Ravioli with ricotta and tomato sauce

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We all love Italian pasta, right? It’s so light, full of flavor, simple, addictive, and to me it’s still one of the cuisines that pulls off vegetarian food most effortlessly and naturally. This recipe from delicious. magazine has become one of my personal favorites. It’s not difficult to make, but filling the ravioli will take some time (it’s very much worth it though!). I started out with my ravioli stamp but soon switched to making cut-outs by hand, because this is faster. There’s only one piece of equipment you really need and that’s a pasta machine. It’s possible to roll out the pasta by hand, but it will never be as fine as the machine-made.

Ingredients for 4 people:

for the pasta:
400 grams of ’tipo 00′ flour (gran duro: it’s also possible to use regular flour but this kind is better for pasta, you can find it at Italian supermarkets)
4 eggs

for the filling:

250 grams of ricotta
the grated zest of one organic lemon (or at least a non-chemically-treated lemon)
a pinch of sugar
a pinch of salt
freshly ground pepper

for the sauce:

olive oil
2 shallots, chopped
garlic clove, chopped
one can of whole peeled tomatoes (or canned cherry tomatoes)
a dash of white wine
small can of tomato passata
note: I made this in February, and I try not to use fresh tomatoes in Winter since they’re just not tasty. If you’re making this in Summer, please use real sun-ripened ones!

topping:

chopped flatleaf parsley
grated parmesan cheese

How to:

Start with the pasta. Put the flour in a bowl, make a cup and add the eggs. Mix with a fork and then with your hands until you have a coarse dough. Take it out of the bowl and knead the dough for at least 10 minutes, until it becomes smooth and elastic (when I get tired I try to see this as a good work out). Wrap it in plastic foil and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.

Make the filling by mixing all the ingredients.

Make the sauce at least 20 minutes before serving, to give it time to simmer. Heat the olive oil in a sturdy saucepan and fry the onion and garlic until soft. Add the canned or fresh tomatoes. Heat the tomatoes and add some white wine. Let this simmer for a while and add the passata. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let it simmer on a low fire until you have a tasty sauce. At this point, I ‘cheated’ and added a bit of leftover Barilla pasta sauce that I had in the fridge. Of course, you’re free to use your own preferred tomato sauce recipe, but simplicity is key.

Assemble the ravioli while the sauce is simmering. Fill a large saucepan with water, add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil while making the ravioli (one of those pans with an extra ‘colander’ piece is ideal, because you can make several batches of pasta without refreshing the water each time, but a slotted spoon or pasta spoon works fine too). Roll out the pasta with a machine (or by hand), start with a third of the pasta dough. Position the machine at its widest and turn the dough through, fold double and repeat. Keep making the sizes smaller and rolling the dough through twice until you’re at the finest position. Make equal squares or rectangles of the rolled-out dough. I made 5×7 cm, but smaller will work as well. Put a teaspoon of filling on half of the rectangles, then cover with a second rectangle and press carefully, excluding as much air as possible. Finish the edges by impressing them with a fork. Repeat for all of the dough. Boil the ravioli in batches for 3-5 minutes (until they come floating on top) and take them out of the water. Add the pasta to the tomato sauce and mix carefully. Arrange on a plate and top with parsley and parmesan. Enjoy!

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way

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On a dreary November afternoon, seven friends got together at our place to join in for an afternoon of Diplomacy. Diplomacy is a board game which can vaguely be compared to Risk – only nothing is left to chance (there are no dice). The starting point for the game is Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Each player represents one of seven superpowers in Europe, and through dialogue, intrigues and the occasional backstabbing every superpower tries to become the master of Europe. If you’re interested, Wikipedia has more info.

So, these seven men set out to redesign the map of Europe (on a board) – a bit like an analogue LAN party. After a draw of luck, it was decided who would be England, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Turkey and Russia. Of course, they had to eat something while they were at it. This is where I come in! As I don’t exactly see myself as a good Diplomacy player (I tend to take these things a tad too personally) I decided to do a little project of my own: I set out to provide for an afternoon of hors d’oeuvres and finger foods, all in the theme of the seven superpowers. My quest for recipes carried me through my cookbook collection and I ended up making at least a dish per superpower, although I must admit I had nothing for Austria-Hungary, since I planned to make Sachertorte and there was already plenty of dessert. I’ll post a Sachertorte recipe to make up for it!

