Pink Bunny Schaffhauser Rosé (2009)

Posted: September 27, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Wine | Tags: , | Leave a comment
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A sweet and light rosé, to enjoy at the peak of the Summer. Probably the girly wine you would bring to a picnic at the end of day  and would get you fizzy before you notice it.

Apple, sage and goat cheese salad

Posted: September 25, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Salad, Vegetarian | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment
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T. brought this  warm apples, nuts, sage, goat cheese and autumn leaves salad last time she came home for dinner. “Did you know Mafalda Pinto Leite?”, she asked, while she took over the kitchen and put the salad together. “Mafalda who?” I answered. Clearly,  I was missing out on something.  The recipe is from the book Cozinha Para Quem Não Tem Tempo (in a very liberal translation from the Portuguese, Cooking for Those Who Have No Time)

Apple, sage and goat cheese salad 

Ingredients (4 persons)

  • 60g butter without salt
  • 1 tablespoon of sage leafs (no chopping needed).
  • 3 tablespoons of white vinegar (I used cherry vinegar)
  • 1 tablespoon of brown sugar (cane sugar will also work fine)
  • 2 green apples without core and cut in quarters.
  • Half  mug of chopped nuts
  • 100g de rucola or red spinach (I used a bag of autumn leaves)
  • 150g of sliced goat cheese (the creamy one)

Method

Put the butter, sage, vinegar and sugar in a frying pan (low heat). When the butter has melted, add the nuts and the apples and. Let cook for a few minutes or until the fruit is tender.

Make a bed of leafs in the dishes, and place the apples and the nuts on top. Reserve the juice that was left on the pan, and poor it over the nuts and apples. Finish with the sliced goat cheese.

Total time of cooking: 8 minutes-ish. Looking for the right ingredients in the cupboard: one eternity.

Tomato galette, take 2

Posted: September 19, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Pastry and Baking, Vegetarian | Tags: , , | Leave a comment
 
It was a food hit of this Summer, with its own rightful post. But, yesterday T. came home for dinner and took a much nicer picture

Spicy beef curry

Posted: September 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Beef | Tags: , , | Leave a comment
Never a dull curry: 10 different spices and 2 different powdered curry mixes.The recipe is from Gordon Ramsay‘s Healthy appetite
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Spicy beef curry

Ingredients
  • 2kg good quality lean rump steak cut into cubes
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 4 tsp garam masala
  • 4 tbsp natural yoghurt – I used soya yoghurt.
  • 4–5 tbsp light olive oil
  • 4 large sweet onions, peeled and finely chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled and grated
  • 5cm knob of fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
  • 4 tbsp tomato purée
  • 2 tbsp caster sugar or to taste – I used sugar cane.
  • 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
  • 800ml beef stock
  • Handful of coriander, leaves separated, stalks finely chopped
  • 6–8 cardamom pods
  • 15–20 curry leaves
  • 6 long chillies finely chopped – I used 2 coffee spoons of dried piri piri.
For the spicy mix
  • 4 tsp cumin seeds
  • 4 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds
  • 4 tsp mild curry powder
Method
Cut the beef into bite-sized cubes, put into a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the garam masala, add the yoghurt and a good dash of olive oil, season and toss to coat. Cover with cling film and marinate for as long as possible while you prepare the rest of the curry.
For the spice mix, toast the cumin, coriander, fennel and fenugreek seeds in a dry pan, tossing over high heat for a few minutes until fragrant. Tip into a mortar, add a pinch of salt and grind to a fine powder. Stir in the curry powder and mix well.
Heat a thin film of olive oil in a large cast-iron casserole or a heavy-based pan (I used a special pan called cataplana – it is something in between a wok and a heavy based pan). Add the onions, garlic, chilli, ginger and a little seasoning. Add the sugar to help caramelise the onions, followed by the coriander stalks cardamom pods and ground spice mix, stir, then cover and cook for 6-8 minutes until the onions are soft, lifting the lid to give the mixture a stir a few times.
Sear the beef in a hot pan and add to the onions along with the chopped tomatoes and tomato puree, stir over a medium-high heat for a few minutes and then add the beef stock and curry leaves. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, for approximately 30 mins or until the beef is tender.
To serve, ladle the curry into warm bowls and scatter over the coriander leaves. Accompany with a steaming bowl of basmati rice

Eccles cake gone mad

Posted: September 4, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Dessert, Pastry and Baking | Tags: | Leave a comment
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The pastry was wrong, the filling was wrong, the cooking was wrong. Other than this, it was delicious. Maybe in a I wannabe-a-molecular-cuisine-blogger post, I could have called it deconstructed eccles cake on steroids. The recipe I used was not created in controlled conditions and cannot be replicated to obtain the same results. The original is here.

