Categorie: Recepten

Sticky rice with spices and dates

Geplaatst op door Aude

This recipe is one of my personal favorites. It’s from Greg and Lucy Malouf’s book Turquoise (a culinary travel journey through Turkey) and I have to say, I’ve yet to find one bad recipe in this cookbook (and I’m actually gonna try the Circassian chicken in a few days – I’ll try to let you know how that turns out). I read in a review somewhere that it’s a more a ‘coffee table book’ than a cookbook, but I totally disagree. For those who like the Eastern Mediterranean kitchen but still seek some moderation, this is a great book. By the way, if anyone can find me the Maloufs’ other cookbook about Lebanon somewhere, I’d be really happy to know (I found it at a bookshop at the Istanbul airport once and I still regret not buying it since I can’t seem to find it now).

Sticky rice with spices and dates

So, here comes the recipe. Preferably, serve with some spicy marinated chicken, lamb kebabs or a Middle Eastern-inspired salad (for example: pomegranate is available everywhere throughout the winter season and a great salad ingredient – I will post my favorite pomegranate salad ASAP!).

Ingredients for 4 to 6 persons ( I count about 50 grams of rice per person):

250 gr basmati rice
500 ml chicken stock (I use water with stock cubes, vegetarians can use vegetarian stock)
50 gr butter
6 fresh medjoul dates, without stone and chopped (if you don’t have medjoul dates, use some more small dates)
1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of ground pigment (I use a mixture of mild paprika and chili powder)
1 teaspoon of cinnamon (I never measure how much I sprinkle on but I’m guessing it’s more than a teaspoon)
a pinch of spicy pigment powder
a pinch of seasalt (or fleur de sel)
peel of half an orange, in a long strip
2 tbsp of chopped flatleaf parsley

for the nut garnish:

2 tbsp olive oil
50 gr almonds, roughly chopped
50 gr pine nuts
a teaspoon of cinnamon
a pinch of sea salt (I prefer fleur de sel)

How to prepare:

Start with the rice. When I’m preparing a meal with several courses, I always try to think of the rice in the preparations. Washing the rice beforehand actually makes it less sticky, as it removes some of the starch. Put the rice in a large bowl and rinse under cold water. Drain the water, then rinse again (you will notice the water becoming a bit white, try to rinse it until it’s not so white anymore). Do this a few times, then let the rice soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Drain and rinse one more time.

Before you start preparing the rice, bring the water with the chicken stock to a boil and let it simmer softly (or prepare the chicken stock, if you’re one of those people with lots of time).

Melt the butter in a large (heavy) skillet. Put the chopped dates in with the spices and pepper and stir until this has become a hot sticky mixture. Stir in the rice until all the grains are mixed with the spices. Now add the hot chicken stock and the seasalt. Bring to a boil, then add the orange peel (I have a tendency to forget this, which is a pity cause it really gives off a nice flavor) and turn down the fire so it simmers quietly on a very low fire. Put a lid on the skillet and let it simmer for about 15 minutes, or until all the stock has been taken up (if you notice that it’s about to burn, you can add a little water). I know you’re not really supposed to stir, but I have yet to find the perfect skillet so in my opinion, stirring is perfectly fine to prevent it from burning. When the rice is edibly soft, take the dish from the heat, cover with a clean towel and let it sit for 15 minutes.

For the nut garnish, heat the olive oil in a small skillet and bake the nuts in a few minutes until they’re golden brown. Put them in a sieve to drain. Sprinke with the cinnamon and fleur de sel and shake so that all nuts are covered in spices.

To serve, remove the orange peel from the rice and mix the parsley in with a fork. Put the rice pilav in a pretty bowl and top with the nuts. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Holiday three course menu: fennel soup, pumpkin pie and hot toddy pudding

Geplaatst op door Aude

This is a menu I’ve used for a lunch with family, but it’s perfect for all those lunches or dinners one hosts during cold winter months. The various dishes are real comfort food but fancy enough to impress your guests – while easy enough to pull it off without any special equipment and ingredients. It does take some time to prepare, but a lot can be done in advance. I got my recipes from one of my cooking classes (at CVO Elishout, Anderlecht), the delicious. cookbook by Valli Little and the December edition of delicious. magazine (Jamie Oliver’s contribution).