What follows is a report in pictures and recipes of this lovely day. If you’re wondering who won in the end: France and England made a superpact (not exactly historically plausible) and slayed the rest of the players, employing much trickery, theatre, drama and a bit of backstabbing. I’m sure another Diplomacy get-together will follow within a few months, since many superpowers are plotting for revenge. Maybe I’ll come up with new recipes by then!

 

Italy: gorgonzola, pizza and caponata

My inspiration for the gorgonzola spoon and the caponata comes from a little book I have called ‘Amuse Italiano’. The pizza recipes are from Martha Stewart.

Spoon with gorgonzola, pear and honey

Cut a pear and 100 gram of gorgonzola cheese into little cubes. Place these on a spoon and top with a little liquid honey. Very easy but the combination of these two flavors is great!

Pizza with cherry tomatoes; pizza with bacon and potato

I admit it, the bacon-potato pizza isn’t very Italian, but the recipe is great. For the dough, I used Martha Stewart’s pizza dough recipe. The tomato pizza is topped with cherry tomatoes (cut in half), olive oil, mozzarella and a bit of leftover gorgonzola. The bacon pizza is topped with thinly sliced potatoes, bacon strips, olive oil and some chopped fresh rosemary.

The pizza dough recipe (start in time, at least 2 hours in advance!):

1 cup of warm water (I use about 250 ml for a cup)
1/4 teaspoon of sugar
2 teaspoons of dry yeast (in the supermarket: Bruggeman)
about 3 cups flour
1,5 teaspoons salt
1,5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for the bowl

Pour the warm water into a small bowl, add sugar and yeast. Stir with a fork until dissolved. Let it stand in a warm spot for 5 minutes, until yeast is foamy.

Combine 2 + 1/4 cups of flour with salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture and the olive oil, mix until you have a smooth dough (add more flour if necessary). Transfer to a clean surface and knead the dough 5 turns, shape into a ball.

Brush the inside of a bowl with olive oil and place the dough in it, smooth side up. Cover with a clean tea towel or plastic foil and let it rest in a warm spot for about 40 minutes, until doubled in size. Remove the towel/plastic foil and punch your fist into the dough. Fold the dough onto itself 4 or 5 times. Turn the dough over again, folded side down, cover again and return to rise in a warm spot for another 30 minutes (until doubled in size).

Punch down the dough again and transfer to a clean surface, divide the dough evenly using a knife (I make 4 mini-pizzas from this quantity).

Preheat the oven to at least 220 degrees Celsius. Roll the dough portion out (quite thin), cover with a little olive oil and your toppings of choice. Put it in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is melted or the bacon/potatoes look done, take it out and cut into wedges (careful, hot!). Yum!

Caponata

I really love caponata, I first ate it on a wonderful Easter day lunch with friends in Palermo. It is a perfect mixture of sour, sweet and salty. Most of all, it has a lot of eggplant in it, one of my favorite vegetables. You need some time and patience to prepare it, but it’s so worth it (and it keeps well in the fridge for at least a few days). This recipe is a mixture of a recipe in the Amuse Italiano book and some internet recipes I looked up. Grated dark chocolate or cocoa powder is the secret ingredient!

For about 24 spoons:

1 large eggplant
half a cup of olive oil
stalk of white celery, chopped into small cubes
2 plum tomatoes, peeled (good ripe tomatoes, in winter I prefer whole canned tomatoes or tomato cubes)
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon black olives, roughly chopped (please don’t use the bland canned type but good Italian, Spanish or Turkish)
1 tablespoon capers
1 tablespoon golden raisins
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic or red-wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder or grated dark chocolate
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves

Peel the eggplant and cut into small 1 cm-cubes and sprinkle with salt, let it sit in a sieve or colander for at least 30 minutes. Squeeze out as much water as possible and pat dry with paper towels.

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet and fry the onion and celery until soft. Turn the fire up a bit, add the eggplant and let it fry along until golden brown. Add the tomato and heat until simmering. Add olives, capers, pine nuts, sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, thyme, raisins and vinegar. Turn the heat down and let it simmer for a while, so that the flavors intermingle. You can add more sweet or sour ingredients to taste. Turn off the heat and let cool to room temperature, serve in little spoons or larger portions as desired.

Turkey: sigara börek and baklava

I first ate sigara börek in the little town of Aglasun, where we were excavating the site of Roman Sagalassos. Our workmen took turns bringing baked goodies to the tea breaks and this was an instant favorite. Since there are plenty of Turkish shops in my neighborhood, it’s easy for me to find the authentic Turkish ingredients. But don’t panic: yufka dough can be replaced by filo dough and Turkish white peynir cheese by regular feta. The recipe is actually from Malouf’s Turquoise and it works great every time I make it! I even freeze these little cigars (unbaked) to have them ready for instant hors d’oeuvres.

