Thursday, December 25, 2014

Apple Puff Pastry Dessert


Chop apples and toss in cornflour (this ensures a nice thick sauce inside the pastry case, and NOT a runny liquid oozing everywhere)
Cook apples in melted butter, add sugar and cinnamon, walnuts


Encase in puff pastry.  Seal with water, brush with egg or milk. Sprinkle liberally with sugar.
Bake till done.  Super easy with shop-bought pastry (which I always have in the freezer).
Enjoy

Indian curry veggie with pomegranites


Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Sticky Orange Treacle Sponge Cake


Simple, light fluffy sponge speckled with soaked real citrus peel (dark pieces)
Thinly sliced oranges on top, with a sticky sweet treacle covering.  Delicious

Monday, August 18, 2014

Oat Pancakes



Here it puffed up like a pitta!





Ingredients

Rolled Oats - blitzed in blender
milk
Egg
salt

water
Flax seeds
Baking Powder


Toppings:

Mangoes
Bananas

Blitz in shaker.
Batter is quite thick.  These cook longer than regular pancakes. The baking powder really helps it rise and behave like a regular pancake.

Serve with treacle.
These are not sweet because I decided not to add any sweetener in the batter mix.
Slightly gooier in the middle than your *normal* flour pancakes.
Nonetheless, Delish.









Friday, August 1, 2014

Sweet Chili Sauce




Holy crap! This was SOOOO easy and quick to make.

Regular Vinegar
Brown sugar
(would have used white if  I had.  However the brown added a lovely natural colour to the sauce)
Chili Flakes
Fish Sauce
Ginger - grated
Garlic - minced
Tomato Ketchup

Vegan alternative: need to check

Dressing

  • 1 tbsp miso paste
  • 1 tbsp ginger paste
  • 2 garlic cloves minced
  • 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 tsp silan
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Source recipe:  https://keviniscooking.com/asian-noodle-salad-with-shrimp/

Did not add salt and surprisingly doesn't tastes as if it needs it.  Nor, did I add cornstarch as it's quite naturally thick.
No cooking necessary neither!   Just add according to taste, stir till all the sugar is dissolved.
That's it!
The longer it stands I expect the more the sugar will dissolve and become sweeter over time

Love it!

Saturday, July 12, 2014

chocolate black bean cake





All mixed in the smoothie blender.  
Couldn't be easier!
Add3 large eggs
1/2 cup/100g icing sugar: 
3 heaping Tbsp cocoa powder (dutch process - amazing dark colour)
1 tsp instant coffee or 1 espresso shot
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped
1 tsp baking powderCointreau or preserved orange peel in sugared syrup (add syrup to mix too)
A pinch of salt
1 cup/240 g cooked black beans (or 1 400 g/14 oz can black beans, drained)



Made two!!



I only had tiny teeny dark choc chips so I sprinkled 1/2 cup on each loaf.  Didn't  bother to stir as the chips sunk below during baking anyway.




Smell of this during baking is amazing!
Baked for about 35 mins, checked with a skewer, comes out clean ready to cool.The absolute darkness of this cake, complete with complimentary gooeyness is enough to persuade anyone to the dark side ;)Usually I alter/adapt (even  new recipes) but somehow I didn't with this one.It's flawless, not too sweet, perfect flavour.  Enjoy.Best with vanilla ice-cream or whipped cream or custard.  Yum

Black bean chocolate cake


Makes 1 loaf1 cup/240 g cooked black beans (or 1 400 g/14 oz can black beans, drained)

3 large eggs1/2 cup/100 g icing sugar
3 heaping Tbsp cocoa powder (dutch process - amazing dark colour)
1/2 cup/50 g dark chocolate 70% / used quality tiny chocolate chips
1 tsp instant coffee or 1 espresso shot
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped1 tsp baking powderCointreau or preserved orange peel in sugared syrup (add syrup to mix too)
A pinch of salt

Directions:


1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F/175 °C

2. Add eggs in a blender first (to prevent sticking)combine all of the ingredients, except the dark chocolate. Blend until it is smooth and free of any lumps.
3. Pour the batter into a parchment lined loaf pan. And yes the batter is very liquidy. Chop the dark chocolate and spread it across the surface, some of the chunks should fall into the batter no need to  help it with a teaspoon the choco bits will sink during baking anyway.
5. Bake the cake for approximately 35 min, and set a side to cool completely before removing it from the panKeep the cake in the fridge, up to 5 days, and it will keep moist and delicious. 

