Indian Crab Cakes with Coriander Chutney

 I had a craving for crab cakes and decided to make Indian crab cakes with Coriander chutney.

Coriander chutney
makes 225 grams, you can easily make less by only using half of the ingredients.

Ingredients
1,5 tbsp lemon juice
1,5 tbsp water
90 gr coriander leaves and stalks, sliced roughly
2 tbsp finely sliced fresh coconut (or dessicated coconut works fine as well)
1 small shallot, sliced finely
0,5 cm fresh ginger root, sliced finely 
1 green chillipepper, seeds removed, sliced finely
1,5 tsp sugar
0,5 tsp salt
pinch of pepper

Method
Put the lemonjuice, water and half of the coriander in a food processor and mix until you have a thick puree. Gradually add the remaining coriander and make sure to regularly scrape the bowl so you mix everything well.
Add the other ingredients and mix until everything is combined. Add pepper and salt to taste. Put the chutney in a non-metal bowl and refrigerate. The chutney will keep for 3 days. 

Indian crab cakes
makes 14

Ingredients
450 gr potatoes (preferably not the variety that falls apart when you cook them) peeled and sliced in half
0,5 tsp turmeric
3 spring onions, finely chopped
1 green chilli pepper, deseeded and finely sliced
1 cm fresh ginger root, grated
2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander leaves and stalks
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 2 lemons
200 gr crabmeat (from a tin) you can also use tuna
salt and pepper
vegetable oil for frying

for the garnish:
slices of lime or lemon
coriander chutney

Method

1. Boil the potatoes in a large pan with lightly salted water. Drain them and peel when cooled down.
2. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and mash them with a fork, stir in the turmeric and add the spring onions, the chilli pepper, the ginger, coriander, lemon zest and the lemon juice. Mix in the crabmeat with your hands and add salt and pepper to taste. 
3. Moisten your hands and form 14 crab cakes from the mixture. Gently flatten them, this makes baking easier. 
4. Heat a layer of oil in a wok and heat it to medium - high. Put as many crabcakes as you can in the pan and fry them for 4 minutes until golden brown. Turn them after 2 minutes. Repeat for the rest of your crabcakes.
5. Serve with slices of lemon and coriander chutney. Enjoy!

 

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Gingerbreadnuts…. or something like that. These are traditionally eaten at Sinterklaas. They are quite hard and are made with the same kind of cookie dough as the Swedish Pepparkakor. During Sinterklaas they get thrown around a lot by Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), the (black) helper of Sinterklaas.

Sinterklaas is named after Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. It is celebrated on december 5th. Sinterklaas carries a big book with the names of all the children, in the book is noted whether a child had been naughty or nice.

Hot thunder and lightning

This probably sounds like the weirdest dish ever, but it is actually a very traditional, and very tasty, Dutch dish. 

The traditional variety is simply called Hot Lightning and probably earned its name because the dish keeps hot for a very long time. It is a simple mixture of boiled and mashed potatoes mixed with sour and sweet apples (or pears). It is crucial that you find the right balance between sourness and sweetness. 

The Thunder and Lightning variant adds French mustard and baked boiled ham slices. I’ll give you the traditional kind with variations. 

Hot (thunder and) lightning
Serves 6

Ingredients

1,25 kg potatoes
500 gr sour apples
375 gr sweet apples
2 medium or 1 large onions, sliced
salt to taste
50 gr butter

Method
1. Peel the potatoes, slice them in cubes and wash in cold water. Put the potatoes in a large pan, completely cover them in water and set them aside.

2. Peel the apples, remove the core and slice in cubes.

3. Gently fry the apples and onions in a bit of butter.

4. Boil the potatoes for 20 or 30 minutes in salted water. When they are done, make sure you keep most of the liquid and pour the water off.

5. Mash the potatoes with the fried apples and onions. 

6. Add butter to the cooking liquid and mix whatever you need through the potatoes until you have the desired consistency.  

Notes
— Traditionally you boil the onions and apples with the potatoes.

— For Thunder and Lightning add:

6 tbsp flower honey
6 tsp french mustard
6 thick slices of boiled shoulder ham
fresh chives to taste

Method 
1. Preheat the oven on 200 °C.

2. Mix the honey with the mustard, taste and add more honey if you like. Put the ham on tinfoil and cover with the honey mixture. Fold the ham once and bake for 10 minutes in the oven.

3. Serve the ham with the Hot Lightning scattered with chives. 

Easy old fashioned meatballs with a twist

Sometimes old fashioned no fuss food is all you need after a long, dull but very busy friday at work. You only need to make the meatballs, then you just have to turn them regularly to make sure they bake evenly. It makes a very easy meal with some slices of bread or rolls and a bit of salad.

I also like them with my Bombay potatoes or with a very Dutch dish which can be translated as hot lightning. I’ll post the recipe next week, it is a mix of potatoes and apple or pear. Very delicious.  

Granny’s meatballs with a twist
serves 8 (freezes well)

Ingredients
65 grams of pine nuts
500 gr of half beef, half pork minced meat
4 shallots, finely sliced
2 tsp of dried rosemary
4 cloves of garlic, sliced finely or crushed
1 slice of white bread 
100 ml milk
12 gr butter

Method
1. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan while stirring until they are golden brown (this will take 2 minutes).

2.  Mix the minced meat with the shallots, rosemary, garlic and pine nuts. 

3. Soak the bread in the milk, crush until the excess of milk is gone and mix through the meat. Season with some salt and pepper. Make 4 balls from the mixture.

4. Heat the butter in a cast iron pan (a Dutch Oven) and fry the meatballs on high heat for about 5 minutes. Turn them regularly and make sure they get nice and brown.

5. Lower the heat and continue to fry the meatballs for 20 more minutes. Keep turning them regularly.

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The christmas flavours arrived at our Starbucks. I enjoyed my first Gingerbread Latte of the year tremendously. 

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My boyfriend brought macarons as a treat :)

Chapatti with dessicated coconut

I have been craving Indian food recently. I don’t know what it is, as there are many wonderful things to cook, but somehow I keep returning to Indian dishes.

Today I went to an Indian restaurant with a wonderful friend whom I hadn’t seen in a few weeks (way too long for us!). We wanted to sample everything and the abundance of lovely sounding Indian recipes made it extremely hard to choose. When we were making our decision our waiter advised us to also try the Peshwari Nan, a nan bread filled with coconut, fennel seeds, jaggery sugar and possibly raisins. That nan turned out to be the highlight of the evening!

The dishes we picked - samosas and lamb kebabs from the tandoor oven as a starter and tandoori chicken and lamb biryani - were awesome. The presentation was lovely as well, they served the tandoor dishes on a blazing hot marble or stone plate which smoked and smelled amazing. But that sweet nan!

As I am currently too lazy to try and make my own nan bread (and it is a  friday evening, after all, so the supermarkets are closed) I decided to make do with what I do have: chapatti bread, dessicated coconut, jaggery sugar and fennel seeds and make my own concoction which hopefully nears the original.

My take on Peshwari Nan

Ingredients
prebaked chapatti bread
melted butter
dessicated coconut 1 tbsp
pistachio nuts 1 tbsp
1 tsp fennel seeds

Method
1. In a pestle and mortar mix the sugar, dessicated coconut, pistachio nuts and fennel seeds to a paste.
2. Smear some butter on the chapatti, then put a tablespoon of the mix on the chapatti, fold it and bake in the oven. Or bake in a hot, dry pan until the chapatti starts to puff up a bit.

Indonesian salad with coconut and Daging Ketjap

As you can see we are enjoying Indonesian food immensely these days. And what’s not to like? It’s easy to make, tasty and packs a lot of flavour in relatively easy to make food. Recently a new Indonesian cookbook came out ‘Boekoe Kita’ (Our Book) the recipes look amazing and we have tried two of them so far with great succes.

Another thing I really like about this food is that it’s very versatile, if you don’t have or want lamb, you just substitute the lamb for beef and the recipe still tastes amazing! We made this recipe with both lamb and beef, and both versions were extremely tasty. We served the beef and salad with some boiled rice and added sambal to taste. 

