Coconut and cardemom muffins

I read about these in the cooking section of the newspaper and thought this would be a great way to make my boyfriend understand my love for carrotcake and spicy cakes. This recipe makes lovely moist muffins. These would have been great for Valentine's Day. All credit goes to Roos Ouwehand in NRC next.

Where are we now...

We had a lovely day in Groningen with a lovely lunch. 

See the full gallery on posterous

mapo tofu

A trip to an asian food market always incurs the insatiable urge to make some Asian food. Reading a wonderful book about a Chinese girl reacquainting herself with Chinese food (Fortune Cookie by Ann Mah) left me with a desire for Mapo Tofu as she describes it as a dish I would LOVE. In the back of the book she adds a recipe, unfortunately she (willingly) omits the soy bean pastes in that recipe, so I went searching for a recipe that keeps the soybean pastes, I adore them. As this is a very traditional dish I really wanted to try it. 

According to (Wikipedia) legend Mapo tofu is sometimes translated as "Pockmarked-Face Lady's Tofu". Legend says that the pock-marked old woman (má pó) was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, poor farmers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city. Another less widely accepted explanation stems from an alternate definition of 麻, meaning "numb": the Szechuan peppercorns used in the dish numb the diner's mouth. As Ching He Huang always says: the Szechuan peppercorns provide a citrusy numbing heat. 

MA PO TOFU (麻婆豆腐)

Ingredients

1 block silken tofu
150 gr ground pork, or grouns beef or ground chicken
3 tablespoons chili bean paste
2 tablespoons cooking oil
3 tablespoons chili oil
1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns (roasted and ground to powder)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon fermented black bean paste
2 stalks of leeks or spring onions (chopped into 1 or 2-inch length)
2 gloves garlic (chopped)
1/2 cup water
Salt to taste

Method

Cut the tofu into small pieces. As silken tofu breaks easily, the best way to do it is to place the entire block on a chopping board and gently make 2 or 3 horizontal slices through it, like you do when starting to chop an onion. You end up with 3 slices lying on top of eachother, now you cam make the vertical slices without breaking the tofu up. Drain the tofu and set aside.  Heat up a wok and pour in the cooking oil and chili oil. Add the chopped garlic, ground pork/ beef/ chicken (whatever you use) and the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until the pork is halfway done. Then add the soy sauce and the fermented black bean paste and stir-fry until you start to smell it. Add the tofu and water; stir gently to cover the tofu with the sauce - be careful not to break it! Lower the heat and simmer for about 3-5 mins or until the sauce thickens (use some cornflour mixed in water if you want to thicken it more). Add in the roasted Sichuan peppercorn powder and chopped spring onions. Keep stirring gently so it all blends well.

To tone down the heat you cal add less chilli oil and less chili bean paste. To make it spicier you can add a tablespoon or  two of chilli powder.

We served this with steamed white rice and some marinated aburaage, which works as a delicious sweet counterpart to this spicy dish.

Thoughts on recipes

Yesterday I made Nigel Slater's Grilled prawns with yogurt and mint. A lovely recipe, but I am not too fond of the way Nigel measures his ingredients. I can work with grams, cups, ounces, you name it. But what to make of "a couple of handfuls" of prawns? Whose hands? I have tiny hands, my boyfriend has big hands... How much is "a good shake"? How much is one sachet? Are the Dutch sachets the same as the once you buy in the UK? How much is a good dollop (or two)? All we know is that a good sprinkling of turmeric is more than the sprinkling of peppercorns. At least, I think it is.

 

And, of course, it's all about tasting, but in this recipe you have to put all the ingredients in a blender and I would like to taste the result before I blend everything... Especially with the coconut, if it's too much you can't correct it anymore.

 

It all worked out fine, but I realised that I personally work better with measurements, it makes me feel more confident about the result. How about you?

 

Lamb tagine with prunes and almonds

Last sunday we had a lovely meal. We were busy making chocolates, so we needed a dish you could assemble and pop into the oven. We used those tiny little cast iron pans so everyone had a cute individual pan. This also makes it easy to adjust the dish to everyone’s personal liking. One of our friends is pregnant and she did NOT want any mint NEAR her pan, so we did one without mint. 

