Student food

The other day when I was in the supermarket, they had some lovely looking mushrooms on offer, so I couldn't resist to buy 3 punnets, each of 300 g.

There was no plan to this purchase at all at the time, but when I got home, I decided to do what I used to do quite regularly while I was at uni - baked with fillings.

I lined a tray with baking paper and pre-heated the oven to 200 degrees C (gas mark 6).

It's important to use mushrooms which have "matured", i. e. where the caps have opened to let the spores out. These are easier to handle, the stems are easier to remove and the cups are easier to peel. So do just that, then place the cups in the tray.

Sprinkle a little salt over them and place your chosen filling inside each. I used cheese for mine - some mystery cheddar-type cheese which I got from the butcher's and which was tasty and I tried some grated parmesan on a couple of the mushrooms.

For Lundulph obviously cheese was not an option, his mushroom cups had pieces of cooked ham with a small piece of butter at the bottom.

The whole thing baked for about 30 minutes, I didn't keep track of time, but I kept checking on the bake regularly. The idea is to let it bake long enough for the mushrooms to bake through completely, yet not to burn the filling.

Delish! Other fillings I used to do at uni were diced bacon, peperoni and butter with crushed garlic. Should definitely be eaten warm.

Easter baking

Once again Easter was upon us, the family were going to visit and I baked kozunak.

As my recipe has been working reliably for a number of years, there was no reason to try something new. Instead I wanted to make the 8-stranded plaited loaf which was one of the technical challenges on the Great British Bake-Off.

However, it appears that my frustration over my new job went straight into the dough, because it was as tough as an old boot. Or perhaps the yeast was old, though I do try to make sure this doesn't happen.

Anyway, after much adjustments with milk and what felt like an eternity of manual kneading, I divided up the dough into 3 equal parts. One of these, I divided further into 8 and rolled out to strands.

Starting by firmly squeezing one end of all the strands together, I started to follow the rather complex instructions and started despairing almost immediately, as the instructions didn't really seem to produce anything remotely plaited and I began to suspect bits of them were missing!

However I persisted and a good thing too, because the result was fabulously pretty. I think. And no instruction steps were missing, you just need to be patient and keep at it.

Some proofing, some egg wash and a generous sprinkle of pearl sugar it was ready to go in the oven.

Not too much rise during the proofing sadly, but baked quite well overall and disappeared quickly as usual when the family gathers. In hindsight, I should have skipped the pearl sugar, so that the plaiting would be more obvious.

And of course I made two rolls with raisins from the other two parts of the dough. That was fairly straight-forward with a hot tip from I can't remember where: soaking the raisins before using them. This way, they won't take away moisture from the dough. I soaked them in water with a tablespoon of dark rum, which worked a treat and the rolls were very tasty indeed.

Mazarins

The third thing I baked for our afternoon tea was real mazarins.

Yes, I finally got my act together and opted for the recipe in the book "277 types of cakes". It is a bit fiddlier to do and at least one instruction was incomplete, but on the whole well worth the effort. They are called "Classical", however, I had to make some changes to the recipe, so I won't call them that. I used ready-made marzipan, though there are instructions on how to make it at home. And I didn't make true fondant for the final decoration, I don't have a marble slab and didn't have any time to spare in making it. Instead I opted for royal icing as I had a couple of egg whites left-over from the pastry cream I made for the coconut tops. The recipe calls for marzipan of type "50-50", also called "tant pour tant", meaning equal parts of almonds and sugar. I suspect shop-bought marzipan has some additives, but I believe a 50% almonds does the trick.

The amounts given are for 30 mazarins and in Sweden they are all the same size, in oval aluminium cases and weighing about 70 g each. However, the only aluminium cases I could find were round and smaller.

Ingredients for the filling
500 g marzipan with 50% almonds
250 g unsalted butter at room temperature
250 g eggs (about 5 medium sized)

1. It is absolutely crucial that all ingredients are at room temperature or the filling will split.
2. Break up the marzipan into small chunks into a large bowl, then using one hand, add a third of the butter and work it in to form a smooth mixture.
   
   This takes some time, but it's important not to incorporate too much air into the filling or it will puff up during baking.
3. Add the next third of the butter and incorporate well, before incorporating the final third and achieving a lump-free goo.
4. Now the mixture should be soft enough to be mixed with a spoon. Stir in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating well and stop just after the last egg is in.
   
5. If not using immediately, cover the surface with cling film, making sure no air bubbles are trapped, and keep in the fridge.
6. Let warm up to room temperature before using it.

The shortcrust pastry is called 1 - 2 - 3 because of the proportions of the ingredients. Eggs are added to make it easier to roll. It can be done in a mixer, but it's better done manually, so that the dough doesn't get over worked.