Indonesian salad with coconut and Kentjoer
Serves 4

Ingredients
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1,5 tsp trassi, crumbled — (this is dried shrimp paste. This stuff SMELLS but it does add a nice taste - even though you would not believe it from the smell that comes off…)
1 tbsp sambal badjak — (this is a baked sambal with coconut - it’s lovely and milder than the more regularly used sambal oelek. Our jar lasted maybe a week :-))
2 tsp kentjoer —  (I must admit… this one still baffles me. Kentjoer is a ground root wich is supposed to have a very ginger-like taste. We went out of our way to buy some, but the ginger-like taste I do not get, in my opinion it has a more sour taste than the spicy note ginger has. I’d say: leave it out if you can’t get it or substitute for ginger powder)
3 tbsp sugar
50 gr dessicated coconut
75 ml coconut milk
half a lettuce (iceberg lettuce)
100 gr green beans
half a cucumber, washed

Method

1.  Rub the garlic, trassi, sambal, kentjoer, sugar and 1/4 tsp of salt together using a pestle and mortar. Add the dessicated coconut and coconut milk and rub it together with the spices until everything is well combined and forms a smooth paste. 

2. Take one big lettuce leaf for each diner to serve the salad in.  Shred the lettuce, clean the beans and boil them for 7-9 minutes, or wok them for a few minutes to your liking. Pour cold water over them and drain the water. Slice the cucumber in slices and slice those in half. 

3. Mix all the vegetables with the coconut dressing and serve on the salad leaves.  

This salad is lovely and fresh and has a mild spicy taste. Make sure the beans are still quite crunchy, that makes the dish so much better!

Daging Ketjap
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 tbsp sunflower oil
2 onions, finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
400 gr fillet of lamb, cubed
100 ml ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce)
the juice of 1 lemon

Method
1. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and garlic until they are soft. Add the meat and fry until browned on a slightly higher heat.

2. Add Ketjap manis, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and leave it to simmer for 45 minutes. 

Tandoori lambchops with bombay potatoes

One of my missions is to get my boyfriend to eat more vegetables. I’ll try everything that might secretly make him eat some. Today I decided not to disguise them. My boyfriend likes spicy food so I thought: Indian food will do the trick! My parents in law gave us some incredible lambchops (another one of his favourites) so they would accompany the veggies.

Tandoori lambchops with Bombay potatoes
Serves 4

Ingredients
2,5 tbsp tandoori spice paste
1 tbsp honey
2,5 tbsp yoghurt +extra to serve
12 lamb chops
700 gr small potatoes, quartered
60 ml sunflower oil
2 tsp black (or normal) mustardseed
2 tsp mild curry powder
1 tsp garam masala
2 tsp grated fresh root ginger
2 tomatoes, seeds removed, sliced in 8 parts
100 gr spinach
mangochutney (to serve)

Method

1. Mix the tandooripaste, honey and yoghurt, cover the lamchops with the mixture and coat well. Leave it in the marinade for 40 minutes to an hour. (Just follow the rest of the recipe and when you are done, you can start frying them - or prepare the marinade beforehand and leave them in the marinade a bit longer - it only enhances the taste!)

2. Boil the potatoes (sliced in quarters) in boiling salted water for 10 minutes or until soft.

3. Heat 40 ml of oil in a wok or frying pan on middle heat, add the mustardseeds and stir fry for 1 minute or until they start jumping from the pan. Add the currypowder, garam masala, ginger and potatoes and stir fry for 2-3 minutes until the potatoes are crispy.

4. Add the spinach and tomato and stir fry for another 2-3 minutes until the spinach has wilted. Keep warm.

5. Heat the remainder of the oil in your frying pan and heat on middle high heat. Fry the lam chops for 2 minutes on each side until they are slightly charred and cooked, but still pink in the middle (NOTE: this leaves a mess in your frying pan! We will cook our chops in the oven or under the grill next time - a barbecue is of course even better, but it’s wintertime already ;-)).

6. Serve the lamb chops with the Bombay potatoes, mangochutney and some extra yoghurt. Enjoy!

ETA: the spinach was pushing it a bit - as I already was afraid of. He did like the tomato (shock!) and potato but did not like the spinach. A shame as I thought the combination was delicious. 

Agatha Christie's 120th birthday

These English people with their cakes that taste of sand, never never, will they have tasted such a cake. Delicious, they will say – delicious –’
Her face clouded again.
‘Mr Patrick. He called it Delicious Death. My cake! I will not have my cake called that!’
‘It was a compliment really,’ said Miss Blacklock. ‘He meant it was worth dying to eat such a cake.’

Agatha Christie has always been one of my favourite mystery writers. I love her books, her characters and the movies and tv series based on the books and short stories. What better way to celebrate Agatha Christie’s 120th anniversary than with black coffee and a cake of death?

AgathaChristie.com announces that they invited queen of cakes Jane Asher to create a recipe for the Delicious Death cake inspired by Miss Marple’s 50th novel: A Murder is Announced. Below is the result. On the official site you can download a recipe booklet and enter your creation into their contest.

Delicious Death cake 

By Jane Asher

Ingredients

175g dark chocolate drops (50-55% cocoa solids)
100g softened or spreadable butter
100g golden caster sugar
5 large eggs
half a tsp vanilla extract
100g ground almonds
half a tsp baking powder

For the filling: 150ml rum, brandy or orange juice
150g raisins
55g soft dark brown sugar
6-8 glacé cherries
4-6 pieces crystallised ginger
1 tsp lemon juice

For the decoration:

175g dark chocolate drops (50-55% cocoa solids)
150ml double cream
2 tsps apricot jam
10g crystallized violet petals
10g crystallized rose petals
A small quantity of gold leaf.

Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 150C, (300F, 135C fan-assisted). Grease an 8” deep cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment or silicone.

2. Prepare the filling: in a small saucepan, combine all the ingredients and stir over heat until the mixture is bubbling. Allow to simmer gently, while stirring, for at least two minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated and the mixture is thickened. Allow to cool.

3. In a small heatproof bowl, melt the chocolate drops over simmering water or in a microwave, being careful not to let it overheat. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.

4. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until very pale and fluffy. Separate the eggs, setting aside the whites in a large mixing bowl, and, one by one, add 4 of the yolks to the butter/sugar mix, beating well between each one.

5. Add the melted chocolate and fold in carefully, then stir in the vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, mix together the ground almonds and baking powder, then stir them into the cake mix.

6. Whisk the egg whites until peaked and stiff, then fold gently into the chocolate cake mix.

7. Spoon the mix into the prepared cake tin, leveling the top, and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 55-65 minutes, or until firm and well risen. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it out on to a rack to cool completely.

8. Using a serrated knife, slice the cake in half horizontally. Spread the cooled fruit filling onto one half and sandwich the two halves back together.

To decorate: put the chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl and melt them together over simmering water or in a microwave. Spread the cake all over with warmed apricot jam and place on a rack over a baking tray. Keeping back a couple of tablespoonfuls, pour the icing over the whole cake, making sure it covers the top and the sides completely, scooping up the excess from the tray with a palette knife as necessary. Add any surplus to the kept back icing. Carefully transfer the cake to a 10” cake board or pretty plate.

Once the reserved icing is firm enough to pipe, place it in a piping bag with no. 8 star nozzle and pipe a scrolling line around the top and bottom edges of the cake. Leave for two to three hours to set.

Place the violet and rose petals into a plastic bag and crush them into small flakes. Sprinkle these liberally around the chocolate scrolls. Finally, with a cocktail stick, pull off some small flakes of gold leaf and gently add them to the top of the cake.

AGATHA CHRISTIE and DELICIOUS DEATH are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion Limited company).  All rights reserved.

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Homemade jam - a birthday present.

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I am leaving for a few weeks to enjoy a (well-deserved, if I do say so myself) holiday. In the course of september I will make backlog posts about: 

- Food in children’s literature

- Norwegian traditional food

Food in children's books

The use of food in children’s literature seems to be a hot item. I must say I also find it very interesting and worth writing about. I am particularly fond of old fashioned English books and the descriptions of food eaten at various picnics you find in those. I love the descriptions of crumbly sweet scones with clotted cream and jam, small triangle sandwiches. gingerbread cookies and all those other treats.

