Falafel Attempt Nr 1

Lately I've been feeling that I'm doing the same four recipes over and over again. Lundulph is a patient man and hasn't complained, but I'm sure he'd love something different. So I spotted some of my Waitrose recipe cards sticking out on top of the rest of the cook books, so I took them out and flicked through them. And what luck - one was for Garlic and herb falafels.

Reading through it, the ingredients seemed a bit unorthodox, but the whole thing seemed simple and looked very nice on the photo, so why not. I did make some changes in the cooking method...

Ingredients
Makes 12 large falafels
4 salad onions (140 g)
1 carrot (100 g)
2 x 400 g cans of chickpeas
70 g garlic and herb water biscuits
1 large egg
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 dl sesame seeds (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C and place a baking tray in to warm up.
2. Trim and wash the onions, peel and wash the carrot. Cut the onion as finely as possible and finely grate and then chop the carrot.
3. Drain and rinse the chickpeas.
4. Break up the biscuits in a food processor to fine crumbs, then add the chickpeas and try to process as finely as possible - this will likely require stirring help as there's not enough liquid to allow a smooth processing.
5. Stir in the onions, carrot, egg, paprika, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
6. Divide into 12 parts and roll to roundish patties. Dip into sesame seeds if you like.
7. Heat up a tbsp of the olive oil in a large pan and fry the first six, 2 - 3 minutes on each side, then place on the hot baking tray and finish baking in the oven. Repeat for the remaining six falafels.

First a word on the onions and carrot. The recipe stated "salad onions", but the supermarket used this term for both what I call salad onions:



and for what I normally would call spring onions - i. e. the green ones without big heads. And the recipe called for six as well as a carrot, which means the end result could be wildly different, so I weighed the onions and carrot I used.

As Lundulph is a carnivore, I fried some lovely Turkish garlic sausage to go with the falafels and served with a large lettuce leaf and some cherry tomatoes. The falafels tasted OK, though the texture wasn't quite right - it was too smooth for my liking. And mind you, I followed the instructions in the recipe and had tremendous trouble getting everything processed, it was just too thick. So next time, I'll make sure to chop things as finely as possible, rather than use my tiny food processor.

We also added a little piri-piri sauce, it seems we're in a mood for spicier foods lately and piri-piri is just so tasty. I would have preferred to incorporate this spiciness in the falafel mixture though.

I rolled the falafels in sesame seeds because I was worried they would stick together, however, this isn't necessary. Lundulph thought the sesame flavour dominated entirely. But they looked pretty and combined with the garlic sausage, flavours worked very nicely.

They were nice re-heated as well and I suspect would freeze well too. For my next attempt however, I'll aim for more texture. And I've already found a couple of rather interesting recipes.

Salmon Fillet Baked In Paper

In my book on Bulgarian national cuisine, there is a recipe for feta cheese baked in paper. I've always found it rather intriguing, but never tried it and with Lundulph being anti-cheese, chances are I won't try it out ever.

But it got me thinking - why not bake something else in paper? And so, when I managed to get hold of a lovely and large salmon fillet the other day, I thought it would be the perfect thing to try out. It also turned out to be fairly quick to make, so we ended up with a relatively festive mid-week dinner as a bonus.

Ingredients

250 g waxy potatoes
100 g carrots
100 g French beans
30 g butter
salt and pepper
3 - 4 tbsp piri-piri marinade (shop bought)
400 g skinless salmon fillet
baking paper large enough to wrap the salmon into a parcel

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Place an oven-safe dish inside to heat up.
2. Prepare the sheet of baking paper by spreading half of the piri-piri marinade in the middle.
3. Place the salmon fillet over the marinade and move it around a little, so that the bottom side gets coated, then brush the remaining marinade on the top side.
4. Wrap the paper around the salmon into a tight parcel. If you feel inclined use a second paper to make sure it's securely wrapped. Then place in the middle of the oven and let bake for 30 - 35 minutes.
5. In the mean time, prepare the vegetables. If necessary peel and wash the potatoes, then steam until cooked.
6. Peel and cut the carrots into sticks, trim and wash the French beans. Steam first the carrots, and add the French beans to the steam pot for the last five minutes.
7. Heat up a large frying pan, melt the butter and get it bubbling, then fry off the potatoes, carrots and French beans for a few minutes just to give them a bit of colour, while stirring often. It's easier to do the potatoes separately from the carrots and beans. Season with salt and pepper while sautéing.
8. Transfer the sautéed vegetables to the pre-heated dish and keep warm until the salmon is ready. Keep the remaining butter in the pan for serving.
9. When the salmon is ready, serve immediately with potatoes, carrots and French beans. Drizzle some of the butter over the vegetables for extra flavour.

I think using baking paper rather than metal foil does make a difference in the taste, especially since I suspect the metal may well react with the marinade. A downside perhaps is that baking paper doesn't conduct heat as well as a metal foil would, so a longer baking time is required. I was hoping 20 minutes would be enough, but a careful look inside the salmon parcel revealed that it wasn't and I wrapped it back up and continued baking for another 15 minutes.

