Autumn break

It's autumn break this week and timing couldn't be more perfect. Instead of this dreary week with rain and greyness, this year it seems Mother Nature is giving us a real treat. It's been sunny all weekend and the nights are cold but during the day when the sun shines the temperature is great for doing things, like taking a walk in the park. Which is exactly what we did to take in all the wonderful yellows, oranges and reds.

Furthermore, autumn break means all the time in the world to try new recipes. In spirit with the season, I decided to make pumpkin recipes. Pumpkin is not very popular here in Holland and I have little experience cooking it or eating it. Although, I do remember some dishes from my time in South Africa where it is much more common. Feta and pumpkin make a great combination, so that's where I started making my salad for lunch yesterday.

Roasted Pumpkin and Feta Salad

1/2 pumpkin, deseeded and cut into cubes of about 2cm5 handfuls of rocket or any other quite spicy lettuce
12 black olives, deseeded
1/2 packet of feta cheese
1 red onion, cut in rings
5 tbsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tsp of ground cumin
1/2 tsp of round chilli flake1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven at 220 degrees Celsius. Peel and deseed half of the pumpkin and cut it into cubes of about 2 cm. Make a dressing for the pumpkin, using three tablespoons of olive oil, the cumin, the chilli flakes and the cayenne pepper. Put the pumpkin parts in the dressing and mix well, making sure all the parts are covered. Season with some salt and pepper. Put the pumpkin part on a baking tray and roast in the oven for 25-30 minutes. When the pumpkin is ready take it out of the oven and let it cool a bit otherwise your salad leafs will welt. In the mean while, put the clean lettuce in a bowl and add the olives, the onion and the feta. You can add the feta to taste varying the amount to whether you're a cheese lover or not. In my family we are not that cheesy when it comes to salads, so half a slice of feta will do for us. Make a quick dressing with the balsamic vinegar and the rest of the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and if you like some dried Mediterranean herbs. Top the salad with the slightly cooled pumpkin and the dressing. Enjoy!

Adapted from Jamie's Fantastic Roast Chicken

This is a long time favourite of ours, my sister and I first made it when we cooked our first ever special Mother's Day menu, a tradition which we have kept. Each year on Mother's Day, we surprise our mom with dinner, the menu varies as one of the rules we created says that it has to be new. But this is recipe is one that we have been making ever since, that's how much we liked it.

Fantastic Roast Chicken

1 chicken (1 kg)
1 kg of potatoes
1 celeriac
250 gr of butter, soft
1 lemon, zest
8 slices of pancetta, thorn to bits
8 artichoke hearts
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
a bunch of fresh thyme
pepper and salt

Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius. Clean the chicken en wipe dry with paper kitchen towels. Mix the butter, the lemon zest, the thyme, the pancetta, garlic, salt and pepper. Put the butter mixture between the skin and the meat. Be careful not to tear the skin. Make small cuts in the thighs and stuff with butter mixture too. If you have any mixture left, rub it on top of the chicken. Put half a lemon inside the chicken. Put the chicken in a tray and pop in the oven.
Now peal and clean the potatoes and cut in chunks of about 4 cm, do the same with the celeriac. Put the potatoes to the boil and cook for about 10 minutes. I add the celeriac after 5 minutes, because I love the way it tastes when it is soft. If you prefer the celeriac to have more of a bite, don't put it in with the potatoes.
After the chicken has been in the oven for about 20 minutes, take the chicken out and add the potatoes, the celeriac and the artichoke hearts. Put the chicken back on top and put back into the oven. Leave the chicken in the oven for 50 minutes. When ready, take the chicken out of the oven and let it rest or about 10 minutes after which you're dinner is ready to serve: enjoy!

If you have left-overs, which we rarely do -that's how much we enjoy this dish - these will make a brilliant sandwich the next day.

All´s well that ends well...

No matter whose foodblog I read or what cookbook I check out, every time I’m confronted with lovely pictures of even nicer muffins. However, no matter what I do my frantic attempts never end up anywhere close to the pictures and my end product doesn’t even taste good. It’s come as far as my sister, Maaike, now refuses to taste what I have made for fear it will be another disappointment. And quite frankly, I can’t blame her as this has been an ongoing process. So simple and yet so hard!
But I don’t like to admit defeat, so this weekend I decided to give my muffin baking another go. I decided to do a muffin version of my carrot cake recipe, which has never failed me and is very dear to me because it reminds me of my first encounter with carrot cake at Harrie´s Pancakes, in Graskop, South Africa during a very special weekend. Got me hooked forever, mind you not only the carrot cake there, but also the pancakes, the best I ever had. If ever you travel the panoramic route in Mpumalanga, you must have a stop at Harrie´s!

