Roquefort, chicory and Italian ham quiche

Quiche wasn't my first love. It took many, many years for me to like the taste of eggs, (bacon) and cheese in combination with the pastry. I don't know why this was. I think it might be because of a bad memory to this combination of tastes which I kept on recalling whenever the aroma came to me, or just an unhappy coincidence. 

Anyway, I recovered from this strange ailment and started really liking all sorts of quiches ... on a few conditions. I have to say I'm still a little picky: I dislike puff pastry, so any quiche made with it doesn't get my full consent, and no bacon for me (I substitute it with all sorts of ham: Serrano, Ganda, cooked, ...).
The thing is that a quiche, to be good for me, should contain at least some vegetables too. I'm totally hooked to greens, from fruits through all sorts of vegetables. A day without them isn't a good one!

This one I'm making combines the sharp and salty taste of the cheese and ham with the bitter chicory and the mild cheese and eggs. And the rest of my veggies come alongside it to make it all the better ^^

Ingredients for 3-4:
- 1 roll of pastry (pick any kind you like, it's up to you whether it's more puffy or crumbly in texture)
- 3 chicories
- 100 grams roquefort
- 3 eggs
- 150 ml milk
- 100 grams Italian ham
- black pepper to taste
- handful of cut up chives
- extra cheese if you want

How to:
Steam or fry the chicory until ready. Make sure it's as dry as possible. When baking, the fluid in the chicory will come out and make the whole quiche wet so that it won't set. If needed, squeeze the excess liquid out.
Unroll the pastry (or make you own pastry) and put it in a with non-stick paper lined round baking tin. Make little holes in the pastry with a fork.
Slice the chicory and the ham, break the roquefort into small pieces and scatter all of these onto the pastry. 

Beat 2 eggs and the white of the third a little, pour in the milk and mix. Grind some black pepper into this mixture and mix in the chives. Don't add any salt because the cheese and the ham are more than salty enough.
Pour the milk-egg mixture onto the rest of the ingredients of the quiche.
If you like extra cheese, you can top this quiche with gruyère, emmental or another cheese you like.
Brush the pastry with the egg yolk that remained. 
Bake in a preheated oven of 180°C until the substance has set and gotten a golden brown colour. Also put on the heat on the underside of the oven so that the pastry gets baked.

I serve this with a salad which I've pimped with some fried bacon (for mum and dad) and some apple (for me).

Ingredients for the potato-bacon salad (for 2-3):
- 100 grams salty bacon pieces
- 6 small potatoes
- black pepper
- some rosemary
- tablespoon of raisins
- lettuce
- cucumber, tomato, ... or any vegetable you like
- 2 eggs
- handful of pinenuts
- neutral oil for frying

How to:
Soak the raisins in a little water.
Heat a skillet with a little bit of oil. Put in the bitezsize-cut potatoes, the bacon pieces, ground black pepper to taste and the rosemary. 
Fry gently on medium heat so that the potatoes are ready in the end but the bacon hasn't blackened. 
Brown the pine nuts by putting them on a fire shortly while stirring continuously. They start giving off a fantastic aroma once they've browned enough. 
Boil the eggs 10 minutes and peel the shell off. Cut them in quarters.
Cut the vegetables and dress them onto the plates.
Drain the raisins, scatter them over the vegetables. Put the potato-bacon mix and the pine nuts onto the salad and serve the boiled egg alongside it.

Nothing remained of both the quiche and the salad!

Bon appétit!

Apple pancakes, Ijeoma style

This afternoon I'm away 'till after dinner. So if I wanted some warm food at home, I had to take care of it by myself. For some reason, I had a huge craving for pancakes*. 

* In Belgium, we usually mean crêpes when we say pancakes. 
They are thin, larger and less fluffy than the American ones.

It was lunchtime, and I started baking, and I shared the dough that I made for at least 8 pancakes with my mum and grandmother (who came in at just the right time ^^).