Ingredients for the dough
600 g plain flour
400 g unsalted butter at room temperature
200 g granulated sugar
100 g eggs (about 2 medium sized)

1. Sift the flour onto the work surface and make a well.
2. Place the butter and sugar in the middle, then pinch together into a crumbly mixture.
   
3. Add the eggs and work together to a dough, then place in a plastic bag, squeeze out all the air, tie it tightly and let rest in the fridge for at least 1 h.
   
4. The dough should be rolled while cold.

I prepared the above on Thursday and kept in the fridge, then took out early on Saturday morning to warm out, while I worked on the coconut tops.

And so yesterday, I put things together.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Arrange round aluminium cases on trays which have a lip along the edges. The cases can glide easily, the lip will stop them from dropping on the floor.
3. Dust the work surface with some flour, then roll out a piece of the dough to 3 mm thickness.
.
4. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out rounds and place in the aluminium cases. The cutter should be a little larger than the cases. Gently press the dough into each case.
5. Place the mazarin filling in a piping bag, cut off a hole of about 2 cm diameter or use a large plain tip and pipe into the dough cases. Fill up to about three-quarters.
6. Bake for about 18 - 23 minutes, until the mazarins are golden brown.
   
7. Prepare the royal icing - place 3 - 4 dl of icing sugar in a bowl and start adding egg white, a couple of tsp at a time and stir in before adding more. Continue until the consistency is thin enough to be "self levelling", but not too runny. Keep covered until it should be used.
8. Remove the mazarins from the oven and let cool enough so they can be handled.
9. Place about a tsp of royal icing on top of a mazarin and spread it over the surface with a knife or spatula.
10. Best served on the day of baking, but should be OK for a day or two afterwards as well. Ready baked mazarins can be frozen before being iced.

Well, I actually only made 15 mazarins, the rest of the dough and filling are now happily biding their time in the freezer. We still have way too many sweet things to eat. Certainly the coconut tops were well received and the younger of our guests found it very hard to stop eating the chewy fudge biscuits and had to be told off.

The mistake I made was to pipe too much filling, so my mazarins mushroomed a bit. This means that I have more dough than filling left, but that's easy to remedy.

Lundulph's verdict: very nice.

A further comment on the "classical" mazarins - as I mentioned before, they should really be glazed with runny fondant. But in order to do that, they need to first be glazed with apricot glaze. This is called "aprikotyr" in Swedish and I went ahead and made it, but here is where the instructions let me down - the simple, yet very important bit about glazing the mazarins with the apricot glaze while it is still hot. Because once it had cooled, it was like jelly. This practice is to prevent the fondant from soaking up moisture from the mazarin and going soggy. However, when using royal icing, this doesn't happen, so I made it in vain. But I've frozen it too, might get to use it at a later date.

Update 25th March: Due to the much-ness of all the baking, I froze a number of the ready glazed mazarins and thawed them earlier this week. Guess what, they were absolutely fine, perhaps a bit on the crumbly side perhaps. For Easter Sunday, I'll thaw the dough and filling and make some more. By the way, I thawed the mazarins by just leaving them out in the kitchen, nothing fancy at all.

Update 23rd June: The other week, I thawed the dough and filling. The dough felt a bit sticky, so I had to be a bit more generous when dusting with flour, but the mazarins turned out very nice as well. As predicted, I ran out of filling before running out of dough. I also ran out of aluminium cases, so instead I lined my heart shaped tins and used gooseberry jam as filling, before covering with more dough, just like with the vanilla hearts. I glazed with royal icing and they turned out really nice too.

Coconut tops 2

I was originally planning to make these on Tuesday already, however, I was quite tired and then other things came in the way, so I ended making these early this morning.

This is a slightly more advanced recipe than the one I've done before. It is from my Swedish book "277 types of cakes".

First, I had to make "vaniljkräm" or "vanilla cream", which is basically crème pâtissière or pastry cream. I made half of the given amount, as I was low on eggs by this point. The cream turned out very nice, even though I made some minor alterations to it. I think it would work rather nicely as filling for macaroons too.

Pastry Cream
Ingredients 250 g full milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
60 g egg yolks (about 3, from medium sized eggs)
62 g granulated sugar
20 g cornflour
12 g unsalted butter
Method

1. Place the milk in a thick-bottomed saucepan and add the vanilla essence, then bring to the boil. As soon as it boils, remove from the heat and let stand for 10 - 15 minutes.
2. In the mean time, beat together yolks, sugar and cornflour until pale and fluffy.
3. Once the milk has completed its "rest", pour it into the egg mixture and whisk together until the mixture is smooth.
4. Pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan, place it back on the hob and bring to the boil again, while stirring constantly.
5. Once it comes to the boil, add the butter and stir it in, then remove from the heat. At this point the cream will thicken dramatically.
6. Continue to whisk until completely smooth, then transfer to a shallow large dish, cover the surface with cling film and cool as quickly as possible - place in a fridge or in cold water.