For 24 sigara:

24 triangles of yufka dough (a Turkish thin dough, but a little thicker and more substantial than filo dough. If you use filo, use a larger piece and create more layers by rolling it. You can usually buy ready-cut triangles at Turkish shops, but you can also buy the round ones and cut into triangles yourself, or even use dürüm dough for this).
400 grams of white peynir cheese or feta
2 eggs
one large onion, roughly grated or finely chopped
2 handfuls of chopped flatleaf parsley
salt and pepper

In a large bowl, combine the white cheese with the onion, eggs, parsley and mix with a fork. Season with salt and pepper (true to Turkish tradition, I use a lot of salt but it also depends on how salty your cheese is). Take out a dough triangle and put a full tablespoon of cheese mixture about 2 cm from the edge on the short side. Fold in the sides and roll it up, attach the bottom piece with a bit of water. Do this for every ‘sigar’, then heat some olive oil in a heavy skillet and bake the börek until golden brown. Serve (but be careful, they’re hot!)

Everybody loves baklava. We used to get it on the Sagalassos site when there was a special find of the week. It’s not that hard to make, but a bit elaborate – especially if you don’t have a food processor, like me. The result is totally worth it though! It’s a really sweet dish, but mine is still not half as sweet as the real Turkish kind (after you eat Turkish baklava, Coca-Cola doesn’t taste sweet anymore – true story!).

For 24 x 24 cm dish of baklava

15 sheets of filo dough
150 grams melted clarified butter (see blinis recipe)

syrup:
150 grams sugar
150 grams liquid honey
100 ml water
50 ml orange juice
juice and grated zest of one lemon
2 tbsp orange blossom water
1 tbsp rosewater

nut mixture:
400 grams of mixed nuts, chopped finely (you can use walnuts, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, but try to include walnuts and pistachios at least)
100 grams sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp orange blossom water
100 grams melted butter

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Roast the nuts in hot skillet or the oven until fragrant. Mix all the nut mixture ingredients in a large bowl.

Use an ovenproof dish that has the same shape as your filo dough. If smaller, cut the filo dough to fit the dish. Butter the form lightly. Take five sheets of filo dough, keep the rest under a moist tea towel. Put the sheets in the dish, one by one, coat with clarified butter in between. Divide half of the nut mixture over this first stack of dough.

Now repeat the first step with another five sheets of filo dough. Add the rest of the filling, cover with the last 5 sheets of dough, butter the top sheet and press the sheets carefully, tucking the sides under a bit. Sprinkle with a bit of extra cinnamon. Cut the baklava in triangles with a sharp knife.

Bake the dish in the oven at 180 degrees for 20 minutes. Lower the temperature to 150 degrees and bake another 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and crispy. In the meantime, make the syrup.

Make the syrup by combining the water, sugar, honey, orange juice, lemon zest and juice in a saucepan on medium heat. Let the sugar dissolve, then let it boil and reduce for 10-15 minutes. Add the orange blossom water and rosewater and let it cool.

Take the baklava out of the oven and pour the syrup over – don’t worry if it hisses a bit. Let it cool down completely – you can decorate the triangles with a bit of ground pistachio.  Really yummy with some Turkish tea!

Russia: blini with sour cream and smoked salmon

Blinis are small savory buckwheat pancakes. I used a Martha Stewart recipe for the batter, you can top them with whatever you like. Since Russian caviar was a bit expensive, I went for sour cream and salmon.

For about 24 blinis: 

100 grams butter
1/3 cup buckwheat flour
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
200 ml milk
150 grams of sour cream
150 grams of smoked salmon
Few sprigs of dill or parsley to garnish

Clarify the butter: melt in a saucepan over low heat. Using a spoon, remove white foam from surface of melted butter, and discard. Allow butter to sit 15 minutes. Pour off the golden liquid, leaving the sediment in the bottom of the saucepan. Set aside.

Place both flours, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and 1 tablespoon clarified butter in a large bowl; whisk until well combined.

Heat 2 tablespoons clarified butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Drop batter into skillet, 1 tablespoon at a time. Cook until blinis are covered with bubbles, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip; cook until brown, about 1 minute more. Repeat with remaining batter.