As there were these good apples, I made apple pancakes. And I added some cinnamon powder to the dough to match the flavour of the apple. 

Ingredients for 8 large apple pancakes:
- 200 grams flour
- 500 ml milk
- pinch of salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
- 2 or 3 large apples
- butter
- icing sugar
- blueberry jam

How to:
Make the dough for the pancakes by putting the flour and the salt in a bowl. Mix these well.
Then add half of the milk and an egg. Stir carefully so that all the flour gets wet. This makes lumbs less likely. 
Add the rest of the milk and the second egg. Keep stirring until the dough is as smooth as possible. 
Mix the cinnamon powder to the dough.
Peel the apples and slice them thinly. 
Heat a low-rimmed skillet and add some butter to it.
Bake the sliced apple pieces (enough for one pancake, not all of them at once!) until just tender.

Pour the pancake dough onto the apples in the skillet. Now you should wait until the downside has browned and dried enough before you turn the pancake upside down.

When the pancake is ready, put it on a plate and serve with dollops of blueberry jam and lots of icing sugar.

This is such an easy thing to make, and even though it costs next to nothing to prepare it, it can compete with any pastry!

Smakelijk!

Wholesome vanilla-chocolate buns

Remember my post on my birthday party? The one for which I baked 7 different kinds of bread? Well, it wasn't fully to my my sister's consent. The reason for this was that there was nowhere a chocolate bread to be found ...

She's a chocolate addict. Not so much as in her childhood, during which she couldn't take her hands of anything containing chocolate (even though she was allergic to the thing!), but still enough to be disappointed about having to eat all sorts of bread without that specific ingredient. 

To make things up with her I decided this morning to bake chocolate buns for her. I woke up as early as 5 a.m. this morning, for I don't know what reason. So as I knew the others wouldn't get up for at least 3 hours, I had enough time to spend some time in the kitchen making the buns.

I'd just made up my mind about this when I found out that the plain flour was all finished. But there are always solutions to these kind of problems: a combination of whole wheat flour and vanilla flour would do.

Ingredients for 4 buns:
- 70 grams whole wheat flour
- 50 grams vanilla flour (custard powder)
- 1 large tablespoon of vanilla sugar
- 3,5 grams instant yeast
- 40 grams lukewarm milk
- 25 grams butter
- 1 egg
- 100 grams chopped plain chocolate
- 1 egg yolk
- powdered sugar for serving (optional)

How to:
Mix the milk, egg and the yeast. Mix in another bowl the flour, the custard powder, the sugar and the salt. Mix both mixtures with eachother and knead the butter in. Knead at least 5-10 minutes so that the dough comes together nicely.
Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes.
Knead again and add the chopped chocolate now.
Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
Knead again and divide it in 4 pieces. Shape them whatever way you like.
Let the dough rest for 45 minutes. Spread some egg yolk onto it so that it will get nice and shiny in the oven.
Bake the buns for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 190°C. Raise the temperature to 210°C and bake for another 10 minutes.
Take out of the oven and let cool. 
Serve with some powdered sugar on top.

At least my sister can't blame me for not thinking about her this morning! 

Have a nice meal! :)

P.S.: they're nice but to be eaten in small amounts. That's because the whole wheat flour doesn't rise as easily as white flour ;)

Chocolate chip cookies with a twist

It's good outside so I decided to take my book out in the garden to read it there. I didn't think it would get that hot in the sun, though. I really had to get inside before getting a sunburn. But what to do when you have time off and you can't do what you had in mind? Right: you get creative in the kitchen :)

Creative to do what I wanted to do (baking chocolate chip cookies) without the necessary ingredients (no vanilla extract, no plain chocolate, ...). Substitutions would have to do.

