time, i sliced 3 small potatoes very thinly (you can do it with a mandolin, tho' i just used the slicing bit of my big hand grater, since i have developed a strange fear of my mandolin), sprinkled them over the top with some dried rosemary and flaky salt.

they went all yummy and a bit potato chip-like on top of the bread.

happily, the electricity came back on and i was able to bake the bread so that it came out of the oven just as they arrived. sometimes you just get lucky.

the salad was simply a package of mixed leaves, a handful of tomatoes, an apple, half a cucumber, diced and a package of blueberries. for dressing, i drizzled a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. i served a south african chardonnay with the meal.

p.s. utterly neglected to photograph the risotto. sorry about that!

what's for dinner - couscous

2011-03-29T07:38:00.003+02:00

wander into the kitchen, bleary-eyed from a day at the computer, and more than a little shocked that it's already 5:45. pour self glass of cold white wine. take a sip. open refrigerator to see what's there. clear out the crisper. put carrots, half a zucchini (left over from yesterday's pizza), half a cabbage (left over from saturday's stir fry), a handful of green beans, half a box of mushrooms and an onion on the counter. check the cupboard, see if there's some couscous left in that box. there is. breathe sigh of relief. take another sip of wine.

set kettle to boil, pour boiling water over one bouillon cube (flavor of your choice - i used beef, tho' to keep this dish vegetarian, you can use a veggie one). meanwhile, put a cup of couscous into a shallow bowl, then pour the bouillon over it and place a plate over the top of the bowl and leave it to soak in. meanwhile, chop all of the assorted veggies you found in the fridge. start by tossing diced onions into pan and sweat them off in a good glug of olive oil. add a grated carrot and grated zucchini (courgette), then chopped mushrooms, then some chopped cabbage and green beans cut into bite-size. sauté them until they're done just enough - it's ok if the beans are still slightly crunchy. you can cover with a lid for a couple of minutes while you have a well-deserved sip of wine, but don't let them lose their bright color. and don't forget to season with salt & pepper.

toast off some hazelnuts or almonds or pine nuts - whatever you've got. chop a handful of dried apricots (or dates) for a little element of sweetness. toss it all together with the couscous (which you've fluffed with a fork), stir it together, take another sip of wine and call the family for dinner. if you're lucky, there might be just enough left for you for lunch tomorrow.

this is a vegetarian dish, but if you had some leftover meat from another meal, you could toss that in, but the dish doesn't need meat.

what's for dinner? - pizza

2011-03-28T14:29:00.001+02:00

i suspect i'm not alone in having a daily struggle with figuring out what to make for dinner. so i thought i'd share that struggle with you here, all week. some days are more inspired than others. it's hard when you've worked all day to find the energy to make a meal for the family. while i do cook to unwind, sometimes, i simply don't feel like cooking. but the fact is, we've got to eat, and so i find ways to put dinner on the table anyway. so i hereby give you the first installment in a week of everyday meals.

when you don't feel like cooking, the temptation to run down to the local pizza place is strong. however, making homemade pizza is easy and so much more delicious than any pizza from the local pizza joint. if you get creative, you can probably use the ingredients you have in the fridge and not even have to go to the grocery store.


potato slices, chicken, mozarella, prima donna cheese

pizza crust

250ml (1 cup) warm water

1/2 package of yeast (half a cube of fresh yeast is what i use, but dry is fine too)

1 squeeze of runny honey

1 tsp. salt

2 T olive oil

3 C flour (you may need a bit more if the dough is too wet)

mix the warm water, yeast and honey in the mixer bowl and let them sit for 5 minutes 'til the yeast begins to bubble. add the salt, olive oil and flour and allow the mixer to knead it for you (or mix it well and knead it for a few minutes if you don't have a mixer with a dough hook). place it in a large bowl, greased with olive oil and allow it to rise in a warm spot while you prepare the toppings. it's enough for two crusts.

suggested toppings:

for all: 3 kinds of cheese - 1 ball of fresh mozzarella, sliced, freshly-grated parmesan, grated prima donna (or whatever cheese you have on hand)

olive oil & garlic base:

3 T good olive oil

4 cloves of garlic, minced

mix the olive oil & minced garlic in a bowl, spread it over the crust. top with cheese. you can also add leftover chicken if you have some. a couple of thinly-sliced potatoes are good too. or maybe carmelized onions.

tomato sauce base:

the quick version: keep a jar of good quality tomato/pasta sauce on hand (ours is called dolmio). (i know this goes against our own "what is not a domestic sensualist" philosophy, but sometimes, it's needed.)

toppings:

sliced tomato + cheese (the classic margarita)

grated zucchini

thinly-sliced mushrooms

chorizo

pesto base:

keep a jar or tub of good quality pesto on hand for those don't-want-to-cook days. but pesto is also easy and can even be made of arugula, pine nuts and a dash of olive oil in the food processor in a hurry. but sometimes, you don't have basil or fresh arugula at hand, so a jar of it is fine.

ideal topped with leftover chicken or leftover flank steak and a few fresh veggies - peppers, mushrooms, eggplant.

bake for 20+ minutes in a 180°C/350°F oven, 'til the crust is crispy. eat immediately.

not the best pic, but it was getting a bit dark.

you can throw some mixed salad leaves right on top, for a healthy kick.

get as fancy and creative as you want with the toppings, but the simpler the better. and don't be afraid to use up leftovers as toppings.

cake pops!

2011-03-20T11:22:00.000+01:00

Hey, thanks julochka and Bee for letting me be silly here - for silly I plan on being ... I mean, what could be sillier than cake pops?!

I'll give you the short version first (and because I have no step-by-step photos - sorry!):
Bake a cake. Deconstruct it completely - as in reduce it to a pile of fine crumbs. Mix crumbs with icing (frosting) to desired consistency. Roll mix into lollipop sized balls. Freeze balls. Cover in chocolate. Decorate.
Silly huh?
From the first time I saw them, I just knew I had to try them.

cake pops

Your favourite cake recipe.

Now's a good time to decide whether you want chocolate pops, red velvet pops, vanilla pops ... try anything as long it produces a nice fine cake crumb.

The original instructions call for a cake box mix, I know how we feel about those here but in all honesty, and especially the first time you make these, it's not such a bad idea.

Bake cake as usual.

Allow to cool completely. Crumble (I know, I know ... it feels wrong, get over it).

I baked my cake in two halves and after I'd crumbled one I decided I had more than enough to work with, so froze the other half. One half produced over 50 cake pops.

Mix up your favourite icing.

Something nice and sticky, and preferably not too sweet. I think cream cheese icing or julochka's fabulous creamy vanilla frosting is a good call.

Again, you probably won't use it all - but I find emergency frozen icing never goes unused.

Spoon icing into crumbs slowly, mixing all the while, to get desired consistency.

Truthfully I added too much icing to this batch, the texture of the cake balls were a little smooth (a bit more like truffles than cake) and they were a little too sweet. You're trying for a mix which will ball nicely but still have a cake-like texture when you bite into them.

Freeze balls on a baking sheet or tray.

Prevent husband from devouring them just like this.
I left mine overnight. A long time to fight off the devouring.

When you're ready to start icing, gather together all the bits you'll need before you start.
- lollipop sticks
- sprinkles and any other decorative elements
- a block or sheet of styrafoam with holes already pegged out in it (you don't want to be doing this with a top-heavy lollipop stick dripping chocolate, trust me).
- a damp cloth (for fingers)
- toothpicks, useful for all manner of reasons
- your sense of humour

Melt chocolate, either using a broken up bar or chocolate melts (also known as buttons or tabs). Apparently melts are better designed to be heated and reheated so you should probably go with those.
If you want to be authentic, melt chocolate over a double-boiler but let me assure you - the microwave works just as well.

Working with only a few balls out of the freezer at a time, dip the tip of a lollipop stick into the melted chocolate then slowly ease it into one of the balls.
Dunk ball in chocolate, swirling it around for overall coverage, patching and smoothing with a toothpick, tapping stick lightly against the side of the bowl to tap off excess chocolate.

Working quickly, before it sets, swirl chocolate covered ball through your sprinkles. Now's when you can add all manner of other decorative bits too. For more decorating tips and techniques it's best to visit the cake pop queen herself.

Now stand your cake pop up in the styrafoam and keep on going!

Awesomely impressive - if a little sweet - these might not appeal to all palates, but they certainly qualify as some delightful eye candy.

And just a couple of tips bakerella won't give you:

- make sure you pee before starting the decorating process

- have a hearty breakfast

- if you live in a hot, bug-infested climate, make sure you've a pop-up fly net handy to keep your completed pops covered

- watch out for eyelashes, it seems you'll never lose more eyelashes than when working with melted chocolate

- have no, repeat NO, small children present at any stage of the procedure (at least not the first time you do it)

- when using a piece of styrafoam you dug out of the garden shed remember to wipe the underside before it's loaded with completed cake pops

- strictly make these at most a couple of hours before serving. Drooping sticks, cracked chocolate, cake oozes - let's just say they start looking a whole lot less attractive if they stand around for too long.

Get popping!

chai cake

2011-03-11T19:55:00.001+01:00

i've been trying to devote my fridays to finishing projects that i have underway. but it seems that every friday, when i should be sitting down to do that, my mind wanders off to something new. today, i had a hankering to make a cake. sabin and i have been watching ultimate cake off, with the ambitious 5' tall structures of cake and fondant, but i wanted to do something a bit more simple. but still with a twist. i decided to make a chai cake. and i began searching for recipes online. the more i looked, the more i thought that i could come up with something myself. so i embarked on an experiment.

we love chai and we love loose-leaf tea. however, our favorite chai is only available in a grocery store called Irma, that doesn't exist in this part of denmark - it's apparently a "city" grocery store and we live in the countryside. just this week, i had run out of that precious elixir, but i still had some of this:

it's a pretty good instant chai mix (tho' a bit sweet for my taste as a drink), that you mix with hot water. i thought it would taste delicious as a cake. i started with a martha stewart butter cake as my base - martha knows her cakes and they always have lots of real ingredients - like butter and loads of eggs and they never call for a box cake mix (very surprising how many cake recipes out there do).

chai layer cake

250 grams butter (i always use salted because i think it tastes better, but you can choose) (that's 2 sticks to y'all in the US)

2 C organic sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

2 and 1/3 C of flour

1 T. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 C instant chai mixture

1 C (250ml) milk

cream the butter in the mixer using the paddle. slowly add the sugar until it's a creamy, light yellow. mix in the four eggs one at a time, mixing well between each egg. meanwhile, combine the flour, baking powder, chai mixture and salt. add the vanilla to your egg mixture. begin to add flour and milk alternating each until it's all combined in a velvety dough.

butter and flour two round (9"/23cm) cake pans. i lined the very bottom with baking paper for ease of removal (i just trace around it with the pan and cut it out to fit it perfectly). i never used baking paper when i lived in the US, but i have to admit i don't know how i did without it! i really highly recommend it.

bake the two cakes at 180°C/375°F for 30-40 minutes (again, my oven is faster than others, but you know yours best). take them out and leave them to cool.

i would have liked to get creative on the frosting (something maple came to mind), but my family loves a good, classic vanilla buttercream, so i pleased them.

classic buttercream frosting

250 grams butter

500 grams powdered sugar

1 tsp. real vanilla

2 T milk

cream the butter, then slowly add the powdered sugar and vanilla. add only as much milk as you need to make a creamy, spreadable consistency. this can differ based on the weather (i swear). chill for a few minutes (up to 15) in the refrigerator, then spread on the cooled cakes.

we didn't decorate or anything, we just ate thick slices with a steaming mug of tea. it tasted great, but i would say it was just a tad on the dry side, but that was undoubtedly because i baked it a bit too long. better to under bake just a titch than overbake. again, i make the mistakes so you don't have to! enjoy!

boutique flours and the baking of bread

2011-02-24T10:54:00.000+01:00

i don't know if it's the same everywhere, but increasingly here in denmark, there are exciting and interesting new varieties of flour on the market. especially flour for baking bread. denmark is full of good bread (which is why husband is always shell-shocked when we go to the US and encounter the bread there). the danes do an excellent rye (rugbrød) that's excellent no matter where you buy it - from the discount supermarket to the local bakery - so i don't really tackle the dark breads. but 2-3 times a week, i bake a loaf of ordinary white or lighter brown bread. and these newly available flours are taking those loaves from ordinary to extraordinary.

a number of the new types of flour are from grains that were found in the nordic seed gene bank and which have been revived and cultivated back to commercial capacity in recent years. my weekly organic box provider has recently added baking boxes which include a variety of these newly-available flours.

~ ølandshvede - with higher protein and gluten content than ordinary flour - the dough you make with it tends to have excellent elasticity and thread very nicely. the ølands wheat flour that i get is stone ground, and they say that stone ground wheat keeps more of the nutrition and taste.

- emmermel - this is a heavier flour, also stone ground. it tends more towards the rye-type and you mix it with wheat flour to get a dough that you can form into a good bread that can stand on its own. the dough is quite soft and ends up a more golden brown (the loaf below used emmermel) and has an almost nutty, hearty flavor.

~ svejderug - a revived grain related to rye, but which gives a lighter bread than rye bread. the seeds were found in norway and it has taken forty years to bring them back to commercial production.

~ spelt - spelt probably makes the most reliably good, hearty bread. you want the dough to be quite moist and loose and it's best to use a bread pan, but if you mix half spelt and half ordinary flour, you can easily form a free-standing loaf. i often use spelt when i make focaccia, as you spread it out over the pan anyway.

i tend as well to buy organic wheat flour as my everyday white flour and that's both widely available in any grocery store and some rather special ones are available through aarstiderne, the folks who bring my weekly organic box. the wheat flour i'm using right now, for cakes as well as bread consists of 75% organically-grown wheat and 25% biodynamic, which has even stricter guidelines. it's also stone ground and is made by aurion.

we intend to get our own flour mill as well and we'll be able to source the grains for grinding ourselves through aurion, so we've got no intentions of going into farming them ourselves. but for now, i'm really happy with what's commercially available. plus, the good folks at aarstiderne bring it straight to my door - what could be easier?

emmerbrød (adapted from aarstiderne)

500ml warm water (2 C)

1 cube of fresh yeast or a generous spoonful of dry

a generous pinch of salt

1 spoonful of honey

1.5 C of emmer flour (or other special wheat sorts)

3.5 C of wheat flour (preferably organic) (depending on the weather and your flour, you may need more than this)

combine the warm water, yeast, salt and honey in your mixer bowl and let it stand 5 minutes or so. add the emmer flour. once it's mixed, begin to add the regular flour until you have a soft, pliable dough. i let my kitchen-aid do this entire process, but you can also mix by hand in a bowl and then knead. the dough hook on the kitchen-aid does all of this for me, freeing me to do other things (like make a coffee).

place it in a large bowl that you've wiped with olive oil and allow it to rise for several hours, covered with a clean tea towel. turn it out onto the counter, sprinkled with a bit of the emmer flour and fold it over onto itself repeatedly until you have a nice, tight round loaf. place it on a baking sheet (i always use baking paper underneath, for ease of cleanup), slash across the top with a sharp knife, so it looks pretty, sprinkle with flaky salt and allow it to rise again for 30 minutes to an hour. if you lack time, you can actually put it directly into the oven and it'll be fine. bake for 30-40 minutes at 180°C/375°F.

another bread i've been baking a lot of lately is this:

feta & pine nut bread

500ml (2 C) warm water

1 cube of fresh yeast (or a generous spoonful of dry)

generous pinch of salt

a good glug of a tasty, fragrant olive oil

1 spoonful of honey

6 C of flour - it can be a mixture of organic white flour and spelt or other wheat varieties (i use ølandshvede lately)

120 grams of feta, crumbled

100 grams of toasted pine nuts

a bit of chopped rosemary if you have it

combine the water, yeast, olive oil and honey and allow it to stand until the yeast bubbles. slowly add the flour and salt until it begins to form a ball on your dough hook (again, i totally let the kitchen-aid do the work). add the crumbled feta and pine nuts and rosemary. it may go rather loose after this and so you can add a bit more flour if desired. but better to leave the dough a bit more wet than you think it should be - it makes for a more moist loaf of bread.

set it to rise in a large bowl that you've wiped with olive oil. let it rise for several hours in a warm place under a clean tea towel. turn it out onto a floured countertop and form it into a nice round loaf. slash the top for prettiness and sprinkle with salt. allow it to rise for 30-60 minutes and bake. you can also just pop it into the oven, no problem. bake for 30-40 minutes at 180°C/375°F. you can tell it's done by knocking on it. it's hard to describe, but it just sounds done and you'll know what i mean if you try it.