We had a fancy and very nice wine with our dinner too,

and the whole thing was quite a success. I particularly liked the French beans, I'd picked them a couple of days earlier from our local Pick-Your-Own. In fact I gobbled up the remaining beans instead of dessert...

Pickled Carrots

The other day, I had a lovely salad consisting of edamame beans, pickled cucumber and carrots and since I've managed to land myself with a whole kilogram of baby carrots with no good idea of what to do with them, I decided it's time to try out a new pickling recipe.

I believe the salad I had was a East Asian type of pickling and so I selected this recipe. It seemed very straight forward.

I originally planned to add some spicing to it, but decided against it, this being the first time I try this out. I had different amounts of course and had to convert to metric. As I was getting prepared, it occurred to me that if I were to cut all carrots the same way, I'd have a kilo of pickled carrots in 3 days' time, so it wouldn't really solve things with all the carrots. So I decided to pick out the smallest ones and keep them whole. Then from the remainder, I quartered some and cut into Julienne strips the rest of them. My thinking was that the Julienne strips would be ready first and we'd manage to eat them by the time the quartered pieces get ready and at the end, the whole baby carrots would be ready.

Ingredients

1 kg peeled baby carrots
4.5 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp salt
3 tbsp granulated sugar
10.5 dl warm water

Method

1. Cut the carrots into desired sizes, pat dry with kitchen paper if damp, then distribute into jars.
   
2. Mix together vinegar, salt, sugar and warm water and stir for about a minute until the dry ingredients have dissolved completely.
   
3. Pour over the carrots, filling the jars to cover everything completely. Close the jars tightly and allow the water to cool down, before placing in the fridge.
4. If the carrots were cut very thinly, they should be ready in 3 - 5 days, the larger pieces would take longer.
5. If the carrots were finely grated, then they could be ready to eat after about an hour.

As this is an experiment, we tried the carrots after one day and after two days as well. On the whole, OK, but not very impressive. The carrots are still crunchy, but not as stiff as when raw. The liquid has made them quite salty, but that's it. I would have liked more flavour. There wasn't too big a difference over the days and since I have three jars of these things, I'll need to come up with a way to add some interest to them.

Update on 18th August: Actually, things have improved - after a week, the carrots which were sliced thinnest were properly ready to eat. Lundulph ate most of the ones I'd served as a side to our salad. They were crunchy and salty and pickled. So I stand corrected and we have two more jars of these lovely things to munch on.

Müsli Recipe Evolved

The other day as I was mixing another batch of müsli, I realised that it has changed quite a bit since I first blogged about it. I've been scribbling changes in my notebook where I first wrote it down, crossing some things out, more scribblings... Some changes were forced due to not being able to find a particular ingredient - like the shredded coconut. Others are things that have recently become available outside London.

So I thought I'd update the blog with the new mixture.

Ingredients
1 pi puffed rice
1 pi cornflakes
1 pi high fibre bran or all bran flakes
1.5 pi porridge oats
130 g sultanas
200 g diced dried apricots
100 g sunflower seeds
75 g sesame seeds
100 g dessicated coconut
75 g dried blueberries
200 g mixed chopped nuts
75 g dried cherries
100 g goji berries
50 g milled flaxseed

I still mix everything together in the same box as before and on the whole it lasts us two weeks. It's a bit sweeter now that there's more fruit in it.

Easy Knäckebröd

The other week, we finally finished the latest batch of crispbread. In fact it was while my Sister Bip was over to visit and we had a cheese evening. Obviously Lundulph stayed in another room. Bip on the other hand was rather surprised at how tasty my crispbreads were.

So it was time to replenish the stock, so that Lundulph has something to munch on, while impatiently waiting for dinner to get ready. And I have two new recipes that I want to try - sent by my Mum from her weekly magazine.

Today I went for "Marinas knäckebröd" from a September 2012 issue, unfortunately the recipe is not on the magazine website any more. The intro on the page is "forget about difficult crispbread bakes, here is an easy version that doesn't even require rolling".

One big change I had to make was to use wheat flour instead of spelt wheat, simply because I didn't have it in the cupboard. Further, I didn't have whole linseed, but used cold milled instead and swapped the rape oil for grapeseed oil. I used the stated full tsp of salt, which was too much for my liking, so I've halved it below.

Ingredients
Makes about 12, depending on size

1 dl wholemeal flour
1 dl white flour
1 dl sunflower seeds
0.5 dl linseeds
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 dl grapeseed oil
2.5 dl hot water

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C and line a baking sheet or two with baking paper. I used two baking sheets of 32x23 cm size.
2. Measure up the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together well.
3. Add the oil and stir it in to form crumbs. Make sure to mix it in well too.
   
4. Now add the hot water and stir quickly to form a sort of porridge with seeds in it.
   
5. Transfer to the baking sheets and using a metal spatula, carefully spread it out as thinly as possible.
   
6. Bake for 15 minutes in the middle of the oven, then take out and carefully cut into the desired shapes.
7. Bake for a further hour or so, until the crispbreads feel dry and have a light golden tinge to them.
8. Remove and transfer to a wire rack to cool down completely, then store in an airtight container.