Ingredients for 8 large cookies:
- 105 grams butter
- 120 grams white chocolate with rice crispies
- 50 grams milk chocolate with hazelnuts (like the one from Côte d'Or)
- 60 grams white sugar
- 1 egg
- 160 grams flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

How to:
In a small pot, melt the butter and the white chocolate. Take off the fire once they've combined and add the sugar and the egg. 
Then put the flour and the baking powder in. Mix well.
When your dough is cooled off, you can throw in the hazelnut chocolate you've cut or broken into small pieces. Stir again so that the chunks are all over the dough.
Line a baking tray with some non-stick paper and make 8 large heaps of dough, evenly spread out over the tray.
Put in a 230°C preheated oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes.
The cookies are still gooey when ready. They set and get crispy when cooled off completely.

My parents' found them delicious. My mum really liked the nutty taste. She thinksI used the real nuts ;) My dad didn't say anything but just ate 2 large ones in about five minutes time!

my sister and one of the cookies ...

Birthday party!

Friday I turned 22 years old. Yesterday, the 5th of August, we celebrated. I invited quite some people but I didn't think everyone would be able to come. 35 people came and with the ambition to prepare all the food by myself, it was the largest party I organised yet.

Originally - that is before I knew that many people could come - I wanted to do a Middle and South American night. I looked up recipes from all over the continent, from Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, ... But as we didn't have pots large enough for the crowd, I switched plans for something less complicated. 

I was to make a buffet of different kinds of bread and side dishes to go along with them. 
To serve with the coffee, I made biscuits and as dessert I made fresh pineapple and chocolate ice cream.
The ice cream was a total experiment: I never made it and we don't own an ice machine. When I told my uncle I made my own ice cream he laughed and said 'Yeah, that won't be much of a success ...!', but when he tasted it he was delighted. Haha! 

Top-down, left to right: buttermilk-poppyseed bread, walnut bread,
multigrain bread, Colombian torta de choclo, raisin bread and saffron bread

Loved making all of it, but it took a full day and a half to do so.

Especially the saffron bread was liked by everyone. Therefore I put the recipe on the blog.

Ingredients for a large saffron bread:
- 700 grams white flour
- 450 ml lukewarm milk
- 1 gram saffron powder
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 7 grams instant yeast
- 25 grams butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk

How to:
Put all the flour, the salt and the sugar in a large bowl. Mix well so that the salt and sugar have been taken up completely. Make a hole in the heap of flour and place small chunks of butter around the hole. Pour in the yeast, milk and egg in the hole. 
Now start kneading with your hands. It's quite a sticky kind of dough, but add a little more flour if you're unable to shape the dough. 
Put the ball of dough aside in a warm enough place for at least 1,5 hour. Cover the bowl with a clean towel to prevent it getting in touch with too much cold air.
Knead the dough again for a couple of minutes. Now you can shape the dough to your liking. I made a round bread yesterday, but any shape is possible (but make sure it's shape is not too uneven so that it can bake properly without getting burned a a side while the other side is still raw!).
Set aside for another 1,5 hour. In the meanwhile you can preheat the oven at 230°C. 
Take the egg yolk and spread it on the risen bread with a brush. The yolk will make your bread look nice and shiny.
Put in the oven for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 200°C and bake for another 25-30 minutes. The bread is ready when it's golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

It's a bread that has a hint of sweetness so it's delicious with both salty things like cheese as well as with sweet jams, chocolate, ...

Smakelijk!

I must say that the party was a succes for me. 
I loved it and I have to thank all my friends and family for coming! I'm sorry I didn't have the time to talk to everyone properly. 

Easy peasy cupcakes!

A barbecue at home, finally! Downside was the fact that for this first barbecue of the season, I wasn't home. It was a high school class reunion that interfered. 
The class reunion was delightful, by the way. We laughed a lot at the stories we recalled and the situations we'd been into since. It's been 4 years since we graduated, and this was the first time we met up with most of our former classmates. Last reunions were always a meet-up of a few 'die-hards' :P

The barbecue was postponed earlier (see last post) and it was said to be the last day of good weather. No time to loose then!