I decided to slightly adjust the measurements to that of a muffin recipe book I have, so I would end up with plenty of batter and I also added a grated apple for some extra moisture as my previous experiments usually turned out dry.
And hooray!!! My carrot cake recipe must have done the trick!! The result was great, moist, sweet, but not too sweet, just fine. And since I’m somewhat biased, I took some to my parents and to friends we were visiting this weekend. Ohh, yes, I even got my sister to try one and the verdict: a great muffin. So maybe it’s not so hard after all.

Carrot Muffins

270 gr grated carrot
1 big apple pealed and grated
zest of one orange
50 gr of walnuts or pecans nuts, chopped
50 gr of raisins
280 gr of self raising flour
5 gr of baking powder
250 gr white sugar
a pinch of salt
180 ml of sunflower oil
50 gr of shredded unsweetened coconut
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
half a teaspoon of ground cloves
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C and place a rack in the middle of the oven. I’m quite lazy when it comes to buttering my muffin trays, so I always use the paper cups. This time I used my small trays, which meant I can make about 24 small muffins, but I think it will make about 16 regular sized muffins.
With the muffins trays ready, I started on the carrots. First peal them and then grate them. Once that is done put them in a bowl and set aside. Peal the apple next and take out the core, then grate the apple too. You can put the apple in the bowl with the carrot. Zest the orange and add to the carrot apple mixture. I also sprinkled a little orange juice over the apple to make sure it wouldn’t go brown.
Then I chopped up the nuts, this time I only used walnuts, but you can also use a mixture of walnuts and pecans or just pecans. I put the nuts in a bowl different from the one that holds the carrots. Thos bowl is for our dry ingredients. So I also added the coconut and the raisins, the flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and ground cloves and mixed everything up.
For the wet ingredients, in again another bowl, I whisked up the vanilla extract with the eggs and the oil. After which, I added the carrot and apple mixture to the wet ingredients. Once that is done, slowly fold in the mixture of dry ingredients until everything is wet.
Fill the muffin tray and put in the oven. Bake the muffins for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown. You know your muffins are ready when you can stick in a toothpick and it comes out clean.
Let the muffins cool a bit in the tray before taking them out. After about 10 minutes remove the muffins from the tray and let cool on a wire rack.
I personally like the muffins cold, but they are also very nice luke warm. The benefit of eating them totally cooled is that you can frost them.

Mascarpone and icing sugar frosting

one tub of mascarpone (250 ml)
175 gr icing sugar

Whisk the icing sugar into the mascarpone and frost the carrot muffins with the mixture. Sprinkle some chopped nuts on top if you have any left.

Vegetarian Carrot Soup

This is a really simple recipe that I often make on busy weekdays or for a quick lunch. Not only is it easy to make, but it consists of ingredients that I almost always have in my fridge and pantry:

Vegetarian Carrot Soup

1 big carrot or half a bunch of smaller carrots
3 sticks of celery
125 gr courgette, no skin and cut into cubes
1 onion, finely chopped
125 gr mushrooms, quartered
1 small can of tomato pure
2 stock cubes, vegetarian, so I used herb stock cubes
800 ml hot water
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
a pinch of dried and crushed red chilli pepper (optional)
pepper

I always make sure all my vegetables are cleaned, pealed, sliced or diced and ready for use. Then I take a big pot and heat some olive oil. First in are the onions, until they are going see-through, after which I add the celery and carrot. Leave the vegetables on for about 5 minutes on medium high heat, make sure they don’t brown. Then add the courgette and the mushrooms and wait another two minutes. I use this time to put on the kettle, so my water is hot when I need it. Add the tomato pure, stir in and let it sauté with the veg. When the water comes to the boil, add 800 ml to the vegetable mix and stir, giving the tomato pure a chance to dissolve. Pop in the stock cubes, the Italian herbs and pepper to taste. Bring the soup to the boil, lower the heat and with the lid on top let the soup simmer for about 30 minutes. You can add a bit of crushed dried chillies, these will give a nice kick to the soup without overpowering its taste, but you don’t have to the soup is great even without the chillies. After 30 minutes, all the vegetables should be soft enough to blend. Be careful when you put hot liquids in the blender. Never use it till its full capacity and keep the lid off, so pressure can’t build up inside. I always have a tea towel ready to keep over the opening. Pour some of the soup in the blender and blend until smooth, continue this process until the entire stock is bright orange and smooth.