Top the blinis with a teaspoon of sour cream, a piece of smoked salmon and a bit of dill or parsley. Enjoy!

England: cheddar-corn potatoes and shepherd’s pie

The cheddar corn potatoes are a nice party snack. Very savory, very cheesy and very English – there’s not much more to be said about them. I got the recipe from Trish Deseine’s book Party Food.

10 small firm potatoes
1 medium can of sweetcorn
200 grams grated Cheddar cheese
50 grams melted butter
salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes unpeeled. When cooked, slice in half and take out a little of the potato at the center. Cut a sliver from the bottom so the potato won’t roll over. Mix the potato with the sweetcorn, cheese and butter. Season, and top each half-potato with a spoonful of the mixture, then brown for 3 minutes under the grill.

Shepherd’s pie

The shepherd pie was something I’d never tried and came out quite successfully. I’m a vegetarian and therefore didn’t try one, but it smelled quite good and even  though the players had been munching all afternoon, the pies were met with quite some enthusiasm. I made them in small cocottes but of course you can make it in a large ovenproof dish. The recipe is for 4 people.

4 large peeled potatoes (soft-cooking)
salt
500 grams lamb minced meat
55 grams butter
2 onions, finely chopped
40 grams flour
1/2 teaspoon mustard
4 dl lamb broth
2 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp worcester sauce
60 ml warm milk
salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes with salt. Preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.

Melt 25 grams butter in a skillet, fry the onions until soft and add the minced meat. Add the flour and mustard. Add the lamb broth in small portions and keep stirring until you have a thick sauce. Add the parsley and worcester sauce, season with salt and pepper.

Mash the potatoes and add milk, the extra butter and pepper and salt.

In a buttered dish (small or large), spoon the meat mixture and cover with the mashed potatoes. Smooth the potatoes with a spoon and then make a diamond pattern with a fork. Bake the dish for 40-45 minutes in the oven, until the top is golden brown. Enjoy!

France: cheese

What’s more French than cheese? To represent France, I served Camembert, Bleu d’Auvergne with baguette. The after-dinner cheese platter was completed with English Cheddar and Italian gorgonzola. The Herve and Chaumes cheeses are Belgian, which was undoubtedly occupied territory at the time of serving.

Germany: Schwarzwalder Kirsch (Black Forest Gateau)

This awesome cake is one of my traditional holiday recipes. I have a few different recipes from several books, but I was never quite satisfied with the chocolate cake batter they provide. Therefore, I replaced it with Nigella Lawsons’s Devil Food Cake batter. This was definitely a great improvement! The cake is named after the Black Forest in Germany and traditionally combines chocolate, whipped cream and cherries (fresh, potted and/or maraschino).

For the cake (recipe Nigella Lawson):

50g best-quality cocoa powder, sifted
100g dark muscovado or brown sugar
250ml boiling water
125g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
150g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I use my own vanilla extract, home made with 1 cup of wodka, at least 2 vanilla beans and 2 months patience)
2 eggs
three 20 cm cake tins (I only have on so I bake the cakes in three steps, or if I’m impatient I bake them all at once and cut them in three, but this is not optimal)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark. Line the bottoms of the cake tins with baking parchment and butter the sides.

Put the cocoa and 100g dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare, and pour in the boiling water. Whisk to mix, then set aside.

Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy; I find this easiest with a freestanding mixer, but by hand wouldn’t kill you. While this is going on – or as soon as you stop if you’re mixing by hand – stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together in another bowl, and set aside for a moment. Dribble the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar – mixing all the while – then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg. Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake, then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping its bowl well with a spatula. Divide this fabulously chocolatey batter between the 3 prepared tins and put in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Take the tins out and leave them on a wire rack for 5–10 minutes, before turning the cakes out to cool.

While the cakes are baking, start with the frosting and cherries:

250 grams sour cream
200 grams dark chocolate, chopped (or Callets)
250 ml whipped cream
70 grams fine sugar
350 grams potted cherries (drained weight)
dark chocolate flakes, for decoration
maraschino cheries, for decoration

Melt the chocolate au bain marie and mix with the sour cream. This is the ganache that will cover the outside of the cake. Let it cool. Beat the cream stiff with the sugar and keep cold.