The amount was enough for one whole of the baking sheets and two-thirds of the second one and was about 0.5 cm thick. The consistency is very like porridge and very sticky, so avoid touching with fingers and I think a metal spatula works better than a plastic one in this situation.

The original instructions state to cut the pieces after 5 minutes of baking, but the mixture was still too wet at this point, which is why I say 15 minutes above. I got a total of 20 pieces, about 5x12 cm. It could be because I'm using a gas oven, I suspect a fan assisted oven would do a better job.

Baking for an hour resulted in a nice smell spreading through the house, but there was still some softness to the crispbreads, so I moved the baking sheet to the bottom shelf of the oven and placed the second baking sheet in the middle. This worked quite well, since the temperature at the bottom of the oven is much lower when there is a baking sheet above to block most of the heat.

As the breads bake, they will shrink a little and some holes might appear where the mixture was spread a bit thinly, but remember there is no raising agent in the mixture, so nothing to make it light and airy inside, therefore they must be very thin in order to dry out during baking.

For the visual side, I think it would look nice to sprinkle some pumpkin and poppy seeds on top and gently push in to make them stick.

Flavour-wise I suggest adding spices like anise seeds, cardamom or caraway to the mixture. Preferably ground, I should think. To make a sweet alternative, I suggest sprinkling some cinnamon and granulated sugar on top. This is a fond memory from a trial combination on sale in Sweden in the 90-s, which I really liked to the point of eating way too many of them and gaining a couple of kilos.

Lundulph and I tried one as soon as it had cooled down - yummy and crunchy.

Rye Sourdough Bread

I've been baking straight white sourdough bread for several months now, the trusty old 1-2-3 recipe and I felt it was time for some variation.

Rye is always nice I think, so I started looking for suitable recipes. I have in my mind that there are other recipes of the type X-Y-Z, which describes the proportions of starter-water-flour, but I wasn't able to find anything during my quick search and most rye bread recipes required slightly different preparations to what I'd already started on. We'd run out of bread, so I'd already fed my starter, when I started looking for a rye recipe, so I couldn't possibly use them, but then I found this on Susan's Wild Yeast Blog, which seemed just right. Here are my amounts, the starter feeding routine is my usual one - I have about 200 g of starter in a jar in the fridge. I feed stir in 200 g water and 200 g flour and leave it until it at least doubles in volume. This time, I fed it in the evening before going to bed. Straight after feeding it, I put 200 g of the starter back into the jar and into the fridge and the rest went into a large yoghurt pot and into a nice warm shelf in the living room. The next morning (some 9 h later), it was more than double the volume.

Ingredients
410 g starter that has been fed
408 g strong white flour
204 g stoneground rye flour
300 g water
2 tsp whole anise seeds
1 tsp vitamin C powder
15 g salt
oat bran for coating the bread tins

Method

1. Mix together the starter, flours, water, anise seeds and vitamin C powder into a dough. It should be fairly soft, but not too sticky.
2. Add the salt towards the end of kneading, a little at a time.
3. Leave to rest for an hour and a half, covered with cling film.
4. Butter two loaf tins ("2 pound" size) and coat with oat bran.
5. Weigh the dough (I got 1338 g) and divide into two.
6. Shape into loaves and place in the loaf tins, sprinkle more oat bran on top and cover with cling film.
7. Place on a warm shelf for 6 - 8 h until it doubles in volume (and fills up the loaf tin).
8. Pre-heat the oven to 240 degrees C and bake for 20 minutes, then place a sheet of aluminium foil over the loaves and turn down the heat to about 200 degrees C and bake for a further 30 minutes.
9. Remove from the oven and the loaf tins and allow to cool down completely on a wire rack.

Well, this turned out to be a rather nice bread indeed, surprisingly light and soft for a rye bread. Lundulph commented that it was "anise seedy", I decided to interpret this as a good thing. I just had a slice with butter as dessert and it was yummy. Lundulph also had some honey, which I suspect would have worked nicely too.

In the evening I made one of my many attempts at omelette, which as usual deteriorated to scrambled eggs with stuff, so I just piled it on top of a slice of the lovely bread and this was our dinner. A friendly neighbour complained that the wild garlic was taking over the back of her garden, so she allowed me to help myself to some leaves and flours, both of which taste lovely and are quite pretty too, so I used some for decoration.

Missed posts

A few weeks back we had our neighbours over for a barbecue. We'd been talking about it for ages, but with the changes in climate in the UK, Spring has been the coldest for some 50 years, not to mention the rain. And so, a date for a barbecue has been difficult to find. But we did it finally.

I got some lovely chicken breasts and lamb leg steaks from our butcher and kicked off two recipes from Ye Olde Recipe Collection - Lamb Steaks with Chick Pea Mash from January 2010 and Yakitori Kebabs from March 2006.

The barbecue went well, even though the grill itself refused to co-operate and some of the dishes didn't work out. But I didn't get a chance to take photos and I completely forgot to blog about it. So here goes.

