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 ...

Pollo con le olive thanks to a loving grandmother

We were going to have friends over for a barbecue today. Were because I just received the message from my mum that the people we invited postponed their visit. 
A pity, because it's just marvelous weather: finally the sun broke through the clouds and we actually get temperatures higher than 20°C all day!


But in life you don't have time to regret for long: it'll be pollo con le olive instead. A dish originally from Siena, Italy.

The inspiration comes out of an old cook book I got from my grandmother just yesterday.
My sister and I felt like making a bicycle tour, and we could visit our grandparents in the meanwhile. It's been a long time since we've been there because of school, exams, ...
They were very happy to see us. 
My grandfather began talking about the TV he has in his room - the TV that was formerly ours, by the way ^^ - and how it could be put on and off, how to change the channels, et cetera. We felt that he liked us being with him, even though he didn't have much to say himself. 
My grandmother made us tea and put a whole table full of biscuits and chocolates, in case we were starving. I just love her!


When we were just about to leave, they both insisted we took a look at some things they  liked us to have. I was shown a whole stack of cook books (my grandmother knows I love cooking. I learned to love it because of her, so it's a common interest). My sister had to look at a rather nineties-looking raincoat, which she had trouble with declining.
My eyes immediately fell on this Italian cook book which mentioned classic dishes. taking it with me wouldn't harm and the fact that I chose it made my grandmother happy too. 

Ingredients for 4:
- 1 whole chicken of about 1,5 kg
- 5 fresh sage leaves
- 150 grams black olives
- extra black olives for serving
- olive oil
- 5 cloves of garlic
- pepper and salt to taste
- 800 grams peeled tomatoes
- French loaf or rice for serving


How to:
Cut the chicken in several pieces (the legs, the wings, the breast pieces). Sprinkle them with pepper and salt. Wash the sage leaves and dry them with a towel. Cut the sage leaves and the garlic in very small pieces.
Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the sage and garlic.

Then add the chicken pieces. When they have browned on all sides, pour in some of the wine.
Now put the tomatoes in too. When the tomatoes have cooked along for a while, you can pour in the rest of the wine. Cover the skillet with a lid and let it all simmer for at least 15 minutes on low heat. That's what the recipe says, but I doubted the chicken would be ready in only half an hour. I put it on the fire for about 1 and a half hour. In that way the sauce will be much more tasty, I reconed. 
I guess my skillet was slightly too small for the chicken in it, quite messy looking! 

Cut the olives in half and remove the stones. Stir them under the sauce of the chicken. Simmer with the lid on for again 15 minutes at least. My cutting in half of the olives wasn't very successful: the stones were unremovable unless I cut round them ;)

Serve with the French loaf or rice and some left over olives.


It was delicious. It was the very first time I used sage in something I prepared, and it made it really good! 


Buon appetito!

Chicken stir fry (or was it quorn stir fry?)

After a very busy week during which we had to go dine out - no complaints at all about that part! :p - we finally have a home cooked meal again.

Today we have our weekly veggie day, a tricky one this time because I mean to trick my dad by telling him it's chicken stir fry instead of quorn stir fry.
He dislikes the meat replacements like quorn and tofu. He rather eats eggs if he really has to have something vegetarian. To avoid nasty glances, I hope he'll believe me. Upside is that chicken is not very distinct in taste, and the oyster sauce tends to be the dominant taste. We'll see ...


This recipe was originally with scampi and rice, but this is my variation.


Ingredients for 4:
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 350 grams quorn cubes (mine were specially for stir frying, but others would be fine as well)
- 500 grams of vegetables such as sugar snaps, broccoli, carrots, ... (or a mixture of them)
- 300 grams egg noodles
- 75 ml oyster sauce 
- oil for frying 
- pepper and salt to taste
- chilli flakes if you like more spice
- fresh chive for serving


How to:
Clean the vegetables and cut them in bite-size pieces. Blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes or until they are done but still crisp.
Prepare the noodles as mentioned on the package. You will usually have to soak them in a hot liquid like water or stock for a while.
Heat a skillet on high heat. Pour some oil in for frying.
Add the garlic, which you've cut in very small pieces, to the hot skillet. Add the quorn cubes as well. Let them brown for a bit. 
Throw the vegetables in and stir the ingredients around quickly. Pour the oyster sauce onto them and stir again. 
The noodles can be added now. They cannot be stirred for long as they will get too soft when heated too long.


Have a nice meal!


P.S.: my dad wasn't fooled. We kept on insisting it was chicken, but he merely said 'very strange chicken, this is!' Haha. Anyway, he kind of liked it.

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!