Tomato galette and roasted spring onions

Posted: September 1, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Pastry and Baking, Vegetarian | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment
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The spring onions’ recipe is a courtesy of T.. The tomato galette was a creation of Yotam Ottolenghi for his New Vegetarian column on The Guardian.

Tomato Galette

Ingredients 

  • 375g all-butter puff pastry
  • 8 stalks fresh oregano, leaves picked and roughly chopped
  • 100g goat’s cheese, crumbled
  • 450g red, yellow or green tomatoes of various sizes, sliced 2mm thick
  • 8 stalks fresh thyme
  • Olive oil

For the sundried tomato paste

  • 10 sun-dried tomatoes from a jar
  • 1 fresh red chilli, sliced (I use a tea spoon of dried piri piri)
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • Half tablespoon of sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 200oC/gas mark 6. Roll out the pastry to 3mm thick  (Alternatively, if you have a large enough baking sheet, roll out the pastry into one circle, like a big pizza.) Transfer the pastry rectangles to a large baking sheet lined with baking paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sun-dried tomato paste. Put all the ingredients in the small bowl of a food processor and process to a rough paste; if necessary, add a little oil from the tomato jar to bring it together. If your food processor bowl is too large, you may need to do some of the chopping by hand.

Spread a thin layer of the tomato paste over the chilled pastry, leaving a border about 1cm from the edge. Sprinkle with the oregano and goat’s cheese, and arrange the tomatoes on top, slightly overlapping but not too precisely. Make sure the tomato paste is covered by fresh tomatoes because it tends to burn. Drop the thyme stalks over the tomatoes and drizzle with a little olive oil.

Bake for 15 minutes, until golden on top; check the base to make sure the pastry is brown and fully cooked. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before drizzling over more olive oil and serving warm.

Roasted spring onions

Ingredients

  • Spring onions, cut in half
  • Salt, pepper
  • Olive oil

Method 

Preheat the oven to 200oC. Put the Spring onions on a baking tray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and then drizzle with a little olive oil. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden on the top.

Chocolate mousse

Posted: August 30, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Chocolate, Dessert | Tags: | 1 Comment
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Mousse au chocolat, using a very traditional recipe from the  O Livro de Pantagruel (a formidable cookbook, first edited in 1946, considered to be the bible of Portuguese cuisine. It is now on its 73rd edition. It has more than 5000 recipes and 1200 pages)

Chocolate mousse

Ingredients

  • 200 g  chocolate (I used Cailler Cremant Intense 64% – with silvery label)
  • 6 eggs
  • 6 tablespoons of  sugar (I use sugar cane – no snobbery intended, I had no white sugar left)
  • 50 g butter (no salt)

Method

Mix the melted butter and the sugar until  you cannot feel the sugar granules

Add the six egg yolks, one by one. When the mix has an off white-ish color, add the melted chocolate (if you want to be a purist, the chocolate is melted in bain marie. I put it on the microwate for 4min, at defrost. When half of it is melted, take it out and mix.The remaining bits will melt on its own. Do not let boil!).

After well mixed, add the eggs whites, beaten until very firm (until you turn the bowl upside down and nothing moves. For extra fluffiness, add a few drops of lemon juice). The egg white should be added slowly, mixing slowly in the same direction with a wooden spoon. If you want to add Port or spirits, this is your opportunity.

Put in the fridge for a few hours.

Chocolate pudding cake

Posted: August 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Chocolate, Dessert | Tags: | Leave a comment
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My birthday cake: chocolate pudding cake, courtesy of S.. It was so delicious I forget to take a photo of the individually cut segment. Thank you S.!

Cream tea

Posted: August 17, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Jams and confits | Tags: , | Leave a comment
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Whole bran scones (courtesy of H.), Devon clotted cream (courtesy of Mike’s British Cheese Center), blackcurrant jam and tea.

Smoked trout salad and buttered potatoes

Posted: August 14, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Fish, Salad | Tags: , , | Leave a comment
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The smoked trout with cucumber and dill salad’s recipe was found on Channel 4. It was just one these unusual circumstances where the ingredients you have are actually the same the ones the recipe asks for.

Smoked trout salad and buttered potatoes

Ingredients

  • 1 cucumber
  •  small bunch of fresh dill, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon  of caster sugar – regular sugar will do.
  • 1 tablespoon of  rice vinegar – I used Jerez vinegar instead
  • 4 hot smoked trout fillets
  • Boiled new potatoes and butter

Method

Halve and deseed the cucumber and thinly slice into half moons. In a large bowl, toss the cucumber slices with fresh dill, caster sugar and rice wine vinegar.

Serve the salad with the trout fillets, broken into pieces, some hot buttered new potatoes with salt and pepper.

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