Assembly:

Put a few dollops of whipped cream on a serving platter and place the first cake layer on top (this prevents the cake from shifting). Add a 2 cm-thick layer of whipped cream. Take half of the cherries and drop them into the cream, evenly dividing them on the cream layer. Add the second cake layer and repeat with more cream and the rest of the cherries, keep a little cream apart for the cake decoration. Add the third layer of cake. Now decorate the outside with the chocolate ganache, using a palette knife. Decorate the sides with chocolate flakes. Using a piping bag, add a few tufts of whipped cream and top with a maraschino cherry. Add some more chocolate flakes on top, as you like (I ran out of whipped cream so in the picture it’s not that pretty, but you can use your imagination any way you like on the cake decorations). Enjoy!

Austria-Hungary: Sachertorte

As said, I didn’t get around to making the sachertorte, but you can find a recipe here. Maybe I’ll try it another time!

 

 

Salmon with ricotta, dried tomatoes and tarragon en papillote

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I made this for New Year’s Eve dinner and can’t say my guests were complaining. It’s actually really easy, the hardest part is taking the salmon out of the oven in time – this takes a bit of practice but also depends on the size of the salmon. Try it for a dinner with guests or just for yourself, it’s really yummy.

Ingredients for 4-6 servings

1 or 2 salmon filets (at least 2 cm thick), in total about 1 kg (you can use frozen and thawed salmon but fresh is better)
4 tablespoons of sundried tomato tapenade or red pesto (try to use good quality – I use Père Olive, for the tapenade and sundried tomatoes)
200 grams of ricotta
several sprigs of fresh tarragon
8 to 10 sundried  tomatoes
olive oil
freshly ground salt and pepper
kitchen string (use good kitchen string, remember Bridget Diary’s blue soup!)
parchment paper

Heat the oven to 210 degrees Celsius. If the salmon has skin, remove this gently by pulling it away using a knife (I actually left part of the skin on for the bottom part, this works fine). Depending on the size of your filet piece, either cut it lengthwise or in half, so that you get two solid and equally large parts. Remove fishbones with a pincet.  Coat one side of each salmon piece with the tomato tapenade (if you kept skin on, don’t coat the skin side!).

Keep a few sprigs of tarragon apart, mix the rest of the leaves (without the harder parts) with the ricotta, season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover the first piece of salmon (if you have skin, it should be on the bottom) with the ricotta mixture and the sundried tomatoes. Put the second piece of salmon on top, so that the ‘head’ and ’tail’ pieces of the filet are on opposite sides and the ‘prettiest’ part on top. Add the extra tarragon. Now, cut a few pieces of string and carefully tie the salmon and its contents as on the picture (2-4 times, depending on the size of the salmon).

Take a large piece of parchment paper and grease with a bit of olive oil. Put the fish roll on top. Fold the papillote around the salmon (roll it carefully around) and fold closed as tightly as possible. I used some extra string to secure the package. Put it in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes – if you’re not sure whether it’s ready, take it out of the oven at 20 minutes and check whether the salmon is done, you can close the parchment paper again. My tip: don’t let the salmon bake completely through – take it out when the inside of the fish meat is still a bit darker and looking ‘wet’, it will continue to bake a little out of the oven. If you wait until it’s completely done, the salmon can become somewhat too dry. Enjoy!

 

Decadent hazelnut meringue pie

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I decided to go all out yesterday and made this hazelnut meringue pie. The recipe is from the famous Holtkamp Bakery in Amsterdam via delicious. magazine (February 2011). I’d been drooling over the article for quite some time so yesterday I finally got around to trying it. The result is very pretty and about to be consumed this afternoon, but I have no doubt it will be delicious (I tried plenty of the mocha buttercream to be fairly certain about this). The only thing you need is a lot of time and patience (i.e. a free afternoon dedicated to cooking) and possibly some friends to eat this with you. Actually, the recipe advises to wait a day since the pie is at its best after one day. Have fun!

The recipe consists of several different parts. I have tried to list them according to the order in which I prepared them: 1. meringue pie layers 2. custard cream  3. hazelnut paste 4. coffee extract 5. butter cream 6. assembly. It’s not as elaborate as it sounds, if that’s any consolation.

Ingredients for the meringue pie layers

2 egg whites (you can use the yolks for the custard)
110 grams fine sugar
75 grams powdered sugar
75 grams ground hazelnuts (I didn’t find this in the regular supermarket so I went with ground almonds, oops)

Heat the oven to 120 degrees Celsius. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt. When they become foamy, add in a bit of the sugar, then add in the rest by the end when they’re completely stiff. Fold in the powdered sugar and ground nuts. You now have a kind of meringue batter, the recipe tells you to use a piping bag but I just used a palette knife. Spread this batter out on two baking tins dressed with parchment paper in a circle shape with a 22-24 cm diameter (it should be about 1,5 cm thick). Put in the oven for 45 minutes, take out and let it cool. Carefully remove from the parchment paper before use. These will be the meringue layers for the pie.