Paella with chicken and sea fruit

paella nearly ready to serve

I made paella last year, and that was a complete disaster.
I didn't find fresh sea fruit so had to do with frozen sea food and found out that it didn't taste any better than pieces of rubber. I just used regular rice, which wasn't cooked through after absorbing the water. I didn't fry the chicken beforehand so the chicken was still raw at places. I didn't season enough which made the flavour bland ...
In short, making paella wasn't something I would try again soon. The disappointment of my fellow eaters was just too great and so obvious in their way of looking at me.


But I found something in the supermarket last week which would soon change my mind: a mix of sea fruit, already cooked but fresh.
My mind began racing and I took the decision of trying paella all over again.


We don't have a special paelle pan and buying one for the occasion is a bit out of proportion for me. Our own skillets would have to do.
I set off for another try at paella.


I have to say that the taste was just right. Of course, it can't compete with the authentic - made in a real paella pan - dish, but it's really worth trying andsuper easy!


Ingredients for 4:
- olive oil
- 1 red pepper, blackened, skinned and cut in small strips
- 1 onion
- 4 cloves of garlic, cut in very small pieces
- 100 grams fresh peas
- 8 cherry tomatoes, cut in half and dried in a 150°C oven for about 45 minutes
- 1 gram of saffron powder
- a pinch of paprika powder
- crushed chillies
- 200 grams sea fruit (prawns, mussels, squid, ...), already cooked
- 6 chicken legs (or any other part of chicken), already fried or grilled
- 300 grams paella rice (you can find it in any supermarket)
- salt and pepper to taste
- a little kurkuma for extra colour
- 1 fresh lime
- 600-700 ml of fish stock


How to:
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Fry the onion, the garlic, the pepper and the tomatoes until they've browned slightly.

Add the rice and spices and turn them in the pan so that each grain of rice is covered in a little oil and the spices are all over the ingredients.
Now pour the stock in, together with the chicken and the peas. Let it all simmer on medium heat with the lid on the pan. Check from time to time whether the rice is ready to be eaten and the stock has been taken up. If more stock is needed, add a little at the time. 
When the rice is just about ready but hasn't taken up all of the stock, add the sea fruit. They have to be added as late as possible so that they don't get rubbery (I learned from my mistakes!).

Before serving, let the paella stand for a few minutes so that the excess damp can evaporate.
Cut the lime in slices and put them on top of the paella on table. Everyone can now spoon his or her own serving. 


Apetitoso!

Petit beurre cake

Petit beurre cake is the most nostalgic recipe I can imagine. My grandmother has been making it for ages. She makes them as a big cake, from which you can cut pieces off. But I made smaller, individual cakes. With the different coloured plates they look funny too!


The reason I made them is because of my dad. He complained that I made too many strange dishes. I had to return back to traditional meals for him. This week I did so, and as this is the dessert his mother makes for family parties, I guess he'll like it.

It's the easiest way to make a dessert. 

Ingredients for 5 4-layer cakes:

- 20 petit beurre biscuits

- 250 grams butter

- 4 tablespoons powdered sugar

- coffee (or milk for children and people that don't like the coffee taste) for dipping

- a pinch of cocoa powder

- chocolate sprinkles

How to:

Stir the butter until soft. Now add the sugar and the cocoa powder, mix it with the butter until it's completely incorporated. 

Dip a biscuit in the coffee or milk. Put it on the plate. Spread some of the butter mixture on top. Repeat this until you have used up all biscuits and all of the butter mixture.

Put the chocolate sprinkles to decorate. 

Store in the fridge until you serve.

Smakelijk!

P.S.: Don't start counting the calories here! It's a very rich and heavy snack, but you can't be strict for yourself all the time :)

Farmhouse chicken casserole

My dad loves to go to flea markets. Whenever the weather is alright and he has some time off, he visits one or another. On Sundays there are often at least two or three he goes to. He has a great eye for making money out of things others regard as trash. He buys something very cheap and sells it - after consulting websites such as Ebay - for a lot more.


After all these years he still brings home little things for decorating. My mum isn't too happy with the eclectic style of our living room. She likes it more sober, but yeah ... he can't be convinced about that.


Another thing he does when going to these flea markets, is bringing home fruit and vegetables. There are always a few farmers who sell their goods. The best strawberries come from their fields. 


This Sunday he brought spring onions and potatoes. As I was going to prepare chicken drumsticks - once bought for the barbecue but never used due to rainy weather, and put in the freezer for later - I thought I could just as well combine them with the onions and potatoes.


The result: farmhouse chicken casserole, or my adaptation of a British dish.