* * *

baking bread is easy, but you can have the odd day where it behaves in a temperamental way. last friday, my bread was an utter failure and i'm honestly not sure why, but i do think the weather and especially the barometric pressure can have an effect. i had a loaf of feta & pine nut spelt that just would not bake properly - it was still strangely doughy on the inside, despite nearly an hour in the oven at 180°C. some brownies i baked the same day turned out strangely as well. some days are like that and you just have to try again.

i realize that many of you won't find these same sorts of grains, but i'll bet this phenomenon isn't unique to denmark - so check your grocery store and see if there aren't some special kinds of flour available. it is well worth it to try them out.

making marmalade

2011-02-17T19:57:00.000+01:00

as always at christmas, we gorged ourselves silly on sweet, succulent little clementines. however, once christmas was over, our consumption tapered off significantly. i didn't pick up on this fast enough and got another big box of them delivered with our weekly organic box in early january. thus, i found myself with a load of clementines in the basket and no one interested in eating them. so i went in search of a marmalade recipe. i found one here, on an australian food blog (do go check it out, as his light was much better than mine and so the pictures are great). of course, i couldn't just follow the recipe, i had to stray from it, but he offered some good advice...like on saving all of the pith and seeds, wrapping them up in a little piece of muslin and throw it into your boil in order to take advantage of the natural pectin that's in the seeds.

mandarin marmalade

20 mandarins or clementines (approx. 2 kilos)

1 kilo organic caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

juice of 1 lemon

6 C (750ml) water

makes 3 250ml jars of marmalade.

peel your oranges, saving about half of the best skins and all of the seeds and pith.
break the mandarins apart (i made the mistake of leaving them in halves and oddly, they didn't really come apart, so my marmalade is rather...ah...chunky.
place the pith and seeds in a small square of muslin cloth and either tie it shut, or sew a quick seam around the entire edge of it (like i did) to keep them trapped inside.
finely slice the peel into small strips (see the original recipe website, he's got great pix of this step).
place all of the ingredients in a heavy pan and stir. put it on the stove over medium heat and stir constantly until the sugar is melted and it comes to a gentle boil.
turn down the heat to very low and allow it to simmer gently for at least two hours, stirring it occasionally. i actually left mine on the stove the whole afternoon - more like 4 hours or so - because it made the house smell heavenly.
prepare your jars...i give mine a tour in the dishwasher and then boil the little rubber seals in a pan. the site where i got the inspiration for the recipe has an interesting method of setting them in the oven that i'm going to try the next time.
fish out the parcel of seeds and pour the marmalade into the jars and seal them. if you have enough seeds, there should be enough natural pectin that the marmalade will set up, otherwise, you can use some purchased pectin.

it was enough to fill three 250 ml. jars - you could use smaller ones and give them as gifts. we've already used up one entire jar - i used the dregs yesterday when i made beth's bread & butter pudding, and i can highly recommend doing that. and i'll admit that i have, more than once, just had a little saucer of the marmalade with my tea. i find this very russian of myself. and it feels a bit decadent, but virtuous too, since i made it myself with organic clementines that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Raspberry Linzer Hearts

2011-02-14T21:59:00.000+01:00

I grew up making cookies with my mother and I've passed the same tradition down to my two daughters.
Tonight I was talking on the phone to my oldest daughter . . . and I told her that I had made Raspberry Linzer Hearts for Valentine's Day. "Ohhh," she said, and I definitely caught a plaintive note in her voice.
I promised to freeze a few of them for her -- not knowing for sure if they DO freeze -- but just in case, here is an offering from mother to daughter: a virtual "love heart."

This recipe comes from Mary Englebreit's Cookie Cookbook which I bought for my girls when they were beginning bakers. The subtitle of the book is "The Queen's Best Recipes" -- which reminds me of my bossy older daughter, who has ruled over us all since she was about two years old.

Here's the editorial recommendation:
Don't bring these out for the Super Bowl: they are labors of love for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and ladies' teas.

They actually aren't that difficult, especially if you are used to working with roll-out cookie dough.
But make them for family and friends and let them be impressed by how very hard you labored . . .

Ingredients:
1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) walnuts*
1 cup (4 ounces) whole blanched almonds* (ensure your nuts are fresh)
8 ounces unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' (icing) sugar, plus a bit extra for decoration
2 large egg yolks
2 1/2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
1/2 cornstarch (cornflour)
1 cup seedless raspberry jam

You will also need two heart-shaped cookie cutters -- approximately 2 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inch.

Method:
Using a food processor, combine the walnuts and almonds and process, pulsing, until finely ground. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks. On a low speed, gradually add the flour and cornstarch, mixing just until incorporated. Add the ground nuts and mix until blended.
Divide the dough (it will be stiff) into four pieces -- and shape each of these into a disk. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate until firm (2 to 4 hours).
Preheat the oven to 325F/160C. Grease two baking sheets -- unless you use Silpats, as I do. Or, use parchment paper to line your cookie sheets.
On a floured surface, roll out one piece of dough at a time until approximately 1/4 inch thick.
Usint a 2 1/2 inch heart-shaped cutter, cut out as many cookies as possible.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes -- depending on how thinly you rolled your cookies. They should just be starting to turn slightly golden, but you don't want to brown them. After they have slightly cooled on the baking sheet, transfer them to wire cooling racks.
For half of the cookies, you will need to cut out the large heart shape -- and then use a smaller (1 1/2 inch) heart-shaped cutter centered in the middle.
Bake and cool the cutout hearts.
Very important: Dust the cutout hearts with confectioners' sugar BEFORE you assemble them.
Spread a rounded teaspoon of jam onto each whole heart cookie bottom and then cover with the cutout heart tops.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Bread and Butter Pudding

2011-02-10T09:12:00.001+01:00

We spent last Saturday looking at houses in Oxford.
It was one of those winter days that is much better spent inside -- what with the wind and the rain and bone-chilling damp.
No house is going to look its best on such a day, even if it is filled with vases of red tulips and wood-burning fireplaces in every room. But that fantasy scenario was far off the mark. In reality, we were looking at run-down houses that were still horrendously expensive. Is there anything more depressing than looking at houses that have come on the market because their elderly occupants have recently died? They have a forlorn quality like nothing else in the world. The howling wind just magnified the flaws of inadequate heating systems and ancient wooden sash windows which creaked in their frames.

On the drive home from this grim outing, I caught part of a Radio 4 program about bread and butter pudding. There is definitely a good reason why this solid old English pudding falls under the heading of "comfort food." By the time we got home, I was so desperately hungry that I went straight into the kitchen to make myself one. There was a rather virtuous minestrone soup for dinner, but I filled up on bread and butter pudding. What is that saying? Life is uncertain; eat dessert first.

This version is my own experiment, based on what I could remember from the radio program -- mainly, to "heat milk, cream and eggs until they were the temperature of blood." It is creamier and more custardy than the English version, which can be a bit dry, but not as rich and decadent as American bread pudding.
I highly recommend it -- best just warm from the oven, but still quite good cold for breakfast the next morning.
It's vegetarian, although not as low-fat or high-fiber as the lentils that Julochka has been eating. On the other hand, it has a pleasingly frugal quality that seems right for February. It is the perfect use for stale bread, and I was also able to empty out two jars of orange marmalade that contained about two tablespoons each.

Ingredients:
8 slices white bread
approximately two ounces of butter, plus a bit more to grease the pan
32 ounces (or 800 ml) of milk and cream combined -- I used two-thirds semi-skimmed milk and one-third single cream. I think this is a fairly flexible arrangement, though.
2 ounces of caster sugar, plus extra sugar (demerara would be good) to sprinkle on the top
3 large eggs
enough orange marmalade -- maybe 4 tablespoons -- to cover four slices of bread
a large handful or raisins soaked in a couple of tablespoons of Grand Marnier
freshly grated nutmeg

Method:
Preheat the oven to a moderate heat -- about 350F.
Start soaking a generous handful of raisins in a couple of tablespoons of Grand Marnier (or Cointreau; or orange juice if you are teetotal).
Generously butter 8 slices of white bread.
Spread 4 slices with orange marmalade -- again, quantities need not be too specific and can depend somewhat on your liking for marmalade (or how much you have left in a jar you want to empty).
Make "sandwiches" from the bread, and then cut them into triangles.
Whisk the eggs into the cream, milk and sugar until thoroughly combined, and then carefully heat over a low flame until barely warm.
Arrange the bread triangles in an oven-proof dish. I like to use my oval two-quart Pyrex.
Throw the raisins over the bread, and then pour the liquid mixture over the top.
Leave to soak for about ten minutes -- and then, as a final touch, dust with freshly grated nutmeg and some coarse demerara sugar.

It will need about 35 minutes in the oven, and maybe 5 minutes before you can plunge in with a big spoon.

vegetarian lunch for one - beluga lentils

2011-02-07T16:08:00.000+01:00

oddly enough, our commitment to eating less meat around here has lasted into February. and i'd have to say that i'm feeling increasingly comfortable with it and feeling less tempted to throw bacon into dishes at the last minute.

i find it easiest to eat vegetarian when i'm making lunch for myself. no one else's palate to accomodate allows me to experiment and explore new flavors. i'm also pushing myself to be a bit more inventive with what's at hand. here's the result from today...

beluga lentil lunch

300 grams of beluga lentils (little round black ones)

1 veggie bouillon cube

1 bay leaf

500 ml (2 cups) of water - you may need to add a bit more if it boils away before you think the lentils are done.

1 small onion, diced

a handful of fresh thyme

handful of hazelnuts, toasted in the pan and then chopped roughly

1 large spoonful of honey

juice of half a lemon

olive oil

soft, fresh goat cheese (mine was packed in oil with seasonings)

rinse the lentils, then cook on the stove, like you would rice, until the liquid boils mostly away - about 20 minutes.

while it's cooking, stir together a generous spoonful of honey and the juice of half a lemon, thyme and a drizzle of olive oil in a bowl, season with salt and pepper. dice onion and add it. toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan (keeping an eye on them so they don't burn). roll the hazelnuts in a towel to remove the husks and roughly chop them. once the lentils are done, drain off any excess water (tho' theoretically, there shouldn't be any) and add several large spoonsful of them to your dressing/onion bowl. stir well, top with soft goat cheese and toasted hazelnuts and enjoy your healthy and delicious solitary lunch. there will be enough lentils left over to do it again tomorrow.

a reluctant vegetarian

2011-01-18T12:33:00.005+01:00

beans for lunch

tho' i'm not much of a maker of new year's resolutions, nearly every january, i am inspired to embark on some new healthy eating campaign. i think it's the overload of sweets and heavy, fatty food from christmas that does it. often, what i think is "we're going to eat a lot less meat around here." and this year was no different. between christmas & new year's, i went online and changed our weekly organic box delivery to the vegetarian box. it comes with enough non-meat goodies and recipes for four meals. it's a good mix of fresh vegetables and beans or pasta and tofu or goat cheese. it's different every week and they're very good at providing inspiration with new ingredients (for example, something called a "silver beet" (directly translated) that is a winter green of sorts) and staples (potatoes, carrots).

i don't want to be a vegetarian per se, but i would like us to eat less meat and thereby enjoy the meat we do eat that much more. i'd rather buy the occasional organic chicken for a sunday roast (and afterwards, a good pot of chicken stock) than eat manufactured, water plumped chicken breasts from chickens that led a dismal life, three times a week. it's a factor too that the production of animals for human consumption is, in general, one of the hardest things on our environment and one of the biggest contributors to climate change. so, we try to eat less meat.

but having grown up in the midwest, the urge is strong to think that no meal is complete without meat. i can stir up a pot of beans or a veggie soup or a stir-fry, but nearly every time, at the last minute, i think, "hmm, some bacon would be quite nice in this." even the beautiful marriage of flavors that is potato leek soup often gets a bit of crumbly bacon on top when served around here. it's hard to fight your upbringing.

however, i recently did fight it and with great results. so great, in fact, that i utterly failed to photograph it. i made a truly vegetarian lasagne. no last minute bacon or any other kind of meat! and it was delicious!

veggie lasagne

3 carrots, grated

2 parsnips, grated

2 large beefsteak tomatoes, diced

1 zucchini, grated

3 leeks, sliced

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or pressed - i've grown to loathe my garlic press, because it's so hard to clean, so i just bash the garlic with the side of my knife and chop it up as best i can)

1 eggplant, thinly sliced, salted, left to stand for 5-10 minutes, then rinsed

1 fennel, thinly sliced

1 jar/can crushed tomatoes

2 bay leaves

1 veggie bouillon cube

pepper

salt

chili flakes

whatever herbs you have around (my thyme is still growing strong, even tho' it was covered with snow for a month)

bread crumbs for topping

lasagne pasta (if you use fresh, you don't need to boil it first, if you use the dried kind, do give a boil to al dente)

1 recipe of bechamel sauce (i'm linking you because i always make husband make this and haven't got the slightest idea how it's done.) i only know that to that recipe, i would add a cup of grated cheese (we use prima donna - an aged gouda) and a good grating of fresh nutmeg, because that's what husband does.

sauté off your leeks and garlic in a good glug of olive oil. add the grated carrots, zucchini and parsnips. after they begin to soften, add the chopped tomato and the can of tomatoes, plus bay leaf, bouillon cube and herbs. salt and pepper to taste. if it doesn't look liquidy enough, you can add a bit of water - i usually rinse the can and just toss that half a can of water in with all of the goodness that remains on the can. simmer the sauce while you thinly slice the eggplant and fennel. use a mandolin if you dare (after my recent adventures in felting, which resulted in quite a lot of needle-related injuries, i stayed away from the mandolin this time).

next, layer your fresh lasagne pasta in the bottom of a pan you've buttered or given a coat of olive oil, on top of that, a layer of thinly-sliced eggplant and about half of your sliced fennel. spoon the tomato sauce over it, then another layer of pasta, eggplant, fennel and tomato sauce. ladle the creamy, cheesy bechamel over the top of it, using a knife to encourage it to sink down into all of the nooks and crannies. top with bread crumbs and bake in a 180°C/350°F oven for 45 minutes to an hour - until it's simmering and bubbling and you simply can't stand to wait for it any longer.

serve it with a simple salad. it tastes even better the next day, but you may not have leftovers.