Serve it straight from the fridge with a dollop of sour cream or ice cream and fresh fruit. Or just eat it straight up as a snack! Enjoy…

 
Note:  Very gooey
 

Recipe Source - Click here for original recipe























Sunday, June 29, 2014

Friday, June 27, 2014

Momo loves fruit salad

Momo Little chef, so proud of his little fruit salad he made.
He picked out his favourite dish (ramekin) and arranged this little feast for himself.

Beautiful  Perfect.

Job well done!

Now to eat!






Hamburger


Quinoa, Coleslaw Salad



Seed, Nut, and Oat Gluten-free Bread



Mix all dry ingredients together.
Then add all the wet ingredients.
Mix well.  Leave to set in loaf tin.  Bake. Easy!

Mix to soft pliable dough.  I  mixed in a bag to save cleaning

Sliced surprisingly easy.  The nuts and almonds cut beautifully.


Is this just me but the swirling movement of the seeds and nuts remind me of Van Gogh's oils.
Strong crushing currents in a twisting intense turmoil.


40 nis for 340gr

Ingredients:
1 cup / 135g sunflower seeds Pumpkin seeds
½ cup / 90g flax seeds
1 cup hazelnuts or/and almonds or/and walnuts, whatever nuts you have.
1 ½ cups / 145g rolled oats
2 Tbsp. chia seeds (optional)
4 Tbsp. psyllium seed husks (3 Tbsp. if using psyllium husk powder) Psyllium-husk explained
1 tsp. fine grain sea salt (add ½ tsp. if using coarse salt)
2 Tbps Molasses
3/4 cup of raisins
3/4 cup of cranberries
1 Tbp of instant coffee
1 1/4 cups / 320ml water - pat/shape with wet fingers

Source Recipe - Click Here

Method:
Mix all dry ingredient together.
Mix wet ingredients together.
Add and mix well.
Shape into loaf tin
Leave to set/rest for at least 2 hours
Bake at 170 till brown on top.  Take out of tin and return to oven uncovered till brown.
It's nicer when the loaf has an all round golden brown crust.

Leave to cool.
Cut with a sharp serrated knife.

Impressive looking cracker/bread.  Very firm, very pretty, taste good and seedy, in a good way.
Will toast nuts and seeds next time, hopefully this will add crunch and a roasty flavour also may prevent nuts looking'soggy' as they did here.
Plus studded with some sweet raisins will be excellent!  A sort of pumpernickel gone healthy, gluten-wild.

It is life-changing.
If I thought finding  psyllium was the challenge - wrong.
Finding the right topping is the challenge.  Me thinks it needs a strong, flavourful partner full of attitude and taste to counter-act this very bold bread.





Top with rasins, cranberries and molasses.
Wonderful pumpernickel-like bread.  Loved the darker colour with the added surprise of the sweet squishy raisins. Loved this, will definitely make this again as is.

Below, used silan and dried tomatoes.  Nice but I think I prefer the darkness of the molasses in this loaf...for me...What do you think?



Getting better and better,
I 'm settled with adding molasses, (not silan, not brown sugar)  dark and rich and sweetness to the 'bread'  Plus LOTS of dark raisins and cranberries. A generous tablespoon of instant coffee.  A nod to my favourite NY raisin pumpernickel recipe.
It looks Amazing and tastes AMAZING!
Think I can no longer improve it.....It has arrived.


