Turkish Cucumber Soup

Have you also had some of that wonderful summer weather lately? I have, and although I don’t have much time to spend outside, at least I managed to have dinner in the sun yesterday. We had a Pasta Salad (with mackerel and sun-dried tomatoes instead of chicken breast and corn) and this very light Turkish Cucumber Soup.

 

Turkish Cucumber Soup

1 cucumber
500 g yoghurt
2 tbsp. dried mint
salt
pink shrimps
garlic oil

Peel and de-seed the cucumber, then chop finely, sprinkle with salt and drain in a sieve. Wash of the salt, dap dry with a kitchen towel and mix with yoghurt, mint and shrimps. Leave to cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Salt to taste. Garnish with shrimps and garlic oil.

 
Notes:

Why should you first sprinkle the cucumber with salt, drain, make wet, dap dry and then salt again? Seriously, I have no idea. This seems to be the least logical recipe I have ever encountered. I’ll leave out this step next time. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a soup anyway, so any cucumber juices would have been welcome, as might some extra yoghurt.

The original recipe calls for two garlic cloves to be crushed, and pure olive oil to be used instead of garlic oil. I can definitely recommend that, as I thought the oil’s garlic taste was not strong enough for the soup; in fact, I didn’t like the oil at all and would not use it again (or let my guests decide that themselves).

We used shrimps because I saw that elsewhere; and pink shrimps because they were the cheapest and we have to pinch pennies at the moment (and because I wanted to add some extra seafood to our menu); but unfortunately, they weren’t really worth it. Either chose good, expensive shrimps, or leave them out altogether to make a vegetarian meal!

Smoked Haddock Chowder

This week I had Smoked Haddock Chowder. Actually, I was looking for a good recipe to use kipper, as I enjoy smoked fish of any kind and kipper is the cheapest of them all. I couldn’t find any interesting recipe for kipper, but I found this one for smoked haddock – or rather these two, as what I eventually made is a variation of this one and this one. I stuck to smoked haddock this time, just to see what the original is supposed to be like, but I will definitely try kipper next time.

 

Smoked Haddock Chowder

1 onion
butter (alternatively olive oil)
500 ml milk
ca. 350 g potatoes
2 fillets of smoked haddock (or any other smoked fish)
1 small can of corn

Chop the onion and fry in butter. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes. Add the milk and the potato cubes, bring to a boil and cook for a little while. Then add the haddock, cook a short while and add the corn. Season and serve.

 
Notes:

Neither the haddock nor the corn I used were frozen, so I had to adapt the cooking time given in the original recipes to make sure that the potatoes were cooked without having the haddock falling apart. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the recipe and the fact that everything except for the haddock (or even including the haddock, if you have a frozen one) are typical staples you would usually have at home. However, I’m not really sure how much I like the taste of it. The taste of corn is quite predominant in this chowder and, although I love fresh corn, calls up associations of cheap food – which is why I awarded only three stars. Adding bits of bacon, as suggested in one of the original recipes, might have helped to add a fuller flavour, but I don’t quite know if that had been enough. The taste of the smoked fish isn’t strong enough at all for a fish chowder, nor was the soup as mushy as I would have expected (which doesn’t mean that at a given moment I cooked the soup so long that the milk didn’t disappear…). I guess using a different kind of potatoes might help, as might using a recipe that calls for longer cooking times in general. All in all, however, this is a super-practical everyday meal.

I’m not really sure in which season I should place this. The smoked haddock indicates winter, but somehow… perhaps the corn makes me feel summer… perhaps the corn should be left out altogether (or strongly reduced), and possibly replaced by other vegetable, if any at all…

Serves 2-4 depending on for which course it is served; adapted from BBC Good Food.

Cabbage casserole and Banana fritters…

Aaargh, who ever claimed to be catching up with recipes? It wasn’t me, was it? Nooo, definitely not me! Anyway, I’m back home with Buzz again, which means more cooking than usual, and therefore more pressure on blogging about it as well…

I already arrived on Thursday and was lucky enough to be able to sit down at a laid table – we finished Buzz’ chicken soup and chicken salad on Thursday and Friday, had a Pizza on Saturday and a Cabbage casserole with blue cheese on Sunday and today. Actually, officially it’s a Savoy Cabbage and Mince Meat Casserole, but we ended up using Chinese cabbage anyway.