According to the book, the pastry cream is good for 1 - 2 days if kept in the fridge, the quicker it is cooled down, the longer it will last. Freezing is also good, and should be done as soon as possible. Once thawed, it will most likely split, this is fixed by heating it up in the microwave and stirring it through.

Ingredients 90 g pastry cream
450 g dessicated coconut
150 g eggs (about 3 medium sized eggs)
75 g unsalted butter at room temperature
225 g granulated sugar
300 g dark chocolate (optional)

1. Line 3 baking sheets with baking paper.
2. Stir together all ingredients until well combined.
3. Using your hands, form balls about the size of golf balls (or 30 g), then shape into cones and place on the baking sheets.
4. Leave to dry for at least 1 h.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees and bake until they go golden brown on top, about 15 - 18 minutes.
6. Leave to cool completely on the baking sheets.
7. Optional: Melt and temper the chocolate, then dip the bottoms of each cone and allow to set.

As I mentioned, I was low on eggs and had 3 whites over from the pastry cream, so instead of 3 whole eggs in the recipe above, I used two and topped up with egg white to reach the required 150 g. I think this meant the coconut tops were a little paler than they should have been. But I have come across recipes with only egg whites, making the coconut tops completely white.

The book states that each cone should be 50 g, but I tried this and I think that was too much, 30 g size is better. This resulted in 32 coconut tops.

I skipped the chocolate - I have yet to master the art of tempering. Besides I was running out of time. An alternative, you can put the melted, tempered chocolate in a small piping bag and drizzle over the coconut tops.

These were very nice, but not as sweet as I expected. Lundulph liked the texture and he does like coconut. I'm thinking that perhaps some lemon zest mixed in there might be nice. Lundulph wrinkled his nose.

Kolakakor

We've invited some friends over for afternoon tea on Saturday and as I'm working in the City since a week ago, I need to start well ahead, since I also have to do a number of shopping excursions to get the ingredients.

So I started by buying most things today and making something quick. Thus the fudge biscuits. Besides, Lundulph has been asking for chewy biscuits for ages. The recipe is from my Swedish book on 277 types of cakes. It also utilises some ingredients that aren't readily available in the UK, so here is my version.

Ingredients
Makes about 60 pieces
320 g plain flour
5 g baking powder
160 g unsalted butter at room temperature
130 g granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
40 g golden syrup
30 g maple syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade and line 2 - 3 baking sheets with baking paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and pinch together into a dough, but careful not to over-work it. It should just hold together.
4. Divide up the dough into pieces, then each piece rolls out to the length of the baking sheet and is about 2 cm in diameter.
   
5. Place two rolls per baking sheet only and bake until golden brown. The recipe said 15 minutes, but I ended up baking them for 22 minutes.
6. Take out from the oven and immediately cut into pieces at a slight angle, then carefully transfer to a cooling rack and let cool down completely, then they will go harder and chewier.
   
7. Once completely cooled, store in an airtight container and careful, they are very moreish!

I divided the dough into 6 parts of 115 g each and baked on 3 baking sheets. The first two went in as rolled and seemed to take ages to swell up. At the 15 minute mark, the edges had reached the right colour, but overall the sticks were fairly pale. Once they were golden brown, the edges were slightly overdone, so when I cut up the pieces, I trimmed the edges and gobbled them up together with Lundulph, while they were still hot. I then flattened the second and third batches, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

I think my baking sheets are about 35 cm long and I got precisely 60 nice biscuits from this bake. We also tried one completely cooled down biscuit and it was very crunchy and chewy. Initially Lundulph thought they weren't sweet enough, but actually they were, it just takes a few seconds to kick in. Thus we're going to bed happy and sugared up tonight.

Update 16th March: After a week in a box, the biscuits have gone hard and lost most of their chewiness. I also felt they weren't sweet enough. I think caster sugar next time instead of granulated and maybe increase the amount of the golden syrup too, it's really sweet.

Carrot and date cupcakes

A few weeks ago, I was treated to some really lovely muffins. I wasn't able to find out for sure what type they were, but it seemed that they had carrots, nuts and dates in them, along with some spices, so I decided to try and re-create them.

After some searching I found a recipe that seemed to have the correct ingredients. So I got the ingredients and am particularly happy to have got hold of some really lovely dates - very soft and creamy. But when I came to actually making the muffins and started converting the amounts to metric, it became obvious that this recipe would not work for me. The amount of dates needed seemed way over the top and with my recent banana muffin experience, I'm very cautious. Some of the other amounts were also suspicious.