Lamb Steaks with Chick Pea Mash

Ingredients
Serves 4

600 ml vegetable stock
2 cans (of 400 g each) chick peas
1 tsp ground turmeric
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
40 g fresh flat-leafed parsley
salt and pepper to taste
4 lamb leg steaks of about 150 g each
1 tbsp Belazy Rose Harissa paste

Method

1. Make up the vegetable stock - I used 2 Oxo cubes to 600 ml boiling water - straight into a large deep pan and keep it boiling.
2. Drain the chick peas and add to the stock, along with turmeric and stir in well, then let simmer for 5 - 10 minutes.
3. Drain the stock away and mash the chick peas in a food processor to achieve a coarse texture.
4. Stir in the lemon juice and olive oil.
5. Cut the parsley coarsely and stir in as well, then season and set aside until needed.
6. Trim off fat from the steaks if needed, then rub in the harissa all over and grill them to desired done-ness.
7. I recommend turning the steaks every minute, rather than leaving for longer on each side, this way, the steaks tend to remain juicier.
8. Serve with the chick pea mash.

The lamb leg steaks were really nice, the butcher made them to order and was only able to keep the bone on two of them. The harissa was fairly mild, I would have preferred the meat spicier. But on the whole very tasty. The butcher recommended using rump for steaks - perhaps not as flavourful, but a bit more tender.

The big disappointment was the chick pea mash and partly my fault, I put too much lemon in the mixture, so it was quite over-powering. However, the texture was nice. Just make sure to start with smaller amounts of spices and taste and add to reach a good balance. I also made the mash a day in advance.

Yakitori kebabs

Ingredients
Serves 4

400 - 500 g chicken breasts
4 tbsp Japanese Soya Sauce
2 tbsp Yutaka Japanese Mirin
1 tbsp honey
2.5 cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 large clove of garlic, peeled and pressed

Method

1. Trim the chicken breasts and cut into thin strips, about 1.5 cm thick.
2. Place the chicken strips in a double plastic bag, then add the remaining ingredients to the bag.
3. Tie each of the bags separately, try to squeeze out most of the air.
5. Toss around the bags to coat the chicken with the marinade, then leave in the fridge overnight
6. When ready to grill, either skewer the strips onto bamboo skewers or simply cook in a barbecue wok for a few minutes.

I ended up marinating these for over 24 h and Lundulph who was managing the barbecue itself over-cooked them as the temperature was too high and the skewers wouldn't play along, so he transferred to the barbecue wok and blackened everything to make sure we wouldn't eat raw chicken.

What we ended up with was fairly similar to the shredded duck available at Chinese restaurants and take-aways in the UK. The marinade was rather good. I didn't know what Mirin is, so I can tell you now - it's white wine. I guess made on rise or such. It tasted funny, so definitely cooking ingredient rather than accompaniment, but perhaps it was the brand that was at fault here and I'm not an expert, far from it.

But the chicken was really nice and I'd definitely make it again.

I also decided to make kyopoolu, but again due to the difficulties in working the barbecue in the windy weather, the aubergines didn't cook properly and the goo I ended up with released loads of liquid and refused to keep together even after removing loads of the stuff. Obviously our dear neighbours were very nice about it, but it was horrendous and this is the first time I've truly failed at this simple dish.

I ended up making a second batch from frozen stock (made in the pepper roaster!) just to assure myself that I've not lost it all together and I've just today bought some lovely big aubergines and peppers and will try to make some more tomorrow and also take some to the neighbours so they get to taste the real thing.

Coconut Angel Food Cake

After my initial success with angel food cupcakes, I decided to try my hand at a large angel food cake.

This was my second bake for Father's Day and I found this recipe which had a lovely looking picture.

However I wanted to ice the cake and wondered if there is such a thing as Nutella ganache. Well, it turns out there is, I picked this recipe.

Ingredients

Sponge
170 g plain flour
150 g caster sugar
3 dl egg whites, from about 9 medium eggs
0.25 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp lemon juice
30 g unsweetened dessicated coconut
fresh coconut shavings for decoration

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C (gas mark 3).
2. In a bowl, sift together the flour and half of the sugar.
3. Beat the egg whites with the salt with an electric whisk until they go frothy.
4. Add the cream of tartar and beat to the soft peaks stage.
5. Add the remaining half of the sugar slowly, 1 tbsp at a time, and keep beating until stiff peaks stage.
6. Finally beat in the vanilla extract and lemon juice.
7. Carefully fold in the flour mixture followed by the dessicated coconut.
8. Pour the batter into a Springform bundt cake tin and level the top surface as much as possible.
9. Bake for about 35 minutes until the top has browned lightly and the sponge springs back when pressed.
10. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the Springform. Make the Nutella ganache in the mean time.
11. Run a knife around the outer edge of the cake tin and remove the sides. Carefully prise off the bottom part of the cake tin.
    
12. Select the smoother side of the cake to be the top and place on a plate.
    

Nutella Ganache

1.8 dl Nutella (most of a 400 g jar)
1.2 dl double cream
1 tsp fleur de sel
1 tbsp brandy or rum (optional)

Method

1. Place the Nutella in a large bowl.
2. Heat up the cream in a saucepan and bring just to the boil.
3. Remove the cream from the heat and pour over the Nutella.
4. Stir together until smooth, then add the salt and the booze.
   