 

Savoy Cabbage and Mince Meat Casserole

1 cabbage head (appr. 600 g, but 1 kg will be fine as well); use savoy or chinese (or any other) cabbage
2 tomatoes
1-2 onions
500 g mince meat
300 g Roquefort or any other blue cheese
200 g cream
2 eggs

Clean the cabbage and cut into 1-2 cm thick slices; boil in salted water until done but still crisp; this may take around 10 min for savoy cabbage, says my cookbook, but the chinese cabbage was done within 5-6 min. Drain the cabbage in cold water so that it doesn’t continue to cook.

Drop the tomatoes into boiling water, then peel and de-seed them and cut them into chunks. Chop the onion and fry together with the mince meat. When that is done, add the tomato and half of the blue cheese (in crumbles), and let the cheese melt; but be careful not to let it get burned!

Grease a casserole and fill with half of the cabbage. Mix the eggs and the cream, season with salt and pepper, and pour half of the mixture on the cabbage. Then add the mince meat mix and top with the rest of the cabbage, pour the other half of the cream-egg-mix and scatter the rest of the blue cheese on top. Pop into the oven and bake at 220°C for about half an hour.

 
Notes:

I quite enjoyed this casserole. I was a little sceptical about how the blue cheese would blend in, but I was pleasantly surprised. Nonetheless, the taste of the blue cheese was quite strong; I suppose it might not have turned out that way if we really had used a Roquefort and not a stronger (and cheaper) Danica Blue, so it’s definitely worth it to either choose a milder blue cheese, or mix the blue cheese with another mild and creamy cheese (Buzz’ suggestion is a goat’s cheese, but somehow that doesn’t really fit my definition of creamy mild cheese…)

Serves 4-6; adapted from Cornelia Adam’s Aufläufe, Gratins und Soufflés.

 

Banana fritters

2-4 bananas
a little flour
more cold (very cold!) water
   (try 1 part flour and 2 parts water to begin with)
2-3 tbsp. sesame seeds
a few tbsp. sugar
a dash of salt
oil for deep-frying

I’m sorry that I can’t give more precise measurements for this recipe. I’ve seen it somewhere recently and really liked the idea, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen it, and so I had to go by memory and intuition.

Anyway. Make a batter from all ingredients except for the bananas. The batter should be relatively liquid. I started out with only a tablespoon or so of sugar, but I kept adding at least two or three more tablespoons of it as the bananas became crisper and less bland. The batter should be cold, so consider placing the bowl in a larger one filled with cold water to keep the temperature down.

Peel and slice the bananas, cover them with batter and fry them in small batches, and serve (warm, preferably).

 
Notes:

Make sure that the batter is liquid, and that it is cold; that will ensure that the bananas are only surrounded by a thin, light and crisp batter. Furthermore, add enough sugar (but not too much, remember that fried bananas release sugar as well!) if you find that your fried bananas are not yet crisp enough. Writing this, I think that letting the batter rest for a short time (anything between 10 and 30 minutes) might have a positive effect as well, so be sure to prepare the batter before sitting down for dinner.

I also rolled the last two banana slices in sesame seeds before covering them with batter – I can really recommend that! But you have to like sesame seeds…

Oh, and one last thing: these are Banana fritters, NOT Finger fritters, so keep you fingers outta there!

Serves 2; adapted from, ehm, my memory.

Rescuing my meal…

I haven’t blogged a lot in the last few weeks, my excuses for that; I have cooked, every now and then, and I will try to catch up with at least some of the recipes.

Tonight, I had Chicken with Creamy Bacon Penne. Actually, I was supposed to eat this dish two days ago; but then I discovered in the very last second that my cream had turned sour, and that the canned peas I bought because I couldn’t find any fresh ones were absolutely disgusting. Luckily, I still had a ripe avocado and a can of corn, so I added those together with a marinade of olive oil and vinegar, and voilà, there was my Easy Pasta Salad (you can throw in a lot of other ingredients if you wish, fresh tomatoes, dried tomatoes, cucumber, carrots (slightly braised?), feta or mozzarella cheese, braised broccoli, …)

 

Chicken with Creamy Bacon Penne

1-2 chicken breast(s), cut in strips
a small pack of bacon
(1-2 small onions, chopped)
4 tbsp. white wine
a few carrots, finely sliced
a small pack of peas
5 tbsp. double cream/1 cup single cream
Pasta

Fry the bacon, the chicken and the onions. If you prefer crispy bacon, fry the bacon first until its half-done, then add the chicken and the onions. Add the carrots, fry a little longer, then add the white wine. When the wine has nearly evaporated, add the peas, the cream and possibly some water, and cook for a couple of minutes until the peas are done.