My mum and dad were both working, my sister had her boyfriend over and I was just at home until leaving for the class reunion at 5 pm. 'Just at home' meant that I was the only one who could do the preparations for the barbecue. A barbecue I couldn't even attend, but then: who cares?

After making some salads, I decided that a dinner party without dessert couldn't be complete. And because there would be two young children of 7 and 4 years old, I thought cupcakes would do the trick. They're small enough for a children's tummy, they can be any taste you like and they're so easily decorated.

The base for my cupcakes was a recipe for Madeira cake. 

I prepared the dough and filled the tray, and then I found out that the dough wouldn't cover the usual 12 small cakes. 11 is a very odd number indeed, but look on the bright side: there is always one cupcake for you to taste without ending up with an uneven number on your table! 

Ingredients for 11 cupcakes:

- 115 grams butter

- 100 grams sugar

- 1/2 bag (7 grams) baking powder

- 75 grams flour

- 50 grams vanilla pudding powder

- 2 small eggs

- decoration like icing sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, brésilienne nuts, ...

How to:

Stir the butter and the sugar until you get a smooth mixture. It's supposed to be creamy. Then you can add the eggs, one at the time. 

Add the dry ingredients and stir until you get a thick dough.

Spoon the dough with a teaspoon (about 2-3 teaspoons for each cupcake) in the tray.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 25 minutes.

Cool and decorate as you wish.

As you can see, I prepared different sorts of cupcakes too. I divided the dough in three portions and added a few drops of almond essence, a few drops of vanilla essence and raisins, and one teaspoon of cocoa powder and chunks of white chocolate respectively.

Were they good? Well, I can tell you that all of them were gone when I returned home from the reunion. That's proof enough when you know there were only 7 people dining here and there was loads of food ...

Trying my new oven ramequins: chicken and vegetable pot pies

I was in Antwerp last week with my mum and one of her best friends. We visited the fashion museum there, the MoMu: www.momu.be. There was an exhibition of women's clothing in the period 1750-1950 (Een leven in mode from the collection of Jacoba de Jonge). It was amazingly beautiful to see all these dresses. I was dreaming of myself wearing one of those, even though they must have felt like a prison in disguise with the corsage and hoop skirt.  

The museum, and this exhibition especially is worth visiting!

After enjoying the good weather on the Vrijdagsmarkt, with a delicious sandwich at Cafe Camino ( http://www.facebook.com/antwerpencafecamino), we went for a stroll through the city center.

We came across the Dille en Kamille shop, and as we all love the shop, we went in. Of course we didn't come out empty handed! I found 4 ramequins that I wanted for ages to make individual pies for everyone at home.

Their first use was for making chicken pot pies. I'd seen so many recipes, but I made my own version of it. I added rosemary and vegetables for more taste.

Ingredients for 4 ramequins:

- 1 full chicken breast (400 grams), in very small pieces

- 1 small zuchini, in very small pieces

- 1 large carrot, in very small pieces

- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed

- butter or oil for frying

- pepper and salt to taste

- 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary

- spoonful of chicken spices

- 1 tabelspoon of flour

- 2 dl cream

- 1 roll of pastry 

- 1 egg yolk

How to:

Heat the butter or oil in a skillet and fry the carrot, zuchini, and chicken pieces. Season them with the herbs (rosemary and chicken spices) and the salt and pepper. 

Make sure the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are softened.

Then spread the flour on top of them. Quickly turn it around so that all of the ingredients have been covered. Then pour the cream. Stir thoroughly.
Then spoon the filling you've prepared into the buttered ramequins. 

Cover the filling with the pastry and use the yolk for a nice golden shine on top while baking. As you can see, I decorated each pie with our own initial (M, N, J & I). Unfortunately, there was no one who noticed it when I served them, so it was all work for nothing ... ;)

The only thing that remains is baking the chicken pot pies at 230°C for about 45 minutes.

I served them with fries and salad. 

Delicious!