5. Cover the surface with cling film to prevent skin forming on the surface and allow to cool completely.
6. Once cooled down, cover the cake with a thin layer and decorate with fresh coconut shavings. Note that the ganache doesn't go solid, so if too much is used, it will run down the sides of the cake.
7. Keep the decorated cake refrigerated.

The crucial thing with angel food cakes is that a Springform bundt cake tin must always be used, due to the delicateness of the sponge - because there is no fat, there is very little to hold up the sponge structure, so it must have the cake tin with a hole in the middle. It is also very important not to grease the cake tin, this will help the sponge rise better.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find ready made coconut shavings and I didn't have possibility to crack open a coconut. The best I could find was fresh chunks of coconut, which I was able to slice into 1 - 2 mm thick slivers, so I knew I wouldn't be able to decorate the cake very nicely. In fact some of the pieces kept sliding down the sides.

As it turned out, this recipe wasn't as good as the previous one. When we cut the cake, it was a lot sturdier, though the texture was still quite light. Possibly I over-baked it a bit. Perhaps it would be better for cupcakes, but not as a big cake.

The Nutella ganache was lovely. I skipped the booze this time, it seems it wasn't needed - the family thought there was some in it anyway. I was a bit reluctant about the fleur de sel,however, it gave a nice salty chocolate/caramel kind of aspect to the ganache. I used about half of the above amount, the rest is frozen for future use. I wonder if it would be nice fold in whipped cream and make into ice cream...

Raspberry Cupcakes

For Father's Day last week, I wanted to make a cake to have after lunch and some muffins to have with our afternoon tea. During my research, I came across a conceptually very interesting blog - Bake It With Booze. It had a very tasty sounding recipe for Raspberry Liqueur Cupcakes, which I decided to try out. As it turned out, this recpie was inspired by this one. However, there were no instructions on how to do the frosting, so I chose the one listed for the Strawberry Daiquiri Cake, but I swapped strawberries for raspberries.

As always there were some adjustments and measurement conversions, so here is the recipe in its entirety. I made the raspberry liqueur purée on the evening before.

Raspberry liqueur purée

Ingredients
345 g fresh strawberries
115 g granulated sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp raspberry liqueur, like Chambord

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a saucepan, stir through and bring to the boil.
   
2. Simmer for 8 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow to cool down.
3. Puree in a blender until smooth, then sieve through to remove the pips.
   
4. Save 1.2 dl of the purée for the muffin batter and 2 tbsp for the icing, the rest can be frozen in an ice cube tray.

Raspberry Muffins

Ingredients
5.5 dl plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
0.75 tsp salt
3.5 dl granulated sugar
1.2 dl grapeseed oil
2 medium eggs
2.4 dl semi-skimmed milk
1.2 dl raspberry liqueur purée
2 tsp freeze dried raspberry pieces

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C (gas mark 3) and line 2 x 12 muffin tins with paper cases.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl, then stir together to make sure they are well mixed.
3. Add the grapeseed oil and stir in to form fine crumbs using your hand.
   
4. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk together with an electric whisk until a fairly runny batter forms.
   
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases, filling about three-quarters.
   
6. Bake one tin at a time for about 20 - 25 minutes until baked through. Don't open the oven door during baking.
7. Let the muffins cool a little, then remove from the tins and onto a wire rack and let cool completely.
   

Raspberry Icing
Ingredients
250 g unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tbsp raspberry liqueur purée
2 tbsp raspberry liqueur, like Chambord
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla extract
10 dl icing sugar
light corn syrup in 1 tbsp increments

Method

1. Place the butter in a deep dish and cream it with an electric whisk for some 30 seconds.
2. Add in the liquids and continue to whisk to form an emulsion.
3. Slowly incorporate the icing sugar.
4. If the mixture feels too stiff after all the sugar has been incorporated, whisk in corn syrup, a tbsp at a time until the mixture is soft enough for piping.
5. Once all the muffins have cooled completely, pipe using a star shaped nozzle to form roses.
   

So, these were great fun to make and I did like the raspberry liqueur very much. It was actually quite thin, more like wine, rather than thick as liqueur. Besides, the bottle was ever so cute - tiny tiny thing, 200 ml only.

I cheated a bit and skipped the sieving of the raspberry liqueur purée and although it posed no problem in the muffin batter, it turned out to be quite a problem during piping of the icing. The pips kept getting stuck in the nozzle, so the piping went a little funny here and there. But on the whole, I'm very proud, I'm beginning to get better at it and some of the roses turned out quite nice. I sprinkled more freeze dried raspberry pieces on top.

I also got a chance to try out my newest gizmo - a cupcake courier. I've spent some time researching on boxes for cupcakes, nothing that seemed remotely useful for transporting the cupcakes. I wanted something that would keep things stable in a car... Then I spotted precisely what I had in mind, at a cup cake stand at a food market. So I was cheeky enough to ask about the boxes and the ladies were very kind and told me the brand.


The box has three racks, each taking 12 muffins.

Very sturdy indeed, no cupcakes were harmed during transportation to my parents-in-law.