The original recipe calls for instant pasta which I didn’t have (and never would buy); I had to cook the pasta separately, and so strictly speaking this wasn’t a one-dish meal anymore, as the cookbook’s title suggested. However, if you prepare the double amount of bacon, chicken and pasta, you could end up with a two-in-one meal, eating Chicken with Creamy Bacon Penne on the first day and the Easy Pasta Salad on the next.

Serves 2-3; adapted from the BBC Good Food Series’ 101 One-pot Dishes.

 

Easy Pasta Salad

Pasta
1-2 chicken breast(s), cut in strips
a small pack of bacon
4 tbsp. white wine
1 ripe avocado
1 can of corn
any other ingredient (fresh tomatoes, dried tomatoes, cucumber, carrots (slightly braised?), feta or mozzarella cheese, braised broccoli, … see note above)
olive oil and vinegar

Fry the bacon, and the chicken. Add the white wine and cook until the wine has nearly evaporated. Mix with the pasta, adding the corn and spoonfulls of avocado, and any other vegetable, and serve with a dressing of olive oil and vinegar.

Serves 2-3; a family recipe.

Quick Meatball Casserole

I’m back in London since beginning of this week, and desperately need a way to cook around all my limitations: no oven, very few herbs and spices, and one person only to feed (although the latter might more be a problem of lacking inspiration than of anything else). Ideal preconditions to make a one-dish meal.

 

Quick Meatball Casserole

500 g turkey (or any other) mince
small bunch of parsley
2(-4) onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
450 g carrots, quartered and cut into chunks
450 g potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 tbsp. paprika
500 g can passata/ chopped tomatoes

Make sure you have at least chopped half of the vegetables, if not all, before you begin. Don’t chop the carrots too finely; they will be cooked as long as the potatoes even though they have a shorter cooking time, and still need to be crisp.

Mix the turkey mince with half the chopped parsley and some salt and pepper and form small meat balls. Heat some oil in a casserole and fry until the meatballs are done. Or just buy ready-made meatballs from your local supermarket as I have, in order to avoid having Spaghetti Bolognese yet again (see this entry).

Add the chopped onions, carrots, and the garlic and fry shortly before you add the potatoes and 300 ml (or two large glasses) of water (– the original recipe says nothing about frying in this step, but I just enjoy the taste of fried onions, and I had already mixed them with the carrots and the garlic when this step occurred to me). Bring to a boil, cover (or not, but make sure the potatoes are immersed) and simmer for 15 min.

Stir in the paprika, passata/ chopped tomatoes and half the remaining parsley. Bring to a boil, cover (or not; I had no choice, I had no lid for my casserole but it went just fine; just don’t forget the potatoes) and cook for a further 10-15 min or until the potatoes are tender. Season to taste and sprinkle with the remaining parsley.

 
Notes:

It will be crucial for this recipe that you end up having nicely boiled potatoes without having flabby overcooked carrots. As I said above, try not to chop too fine chunks of carrots but make an effort with the potatoes (relatively, that is – mine were approximately 2×2x2 cm). I could only find cans of chopped tomatoes instead of passata, and it went very well – you could probably also add other vegetables, or passata plus fresh tomatoes, as long as you add enough liquid.

I’m not yet really sure whether I should award this recipe three or four stars – I guess the problem is mainly that it tastes too much like typical kids’ food. Don’t shy away from this dish because of this comment, the food is tasty, and anyway, it’s ideal for kids…

And check your cupboard for any ingredients you believe you don’t have before cooking, not after…

Serves 4; adapted from the BBC Good Food Series’ 101 One-pot Dishes.

Catfish with a Lime-Crust, Flambéed Grapes

Last week Thursday it was my turn again with cooking, and I was far too late again; at 6 o’clock Buzz would come home, having had an extra difficult day because of application talks, and at 5 o’clock I still hadn’t had the faintest clue of what to do, nor the ingredients I would probably need.

