Baked feta

We ate quite a bit of baked feta when on holiday in Crete a few years ago. For some reason we only just thought of making it. It's really easy and simple and delicious.

1 block feta, drained

1 small tomato (ideally yellow), sliced thinly

1/2 a red pepper, sliced thinly

a few olives, destoned and sliced

black pepper

dried oregano 

olive oil

Heat oven to 220C or get the fire going. Put block of feta on a piece of foil big enough to wrap it. Arrange slices of tomato and pepper on top; and olives. Sprinkle with black pepper and oregano. Drizzle with olive oil. Wrap up and bake at 220C for about 20 min. Also good (better?) cooked on fire embers. Eat with crusty good bread.

Guacamole

Guacamole is kind of too simple for a recipe, but there are lots of different schools of thought on it, and I do have a favourite way of making it...

c. 2 ripe avocados, peeled and destoned

1 small tomato, finely chopped

c. 1 tsp finely chopped onion

juice of one lime

1-2 tsp coriander, finely chopped (optional) 

few drops of hot sauce (optional)

pinch of salt

Mush it all together with a fork. Nice if the avocados are still a little bit chunky.

Updated muhammara

I hadn't made muhammara for a while, but S bought some in the supermarket and it was really sweet and didn't have any walnuts in it and just made me pine for the real thing. And then I remembered it was an excellent use for walnuts - am always looking for excellent uses for walnuts, since we have a big old walnut tree in the garden. I have been testing out a few different combinations and textures for muhammara, here is my old version, and here is my latest:

3 red peppers
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted
1 clove garlic
1 tsp dried red chilli flakes
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
juice of 1/2 lime (or lemon)
1 tsp ground cumin
1-2 tbsp olive oil

Roast red peppers at high heat, c. 220C, until collapsed and with blackened spots. Cover and let cool, then remove peel and seeds. Can be kept in the fridge for a day or so until ready to make the muhammara.

When ready to make the muhammara, first toast the walnuts. Then put the peppers, breadcrumbs, garlic, chilli, pomegranate molasses, citrus juice, cumin and olive oil in a blender and blend until smooth. Crush the walnuts with a pestle and mortar, and then mix in a bowl with the pepper mixture. Check consistency and taste for seasoning.

Baked donuts with raspberry icing

This morning, little s suddenly started talking about donuts. I have no idea why - I am pretty sure he has never eaten and probably never even seen a donut.

I'm not a donut fan, but we ended up agreeing that we would make some. I looked for a recipe while he napped. No way was I going to deep fry anything (it's so stinky), so I looked for a baked donut. Went with this one, but halved it. And did a raspberry-cream cheese glaze with desiccated coconut sprinkles.

Improvised a donut tin by molding little squares of foil around my finger and then pressing them into a muffin tin so the finger stuck up in the middle.

(makes 12 small ones)

For the donuts:

26 g butter

25 g veg oil

48 g sugar

35 g brown sugar

1 egg

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp nutmeg

3/8 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla powder

159 g flour

113 g milk 

 

For the decoration:

c. 6 frozen raspberries, microwaved for 20 sec to defrost and smushed with a fork

c. 4 tbsp icing sugar with vanilla

c 2 tbsp cream cheese

2-3 tbsp desiccated coconut

 

Heat oven to 220C (425F). Grease the 'donut tin' lightly with oil. In a medium bowl, beat together butter, oil, sugars until smooth. Add egg, beat to combine. Stir in baking powder, bicarb, nutmeg, salt and vanilla. Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk (start and end with flour). Batter will be thick - wooden spoon should leave a furrow. Spoon batter into the tin, leaving about 1/4 inch of the finger sticking up. Bake for 10 min. Take out of the oven and wait c. 5 min before turning out, peeling / pulling off/out the foil.

While the donuts bake, prepare the icing. Make sure there are no lumps in the icing sugar, then put it in a small bowl and beat in the raspberries. Beat in the cream cheese. Check the consistency and colour is as you want it. This only made a little - enough to ice about the top third of each donut.

After removing the foil, check the holes are still intact. I iced the bottoms of the 'donuts' because they looked neater. Ice the donuts while still warm, right after turning them out. I spread it out with a teaspoon. When the icing is on, sprinkle with desiccated coconut (toasted if you wish). Let cool or eat while still warm.

These are very cute. They didn't look great when I took them out the oven as the batter rose too much and engulfed the fingers (ideally make them stick up higher than the tin!), but I cut the holes back into the side they were missing, and the donuts survived the operation pretty good, and then the icing and sprinkles and holes made them look quite legit (if tiny). 