The Village Voice blog put together a top 10 of the best food-themed children’s books. Now I must say that I don’t know half of those, but I do agree with certain worldwide favourites as Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.

From my childhood I remember the food used in Alice in Wonderland (who does not love the teaparty at the Mad Hatter’s?) Furthermore I fondly remember the picnics in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books and the Malory Towers books - I always wanted picnics like those!

And what about the unbirthday party in Alice in Wonderland, full of half cups of tea and buttered clocks. Somehow the Eat Me cookies never struck me as particularly interesting, I liked the Drink Me drink better as it had all those different tastes. Eat Me cookies are easier to make, though. (Heston Blumenthal proved that the Drink Me drink IS possible, however ;-)).

Now a children’s book recipe you CAN make and take with you on a picnic…

Hot Dogs
-From Roald Dahl’s Even more revolting recipes
Makes 8

Ingredients
1 packet of bread dough mix
8 sausages 
8 rashers of bacon (optional) 
Tomato ketchup 
Mustard 
1 egg yolk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6. Make bread dough according to packet instructions.

2. While the dough is rising, cook the sausages in the oven. If you are using the bacon, wrap it around the sausages before cooking. When they are light brown (about 15 mins) take them out and allow to cool.

3. When the dough has doubled in size, weigh out 8 70g pieces. Roll each piece of dough to a 12 cm wide circle. Place the sausage in the middle of the dough and spread with the mustard and ketchup. Carefully roll it up, keeping it quite tight, and fold the sides in so that there is no chance to escape. Do the same with the rest of the sausages. Place in the roasting tin. Brush with the egg yok and allow to rise again.

4. When they have doubled in size again (20-30 mins) place in oven and cook for about 20-25 mins or until golden. Allow to cool for 5 mins before eating - tge waiting is the difficult part of the recipe. Set an alarm clock and eat as soon as the bell goes.

Daging Semur

I bring a traditional Indonesian recipe today: Daging Semur. Beef slowly stewed in spiced kecap manis. A lovely dish and very easy to make - after you sliced the meat and chopped the onions, you just put it all in a Dutch oven and let it stew for 2 hours or more. After that you only boil some rice (and in my case some eggs) and your meal is ready!

Daging Semur

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Ingredients

• 750 grams of beef 
• 6 tablespoons sunfloweroil 
• 2 onions, finely sliced 
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
• 2 red chilli peppers, deseeded and sliced in rings 
• 1 tablespoon of Ketoembar, coriander powder 
• 1 teaspoon of djinten, cumin powder 
• 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg 
• 5 tablespoons kecap manis 
• 1 tablespoon tamarind paste 
• 150 ml chicken stock 

Method
1. Cut the meat in cubes or strips.
2. Heat the oil in a wok or Dutch oven and brown the meat in 3 minutes.
3. Take the meat out of the pan and gently fry the onion, garlic and red chilli pepper in the juices of the meat for 3 minutes.
4. Add the coriander powder, cumin powder and nutmeg and fry for a short time.
5. Return the meat to the pan and add the kecap manis and tamarind paste. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil (taste and add salt if necessary).
6. Stew the meat on a very low heat for 1 hour or more.

A cupcake recipe

As an answer to my cupcake dilemma from last week, I noticed a cupcake recipe in the saturday magazine of our newspaper.

Gwen Thomas, an American woman living in Amsterdam, bakes cupcakes to order for us Dutch people who just don’t seem to grasp the concept of a cupcake (even though we do appreciate a good cupcake.

The article mentions that most Dutch people indeed seem to think that a cupcake is a decorated muffin. To prove us wrong Gwen shows the journalist interviewing her a picture from the book I’m just here for more food written by Alton Brown. This shows that cupcakes do not have a “hat” and that the airbubbles inside a cupcake are all the same size, while those in a muffin differ in size.

For Gwen it turned out to be difficult to make cupcakes according to Martha Stewards recipe without all the American ingredients, so she decided to experiment with Dutch ingredients and she changed her weighing method: instead of cups she started weighing with scales, just like we do ;-)

The recipe she shared with the newspaper was a recipe for Vanilla Cupcakes, made with her own vanilla extract (vanilla pods which have been floating in vodka since the 24th of may):

Gwen’s Vanilla Cupcakes

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(adapted from Martha Steward’s “Billy’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes”) 

Ingredients

• 98,5 grams of butter
• 6 grams of vanilla extract 
• 174 grams of sugar 
• 113 grams of milk 
• 186 grams of all purpose flour 
• one eighth teaspoon of salt 
• 10 grams of double acting baking powder 
• 2 egg whites 

For the frosting

• 85 grams of soft butter 
• 140 grams of powdered sugar 
• milk 
• 1 drop of vanilla extract 
• food colouring 

Method
1. Preheat oven to 175-180 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside.
2. Mix the butter with an electric whisk, slowly add the sugar and keep whisking until the mixture goes white. Stir the vanilla in the milk.
3. Sieve the American flour, the salt and baking powder three times. Alternately add the flour mixture in three parts and the milk in two parts to the butter and mix well. With mixer on medium speed, add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scraping down sides of bowl before each addition; beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.
4. Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until you get soft peaks, it does not need to stiffen up. Fold the egg whites through the batter.
5. Divide batter evenly among liners, filling about 2/3 full.
6. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 17 to 20 minutes.
7. For the frosting: mix the sugar in portions with the butter. Add the vanilla and food colouring, if desired. If necessary add some milk to make the frosting thinner. Once cupcakes have cooled, use a small offset spatula to frost tops of each cupcake.

Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori chicken is one of the best things you can do to chicken. The marinade is

spicy and tasty and it is a very versatile dish. You can shred the chicken and use the meat as a sandwich filling, you can eat it with rice or naan, 

or - like we did this weekend - as part of a lovely barbecue with homemade bread, a light potato salad and raita.

Preferably the chicken is of course cooked in a traditional tandoor oven, but a barbecue is just as good. It gives a lovely extra smoky flavour.

For the marinade I used Anjum Anand’s tandoori marinade. She makes Tandoori lamb wraps with it, but trust me: it works on chicken as well. I rubbed the marinade in the chicken the evening before to let it marinade overnight, so we just had to light the barbecue and throw the chicken on it the day after. I love that about summer.

Barbecued Tandoori Chicken

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For the marinade

• 150ml/5fl oz Greek-style yoghurt 
• half a small onion, roughly chopped 
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped 
• 2.5cm/1 in piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped 
• 2 tsp each garam masala and ground cumin 
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• half a tsp ground fennel seeds 
• one fourth of a tsp freshly ground black pepper 
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil 
• 2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves 
• half a tsp red chilli powder, or to taste 
• 2 tsp lemon juice 
• 1 tsp salt, or to taste 
• 2 chickens (with skin), butterflied

Method
1. Place all the marinade ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Pour the marinade over the butterflied chicken and rub it in well (don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, this is the best way to do it). Leave to marinate in the fridge for as long as possible, preferably overnight. Bring back to room temperature an hour before cooking. 
2. Preheat a barbecue or grill until very hot or preheat the oven to 240C/gas 9. 
3. Place the chicken on the hot barbecue or grill to cook on both sides until completely cooked - it takes about 15-20 minutes on each side, depending on the heat of your barbecue. Or place the pieces in a roasting tin in the oven and cook for 10 - 20 minutes, until cooked through.

This feeds a crowd, as you can see :-) We served it with homemade bread which was drizzled with some olive oil, garlic and parsley and put under the grill, potato salad and a cucumber raita.

Cucumber raita

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Ingredients

• 250ml/8fl oz natural yoghurt 
• half a cucumber, grated or finely chopped
• large handful mint leaves, chopped
• large pinch salt 
• half -1 green chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped (optional) / we always use a bit of chilli powder instead. 

Method
1. Wrap the grated cucumber in a tea towel and squeeze out any excess water.
2. Mix together all the ingredients and serve chilled.