Ingredients for the custard cream (makes about 700 grams)

500 ml of full-fat milk
100 grams of sugar
half a vanilla bean
45 grams of custard powder (I bought vanilla pudding mix, like Dr. Oetker and noticed that one bag is about 45 grams)
2 egg yolks

Put 450 ml milk in a saucepan with 50 grams of sugar. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrape the seeds from it and add both to the milk. Put the saucepan on the  fire and bring to a boil, switch off immediately when it starts to boil and remove the vanilla bean. Meanwhile, mix the remaining 50 ml milk and 50 grams sugar with the custard powder and egg yolks. Add a bit of the hot milk to this mixture, mix well and then add the cold mixture into the saucepan milk. Stir, bring to a boil on a low fire and let it bubble for about two minutes  while stirring continually (this burns very quickly so don’t leave the pan). Pour the custard into a cold bowl and let it cool, while stirring occasionally.

Ingredients for the hazelnut paste (makes about 95 grams)

60 grams of white hazelnuts (without skins)
35 grams of sugar

Roast the hazelnuts in a hot skillet until they’re golden brown. Mix the hazelnuts with the sugar in a food processor  until this is a thick, almost fluid paste. I have no food processor so I used a stick blender, which also works, but it’s not ideal. You can conserve any extra’s in the fridge for up to a month.

Ingredients for the coffee extract

half a cup of strong, warm espresso (50 ml)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp Nescafé (instant coffee)

Mix the hot espresso with the sugar and Nescafé until completely solved. Let it cool and preserve in the fridge.

Ingredients for the butter cream, or crème au beurre (for about 600 grams)

300 grams of custard cream (recipe above)
65 grams of sugar
200 grams of soft butter, beaten until fluffy

Using a mixer, beat the sugar through the custard cream. Now add the soft butter (if this doesn’t go easily, you can use a hair dryer to heat the bowl while adding in the butter). You can keep this cream in the fridge for 3 days or in the freezer for a few months.

The glorious assembly!

100 grams of hazelnuts, roasted and crushed coarsely using a mortar and pestle
a few whole hazelnuts for decoration
30 grams of powdered sugar

Mix 600 grams of butter cream with 25 ml of coffee extract and 35 grams of hazelnut paste. This is the coffee hazelnut cream that will make the filling of the pie. Put a few small dots of the cream on the plate on which you will assemble the pie. Put the first meringue layer on the plate. Put the coffee cream into a piping bag with a medium star-shaped tip and cover the meringue layer with a layer of coffee cream (I started at the outsides, making a circle drawing closer to the center). Add the second layer of meringue. Now, the recipe told me to add a thin layer of cream to the sides, but I found this very difficult as the outer parts of the meringue were rather thin and my cream was a bit too fluid. So I piped a layer at the side/top of the upper meringue layer, which then sort of fell into place on the side of the pie.

Now, decorate the sides and top with the crushed hazelnuts. I did this by sprinkling the hazelnuts on top of the cream and adjusting where necessary. When the sides are done, use the rest of the hazelnuts on top of the pie. Pipe a few decorations onto the pie and add a whole hazelnut (see picture). Finish by dusting with powdered sugar (it’s so pretty you don’t really need to do this, in my opinion). Enjoy!


My New Year’s resolution

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A new year! Time to celebrate and wish each other all the best for the future. For 2012, I wish you all the time to enjoy moments together with friends and family, good health and much joy in your endeavours, whether those are work, hobby, studies… And it goes without speaking that I wish you all the time and opportunity to enjoy great food!

The start of a new year is more than a time for wishes, for most of us it’s a time to make resolutions. Some may decide to find a worthy charity to donate to, some become a vegetarian for a year, hopefully all of us will resolve to make some small changes in our daily lives to stop pollution and reduce global warming. But the number one New Year’s resolution (besides contributing to World Peace, of course) has to be to do something about our waistlines! How many of us have decided that this time, in 2012, we will finally reach our desired weight, or fit into that tiny – but oh so flattering! – dress. I know I’ve been there, several times.