So, I resorted to checking what Delia Smith and Mary Berry had to say on the subject. Well, Delia had two recipes, but for carrot cake, not muffins and I didn't have all the ingredients for them. The Mary Berry one seemed very intriguing and I will give it a try some day. This time, I used it as a guidance for the amounts of my recipe instead.

Ingredients
Makes 24
12 whole dates
3 - 4 large carrots
400 g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
2 dl chopped walnuts
250 g honey
4 medium eggs
4 dl water
1.2 dl grapeseed oil

Icing
300 g unsalted butter at room temperature
500 g icing sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
100 g maple syrup
4 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk (if needed)
ready-made tiny sugar carrots for decoration

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Prepare the muffin cases - you need 24 of 5 cm diameter.
2. Cut the dates lengthwise in half and remove the stone, then set aside.
3. Peel and trim the carrots, then grate coarsely. Weigh up 300 g for the recipe.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and walnuts.
5. Add the carrots, honey, eggs, water and oil and stir together to get thoroughly mixed through. It will look like runny porridge with orange sticks in it.
6. Pour some of the batter into the cases, filling to about a third. Then place a date half in each, with the cut side up.
   
7. Distribute the remaining batter in the muffin cases, then bake until they go golden brown, about 50 minutes. Check with a toothpick for readiness.
8. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.
   
9. While the muffins are baking, place the butter, icing sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and stir together with a fork until well combined.
10. Add the maple syrup and vanilla extract and incorporate well.
11. If the mixture feels too thick for piping, add the milk and incorporate. Wrap tightly so the icing doesn't start drying and store in a cool place until it's needed.
12. Once the muffins have cooled completely, prepare a piping bag with a nozzle and transfer the icing to it, then pipe onto each muffin.
    
13. To finish, place a small sugar carrot decoration.

I have two muffin tins, taking 12 cases each, so had two batches to bake. The first one I baked for 45 minutes and they had a really nice colour on the surface when they came out. I'd tested for readiness several times and each time, the toothpick came out with small amounts of batter. I let them cool inside the muffin tin, which is fairly thick, so would extend the baking a little. They were slightly warm by the time I took them out.

The second tin, I left to bake for 60 minutes and it went a bit darker on the surface than I would have liked. But the tooth pick came out clean. However, when I cut in half one of each batch, the 45 minute one seemed moister than the 60 minute one. And this was indeed the feeling I had when I ate them. Lundulph commented that the 60 minute ones were better as the creaminess of the date became more prominent. However, once the icing was in place, the date creaminess was lost a little. Lundulph was adamant that the date should be in one piece in the middle and not chopped and stirred into the batter. These dates don't really have that strong a flavour, so chopping them up would make them disappear completely. Possibly this goes for all dates, I don't know.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with this recipe, as I feel I put it together myself to a much larger extent than before. I've also been racking my brain on variations for the future. For starters, if the muffins won't be iced, then the amount of honey should be increased, they weren't very sweet on their own. The recipes on Delia Smith's website had orange zest in them and that might complement the flavours nicely.

After baking was over, the whole house smelt very nice, but I think if I'd used butternut squash instead of carrots, the result would have been the same. Lundulph reckoned it's just there to add bulk. The carrots do add some sweetness and certainly moisture. I would have liked a bit more crunch, so will probably toast the walnuts beforehand. And use honey with stronger flavour too.

I'm particularly pleased with the icing - inspired from this recipe, I used the amounts from my cookie monster cupcakes, but added vanilla and cinnamon. Actually I made half the amount, from 150 g butter and this as barely enough for 20 cupcakes, so I've doubled the amounts in the recipe above, so that all 24 muffins can be decorated and one doesn't have to worry about running out. I should practise my piping though.

Hot & spicy goose/chicken noodle soup

In the cold snap of late, I thought soup might be nice. My original plan was to make this on Wednesday, but due to Lundulph being out almost every evening this week, I only got to make it tonight.

This is a recipe card from Waitrose and a very recent at that - the card says early February 2013 and so it isn't on their website yet. At least I wasn't able to find it, as I trawled through the 350+ results on "soup" and 150+ results on "noodle".

I also decided not to follow the recipe entirely - there is still some goose meat left in the freezer from Christmas and I really didn't like the look of the sugar snaps, so opted for green beans instead. And I wanted fancier mushrooms than regular button ones.

Ingredients
4 - 5 portions
150 g shiitake mushrooms
160 g enoki mushrooms
150 g green beans
2 - 3 breasts of chicken or goose (previously cooked)
5 Oxo reduced salt chicken stock cubes
1.7 l boiling water
0.5 dl dark soy sauce
0.5 tbsp chilli flakes
1 packet dried instant noodles, without the flavour sachet
1.5 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp granulated sugar
a bunch of salad onions (8 - 9)

Method

1. Brush the shiitake mushrooms clean and slice into strips. Remove the "root" parts of the enoki mushrooms and cut the bunches into 3, then divide into smaller bundles.
2. Trim and wash the beans, then cut in two or three. Trim and wash the salad onions and cut into 3 cm pieces.
3. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.
   