My guests were very positive about this menu! All of it is very ‘filling’ comfort food, perfect for those cold and rainy fall and winter days. If you try any of these, let me know what you think!

As a strong starter, I made fennel soup with shrimp. This is actually quite an easy recipe but has a refined taste due to the garnish. Perfect to impress guests!

Ingredients for six persons:

one good-sized onion (if you have small ones, use two)
butter or oil, as you prefer
about 3 pieces of fennel (keep the green leafy parts apart)
two soft-cooking potatoes
fish stock (I used the real thing in class and cubes at home)

for the garnish:

200 grams of peeled grey shrimp/Dutch shrimp (shrimp from the North Sea)
zest of one orange, grated
a handful of basil leaves, thinly chopped
200 ml 30% cream

How-to:

Make the soup by heating some butter or oil and sweating the chopped onions in it. Then add the roughly chopped fennel and potatoes and let the vegetables stew for a bit so they can give off flavor. Add fish stock and/or water – I don’t really measure this but just pour until the vegetables are at least completely covered and then some (at least 2,5 liters) – 2 cubes of stock per liter. Let this come to a boil and then simmer on a low fire for a while until the vegetables are completely soft. Turn off the heat and blend the soup with a hand mixer, using a conical strainer if you have one (I finally bought one, yay!). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the garnish, mix the grey shrimp with the orange zest and the chopped basil (for the real vegetarians, you can always leave out the shrimp or replace with some baked bread crumbs. I try to find non-peeled shrimp because they often travel a long way and back to be peeled, which is not very environmentally friendly). Beat the cream until it has the consistency of yoghurt. Put a spoon of cream into a soup bowl. Add the soup, then sprinkle with a few spoons of shrimp. Finish with a sprig of fennel green. Enjoy!

Note: originally, my soup was of a prettier color green than the one in the picture. I put it back on the fire to heat up a bit when my guests came in, but then I had to show them around the apartment and so my soup was boiling by the time I got back to the kitchen. The longer you let green soup boil, the less ‘green’ it will become. Just a hint!

The main course was a pumpkin pie to which I added some sweet potatoes that were still lying around. This dish is more labor intensive but if you have time, it’s absolutely worth it. The recipe is from the delicious. cookbook by Valli Little and it’s absolutely delicious and very filling comfort food. If you’re feeling lazy, just use store-bought shortcrust pastry instead of the homemade kind (it won’t be as good though). For those who dislike mushrooms (in my experience, quite some people dislike them, although I can’t understand why) you can just leave them out.

Ingredients

for the shortcrust pastry:

250 gr flour
180 cold butter, in small cubes
for the pie filling:

700 gr pumpkin/sweet potato, in wedges of 3 cm (or a bit more, according to what you have in store)
olive oil
40 gr butter (or a good chunk)
2 leeks, the white and light green parts, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped coarsely
white wine
300 ml of 30% cream
3 eggs
2 teaspoons of chopped thyme leaves
2 tablespoons of chopped flatleaf parsley
125 grated gruyere or emmental
a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

for the mushroom topping:

40 gr butter (or a good chunk)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
400 grams mixed mushrooms (Parisian, shii-take,…), dirt brushed off and chopped coarsely
white wine
2 tablespoons chopped flatleaf parsley

How-to:

First, make the shortcrust pastry. Put the flour in a mixing bowl and add the butter cubes. Rub the butter cubes until mixed coarsely with the flour (or pulse in a kitchen robot if you have one). Add three tablespoons of ice water and mix until you have a smooth dough (don’t mix for too long!). Shape into a round ball and put some plastic foil around it. Let the dough rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This can be made beforehand, a day or so.