Chocolate and raisin biscuits

I woke up way too early this morning. No one to talk to and it's too cold to take a walk outside yet. Making biscuits is something easy, relaxing and it spreads the most amazing aroma through the house. So that's a very good way to pass time.


These biscuits are really aromatic because of the light brown sugar. I took the recipe from a book I bought in Oxford, while on excursion in high school about 6 years ago. It's actually a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but I altered it a bit. As you know, copy-pasting is not exactly proper in copyright terms ;)


Ingredients:
- 110 grams butter
- 100 grams light brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 140 grams flour
- dash of salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- handful raisins
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 2 tablespoons Nestlé powder
- 50 grams dark chocolate, molten 


How to:
Preheat the oven up to 190°C.
Mix the butter and the sugar until they are creamy. Add the whisked egg. Then add the baking powder, flour, salt, vanilla essence. Now, split the dough in two. In the first half you add the raisins. In the second half you add the molten chocolate, cocoa and the Nestlé powder. 
With a little spoon, drop heaps of dough on the baking tray (on non-stick paper). Leave enough space in between because they tend to get larger while baking.
Bake for about 10-15 minutes according to your oven. They are ready when still soft in the middle but light golden on the sides.

Don't they look good?

Smakelijk! 

Pizza from scratch

A few days ago my sister asked me when we would eat Swiss cheese fondue again. I don't like it a lot, but she's doing her exams this month, so no question of hers can be denied I guess. I went for the fondue at the supermarket - I've never prepared it myself, so the shop's will do for the time being.

For myself - not a fan of the bread in cheese combination - I decided to make my own pizza from scratch. 

Knowing my own habits of messing around, I made the dough and the tomato sauce this morning before taking a shower (so that my hair wouldn't be white from flour again). 

Ingredients for a 1 person's pizza dough:

- 85 ml luke warm water

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 2/3 tablespoon honey

- 1 tablespoon olive oil (I used scented oil with bay leaves and peppers)

- 116 grams flour

- 2 to 3 grams instant yeast

How to:

Mix the water, yeast and honey and leave them for a couple of minutes.
Then add the flour to form a sticky dough. Add the salt when all the other ingredients have been mixed thoroughly. It'll look somewhat like this:

Knead for a little while and make a ball of it which you put in a small bowl covered in the olive oil. Cover the bowl with a towel/tin foil/... until it has risen. As I made it early in the morning and the pizza was meant for tonight, I set it in the fridge. 

Ingredients for the tomato sauce:

(enough for 3 pizza's - put the rest in the freezer if not needed)

- 1 can of peeled tomatoes (400 grams)

- 1 little can of tomato paste (70 grams)

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 tablespoon basil

- 1 tablespoon oregano

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

- 2 teaspoons sugar

How to:

Heat the peeled tomatoes, the tomato paste and the mashed garlic cloves until they cook. Add the herbs, sugar, salt and pepper and let simmer on low heat for at least 20 minutes.

I'm quite fond of my toppings. I think I've not quite often chosen different ones the last couple of years. They're nearly always tomato sauce, cooked ham, parmesan cheese, fresh basil leaves and a little gruyere. You might say it's like pizza prosciutto, but my version.

After assembling the pizza, it was ready to be put in the oven (230°C) for about 20 minutes. I usually depend on my instincts and take it out when I think it should. The crust must be light golden brown in colour and must sound hollow when tapped.

I dare say it's been a really good dinner. I watched my sister and parents eat their cheese fondue and I enjoyed my pizza in the meanwhile :)

Believe me, this pizza tastes much better than it's freezer counterparts!

Home made vlaai

Ever heard about 'vlaai'? It's a very special kind of Flemish dessert. Many different recipes occur, and some of them are protected - including having secret ingredients and recipes - but my mum has her own.