4. Crumble up the stock cubes in a large saucepan. Boil up the water in a kettle, pour over the stock cubes and stir to dissolve them completely.
5. Set the saucepan on the hob and add the soy sauce and the chilli flakes. Once the liquid is boiling, add the mushrooms, beans and meat. Break up the noodles and drop into the soup.
6. Let simmer for 3 - 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then stir in the lime juice, sugar and onions and remove from the heat and serve.

OK, so I made some changes to the original recipe - dried chillies instead of fresh etc, but no matter how you look at it, it's a glorified way of preparing what is essentially student food. And it's nothing wrong with that - most of the time was spent cleaning and cutting things up. So very suitable for a mid-week dish.

Lundulph liked it and so did I.

Banana-Nutella Muffins

Once again I mysteriously came across an appealing recipe, while browsing for something completely different.

The combination of banana and Nutella is always a winning one, I've previously done - peeled and wrapped in aluminium foil together with generous dollops of Nutella.

So I had great hopes for these and set about to convert the measurements to metric. As I write this, I realise that I used baking powder instead of bicarbonate of soda (listed as "baking soda" in the original recipe). Dang!

Ingredient
Makes 12
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled (about 100 g)
4.75 dl plain flour
1.8 dl granulated sugar
0.75 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tsp salt
3.5 dl very ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
0.6 dl plain yoghurt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
0.6 dl chopped and toasted hazelnuts
12 tsp Nutella

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees for fan assisted) and line a muffin tin with paper cases. Gently melt the butter, removing from the heat before all of it has melted, that way it will cool quicker.
2. Mix together the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the mashed bananas, yoghurt, eggs and vanilla extract.
   
4. Quickly fold in the wet mixture into the dry mixture and also add the hazelnuts.
5. Divide up the batter between the cases, add a tsp of Nutella to each and swirl around with a toothpick. The Nutella must be at room temperature and maybe even warmed up for a few seconds in a microwave, to make swirling easier.
   
6. Bake for about 25 - 35 minutes until the muffins are golden brown and are baked through. Use a toothpick to test, it should come out clean.
   
7. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

As the muffins were baking, they smelt so wonderful, I opened the kitchen door and let the smells spread out through the house. Once they were ready and out of the oven, I noticed that they were heavier than expected, as I moved them from the muffin tin to the cooling rack. And as tempting as it was, I managed to resist trying one, but waited for Lundulph to come home, which was very late.

And then disappointment - the muffins were heavy and didn't feel spongy. They tasted nice, but were very dense, not at all what I expected. Lundulph suggested having them with custard and I think perhaps a few seconds in the microwave might soften them up a bit.

Thus we have 10 more muffins to get through, I've frozen most of them and perhaps I'll give this recipe another try, with bicarbonate of soda and I might change the amounts as well. I realise why there is yoghurt on the ingredients list, it is moist and acidic and activates the bicarbonate, so that it bubbles up and is the reason why the recipe of sponge cake without eggs. works. Oh well, never mind...

Baba ganoush

Recently I've had several Lebanese dishes and have become keen to explore this cuisine further. I've already tried hummus, which seems to be a staple.

Another staple seems to be the aubergine dip baba ganoush. Oddly enough, the one I had in a restaurant seems to be quite different from the recipes I found on the internet - it contained green pepper, red onion and tomato, all very finely diced. The result is that the dip is both creamy from the roasted aubergines and has a fresh crunchiness to it from the green pepper. Thus I decided to try and replicate this.

Ingredients
6 largish aubergines
1 medium sized green pepper
2 large tomatoes
1 medium sized red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp lemon juice
1.5 tbsp tahini paste
salt and pepper to taste
fresh finely cut coriander

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 240 degrees C. Wash the aubergines and trim the green bits around their "handles".
   
   Pierce each aubergine through with a skewer all around, then place on a rack in a pan and let bake in the oven until they go dark and soft, let the skin turn to charcoal even. This will take some 45 minutes - 1 h and the aubergines may need to be turned a couple of times.
   
2. Take out the aubergines and set aside to cool. In the mean time, wash the pepper and tomatoes and peel the onion and garlic. Cut the pepper and tomatoes in half, then remove the stalks. Dice them finely along with the onion. I recommend using a mandolin or an alligator cutter.
   
3. When the aubergines have cooled enough to handle (they will sink in a bit), carefully hold each by its "handle" and peel off the skin, removing any charcoal pieces as far as possible. When all aubergines are peeled, cut off the "handles" and place in a deep large bowl together with the garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper and mash with a blender.
   