* * *

i'm often home alone when it comes to lunchtime (such is often the fate of the independent entrepreneur). i find it easier to do a vegetarian meal for myself when my family's not around. (i wonder why that is?) but just because you're alone, doesn't mean you can't make yourself something healthy and delicious.

beans for lunch: a solitary lunch

400 grams of dried beans (pinto, black, white, red - whatever you have on hand)

1 carrot, cut into chunks

1 parsnip, cut into chunks

2 bay leaves

10-12 whole peppercorns

1 handful of fresh (or dried) thyme

1 small onion

3 cloves of garlic

salt & pepper

1 avocado

1 small red onion, diced

soak the beans overnight and discard the liquid, rinsing the beans. place them in a pot with fresh liquid and throw in the rest of the ingredients. cook them until the beans are tender (45 minutes - 1 hour).

dice your onion and avocado and combine it with a few spoonsful of the cooked beans. you can either include the carrots and parsnips as you ladle the beans into your bowl, or not, depending on your taste. i used a slotted spoon to avoid the "soup" the beans are in, as i wanted a hearty lunch, not a soup, but you could leave the liquid there and have more of a soup. there will be plenty of beans left over for another use...a salad, or for lunch tomorrow, or to be mashed into refried beans for tacos later with the family.

you could put on a dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche and eat it greedily for your solitary lunch. and it would be even easier and quicker with a can of beans.

* * *

for more goodness, check out this new food blog by mari, she's got a couple of vegetarian recipes wherein she (mostly) resists adding bacon.

and some properly vegan recipes that inspire here.

12 Days of Christmas Baking

2010-12-24T18:22:00.000+01:00

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

I undertook to bake . . .

twelve pecan tassies

eleven mincemeat pinwheels

ten cardamom buttons

nine molasses crinkles

eight oatmeal chewies

seven gingerbread trees

six cranberry loaves

five butter stars

four gingerbread houses

three dozen spritz

a double batch of sugar cookies

and a whole lot of Texas fruitcake!

The first day of Christmas doesn't actually start until the 25th,

but when it comes to Christmas baking, I'm pretty much done by that day.

I might manage one more batch of mince pies, and maybe another batch of English toffee for my mother-in-law, but all of my baking efforts come in the run-up to the Christmas season.

For weeks now, my kitchen has resembled an amateur bakery . . . and feel free to call me crazy, because all of my friends (and my husband) do.

I suppose we all have our favourite Christmas traditions -- the ones that make us feel cosy, and put us into the seasonal spirit -- and for me, it is all about a warm kitchen and the alchemy of flour and sugar. I'm sure it goes back to my childhood, when I spent many happy hours decorating sugar cookies and cutting out gingerbread men with my mother. These days, some of my best moments come when I'm in the company of my own children and we are chatting and laughing and listening to Christmas music -- whilst absorbed in our culinary tasks. I know that I will treasure the memory of the snowy day when my teenaged daughter's social plans were ruined and so we spent a long afternoon making candy: peanut brittle, English toffee, and a family favorite called "Oklahoma Brown" candy.

It's not that we don't sample the treats, but when it comes to Christmas baking, I definitely prefer to give . . . rather than to keep it all in the family. I make cookies platters for friends and teachers, and no one can enter my house without me breaking out the fruitcake and making little gift bags to take home.

This year will go down as the "Fruitcake Christmas." I dug up an old recipe that my grandparents used to love: they called it Fort Worth fruitcake, and my mom told me that the recipe was an annual request in the Fort Worth, Texas newspaper. I've made a few changes in the original recipe . . . you know that saying that necessity is the mother of invention? . . . and so I've called it Texas Fruitcake. Unlike the English versions of fruitcake, it doesn't have raisins, currants or mixed peel. Instead you get lots of moist dates and apricots, and plenty of pecans -- which are a major crop in Texas. I've tested this recipe on ALL sorts of people this Christmas, and everyone seems to love it. I've become a victim of my own success, though -- and I keep on having to make more of the stuff because I will insist on giving it away. I've made at least 20 loaves of it, maybe more; I lost track a long time ago.

Texas Fruitcake

Ingredients:

1 pound of stoned and chopped dates

1/2 pound candied cherries

1/2 pound chopped apricots

1 pound of pecans, coarsely chopped

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 eggs

Method:

This recipe will make either one large angel food tube pan, two medium loaves, or four small loaves. The cooking times are more or less the same for all of them -- two hours, taking away about ten minutes if you use the small loaf pans. Prepare all of the pans by using a bit of butter or shortening and then lining with parchment paper.

Cut fruit and nuts into small pieces and put into a large bowl. Note: If you cut them by hand you will have more quality control, but you may also use the food processor -- except for the cherries which really need to be cut up by hand. Be careful with the dates, too -- as they can easily turn to mush.

Sift the dry ingredients together and mix with the fruit and nuts -- using a wooden spoon.

Beat the eggs and vanilla together and pour the liquid mixture over the fruit/four mix.

Mix very well -- with a wooden spoon, or even with your hands.

Pack the mixture into the prepared pans.

Bake at a very low oven -- 250 F/125 C for approximately two hours.

Cool the cake in the pan, and then remove and wrap well in cling film.

Some commentary: When it is fresh out of the oven, this cake is absolutely delicious. You may treat it like a traditional fruitcake though, and "feed" it with brandy (sherry, rum, whatever) for several months or weeks before eating. It will get darker with age, and the flavour and texture will change -- but both versions are great. Yesterday, we had friends over for mince pies and mulled wine and I cut into a loaf that I've been "steeping" for almost two months now. (Sadly, there isn't a trace of it left now.)

If forced to choose, though, I would probably opt for the non-alcoholic version -- which is great for afternoon tea or even breakfast-on-the-run. At the beginning of the week, I had to catch an early train to London and I brought along several slices to share with a friend for our commuter breakfast. She was begging me for the recipe . . . really, it's that good.

Although it may seem like it's a bit late for fruitcake season, you might as well treat yourself because we still have wintry January and February to get through.

This is really such an easy-peasy recipe, and did you notice? No butter or other fat in it.

Perfect for Christmas -- or the upcoming season of austerity.

Happy Christmas baking!

bûche de nöel or how to look good this christmas

2010-12-16T17:44:00.001+01:00

last year, about this time, i made a reference to nigella's fabulous bûche de nöel, without sharing the recipe with you. since i spent my morning making a double one to take to sabin's school play this evening and had a chance to photograph the process, i thought i'd share it with you now...just in time for you to look positively heroic this christmas. because this cake is a veritable masterpiece when it's done and it's dead easy. plus it doesn't contain any flour, so even those who live the gluten free life can partake.

as usual, i couldn't leave even the goddess-like perfection of nigella alone and i have made a teency weency adjustment to the recipe.

nigella's bûche de nöel a la julie

the cake:

6 eggs, separated

150g sugar

50g cocoa powder

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3-5 teaspoons of powdered sugar to decorate

the icing:

175g good quality dark chocolate, chopped
250g powered sugar

225g butter

1 T vanilla extract

the extra julie touch:

1/2 liter of cream, whipped

preheat your oven to 180°C/375°F.

whisk the egg whites until they are thick and and beginning to peak, then add 50g of the sugar and keep whisking 'til stiff peaks form. if you're like me, you let your kitchenaid do this bit while you're working on the next part.

whisk the egg yolks and the rest of the sugar until they are a creamy pale yellow, add the vanilla, whisk a bit more, then sieve the cocoa powder in and mix it well.

put a big dollop of the egg white mixture into your chocolatey egg yolks, mixing well, then fold the chocolate mixture carefully into the rest of your egg whites, taking care not to lose too much air.

pour the mixture into a swiss roll tin lined with baking paper. a little trick to keep the baking parchment from rolling up on you while you're trying to pour (seriously, why isn't part of pregnancy the growing of a 3rd arm - wouldn't that be handy?), you can put a little dab of butter in each corner and stick the baking paper to it.

bake for about 20 minutes until it looks done. i realize this sounds vague, but trust me, you'll be able to see when it's done. remove it from the oven and let it cool very briefly (and i do mean very briefly) before turning it onto a new piece of baking paper and peeling off the baking paper backing.

don't let it get too cool before you do this, or you'll have trouble getting the paper off without taking quite a lot of cake with it. trust me, i've made the mistake so you don't have to.

while it's cooling. melt your chocolate in a double boiler (or in a metal bowl over a pan of boiling water, like i do).

put the powdered sugar down in your food processor and whip it up to get rid of any lumps. then add your softened butter and let the food processor do the work for you. add the vanilla once the butter and sugar are well-mixed. once the chocolate is melted and cooled down a little bit (so it doesn't melt your butter), add it to the butter/sugar mixture and again, let the food processor do the work for you.

while it's doing the work, let your kitchenaid whip up some cream for you - but do keep an eye on it, you're not making butter here (again, i've made the mistake so you don't have to).

put the cake on a good work surface and spread a thin layer of the chocolate icing on top. on top of that, spread a good layer of whipped cream. it hit me today, when i was a little concerned about not having enough of the chocolate icing (i was making two cakes and doubled the icing recipe, but it didn't look like enough), that you could use the hazelnut goodness of nutella here on the inside, just to add another note to the cake. i did, however, have plenty of icing, so i needn't have worried.

i found the cake too heavy and dense the first time i made it, without the whipped cream, tho' nigella's original recipe doesn't call for it. i find it makes it lighter and more sort of dreamy and delicious.

let the baking paper help you carefully roll the cake up. then carefully cut each end at an angle (strangely, i failed to photograph this bit), so you can place it beside your main "branch" as smaller "branches."

place the cut ends at angles against the main cake - my cake here is actually two cakes, so yours will be half the size of this. spread the remainder of the chocolate icing over the cake, covering and using extra bits to stick your branches on. use a spatula and a toothpick to make it look like the bark of a tree.

dust it with powdered sugar so it looks like new fallen snow and decorate around it with greens and pinecones gathered outdoors.

it may sound a bit fussy, but you'll be amazed how easy it really is. and your friends and family will never know (unless you tell them). so you can act like you slaved all day and get people to fetch you glasses of wine while you relax.

lucia bread

2010-12-13T07:38:00.012+01:00

december 13 is st. lucia day in sweden- that means beautiful blonde girls wearing angelic white robes and crowns of live candles and it also means the most lovely, golden, saffron and cardamon-scented buns. i made them for the first time this year (despite more than a decade married to an actual (half) swede. the recipe comes from danish t.v. cook camilla plum's christmas cookbook - jul.

luciaboller (that's the danish version of it)

25 g yeast

4 dl warm milk

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. saffron

1 tsp. ground cardamon

1/3 C sugar

2 and a half C white flour (preferably organic)

100 g melted butter

1 egg, beaten, to brush on before baking.

mix the yeast and milk together while you grind the saffron with a spoon of sugar in a pestle and mortar, add the cardamon to the saffron mixture. add the remainder of the sugar to the milk and yeast mixture, then add the spices and begin to slowly add the flour. mix in the melted butter (taking care not to add it while it's too hot or you'll kill the yeast. the dough should be a bit sticky, so take care not to add too much flour.

allow it to rise for several hours in a warm place or overnight in a cooler place. form into rather pagan curly swirls, allow them to rise, brush them with the beaten egg and bake at 180°C/375°F for 20 or so minutes (my oven may be a bit fast, but let them get browned and lovely). serve them with a pot of fresh tea.

makes 18-24 buns (depending on how creative you get with your shapes/how much you let your 9-year-old help).

happy st. lucia day!

nordic wintry goodness

2010-12-11T22:11:00.001+01:00

i recently got my soul back from the devil and it has caused me to return to my (still horrible calamine-lotion-pink) kitchen. we've been buried in a glorious blanket of snow for several weeks already, tho' rain came overnight and most of it has disappeared and turned everything to a muddy muck outdoors. however, the mud hasn't dampened my spirits and i cooked up a warming winter dinner for us this evening. a nordic tagine--of all things--combining sweetness and meat a la morocco, but with the nordic note of elderflower. it was a recipe inspired by earthy danish t.v. cook camilla plum's jul - a christmas cookbook. to accompany it, a hearty, simple brown rice and a wintry salad of red cabbage and pomegranate.

nordic tagine

1 beef roast - you can do with a cheaper cut, because you're going to slow cook it 'til it's falling apart

4-5 small red onions, sliced into small boats

1 head of garlic, peeled

1 whole red chili

juice and zest of one lemon

a moroccan-inspired rub for the meat consisting of coriander, cumin, cardamon, salt, pepper (you can buy them ready-made or throw things together in your mortar and pestle yourself)

1 750ml bottle of elderflower cordial.

1 generous splash of balsamic vinegar

4-5 T of olive oil

sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil, then brown the roast (into which you've rubbed the spice mixture). toss in the chili and then pour over the elderflower cordial, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. if it doesn't cover the roast, fill the remainder up with water, so the roast is covered, then put it into an oven-proof pot with a lid (my red le cruset was perfect) and pop it into a 150°C (325°F) oven to slow-simmer for 3 hours.

when there's about an hour to go, cook the brown rice in double the liquid to the amount of rice. i throw in a beef bouillon cube for flavor. it takes 30 or so minutes to cook. when it's nearly done, i throw in a generous hunk of butter.

like most tagines, the meat dish is sweeter than our northern palates are accustomed to, but the aromatic richness is balanced by the heartiness of the rice and it seems just right on these cold, wintery days.

red cabbage & pomegranate salad

1 small red cabbage, shredded

1 tart apple, grated

1 pomegranate

3 T vanilla olive oil (worth searching for in high end grocery stores)

2 T balsamic vinegar

toss the cabbage and apple into a food processor. cut the pomegranate in half and wack it over the bowl with a wooden spoon to spill all of the ruby gorgeousness of the pomegranate seeds over the cabbage and apple. if you can find the vanilla olive oil, it's definitely worth it. otherwise, throw a vanilla pod into a bottle of good quality olive oil and make your own...it's fantastic with winter salads.

the crunch and sharpness of the cabbage salad is the perfect counterbalance to the fragrant sweetness of the tagine.

* * *

coming soon...st. lucia bread, just in time for the swedish celebration.

and it feels very good to be back.

Apples and Pears

2010-11-10T23:05:00.000+01:00

For a host of climactic reasons, (which I won't pretend to understand), we've had a bumper crop of autumn fruit this year. Just the other day, a friend of mine was complaining about her "glut of apples and pears." Has GLUT become the collective noun for apples and pears in your house, too?

Unlike my friend, who has a small orchard, we only have one small and wizened apple tree. But it still produced enough fruit to fill my freezer with cut-up apples, crowd my refrigerator with jars of applesauce -- and feed the litter of pigs at our next-door farm. Sadly, we aren't as blessed with pears. We do have one tree, but its fruit is inedible (and, rather conveniently, drops straight into our compost bins). These gnarly little pears would probably make a decent chutney, if I were enterprising in that way, but my tastes lean more toward Pear Tarte Tatin. If you are fortunate enough to have a glut of pears, you must try this classic French pudding. It is absolutely scrumptious.

This simple recipe has been adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Ingredients:

1 packet ready-roll all-butter puff pastry

6-8 pears, ripe but still firm

80 grams unsalted butter

80 grams caster sugar

Juice of half a lemon

(To these ingredients, I've added lemon zest and a large pinch of nutmeg and ginger. Both versions are delicious . . . I've taste-tested them!)