For the pie filling: preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. (about 356 Fahrenheit). Dress a (metal) baking tin with a sheet of parchment paper. Put the pumpkin and sweet potato slices on the parchment paper, sprinkle with olive oil and coarse salt (fleur de sel) and pepper, toss carefully. Cover the pumpkin with aluminum foil (I don’t have this so I used parchment paper) and roast the pumpkin for 25-35 minutes in the oven, until tender. Shake the pumpkin in a large sieve and put above a bowl to let the liquid drip out for at least 3o minutes.

Now, take a pie mold of about 26 cm diameter (I used a bigger one but I upped all the portions) and rub it with butter. Roll out the pastry, about 5 mm thick onto a sheet of parchment paper, put this into the pie mold. Put it back into the fridge for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Then, line with parchment paper (I didn’t do this and used flour, but it was quite hard to remove the baked crust from the mold) and uncooked rice or beans (as a baking weight) and put it in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove the weight and bake for 8 more minutes until golden brown.

In the meantime, melt the butter in a large frying pan. Add the garlic and leek and stir-fry until the leek is tender. Add a good swig of wine and let it cook for a few minutes, then take the pan from the fire and let the leek cool. Blend the pumpkin flesh with the leek, the cream, eggs, thyme and parsley until smooth (with a hand mixer or blender). Add the grated cheese and nutmeg and royally season with pepper and seasalt. Pour the pumpkin mixture carefully into the prepared crust and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes (or longer if necessary), until firm and golden brown. If necessary, you can make the filling beforehand – but in that case, make sure that the leek and pumpkin are cooled before you add the cream and eggs.

While the pie is in the oven, heat an extra chunk of butter in a large frying pan or wok. Add the garlic and mushrooms and stir-fry for a few minutes until the mushrooms have shrunken. Add a bit of white wine and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes until the wine has evaporated. Mix the parsley with the mushrooms, put them on the pie and serve. Enjoy!

I recently made Jamie Oliver’s hot toddy pudding from delicious. magazine and it immediately became one of my favorite desserts. It’s easy, yummy and a winter dessert that warms you on the inside! You can make it a few hours before and bake it later, if you do so sprinkle the sugar on right before baking.

 

 

 

Ingredients:

150 g raisins
100 ml dark rum (more or less)
15 slices of white bread (you can use old bread for this)
6 large eggs
600 ml cream
450 ml milk
200 g cane sugar + 50 g extr for topping
grated peel of one (preferable organic) orange
3 ripe bananas, in thick slices
a baking dish of about 25 cm diameter, lightly buttered (pyrex or ceramics, oven-proof)

Note: I used a smaller baking dish (see picture) and I cut the milk-cream-egg-sugar ingredients in half, I used about 100 g of raisins, about 10 slices of bread and 2 bananas. This amount was definitely enough for 6 people. If you notice you don’t have enough egg-cream mixture you can alway make a little more and add it to the pudding. The most important is that your proportions are right.

How-to:

Start by putting the raisins in a small bowl and pouring rum over them so that they are completely covered. Let them soak for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Cut the bread slices into triangles, making four triangles from every slice (the second time I made two triangles out of every slice, it depends on the size of your bread). You can leave the crust on. Beat the eggs loose with the sugar and add in milk and cream. Sieve the raisins and mix the rum in with the cream mixture. Mix in the orange zest, keeping a small tablespoon apart. Dip about 8 of the bread triangles into the custard and keep them apart. Now, cover the bottom of your baking dish with bread and add half of the banana slices and half of the raisins. Add another layer of bread, bananas and raisins, but keep a handful of raisins apart.

Finally, cover the layers with the custard-dipped bread slices. Now slowly pour the cream mixture into the dish, be careful so that the bread doesn’t float up. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar and orange zest. Jamie Oliver adds the leftover raisins at this point, but I like to keep them apart and add them before serving so they don’t burn. Put the dish into the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes, until firm. If it gets too brown on top, you can cover it with some parchment paper. Add the raisins and serve (careful, it’s hot). Also perfect with some tea or coffee!

