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.

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 2×2×2 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.

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…

Creamy Lemon Puy Lentils with Poached Eggs

2-4 spring onions
2 garlic cloves
1 can puy lentils
rind and juice of one lemon
4 tomatoes
1 teaspoon mustard (or more, if wished)
2 eggs
1 large blob crème fraîche

Ok, do your homework first. Chop (or slice) the spring onions, chop the garlic (or use a garlic press), open a can of puy lentils (or, *gasp*, cook them until tender, preferably including a bay leaf for extra taste), rind and juice the lemon and seed the tomatoes.

Then go on to fry the spring onion and the garlic until not-yet-burned. Add the mustard, the lemon rind and juice, and the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.

In the meanwhile, prepare a saucepan with salted, slightly simmering water (you can also use vinegar instead of salt) and poach the eggs for 2-3 minutes.

Add the lentils to the spring onion mixture, add the crème fraîche, warm up a little, season, and serve together with the poached egg.

Serves 1 1/2; adapted from Nicola Graimes’ 330 Vegetarian Recipes for Health

Saffron Rice with Chorizo

Just a very quick post today. Our freezing compartment is overflowing with food we don’t need, so I decided to clean up and use up at least one item from the freezer. Like for instance one of the two (still unused!) packets of peas.

 

Saffron Rice with Chorizo

200 g Chorizo
2 onions
325 g yellow rice
750 ml bouillon
300 g peas
2 tomatoes

Roughly chop the Chorizo and the onions and fry until golden (that is, if you can discern any colour other than the red the Chorizo will discharge). Add the rice, fry for another minute or so and then add the bouillon. Perhaps I should already mention at this point that my rice was overcooked, but that I had to wait until all liquid was evaporated, so I’d rather recommend to cut back on the bouillon. Boil gently for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, skin and de-seed the tomatoes, and then add them and the peas. Season with pepper, if you think it necessary. Cook another 5 minutes, cover and let rest for another couple of minutes. Serve with fresh parsley.

 
Notes:

I was a bit disappointed by this one. On the one hand it was fun to make, it made me think of some kind of mini-paella, and it was easy. The taste, however, was nothing like a paella; the chorizo was overpowering, and the yellow rice is just not comparable to the taste of real, good rice with saffron. If I were to try this recipe again, I’d really take care to use good ingrdients (normal rice with real saffron, and perhaps a other kind of chorizo), and in general I’d rather go for the original next time (unless I’m really in a hurry…).

Serves 4-6; adapted from a recipe provided by my local supermarket.

The Oxford Companion to Food and Pollo a la Española

A new year requires a new blog, and a new blog requires a new cookbook, at least if it is concerned with cookbooks and the blogger’s addictions to them. Of course I wouldn’t let such an excellent excuse to buy a new cookbook slip away. A week before Christmas I had discovered Alan Davidson’s The Oxford Companion to Food lying in my local bookstore – discounted from € 65 to € 25… With Christmas in my mind I resolved not to buy it then, but to come back after my Christmas holiday and check if this book was meant for me. And surprise, surprise, what did I see? Anyway, you might gather from the book’s title that it’s not really a cookbook, which gives me yet another excuse. Any suggestions?

We had enough Escalivada over today (we actually still have enough for tomorrow, too..) so I decided to look for a main dish that would complement these vegetables well. Pollo a la Española looked interesting and, even better, used all my leftovers: a single green bell pepper, a lonely tomato, some bacon. All I needed to buy was another red bell pepper and four chicken filets, and to raid my storage for the rest.

 

Pollo a la Española

4 chicken portions
paprika
150 g bacon (alternatively: cubed Serrano)
1 large or 2 small onions
2 garlic cloves
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
450 g tomatoes or 400 g canned tomatoes

Rub the chicken with salt and paprika, and fry gently until done. Fry the bacon in another pan, and add the chopped onions and garlic when the bacon starts to give off fat. Clean the bell peppers and chop them roughly. Add them to the onions, or really follow the recipe, unlike me, and add them to the chicken; either seems to work well. Add the tomatoes and the chicken, season, and let simmer on low heat for some 15 minutes.

Serve with rice.

 
Notes:

In this recipe the chicken seems to be prone to dry out – be careful not to let that happen by frying the chicken as little as possible.

Serves 4; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.

Escalivada and Broad Beans with Bacon

A new year requires a new blog, at least if you, like me, are a compulsive buyer of cookbooks, only to hardly make use of them, and have not yet found a method of exploring them in a convenient manner. Thus, my New Year’s resolution: to try out as many new recipes as possible and document them on this blog.

I will start with the first dish prepared this year. Since I’m still enjoying my semester break at home while my poor companion (Buzz, from now on) has to work full-time again, I’m in charge of getting something hot and edible on the table no later than nine o’clock (and preferably earlier). And as we’re still recovering from our holidays, including a trip to meet previously unknown family members, which, as you will know, cannot be made without heaps and piles of food (at one point we actually had a family dinner with 32 people), we opted for something light and healthy today.

Escalivada, Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking informs me, is Catalan for ‘Baked over Embers’. It’s a classical side dish, and amazingly easy. Even better, it is perfectly complemented by Broad Beans with Bacon (also known as Habas Españolas) both in nutritional values and in cooking time, as the latter can easily be prepared while the other is in the oven.

 

Escalivada

2-3 zucchini
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
2 red bell peppers
450 g butternut squash
6 whole garlic cloves, unpeeled and knife-crushed
juice of half a lemon
4 sprigs of thyme
4 tomatoes
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Slice all vegetables (but keep the tomatoes aside as you will only need them later) in large chunks. The butternut squash and perhaps the fennel will probably take a little longer than the rest to be cooked, so consider cooking them for some 10-20 minutes before you add the rest of the vegetables.

Try to find a roasting pan which will accommodate all vegetables in one layer – mine didn’t, but I knew I only had one anyway, and my tiny oven wouldn’t take a larger one, so I had to cook them for a little longer. Place the vegetables in the roasting pan, tuck the thyme between the vegetable chunks and sprinkle over oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add crushed cumin seeds, too, if you like. Bake everything for 20 minutes at 220°C.

Stir the vegetables and add the roughly chopped tomatoes. Bake for another 15 minutes or until tender.

Serves 4-6; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.

 

Broad Beans with Bacon

1 chopped onion
1 garlic clove
50-150 g smoked bacon cubes
225 g fava beans
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp sherry

Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in some olive oil until the onions are browned. Add the fava beans and paprika, and stir-fry for a minute. Lower the heat, add the sherry and let cook for some minutes until the beans are tender, adding more sherry and/or oil if necessary.

Serves 2; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.