Macedonian Salad

On our recent visit to Bulgaria, we stopped at a Black Sea resort for lunch. Always when the weather is very hot, I tend to lose my appetite and live on salads, kyopoolu and tarator, so concentrated on the starters section of the menu. Here I spotted what was intriguingly called Macedonian salad and had to order it to find out what it is. As it turned out, it was roast and peeled green peppers in a garlic/dill marinade. Yummy!

Some googling later revealed that Macedonian salad is very similar to the Bulgarian Shopska salad or a Greek salad and not at all what I was served, however I decided to try and make it for our friends' Summer barbecue at the end of July.

Ingredients

1 tbsp chopped fresh dill
0.5 dl olive oil
0.5 dl balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
1 clove garlic
9 long peppers - any colour

Method

1. Make the dressing on the day before - mix together the dill, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and press in the garlic. Place in a glass jar in the fridge and give it a shake now and then.
2. Roast the peppers - ideally on a barbecue or pepper roaster or electric hob - then place in a saucepan and cover with a lid and leave to "stew" for a few minutes.
3. As soon as you're able to handle the peppers, peel off the skin and remove the stalks, seeds and pith, then rinse under hot water and cut up into bite-sized pieces.
4. Place in a serving bowl, pour over the dressing and stir through to mix. It's now ready to serve.

If you choose red, yellow or orange peppers, the end result will have some sweetness to it, if this isn't your thing, select green peppers. I'd chosen a mixture of red, yellow and orange, because the colours looked pretty, however after roasting, yellow and orange became indistinguishable. Still, it turned out to be quite a hit and several people asked me for the recipe. In fact, I thought it was nicer than the stuff I got at the restaurant.

There's a bit more work because of the roasting, but it makes a huge difference and it's a very good thing to do for a barbecue and start with the peppers before the other things, so that while meat and such are being grilled, the peppers get to stew in their saucepan. It's well worth doing, this salad tied in very nicely with the red meats.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo.

Student Potato Salad

Three years ago, I revived a long-forgotten recipe from my student days, when a quick potato salad was called for and it turned out to be a hit and when I now searched through my recipes, it seems I forgot to write it up at the time. I don't have any photos, potato salad tends not to look too pretty.

Ingredients

300 ml full fat crème fraîche
4 - 5 tbsp full fat mayonnaise
1 small Granny Smith apple
⅓ dl brined caper buds
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1 kg waxy potatoes

Method

1. Wash and cut the parsley finely.
2. Peel and dice the apple.
3. Drain the capers well, then chop finely.
4. Mix together the crème fraîche, mayonnaise, apple, capers, parsley, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Cover and chill in the fridge.
5. Peel and dice the potatoes, then boil until soft.
6. When the potatoes are ready, transfer to a colander and rinse under cold water for a minute, then shake off excess water as much as possible.
7. Take the bowl out of the fridge and slowly stir in the warm potatoes into the mixture. It should go a bit soft, but shouldn't melt.
8. It's nice when it's still a bit warm, so if it's made well in advance, it should be brought to room temperature and carefully warmed up in the microwave oven.

It's very important that the apple is of Granny Smith type - it should add some sourness as well as a little hint of sweetness. It must also be small or there'll be too much crunch in the salad. I made the mistake of doubling the recipe and putting in 3 small apples and Lundulph thought that it was partially frozen.

Also important the warming up - straight from the fridge, it will be grainy and the flavours will be dulled and it'll taste like some sort of wallpaper glue (I'm guessing).

I also think fresh tarragon or dill would work instead of parsley as well.

Roasted Cauliflower Salad

In general when I'm at work, I'll go for the salad bar if there is one available, it seems to be the only thing that stops me from falling asleep in the afternoon. That and soup, but in the last few years, I've not had any luck with restaurant soups, so generally opt for safety and avoid them. Where I work at the moment, the salad bar has ups and downs. On a good day (and this happens about every other week or so), one of the salads offered is roast cauliflower with peppers of different colours, salted gherkins, olives and sun dried tomatoes. This is absolutely yummy, and the other salad eaters agree, since this salad is usually one of the first to run out. I'd been racking my brain on how they do it, simple though as it is, now that I've sussed it.