4. Add the finely diced vegetables and coriander and stir in well. Let stand in the fridge for a couple of hours, check the seasoning and adjust if needed.

I'd only bought three aubergines and would normally have roasted them in my pepper roaster, however I was curious to see how it would work in the oven. The pepper roaster is faster I think and also creates the charcoaled skins, I wasn't able to achieve this in my oven. Perhaps putting the aubergines under the grill towards the end might have worked better. What is absolutely vital is to pierce the aubergines before the roasting/baking. Very, very important, otherwise they will explode as the internal juices start boiling and the rest of the day will have to be spent cleaning the oven. So pierce! This also goes for the pepper roaster and it's even harder to clean.

I also opted to dice the aubergines, so I didn't achieve the creaminess I was after and I forgot the coriander completely, which probably explains why it didn't taste like the stuff in the restaurant. Possibly some more lemon juice and tahini wouldn't hurt either. However, after resting this dish in the fridge for a couple of hours, it tasted quite nice anyway. And the only fat in it was from the tahini, so rather healthy.

Lundulph and I had another "myskväll" on Friday evening, with sticks of carrot, cucumber and colourful peppers, pita breads, hummus and this baba ganoush. I'd flavoured some of the hummous as before and again we ate quite a bit more than intended. So moreish!

A new spice mixture

While watching the Danish Great Bake Off - Den store Bagedyst, one of the savoury breads was called manaish and had a spice mixture called zaarta, which looked intriguing.

After some googling, I found several synonyms for this, but no clear information on what the mixture contains. Luckily I was able to get hold of some the other day, under the name of za'atar. It's green and has sesame seeds in it and smells really nice.

As it was time to make bread, I decided to try out my new spice mixture. I still haven't worked out a routine for my sourdough starter and am still struggling to reduce the amount, but today I think I may have sussed it.

As usual, I began by feeding the starter. I had just over 300 g of starter into which I added 200 g water and then 150 g flour. A few hours later, it had doubled, so I transferred 200 g of it back to its jar and put the rest in the bowl of the kitchen machine.

I switched it on and started adding flour, a little at a time and when it came together, I checked for stickiness. When it was barely sticky and the gluten was almost fully developed, I manually incorporated about half a decilitre of olive oil and let it rise, a bit too long than I should have, but I was busy making the beef sarma.

Still, I rolled out the dough, brushed with more olive oil, then sprinkled za'atar all over the surface and rolled it up like a Swiss roll. Then placed the roll into the loaf tin and let it proof for another hour before baking it at 240 degrees C for 20 minutes, covering with aluminium foil, reducing to 200 degrees C and baking for a further 30 minutes.

The bread looked really pretty and smelt very nice. I had some toasted with butter. The za'atar mixture tasted a lot milder than I expected. Perhaps I should be even more generous with it, though I thought I'd sprinkled quite a lot on the bread to begin with.

Marinated mushrooms

In my recent tidying up of my recipe collection, I came across a torn off page from one of my Mum's magazines from the Autumn 2009. It has three recipes on mushrooms and one of them was particularly appealing, so the other day I bought a lot of mushrooms and got to work.

The recipe comments that these are good as a side dish with meat or fish, but also on their own as part of a buffé.

Ingredients
850 g baby chestnut and/or button mushrooms
a couple of pinches sea salt flakes
1 dl grapeseed oil
0.5 dl Malay kicap manis (soy sauce)
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds
2 fresh kaffir lime leaves
1 large clove of garlic
1 dl finely chopped coriander
1 tsp dried crushed chillies
freshly milled black pepper

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C and brush the mushrooms clean.
2. Place the mushrooms in a deep pan, sprinkle some salt flakes over them and stir around, then bake in the oven for 30 - 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. The mushrooms need to release some of their liquid and cook through and soften, but not dry out.
   
3. In the mean time, prepare the marinade by mixing together the grapeseed oil, kikap manis and the sesame oil in a large bowl.
4. Toast the sesame seeds for a couple of minutes until they go glossy and start sticking together, then stir into the marinade.
5. Wash the lime leaves and divide each in two and add to the marinade. Peel the garlic and press into the mixture as well.
6. Add the coriander, chillies and pepper and stir through to combine, then let stand until the mushrooms are ready.
   
7. Transfer the mushrooms to the marinade, pour over their liquid as well, then stir through to coat them well. Leave to cool completely, then taste and adjust the salt if necessary.
   
8. The mushrooms are now ready to eat, but can be transferred to a jar and kept in the fridge. The flavours should develop more with time.

The original recipe called for 1 kg of mushrooms, but the ones in the shop had a lot of mud on them and I opted to reduce the amount to save myself some time in cleaning them. I think larger mushrooms can be used, but should be cut into chunks. Visually I think baby mushrooms are better.