It usually goes like this: at the beginning of the year, I’m fed up with the second chin that’s sneaking up on me and my ever-expanding waist and decide to take some action. A few years ago, I did Start to Run – 5K in 10 weeks and really liked it. So I kept on running and went on one of those protein bar-and-shake diets. It worked really well, until I went back to normal meals, and fell into bad habits again, you can guess the rest. I haven’t lost my love for running since, although it’s hard to stay on track during the winter months (rain! darkness! no way I’m getting up to run before work!). Last year, I went at it again and joined Weight Watchers. Their program is absolutely great, and it really works. But then, once I’ve achieved an acceptable weight loss and don’t want to keep on paying for their expensive weekly pep talks, the bad habits come back. It’s only human, I guess.

So this year, it will be different. I will stop counting and tracking and cheating with grams of chocolate and I’ll also stop dreaming of having a figure like Jennifer Aniston (Beyonce, more likely). In 2011, I read Michael Pollan’s book ‘In Defence of Food’. Pollan is a journalist/food philosopher. In the book, he explores the Western world’s relation to food during the 20th century. It’s intriguing to see how things like politics and lobby organizations have helped shape the way we think about food. Pollan’s main point is that we’ve stopped thinking of ‘food’ and have replaced this by ‘nutritional thinking’. He points out that our grandparents (or at least great-grandparents) had no idea what antioxidants, monosaturated fats, omega 3-fatty acids (I’m not sure these exist) and other ‘nutritional building blocks’ were, yet they were usually healthier and less overweight than our own generation. Our grandparents used their common sense and ate food that was available during the season; we eat E-numbers, hydrogenated things and constantly have a huge amount of cheap food (or edible foodlike substances, as Pollan calls them) readily available at the supermarket, the train station vending machine, work… No society in history has ever been so obsessed with eating and dieting, yet no society has ever had so many problems with obesity and all modern diseases that follow from it. I could go on about the contents of the book – it’s well-written and utterly fascinating, but if you’re interested I suggest you read it yourself (or borrow it from me). It’s the end of the book and the book that follows from it that’s the most important.

Pollan explains how damaged our relationship with food has become and suggests ‘rules’, based on common sense, food tradition and scientific knowledge to follow in order to repair this relationship. These rules are: Eat (real) food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pretty simple, huh? He elaborates on these three basic rules in his next book, ‘Food Rules’, which contains 64 rules on how to eat. They’re mostly common sense and if I evaluate my eating habits, they’re not so bad. I do mostly eat real food and not too many highly processed foods and as a vegetarian, I probably eat more plants than many of my friends. However, the ‘not too much’-part is where I usually get off track a bit – especially at rule 60: Treat treats as treats. And when I delve deeper into the ‘eat real food’-part and started looking at labels of the things I munch on throughout the day, there’s a lot of ingredients I can’t really picture in my kitchen – or that I can’t picture at all.

So, here’s my New Year’s resolution: I will try to follow Michael Pollan’s Food Rules as closely as possible (luckily, the very last one is ‘break the rules once in a while’) and restore healthy eating habits. By doing so, I’ll probably reduce my sugar, fat and calorie-intake without really paying specific attention to it, which is exactly what most diets try to make you do. It won’t stop me from cooking as I like, since Pollan recommends cooking for yourself as much as possible: when you realize how much work it is to bake Devil’s chocolate cake or make deep-fried chicken yourself, you probably won’t want to eat it every day (oh, the poor man hasn’t met me yet!). I especially like the S-rule: no sweets, snacks or seconds, except on days that start with an S. Sounds like a good way to start! Hopefully, my other yearly resolution, running the 20K of Brussels in May, will also help me get healthier (if only it would stop raining so I could go for a run though!). It will require some adjustment, a lot of discipline and perseverance and occasionally others to take the cookie jar away from me but I’m convinced that I can do it!

For those who are interested: you can find more information on Michael Pollan and his books at http://michaelpollan.com/

And oh yes, food posts will resume very soon – I still have a wonderful culinary day to report on!