No-Mayo Potato Salad

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By Rachael Ray (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 pounds Idaho potatoes, cut into quarters lengthwise, then chopped into large chunks 
• 1/2 cup beef consomme or broth 
• 3 tablespoons capers 
• 1 red bell pepper, finely chopped 
• 2 stalks celery, finely chopped 
• 1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped 
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) 
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper 

Method
1. Place the potatoes in a medium pot. Fill with cold water and bring to a boil. Add aliberal amount of salt and cook the potatoes until they are tender, about 12-15 minutes. Once the potatoes are tender, drain and return them to the warm pot to dry them out.
2. Add the beef consomme, capers, red bell pepper, celery, onion, lemon zest and juice, red wine vinegar and EVOO. Season with salt and pepper. This dish tastes great either warm or cold.

Enjoy!

The Cupcake Dilemma

As a Dutch girl I never completely understood the difference between muffins and cupcakes.

When I was a child we would simply call whatever we were baking “little cakes” and happily decorated them with some icing and Smarties (M&Ms without peanuts). The icing was simple: just sugar and water mixed until smooth - I’d never heard of, seen nor had the buttercream variety until I saw them on American tv shows. I also believe that I always used the terms muffin and cupcake interchangeably…

Nowadays in the Netherlands we have muffins, usually those are bigger and mushroom shaped vanilla or chocolate cakes (or even marbled!). In my favourite coffee place (which closed down, unfortunately) they also sold muffins filled with nuts and oats and dried fruit, very yummy! Then we can buy a box with a cake mix to make small cakes which are called Fairy cakes or Princess cakes: delicate vanilla flavoured small cakes decorated with glittery candy and pink icing and all of a sudden these also popped up, everywhere, called cupcakes: 

If I understand it correctly, and please, do correct me if I’m wrong, cupcakes are these small, light cakes topped with (buttercream) frosting and muffins are bigger, more dense and often also contain nuts or chocolate chips or raisins and oats and don’t have frosting. 

The frosting is a whole other issue: I never ever made this type of spreadable frosting. I always made the sugar-mixed-with-water type which hardened as it cooled down. How do you make the buttercream frosting? It unnerves me, because I have the feeling it is pretty easy, but it’s somehow still a daunting prospect.

What is your (or THE) definition of a muffin and a cupcake?  Please share your favourite recipes for muffins and / or cupcakes and frosting with me! 

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Last night we had Lucy’s Tilapia taco’s, finally! (I posted we were going to make it last week). The fish came out lovely and moist, it was more a traditional steamed fish dish, but worked pretty well with all the taco accessories like tortillas, avocado, creme fraiche, hot taco sauce and tomato. A lovely and relatively light dinner, very suitable for a hot summer’s day!

Tilapia taco’s
by Lucy Knisley (modified by me to empty the fridge, at my own risk ;-)), serves 2

Ingredients

2 tilapia filets, thawed
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 red onion
1 spring onion
a good splash of balsamic vinegar
a splash of lime juice
a dash of olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
2 knobs of butter
2 pieces of parchment paper
 
Method
1. Preheat the over to 400 F/ 200 C Slice the peppers, onion and spring onion (I sliced the spring onion lengthwise and then cut it in a few pieces).
2. Put each fish fillet on a piece of parchment paper, cover with some pieces of bell pepper and onion. Grind some pepper over it, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and add some lime juice. Put a knob of butter on each piece of fish and add a piece of lime.
3. Fold the pieces of parchment paper like a present, make sure they’re closed firmly, and turn the packages over so that the folding lines are on the underside.
4. Place the packages in the oven and let them bake for 30 minutes. Let them cool down a bit and serve with anything you like.

Enjoy!

Grilling weather

It’s toasting hot outside, the perfect weather for a barbecue. Unfortunately we don’t own a barbecue neither do we have the space for using one, I am sure many people have the same problem. Fear no more: a grill pan will do the trick just fine!

A recent trip to Ikea left us with a very nice recipe book full of ideas to use your grilling pan to the max: “I grill with you - 20 delicious recipes”. The recipes are varied and quite interesting, I must admit. They either have a picture or are illustrated with extremely cute drawings:

It also contains our signature dish, one we’ve been trying to recreate and perfectionize after eating it in a Japanese resaurant: Usuyaki, beef rolls filled with spring onion and garlic, fried and glazed with a teriyaki sauce. We make this dish often, and the recipe in the Ikea cookbook is quite good. 

Usuyaki - fried beef rolls filled with spring onion
makes 24

Ingredients
3 beef steaks
6 spring onions, sliced in 24 parts (slice each spring onion in 4 parts)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped (optional, we always add it, Ikea doesn’t)
Olive oil 
teriyaki sauce (see below)

Method
1. We’ve tried to recreate it before, but slicing the beef that thin turned out to be really difficult. Now we bought already thin roastbeef steaks which we put in the freezer to firm up, then we sliced each steak in 8 thin slices.
2. Fill each slice of steak with a piece of spring onion drizzle some garlic over the spring onion and roll it firmly and put in a stick to keep it from falling apart.
3. Lightly brush the beef rolls with some olive oil before grilling. You only need to grill these for a good 20 seconds on each side. Serve with the Teriyaki sauce.

Tips / varieties:
1. In the lovely The Manga Cookbook (which - perhaps surprisingly - is a VERY good Japanese basic cookbook) you’ll find a recipe for Nikumaki which uses bacon of some other piece of thinly sliced pork as a wrapper and carrot and haricots verts as filling.
2. These are also great filled with small green asparagus.
(print recipe)

Teriyaki sauce (also from The Manga Cookbook)

Ingredients
1 cup of soy sauce 
1 cup of sugar 
1 cup of mirin
1 cup of cooking sake

Method
Mix it all together in a saucepan, bring to the boil and let simmer for 7 minutes or until the sauce starts to thicken.
Note on measurements: My sister in law Maire gave me a lovely set of cups for measurements in cups (logically), I used the 1/2 cup size for this recipe as we were only making it for the two of us. This proved to be more than enough for both the Usuyaki and another recipe we made (Teriyaki meatballs). We also used it to drizzle over our tuna sashimi which we had for our starter. Which brings me to a general note: the teriyaki sauce did not seem to thicken when I first made it, but it does thicken slightly more and tastes even better the day after, so make it beforehand!

(print recipe) 

This was not the recipe I wanted to share from the Ikea cookbook, but as it makes a wonderful light dish or starter I wanted to share it anyway. 

Now, onwards to the real summery recipe from the Ikea grilling cookbook!

Chicken from Tuscany
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of mixed Italian herbs (basic recipe you can make and store in an airtight container uses 1 teaspoon of each: dried oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme and sage)
olive oil
125 grams of small mozzarella balls
6-8 sun dried tomatoes, soaked and chopped
some mint leaves
8 black olive, stone removed and cut in half
2 spring onions, sliced diagonally
freshly ground black pepper

Method
1. Rub the chicken breasts with pepper, salt and the mixed italian herbs. Brush some olive oil on them.
2. Heat the grillpan until very hot. Put the chicken in and cook for 15 minutes until done, make sure they get nice grilling stripes.
3. Meanwhile: put the mozzarella in a bowl with the chopped sun dried tomatoes. Chop the mint leaves and add those as well together with the olives and spring onions. Sprinkle some olive oil on the salad and mix well. Season with some freshly ground black pepper. 
4. Serve the salad with the grilled chicken breasts.  

(print recipe)

Nice, light and summery. 

Shrimp salad

It has been too hot for any “real” cooking the past week, which explains the lack of posting. We have been eating easy dishes, reheating leftovers or freezer stock or went for takeout. This was actually our dinner from last Sunday: retro shrimp salad! Easy as anything. The recipe is my mother in law’s and has been in the family for ages. 

Retro Shrimp Salad
for 4 people

Ingredients
500 gr of small cooked shrimps, Crangon Crangon they are called, so Wikipedia tells me.
2,5 tablespoons of mayonnaise (I use yoghurt mayonnaise, it is lighter, you can mix 2 tbsp of mayonnaise with half a tbsp of yoghurt for the same effect)
lemon juice, a squeeze to taste
freshly chopped chives, to taste but I like LOTS of it
a pinch of dried garlic powder or a bit of finely chopped fresh garlic
sea salt and ground black pepper to taste

To serve: little gem lettuce and slices of toasted bread

Method
1. Mix the mayonnaise with the salt and pepper, garlic powder, lemon juice and chives, taste to check the seasoning and stir in the prawns.