And I did suss it thanks to realising the other day that it's been ages since I read the lovely Green Kitchen Stories blog, so I decided to catch up and spotted a salad with roasted cauliflower. I feel a bit embarrassed not having thought about it on my own. Thus step one - roast the cauliflower. It appears this year is a bad one for these wonderful vegetables, they are very small, so I ended up buying two.

Roast cauliflower

1. Before preparing the cauliflower, pre-heat the grill to 220 °C.
2. Remove all the greenery, cut up into florets and washed them.
3. Then lay them out on a shallow baking tray with a lip and brush generously with olive oil and sprinkle some salt or Vegeta.
4. It may help to also get your hands dirty and move the cauliflower around to get the pieces really well coated with the oil.
5. Place under the grill for 20 - 25 minutes and stir a couple of times during roasting. They just need to start softening somewhat and go brown and crunchy here and there, but not mushy.
6. Set aside to chill and store in the fridge. Mix in with your green salad.

This turned out to be quite a bit hit with Lundulph as well, even though he wasn't sure when he had a sniff of the cauliflower in the container where I'd put it. I'm not entirely sure what he was talking about, I didn't find the smell unpleasant, but cauliflower is a member of the cabbage family, I'm guessing there was some hint of fart.

I had intended to also do the tahini dressed chick peas, but I had plans already for my second tub of yoghurt and decided to leave them for another time.

What was left of the cauliflowers a couple of days later, I reheated with a covering of kashkaval - a Bulgarian yellow cheese, which was also extremely tastry.

Satay Chicken Salad

Now that Spring is in full swing and Lundulph and I have spent several week-ends cleaning and rejuvenating our patio, I want to cook things we can eat outside. Tonight was not to be sadly, it was just a little too cold, but we've had several meals at our little table outside and it's been very nice.

I've had this recipe card from Waitrose stuck to the Fridge for a very long time and it's no longer on the Waitrose website. It's overly enthusiastic about preparation and cooking times as well as some of the proportions, but it was good enough as a start and there's room for improvement.

Ingredients

600 g chicken breasts
2 smallish carrots
6 - 7 radishes
half a small white cabbage (grapefruit size)
half a cucumber
2 salad onions
2 tbsp grapeseed oil
100 g satay sauce
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
100 g frozen peas
2 tbsp water
150 g rice noodles
½ dl dry roasted crushed peanuts
1 lime (optional)

Method

1. Trim the chicken breasts and cut into strips, about 3 cm thick, then set aside on a grill pan. Pre-heat the grill.
2. Peel and julienne or grate the carrots thinly.
3. Trim, wash and cut the radishes into thin slices.
4. Remove any wilted outer leaves from the cabbage as well as the stalk, then shred finely.
5. Peel the cucumber and cut in half lengthwise, then using a melon baller, remove the seeds and discard. Slice the cucumber thinly as well.
6. Trim and finely cut the salad onions.
7. Place all the sliced vegetables in a bowl and stir through to mix.
8. Brush the grapeseed oil on the chicken strips and grill until fully cooked, turning a couple of times.
9. As the chicken is almost ready, place the frozen peas in a bowl with a couple of tbsp water, cover and microwave for a minute, stir and then for a further few seconds to get them warmed through. Then drain and stir in with the other vegetables.
10. Heat up the toasted sesame oil in a large pan and fry the rice noodles to warm them through. Then stir into the vegetables.
11. When the chicken is ready, remove, cut the strips into bite-sized pieces and stir together with the satay sauce to get them coated all over.
12. Stir in the chicken along with the crushed peanuts into the vegetables and serve immediately while the chicken and rice are still warm, with a wedge of lime to squeeze over.

This was a really nice and tasty surprise. What originally attracted me to the recipe was the photo on the card, I hadn't bothered to read it. When I did, I was a bit disappointed, as it didn't read like a "real" recipe, but I didn't have any better ideas, so I went for it anyway and I'm quite glad I did, it was a really good meal.