It's always made out of milk, speculoos (a light brown biscuit made with different spices) and peperkoek (a kind of breakfast cake with yet again many spices) and syrup. My mum also adds raisins for taste and from time to time we also add coconut macaroons (a delicious biscuit made almost entirely out of grated coconut).

peperkoek

speculoos

candy syrup

As you see, this really is a regional dessert, with all these native ingredients.


The recipe here is my mum's. In Belgium all bakeries and town have their own, so I'm not claiming the truth about vlaai.  But it's worth trying, simply because it's so good and incredibly simple to make. You really can't do wrong in any way!

Ingredients:
- 1 l milk
- 1/2 pack of peperkoek (about 250 grams)
- 100 grams speculoos
- a few spoonfuls of candy syrup
- raisins as many as you want (if you like)
- coconut macaroons to taste


How to:
Put all the ingredients (except the raisins) in a large pot and crush them with a potato masher until you get a kind of brownish liquid. You really have to make sure there are a few lumps left, it sounds not very good but it's essential for the texture. 
Butter an oven tray or an aluminium baking tray. Pour the mixture in and scatter some raisins on top. Push these down with a fork so that they won't burn in the oven. 
Put the tray in a 180°C oven for 45 minutes. Take the vlaai out of the oven and let it cool. 


When first taken out of the oven, it tends to be still a bit wet. But it sets after cooling down.
It's also best eaten a while after baking. The taste gets more intense. 
We usually make it the night before or early in the morning. During hot days like these I put it in the fridge for extra coolness and it sets more easily too.


For serving, you just cut out a square piece. No fuss at all :)


Smakelijk!

Pleasing dad ...

Yesterday I was making chocolate sprits (tuiles viennoises), but my dad was disappointed when he found out they contained chocolate. He's the only one in the house not liking chocolate. In fact, he only likes white chocolate, the kind that doesn't even contain a speck of cocoa! 


To please him, I made shortbread filled with strawberry jam. 


Ingredients:
- 180 grams flour
- 1 spoonful of lemon juice
- 60 grams sugar
- 120 grams butter
- strawberry jam to taste
- 1 spoonful of sugar 


How to:
Mix the butter and the sugar until all the lumps of butter have blended in the sugar. Add the juice and the flour and mix well. You'll get a powdery mixture, but that's normal. If you can squeeze a little ball with your hands of the mixture, you've the right substance.
Layer a round baking tray with non-stick paper. Squeeze half of the powdery mixture down until you get a layer of dough of a few millimetres. 
Then spoon the strawberry jam over the layer of dough. Spread it out so that the whole surface is covered. You can put as much as you want, according to your taste.
Cover, with the rest of the shortbread mixture, the jam and press all off it a little down so that the surface is flat.
Sprinkle a little sugar over the shortbread before baking.
Put the tray in a pre-heated oven of 180°C for about 25 to 30 minutes.


I really had to add a little heat and I even put the grill on so that the dough would get a little colour. The oven here isn't the best, so I'm obliged to work with it with a little trial and error.


The result: 

He's not home yet, so I'm patiently awaiting his reaction ...

Tuiles Viennoises by an amateur

Woken up too early for a day like this, no work or school duties to think about. My only tast today is do the groceries and the shops are not open at 7 am. What to do, then? 


I can't keep myself from messing around in the kitchen on moments like this. I took a look in my cooking library and decided to make peanut butter biscuits. 
Problem was that there wasn't any peanut butter in the house. That's so me - not checking at first what's needed and just starting off. 


As I'd already started mixing the butter and sugar, I had to change plans quickly. I was looking in a cooking book of Le Cordon Bleu, the famous international culinary school. Luckily the book mentioned also a recipe of chocolate sprits or tuiles viennoises.

Ingredients for 10-12 sprits:

- 120 grams butter

- 50 grams white sugar

- 1 egg

- 175 grams flour

- vanilla essence

- 100 grams chocolate

How to:

Mix the butter with the sugar. Add the egg and the vanilla essence. When they've been mixed through, you can add the flour. The dough should be really smooth. 