I also started wondering what is the difference between a pickle and a marinade and wasn't really able to find a definitive answer. From what I could work out, marinade is a way to tenderise meat (mainly) before cooking, whereas pickling is a method of preserving food.

The above recipe is definitely a marinade, there is not enough sourness to preserve, so I suspect the mushrooms will last about a week.

One big substitution I made was on the soy sauce - the original recipe called for Japanese soy, but I couldn't find it in the supermarket and decided to go for the Indonesian version. I've used ketjap benteng many years ago in a nasi goreng dish and although I don't remember the exact flavour, I do remember it was very nice, so that's my reasoning behind the swap. The kicap manis was a lot thicker than I expected, very much like tomato ketchup (according to Wikipedia the word "ketchup" originates from "kicap"/"ketjap").

Overall the flavours came together very nicely and I should have bought the full kilogram of mushrooms, there was enough marinade for that. The cleverness of this recipe is the baking of the mushrooms before marinating - they are ready to eat after cooling down and have a nicer overall texture. I have had similarly prepared mushrooms in restaurants, but there they had been made with uncooked mushrooms, so require a couple of days at least for the marinade to go through them and soften them up. This is also nice, but requires vinegar. Also, if serving the mushrooms too early, they are still fairly raw inside and it doesn't work for me. I think adding some nice balsamic vinegar to the mixture should lower the pH value and reduce bacterial growth to some extent.

We had some of these lovely mushrooms with our salad yesterday, very yummy. I don't think there is any risk for them remaining too long in the fridge. I might reduce the amount of grapeseed oil a little for next time, though.

Beef sarma

After a few weeks of focusing on baking, I thought it is time to do some cooking. Some time ago, I purchased a large jar of sour cabbage leaves from a Turkish shop in London and with Winter on its way out (fingers crossed!), I thought it would be good to make a hearty Winter dish.


Originally I was planning to make the sarma entirely vegetarian, but as Lundulph needs meat, I decided to make a beef mixture filling. I also thought some iron boost might be good, so I decided to also add some liver. According to Lundulph, "beef" liver is the best one nutritionally. I think he spent some time researching this on the internet last year, while I was in Sweden. It's good for B12 vitamin.Of course there is no such thing as beef liver, but calf liver or ox liver. I opted for the former and wandered to our butcher's. As many times before, they seem to anticipate what I will ask for and had 300 g portions nicely vacuum packed and appealingly presented in the window display.
There was also a bottle of Faustino I from 1994. A precious bottle we'd saved through various house moves, to drink at a special occasion, only to find it corked. As always, I don't like to throw things away, so I put a wine saver on it and pumped out the air and put the bottle in the larder for a cooking opportunity.
Ingredients
0.5 dl grapeseed oil
2 onions
2 - 3 carrots
2 cloves of garlic
130 g calf liver
500 g lean beef mince
150 g pearl barley
7 dl red wine
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried rosemary
1.5 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried dill
2 tsp dried savory
2 tsp dried mint
salt and black pepper to taste
1 tbsp granulated sugar
150 g parboiled girolles
350 g canned sliced button mushrooms
10 - 12 soured cabbage leaves
Bechemel sauce
1 dl grapeseed oil
1 dl plain flour
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp black pepper
0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
5 dl milk
the liquid from the canned mushrooms
the liquid from the sarma
more milk or water if necessary
Method

1. Peel and dice the onions and carrots. Peel the garlic and pre-heat the oil in a large deep frying pan.
2. Add the onion and carrots to the oil and press in the garlic and let fry for a few minutes until they go soft. Stir occasionally.
3. In the mean time, dice the liver as finely as possible, then add to the onions and carrots, followed by the mince. Stir vigorously to prevent lumps.
4. Rinse the pearl barley and once the meat has browned, add it to the pan and stir in, then add the wine and all the herbs.
5. Season with salt and black pepper, but careful with the salt as soured cabbage tends to be quite salty.
6. Stir in the sugar, then cover and let simmer for 30 minutes.
7. Check the filling and taste the pearl barley for readiness. If it looks dry, add some more water and let simmer for a further 15 minutes.
8. Prepare the soured cabbage leaves on a plate. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.
9. Just before taking the filling off the heat, stir in the mushrooms.
10. Take some of the filling and place in the middle of a soured cabbage leaf, then fold the leaf around to make a packet and place it in an oven-proof dish with a lid. Place the packet so the cabbage folds are at the bottom, so that it doesn't unfold.
11. Bake for at least an hour.
12. When the sarma are ready, make the bechemel sauce by heating up the oil in a saucepan.
13. Mix together flour, salt, black pepper and nutmeg, then add the flour and fry with the oil for a few minutes, stirring constantly.
14. Pour in the milk, a little at a time, while continuing to stir. It will lump together and look like a dough, but will get runnier as more liquid is added. Once the initial 5 dl of milk have been added, continue with the mushroom liquid and also carefully pour in the liquid from the sarma.
15. If the sauce still looks thick, add more milk or water to reach the desired consistency.