I titled this recipe lamb tagine because I believe it will taste even better when made in a tagine - somehow I think it will retain more moisture, as the little pans did come out a bit dry. Odd, considering we even added more moisture after the first hour of cooking. Any ideas on why that happened?

On to the recipe!

Lamb tagine with prunes and almonds
Serves 4 (generously, we had enough extra helping(s) for our dear pregnant friend who eats for 2 :))

Ingredients
500 gr lamb neck, or shoulder or shanks cut into small cubes
200 ml of beef stock
1 onion, finely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ras el hanout
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp crushed saffron threads
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground ginger or crushed fresh ginger
1 cup of pitted prunes
1/2 cup of (slivered) almonds 
1/2 cup of freshly toasted sesame seeds
A bunch of mint for garnish. 

Method
1. Start by sweating the onions over medium heat in the tagine. When translucent, add the garlic and stir for 5 minutes or until fragrant. 
2. Add the lamb and make sure you brown all pieces evenly.
3. Add the ras el hanout, (ground) ginger, cumin, saffron threads, turmeric and beef stock and stir well. Put the lid on and let it simmer for at least 1 hour before checking for doneness. If you can no longer retain yourself: take a peek and notice that the sauce has become syrupy and gorgeous. 
4. After an hour taste to see if it needs more seasoning and add the prunes, almonds. Leave it to simmer for another hour or more. Right before serving add the mint and sprinkle over some sesame seeds. Enjoy!

If you make this in individual pans, put the meat and onions in the pans after browning them, add the beef stock and spices, preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and put them in the over for an hour. After an hour, check for seasoning and add the prunes and almonds. Cook for another hour and add the mint before serving. 

Gingery buttermilk scones

In the most recent Good Food Magazine I saw these amazing gingery scones. I love ginger and scones, so I just had to try them. They turned out really nice and crumbly - just perfect :) To try to make something that resembles clotted cream (very hard to get over here in the Netherlands) I mixed one tub of mascarpone (250 g) wil 1 small tub (125 g) of cream fraiche. Whisk well and you get something that tastes pretty good, but can never ever replace the real clotted cream. 

 

Go here for the recipe: BBC GoodFood Gingery buttermilk scones

Pralines

We made lovely pralines today. They turned out amazing, if I may say so myself. They are filled with pistache creme, hazelnut and cookie crumble and caramel with cookie crumble. Delicious!

Potato and carrot mash

I have another traditional Dutch dish for you: potato and carrot mash. This is a wonderfully warming, hearty and filling dish during this cold winter. I spiced things up a bit - as I usually do - since the traditional version required boiling your finely sliced carrots, potatoes and onions together. You then mash them all together and end up with a glue orange-yellow substance which does not look very appetizing, to say the least. It still tastes fine, if a bit bland. So in my version we leave the pieces of carrot a bit bigger, and after we boil them, we fry them together with the onions which we do not cook but fry instead…

Potato and carrot mash
Serves 4 

Ingredients
1 kg potatoes, peeled and cut in equal parts
400 gr carrot, peeled (wintercarrot this variety is called in Dutch, these are just HUGE carrots)
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp curry powder
3 red onions, sliced in half rings
1 cup of creme fraiche (125 ml)

Method
1. Boil the potatoes in salted water for 20 minutes until done. In the meantime: cut the carrots in rectangles, 4 cm long and 0,5 cm thick. Boil them in salted water for 6 minutes until they have softened but still have a bite to them.
2. Heat 2 tbsp op oil in a frying pan and fry the cumin and currypowder for 2 minutes. Add the onion and fry for 4 minutes. Then add the cooked carrot slices and fry for another 2 minutes. 
3. Strain the potatoes and put them in a bowl. Add the creme fraiche and the remaining oil and mash the potatoes roughly (you don’t need a gluey mash). Add salt and pepper to taste and stir the onion and carrot through the mash. 

You can keep this dish completely vegetarian by serving it with some red beans. They add some depth and extra heartiness. This is also great with sausages (traditionally we eat it with smoked sausages) or fried slices pork belly sprinkled with some curry powder and black pepper.