Ingredients for 4:

- 1 or 2 drumsticks per person (I had provençale marinated legs, which worked well)

- 8 small potatoes that won't fall apart during cooking

- 4 spring onions

- 3 large carrots

- 1/3 cube vegetable stock

- 1/2 l water

- black pepper

- Maizena express

- fresh parsley

- 100 grams flour

- olive oil or butter

How to:

Wash the potatoes and cut them in half. Don't peel them, so that they will keep their taste better. Clean the sping onions and cut off the excess greens. Peel the carrots and cut them in half. 

Roll the drumsticks in the flour. They have to be covered with it all over. 

Heat a pan and melt the butter or olive oil. Fry the drumsticks in it. They don't have to be cooked through, they just have to get a little crust outside. 

In the same pan, fry the potatoes and the vegetables lightly. They don't have to be cooked through either.

Now take a casserole that's quite large. Put all the vegetables, potatoes and the chicken in it. Grind black pepper over it to taste. Don't add salt because the stock is salty too.

Dissolve the stock in the water and pour it over the casserole. 

Cover it with foil or a lid.

Put it in the oven and let it simmer for at least 1 and a half hour at 230°C. 

The vegetables should be just tender but shouldn't fall apart. The chicken should fall off the bone when touched. 

Take out all the thning out off the casserole so that only the fluid remains. Add the Maizena express, stir well and put all things back in the casserole.

Don't cover it now, so that it can grill for a few minutes.

Ready to serve with parsley sprinkled on top of it!

Pasta with Summer flavours

The weather is dreadful yet again. No sign of Summer, only rain, lots of wind and a dark sky. Let's hope it's changing for the better once the 21st of June comes. I'm prepared to wait for the official date to call it Summer, but after that I expect much more from the skies above us!

To ease the pain, I have to do with food that gives me a joyful feeling.

Today it was pasta with fresh vegetables, Italian ham, pine nuts and fresh cheese. Due to the vegetables that aren't cooked along, you get a nice crunch and it's really a cross between a pasta and a salad.

Ingredients for 4:

- 300 grams pasta (penne for example)

- 200 grams fresh cheese (I used Philadelphia)

- 150 grams Italian ham

- 35 grams pine nuts

- 80 grams rucola (rocket)

- 100 grams cherry tomatoes

- 3 dl milk

- pepper and salt to taste

- crushed dried chilli to taste

- some cheese to top (if you like) like emmental, gruyère ...

How to:

First, cut the tomatoes in half and place them next to eachother with the wet side up on an oven tray. Put the tray in a 150°C oven for about 1 hour. The tomatoes will come out a little dried and their taste will be even sweeter.

Cook the pasta al dente. 

In the meanwhile, cut the ham in smaller, bitesize pieces. Roast the pine nuts.

Warm the cheese in the milk. It'll get thickened while heated. Add pepper and salt to taste to the sauce.

Toss the cooked pasta in the cheese sauce so that it gets soaked up.

Now assemble everything: spoon a bit of pasta in a plate, put some ham, pine nuts, rucola and cherry tomatoes on it. Then spoon some more pasta on top of it. Put some ham, pine nuts, rucola and cherry tomatoes on it again, crush some chilli on it and cover with some cheese.

I promise: it's a heavy dish, but the Summer flavours make up for at least some of the bad weather!

Veggie Day

Today the veggies rule!


Veggie Day is a term that was introduced a few years ago. The city of Ghent launched the initiative to eat vegetarian once a week, on Thursday, to help reduce the ecological footprint. Even though it's not compulsory for the citizens of the city, a lot of people follow that example.
It was world news, as you see in this article in Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900958,00.html

I'm convinced that - as you can't do it all by yourself - every little step any one takes, is a step in the right direction. I don't claim to change the environment with this, but I do try to reduce the meat consumption for myself and - though in a smaller amount- of my family. 


So since a couple of years we eat at least once a week vegetarian. I have to admit that only my sister and I really eat vegetarian all day. My dad and mum have the nasty habit of considering anything that can be put on a sandwich (salami, ham, salads ...) doesn't count. I haven't been able to bring them round yet, but we keep on trying :)


Today we have stuffed peppers for dinner. It's completely my own creation. I looked for some recipes but I wasn't really happy with them entirely. 


Ingredients for 4 people:
- 4 red (sweet) peppers 
- 150 grams feta cheese (or another cheese made out of goat/sheep milk)
- 220 grams butternut squash
- 30 grams quinoa
- vegetable stock (as much as needed to prepare the quinoa)
- pepper and salt to taste
- handful of raisins
- handful of fresh mint leaves
- 400 grams peeled tomatoes
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 clove of garlic


How to:
Put two peppers and the squash under the oven grill (highest temperature). Once the peppers are wrinkly all over their surface and feel soft when touched, take them out. Cut them in half vertically and remove all seeds so that each half has part of the stem. Take out the squash once it's soft. 
In the meanwhile, make a tomato-pepper sauce by cookingthe peeled tomatoes, two sweet red peppers (cut in smaller pieces), the cumin, the oregano and the garlic. Let all of this simmer for at least an hour and blend it afterwards so that it becomes a smooth sauce.