2. Serve with toasted bread and little gem lettuce. 

Fuss free cooking - ideal for hot weather. 

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Today we went to Amsterdam, my boyfriend followed a Dr Sketchy’s Workshop at the local American bookstore’s Urban Art Festival with Molly Crabapple and a lovely model, Lotta from Utrecht. I decided to test my new camera and catch up with a dear friend.

We had lunch at the Esprit Caffe at Spui Square, I had a lovely bagel with smoked chicken, cream cheese, avocado, tomato and red pesto, my boyfriend had the USA burger with cheddar, red onion, salad, ketchup and tomato (which he put aside :)) our friend had the Bombay Express, a ciabatta with tandoori chicken, tomato, cream cheese, coriander, salad and a curry sauce. It all looked and tasted amazing. 

For a light dinner we went to Wagamama and had some starters: deep-fried prawns in panko breadcrumbs. served with a spicy chilli and garlic sauce. garnished with lime, steamed and grilled gyoza filled with chicken, vegetables and shrimp and fried chicken with thyme served with a garlic, chilli and soy sauce. We had green tea beer and ginger ale with it. Lovely food on a lovely day!

She's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine!

http://lucylou.livejournal.com/561084.html

We’ll be making Lucy’s Tilapia Taco’s next week!

Home-made pizza

Tonight is pizza night! I have been craving for pizza this entire week. For myself I’ll make a vegetarian one (not that I don’t eat meat, I just like the traditional combination of mozarella, basil and tomato so very much). My Hungry Boyfriend will make himself a pizza with chorizo, red onion and old Gouda cheese - which is also very yummy so I may as well make part of my pizza with chorizo as well.

As it is extremely hot these days, we will not make the dough from scratch, I’ll use a ready-made storebought dough instead. Usually we do try to make our own, but we have a tiny - but well- equipped - kitchen and it is a challenge to roll out dough and find the room to really knead it. So whenever my parents in law invite us over for dinner we tend to suggest either a barbecue (no garden or balcony so not an option at home) or pizza. They have a lovely big kitchen with a huge heavy wooden butcher’s chopping board in the centre which is wonderful for all your dough rolling and kneading needs. I want a butcher’s chopping board as well! They bought it from their organic butcher when he closed his shop. One of their best buys ever. 

If you do feel like making your own, I highly recommend this recipe from Jamie Oliver: 

Jamie Oliver’s pizza dough
makes 6 to 8 medium-sized thin pizza bases
This is a fantastic, reliable, everyday pizza dough, which can also be used to make bread. It’s best made with Italian Tipo ‘00’ flour, which is finer ground than normal flour, and it will give your dough an incredible super-smooth texture. Look for it in Italian delis and good supermarkets. If using white bread flour instead, make sure it’s a strong one that’s high in gluten, as this will transform into a lovely, elastic dough, which is what you want. Mix in some semolina flour for a bit of colour and flavour if you like.

Ingredients
1kg strong white bread flour or Tipo ‘00’ flour
or 800g strong white bread flour or Tipo ‘00’ flour, plus 200g finely ground semolina flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
650ml lukewarm water

Method
1. Sieve the flour/s and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.

2. Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.

3. Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called knocking back the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in clingfilm, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas – this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.

4. Timing-wise, it’s a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don’t roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though – if you are working in advance like this it’s better to leave your dough, covered with clingfilm, in the fridge. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there’s one less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 0.5cm thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted tinfoil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with clingfilm, and pop them into the fridge.

Do not overload your pizza, less is more! You will keep a nice crispy bottom this way. Soggy pizza is the worst! Also, if you use fresh tomatoes, like I do, you should really pat them dry before putting them on your pizza base, this prevents sogginess as well.

Buon appetito! 

Lemony Chicken Burgers

Sometimes you just don’t feel like putting a lot of effort in your food. On those days an easy, healthy dish with only a few (pantry) ingredients is nice to have. 

For this chicken burger you only need chicken (minced, if available, otherwise you put it in the foodprocessor or slice it as finely as you can), rice wine, sesame oil, spring onion, soy sauce, lemon juice a bun, some sauces and lettuce and / or tomato. It’s as easy as that! You can make them on the griddle pan or on the barbecue, if the weather permits. You griddle pan will become a mess, I must warn you, but these burgers are definitely worth it. 

Lemony Chicken Burgers
Ching He Huang in China Modern

Ingredients
3 small chicken breasts
2 large spring onions, chopped
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp rice wine
1 tsp cornflour
1 tsp brown sugar
1 dash of soy sauce
1 dash of sesame oil
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 white buns, for hamburgers, topped with sesame seeds
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp ketchup, chilli-tomato
1 baby gem lettuce, shredded
1 tomato, sliced

Method
1. Finely dice the chicken for the burgers and combine with the spring onions, lemon juice, rice wine, cornflour, brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil and seasoning. Shape the mixture into two large patties and put them in the refrigerator - if you have time - for an hour or more so they can firm up a bit.
2. Heat the vegetable oil in a griddle pan over a medium heat. Fry the chicken patties for about 3-5 minutes on each side - they should be light brown and tender. Remove from the pan and keep warm. 
3. Spread the buns with some mayo and chilli ketchup, put some lettuce leaves on the bun and place your burger on top of the lettuce. Add some slices of tomato if you like.

 

We also mixed in some chopped coriander leaves, this time, which adds a lovely extra ‘herby’ depth. I also often use my lemon black pepper, which adds some extra zing on top of the lemon juice.I topped my burger with a tiny bit of Sriracha sauce.

A satisfying, easy and healthy burger! I am sure you will find yourself making these often - they are also great for picnik or lunch sandwiches or just for a snack.

Liege waffles (with pearl sugar)

Belgian waffles are amazing. Especially the variety with the crispy pearl sugar which gives the soft, slightly chewy waffle a nice crunch. I always wanted to recreate them myself, but never found a recipe that sounded easy enough. I think I found it this time!

Note that the batter has to rest for 30 minutes in total!

Liege style waffles (Belgian waffles with pearl sugar)

35 min | 30 min prep | Serves 4

Ingredients

1 (1/4 ounce) package yeast
1/3 cup lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
3 eggs
1 cup softened butter
1 cup pearl sugar

Method 
1. Mix yeast, water, sugar and salt, and let develop for 15 minutes.
2. Place flour into a large bowl. Make a well, pour in yeast mixture, and begin to knead.
3. Continue to knead, add eggs, one at a time, and add soft butter, 2 tablespoons each addition, mixing well.
4. Let dough rest in bowl until doubled.
5. Gently mix in pearl sugar.
6. Let rest for 15 minutes.
7. Heat waffle iron. When hot, butter waffle iron, pour in 3 tablespoons dough per waffle.
8. Cook for 3-5 minutes, until waffles lightly brown on top.Serve warm or room temperature.

Enjoy!

I remember my father really loves these with warm cherries and some cream. :-)

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What is your favourite way of keeping your recipes organized? I need tips and tricks! I have huge amounts of scraps of paper with handwritten recipes, or cut-outs from magazines and don’t know what to do with them!

Feel free to take a picture of your recipe book, binder or card index to get me inspired :)

Spice blends

My mother in law brought me a seriously spicy piri piri spice blend. Even pointing at it made my eyes water. It tastes delicious, however, when you mix just a pinch of it through your ground beef or sprinkle it over some baked chicken. Spice blends are wonderful to spike up a relatively simple (or easy) dish. This made me remember a conversation I recently had with a colleague, she told me her (Greek) boyfriend never really liked spicy dishes, but when she made gyros and only sprinkled some cumin and coriander over the meat, it rocked his world. It is that easy to perk up a dish!

In the Middle East a herb called za’atar is used to perk up a common pita bread: the bread is dipped in olive oil and za’atar mixed with sumac, salt and sesame. This herb was already known and used in ancient Egypt as remains of one of the varieties of the herb was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. And who can ever doubt a pharaoh?

As za’atar is probably not readily available everywhere, I’ll give you some other well-known spice blends you can easily make at home.