Method:

You can use a ceramic tart/pie plate OR a cast iron skillet to make the tatin. I used my cast iron skillet, which makes it a one-dish affair.

First, roll out the pastry quite thin. It should be a large round, about a centimetre or two larger than the tin/skillet that you are using. The puff pastry is 500 grams, but I discovered that about 400 grams is enough -- and gives a less doughy (and calorific) pastry crust. Prick a few times with a fok and then refrigerate between greaseproof paper.

Next, peel, halve and core your pears. Then cut them into thick wedges. Unless your pears are really big, you will get four pieces from each pear. The pears shrink quite a bit, so err on the side of more pear than less.

Melt the butter with the sugar in your skillet -- or a heavy-based frying pan if you will be transferring the fruit to a tart/pie plate. Add the lemon juice and pears (and spices and zest, if you want them) and cook over medium-high heat. Turn the pears from time to time, being careful that they don't stick or burn. (It's probably best not to attempt to make a risotto simultaneously, which is what I did the second time I made this. Stirring both dishes at the same time was a bit awkward.)

Cook for approximately 20 minutes -- or until the fruit is golden and you have a thick caramel-coloured sauce which coats the fruit.

Then arrange your fruit, cut-side up, because of course you will be flipping the pan after it bakes. Make sure the fruit is crammed together with no space between. Now set aside to cool.

Drape the pastry over the pears, and tuck it in around the side of the pan to enclose the fruit. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a hot oven (220 C) until it is golden brown. Leave to cool for five minutes, and then run a knife around the sides and carefully invert the tart on to a plate. Let it set for a few more minutes and then serve warm. A scoop of ice cream isn't necessary, but it certainly doesn't detract.

Note: The tarte tatin really should be served warm, but you can get the pear mixture and the pastry ready long beforehand -- and then just assemble and bake at the last minute.

From Pear to Tarte Tatin

Moving on to apples . . .
my problem is too much applesauce. We burned out on the stuff weeks ago; now what to do with the excess?
Happily, I remembered a muffin recipe known, in our family, as Johnnie Applesauce Muffins. My grandmother used to make these for my father when he was a little boy -- just a few years ago, you understand -- and I made them for my girls, too, when they were small. But then I forgot about it; actually forgot about it for years. It's one of those oldie-but-goodies that really does deserve a revival.

Johnnie Applesauce Muffins
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup applesauce
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 to 1 cup raisins
1/2 to 1 cup chopped walnuts

Method:
Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs, one by one, until well-incorporated. Add the applesauce.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Sift, or toss gently. Add the raisins and walnuts if you are using them. You can, of course, leave them out -- but I wouldn't advise it. The original recipe doesn't call for them, but I think they boost the flavour -- not to mention the nutritional value.
Add the dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients -- and mix together gently with a wooden spoon. Don't beat them or overmix them, as this makes for a "tough" muffin. You will have a really thick mixture, which you will need to spoon into prepared muffin tins. (It's easier to use muffin papers, and it helps the muffins stay moist, too.) I like a good-sized muffin, so I fill them right to the top. This recipe will make 12 muffins -- or 18, if you fill them 2/3rds full.

Like any muffin, these are best the day they are made. If you don't eat them all on the first day, then freeze them immediately as they will defrost beautifully.

I went to a field hockey match this afternoon, and it was absolutely frigid. Mitten weather, really; but I neglected to wear them. Honestly, I deserved and needed a mug of Earl Grey tea and a warmed-up muffin for a late-afternoon snack. These moist muffins, so plump with fruit and fall spices, have so many virtues: They will use up unwanted applesauce, perfume your kitchen and are nutritious enough to serve as a "lazy" breakfast . . . if you, like me, are having trouble getting out of bed early on these dark mornings!

Toffee Apples

2010-11-01T01:09:00.000+01:00

Sixteen years of hosting Halloween parties, and I just learned a new trick: Toffee Apples.

Now that we live in a country where you can't get those Kraft circles of wrappable caramel, I've been making do without. But despite there being absolutely no need or justification for more sweet stuff, I've really missed this Halloween treat. And how else are you going to get a piece of fruit into a kid on October 31st?

As I get older, and wearier, I really appreciate that which is truly EASY.
Here is a classic four ingredient recipe:

8 apples, anything crisp and sweet
2 225 gram bags of toffees (I found mine at Waitrose)
2 1/2 tablespoons of water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method:
Insert wooden sticks into your apples. (I got lolly sticks from Lakeland.)
Combine the toffees, the water and the vanilla extract in a medium nonstick saucepan. Stir over low heat until the toffees have melted and you have a thick, satiny mixture.
Swirl the apples in the toffee, OR smooth on with a wooden spoon.
They will harden at room temperature, but you can also refrigerate them.

DELICIOUS!

And even though it may be too late to produce these for this year's Halloween, they would be the perfect dessert for upcoming Bonfire Night on November 5.

autumn goodness

2010-10-03T11:49:00.000+02:00

we ventured out on a sunday morning walk with friends and we hit the jackpot mushroom-wise. the forest was full of mushrooms of all kinds (you can see them here), but the most interesting were the rabarbar parasolhat (macrolepiota rachodes - known as the shaggy parasol in english)and the krystal-støvbold (lycoperdon perlatum - known as the common puffball in english). they were the most interesting because they were ones we could have for lunch.

i adore the idea of found food. something free provided by nature on a walk in the woods. there's just nothing more appealing than that, is there? but i am a cautious mushroomer. i grew up hunting morels and i know them well, but they are a spring mushroom and i don't really know my autumn mushrooms. therefore, i always go hunting with a knowledgeable friend. i've also invested in a good mushroom book and always compare carefully to it before frying up anything i bring home.

rabarbar parasolhat (macrolepiota rachodes - or the shaggy parasol)

krystal-støvbold (lycoperdon perlatum - or the common puffball)

the puffballs are very small, so we prepared them very simply. they were carefully cleaned and halved or quartered, depending on their size. then they were gently fried in butter with just a titch of garlic, salt and pepper. they have a gorgeous, earthy, mushroomy flavor and too much garlic quickly overpowers it. they should be fried 'til they have a crispy, golden crust but are still soft and gorgeous on the inside.

the shaggy parasols were cleaned and sliced and gently fried up in equal parts butter and olive oil. they can tolerate more garlic, so we used two good, fat cloves. once they were softened, we added a bit of cream. you could add some herbs - thyme would be nice - if you had them on hand, but the creamy, garlicky goodness is perfect on its own on a slice of ordinary toast with a glass of white wine.

mushroom tart

the mushroom theme continued last weekend when we visited family in sweden. my sister-in-law is a fantastic cook and i always get inspired when i'm at her table. this time was no exception. she made an absolutely gorgeous mushroom tart. the secret to it is grating the mushrooms. this seems to free their earthy goodness in a way i hadn't imagined possible. i had to make the tart myself this week, even tho' i had just eaten it on saturday. it was so good, i couldn't stop thinking about it. i used store-bought mushrooms, since my mushrooming friend wasn't around.

mushroom tart ala sinna

crust - you can make your favorite piecrust, or, like me, buy some frozen puff pastry (butterdej) and line a tart pan, then prebake it for 15-20 minutes.

filling:

1 leek, sliced and rinsed well
3 cloves of garlic, chopped

500 grams of mushrooms (i mixed portabellos and ordinary brown champignon)

250 grams organic creme fraiche (or sour cream)

chopped fresh herbs of your choice (thyme, parsley, sage)

soften the leek and garlic together in a pan with a big lump of butter and a glug of olive oil

in the meantime, grate two large packages of mushrooms - i used one package ordinary brown mushrooms (champignon) and one package of portabellos i suppose it's about 500 grams of mushrooms. grating the mushrooms is absolutely key.

sauté the mushrooms together with the leeks - adding more butter/olive oil if necessary. add a glug of white wine, simmer until the liquid cooks away and the mixture is quite dry again.

throw in some chopped fresh herbs along the way if you have some (thyme, parsley, sage come to mind).

once the liquid has cooked off the mushroom mixture, stir in a cup of organic creme fraiche (or sour cream). then pour the mixture into the pre-baked crust and bake it another 20+ minutes in a 180°C (375°F) oven - until golden brown on top.

serve with a simple green salad and a crisp, cold south african chenin blanc.

and don't worry about leftovers, there won't be any.

* * *

i wasn't going to mention my long absence from this blog, but am feeling i must. since our move in may, i've been so depressed by my awful, old (pink!) kitchen, that i haven't felt inspired by cooking. that's not to say that i haven't been cooking, i have, i just haven't felt inspired. i'll write a separate post, sharing the horror of my kitchen with you very soon. i think it's been mildly depressing to move from my beautiful kitchen at the old house to this old, ugly and uninspiring space here at the new house. of course, i know it's temporary, but building projects take time, so i have to live with it for awhile now. but anyway, that's why i haven't been here much. i'll try to remedy that.

Child's play

2010-07-30T23:41:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of June it seems an impossibility, but by the time August rolls around you can pretty much guarantee that your children will utter that universal phrase of childhood: I’m bored. If you live in a hot climate, this boredom will probably coincide with a generalized ennui about swimming pools and other outdoor activities. Children who were desperate to play in the sun can now be found inside, lounging and listless. Maybe it’s just me, but August always seems like the burnt-out end of summer – when everything goes a bit a yellow and tired at the edges.

Since I’m no good at crafts, and quickly bore of games, I think of baking as a good indoor activity. There’s really no such thing as a surfeit of cookies, because there are always extra kids hanging around our house – and we seem to have houseguests more often than not. I like recipes that are easy (childproof, even) and give a small bored person something to do.

This summer I’ve been making that pecan-studded shortbread cookie that goes under many names: pecan sandies, Mexican wedding cookies, sand tarts. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love these cookies – and that includes a 13 year old boy who is firmly convinced that he doesn’t like nuts. Even better, they are super-easy . . . but everyone who eats them seems to be convinced that I’ve performed some minor miracle. Best of all, this cookie gives lots of scope for small hands: rolling the dough into balls, and later, dunking them into confectioner’s (icing) sugar.

Here is the recipe that I like: from The New Basics Cookbook.

Ingredients:
8 ounces unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 teaspoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour
1 cup finely chopped pecans
Approximately 3 tablespoon’s confectioner’s (icing) sugar

Method:
Cream together the butter and sugars.
Stir in the vanilla and water – thoroughly blend.
Add the flour and pecans, mixing until the dough is thick and creamy.
Wrap the dough in waxed paper and chill it in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours.
Preheat the oven to 325 F/170 C.
Shape the dough into balls the size of a rounded teaspoonful, and drop them onto baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Flatten them slightly with the tines of a fork. Bake until pale golden – 20 minutes. (This is the bit that children particularly like to do.)
Allow the cookies to cool slightly, and then roll them in the confectioner’s sugar.

When they are completely cool, they will develop their characteristic melt-in-the-mouth texture.
Truly, this is an easy cookie to make and it gives very consistent results.

Another cooking project that I love to do with kids is cream puffs . . . or éclairs, or profiteroles.

They have that “science project” element which fascinates children. How can those few ingredients – butter, flour, water and eggs – puff up the way they do? Non-cooks are always amazingly impressed with cream puffs, but really, they couldn’t be easier. Not only that, but you only need a saucepan and a wooden spoon to make them. I use the recipe that comes from my old, falling-apart copy of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

Cream Puffs (an easy recipe for choux pastry)

Ingredients:
4 ounces butter
8 ounces water
1 cup all-purpose (plain) flour
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs

Method:
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter at low heat. Then add water and bring to a boil.
Add the flour and the salt all at once, stirring vigorously. Cook and stir until the mixture forms a ball that doesn’t separate. This should just take a minute or two.
Remove from heat and allow to cool for about five minutes.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until the mixture is smooth. It will have a thick, glossy texture.

Drop the batter by heaping tablespoonfuls about 3 inches apart on a greased baking sheet. You can also form the pastry into long éclair shapes using your spoon.

Preheat the oven to 400 F/200 C and bake for about 30 minutes – or until golden brown and puffy.
Cool on a baking rack.
When completely cool, split them in half and fill with your choice of: ice cream, whipped cream or custard. (I like a custard lightened with about a 1/2 cup of stiffly whipped cream).

Cream puffs are generally dusted with confectioner’s sugar while éclairs are iced with a thin chocolate frosting. I like to melt some really good dark chocolate and then drizzle that on the top.

So delicious and SO EASY! Child’s play, really.

Raspberry Almond Squares

2010-06-22T14:29:00.000+02:00

When you see English raspberries or strawberries in June, you really understand the point of seasonal eating. I wish that I could say that I got these from my own garden, but the first berries are just beginning to ripen on my raspberry canes. I will confess that I bought these raspberries at M & S, but the sweet, slightly tart, richly perfumed flavor said that they had definitely been recently picked. And within minutes of taking this picture, I started snacking on them! In June, I gorge myself on raspberries and skip lunch.

When raspberries are perfect, there is really nothing better than eating them by the fresh handful. It is the season of summer baked goods, though -- Sports Day, Summer Fete, Mother/Daughter Tennis Tournament -- and I need a sturdy, easy treat that will make a change from the usual brownies and flapjacks. For several weeks now, I have been tinkering with a recipe that is a version of a blonde brownie. On Sunday, I made a deliciously gooey batch and five of us "ate the lot" in less than an hour. I wouldn't necessarily think of serving a glass of icy-cold chablis with something sweet, but in the hot garden, surrounded by blooming roses, it was a truly divine combination.

Yesterday I made another batch for a tennis tournament at my daughter's school, and this time I think I've gotten the proportions just right. Unlike real brownies, they are just as good -- and deliciously squidgy and moist -- the next day. Also, they have fruit in them . . . which makes them (nearly) a healthy food, don't you think?

I made the Raspberry Almond Square in my Edge Pan. This was a Christmas present from my Mom, and we've used it a lot -- especially for brownies and banana bread. It is nonstick, and helps cook baked goods really evenly . . . no more burnt edges and underdone middles. I got the inspiration for my recipe from one of the "Edge" recipes, but I would like to think that I've made considerable improvement on the original.

Raspberry Almond Squares
Ingredients:
6 oz unsalted butter, softened
2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 2/3 cup plain flour
2/3 cup ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
grated lemon zest from one large unwaxed lemon
1 cup toasted, flaked almonds*
1 cup fresh raspberries*
** I didn't really measure the raspberries or the almonds, so this is a guesstimate. Cover the surface of the batter generously is my motto!

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350F/170C. Lightly spray or butter your non-stick pan.

Combine the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and salt in a small bowl.

Using a mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add each of the eggs, one at a time, until well-incorporated. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and lemon zest. Then add the dry ingredients and beat just until combined.

Spread the batter (it will be quite thick) evenly into the pan. Cover the batter with a layer of toasted, flaked almonds, and then adorn -- generously -- with fresh raspberries.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, mine needed 45, until the top is golden. Cool in the pan and then cut into squares.

Note: although they might not come out of the pan really cleanly, these are deliciously gooey when still warm. A scoop of vanilla ice alongside would make an easy summer dessert.

Tomato Panzanella Salad

2010-06-09T00:57:00.002+02:00

I still remember, vividly, the first time I tasted a cherry tomato.
I was in my great-aunt's backyard in Texas, it was sultriest summer, and there it was . . . ripe for the picking.
More than the taste, I remember the smell and the texture. How do you describe the smell of a tomato? There is something peculiarly green about it . . . something immediately recognizable, and yet otherwise indescribable. I also remember the slightly tough skin giving way, and then the juicy gush. It made me shudder, in a not entirely pleasurable way.