Layered trifle with red fruit

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This is one of my all-time favorite desserts. A trifle is a typically English layered dessert that includes fruit, cookies or cake and some kind of creamy inbetween (and no, it’s not pronounced ’triffel’ in Dutch). It’s really quite easy to make and it’s impressive because of the many differently colored layers. I usually make it in a big cylindrical glass bowl, which has a big wow-factor. The downside of that is that once you start dividing portions, the effect is ruined and it’s also not easy to give everyone a balanced portion (fruits-cake-mascarpone-custard-wise). The red fruit layer has blended in a bit with the cake layer in my trifle in the picture, because I was pressed for time and didn’t let the red fruit thaw properly, so that its juice thawed into the cake (sounds delicious though, doesn’t it?) If you’re more patient or using fresh fruit, making a pretty cake layer will be easier. It’s also an easy dessert to make in small portions: use glasses (regular glasses or wine glasses) or another kind of bowl, but make sure that you have something transparent so that the visual effect pays off. If you have small bowls, you can easily decorate the top with a sprig of mint or a strawberry with a bit of whipped cream. The original recipe puts whipped cream on the custard, but usually I find this a bit over the top (can a dessert ever be over the top though?). Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients, it’s really not that hard or time-consuming to make.

Ingredients for at least 12 people

For the cake layer (I just use a regular 4/4 cake recipe but you’re welcome to use your own favorite recipe):
4 eggs
250 grams of sugar
250 grams of butter
250 grams of self-rising flour (or regular flour with a big teaspoon of baking powder)

For the red fruit layer
a sweetish fruity liquor like Grand Marnier, Cointreau, Kirsch… (not Passoa or Pisang!)
a cup or jar of red fruit jam (strawberry, raspberry or red berry mixture)
about 700 grams of red fruit (I usually use frozen in winter, let it thaw a bit before use)

For the white creamy layer
500 grams of Mascarpone
milk
sugar (I never measure this, sorry)

For the yellow custard layer
1 liter of full-fat milk
1 vanilla bean
8 egg yolks (you’ll probably have a lot of egg white leftovers, I try not to waste these – you can freeze them or make chocolate mousse with them, just melt at least 300 grams of chocolate au bain marie and add to the beaten egg whites)
200 grams of sugar
65 grams of corn starch/maïzena (the original recipe uses flour but I find it very hard to make the custard without clots then)
For the lazy ones among us: you can use pudding mix from a package but of course it won’t taste the same as the homemade stuff).

Start by making the cake. Heat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius and prepare a regular cake tin with butter and flour. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks with 200 grams of the sugar until it is a fluid and white mixture. Melt the butter in the microwave and add it slowly while stirring. Add the flour. Now beat the egg whites with the 50 grams of sugar: add in a spoon when you start beating them, then add another spoon when you’re halfway, then add the rest of the egg whitewhen they’re stiff. Mix the egg whites with the flour mixture, be careful not to stir them but sort of ‘shovel’ them under, leaving air in the batter. Pour the batter into the cake tin and put it in the oven for 40-45 minutes. The cake is ready when you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean, or when it starts moving ‘away’ from the tin and it springs back when you push on the top. Le the cake cool down and cut off the crust on the top and sides. Cut into blocks and fill the bottom of the glass cylinder. Tip: you can also use store-bought cake, cake leftover that have been sitting around for a few days or crunchy cookies (I’d only use cookies if I was making it in small portions though).

Sprinkle the cake layer with some liquor, to prevent it from drying out and give it a more refined taste. Spoon the jam over the cake layer (if the jam is too rigid you can heat it up a bit first), then add the red fruit.

Make the custard layer before the mascarpone, because it needs to cool down. Start by putting the milk in a saucepan with the vanilla bean, after you have cut through in the length and scraped the black seeds out – add these to the milk. Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat. In the meantime, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until it becomes whiter and fluid. Add the corn starch to the egg mixture. When the milk has boiled, add the hot milk to the egg mixture and beat with a wire whip. Put the mixture back on the fire and keep whipping and scraping the bottom so it doesn’t burn. Continue until the mixture is bubbling, let it boil for a bit (don’t stop whipping!), take it from the fire and pour it into a clean, cold bowl. Let it cool down and stir now and then to prevent it from forming a ‘sheet’ on top. Remove the vanilla bean before use.

Make the mascarpone layer by emptying the mascarpone in a big bowl and adding a few sips of milk, then crush with a fork and mix until it is a creamy mixture with the consistency of toothpaste. Add sugar to taste – if you want, start with 50 grams and then add until it’s sweet enough.

Put the mascarpone layer on top of the red fruit and smooth out the top. Add the custard layer once it’s cooled down and make it smooth as well. Done! Just at tip: if you make it at least a few hours beforehand and then put it in a cold spot, the flavors can work into each other really well (it’s also a great day-after-the-party leftover-munch). Enjoy!

 

 

Sticky rice with spices and dates

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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

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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

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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

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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!