 

 

 

Spongy, spicy, dried-fruit-and-rum cake

Geplaatst op door Aude

Last Sunday, I was itching to bake something. A few days earlier I’d made Jamie Oliver’s hot toddy from the latest number of delicious. magazine and the rum-soaked raisins tasted like more, so I figured I’d do something with dried fruit and rum (how can you ever go wrong with something that’s soaked in rum?). I ended up tweaking another delicious. recipe from a piece they did on Surinamese food in February 2011. In the article, the cake is called keksi and made with Dutch gin (jenever) and amaretto. Since I had neither of these, I used rum instead. In addition to raisins, I added dried abricots and dates. I also split the recipe in half, since it was originally for 20 servings and there’s just two of us. As a last addition, I substituted the regular sugar for coarse cane sugar (in the spirit of Jamie Oliver’s fantastic toddy).

The result was very nice. The cake is very fluffy, sponge-like even. To reach this effect, it’s important to use many eggs and beat them long enough, as instructed. The earthy spices, rum and dried fruit make it a very autumn-worthy cake. Since the recipe was still fit for 10 servings, we both took some to share at work, where it disappeared quickly.

This is the recipe I ended up using:

125 grams of butter (+ extra for buttering the cake tin)

125 grams of regular flour (+ extra for the cake tin)

6 large eggs

150 grams of cane sugar

1 tbsp of ground cinnamon

1/2 tbsp of ground nutmeg (I didn’t split the cinnamon and nutmeg in half, in fact I always use more spices than indicated in a recipe)

2 tbsp of vanilla aroma (I’ve been making my own using vodka and vanilla beans – easy and way cheaper)

1 tbsp of almond aroma (I used a few drops of almond essence instead)

200 grams of mixed dried fruits such as raisons, abricots and dates, larger fruits cut into smaller pieces

100 ml of brown rum + more for the cake

 

Start in advance by soaking the dried fruit in rum: put the fruit in a bowl and top with rum until it is entirely covered. Let it soak for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Grease a 21 cm cake tin with butter, sprinkle with flour. In the original recipe they recommend not using a springform pan (the kind that’s in two pieces) because the batter is very liquid and it might run. I ignored this advice since I had no other useful tin and it worked fine, you just have to be a bit more careful. Don’t use if you know in advance that yours is leaky.

Clarify the butter by heating it slowly in a saucepan. When it has completely melted, you will notice that there are some white things floating on top and some white stuff on the bottom. This is the protein that’s in the butter. Using a spoon or a slotted spoon, carefully skim the white parts off. When this is done, pour over the liquid butter into a bowl, being careful to withhold the bottom white protein parts. Don’t throw this away, it can be kept in the fridge and it’s a tasteful addition to mashed potatoes, for example.

Mix the eggs in a clean, large bowl with a hand mixer or in a kitchen robot. Add in the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and almond aromas (this is where I discovered I have no special grater for nutmeg and had to use my coarse cheese grater – whoops). Keep on mixing for at least 10 minutes, until the mixture runs from a spoon like a ribbon and has grown a lot bigger and airier. Slow the mixer down and add in the flour little by little, add a pinch of salt. Mix shortly until the flour is blended in and pour the batter into the tin.

Using a big spoon, drizzle in all but 3 tbsp of the clarified butter and blend it shortly with a spatula. Try not to lose the airiness of the batter. Lastly, put the soaked dried fruit through a sieve above a bowl (keep the rum in the bowl for later) then distribute it over the batter. I just dropped it in, which made it go straight to the bottom. Therefore, what later became the upside of my cake was covered with a dried fruit layer. If you want them spread throughout the cake, roll them in flour first and they won’t sink all the way to the bottom.

Bake the cake in the oven for 35 minutes. Then, cover the cake with the 3 extra tablespoons of clarified butter and put it back in the oven for 5 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Take the cake out of the oven and flip it upside down on a plate, take the cake tin off. You don’t have to flip it necessarily, but if your fruit has sunken to the bottom this has a nice effect. Drizzle with the leftover rum from the fruit and some extra to taste. Enjoy!