Prepare the quinoa as mentioned on the package with the stock. Add the raisins when the quinoa is nearly ready. They will soak up some of the water and get softened. Blend the squash once it's soft. Add it to the quinoa. Crumble the feta cheese and stir it under the quinoa-squash mixture. Cut the mint leaves in small pieces and stir them into the stuffing. Stuff the peppers with this filling.

Lay the stuffed peppers in the tomato sauce in an oven tray and let it all simmer for at least one hour at 200°C so that all aroma's are taken up.
I turned them oven halfway through cooking time also.


I served them with wheat semolina (used for couscous). I put some of the sauce on it for taste. When cut open, the stuffed peppers had the nicest yellow colour. 


We really loved the taste of it all. I felt sorry for not making more for us, because it was finished in no time! Even my sister who's a very, very difficult eater said she really liked it ... ;)

Cod tandoori with saffron pilav

I made a huge mistake yesterday. Instead of doing groceries properly and bringing meat for tonight, I took a large portion of cod out of the freezer. I never thought my mum bought it for making something special. She was a bit angry when she found out I reserved it for tonight (and she couldn't cook tonight because of work). Now, she told me to make something with it anyway. 


What to do then? I am a great fan of the Indian kitchen, so I looked in one of my great Indian cook books. Nowhere a recipe to be found with cod. A lot of chicken and lamb, but nearly no fish at all ... 


I've tried chicken tandoori in the past, my idea now was to try making cod the same way. So I did. I made the marinade and put the fish soaking in it in the fridge. It's looking really odd, pink in colour and all!


Ingredients for the cod:
- 4 slices of cod 
- 250 grams yoghurt (it's supposed to be Greek yoghurt, but I only had 0% so I used that)
- 1/2 teaspoon tandoori food colouring
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
- 4 ground cardemom pods
- 3 ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon cumin powder
- chilli powder to taste (I used none today because my sister hates hot spicy food, unfortunately!)


How to prepare the cod:
Mix all the ingredients apart from the cod together so that you get a pink/reddish sauce. That's your marinade. Now put the pieces of cod in it and turn them around so that they get coloured all over.
Put it all away in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
When ready to cook, preheat the oven grill up to 230°C. 
Take the pieces of cod out of the marinade and put them in an oven tray that you put about 15 centimetres from the grill in the oven (quite high).
Grill the fish for about 20-30 minutes until cooked through. Turn it around from time to time so that the fish colours on all sides.


I did the fish, now it was time to think about what to serve with it. As you see, I'm not really a planner in these sorts of things. I take it from where I am at the moment.


I turned the pages of the Indian cook book and saw a lot of tasty looking rice dishes. Tandoori isn't saucy, so I wished to make something that was tasteful by itself. I decided to make saffron pilav (kesar bhat). It's described as a dish widely served in the more Muslim parts of India and the ingredients looked really good from the start. On top of all that, it has the most amazing colour: bright yellow, from the saffron. Quite luxurious, isn't it?


Ingredients for saffron pilav:
- a handful raisins
- 250 grams basmati rice
- 1 gram saffron powder or 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads (soaked in the water)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 cardemom pods
- 3 cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 small onion, sliced into small pieces
- little oil for the pan


How to prepare the saffron pilav:
Soak the basmati rice for about half an hour in some cold water.
Heat the oil in a pan on a heavy fire. Put the onion in and let it colour for a while. Then add the cinnamon, cloves and the cardemom  pods all at once. Stir it all around. 
Drain the rice and add it with the raisins, the saffron and about 500 ml to the rest of the ingredients. Now turn the fire on so that it starts to cook. Once it all cooks, you turn the fire a little lower so that it can slowly simmer for about 5 minutes. After that, turn the fire on the lowest heat and put the lid on the pan. Let it all be for another 5-6 minutes. You'll see that all the water has been absorbed by the rice and the raisins by now. 
Take the pan off the fire and let it rest for another 5 minutes with the lid on the pan. The rice will dry out more and the water will steam away.


For some more colour and the vegetables, I served the fish andthe rice with some cherry tomatoes. If I had some fresh coriander, I would scatter them over the plate for an even more colourful plate.

My parents and I approved, my sister - a special case when it comes to food - wasn't convinced. Fish is not her favourite, and the rice was too spicy ... What can I do about that?

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!