Although I've always liked tomatoey things (sauce, and salsa, and even ketchup), I've had to cultivate a taste for the raw tomato. Sometimes they are too mushy; sometimes they are too wet; sometimes (often) they lack flavor. A few weeks ago, though, I ate the most deliciously tomatoey dish . . . and ever since, I've craved tomatoes.

A tomato panzanella salad is a classic Italian dish; indeed, I noticed one on Jamie's Italian new summer menu last week. It contains so many of the classic Italian ingredients (tomatoes, olive oil, basil, mozzarella, ciabatta) -- but how much more sublime they taste when soaked and tossed together.

This version of the dish comes from Vanessa Miller -- a friend of mine who runs her own catering company and teaches cooking classes at Treetops in Newbury, Berkshire. Although Vanessa made several delicious and imaginative salads during a recent class, this tomato salad was the crowd favorite -- according to my informal straw poll, not to mention the running commentary of mmm's and ah's. It's a really flavorful twist on the caprese (which can get a little tired), and I know it will be my favorite salad this summer . . . great with grilled meat or as a stand-alone light lunch or supper.

Red and Yellow Cherry Tomato Panzanella Salad with Basil, Olives and Mozzarella

Ingredients:
500g red vine cherry tomatoes
500g yellow vine cherry tomatoes
1 garlic clove, cut in half
1 small red onion
30g mini capers
sprigs of basil -- Greek basil if you have it
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp caster sugar
100g Kalamata olives, pitted
250g baby buffalo mozzarella balls
400g plain crusty ciabatta or other coutnry bread, toasted, and cut into cubes
extra virgin olive oil
black pepper
red wine vinegar

Method:
Rub the inside of a large mixing bowl with the cut garlic and then add the ciabatta cubes and capers.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, reserving all of the juices, and place in the bowl.

Thinly slice the red onion, pit and cut the olives in half, and add both ingredients to the tomatoes. Mix gently and season with the salt, sugar and pepper. Add a good glug of olive oil and red wine vinegar. Leave for about half an hour for the juices to run and be absorbed by the bread.

Before serving, roughly rip the mozzarella balls in half and add to the tomato mixture, gently mixing together. Place the salad in a serving bowl and sprinkle generously with basil sprigs.

Note: This makes a "company" size bowl of salad. For my family of four, I would halve this recipe . . . and still have enough left-overs to toss with pasta the next day. (just remove the bread before you refrigerate)

No tomatoes yet . . . but the plants in my garden are coming along!

when you begin to believe summer will come...

2010-05-23T13:26:00.000+02:00

strawberries + blueberries make a summery snack in the garden
no strawberries are ready yet this far north - these came from italy and the blueberries from spain

yesterday was the first glorious sunny day of the late spring. it almost made us believe in summer. we took full advantage, spending the entire day outdoors in one form or another - from a lunchtime picnic on the lawn to hanging up a swing to getting out the iron garden "couch" and pillows and having a little afternoon snooze with birdsong accompaniment. an easy, springy fish dinner with new potatoes and white asparagus.

a summer picnic consisting of sandwiches with paté and some with tuna
homemade rhubarb syrup* mixed into a cool drink.
and a danish summer diary treat - koldskål with crunchy müsli ton top

although i bought my koldskål (literally translated: cold bowl) in the grocery store, it is possible to make it and it's wonderful when you do, but the organic one we can buy here in the store is so yummy i took the easy route.

koldskål

1 liter (quart) buttermilk

1 C yogurt

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla (or one vanilla bean, scraped with a knife) for the pretty little black flecks)

1/2 C sugar

juice of half a lemon

whir it all up in a blender. you can add a handful of strawberries to the blender if you have some. otherwise, serve it with some sliced strawberries. what's traditional is little round, hard cookies called kammerjunker. but a homemade or store-bought müsli is just fine to sprinkle on the top. here we even have one that's specifically for koldskål.

a light late spring almost summer dinner.
kuller (in the cod family) fish with homemade bread crumbs on top
new potatoes with butter
white asparagus on a bed of fresh spinach & the first of the garden onions

easy cod with homemade breadcrumbs

4-6 fish filets with the skin still on (any fish will do - ours was kuller, which is a member of the cod family)

5-6 slices of day-old, slightly hard bread (i used some of my homemade focaccia)

seasoning salt of your choice (i used a cajun one)

knob of cold butter

whir the bread, butter and seasoning together in your food processor on pulse until they are large, chunky crumbs, but not totally pulverized. dip the fish filet (just the fish side, not the skin side) in egg, then lay it, skin side down in an oven-ready dish that you've brushed with a little olive oil and sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. pop it in the oven for 20 or so minutes at 175°C/350°F. you can turn on the grill at the end to get the bread crumbs nice and toasty.

a bruschetta starter with tomatoes that are starting to taste of something again.

i served a little bruschetta starter - drizzling some of yesterday's focaccia with olive oil and a bit of prima donna (salty aged gouda) over the top and giving it a little toast in the oven. meanwhile, i diced some tomatoes, threw in a few mint leaves (it's what i had and gave a more spring-like tone than basil, but use what you have), a clove of garlic, salt, pepper and a drizzle of good olive oil.

the meal, all plated up - with a bit of creme fraiche dressing at twelve o'clock.

i know white asparagus is considered a real delicacy, but i'll admit to you that i prefer green any day. the fat little stems, intentionally starved for sun just don't do it for me, but it came in our box this week, so i decided to give it another chance. the skin on white asparagus is awfully tough, so you have to carefully peel it off with a vegetable peeler. i'd advise you to do it against a cutting board and not trying to hold it, as it will be less likely to break the asparagus that way. after it's peeled, it just needs 4-5 minutes of steaming and it's ready. i put it together with the following spinach dish and that made it better.

fresh spinach with onions & breadcrumbs

1 large bag of spinach - carefully rinsed and the big stems discarded

1 small onion, thinly sliced

handful of bread crumbs (i had some left from the fish)

knob of butter

olive oil

salt & pepper

melt the butter and olive oil together in a large pan - a wok is ideal, because the spinach seems like a LOT at the beginning (it wilts down to nothing quickly). throw in the onions and sauté them. these were fresh, spring ones (without being spring onions), so they didn't take long. add the bread crumbs and toast them a little bit before adding the rinsed spinach. keep stirring. the spinach will wilt and you'll be very surprised how little there is. when it was done, i placed it in a bowl and arranged the white asparagus on top with a little pat of butter on it. the spinach definitely made the asparagus more of a delicacy.

served with simply boiled new potatoes and a creme fraiche to which i had added the cajun seasoning i was using completed this springy, almost summer meal.

* i'll be doing an all rhubarb post in the near future, but to tide you over, i've done a rhubarb cocktail over here and it tells how to make the syrup.

simple meals for busy times

2010-05-12T15:10:00.000+02:00

i've been a bit absent from this blog of late as we packed up nearly a decade of life in our home and moved across the country to new jobs and a new house on an old farm property. my new kitchen is a severe downgrade in comparison to the old one (we're going to remedy that, don't worry) and i'll admit to a mild depression over having to cook here amidst the pepto bismol pink color the last owner chose to paint the cupboards (seriously, who would think that color would look good in a kitchen?). since it's going to be about a year before we redo the kitchen, i'll be painting those cupboards in shades of teal leftover from my famous blue room over this coming long holiday weekend (ascension day makes for a four-day weekend in denmark).

one thing i found in the midst of the chaos that is a move is that our desire to eat was not lessened in proportion to how busy we now were. so i had to find ways to cook simple meals that required few dishes, as my selection of dishes, pots and pans got pared down as more and more of that stuff was packed down.

i came up with a couple of delicious solutions that were easy, but look deceptively like you slaved for hours. a pasta dish and veal parmesan. not necessarily to be eaten together, tho' you could if you were really hungry.

simple pasta with red pesto and zucchini ribbons

this pasta dish is super easy because you use those packages of fresh pasta you can buy in the refrigerated case in the supermarket, the best pesto you can find (also purchased from the supermarket and preferably from the refrigerated section not just a jar) and a single zucchini, sliced into thin ribbons using a potato peeler. it's super quick (the fresh pasta takes only 3 minutes). you simply toss the pasta, pesto and raw zucchini ribbons together in a big bowl and dig in. a very posh meal literally in minutes. i can see from my picture that i also tossed in a bit of asparagus that i cut into bite-sized pieces and threw in with my pasta for the last minute or so of the boil. just long enough that it's still green and brilliant. the zucchini cooks just enough from being tossed with the warm pasta, so you don't need to cook it at all.

the second easy dish i've made of late is a big pan of veal parmesan. on our last night in the old house, we invited our neighbors for dinner and i made this, making sure that i made enough for us to take a pan of it with us to the new house - it felt symbolically important to make food in the old house and bring it to the new one to eat the first day.

veal parmesan

you may be thinking that i'm crazy to say that veal parmesan is easy and you'd be right if i told you to spend six hours stirring up the perfect sauce from scratch, but that's not what i did, there simply wasn't time for that. i bought a jar of good quality tomato sauce - Dolmio classico organic to be exact.

veal parmesan

100 grams of very thinly-sliced veal weinerschnitzel per person - i have the butcher slice it for me as thin as he can (so thin he thinks i'm crazy)

1 jar good quality tomato (pasta) sauce

2-3 medium-sized onions

1 thinly-sliced eggplant (if you like it)

2 eggs

breadcrumbs

finely grated parmesan cheese

pound your veal with one of those meat-pounding thingies (mine came from ikea) - it's very therapeutic and relieves stress nicely. you want it to be super, super thin, like thin enough to read something through it if you laid it over a newspaper.

mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan together and dip the veal in egg and your breadcrumbs. you can season the breadcrumbs with salt & pepper. i used Lawry's seasoning salt as well, but use whatever you like.

brown them up in a pan. while they're browning, slice the onions into small boats and put them in the bottom of an oven-safe dish. layer the veal on them as it gets done. put more onions between layers. if you like eggplant, layer browned eggplant slices together with the veal. cover the whole thing in the jar of tomato sauce and grate a bit of your favorite cheese over the top (we love prima donna at our house - it's an aged gouda with salt crystals in it). pop it into the oven at 175°C/350°F and bake for 30 minutes or so (depending how fast your oven is). serve it with some good bread and an arugula salad. it's very filling, so you don't need pasta with it, but you can serve pasta to soak up some of the good sauce.

make extra so you have some the next day. it's great cold put onto some good ciabatta bread as a sandwich, but it warms up very nicely again in the oven. we really thought it was the perfect meal on our first night in the new house, after a long day of driving and unpacking the truck. like most tomato-sauce dishes, it tastes even better the second day.

these are deceptively simple. make them the next time you want to look like a superwoman (or man). :-) and just pretend you slaved all day.

a burger is not just a burger

2010-04-25T21:57:00.000+02:00

like most families, we love a good burger. and we do succumb to the occasional trip to the golden arches (tho' we always regret it afterwards, unless the only thing we got is one of those mcflurry with daim and extra caramel (but i digress)). but the best burgers are the ones we do ourselves at home.

i tend to make it as easy on myself as possible, because burgers are always something we do when we've had a busy day otherwise and we don't feel we have that much time, but want something yummy. i buy good quality organic ground beef, some kind of posh buns, a few ripe avocados for guacamole, a tub of greek yogurt for tzatziki, a jar of pickled jalapeños, some arugula, some ready-made indian pickles.

tonight, we also had a mango around, so i diced it, threw it together with a few green onions and tossed it in a ready-made goma (japanese sesame) dressing from a sushi place. i always make a big bowl of guacamole as well, as for us, no burger is complete without it. and yes, a mish-mash of styles - mexican, japanese, indian, is all right by us. this time, it was even more complicated, as i drizzled the ciabatta buns with truffle oil before i toasted them. it was a veritable international feast all one one plate. but a burger holds up to that, doesn't it?

it's all very simple - in this case, i had strange long ciabatta buns strafed with cheese, so i shaped my hamburger accordingly. i seasoned it simply with salt and a sprinkle of the fajita seasoning i use in my guacamole - fiesta makes the best one in my humble opinion.

tho' none of this is actually complicated enough to warrant recipes, i'll show you how simple it is by sharing the guacamole and tzatziki recipes....

guacamole

3-4 ripe avocados (depending on how many you are serving - i use approximately one per person, but we're big fans)

1/2 an onion, finely diced

1 small tomato, finely diced

handful of cilantro (this evening, i didn't have cilantro, but i did have those beautiful deep green garlicky ramsons (ramsløg) that can be found in the forests around us at the moment)

1 small chili, finely diced (i do leave this out when serving children, or make them their own bowl without it, but tend to serve it on the side for those who like it with a bit more kick)

fiesta fajita seasoning to taste

juice of a lime or half a lemon (whichever you have on hand)

scoop out the avocado into a bowl and mash it with a fork, add the diced onion, tomato, cilantro and chili and season with the fajita seasoning. if you lack fajita seasoning, a bit of salt and a garlic pepper will do. squeeze the lemon over it to keep it from discoloring.

tzatziki

1 cup (250 grams) greek yogurt (i like the thickness it offers as opposed to ordinary yogurt)

1 6" section of cucumber, grated (grate into a sieve and squeeze out the excess liquid)

1 clove of garlic (or a handful of ramsons, finely chopped)

stir up and enjoy!

think posh the next time you serve burgers. if you invest in good ground beef, why not splurge on other ingredients? a bit of truffle oil, fancier buns, a spicy indian pickle, some posh mizuna greens or peppery arugula, a fresh pesto...the possibilities are only as limited as your imagination.

what to eat with a south african white wine

2010-04-02T18:10:00.000+02:00

lovely whites from cybercellar.com

late last year, via twitter, surely after i was tweeting on about chenin blanc, i was contacted by cyber cellar, an online south african wine seller. even before that, south african wines were my new world wine of choice. mostly because i had visited spier and delheim and a couple of other smaller wineries on my two business trips to south africa, so i felt i had more relationship to south african wines than any of the other new world wines. the wonderful folks at cyber cellar sent me enough bottles for two wine tastings. i had in mind a (then) upcoming christmas gathering and my january blog camp as occasions for those tastings. well, there was a lot of flu going around at christmas and so that occasion didn't happen. at blog camp, we tried a couple of the wines, but the focus was elsewhere and we didn't do a proper tasting.

i'll admit i felt ill equipped to talk authoritatively about the various wines cyber cellar had sent, as i had only what information i could glean from the quick blurb on their website and the wineries' own websites, so i never felt bold enough to advertise and hold a proper tasting. thus, i've been sitting with 8 bottles of wine (out of 12) left and a very guilty conscience, since i hadn't done a very good job of helping cyber cellars find some new customers. and thanks to our own chaos around here with moving and such, i haven't even ordered for myself yet, which i definitely want to do. so in all, i've been hanging my head a little bit in shame after they were so generous to me.

but on wednesday, it hit me, what i love most about wine (aside from drinking it on a daily basis) is pairing it with food. and food (despite my absence from this blog of late) i can do. so i went to see my wonderful fish man (i'm gonna miss him when we move) and i got a selection of things that would be lovely with the perdeberg chenin blanc and the cowlin chardonnay semillion i had left.

since it's spring and still the season for stenbiderrogn, which i wrote about previously, we started with that. the fresh brightness of the perdeberg chenin blanc was the perfect complement to the light, springy taste of the caviar. it cut nicely through the creaminess of the créme fraîche and let the pop of the eggs shine through.

since we wanted to try a variety of different fish with the two whites, we ate rather tapas-style, with several small dishes, rather than starting with an appetizer and moving onto a main dish. i stuffed two golden foreller (a kind of trout) with shallots, ginger and cilantro, drizzled them with golden, local cold-pressed rapeseed oil and poached them in some of the chardonnay semillion. while they were poaching in the little oven, i steamed some asparagus and did up a handful of scallops that had been marinated in the same flavors in the grill pan. a big loaf of our beloved focaccia bread came out of the big oven just as we were ready to sit down. (don't worry, all recipes will follow.) to make it a meal, i stirred up a golden garlicky aïoli mayonnaise to slather on the bread and eat with the big bowl of dill-poached crayfish that the child had requested (and which she ate most of singlehandedly). we can buy the crayfish frozen and already cooked in the dill, so all we do is thaw them, so i'm afraid i have no recipe for that bit.

the light was starting to go and not great for this picture in light of my reluctance to use flash, but you get the idea.

rounding off the deliciousness was some smoked cod egg (torskerogn) and a couple of delectable slices of smoked tuna, both of which were gorgeous with the homemade mayonnaise. they're pictured here on swedish flat bread from today's lunch, but we ate them with the homemade focaccia last night.

smoked cod egg on the left, smoked tuna on the right

the cowlin chardonnay-semillion was the perfect companion to the heavy oiliness of the smoked fish. it both lightened and brightened the heavy smoky taste of both - i think they were smoked in a similar way and both could have a tendency towards heaviness, but the chardonnay-semillion stood up to them nicely. the right wine really can make the meal.

and now for the recipes....

my favorite focaccia

adapted from jamie oliver

1 block organic yeast

pinch of flaky sea salt (i love maldon's best)

1 glug of good olive oil (a couple tablespoons?)