Ras el hanout is a well-known spice blend commonly used in Moroccan dishes. Many different versions exist, as the name already reveals: “best of the shop”. This is a streamlined version:

Ras el hanout

Ingredients
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Method
Combine the spices in a pestle and mortar and start grinding. Sieve your mix into a seperate bowl now and then and put the coarse pieces back into the mortar until you have a fine powder. 

The Indian spice blend Garam Masala is also very easy to make, as with Ras el Hanout many different versions exist. It is merely a matter of taste. This recipe by Camelia Punjabi is a wonderful basic blend.

Garam Masala

Ingredients
6 grams of cinnamon sticks
6 grams of cloves
6 grams of black peppercorns
the seeds from 1 black cardamom seed or from 4 green cardamom seeds
1 teaspoon of fennel seed
1 bay leaf or 1 curry leaf

Method
Heat a frying pan on high heat and toast the spices for 30 seconds or until fragrant (it will smell heavenly, believe me!). Put everything into a pestle and mortar and grind until powdered. You can store the garam masala for 3-6 months in a tightly closed jar.

Easy standby dishes

Finally Summer arrived! I am happy about it, but since I am terrible with heat, I have not been very inspired when it comes to food. Luckily I have some nice standby dishes that will perk up any easy meal, go great as side dishes with a barbecue or just make you feel comfortable. 

One of my favourite sandwich fillings is egg salad. It is very easy, healthy and satisfying. This weekend I made the extremely easy version. 

Easy Egg Salad

Ingredients
4 hardboiled eggs
5 tbsp of mayonaise (I use yoghurt mayonaise, if you don’t have that, add 2 tbsp of low fat yoghurt to 3 tbsp of mayonaise)
1 tsp of Dijon mustard (or any other mustard you like)
2 tsp of curry powder (or to taste, depending on the spiciness of your curry powder)
1 tsp of paprika powder
1 pinch of onion powder
1 pinch of cayenne pepper for a kick 
freshly ground black pepper
ground salt to taste
lots of chopped chives 

Boiling the eggs
I would say: boil the eggs the way you usually boil them.
Personally I have 2 methods, one before my Perfect Egg Timer and one since.

At first I boiled my eggs the way I learned from my mother, which is how she learned it from her mother, etc etc: bring the water to the boil, carefully put in the eggs and let them boil for 8 minutes. I let them boil for 5 minutes for still slightly runny eggs - not recommended for this recipe, but just to be complete. Run cold water over them (in the Netherlands we call that “scaring the eggs :-)) and let them cool down before peeling them.

The method with the Perfect Egg Timer is: fill a pan with water, put in your eggs and the Perfect Egg Timer and wait until the egg-timer says they are in between medium and hard. Take the eggs out of the pan, scare your eggs and let them cool down. 

Method
1. Peel your eggs and cut them into cubes, do not mash them finely - we like to have some texture. Put the cubed eggs aside in a bow.
2. In another bowl mix the 3 tbsp of mayonnaise with 2 tbsp of low fat yoghurt. 
3. Add the curry powder, paprika powder, onion powder, salt en pepper and mix well. 
4. Sprinkle in  the chives and give it all a good stir. 
5. Add your cubed eggs and mix carefully. Taste to adjust the seasoning. 

— You can of course build upon this recipe. I usually also add chopped cherry tomatoes, some slices or cubes of boiled potato and chopped spring onions, you could add finely diced cucumber or really anything else you like. You can also vary with the seasoning, add some dill or celery. 

For extra nice sandwiches I also fried a chicken breast with my Norwegian shish kebab spice mix, which has coriander, paprika, chilli, cinnamon, cumin and garlic. Very nice with some salad and a tiny bit of Thai Sriracha sauce.

Another one of my easy favourites is tuna salad. This, again, is the very easy version. Feel free to build upon it and add whatever you like!

Easy Tuna Salad

Ingredients
1 tin of tuna (I usually use tuna in water, but you could use the one in oil)
2,5 tbsp of yoghurt mayonnaise (or 1tbsp of low fat yoghurt mixed with 1,5 tbsp of mayonnaise)
a squeeze of lemon juice
1 small tbsp of ketchup
1 onion, chopped
freshly ground black pepper
some salt

Method
1. Drain the tuna and squeeze a little lemon juice on top. 
2. Mix the yoghurt mayonnaise, the ketchup, the freshly ground pepper, a pinch of salt and the chopped onions. Combine this with the drained tuna

— To spike this up, add some Italian herbs and 2 sun dried tomatoes, soaked in boiling water for 3 minutes and finely sliced. In the Netherlands they actually have ready-made packets of tuna mixed with Italian herbs and sun dried tomatoes, you could use those and mix them with the onion, ketchup and mayo. You can also replace the “normal onion” with a spring onion and add some pickled capers for a zesty tang.

Enjoy!

Indian night

Tonight there are Indian dishes on the menu. We’ll make samosas filled with spiced potatoes and peas and chicken tandoori. I have high expectations about the samosas. I’ve been wanting to make them ever since I saw some made during Masterchef - they looked so extremely delicious and I absolutely love curried potatoes. I also hope this will be a recipe to get my boyfriend to eat more potatoes and vegetables in general… 

Samosas have a long history, they probably originated in Central Asia before the 10th century. They are believed to be an innovation of the pies that were first created by the ancient Egyptians some 4000 years earlier and were passed on around 600 BC to the Greeks and Romans. 

There are many different versions of samosa, some deep fried some baked, the dough and the filling also differs from region to region. I use Anjum Anand’s recipe with filo pastry and a filling of spiced potatoes and peas. 

Potato and pea samosas
By Anjum Anand from Indian Food Made Easy
Preparation time: less than 30 mins
Cooking time: 30 mins to 1 hour
Makes 20

Ingredients
3 tbsp vegetable oil
half a tsp mustard seeds
60g chopped onion
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
60g frozen peas
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
one fourth tsp red chilli powder
half to three quarter tsp garam masala
1-2 tsp dried mango powder, to taste
salt, to taste
splash water
600g/1lb 5oz potatoes, peeled, boiled until soft and crushed into large lumps
4 tbsp chopped fresh coriander leaves
packet ready-made filo pastry
5 tbsp melted butter, for brushing
2 tbsp sesame seeds (optional) (you can also use poppy or nigella seeds)

Method

1. Heat the oil in a small non-stick pan and fry the mustard seeds for about ten seconds, or until they begin to splutter.
2. Add the onion and ginger and cook for 2-3 minutes over a high heat. Add the peas, stir well and add the spices, mango powder, salt and a splash of water. Cook for 1-2 minutes, then add the potatoes and coriander and cook for 2-3 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
4. Unroll the pastry and cover with cling film and a damp tea towel. Peel off one piece and keep the rest covered so that it doesn’t dry out. Lay the pastry sheet flat on a clean surface and brush with melted butter. Fold in one third of the pastry lengthways towards the middle. Brush again with the butter and fold in the other side to make a long triple-layered strip.
5. Place one rounded teaspoon of the filling mixture at one end of the strip, leaving a 2cm/1in border. Take the right corner and fold diagonally to the left, enclosing the filling and forming a triangle. Fold again along the upper crease of the triangle. Keep folding in this way until you reach the end of the strip. Brush the outer surface with more butter. Place onto a baking sheet and cover while you make the rest of the samosas. Sprinkle over a few sesame seeds, if using.
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until golden and crisp, turning halfway through the cooking time.
7. To serve, place the samosas onto a large serving plate with a bowlful of chutney.

As I still have a jar of tamarind paste going to waste in the refrigerator, I decided to make tamarind chutney to go with the samosas. We both love tamarind but don’t use it often enough, there are too many good recipes around!

Tamarind and jaggery chutney
By Anjum Anand from Indian Food Made Easy
Preparation time: less than 30 mins
Cooking time: 10 to 30 mins
Serves 4

Ingredients
three quarter tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp tamarind paste (available from Asian supermarkets)
3-4 tbsp jaggery (palm sugar), chopped
half a tsp freshly ground black pepper
pinch salt
70ml water
6 mint leaves, shredded (optional)

Method
1. Heat the cumin seeds in a frying pan and dry fry for 1-2 minutes, or until fragrant and golden-brown. Transfer to a pestle and mortar and grind to a powder.
2. Put all of the ingredients into a small pan and mix until well combined. Bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and simmer for 3-5 minutes, or until the mixture has thickened. Set aside to cool.
3. Serve as a dip with samosas, chaat or dhokla. (This chutney will keep in the fridge for 4-5 weeks.)