It's almost needless to say by now that I've made alterations to what the recipe card states, as I wasn't able to get hold of the special brand of satay sauce that the card was advertising and I forgot the lime, as Lundulph came home and was hungry, so we just sat down and ate straight away. When I remembered the lime and mentioned this to him, his comment was, that it would not have worked. I disagree, but didn't get to prove my point.

The recipe stated that it was 4 portions. I'd say more like 5 or even 6, so after we'd had our dinner, there was still quite a lot left, which went into the fridge. The fresh vegetables in the salad meant that it couldn't be reheated, but frankly it worked quite well cold as well, I took some with me for my lunch the next day and it was just as tasty as the night before.

Myskväll

Yesterday my Mum casually mentioned that there are loads of avocados in the house that needed to be eaten fairly urgently, so I suggested we make guacamole.



I've never done this before and have wanted to try my hand at it. My friend Boncey has quite a knack for it, so I have a very high watermark to hit.

What I have noticed is that avocados sold in Sweden are tiny in comparison to the ones you get in the UK. I'm not sure why, but such is the case, at least at the shops which I've been to. So I decided that two Swedish avocados would count as one. This means I had 4 big avocados to use up (or 8 tiny ones).

A quick google on the food pages of the BBC gave several interesting results. The one I settled on is from The Hairy Bikers. They have proven reliable to me in the past and I do quite like them. And once again, I was not able to follow a new recipe to the dot, so here is my take on it. The original recipe can be found here.

Ingredients

1 small very hot dry chilli, seeds removed, then crushed
2 handfulls of fresh coriander, chopped
4 ripe plum tomatoes, diced
2 small red onions, coarsely diced
2 tbsp lime juice
3 tbsp water
salt
4 large ripe avocados

Method

1. Place everything except the avocados in a blender and process until a pulp, though not entirely smooth.
   
   


2. In a serving bowl, scoop out the avocados and mash with a fork.
   
   


3. Pour in the tomato mixture and stir in to combine. It is now ready to serve.

The amount of salt depends on what the guacamole will be used for - we were going to have a "myskväll", which means a cosy evening, mostly in front of the TV. And my Mum had bought tortilla chips to dip. Thus I didn't put much salt in it.

We ended up with a really large bowl. As it turned out, there was no need to worry that we wouldn't be able to eat it - we managed to put away about two-thirds of it straight away. We being me, Mum and my Sister. In fact, Bip was well impressed with how tasty it is - she does guacamole, but generally uses spice mixes which she stirs into the mashed avocado and that is of course a bit different to what we did yesterday.

Although I did not get anywhere near Boncey's wonderful guacamole, this is definitely a repeat recipe, and I'll try to use fresh chillies next time. Mum thought it had too much coriander, though I thought it was OK. But I will reduce the amount of tomatoes, they were too prominant for me.

Poached Eggs

Last night was salad night and I thought it would be nice to combine our usual salad with a poached egg. I've read about these and Lundulph has been talking about swirling boiling water and such, I wanted to give it a go. I'd already done some research on this and YouTube is full of videos on how to do it. So I just had a quick check in Delia's Complete Cookery Course and also in my Bulgarian National Cuisine book, where these are called забулени яйца which translates to veiled eggs. On the whole, it looks like experience is the main thing, trying and tweaking until you're happy with the end result.

On the whole I think I did fairly well for a first time. And I'll write down what I did for reference for next time. I already have some tweaks in mind.



Ingredients

2 medium sized very fresh eggs
5 dl water
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp salt

Method

1. Place the water, vinegar and salt in a small-ish saucepan, it should be about 5 cm deep, and heat up on low, so that it's just under boiling temperature.


2. Prepare with a slotted ladle and a bowl with kitchen tissue in order to drain the ready eggs.


3. Crack one egg in a small bowl or ladle, then carefully pour into the water, keeping the bowl as close to the surface as possible.


4. The egg white will solidify fairly quickly. I tried to keep it together with a spoon, but it still managed to spread quite a bit. I suspect my eggs weren't as fresh as I thought they were.


5. Keeping an eye on the yolk, so it gets a bit of a skin, but remains runny, take the whole lot out after about 2 minutes and drain on the kitchen tissue.