 

They aren't all that much like donuts, although they looked the part - not yeasted or deep fried. But that's fine with me; and they taste pretty good - the spices and brown sugar make for a tasty batter, and the raspberry goes pretty well with that. Wonder how well they will keep (we ate about half for dessert but the rest are kept til tomorrow).

Krautsalat (German cabbage salad)

Krautsalat is one of the things S always buys and eats loads of when he visits Germany. I’d never tried to make it for him before but we had an excess of cabbage and it seemed like a good idea. He’d been into caraway recently so I though it should be the kind with caraway in it. This recipe seemed like just the thing.

We had a hyper German dinner, with this and some boil in the bag knoedel from Aldi - surprisingly good boiled, cooked, then fried in slices with onion and mushrooms. S was v enthusiastic about both, I should make krautsalat again... maybe I should even try making knoedel from scratch?!

1 kg white cabbage 

1 tbsp salt 

2 tbsp sugar 

3 onions 

1 tbsp caraway seeds 

140 ml sunflower oil 

150 ml white wine vinegar 

1 tbsp mustard (I used whole grain)

Clean the cabbage and remove the stem. Slice thinly and place in a large bowl. Add the salt and sugar and mix with hands for 5-10 min, until the cabbage goes a bit floppy. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge for approx. 24 hours.

The next day, peel and thinly slice the onions. Heat a medium saucepan over high heat and toast the caraway seeds briefly. Add oil, vinegar and onions to the pan and let cook gently until onions are soft. Add the mustard and mix to combine. Remove from the heat and let cool a bit.

Take the cabbage out of the fridge, add the onion mixture, and it is ready to eat. Keeps in the fridge well for a few days.

This is totally perfect, an excellent use of cabbage. It's quite quick and easy even though you have to remember to start it the day before you want to eat it. I did try making knoedel at some point, they were ok, need practice!

Chocolate tofu pudding

I have made chocolate tofu many many times since I first tried it (here). But realized when I was looking for the recipe recently that actually my noted recipe was a bit inadequate. So here is an updated version, adapted to use one whole typical 349g Mori-Nu type silken tofu package.

175 g chocolate

75 g sugar

120 ml hot water

349 g pack of silken tofu (preferably the kind in a tetra pak, not floating in liquid)

1 tsp cinnamon

3/4 tsp vanilla powder

pinch cayenne

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Dissolve the sugar in the hot water. Put the tofu and spices in a blender cup. Scrape the melted chocolate into the blender, and pour in the sugar syrup (let it cool slightly first). Blend until smooth. Transfer to glasses, ramekins or other containers (I like to use jars for easy storage), and refrigerate for at least 30 min before eating - preferably at least 2 hours for ideal texture, although it'll taste good right away. Keeps fine in the fridge for a few days.

Tostones (fried green plantains)

There used to be a Colombian vegan food stall in the now-long-gone Papirøen, which was always S's top pick when we went there, mainly because of their yummy plantain chips (tostones). 

I bought some very green, fairly small plantains from our super weird local Indian shop the other day. Only two, because I wasn't sure what to do with totally green ones (or if ones this green would ever ripen). S and I were sitting on the sofa early evening, somehow the question of what to do with the plantains arose, he suggested tostones, I had a quick Google and discovered they call for very green plantains, and was sold. They also seemed to be pretty simple. Off I went...

(makes about 20 tostones)

2 very green plantains

refined coconut oil (or other flavourless high-temp frying oil) for frying

coarse salt for sprinkling

lime, avocado, coriander also nice if you have them

Peel one plantain (they don't peel easily - had to slice to some extent). Cut into rounds 2-3 cm deep. Melt 2-3 mm depth of coconut oil in a high-sides frying pan. Fry plantain rounds a few minutes on each side, until yellow and just starting to brown. Remove from heat onto a plate. Repeat with the other plantain (peel and slice one at a time so it doesn't go brown - alternatively you could peel and slice them all and keep the slices in salted water until ready to fry).

Take the first slice of lightly fried plantain, put it on a flat plate, and squash with the (clean) underside of a tin (e.g. of coconut milk). The tin has a rim which means you can't flatten too much so press firmly. Repeat for all the slices from the first plantain, then put them back in the frying pan (add more oil if needed). Fry a few minutes on each side, until golden brown and crispy-crunchy. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen paper and sprinkle with coarse salt. Repeat for the rest of the slices.

Nice with a dip - guacamole would be ideal. Or just a sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of lime. Or ketchup if you are little s. S and s both loved them - they deffo turned out way better than I dreamed when I bought the green plantains, and were pretty similar to the colombian vegan ones - perhaps not quite as crunchy but no complaints.