 

 

Fall menu: Blackened salmon with pumpkin fries and mango sauce

Geplaatst op door Aude

I love salmon. Smoked, poached, baked, grilled, in papillotte…  I wouldn’t know which way to choose. And while preparing salmon is pretty easy, it’s not always easy to decide what to serve it with. That’s my experience, at least. Sure, I love smoked salmon quiche with broccoli and goat cheese, and there’s plenty of classical salmon recipes, but every once in a while, we want something different, no? So I revisited one of my favorite ways to prepare salmon, which is blackened salmon. It’s a recipe that originated in Cajun cooking, in which the salmon is rubbed in a thick layer of spices and then baked, creating a ‘blackened’ spicy crust. Mmmm, I could hardly wait for dinner time once I decided I would make this.

But what to serve with it? There’s the problem. I once ate blackened tuna with mango sauce in Cactus Taverna, a great restaurant in Salisbury. But good fresh tuna is hard and expensive to find in Belgium, and I try to avoid tuna since it’s going extinct due to overfishing.  I decided to go for blackened salmon with mango sauce, and be bold and try out pumpkin and sweet potato as vegetable sides to balance the spicyness. Exciting! As it was kind of an experiment, I looked up a few ways to make blackened tuna, mango sauce and sweet potato baked fries on Tastespotting (always a great source of inspiration, if just for the wonderful pictures).

The result was delicious. There’s the spicy, slightly crunchy salmon, balanced by the sweet and mild mango. The earthy but flavorful pumpkin and sweet potato chips, also slightly spicy, make for a great balance. I have yet to perfect an elegant way to serve the plate, but the taste was surprisingly complementary. Do try at home!

Blackened salmon spices
Making the mango sauce

 

Fall vegetables
Pumpkin and sweet potato fries

 

Coating the salmon with spices
Baking the blackened salmon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The result: blackened salmon with pumpkin fries and mango sauce

 

Recipe for four people:

For the blackened salmon:

-four pieces of fresh salmon, preferably bio/organic

-spices: black and white pepper, salt, paprika, thyme, basil, rosemary, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, ground dry chili flakes or spicy chily powder, cayenne pepper (you’re free to improvise according to your own pantry here)

-butter

For the mango sauce:

-Two very ripe mangos

-Juice of one lime

For the pumpkin and sweet potato fries:

-Half of a small, flavorful pumpkin (I used a chestnut pumpkin)

-2-3 sweet potatoes (I actually didn’t have real sweet potatoes but some kind of in-between Turkish long potato I picked up at the local store)

-olive oil

-salt and pepper, dried herbs such as thyme, rosemary, basil, some spicy chili powder

Start cooking!

Start with the pumpkin and sweet potato as they will take the longest. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (about 400 F). Peel the pumpkin and potatoes and cut into long fry-shaped wedges. Put them on a metal oven-proof platter covered with a sheet of parchment paper. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper and spices, toss carefully so everything is covered. Put in the oven and let bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the fries are soft but still have bite (this depends on the kind of vegetables, your oven…)

While the vegetables are in the oven, start with the mango sauce. Peel the mangoes and cut them into cubes. Put in a mixer bowl with the freshly squeezed lime juice. Mix until you have a thick, fluid sauce. Keep the sauce ready in a saucepan to heat before you’re serving.

Cut the salmon into the desired amount of pieces if necessary. Mix all the spices. I don’t use an exact formula but I tend to start with the first listed in the largest quantities, then move down to smaller quantities, depending on how spicy you like the crust to be. When the mixture is ready, heat up a pan (a grill pan is also possible, try to use one that conducts heat well, like a cast iron) and let some of the butter melt at a low temperature. Take the salmon and sweep it through the butter on both sides, then through the spice mixture.  Put a little more butter into the pan (you don’t need to smother the salmon, just so the crust won’t burn) and heat it up. When the butter is hot and melted, put the wedges of salmon into the pan and bake on both sides until the insides are done (not overdone, it really is a shame to ruin salmon by letting it get too dry, so check regularly on the inside of it’s still rosy).

Put the salmon on a (warm) plate, arrange the fries around it or underneath and top with some hot mango sauce. Yum!