I quickly reached out for Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food – if there was anything I needed now it was exactly that. I opted for fish, because we hadn’t had any fish all week, and I was delighted to find a recipe that wouldn’t require me to go to the fish monger and wouldn’t need any special ingredients either. For dessert, we were about to repeat Valentine day’s Flambéed apples when we decided to try it with any other fruit we had in house – grapes in our case. And to my great surprise, it worked!

 

Catfish with a Lime-Crust

4 large trout fillets (or other white fish)
2 tbsp. fresh breadcrumbs
(2-)3 limes
4 tbsp. fresh mixed herbs (parsley, dill, tarragon)
25 g butter
salt (and pepper)

Preheat the oven to 200°C (I always forget that if I don’t mention it in the very beginning).

Grind or grate an old bread roll for the bread crumbs, if possible. Grate two of the limes and add the zest to the bread. Finely chop the herbs and add them as well, then place on a flat plate.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the juice of 1-2 of the limes. Press one side of the fish fillets firmly onto the herbs so that they will stick, then place them on a baking sheet, herb-side up, I suppose, and spoon over the butter and lime.

Bake until the fish is done (should be 6 min for trout but can be longer!), and serve. Nigel Slater chose crispy green beans for accompaniment, I opted for broccoli. Go for some Caribbean vegetable accompaniment to make it a bit more special and get that summer feeling.

 
Notes:

Because I couldn’t find trout, I bought two filets of Catfish (Pangasius) instead, a fish that, as I found out, needed more cooking time than a trout (which might be down to the fact that catfish fillets are larger, apparently…). Also, I didn’t really manage to get a crust, I probably used too much butter and/or lime juice (I never measure those things precisely; I must have used less lime juice anyway because I only had two in place of the required three), as the crust was too soggy to be crispy. So, next time I’ll definitely reduce the amounts of liquids.

Be careful not to use too much parsley, as the taste of parsley is far stronger than that of dill, and beware of the intensity of the lime juice as well.

Serves 2; adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food.

 

Flambéed Grapes

Basically, this recipe is identical to that of the Flambéed Apples, with the apples replaced by, well, grapes, and no Calvados.

a bunch of grapes
Caster sugar
some Rum
Ice Cream/ Crème Bavaroise

Pick and slice the grapes. Melt some butter in a pan, add the grapes and cook for a short while. When you think they are ready, sprinkle caster sugar on them, add the rum and ignite. Small grapes will take the shape of contact lenses, might be a nice idea for a Halloween joke later this year.

Some tips for flambeing: Some alcohols, such as certain brands rum, contain just about enough alcohol to make flambeing possible. To help the process, make sure the food you want to flambé is hot, and preheat the alcohol in a ladle above a flame before igniting.

Serve with ice cream or Crème Bavaroise (we had Speculaas-Ice cream, ice cream with bits of spicy cookies mainly eaten around Christmas and Sinterklaas, making it a typical winter dish – excellent!).

Serves 2; adapted from Hedwig M. Stuber’s Ich helf dir kochen.

Dinner with my in-laws

Dinner at my in-laws’ last Wednesday. I always enjoy going there, not only because it’s always very entertaining and pleasant, but also because my mother-in-law is a fantastic cook. And she has outdone herself once again.

As a starter we had Beetroot Soup with Pumpkin and Horseradish Cream. It was supposed to have been beetroot soup, but in the last minute she discovered that it wasn’t going to be enough for the four of us and added some pumpkin – a daring step, I think, but it gave a very interesting taste. The main dish was Steak with Aubergine and Coriander, followed by Apple Bread Pudding. I only have recipes of the latter two, so I will only post those.

 

Steak with Aubergine and Coriander

3 aubergines
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 lime
1 cm fresh ginger
2 shallots
2 red peppers, deseeded and sliced
coriander

1 steak pp.

Cut the aubergine into long thin slices. Sprinkle them with salt, place them in a sieve and place a heavy object on them so that as much water as possible will be squeezed out.

Place the coriander seeds in a dry pan and roast them until they begin to smell. Wash the lime, grate its zest and squeeze the lime. Grind the coriander seeds, lime zest and juice, ginger, shallots and red peppers until they form a smooth paste.

Pat the aubergines dry. Fry them for 6-8 minutes in some oil, then add the paste and 100 ml water, cover and cook for another 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Brush the steaks with oil. Heat a grill pan and grill the steaks for 1-2 minutes on each side until they are done but remain pink on the inside. Serve with the vegetables and sprinkle with coriander leaves.