Now for the taste test - the muffins were very moist, the texture was almost like steamed suet pudding, but a bit lighter. They were also quite sweet and strongly raspberry flavoured. I found this rather nice, but I suspect not everyone might think the same way. The icing was nice and I really regret not sieving away the raspberry pips.

As for the amounts of icing, they do indeed seem dauntingly large and indeed there was some left over. The batter resulted in 21 muffins and I think I over-filled them a bit and had to trim them. The left-over icing is now happily frozen together with the raspberry liqueur purée. Interestingly enough, the purée hasn't frozen solid, so has had to stay in the ice cube tray. This is a bit annoying as it's taking up space in the freezer. If I repeat these, I'll need to reduce the amounts of liquid I use in the batter and make it stiffer.

"Blødende" chokoladedessert

A couple of months back I purchased a set of stainless steel food rings and I've been looking for a reason and recipe to try them out.

Then I remembered that I watched a Danish bakery show last year and I'd saved a rather appealing recipe for chocolate fondant. They called it "bleeding" chocolate dessert, thus the title of this post.

Besides it was time to add another year to my count, so a perfect opportunity to try make this since I decided not to make a cake this year.

Ingredients
6 portions
60 g salted butter
60 g dark chocolate (~65%)
50 g icing sugar
50 g plain flour
0.5 tsp baking powder
2 medium eggs
25 g toasted, chopped hazelnuts
50 g Viennese nougat divided into 6 pieces
grapeseed oil for greasing the food rings
icing sugar for sprinkling

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Chop the chocolate into small, equal sized pieces and melt together with the butter in a bain marie very carefully. Only enough to melt, but not to heat up.
3. In a bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder
4. In another, larger bowl, whisk together the eggs and icing sugar until white and fluffy.
5. Sift in the flour mixture into the egg/sugar mixture, followed by the hazelnuts and the melted chocolate/butter mixture and fold together carefully until the resulting batter is homogeneous.
   
   
6. Line a baking tray with baking paper and brush with grapeseed oil. Brush also 6 food rings (5 cm diameter, 6 cm high) and place on the baking paper.
   
   
7. Distribute the batter between the food rings, they should fill up to about three quarters, then gently push in a piece of Viennese nougat into each, so that it's hidden.
8. Bake the cakes for 6 - 7 minutes, take out from the oven and carefully push the cakes out of the food rings and onto the serving plates and sprinkle with icing sugar.
   
   

Sadly I ended up with rather light and fluffy muffin-like cakes instead:

Now there is a very simple reason for this - my food rings are 7 cm diameter and 7 cm high. This meant the batter wasn't enough. I used 4 rings and still the batter barely came up to the middle of them. The pieces of Viennese nougat were big and wouldn't hide very well inside the batter either.

I also baked for a bit longer, because the cakes took ages to rise and so they over-baked. However they were very tasty. Next time I'll get food rings of the right size.

Regular readers (if there are any) will of course know that I have a preference for unsalted butter. Also on this occasion I used it and added a pinch of salt. Not sure if it made any difference.

Another very appealing thing with this recipe is that the fondants can be frozen immediately after the batter has been poured into the food rings. As it was just me and Lundulph, I baked two of the fondants and froze two. I put a piece of baking paper at the bottom of an old ice cream box and placed two of the rings inside, before pouring in the batter. I then covered the whole thing with cling film, since the food rings were taller than the box, and into the freezer they went. The frozen fondants are baked in a pre-heated oven, straight from the freezer and for 3 minutes longer than when from room temperature. This means they can be prepared well in advance of a dinner party or if someone comes to visit unexpectedly.

Instead of the recommended home made vanilla parfait with pineapple and basil sauce, I just served with shop bought vanilla ice cream, which was rather lovely too.

Scones!

Yes, I finally got round to making scones! After all these years in the UK and so many cream teas around the country, I finally found a recipe that was so appealing that I had no excuse to ignore it.

Oddly enough it is from the UK version of Metro. And I mean oddly simply because I don't read this newspaper, but I found it on the sofa at my in-laws' the other week and flicked through it briefly and spotted a full page photo and the associated recipe.

I mean it has yoghurt, it has cherries and it has white chocolate in it - three of my favourites.

Thus yesterday I set to work. Rather late in the afternoon, after making bread and a chicken curry, but I hadn't cooked for a long time. Besides, Lundulph asked me to get some posh soups for the days when it's not salad days and the days when I'm not cooking. I felt ashamed, so took priority above the other things. However, neither the bread, nor the curry are anything to report on.