Intense.  In a good way...very good way




Tuesday, June 3, 2014

class B produce class A dish


This was class B avocado, what's class B?  Not class A.
Class A is supposedly 'Top' quality though not necessary so, but yes you will be definitely paying Top prices.
Fruits and veggies are sold like most things with  a peak/ripe date and an expiry date.
It goes without saying the ripe, ready-to-eat, must-be-devoured-today will be much cheaper than the firmer, less ripe but will be ready to be eaten in the coming days will have a much higher price tag.
TIME in essence is what you are paying for.

My salad from 'price-reduced' produce
Fantastically ripe avocado; 
mixed lettuce leaves; 
apricots (reduced - class B); 
blue cheese; 
peaches (reduced - class B); 
walnuts; 
pumpkin seeds; 
sunflower seeds;  
soft boiled egg; 
red onions; 
Dressing:  Balsamic; Olive oil; salt;


Saturday, May 17, 2014

Cheezy broccoli & sweet-corn mini quiches

Big hit with the family, because of the paper cases they were so easy to handle and eat on the go too.  And no messy clean ups!
Big flavours here, used a bag of mixed cheeses of which for sure I will never be again to obtain the exact same kinds.  But that's life..never the same river twice.  

Oh I splurged this time and used cream.  Eggs and grated cheese, 2 tbps of flour, sweet-corn and post-steamed broccoli (as small as you can be bothered to make them).
Mix and pour into the paper cases.  Bake at 180 till done.








Picked Peppers - super quick


Very quick indeed.
Admittedly, this was  rescue in disguise, I  saw the peppers STILL in the fridge and seeing I will have not time to do anything with them in a dish soon, decided best bet was to 'BUY TIME" so pickling it was!
Wash peppers, prettiest if you have multi-coloured, but perfectly fine if you just have red like I have here.
Place in plastic bag and micro-wave for say 10 mins.  Leave to cool.  Then peel the skin as well as you can.  "Don't worry if you don't get all the skin off.  Cut in strips ( I used sissors)   In a separate glass mix regular vinegar, white sugar, salt, dissolve granules and mix into the peppers.  Dress up with white and black sesame, add some chopped green coriander.







Buckwheat Crackers/bread

 
Bread recipe contained eggs and not yeast.
This did rise quite a bit, but looked spongy to my mind, anyways into the oven...


Nice nutty taste, but the texture was too cakey for me and not the bread I was looking for.
Another recipe next time.  I think.  By the way this recipe required 2 eggs/500g buckwheat flour and no yeast.


This new recipe the dough did not rise at all after many hours.
So rolled it out and baked it.  If not bread then we shall have crackers.  It was next on my list anyway.
Click here for Buckwheat Recipe

Note, this did not rise for me, I rolled the dough indented (this helps to break and eat later) before baking in a warm oven about 150 till crispy and brown.
NOTE:  Roll as thin as possible for delicate crispiness!  (Not so nice when it's a thick slab)
Also note to self add cheddar in mixture or Parmesan for cheezy kick. 


Came out very nice, considering it was a 'rescue'  will add more seeds and perhaps flax next time.
Fresh from the oven lovely and crispy.  If kept longer, then should be toasted just in a regular toaster to crisp it up, it looses it's crunchiness, unless you like your crackers less crusty.



 My salad of this Summer is this refreshing celery and apple salad.  Delish.
Recipe for refreshing salad


Favourite salad, home made labane, and home made buck wheat Crackers.  What could be more healthy and satisfying ..

Recipe
½ teaspoon baker's yeast
2 heaped teaspoons raw sugar
1 cup lukewarm water

3½ cups buckwheat flour (preferably organic)
1 cup oats (quick oats, large oats or a mixture of both)

1¼ cups seeds: ¾ cup sunflower, ¼ cup flax, ¼ cup sesame
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1¾ cup water 








 
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