I don't often use liver and I've only had calf liver once to my knowledge - many years ago when I was maybe 14 and my Gran made me eat it. Lundulph did warn me that it has a stronger flavour than liver from other animals and he was right, it smelt quite strongly of liver while I was dicing it. I had planned to use more than 130 g, but it was very spongy to the touch, hard to cut and I didn't like the smell much - because I was forced to eat it all those years ago. I have similar issues with camomile.
However, the filling turned out rather nice, the liver contributed to the mixture of flavours, rather than overpowering everything. Lundulph was quite pleased with it too.
I actually didn't have enough soured cabbage leaves and used up only about two-thirds of the mixture. I froze the remainder to use as pie filling in the future. And I'm happy to have used up the corked wine. It had started to turn into vinegar a little, but was perfectly fine in the sarma.

Almond biscuits with raspberry jam

The other day we visited Lundulph's parents as we haven't seen them since Christmas and I really wanted to bring them something baked.

I had originally planned to bake bread, but didn't plan ahead and was short on time, so skipped it and went for the lovely almond biscuits with jam instead. This recipe is from the third week of Den Store Bagedyst, the Danish version of The Great British Bake Off.

Ingredients
Makes around 24, depending on size

200 g plain flour
75 g ground almonds/almond flour
50 g caster sugar
0.5 tsp almond extract
150 g unsalted butter at room temperature
icing sugar for dusting
smooth dark coloured jam

Method

1. In a large bowl, blend together the flour, the ground almonds, the sugar and the almond extract.
2. Cut the butter into 1 cm dice and add to the dry mixture, then using only the fingers of one hand, gently incorporate the butter. It is important that the dough is not over-worked.
3. Once the mixture is homogeneous and looks a little like wet sawdust, use the whole hand to bring the dough together to one ball.
   
4. Wrap in cling film or put in a plastic bag and place in the fridge for an hour.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C. Prepare baking paper for the baking sheets.
6. Place a piece of baking paper on the work surface, take half of the dough, form to a flat patty and place on the baking paper. Place a large piece of cling film on top and roll out over the baking sheet.
7. When the dough is about 3 - 4 mm thick, remove the cling film and cut out biscuit shapes of your choice. Make an even number of biscuits and cut out holes in the middle of half of them. Leave at least half a cm between the biscuits.
   
8. Remove all surplus dough around the biscuits, then bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown.
   
9. Repeat until all the dough has been used up.
10. Once a baking tray is done, very carefully remove the biscuits to a wire rack to cool.
11. When all biscuits are baked and cooled down, leave the ones with holes on the wire rack and move the others to one side.
12. Dust the biscuits on the wire rack with icing sugar using a sieve.
    
13. Warm up the jam for 10 - 15 seconds on half power in the microwave oven and stir it around.
14. Place about a tsp of jam on each of the whole biscuits, then carefully spread it around evenly over each biscuit.
15. Very carefully place an iced biscuit over each of the jam biscuits, press very gently in place.

The biscuits are very brittle and really melt in the mouth. This is why it is so important to be very careful when mixing the dough and only using the fingers and very gently squeezing the butter into the dry mixture. If kneading with the whole hand, I think gluten starts developing and makes the end result tough and chewy rather than melt in the mouth.

I made 16 biscuits and had about a quarter of the dough left over. I froze it and will try it out in a couple of weeks. I used a cutter that was about 6 cm diameter and made the holes using a metal cap from a wine bottle. I also rolled the dough to 5 mm, so overall the biscuits were a bit too big and too thick. Because of being so brittle, I think a 4 cm cutter would be better and also roll them slightly thinner too, so that a biscuit can be eaten in one bite.

I also cut them out a bit too close to each other. There is no leavening agent in the dough, but they still swell a little. Also it would be easier to remove the surplus dough. I had to use a toothpick.

I also didn't have any smooth jam, but used some of my raspberry jam, which had quite a lot of pips in it. The original recipe calls for blackcurrant jam ("solbær" in Danish, literally "sun berries"). I think raspberry worked quite nicely, but any dark coloured and tangy jam will do. However, it should definitely be smooth.

I think these are the fiddliest biscuits I've done to date, but they were well worth it and actually they didn't take too long to make. I'm very pleased with the dough and the texture I managed to achieve. Lundulph is still in awe of the angel food cupcakes, so his praise was subdued, but commented that they would be nice with strawberry jam. I'm not sure, but we'll see.