I set off and mixed all the ingredients just like prescribed, that's not hard. 

Then came the next obstacle on my road to baking sprits: sprits need to be squeezed from a pastry bag on the baking tray. That's quite difficult for me, having no parstry bag in the house. But with a plastic bag and scissors, you can do it just fine. I put all of the dough in the bag and cut a small hole in one of the corners. You don't have these fancy shapes like with a professional pastry bag, but yeah ... the taste won't change, right?

I just needed to bake them in a 200°C oven (preheated) for about ten minutes and they were ready. They were slightly golden. The shape was not al all the one I'd intended of course. I blame the plastic bag!

Now, sprits have this chocolate dipped end, but I decided to turn the biscuits around so that their flat side was up, and I covered these with the molten chocolate.

They are not as fancy as the ones you see in the books, but taste matters :)

Bon appétit! 

Baking something like buchteln

At home we have this book called 'International Dishes' (in Dutch 'Internationale Gerechten') for years. It's a book full of recipes of all over the world. It's quite old, having been my mom's for decades. Russia doesn't exist in the book for example, the countries Yugoslavia and the USSR on the other hand are present. For me, born in the year 1990, it's a souvenir from an age I haven't experienced myself.

The book wants to teach us the art of cooking of all sorts of countries around the world, by presenting you with some specialties from each of them. I might say that the authors haven't always taught their readers the correct recipes. I as a Belgian can say that the signature dish from Ghent presented in the book (Gentse Waterzooi - a kind of soupy dish including potatoes, chicken, carrotys and leeks) looks quite alien to me.


Anyway, the book is great. It's been the book I've used the most often too. 


One of the first things I learned to make from the book was an Austrian recipe: 'buchteln'. It's a kind of brioche-like bread, scented with lemon zest. It's a wonderfully delicate taste. It's good enough to eat just like that, warm from the oven, but I tend to spread some good jam on top of it.


When I made it for the first time, I must have been about 13 or 14 years old. And since that time, my mum loves it.


Here's the recipe as mentioned in the book:


Ingredients: 
- 500 grams plain flour
- 30 grams fresh yeast (or 7 grams dried yeast)
- 50 grams white sugar (I used sugar infused with vanilla pods the last time)
- 1/4 l luke warm milk
- 40 grams butter (I used only 25 grams and it was great already)
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- grated zest of 1 lemon
- 75 grams butter for baking
- powdered sugar for serving


How to:
In a bowl, make a heap of flour. Make a little pit in the middle in which you can mix the yeast, a little sugar, a little milk and a little flour. Leave it for about 15 minutes so that the yeast can start working.
Melt the butter and pour it in the bowl. Add the rest of the sugar, salt, milk, the whisked eggs and the grated lemon zest. Knead it all together until you get an elastic dough. It's quite sticky, but that's normal.
Leave the dough to rise for another 15-20 minutes.

Preheat the oven up to 220°C. Melt the 75 grams of butter on low heat. In the mean time, make little balls of dough of + 50 grams each. Roll them in the melted butter and place them one next to the other in a baking dish.
Bake the buchteln for about 20-30 minutes in the oven. 
Before serving, sprinkle with the powdered sugar.

As you might have seen in the pictures, I'm not the kind of cook to follow a recipe from A to Z. I can say that I ALWAYS do something else than mentioned. Because I feel like cooking but the ingredients mentioned are not there, because I don't like the look of it, because ... 


This time I put the zest of the lemon (all of it) in only half of the dough. In th rest of the dough, I put around 50 grams of chopped milk chocolate. The reason? My sister is a chocolate addict and doesn't like the taste of the tangy lemon at all. The dough is quite brioche-like, so replacing lemon with chocolate would work, I figured.


It turned out great. I ate the lemon buchteln with strawberry-rhubarb jam and that's a real recommendation!


I hope you enjoy this too!


P.S.: Any Austrian readers feeling offended for messing with their recipe: I'm really sorry! ;)