6. Serve immediately while it's still hot. Though it works well cold too, since our dinner got a bit delayed. Lundulph re-heated his in the microwave and the yolk was still runny and tasted very nice on top of our salad, in fact I cut mine up and stirred it in like salad cream.

In the photo, it is served with a few slices of some wonderful филе "Елена" (fillet Elena), which is a very fine cured, spiced and dried fillet from Bulgaria.

Now, tweaks. I had too much water in, that is the water was too deep and the egg sank to the bottom, thus stirring it up and that might have spread some of the white around. Delia recommends that it's shallow enough to need to baste over the yolk to get it cooked and I think that might be a good thing to try.

Then my eggs were not sufficiently fresh. Generally the fresher the egg, the thicker the white is and the closer is stays around the yolk, whereas an older egg has much runnier white, so the older the egg, the more likely the white will spread in shreds during the poaching. I've seen a couple of the shops in the village sell extremely expensive eggs, but dated with when they were laid. I'm guessing it's the owner's own hens in question, so that would be the next thing to try. I'm happy to spend a little bit extra money on two eggs, that'll make it feel even more luxurious.

And I'd also like to try out the swirling method, just for the heck of it, even if it doesn't work out. I'm not too old to play with food.

Finally, I've never really been too big a fan of egg white (unless it's in a meringue), so I might just try poaching a yolk on it's own.

Mrs W's Spicy Lamb Kebabs

A few weeks ago, Mrs W published this recipe and I got sold on it straight away.

Yesterday we had our second barbecue and I spent quite some time preparing for it, this last week has been stressful and I needed to relax and what better way than by preparing lots of food?



So the main thing was of course Mrs W's spicy lamb kebabs. I'd ordered a butterflied leg of lamb from the local butcher and I got to see him prepare it, it's quite a skill. He also kindly used a special stapler to puncture lots of holes everywhere, so that marinade could soak in better. Very nice. At home, I removed as much of the fat as I could, then diced it, stirred in the spice mixture and put it in the fridge. I realised only yesterday morning that I'd forgotten the olive oil, so I quickly added it then and decided to keep my fingers crossed that it would work.

On Saturday morning, I sliced the aubergines and sprinkled with salt and pepper and lined them up on a baking tray. I put a small bowl upside down under one end of the tray, so that any liquid that the aubergines would produce would gather in the lower corner. On the skewers I added figs as per the original instructions and they worked ever so well. The glazing didn't go thick, but maybe that's because I might have screwed up the proportions a bit. There was plenty left over as well.

Mrs W also recommended couscous or quinoa to go with the lamb and I decided on couscous, mainly because I'd never made quinoa before and couscous is very quick to make. I made 250 g couscous and stirred in 2 tbsp olive oil. When it had cooled down, I chopped about a handful of fresh coriander and stirred in. This worked out very nicely.

In addition I also made a green salad and this time I mean really green. Green peppers, unpeeled cucumber, parsley, peppermint, dill, iceberg lettuce and lime. Wonderfully tangy. All cut into small pieces, the lime peeled as well. And I got to use the parsley and mint from my new herb garden - an old set of stackable strawberry pots that I've put on the patio.



Then Lundulph said that we can't entertain without crisps and dips. Now I thought the lamb kebabs and aubergines and couscous were very Middle Eastern in style, so I thought I'd get matching dips. The hummus on offer in the supermarket didn't look too nice and I decided to make my own. Also I thought I'd try my hand at "сух таратор", that is suh tarator literally meaning dry tarator - like tarator but with strained yoghurt and with pickled gherkins instead of cucumber. Sadly it turned out I didn't have gherkins, like I thought I did and so only put dill in the strained yoghurt.

I'd never strained yoghurt before. I had two jars of my home made stuff, which isn't too sour. I put my large sieve over the wine bucket, then lined it with three layers of cheese cloth and poured both jars into it, about 1 litre in total. And it started dripping. I put the whole setup into the fridge, because it was taking time and I worried that the yoghurt would turn into cheese. Must remember for next time, do one jar at a time, smaller portions take less time.

If it sounds like I've been busy, then it's because I have. But it was great fun to do. And I remembered to soak the bamboo skewers for hours and still they caught fire, mostly at the end where we'd threaded the meat, I guess the fat that stuck is what made that possible.