We also made chicken tandoori skewers (so it was not a vegetarian night :-)) 

Chicken tandoori skewers

Ingredients
400 g chicken thigh meat
500 g yoghurt
1 tbsp cumin powder
1 tbsp Garam Massala
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp chilli powder
the juice of 1 lemon
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 heaped tbsp of grated root ginger
1 lemon (to serve)
some skewers that have been soaking in water for an hour (I always forget this, so I thought I’d add this step ;-))

Method
1. Clean the chicken (I always do this, I cut of the “funky” bits), slice it in long, broad strips and put it in a bowl.
2. Add the yoghurt and the spices, the garlic, ginger and the juice of one of the lemons, mix well. Put it in the refrigerator for 2 hours / overnight.
3. When ready to bake, preheat the over to 230 degrees celsius.
4. Take the chicken out of the refrigerator and thread the chicken on the skewers.
5. Put the chicken into the oven and bake for 6 to 8 mins until the meat is cooked.
6.  Serve with rice and a wedge of lemon.

Grilled Halloumi

Sunday needs barbecueing and therefore I bring you a recipe! A vegetarian one today, just for the fun of it, and with a slightly unusual ingredient to spice things up: Halloumi. 

Halloumi is a small, elastical and crustless white cheese from the Middle East. It hardly melts and is therefore wonderful to prepare on the barbecue.

Grilled Halloumi with a lemon-coriander-almond pesto.

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Ingredients

A block of Halloumi 

For the pesto

A large handful of coriander stalks with leaves
1 clove of garlic
1 red chilipepper
2 tablespoons of white almonds
half a teaspoon cumin seeds
half -1 salted lemon
1-2 tablespoons of moisture from the jar

Method

1. Slice the halloumi in thick slices and grill the slices.
2. Mix the ingredients for the pesto in a blender to form a puree. Cautiously add 125 ml of olive oil or enough to make a smooth sauce.
3. Serve the grilled halloumi with the pesto (I never said this was a difficult dish).

Halloumi tastes quite salty, quite like feta, so it nicely combines with the slightly sour taste of the pesto.

Enjoy!

French onion soup

Tonight an easy dinner: French onion soup from a jar. But not just any jar. It’s from the KleinsteSoepFabriek (The SmallestSoupFactory) - The SmallestSoupFactory produces soups. Full, delicious and adventurous soups, inspired by far away travels, and created according to traditional methods.

From their website:

For this French onion soup the onions are slow-cooked to create ultimate flavour and a beautiful yellow-gold colour. After they’ve been cooked the other ingredients are added. This onion soup is a delicious warming and invigorating soup which used to be eaten as early as 5 am by the market traders of Les Halles in Paris. Instead of coffee, it was onion soup! For evenings: it’s also tasty with a dash of white wine or cognac. If desired add some croutons.

We made it with a splash of white wine and ate it with a baguette. Absolutely delicious. 

This is a nice standby to have, but onion soup is also fairly easy to make yourself. This recipe is from Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights. As Sophie herself says:

“Purists will argue this is nothing like the real thing, which should be made with beef stock and have a great molten island of bread and cheese on top. I use vegetable stock and lose the bread - it’s not as heavy, yet still as decadent. The trick is sloooooooooow cooking the onions, so they impart their rich caramelly flavour to the soup.”

French Onion Soup
from Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights

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Ingredients

3 large yellow onions
1 tablespoon of butter
Slug of olive oil
2 litres / 8 cups of stock - I used 4 cups of chicken stock and 4 cups of vegetable stock.
1 tablespoon of good aged syrupy balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
100 g / 1 cup of grated cheese (Gruyere or parmezan according to Sophie or aged Gouda when you are in the Netherlands like me :-)) 

Method

1. Roughly chop the onions. In a large pot (like a heavy-bottomed Le Creuset) melt the butter with a few glugs of olive oil on a low heat. You don’t want it to burn. Make sure the bottom of the pan is covered by swishing it around.
2. Pour in the onions, mix them into the oil with a wooden spoon and sweat gently for about 40 minutes. If your heat is kept to the lowest setting they won’t neat more oil. Sometimes this is helped by using a heat diffuser pad. Towards the end of the cooking, turn up the heat a bit; you want the onions to brown and caramelize, not to be charred to a crisp.
3. When the onions look golden and browned around the edges, pour in the stock. Turn down the heat to low again, stir, and add the balsamic vinegar. I don’t know why, but this gives the soup a mellow, sweet earthiness. Let it simmer for another 15 minutes, taste, add salt and pepper if needed and then, using a ladle, pour into bowls.
4. Pour the cheese in when you’re about to serve.

Onion soup is also nice to serve as an appetizer or a small dish during a high tea, it looks lovely when served in small glasses.

Thai Beef Salad (Yum Nua)

I envy my sister in law. She has been to Thailand a few times and took a cooking class once where she learned how to carve pretty vegetable flowers. That is high on my to do list! Luckily she brought me some Thai food greeting cards. They have amazing recipes printed on the back with a pretty picture of the food in question on the front. I use them frequently, and one of them has become one of our signature dishes. Spicy beef salad, or Yum Nua. It is a very easy dish and pretty adaptable. 

As the amazing-but-sometimes-impossible David Thompson always says in his Thai Food bible this dish should taste equally salty, sour, sweet, spicy and umami. Give it a go, it won’t fail. You can serve it with either noodles or rice or a nice baguette, whatever you like.

Yum Nua
Spicy Beef salad

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Ingredients

400 g of beef tenderloin (we used ostrich steak today)
0,25 cup sugar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
2 cloves garlic
6 fresh coriander leaves (and more for garnish)
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper
2 spring onions
6 fresh red chillies (:-D it IS Thai food, we usually use 1…)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
lettuce leaves (we used red bell pepper today)   

Method
1. Grill the beef until medium rare, or as preferred, and cut into thin slices.
2. Pound together the garlic, soy sauce, sugar, lime juice, chopped coriander leaves, spring onions (thinly sliced), salt and ground black pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan and stir fry the spice paste for 3-4 minutes.
4. Combine the beef and cook for a minute.
5. Remove the beef and allow to cool.
6. Before serving, sprinkle the chillies (thinly sliced) on top and garnish with the remaining coriander leaves.

Comfort [insert noun here]

Many things count as comforting. For me it ranges from a tasty cup of coffee (and I am very picky) to reading books with titles like “Enquire Within About Everyting 1890” (with the dazzling remark printed on the cover: over one million copies sold). I am not kidding - I spent some lovely evenings leafing through it, stumbling across sensible advice as:

376. Beat a Carpet on the wrong side first; and then more gently on the right side. Beware of using sticks with sharp points, which may tear the carpet.

It may sound silly and obvious, but I completely understand the need for a book like this. Another one, just for the sake of it:

1792. Why does milk turn sour during thunderstorms? - Because, in an electric condition of the atmosphere, ozone is generated. Ozone is oxygen in a state of great intensity; and oxygen is a general acidifier of many organic substances. Milk may be prevented from becoming sour by boiling it, or bringing it nearly to boiling point, for, as the old proverb says, “Milk boiled is milk spoiled.” Heating the milk expels the oxygen.

Wonderful!

Other times just watching an episode of one of my favourite tv series (or a newly discovered one) can be just the type of comfort I need.

One of my “guilty pleasures” when it comes to comfort reading is The Babysitter’s Club series. I really like the comic books by Raina Telgemeier released last year.

Sometimes, though, you actually have to get your hands dirty to satisfy your comfort-cravings. And as one of my ultimate comfort foods are scones: here’s a nice recipe that I have to try soon - they look so delicious!