1 squeeze of runny honey

2 C (1/2 liter) lukewarm water

4-5 C of flour - i often mix 1/3 spelt flour and the rest good organic white flour, but use what you have around. the more rough your flour, the heavier the bread will be.

give the liquids and yeast and salt a whirl in your mixer with the dough hook in place and then let it sit until it begins to froth up a bit (about five minutes), then add the flour.

mix in your mixer with the dough hook until it comes together in a sticky knot on the dough hook. it will still be a little bit sticky. if it looks too sticky, add a bit more flour - in my experience flour varies a lot, even if you use the same brand, but especially if you're using speciality, stone-ground flours, which i like to do. it can be anywhere from 4-6 cups you need.

set the dough to rise under a tea towel in large bowl that you've dabbed with olive oil and a sprinkling of flour. you can ignore it all day or let it rise only an hour or so, whatever fits your schedule. once it's risen, spread it out flat on a baking pan that's lined with baking paper. make some dimples with your fingers, then drizzle olive oil over it. sprinkle with a good pink of flaky salt crystals and whatever herbs you have at hand. i usually grate a bit of cheese over the top - my favorite is prima donna, a salty aged gouda, but i've been known to use parmesan or cheddar - i really use whatever i've got in the fridge.

let it rise again for 30-45 minutes if you have time. bake approx. 30 minutes at 180°C/375°F. my oven is faster than that, so keep an eye on it. it's done when you knock on it and it seems crispy. it shouldn't seem soft. and it will be quite flat still, not more than about 3cm high.

i make this bread several times a week and it always disappears immediately.

stuffed, poached trout

2 small-medium trout, which your fish monger has cleaned for you (e.g. the guts are gone and their belly is ready to fill with goodness)

1 big hunk of fresh ginger

1 medium shallot

rapeseed oil (it's a bright, beautiful yellow, but you can just as well use olive oil)

handful of fresh cilantro

good glug of white wine

chop the shallot and the ginger finely and mix them together in a bowl. drizzle with rapeseed oil and season with salt and pepper. place the trout in an oven-safe dish and stuff them with the shallot-ginger mix and as much cilantro as the trout can hold. pour over about a cup (250ml) or so of white wine and place them in the oven to poach at 150°C/350°F for 15-20 minutes (depending on how fat your trout are).

i served them with steamed asparagus that had melted butter and a squeeze of lemon over it.

i love that beautiful bright gold of the rapeseed oil

aïoli - garlic mayonnaise

2 cloves garlic, salted and crushed with a mortar and pestle

2 egg yolks

1 T vinegar

a good oil - i used a combination of rapeseed oil and olive oil, but it's up to you.

i have taken a long time to perfect making mayonnaise and i will admit it doesn't work for me every time - sometimes it's more of a runny sauce than an actual mayonnaise. the key is in adding the oil slowly enough. i've tried making it by hand and in a blender and with a hand mixer, but have found that it succeeds most often if i use my big food processor. first, i crush the garlic into a paste with a good pinch of salt in my mortar and pestle. i give the egg yolks a whirl with the vinegar in the meantime, then i add the garlic to them and begin very, very slowly to add the oil. i usually start with the lighter oil - in this case, the golden rapeseed oil because it is lighter than olive oil. the photo above is a HUGE stream in comparison to what it should be at first, it should be as thin as a hair at first. after about a minute or so at the very slow speed, you can begin to increase the amount or switch to olive oil if you want that rich, green flavor. this time, i made it only with the rapeseed oil because i wanted it to be really golden and i wanted to make it with ingredients produced in denmark. it made for a lighter mayonnaise than when you use olive oil. i actually think it's a bit easier to make it come together as a mayonnaise if you use the rapeseed oil rather than straight olive oil. but i'd love to hear from any of you who have mayonnaise-making experience. i think it can be a temperamental thing.

in all, this fish feast felt like a very springy, eastery thing to eat. and the lightness of the south african whites, both of them, were really the perfect complement to the food. if you're interested in these wines, you should definitely check out cybercellar.com as they will ship just about anywhere! please do tell them i sent you, if only to ease my guilty conscience!

i'll present some wonderful south african reds and the food to go with them in a few days.

Pad Thai

2010-03-23T16:29:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Thai cooking course . . . and it was good fun . . . but I couldn't help but realize, about half-way through the class, that it wasn't going to lead to recipes that I could make for dinner. First of all, it involved lots of chopping and lots of ingredients that I wasn't likely to have on hand -- not great for those evenings when I have a late pick-up from school. These are minor problems, though, compared to the eating prohibitions imposed by my family. My husband doesn't like curry, coconut milk (for health reasons) or spicy things; my daughter doesn't like any kind of seafood.

I love those Thai flavors, though. Peanuts. Lemongrass. Coriander. Ginger.

Even though I want to abandon the typical winter fare, our weather isn't really cooperating. In late March in England, it's still cold and wet and there's not any exciting seasonal produce, either. Somehow, the spicy, aromatic, fresh tastes of Thai food seem just-right to me right now.

The one thing that everyone in my family loves is noodles, so I have been concentrating all of my efforts on perfecting my Pad Thai recipe. It is quick to make, delicious to eat, and has just enough flavor to please me -- but not enough to put off the rest of my family. Pad Thai, like any kind of stir fried dish, is really just a blueprint . . . and I have experimented a lot with this recipe. I started off using rice noodles, which are thin and brittle and must be soaked for an hour before you stir-fry them. They burn very easily, though, and absorb lots of oil; so after some trial and error, I decided that ribbon noodles were a much better deal. (I buy a brand called Sharwood's Thai ribbon noodles, and they can be found in my usual grocery store.) After five or six attempts at this dish, this is the version we've liked the best, but it can certainly be altered to suit your own taste. If you like more bite, you could add some diced red or green chilli peppers. Shrimp is good with it, too.

Ingredients:
for stir-fry
shallot or small red onion
garlic -- one or two cloves
a knob of grated or chopped ginger
a couple of tablespoons of groundnut (or vegetable) oil
thinly sliced red pepper
a couple of handfuls of bean sprouts
4 to 6 ounces of cooked chicken
a 300 gram/12 ounce package of ribbon noodles
one egg, lightly beaten
chopped coriander (or cilantro, if you are in the U.S.)

for sauce
two tablespoons of fish sauce
juice from a lime
one tablespoon of sugar
one tablespoon of tamarind sauce
one tablespoon of smooth peanut butter
a handful of salted peanuts

Method:

Assemble the ingredients for the sauce in a dish and gently warm -- just enough so the peanut butter will amalgamate with the rest of the ingredients.

Chop/dice all of the vegetables and the chicken. You want to have everything ready before you begin, because it will only take about 5 minutes to cook this dish.
Heat the oil in a large nonstick saucepan or wok until warm, but not sputtering. You want to GENTLY cook the shallot (or red onion). As it begins to soften, add the chopped garlic and ginger. Cook for just a minute, and then add the red pepper and the noodles. (Note: you may need to pull apart the noodles with your thumb and fingers.) Stir quickly, until the noodle mixture is evenly coated with the oil -- and then add a lightly beaten egg (or two) to a clean section of the pan. As soon as it is just scrambled, lightly incorporate the egg into the rest of the dish and add the bean sprouts and the chicken. Finally, add the sauce and toss until evenly coated.

To serve, toss with a handful of peanuts and chopped coriander (or cilantro).
This serves two, but you can easily double it.

Sláinte!

2010-03-17T20:35:00.000+01:00

Hot Cross Buns and a glass of Irish Stout

I said that I was finished with Hot Cross Buns, but then Dan Lepard's recipe came along to tempt me. Soaking the fruit in hot black tea . . . and fermenting the sponge in Irish stout . . . could there be a better way of celebrating the Irish and the Lenten season?

My daughter says this is the best batch yet: lots of fruit and a rich malty flavor. Is it just my imagination, or does stout have a chocolate bouquet? Maybe not, but the smell in my kitchen was incredible.

Ingredients:

325 ml Irish stout

1 1/2 tsp each of ground ginger, cinnamon and mace (or mixed spice)

1 1/2 tsp dry instant yeast

875 g strong white four

325 g raisins (or currants and sultanas)

175 g mixed peel, or finely chopped dried apricots

250 ml hot black tea

1 large egg

50 g melted butter

50 g caster sugar

1/1/2 tsp salt

Method:

The night before, mix the stout, spices, yeast and 325 g flour in a deep bowl. Put the raisins, peel and tea in another bowl. (Cover both bowls with cling film.)

Next day, mix the egg and butter with the fruit, then stir into the beer and spice batter.

Mix in 550g flour, the sugar and salt, and leave for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil your hands and patch of worktop or cutting board.

Knead the dough for 10 seconds, leave for 10 minutes, repeat twice more at 10-minute intervals, and then leave for an hour. If the dough is too sticky, lightly flour the surface of it as you knead.

Divide the dough into 100 g pieces, shape into balls and place, touching, on a tray lined with nonstick paper. Leave for 90 minutes.

Mix a couple of tablespoons of flour, a tablespoon of caster sugar and enough water to make a pourably thick paste. Pipe crosses on each ball.

Bake at 200C/400F for approximately 25 minutes.

While the buns are still hot, brush with a glaze made from a tablespoon each of caster sugar and boiling water.

To your health!

a pale green tulip for St. Patrick's Day

Hot Cross Buns

2010-03-12T18:55:00.000+01:00

For some inexplicable reason, (but I will attribute it to the unseasonably cold weather), I have become obsessed with hot cross buns this spring. I’m on a quest for the perfect recipe, and it’s already been quite the long process. After my fourth batch, my oldest daughter warned me that I’m in danger of permanently burning her out, so perhaps this should be my last batch – until the next Easter season, of course.

I’ve decided that this is my year to try my hand at baked goods I’ve never experimented with before. Actually, I’ve meant to make hot cross buns for several years now, but it has long been our tradition to spend Easter in Texas, and invariably I will forget about hot cross buns until Easter is long-gone. Of course, I could make hot cross buns in May . . . but if you are going to make a seasonal specialty, it does seem more meaningful to abide by the imposed timeline.

As my years in England increase, I’ve noticed that my baking habits are skewing towards British traditions. There is ancient historical precedence for having hot cross buns at Easter – to the extent that Queen Elizabeth I had to pass a law limiting their production to the Christmas and Easter season. (Apparently they had a dangerous association with Catholicism, but we won’t get into that.) Anyway, that law must have been repealed a long time ago because now you can find hot cross buns on the shelves of any grocery store year-round.

When I was looking for a recipe, I checked Baking with Julia first – and was hugely surprised to discover that this authoritative tome had neglected in include hot cross buns in their offerings. The Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking book didn’t have a recipe for them, either. I did manage to find a rather simple recipe in my 1953 edition of Better Homes and Gardens, but I was a bit dubious about it. Adding some currants and a bit of cinnamon to plain roll dough wasn’t really what I was looking for . . . because surely there is more to it than that? From this sampling of American cookbooks, I think that we can infer that hot cross buns are not really part of the American baking canon. I did find a recipe in the King Arthur Whole Grains cookbook – but after trying it, I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it.

The first batch of hot cross buns I made came from a most beloved cookbook: Jane Brocket’s Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. If you are a fan of English storybooks and/or the traditions of English teatime, this book is a must-have. Jane cites Dan Lepard, a well-known English baker, as the source of her recipe – and I did think it gave a good result. It makes a sturdy bun – slightly spicy, not too sweet. Like all yeast rolls, these buns are best straight out of the oven. As soon as they cool, I freeze what we aren’t going to eat right away. A brief defrost, and then a 20 to 30 second zap in the microwave, will approximate the just-out-of-oven goodness. This batch served as breakfast for a week.

The one drawback of the Jane Brocket recipe is the overall time it takes. Brocket wants three different risings (I don’t mean to sound Biblical here): one for the sponge, one for the dough, and another for the shaped rolls. She mentions having these buns for “elevenses,” but I would have to stay up all night if I wanted to serve them any time before noon. At this time of the year our house is extremely cold. Even when I put my buns in the “hottest part of the house,” the airing cupboard, I still needed to double the amount of time required to get a good rise out of my dough.

Moving on to the next step in my hot cross bun journey: Nigella. I was surprised (again!) to discover that Nigella Lawson didn’t include a recipe for hot cross buns in her baking book: How to be a Domestic Goddess. Surely, surely, a domestic goddess makes her own hot cross buns? She does remedy this oversight in a later cookbook: Feast. I had thought that Nigella’s hot cross bun would prove to the favourite, and thus final batch, of the hot cross buns . . . but sadly, no. Despite a promisingly fragrant beginning, where you steep clove and cardamom in hot milk, her buns were oddly flat and tasteless. I actually did wonder if there were mistakes in the recipe – which does not call for sugar or salt! Nigella gets all fancy with the finishing touches: an egg wash, plus the flour/sugar crosses, plus a sugar glaze. Unfortunately, her buns were as hard as rocks the next day. She bakes them in a very hot oven, unlike the other recipes that I followed, and although they are beautifully burnished they just don’t hold up well.

Even with the favourite of the three recipes I tried, the one from Jane Brocket, I wanted a hot cross bun that was more meltingly tender. Finally, on my fourth go, I improvised. Hey, I do the experimenting so you don't have to. One batch of hot cross buns per Good Friday is probably enough.