Easter 2020: Hot Cross Buns and Egg Hunting

Lockdown Easter. We decorated eggs all the ways we could think of, and then put them in the garden for s and M-E to find and play with. Also, I made hot cross buns (this recipe), and they were the best I ever made (nb i think i've only made them 3-4 times - bit of a faff but not that bad, and you can't buy them here so worth it. i do like them! so did s...).
 

Onion marmalade

We had part of a bottle of red wine left after a visitor left (our last visitor from the UK before lockdown!). Clearly we weren’t going to drink it, we never do, but we also had quite a lot of onions so I decided it should become onion marmalade. I am pretty sure I have made this onion marmalade before, many moons ago. It’s easy and tasty, goes great with cheese, and keeps for a while in the fridge. I think this is the recipe I used before - and it was also the one I used this time.

2 kg red onions or regular onions 

4 garlic cloves 

140 g butter 

4 tbsp olive oil 

140 g golden caster sugar 

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaf 

pinch of chilli flakes (did not use) 

75 cl bottle red wine 

350 ml sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar 

200 ml port (used extra wine / wine vinegar instead)

Halve and thinly slice the onions, then thinly slice the garlic. Melt the butter with the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over a high heat. Tip in the onions and garlic and give them a good stir so they are glossed with butter. Sprinkle over the sugar, thyme leaves, chilli flakes if using and some salt and pepper. Give everything another really good stir and reduce the heat slightly. Cook uncovered for 40-50 min, stirring occasionally. The onions are ready when all their juices have evaporated, they’re really soft and sticky and smell of sugar caramelising. They should be so soft that they break when pressed against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Slow cooking is the secret of really soft and sticky onions, so don't rush this part. 

Pour in the wine, vinegar and port and simmer everything, still uncovered, over a high heat for 25-30 min, stirring every so often until the onions are a deep mahogany colour and the liquid has reduced by about two-thirds. It’s done when drawing a spoon across the bottom of the pan clears a path that fills rapidly with syrupy juice. Leave the onions to cool in the pan, then scoop into sterilised jars and seal. Can be eaten straight away, but keeps in the fridge for up to 3 months.

Baked coconut rice pudding with mango

I liked the idea of rice pudding made with coconut milk instead of normal milk, and eaten with fresh mango. Right??? I approximately followed this recipe.

I also used coconut sugar, and tonka bean instead of vanilla. I bought the tonka bean a while ago but don't really know what to do with it. I was super curious about it because I first tried to buy it when we lived in the USA but couldn't, as it is illegal there! So when I saw it in the supermarket a spontaneous purchase happened... The internet suggests you grate it like nutmeg, and use it in places where you might use vanilla.

80 g coconut sugar (or normal sugar - golden caster)

800 ml coconut milk

1 strip lemon zest (optional)

about 1 tsp grated tonka bean (equivalent to seeds from 1 vanilla pod?)

160 g pudding rice

1-2 fresh mangoes, peeled and chopped or sliced, to serve

Heat oven to 150C. In large oven dish, combine sugar, coconut milk and lemon zest. Grate in tonka bean. Add pudding rice (rinsed), and mix to combine. Place in the oven and cook c. 2 hours, stirring halfway through, until rice is tender and liquid absorbed. Serve hot or warm with fresh mango.

Snobrød

I don't even know the name for this in English: 'bread twisted onto a stick and cooked on a fire' is rather long winded. So, snobrød (literally translates to 'twisted bread') is something that it seems to me every Danish person has been making since kindergarten (børnehave), like building supercool ground-level treehouses out of sticks in the woods or making awesome morning rolls. But I had never made or eaten it. So it had become one of my dream-Denmark-goals - my American one was to see a skunk (realized just weeks before leaving after 5 years). We had been talking with our neighbours about making a fire in the garden together and making some snobrød, and finally got around to it a couple days before New Year's Eve, on a non-rainy afternoon after S+T had been cutting down some tree pieces. T had bought some special sticks (metal with wooden handles), and I made the dough using this recipe.

300 ml water

25 g fresh yeast (used c. 1.5 tbsp dried)

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

500 g plain flour

Mix yeast and water in a large bowl. Add sugar, flour and salt and mix to a smooth dough. Add more flour if needed. Let rise approx. 45 min (or a bit longer). Take pieces of dough approx the size of a snooker ball, and roll into long thin sausage shapes before twisting around the end of a stick and squishing a bit into shape. Bake by holding over hot embers. Like marshmallow toasting, different techniques and tastes apply, but I think it best to be patient and go for browned on the outside / cooked on the inside. 

This was about the right amount for 4 adults and 2 three year olds, as a sort of afternoon snack. They were quite special - the crispy outside and soft inside is different from any other bread I've eaten. Next time it might be nice with seeds in the dough - sesame?