Ingredients
450 g self-raising flour
2 ml salt
4 level tsp baking powder
100 g chilled butter
50 g caster sugar
150 g dried cherries
80 g white chocolate
2 medium eggs
100 g natural yoghurt
100 ml full fat milk
granulated sugar

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C and line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper.
2. Mix or sift together flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl and stir together to mix well.
3. Dice the butter as finely as possible and add to the flour mixture.
4. Using the tips of your fingers carefully rub together the butter and flour until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
5. Add the caster sugar to the mixture. Cut the cherries in half and add to the mixture. Dice the chocolate into small chunks and add to the mixture. Then stir in to distribute them as evenly as possible.
6. Break the two eggs into a jug, add the yoghurt and stir together, then top up with the milk until you get 300 ml of liquid.
7. Save a table spoon of the liquid and pour the rest into the dry mixture and stir together to a fairly soft and sticky dough. Then take out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and fold together a few times to make it come together. Careful not to over-work.
8. Flatten out or roll out to about 2 cm thickness. Then using a round cutter, cut out the scones and place onto the baking sheets. Make sure to cut by pushing the cutter straight down, do not twist because this will prevent the scones from rising properly during baking.
9. Brush the scones lightly with the saved liquid and sprinkle a little granulated sugar on top, then bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.
10. Remove and let cool completely on a wire rack.
11. Serve preferably on the same day or freeze.

Now I've written down the recipe above and with corrections, because the one in the newspaper was incorrect. It had too much liquid and I ended up adding quite a bit of flour to turn it into something remotely like a dough. It was so sticky, I didn't worry at all that I might over-work it.

I'd also bought full fat yoghurt, but mysteriously forgot about it and used low-fat instead, which was on the watery side too, so that probably didn't help either. As for the self-raising flour, I've always viewed it with deep mistrust. I've not seen it in Sweden and to be honest I don't see the point, it's not difficult at all to add baking powder or bicarbonate of soda or whatever else as needed to regular plain flour and most recipes I've seen that call for self-raising flour also invariably state that more baking powder needs to be added. But I thought I'd give it a go. Next time, I won't bother, according to Nigella's website, 2 tsp baking powder to 150 g plain flour is the corresponding to 150 g self-raising flour.

And the recommended flattening of the dough to 3 cm thickness seemed a bit extreme to me, I rolled out to 2 cm and of course I didn't have a 7 cm cutter, but 6.x something. This all meant that I ended up with 17 lovely scones and one dough ball the size of a walnut.

For once the baking time was correct - 15 minutes was just right and the beauties rose wonderfully and the sugar on top caramelised a little and Lundulph and I had some with clotted cream and cherry jam and it was heaven!

I froze most of the scones, but kept a few in a box for the following days - a whizz in the microwave for 30 seconds at full power makes two scones like freshly baked.

I'm very pleased and Lundulph is struggling to resist having a second one after the first.

Back Forest Butterfly Cakes

I've managed to hold off my baking for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't keep it up any longer. The following recipe had taken my fancy and I just had to give it a try.

I'd only read through the ingredients list before going shopping and had already decided to also add some Kirsch to it, I think it would work ever so nice with the Black Forest theme. Certainly chef Rachel Allen is generous with it in her creations.

However our supermarket didn't carry Kirsch, in fact nothing even remotely like it, but I spotted a group of "cherry brandy liqueur" bottles trying to pass themselves off as alco-pops, so I grabbed one of them, hoping that it would work anyway.

Of course, adding liquid to a sponge mixture means that the dry ingredients need to be increased or the consistency will be wrong. OK, I decided to increase the flour. My initial thought had been to add the Kirsch to the icing, but Lundulph pointed out that this would limit when they could be eaten... so the booze would have to go into the sponge itself.

At this point I read through the instructions and also realised that it is a heavily branded recipe. But no way I'll go and buy things I already have at home, just because they aren't the right brand! What was a bit disturbing was that everything should be mixed together in one go - normally it's the sugar and butter first or sugar and eggs first, then flour and baking powder to be sifted and mixed together well... My gut feeling was right, I should have done things more traditionally, however mixing everything in one go worked a lot better than I expected.

Ingredients
Makes 12

150 g caster sugar
150 g unsalted butter at room temperature
150 g plain flour
25 g cocoa powder
1 tbsp baking powder
3 medium eggs at room temperature
3 tbsp cherry brandy liqueur
1 tsp vanilla extract
200 g ready-made chocolate flavoured icing
red glacé cherries
edible silver shimmer spray

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (gas mark 4). Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Place the caster sugar and butter in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, then stir together to mix well and add to the sugar and butter.
3. Add the eggs, liqueur and vanilla extract, then whisk with an electric whisk until smooth and fluffy.
4. Distribute the batter between the muffin cases, they should be about two-thirds full so as to rise and form domes during baking.
5. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until they are ready (test with a toothpick - it should come out clean), then remove from the oven and onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely.
6. Using a serrated knife carefully cut off a lid from each muffin, then cut the lids in two.
7. Pipe some of the icing on the cut surfaces of the muffins, then carefully push in the two dome halves to form butterfly wings.
   
8. Place a glacé cherry in the middle and finish with lightly spraying with shimmer spray - careful not to over-do it.

The instructions did say to make sure to fill the cases enough so that domes form and sadly I got over-excited to the point that I only got 11 muffins. And I was scientific about it - weighing the batter and dividing by 12, but mysteriously it didn't quite work out. 56 g of batter per case resulted in this:



No more than 50 g next time in each muffin case, I think.

Spread out muffins meant the domes I cut out were too big, but this was easier to sort out, I just cut out a strip in the middle of each dome:

I only decorated two yesterday and thought I'd decorate the others on a per need basis. As it turned out, when I opened the lid of the cake box a moment ago, the muffin surfaces had gone a bit soggy and it was barely possible to make the butterfly tops. So these should be done on the day only.