Bee’s Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients:

2/3 cup milk
½ cup butter (4 ounces or one stick)
½ cup to 2/3 cup of sugar (depending on your sweet tooth)
zest of an orange and a lemon
1 package active dry yeast*
1 cup mixed dried fruit (raisins, currants, sultanas)
2 teaspoons mixed spice (or a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger if you don’t have this)
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
4 ½ to 5 cups of white bread flour

Method:

Just to be on the safe side, you may want to proof your yeast in a ¼ cup warm water and a teaspoon of sugar. You shouldn’t need to this with active yeast, but I got a better result when I did. * Next time I try this recipe I'm going to go with two packages of yeast, but I can't vouch for the end-result as I haven't tried it yet.

Then melt the butter into the milk over very low heat. While it was melting, I scraped off the zest from an orange and a lemon and threw it in the saucepan. When the mixture has cooled, and is only slightly warm, beat two eggs into it.

As the milk mixture is cooling, add the other ingredients into a large mixing bowl : 4 ½ cups of flour, the spices, the sugar, the salt and the dried fruit. Pour the liquid ingredients over the top and mix until well-incorporated. You may have to add a bit more flour – or conversely a bit more milk. The gluten in flour varies quite a lot and you need to go by feel. You want a soft dough that holds together, although it won’t make a ball shape; it shouldn’t be sticky, nor should it be dry. After being kneaded, it should feel silky. I kneaded it with my dough hook for about five minutes, without ever taking it out of my mixing bowl, but it is easy enough to do by hand. This kind of dough doesn’t need as much kneading as bread.

Lightly oil (or butter) your bowl and the top of your ball of dough. Cover with a damp tea towel and put in a warm place.* (The only warm place in my house is the airing cupboard.) It should rise until nearly doubled; this may take an hour, or it may take three hours. After your dough has risen, punch it down. (Please see the picture sequence.)

After the first rising, you will shape the dough into balls – approximately 3 ounces each – and place on a greased baking sheet. They should be “snug,” as Nigella says, but not touching. After they bake they will be touching, but you should be able to easily pull them apart. With a knife, score each bun with a cross. (If you wait to do this, you will press down too much on the dough after it has risen.) Cover your baking sheet with a tea towel and put the buns in a warm place for their second rising. Again, some recipes claim that this will happen in 45 minutes . . . but I found that two hours (or about the length of my yoga class, plus the drive back and forth) was just about right.

Before baking, you will have to do the last step: filling in the crosses. Without the crosses you’ve got nothing but spiced buns.

Make a paste of 3 tablespoons of flour, a tablespoon of sugar and approximately 2 tablespoons of water (maybe more). It should be smooth, thick, but not too thick. You can then pipe, syringe or merely ladle the paste into the indents of the cross.

my left-handed daughter demonstrates her technique

Bake for 25-30 minutes in a moderately high oven. 180C/375F. They should be golden brown, but be careful – the browner they get, the harder. Err on the light side of things.

Finally, when the buns are still warm, remove to a rack and glaze. If you boil a tablespoon of water with the same of sugar it will make a simple glaze to brush over the top. If you want something sweeter, you can make a simple frosting of icing sugar and milk.

It is not necessary to drink a cup of tea with a hot cross bun . . . but it is advisable.

The best way to reheat rolls is to place them in a plain paper bag, sprinkle the bag lightly with water, and place in a hot oven 3 to 5 minutes before serving. (from the 1953 edition of "The Red Plaid Cookbook.")

at last a glimpse of spring

2010-03-07T15:11:00.000+01:00

my local fish man - the stenbiderrogn is the pink-ish stuff in the bowl upper left.

i knew that spring was on its way at last when i stepped into the fish store saturday morning and lo and behold, there was a big bowl of stenbiderrogn - google translator tells me that stenbider is lumpfish, but i have to say that a literal translation of "stone biter" sounds better in my ears. these delectable fish eggs taste of pure spring and the season doesn't last long - from late february to late april, sometimes into may.

stenbiderrogn w/creme fraiche and red onions

the best way to eat them is very simply. toast a piece of ordinary sliced bread, butter it generously, add a good spoonful of the lightly salty pink roe, a dollop of creme fraiche and a sprinkling of finely-chopped red onions. the fresh, springy pop of the eggs between your teeth just cannot be beat. they don't taste fishy at all, but light and fresh. a sure sign of spring. at least here in denmark.

Fabulous Fish Soup - guest post by Miss Buckle

2010-02-28T20:52:00.003+01:00

This is one of my go-to party dishes, and always a crowd pleaser. Every time I make it I morph it to the people eating it: their likes, and their dislikes.

Not everyone is that comfortable or acquainted with mussels, or blåskjell -blue shells, as they are known in Norway. Here, they are a cheap delicacy. Soft, melt in your mouth, mild and seafoody goodness.

And they make delicious stock as a base for fish soup. The last time I made it I only used mussels and prawns. Both in season. Both exceptionally fresh. At Julochkas I made it with fish. And I mix the veggies around a lot.

If you, or your guests, are a little scared of mussels then keep them on the side, and start with a few.

Fish Soup (feeds four)

1 kilo mussels (live in the shell)
1/2 to 1 kilo fresh prawns (small, cooked and peeled)
200 grams pink fish (like salmon or trout)
200 grams white fish (like cod or halibut)
1 organic unwaxed lemon
6 cloves of garlic
1 chili (or more, to taste)
2 carrots
1 medium fennel
1 cup white wine (I usually give a good glug to the mussels, and a good glug in the soup)
200 millilitres creme fraiche
Spring onions
Flat leaf parsley
2 tbs butter
Salt
Pepper

Rinse the mussels, discard any crushed ones. Pull off beards. If you have farmed ones, they really don't need cleaning. If you pick them out of the sea, you might want to scrape off the barnacles, and make sure there is no poisenous algae in the ocean. In Norway we have a phone number and a web page to check this. Farmed bought ones are always safe.

First steam the mussels. This only takes about 3 minutes. Cook the mussels in the pot you want to make the soup in, a good glug of white wine, a couple of smashed cloves of garlic and some parsley stalks.

While the mussels steam prep the veggies. I half the peeled carrots and then I slice them diagonally. Just cause I think it looks pretty. The bits match the slices of fennel. I chop spring onion and parsley and set aside for later use.

Mussels done. Drain the stock into a bowl through a colander. Leave mussels to cool while you finish off the veggies.

Clean the mussels. Sometimes I just leave them in the shell, but they are easy to pick out, and you can always keep some in the shell for that rustique look. It is really easy: Empty one shell, and you now have 'tweezers' to pick out the other mussels with.

Start the soup off with four chopped cloves of garlic and chilli in the butter. Add veggies and sweat off. Steam it all off with another good glug of wine, and add your creme fraiche and mussel stock. Make sure you stop before the little gritty bits at the bottom sneak in. Salt and pepper to taste. At this point you can add some water to make more soup. Sometimes you can compensate with a fish stock cube to feep the flavour (but mind the salt).

The soup is ready for fish. Add it in square chunks. Three by three centimetres so they don't fall apart in the soup. Add spring onions.

As soon as the fish is opaque, add the parsley, zest from at least half the lemon, juice from at least half (this is a little about taste, again mind your guests. I like it lemony, Big Man doesn't), prawns and mussels.

That's it. It really isn't complicated, just about having everything ready in advance. For a great supper, serve it with a home made foccacia, or whatever bread you love.

Enjoy.

* * *

thank you Anne for being our guest here at domestic sensualists.

we've been a bit low on cooking mojo of late and this helps.

for more from Miss Buckle, please do check out her blog.

Cream tea

2010-02-11T20:28:00.000+01:00

Years ago, my parents and I travelled through the Cotswolds. When my father received his credit card bill,, he marvelled that we could have spent so many pounds (in weight and money) on tea and scones. When in England . . .

Really, is there anything more quintessentially English than a cream tea?

Last week, I went to The Ritz to celebrate a dear friend's 50th birthday. The Ritz is famous for their afternoon tea; so much so that you have to book, sometimes months ahead, for a reservation. The colors are all cream and gold, and they bring everyone an individual silver tea service -- with a tiered tower of treats to share. On the ground level are the sandwiches: smoked salmon, egg mayonnaise, ham and cheese. On the top level are the little pastries and chocolate cake. But the true centerpiece of the ritual is the plate of scones, with the obligatory china pots of clotted cream and jam on the side.

Americans and Brits have both been known to ask: What is the difference between a biscuit and a scone? And although I've tried many recipes going under each of these titles, I don't think there is an answer to this question . . . precisely because there is no definitive recipe for either the biscuit or the scone. Really, it's just a matter of language. The essential ingredients are flour, butter/shortening, sugar and a leavening agent -- but the liquid ingredient might be buttermilk, whole milk or cream. The amount of sugar can vary a lot, and as a general rule I would say that scones have more sugar than biscuits -- but I've eaten exceptions to that rule, too. Both biscuits and scones can be cut into rounds, or they can be dropped by a spoon or cut into triangles.

Ritz scones are cut into rounds, and they have what I suspect is an egg glazed top. They are soft, even slightly doughy, with a fine crumb -- and dense, but not heavy. I would have asked for the recipe, but I couldn't get up the nerve. This is the sort of place that won't even give you a doggie bag, and I DID ask for that. The birthday girl had to secret away the left-over scones in a napkin and take them home in her handbag. We had to leave behind, with some regret, the pastries that we couldn't manage. They just weren't hardy enough for handbag transportation.

I have never been able to duplicate the Ritz sort of scone at home, no matter how many recipes I've tried.
For home use, though, I am fond of a recipe that is attributed to Claridge's -- one of the other famous places to take tea in London. It is a more rustic kind of scone, but also very delicious. It lends itself well to add-ins; so while raisins or currants are traditional, you can feel free to add nuts, dried berries or cherries, candied ginger, the zest of an orange or lemon or any other thing that you fancy.

Scones
(from Tea and Crumpets, by Margaret M. Johnson)

3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup (6 ounces) butter, cold and cut into small pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 cup raisins
optional: sugar crystals or demerara sugar for the tops

Preheat the oven to 350F/175 C. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat.

Combine the flour and sugar in a food processor. Add the butter, and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (You can do this by hand, or with a pastry cutter -- but the food processor is faster.)
Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, and stir in the buttermilk and egg with a wooden spoon until you have a soft ball of dough. You may need to add slightly more liquid, but try to handle the mixture as lightly as possible. Knead in the raisins.

Divide the dough in half and form each half into a ball. Press each ball down until it is a round disk about 1 inch thick. Then use a serrated knife to cut into wedges -- six or eight, depending on how big you want your scones to be. Sprinkle the tops with sugar.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.
These will sprawl out a bit, so don't place them too close together on the baking sheet.

Let them cool for about 10 minutes -- but the sooner they are served, the more tender they will be. (Having said that, I heated up one of the left-overs in the microwave this morning and it was still pretty darn good.)

Now the really critical bit -- and here's where the real line between scones and biscuits is drawn.
While American biscuits might be dressed up by butter, honey, jelly or even gravy, an English cream tea calls for the following critical ingredient: clotted cream. If you've never had clotted cream, I can only attempt to describe it -- really, there's nothing else like it. It is thick enough to cling to an upside-down spoon, silky in texture and slightly yellow -- the color of, well, cream. Apparently it is made by simmering cow's milk until a thick layer of cream can be skimmed off the top. It has to be a certain kind of cow, though -- typically a Jersey or Guernsey who has been grazing on grass and clover year-round.

Believe it or not, there are two "methods" for garnishing your scone: Devonshire and Cornish. For the Devonshire method, which I have long subscribed to without ever realizing that it had a proper name, you split your scone in half and then cover each half with a layer of cream and then a topping of jam. The Cornish method is slightly more fat-soaked: first a thick swipe of butter, then the jam, with the clotted cream on top.

And one more thing about scones: even in the pronunciation they are controversial. Americans (and some Brits) say scone in a way that follows typical phonetic rules for pronunciation: scone, with a long o. Many English people will scoff at this pronunciation, though. They prefer to call this tea-time delicacy a sc-ah-n.

Another novelty is the tea party,

an extraordinary meal in that, being offered

to persons that have already dined well,

it supposed neither appetite nor thirst,

and no object but distraction,

no basis but delicate enjoyment.

Brillat-Savarin

going bananas

2010-02-04T12:56:00.001+01:00

i know what you're thinking...why on earth is she showing us her ugly black bananas? well, i can tell you that around here, we buy bananas in order to let them get like this. and once they get like this, we rejoice, because it means it's time to make my grandma goot's banana bread. grandma goot was my name for her - when i was little, i mispronounced her name, which was in fact, gert (short for gertrude) and it just stuck. grandma goot was a baker of the highest caliber. at christmas, she'd make dozens of cakes and cookies of different kinds - all absolutely beautiful and perfect. but my favorite recipe of hers is her banana bread (which husband argues is a cake). i argue that it's a bread so i can bake it in a loaf pan and slather it with butter before eating it, but he's right, it is a rather cake-like bread. next time you've let your bananas go, you've just got to try it.

grandma goot's banana bread

1/2 C butter

1 C sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 C flour (to make it "healthy," i often use half spelt flour and half ordinary)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/3 C buttermilk (plain milk totally ok if you don't have buttermilk)

3 (or 4 if they're small) mashed bananas

1/3 C walnuts (optional)

1 large milk chocolate bar, smashed into bits (or chocolate chips if you live where they have those) (optional)

cream together the sugar and butter, add the eggs one by one once it's creamy. combine your flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and pour half in, then add the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour. lastly, add the bananas. because i use my kitchenaid, i don't bother to pre-mash them, i just whack (as jamie oliver would say) them in in chunks, but if you don't have a stand mixer, you might want to pre-mash. nuts and chocolate pieces are optional. at our house, because of a certain 9-year-old, we leave out the nuts, but add the chocolate. i should add that the chocolate was the 9-year-old's idea in the first place, but it goes beautifully with the bananainess of the cake. pour into a buttered/floured bread tin (or two - we always make a small loaf for the neighbors) and bake at 175°C/350°F for 40-50 minutes (when a toothpick poked into the center comes out clean).

it's delicious piping hot out of the pan with a steaming mug of tea, but it also makes a great breakfast. even marilyn thinks so...

out of the winter doldrums

2010-01-29T09:58:00.000+01:00

i have found this week, that aside from baking 79 red velvet cupcakes, what has snapped me out of the winter doldrums has been changing to a new weekly organic box. normally, i'm quite religious about getting the "dogme kasse," which contains exclusively danish-produced veggies. and although årstiderne, who provides our weekly box (they bring it right to our door on fridays), has gotten much better about the selection that box contains than they were when i first started it a couple of years ago, i will admit to being a bit overloaded on root veg and cabbage. so when they recently introduced a box that contains all you need for three full meals - meat, condiments, veg, even eggs (as you can see above) - i had to make the switch, at least for a few weeks, to get me over this winter slump.

the picture above (in the early morning pre-sunrise yellow light of my yellow kitchen) gives you an idea of what the box contains, tho' it's different every week. this week, the three kinds of meat (not pictured above) are an organic chicken breast (it's the whole thing, bone in and skin on, not like those watery chicken breasts you can buy bulk in the grocery store), tender beef cubes (perfect for a stir-fry or goulash) and some interesting fresh beef sausages. to go with them, we got three large sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, carrots, 7 onions, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, two yellow peppers, brown mushrooms, a little container of dried figs, a lemon, a loaf of dense rye bread, organic quinoa, and half a dozen pretty brown eggs.

three recipes, which use the provided ingredients, come with the box as well. the recipes are designed to be made within about a half an hour-45 minutes, so they're quick without being fast food. that has been most helpful to me, as it has returned me to long-forgotten stir-frys and lifted me from my dinnertime rut. i haven't tried this week's recipes yet, as the box just arrived this morning, but i thought i'd share them with you.

panfried chicken breast and quinoa salad

1 organic chicken breast (on the bone)

black quinoa (1dl per person)

1 handful of dried figs

1-2 onions

1 yellow pepper

1 cucumber

1 small cabbage (mine is a spidskål - which is lighter than normal cabbage and pointed at the end, i don't know what it's called in english)

1/2 lemon

olive oil

salt & freshly ground pepper

measure 1 dl quinoa per person, but it's ok to cook a bit extra, as the salad tastes great the next day. rinse the quinoa in warm water. boil twice as much water as you have quinoa (4dl quinoa = 8dl water) and add the quinoa and a pinch of salt. put a lid on the pot and boil for 15 minutes. turn off the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes.

take a paper towel and dry any excess moisture from the chicken breast, salt. heat a bit of olive oil in the pan and lay the breast in, skin side down, browning for about 10 minutes. turn it and fry for another 25-30 minutes (you'll need less time than this if you use ordinary chicken breasts, these times are if the bone is in). add a bit of water as it fries and put a lid on it to keep it moist. the chicken is done when the juices run clear when poked with a fork.

while the chicken is frying, cube the figs and onion, cucumber and yellow pepper. slice the cabbage into thin strips.

mix together a dressing of lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. if you have some fresh herbs around, you can add those. give it a bit of zing with the mustard and honey or chili.

mix the warm quinoa with your dressing and allow it to cool before adding the veggies and figs.

serve the salad together with the simple chicken breast.