Of course we also had dessert. I took this opportunity to make the Daring Bakers May challenge, so I'll blog about it when the time for that comes. All I can say is that it was delicious.



Finally, Lundulph had bought some nice chicken breasts for backup. We didn't use them, but I marinated them in the left over glaze for the lamb kebabs and have frozen them now. I think it will work out nicely in future barbecues - if the weather keeps up like it has this week, we're bound to eat more grilled things this Summer.



But the lamb recipe is a keeper and I'm very grateful to Mrs W for this. Sorry for the lack of photos, but we were busy eating and licking our fingers.

Bean and Red Onion Salad

Today is a major cooking day, mainly because we're celebrating Lundulph's half past life tomorrow and the whole clan is turning up. Also I made up a new dessert on the fly. I'm half way through the day's tasks and thought I'd blog while having a break.

The first thing I made today was to process fresh ginger with a little bit of water, fill up the ice cube trays and freeze. Each cube is about 1 tbsp in size, so making curries is very easy whith these. The big chore here is to peel all the ginger, I bought about 1 kg yesterday. On the other hand this'll last me for months.

Today's first dish is thus

Bean and Red Onion Salad

Ingredients

2 cans of butter beans (each is gross 410 g/ net 235 g)
2 smallish red onions
2 - 3 tbsp olive oil
2 - 3 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp chopped parsley
salt to taste

Method

1. Drain and rinse the beans well.
2. Peel and coarsely chop the onions.
3. Place the beans and onions in a bowl and sprinkle the olive oil, vinegar, parsley and salt.
4. Stir well.

The flavours usually come out better if you make this on the day before. Oil, vinegar and parsley should also really be to taste. If you don't like parsley, dill works just as well.

If you feel that the red onions taste strong, I recommend that, after chopping, you sprinkle generously with salt and rub it in with your hand. Very quickly, the onions will release their liquid and begin to feel a bit softer. Rinse well over a sieve. This should take out the sharpness. Alternatively shallots or spring onions can be used.

This is a traditional Bulgarian Winter salad, but I make it quite regularly throughout the year. Of course, since I'm expecting lots of people tomorrow, I used 3 cans of beans.

Spinach and Chickpea salad

I had a Moroccan salad at a friend's party a while ago and I didn't manage to get the recipe, so I tried to put it together from what I remembered. This one is quite nice and refreshing and makes a bit of a difference to regular salads.

1 can (400 g) chickpeas
2 small green peppers
fresh baby spinach leaves
lemon juice
olive oil
dill, salt

1. Drain the chickpeas and rinse, then place in the salad bowl.
2. Remove the seeds from the peppers, then cut in small pieces, about the same size as the chickpeas, and put them in.
   
3. Add a couple of handfuls of fresh baby spinach leaves. If you think the leaves are a bit big, cut them carefully into smaller pieces. Carefully because the spinach tends to go soggy if you chop it.
   
4. Add some lemon juice, olive oil, dill and salt and stir well. Again be careful, if the spinach leaves have been cut.

This works both with fresh and dried dill.

Bavarian potato salad

I picked this up when I was in Munich some 10 years ago, however, I've changed the recipe to be something like a potato soup.

5 - 6 medium sized potatoes
1 medium sized red or regular onion
1 clove of garlic
5 - 6 fresh mushrooms
1 dl vegetable stock (e. g. Oxo or Maggi)
pepper
light and dark soy sauce
balsamic vinegar

1. Wash, peel and dice the potatoes, then steam them.
2. In the mean time, peel and dice the onion coarsely.
3. Peel and slice the mushrooms thinly. Place along with the onion in a deep bowl.
4. Add the soy sauces and balsamic vinegar and let them stand for a few minutes in the marinade.
5. When the potatoes are ready, transfer them to the bowl as well, pour over the vegetable stock and stir well.
6. Serve warm.

The original recipe didn't have mushrooms in it and no marinade was made. Also I think 3 tbsp vegetable stock was used for the potato salad.

I think at some points, I'd put 2-3 dl stock and I'd get a soup that's a bit on the sour vinegary side, which I quite like.