Pumpkin & Date Scones

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(from Mix & Bake by Belinda Jeffery)

Ingredients

3 cups (450g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarb/baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
120g cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
200g chopped pitted dates (not medjool, they’re far too moist and sticky for this)
1 cup cold cooked mashed pumpkin (I used butternut)
3/4 cup buttermilk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper, then very lightly dust it with flour and set aside.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking/bicab soda and salt into a large bowl and use a balloon whisk to whisk it together. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips till the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir together the buttermilk and cooked cold mashed pumpkin and set aside for now.
3. Add the dates to the bowl and toss them through to coat them in the flour mixture, then make a well in the centre of the bowl and pour in the pumpkin/buttermilk mix. Stir it together till barely combined, then tip it onto a well-floured chopping board and lightly knead till the mixture comes together (not till the batter is smooth - just till it holds together and doesn’t have any unmixed bits).
4. Pat the dough into a round about 4cm thick, then dip a scone cutter (or glass tumbler) into some flour and stamp out your scone shapes. Alternately, you can cut the round into triangular wedges or pat it into a cylinder and just cut off rounds.
5. Carefully sit the scones closely together on the baking tray, using up all your dough (press the scraps together rather than kneading them). Either dust the tops with flour or give them a milk or egg wash, then bake for 20 minutes or till cooked through and golden. Once they’re done, remove them from the oven and wrap in a clean tea towel for 5 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool.
6. Serve whilst warm with some salted butter, or store in an airtight container for up to three days. Cold scones can be reheated in a microwave or toaster oven to make them warm and soft again.

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Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

Adelle Davis (1904 - 1974)

That’s difficult to do, though, when my life at least, is programmed around doing it the other way around… I have more time to cook (and more of an appetite :-)) in the evening than in the morning.

My opinion? As long as you listen to your body, enjoy what your eating when you’re eating it and do not overeat you should be fine. What do you think?

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htm

roughnightrx:

meriggiare:

simple and clear!

This is a great tool!  Check this out.

Club Sandwich

A club sandwich, also called a clubhouse sandwich or double-decker, is a sandwich with two layers of fillings between 3 slices of (toasted) bread. It is often cut into quarters and held together by cocktail sticks. The traditional club ingredients are turkey on the bottom layer, and bacon, lettuce, egg and tomato on the top (it is sometimes called the “turkey club”).

from Wikipedia’s Club Sandwich page.     

A sandwich is a wonderful kind of food. It is easy to take somewhere, it is filling and you can put anything you fancy between those two slices of bread. But sandwiches are also easy to get tired of. I am always searching for nice new sandwich fillings to take for lunch. 

A club sandwich, however, always feels special. It is usually not something I bring for lunch, it is more a dish I order when eating out. It is easy to make, however, and when 3 slices of bread seem much or are impossible to bring, why not put the filling between just 2 slices? (Ok, technically it’s no longer a club sandwich, but hey, I won’t tell if you don’t ;-))

One of the best club sandwiches I had was one with smoked chicken, tomato and avocado, a tiny bit of bacon and a drizzle of mayo. The bread was toasted dark whole wheat bread and delicious! I was having lunch with a dear friend and we had a lot of catching up to do. We were talking so much that we initially didn’t realize the cook had forgotten to add the smoked chicken. Luckily all the talking had prevented us from starting to eat, so when the waiter came to tell us, it wasn’t a big deal. 

What are your favourite (club) sandwich fillings?

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Everyone seems to love the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning, but not everyone likes the taste of coffee. To some any kind of coffee will do, as long as it has the desperately needed caffeine, some do like the taste but don’t want the caffeine (my mom :)) and others, like myself, are extremely picky - sometimes irritatingly so - when it comes to coffee. My motto: I only drink 2 to 3 cups a day, so they’d better be good! Especially in the morning, so imagine my horror when I first discovered the habits in two of the student dorms I lived in. We lived with both students and some older women that were already working, in two different dorms the older women all had the habit of preserving leftover coffee from last evening to drink COLD in the morning. I drank tea with breakfast in those dorms, suffice to say. 

During the last couple of years I’ve moved through different stages, coffee-wise. From a drip machine at my parental home, through a Senseo coffee pod system while living in a small student room to a Nespresso cup-system (which is in my opinion the next best thing after a machine you can fill with whole beans).

Last week I completed the circle when I took home my mother’s old Cafe Duo drip machine and bought my all time favourite ground Lavazza coffee. The machine is probably twenty years old, but it still works like a charm and makes piping hot wonderful coffee in a few minutes.

My pickiness proves itself at work where last year all machines were replaced. First we had those machines which could make everything: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, soup - you name it and it had a button for it. The coffee was terrible, the cappuccino even more so as it was all powdered and overly sweet (and tasted ever so slightly of soup or hot chocolate, depending on the item of choice of the person in front of you…).

Considering my two cups a day, I always went out for coffee and bought my coffee in one of the many available coffee places in the train station and shopping centre below my office. Last year it seemed I could get free coffee at work again as all the old all-in-one machines were replaced by huge machines you could fill with beans and would only make coffee or coffee-based drinks (espresso, crema, cappuccino or latte macchiato) unfortunately my company has a contract with one of the few coffee roasters I do not like… so I still go to one of the coffee places outside my office where they sell coffee from different suppliers.

My colleagues don’t understand: “But, but, we have a machine with WHOLE BEANS now! How can you taste the difference?” It is simply a matter of taste, I think the coffee at work has a bitter, deep and burned taste. I like my coffee lighter, rounder and sweeter. For them it is a matter of “as long as it has caffeine” for me it simply is a matter of taste.

Food in the Viking Age

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/food_01.shtml

One of the culinary delights of the Viking Age: a stew. “The stew itself also looks rather scary; a thin crust of fat has formed over a brown liquid which is made up of boiled lamb bones, beans, peas, carrots and turnips.”

Nostalgia

This weekend we made a blitz trip to Brussels. We wanted to see the Moomin exhibition in the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée - a lovely Art Nouveau building. Brussels itself was a bit disappointing, though. It looked a bit faded and since I heard so much about the Art Nouveau tours and the wonderful architecture I was stunned to find tons of new, high, ugly buildings when we were driving to the museum. If anyone has better experiences with Brussels and tips on which areas to visit, I would love to hear them.

The weekend started with a visit to my parents in the very south of the Netherlands, near both the Belgian and German border. It still feels like home. Completely unexpected one of my dear childhood friends was visiting her parents as well, she now lives in the US so she was the last person I expected there! She called because she thought she saw us drive by and we had a nice long talk which made the weekend extra nostalgic.

For dinner on friday evening my mother made home made fries (cut by hand, so they are not as thin as French Fries) with a traditional sweet and sour meat stew called Zuurvlees. My grandmother makes the best version and she handed it down to my mother, so I am giving you a true family recipe.

Zuurvlees is traditionally made with horsemeat, I remember eating it with horsemeat when I was a small child - I loved it, even though I also love horses. The last fifteen years my parents or my grandmother have not made it with horsemeat anymore, as it is a bit controversial and not sold everywhere. It tastes just as wonderful with beef.

Traditional Zuurvlees

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Ingredients
500 g beef flank steak cut in small chunks
4 big onions, peeled and sliced
3 bay leaves
3 cloves (I always put the cloves and the bay leaves in a folded paper coffee filter so you can easily take it out again)
sweet paprika powder, salt and freshly ground black pepper for seasoning
a splash of sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
2 cups of water
1 cup vinegar
two or three tablespoons of apple butter for taste, thickening and colour, if you can’t find apple butter use some slices of crumbled soft gingerbread instead
sugar to taste
1 stock cube

Method
1. Brown the meat well in a little bit of oil or butter, season it with salt, freshly ground pepper and paprika powder to taste.
2. Add the sliced onions and cook until soft.
3. Add the water, vinegar, the package with the cloves and bay leaves, the crumbled stock cube and kecap manis. Let it simmer for 2 hours or more, stirring occasionally and scooping off the foam.
4.When the meat is done, add the apple butter and / or the crumbled gingerbread slices and stir until combined. It should be a thick and velvety dark brown sauce. Taste to determine if it needs more seasoning, vinegar or applebutter and adjust to taste accordingly.

This is traditionally eaten with home made fries and a dollop of mayonaise. It also tastes delicious with the, also extremely Dutch, Hotchpotch (Hutspot in Dutch) a dish of boiled and mashed potatoes, carrots and (in my family baked) onions. I often eat it with bucatini pasta, stirred with a little bit of butter and grated nutmeg, delicious nostalgic comfort food!