* * *

beef sauté with mushrooms, broccoli, carrots and peppers and sweet potato puré

1 package of beef in cubes

750 grams potatoes

1 large sweet potato

1-2 onions

1 package of mushrooms

3-4 carrots

1 yellow pepper

1 broccoli

1/2 lemon

olive oil

salt & freshly ground pepper

peel the two kinds of potatoes, cut them into similar-sized pieces and cook them in water until they are tender.

dice the onions, cut the mushrooms in quarters and peel and slice the carrots into diagonal pieces. divide the broccoli and slice the stem into bite-sized pieces. slice the pepper into strips.

drain the potatoes, leaving just a bit of water and mash them. add salt, pepper and butter and a bit of milk to taste and to get the consistency you want.

heat some oil in a pan and brown the meat. add the onions and mushrooms. when they are golden, add the carrots. turn down the heat and add the broccoli and pepper and sauté for 3-4 minutes before adding 1-2dl water. put a lid on and steam for 4-5 minutes, then add salt, pepper and a bit of lemon juice.

serve the beef with the potato mash.

you could marinade the beef in a bit of soy or leftover red wine and olive oil and whatever herbs you have around. the recipe doesn't include that because they are trying to stick to what's provided in the box, but you can always use what's already in your larder.

* * *

beef sausages and potato tortilla

this is tortilla in the spanish sense, not the american one - so it's an omelette.

1 package of sausages

6 eggs

500 grams potatoes

1-2 onions

1 yellow pepper

handful of cherry tomatoes

olive oil

salt and freshly ground pepper

peel and dice the potatoes. heat up 2T olive oil in a pan and add the potaotes. fry them until they are golden and nearly done. in the meantime, dice the onions and pepper and add it to the potatoes when they're nearly done. fry until the onions and pepper and soft.

whisk the eggs with salt, pepper and a bit of water or milk. pour them over the potatoes, put a lid on and turn the pan down to low. cook them for 15-20 minutes. you can add some grated cheese on top if you like and have some at hand.

sauté the sausages until golden brown in another pan.

half the cherry tomatoes and scatter them over the top of the tortilla before serving. serve with a slice of rye bread.

* * *

the omelette is actually one of those standards i make at least once a week because everyone around here loves it and it's an easy dinner. when i make it, i generally throw in some chorizo and i would put the sausages in this one as well, rather than serving them on the side, but either way, an omelette is a solid winter dinner. i usually top ours with undressed mixed leaves or baby spinach to have a bit of green.

even if you don't have a service in your area that will bring your dinner ingredients to your door, i hope you find a bit of inspiration in these. i'll add some photos to this post as i make the dinners this week.

red velvet goodness

2010-01-24T19:46:00.000+01:00

it's birthday weekend around our house for a certain almost 9-year-old (the actual b-day is tomorrow), so i'm working on my second batch of red velvet cupcakes. i made the first batch, thinking the child would want to take some to her saturday and sunday riding lessons, but when it came down to it, she was so afraid they would sing to her or that someone would think she was bringing treats because she fell off the last time (which you must do), she refused to let us take the cupcakes along. in the end, we didn't really mind, because that meant there were more for us.

we had an extensive discussion around here as to the completely wrongheaded labeling of these cupcakes as muffins. that discussion extended to twitter, where it was agreed by those in the know, that these are indeed cupcakes. muffins, in some sense, purport to be healthy, whereas these red velvety little fellas are pure sin and have no redeeming nutritional value. if the frosting has nearly 500grams of butter in it, it's not a muffin. in fact, if it has frosting, in my book, it's not a muffin (a lemony glaze doesn't count as frosting).

now we're making a second batch of them since there are no longer enough left for the child to take to school tomorrow to share with her class. the recipe below makes 40 cupcakes. there are about a dozen left, but there are 20 in her class, so that's not enough. it seems that with teenagers around the house, you can go through a lotta cupcakes.

red velvet cupcakes

3-1/2 cups of flour

3/4 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

6 T red food coloring

3 T unsweetened cocoa powder

1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1-1/2 tsp salt

1-1/2 C buttermilk

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 recipe creamy vanilla frosting (below)

preheat your oven to 175°C/350°F. prepare your muffin tins by lining with cupcake papers.

in a small bowl, sift the flour and baking powder and set aside. in the large bowl of your electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one. in a small bowl, whisk together the red food coloring, vanilla and cocoa. add to the batter and beat well.

in a measuring cup, stir the salt into the buttermilk. add to the batter in three parts alternating with the flour. with each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated, but do not overbeat. using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl, making sure the ingredients are blended and smooth.

divide the batter among the prepared pans. bake for 15-20 minutes. remove them from the tins and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

creamy vanilla frosting

as i have written on this one, "this frosting is da bizness." i used to use a martha stewart buttercream, but this one just behaves so beautifully and tastes so divine that i use it now for all my cakes. i think i found it originally on epicurious.com, but i'm not actually sure anymore, as it's one of those i've hand-written into a little notebook.

6 T flour

2 C milk

2 C butter, softened

2 C sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

in a medium-sized saucepan, whisk the flour into the milk until smooth. place over medium heat and, while stirring constantly, cook until the mixture becomes thick and begins to bubble (10-15 minutes). cover with waxed paper, placed directly on the surface, and cool to room temperature. this takes about 30 minutes.

using your electric mixer, beat the butter for 3 minutes until it's creamy and smooth. gradually add the sugar, beating continuously until it's fluffy. add the vanilla and beat well.

add the cooled, cooked milk mixture and continue to beat on high speed for 5 minutes, until it's very smooth and noticeably whiter in color. i used organic sugar, which isn't very white and if you whip long enough, it becomes quite white anyway. cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

put it in a piping bag and pipe it onto the well-cooled cupcakes (or use a knife and spread it - i just think it looks prettier if you pipe it on). sprinkle with the sprinkles of your choice.

a note on measurements: we discussed extensively at blog camp the conversion of american cups into grams and vice versa. we have discovered that there are vast differences in the weights of flour especially, so we're going to provide the recipes in their original measurements, rather than doing any conversion. i recommend googling a converter and using your best cooking judgement. that, and get your hands on some US measuring cups. lots of recipes out there use the american measurements, so you won't go wrong owning your own set, no matter where you live. we'll be putting some links to some of the converters we've used along the sidebar, but trust your own good cooking instincts. you surely know your own ingredients best.

In a rut

2010-01-22T14:06:00.000+01:00

The pot is empty; the cupboard is bare.
Frankly, I'm in a rut here.

The other night, it was just me and my older daughter for dinner -- so I decreed that we would eat left-overs.
(Mostly I was being thrifty, although I do admit that there was some small measure of laziness involved.)

There is nothing to eat, she wailed.
Not so, I countered. We have chicken tortellini soup, lentil/bacon soup and bolognese sauce.
But I've already eaten those millions of times, she said (with typical teenage exaggeration). I'm sick of soup! It doesn't even count as food anymore.

Although my daugther lost the battle, and eventually had to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of chicken soup, I did (secretly) acknowledge that her complaint had some validity. It's true; I do seem to be making too much soup these days. I'm definitely in a cooking rut.

It's a January thing, I think. First of all, I am sick of cooking after the Christmas excesses. Second, I am sick of eating; nothing really sounds good. Third, there is not much seasonal food around to inspire me. We have all eaten our weight in clementines this winter, and I feel sort of jaded about most of the other produce.

I've signed up for a Thai cookery course this February, but meanwhile, I'm racking my brain as to what I can make for dinner tonight.

What's tasting good to you these days?

cooking mojo, where have you gone?

2010-01-11T10:28:00.001+01:00

the holidays were hard on my desire to cook. all that frenzy of preparation leading to just a few meals, it can really take the inspiration right out of you. and it doesn't help that it all happens in this dark, dismal time of year, does it? so how to get back the mojo in the kitchen after the holidays? i've been asking myself that for more than a week. i asked myself last monday, when we went out to dinner at our favorite local restaurant. i asked myself that last tuesday, when i wasn't feeling well and let my family fend for themselves. i asked myself that last wednesday when i made a simple risotto because it felt like the only thing my stomach would accept...anyway, you get the idea.

it wasn't until friday evening, when husband's teenage daughters were each bringing a friend and i suddenly had to cook for more than three people again that i began to feel interested in being in the kitchen again. i started with a faithful standby, nigel slater's coq au riesling. the smell of browning chicken rising from the pan began to awaken my sleeping cooking mojo and it came back in earnest when i tossed in the garlic and a leek and that smell began to fill the air. when i opened the fridge and gazed upon all that winter veg - read: cabbage, and thought, "i can make a delicious salad of this, some chopped macadamias and one of those grapefruit," that i knew it was coming back.

summer cooking is easy, but winter is harder. all those root vegetables staring at you from the bottom drawer. what to do with them? how to keep it interesting night after night, especially if your husband isn't that fond of soup. and how on earth do you top the goodness of the holiday meals and go back to boring, everyday fare again?

one way, for me, has been to adapt an idea i used at christmas to my more everyday cooking. for christmas, i had ordered a duck and a pork roast from the årstiderne, the folks who bring my weekly organic box. they come in really nice styrofoam boxes, together with ice and so rather than opening them up and disturbing this, i just set them in the outdoor refrigerator, without looking at them. when it came time to open them up and prepare them for the christmas dinner, i discovered that the pork roast was a whole lot smaller than i had imagined it to be and i was suddenly worried that we didn't have enough food. after an initial moment of panic, i turned to nigella's christmas, my go-to book for festive meals. there, i found a rolled stuffed loin of pork.

although i didn't have a loin, it was a thick roast and we were able to open it up and put a modified version of nigella's delicious stuffing inside.

125 grams bacon (i had a large hunk that i cubed up myself, rind and all, rather than using sliced bacon)
3 shallots, peeled and halved
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
3 T fresh thyme leaves
handful of dried cranberries
generous handful of salted almonds
3 T olive oil

throw all of these ingredients into the food processor and whiz it up into a thick paste. spread it on your meat, fold it up and wrap the meat in sliced bacon. this really helped against the pork roast becoming dry and boring as they sometimes do.

and ever since, i've been addicted to variations of this stuffing. we used it in a beef roast - minus the wrapping in bacon part and with rosemary instead of thyme - for new year's (i will use less cranberries next time i use it with beef, they were slightly too sweet) and i just used it to stuff a couple of pork tenderloins on saturday, using parsley instead of thyme, since my thyme is under the snow at the moment. it's versatile and flavorful and keeps the meat juicy and delicious. on new year's, we took a bit of our cake over to the neighbor's house and were asked to stay for a drink, so our beef roast ended up in the oven for longer than i would have liked. if it hadn't been stuffed with this, it would have been dry, boring and overdone, but because it was stuffed, it was meltingly tender, infused with rosemary and the smokiness of the bacon and just delicious.

so the next time you're standing before a potentially boring roast, whiz up a batch of this and watch your cooking (and eating) mojo return. but do be sure to roast some of those root vegetables beside it, you wouldn't want to let them go to waste - just pour in a bit of apple cider with them and a drizzle of honey and a few sprigs of your thyme or rosemary and pop them into the oven. they'll be the perfect accompaniment to your roast.

Sunday morning pancakes

2010-01-10T15:15:00.002+01:00

Last night we had a drip in the ceiling over the sink, and I lay awake fretting about it. I kept getting up to check how quickly it was filling up the silver bowl that I had left under it . . . and I had terrible visions of waking to find that the kitchen ceiling had collapsed under the weight of water.* My husband is out of town, the roof is rimmed with icicles, and our driveway is one big drift of snow -- despite my shovelling efforts. Suddenly winter doesn't seem so cozy.

While I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking about pancakes.
Pancakes with melting butter and warm maple syrup. Hot coffee on the side.

Sitting in my kitchen in the darkish dawn, as I drank endless cups of tea and monitored the drip of water (wondering how early I could call my builder-friend), I flipped through The Little House Cookbook -- which has not just one, but two recipes for pancakes. One of the recipes is for the buckwheat pancakes that Alamanzo and Royal Wilder ate, plate after towering plate, during The Long Winter. The other recipe is for the "pancake men" that Laura ate as a small child in The House of the Big Woods. This one is a buttermilk batter, and you are advised to take a chunk of salt pork and grease up your (presumably cast iron) griddle. Although both recipes made for interesting reading, I decided to stick with my tried-and-true recipe for pancakes. It's an old family friend, and I felt more like comfort than experimentation after a largely sleepless night.

Pancake (or Waffle) Batter

Ingredients:
2 cups of flour (approximately 320 grams)
1/3 cup sugar (68 grams)
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

16 ounces milk (450 ml)
2 large eggs
2 ounces butter (34 ml)
a dash of vanilla (not necessary, but I usually add it)

Method:
Sift together the dry ingredients. Then pour the milk, beaten eggs and melted butter over the top.
Lightly whisk until everything is well-incorporated, but don't worry about a few lumps. You don't want to overbeat this.

My mother uses an electric griddle to make pancakes, but I use a nonstick pan on the stove-top. You can make pancakes of any size, obviously, but a 1/4 cup scoop makes a medium-large pancake.

When the pancake begins forming bubbles that are just starting to pop, it is time to turn it. You can lift it up with a spatula and take a peek . . . it should be a golden brown color. If it sticks, it's not quite ready.

Making pancakes is not exactly an art, but there are a few tricks to the process. I always use nonstick pans, but I butter them lightly at first -- more for the flavor than anything else. One of my pans cooks faster than the other one, and one browns more evenly. I have a gas stovetop, and I keep it at medium-low flame for pancakes . . . but sometimes I will need to turn the heat down slightly after the pan thoroughly heats up. Your pans and burners will have their own idiosyncrasies, so just use your own good judgment!

I added some chopped pecans to the batter just after I poured it. Fresh blueberries or raspberries also make a good add-in.

*It turned out that the overflow from our water tank was freezing up, which caused it to back up. We had to get a new ball valve. Thank goodness for builder friends!