Serves 4; a recipe from the local supermarket.

 

Apple Bread Pudding

bread
cinnamon
butter
apples

Butter some stale bread (e.g. baguette), sprinkle with cinnamon and roast in the oven until it is dry and crispy (but not too crispy, you will want to be able to bake it a second time), then cut into small cubes. Cut some apples into slices and cook until they fall apart. Keeping some of the bread cubes apart, mix the apple mixture with the bread cubes in a oven-save dish. Place the rest of the cubes on top, and roast for another 10-15 minutes.

Serves how many you wish; a family recipe.

Be my Valentine: Cheese Fondue and Flambéed Apples

Again a lot to catch up with this week.  Let me start with the weekend:

Buzz had a very sweet savoury surprise for me when I came home this weekend. I was greeted by two red roses when I opened the door, and I was finally told what he had planned for Saturday evening: He would make Cheese Fondue for me. Now you must know that Cheese has always been a favourite of mine. When I was a kid, we used to eat Raclette every now and then, and even though I was still small, I was one of the most eager to begin, and one of the last to stop eating, making my grandmother feel full by merely watching me.

 

Cheese Fondue

pp. 100 g Emmenthaler or Gruyere
pp. 100 g of a softer cheese, such as Raclette
white wine
a lacing of kirsch
cornstarch

Heat the white wine in the fondue pan. Grind the cheese and let it melt bit by bit in the wine, stirring continuously. Add the kirsch, and add some cornstarch to bind the cheese mixture.

Serve with bread, pickled cucumbers, pickled onions and corn salad.

When Buzz bought the cheese, the lady in the shop recommended to calculate 200 g cheese per person. He bought 500 g for the two of us, and hadn’t it been for the dessert, I would have gone to bed hungry… but that might just have been me…

Serves 2; a family recipe.

 

Flambéed Apples

1 apple per person (e.g. Granny Smith)
Caster sugar
1 shot Rum
1 shot Calvados
Ice Cream/ Crème Bavaroise

Peel the apples, remove the core and slice them into appr. 1 cm thick slices. Melt some butter in a pan, add the apples and cook for a while. When you think they are ready, sprinkle caster sugar on them, add the rum-calvados-mix and ignite.

Some tips for flambeing: Some alcohols, such as certain brands rum, contain just about enough alcohol to make flambeing possible. To help the process, make sure the food you want to flambé is hot, and preheat the alcohol in a ladle above a candle before igniting.

Serve with ice cream or Crème Bavaroise (we had Speculaas-Ice cream, ice cream with bits of spicy cookies – excellent!).

Serves 2; adapted from Hedwig M. Stuber’s Ich helf dir kochen.

Know what you’re doing, II.

Finnish Meatballs turned Spaghetti Bolognese…

Yesterday I planned to have Tessa Kiros’ Finnish Meatballs for dinner. That is to say, I intended to make them first, and then to gobble them before anybody else had the chance to get between me and my meatballs. Alas, it would never come as far.

Of course I began with my typical mistakes, beginning to cook when I already felt hungry, and not reading the recipe before that. Big mistake. The recipe said that I would need soak some bread in milk for half an hour, or until all milk is soaked up. There was no way I could wait as long. Additionally, the bread that I had planned in for the meatballs, I had, uhm, already devoured for lunch. Luckily I still had a breakfast roll I could use that took up liquid very quickly. Next I discovered that I had forgotten to buy eggs – and making meatballs without eggs is a nearly impossible task. So I left, bought some eggs in the nearby supermarket, returned and proceeded according to the book: add minced meat, chopped onions, allspice (which I did not have and left out), salt and pepper to the soaked bread and form small, walnut-sized balls. Hmm. How should you be able to form balls from a mass that resembles a liquid more than anything else? I tried it, squeezing the meat into meat balls with the help of two spoons, and then fried them in a pan, but in the end they would inevitably fall apart when I turned them. Finally, I gave up and fried the minced meat as it was until it was cooked, boiled pasta instead of the planned potatoes, added tomato sauce and oregano to the meat and made a simple, tasty spaghetti bolognese.

Oh, and yet something else that went wrong: I was lucky to find one can of tomato sauce, but that was not enough. As I still had some sour cream left over, I added some of that. I fear, though, that no self-conscious Italian would still call it a Spaghetti Bolognese…

When Snow turns Ice…