I usually serve this with some sour cream and chunky, dark bread. The soup tastes great the minute you take it from the stove, but it is even better the next day when all the flavours have had time to blend really well.

A nice variation, for men who believe a meal is not a proper meal without some meat in it, like my dad or my boyfriend, is to change this recipe into a minestrone soup by simply adding half Italian salami and some pasta.

Minestrone

1 big carrot or half a bunch of smaller carrots
3 sticks of celery
125 gr courgette, no skin and cut into cubes
1 onion, finely chopped
125 gr mushrooms, quartered
1 small can of tomato pure
2 stock cubes, vegetarian, so I used herb stock cubes
800 ml hot water
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
half a salami sausage, diced
pepper

To start with, I fry the onion and the salami, so the fat from the salami will melt into the pan, releasing its flavours, which will then mix with the vegetables and the stock. After having fried the salami and the onions, I continue like the vegetarian version of this recipe. The big difference is though that instead of blending the soup to make it smooth, I add some pasta which I cook in the soup and once cooked I serve it as it is. I leave out the crushed chillies and perhaps add a bit more of the Italian herbs and pepper to taste. You can also substitute the pasta with potato or chick peas, but we like it best with the pasta. Enjoy!

Summer Spirit BBQ

To make sure, my boyfriend and I would be able to maintain our summer spirit, having just returned from our holiday in Scandinavia and thinking about work again. I decided to put together a small BBQ for the two of us and surprised my boyfriend with an evening in the park (our appartment doesn't have a garden and unless I want to smoke us out, BBQing on the balcony is a bad idea). Since this was a spontaneous idea, I first raided my freezer and adjusted my shopping list to whatever I could find. Furthermore, it presented me with the perfect opportunity to go through one of my new cookbooks Leila's Food with a Golden Touch, which I bought in Sweden. The first dish in inspired by a recipe by Leila Lindholm:

Chicken in Thai Marinade

1 dl of coconut milk
1 red spur chili
1 stalk of lemon grass
2 gloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp of fishsauce
1 tablespoon of sugar
3 bayleaves
1 chicken breast, defrosted and diced
zest of half a lemon
Salt to taste

(The original recipe asks for 5 lemon leaves and the zest of a lime, but our local supermarket does not sell these, so I was forced to come up with substitutes)

Break the lemon grass and the chili in bits and crush slightly. Put the crushed ingeredients in a bowl with the coconut milk, the fishsauce, the sugar, the lemon zest, salt and the bayleaves and stir. Add the chicken, cover and leave in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably longer. Right before you need the chicken, put the diced and marinated chicken on skewers. If you use wooden ones, which I did, it is smart to soak these in water before use, or else they will catch fire.

Marinated tiger prawns

16 tiger prawns, scaled and defrosted
2 gloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of dried chili flakes
2 teaspoon of dried thyme
salt and peper
lemon juice
1 dl of olive oil

Put together the oil, garlic, chili flakes, thyme, salt and peper and mix it all in. I added a bit of the lemon juice from the lemon I used in the previous recipe. Add the prawns to the mix, cover and put in the fridge until use. I always marinate my meat and fish before putting it on to the skewers, because I can use smaller bowls. However, if you don't like to get your hands dirty, you can also put the prawns on the skewers before marinating them. The prawns will get a lovely shade of orangy-pink, when finished. Serve with sweet chili dip and lime wedges.

No BBQ is complete without a potato salad, so I made this super simple recipe, which can easily be adjusted to fit your taste by adding ingredients, but this is how I did it:

Super simple potato salad

500 gr potatoes
2 tablespoons of yoghurt
2 tablespoons of mayonaise
1 tablespoon of creme fraiche
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 avocado (optional)
parsely, finely chopped.
salt and peper

Peal the potatoes and boil them till there just about ready, about ten minutes should do. Once they are cooked, cool the potatoes in the fridge untill they are the cold. In a bowl put together the other ingredients and stir well. Add salt and pepper to taste and do the same with the parsely. Add the chopped onions and the diced potatoes to the dressing and mix well. I topped my salad off with a slide avocado, which I sprinkled lightly with lemon juice, as I wanted it to still look fresh and green when I arrived in the park.

To finish our meal in style, I marinated some fresh strawberries in balsamic vinegar and springled them with sugar and a teaspoon of cummin seeds. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any ice cream with me to the park, nevertheless, my summery desert went in well!

My first steps...

On the way to what will hopefully become my own lively en entertaining foodblog. After addictively reading so many others for weeks maybe months now, browsing the internet for hours, I think time has come to finally give it a go myself. So here we go...