The silver shimmer spray was quite cool, it made a huge difference visually - sadly I wasn't able to capture it well on camera:

But the best thing was the cherry brandy liqueur. I did have a little sip before adding some to the muffin batter and it was delish! And it works really nicely in the muffins too. Though the ready made icing was quite over-powering and sweet, I piped too much yesterday and the flavour of the muffins was lost, however in my second attempt, I was more measured and the lovely cherry flavour came through. I'll add the cherry liqueur to the icing next time and make it myself, so it's not so sweet.

Inspired by Soto Maior

While I was getting salmon fillets for our lovely dinner the other day, I also spotted some very nice looking rainbow trout.

My plan was to do it en croute with wild mushrooms, but I decided to look through my recipe collection for inspiration and a good thing too, I found it in a booklet advert for some brand of cooking oil from 1993. The original recipe is for zander à la Soto Maior, but it calls for deep frying it, so I decided to just use the marinating part. The recipe said minimum 2 h of marinating, another recipe stated at least 4, so I decided to let the fish marinate overnight.

Ingredients

150 g finely chopped shallots
2 finely sliced lemons, pips removed
600 g rainbow trout fillets
2.5 dl grapeseed oil
500 g piece of puff pastry
a handful of coarsely cut flat leaf parsley
1 egg yolk
3 dl single cream
4 dl parboiled girolles
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Prepare the shallots and the lemons, then remove the skin from the trout fillets and check for any bones. Remove these with tweezers. Cut the fillets into 4 or even 6 pieces.
2. Place a third of the shallots at the bottom of a glass dish, then place some of the fish and some of the lemon slices. Repeat the layering, finishing with a layer of lemons.
3. Pour over the grapeseed oil (actually any flavourless cooking oil will do). Cover with cling film and put in the fridge.
4. When ready to complete the dish, pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C (gas mark 7). Also place a thick-bottomed baking sheet upside-down in the oven to heat up as well.
5. Roll out the pastry to about 0.5 cm thickness and cut in two, one piece a little larger than the other.
6. Take the pieces of fish out from the marinade and pat dry with kitchen towels, it's OK if some of the shallot pieces remain on them.
   
7. Arrange them on the smaller piece of puff pastry, leaving about a cm around the edge clear. Sprinkle the parsley over the fish.
8. Brush the clear edge with a little egg yolk, then place the larger piece of puff pastry on top and gently press around the edges to make it stick. Use the remainder of the yolk to brush on the top of the puff pastry. Make a few holes to allow steam to come out.
   
9. Bake until the puff pastry has risen well and turned a nice dark golden brown.
   

Soto Maior or vicount António de Soto Maior da Cunha was the Portugese ambassador to Sweden starting in 1856, who remained in Sweden until his death in 1894. According to the Swedish wikipedia, he was a very colourful personality, who was also very interested in food and the recipe for zander à la Soto Maior is part of his legacy.

A quick google search showed some variations of the original dish, but the key parts - zander, marinade, deep fried and accompanied by mushrooms stewed in cream are all there.

After marinating the fish overnight, some of the pieces had gone pale pink and looked a little like gravad lax. Actually I only had just under half of the amount, so we ended up with a rather thin pie. Also, I didn't let it bake for long enough, so the bottom puff pastry was undercooked and soggy. Perhaps I should have rolled it even thinner, but as it was, I ended up with quite a lot to spare. I wrapped it tightly in cling film and put back in the fridge, hopefully I'll get an idea what to do with it over the next couple of days.

Lundulph really liked this one and I agree, it was indeed tasty, though I think the onions were a bit over-powering, I'll reduce them for next time, but I'm quite pleased with the end result.

Pan-fried Salmon

Recently I'd started having a hankering for pan-fried salmon. No idea where this came from, especially since I'm not a fan of fish on the whole, yet there it was and I decided to act on it.

I was hoping to get some Jersey Royal potatoes, but sadly there weren't any, Spring has been late this year. But I picked up a small bag of new baby potatoes along with the two salmon fillets and a jar of Hollandaise sauce. It's a pity that our supermarkets don't do fresh Hollandaise, it's so much nicer than the stuff in the jars. I should probably try and make some myself.

As it also happened, Lundulph had worked late and wasn't home yet, so I set the potatoes to steam, while I laid the table.

Half-way through cooking, I heated up about 50 g of butter in a large non-stick pan, rinsed the fillets and placed them to fry, skin side down.

I grated some lemon zest on top and sprinkled some tarragon leaves. After about 7 minutes, I turned the steaks over and let them fry for a further 5 minutes. Just to be on the safe side, I fried them for a couple of minutes on the two remaining sides as well.

For the plating I peeled some cucumber and sliced it very thinly, then drizzled balsamic vinegar over it. Once I'd plated the salmon, I drizzled the butter from the pan over it. I believe it's called beurre noisette and it's tasty.

On the whole, I thought it was a lovely and quick dinner to make. Lundulph was more reserved in his praise.