Tried and True!

I love my cookbooks but, more often than not, it is to *teh innernets* that I turn to for inspiration and ideas. The cooking sites and blogs I read are all listed in my sidebar, and I have to admit are visited daily. (Or at least they were up until this week, where I finally started work again after a year on maternity leave.).

Anyway my ’system’ for marking and remembering internet recipes leaves a lot to be desired: I try to bookmark them into a ‘recipe’ folder never look back. Not such a great technique however, since I end up spending hours trying to remember something I saw. Not so with this recipe, from a highly recommendable blog, which I have been meaning to try for a year now. Everytime I saw lemons, I had to think of this recipe and I have finally made it. And I can tell you: tried and true, it’s absolutely awesome. Because you use an entire lemon, you get a little bit of the bitterness of the peel and the zest which makes it taste somewhat like a gin and tonic with sugar. And no booze.

By the way, my biggest fan and harshest critic (all rolled into one) did yet again, not believe me that a whole lemon was a good idea for a tarte au citron. That’s probably because legend has it her husband makes the most perfect, delicous tarte au citron meringuée. But I have never had the privilege to taste it (HINT!). Anyway, if you hear me sistah, go make it!

Oh, and I am also using this post to make a little special smartypants insert about tarte dough (which my husband INSISTS on calling pie dough–a tarte is NOT a pie my friends!). As a disclaimer, though, I will tell you that my mother (what’s with me and my family in this post, huh?) makes the absolute most perfect tartes and subsequently, tarte doughs. Hers are buttery, flaky and most of all thin. I have somehow never managed to achieve my mother’s tartes’ degree of thinness, but I actually also like tarte dough so much, that i absolutely don’t mind if there is a lot of it! Ok, enough digressing, let’s move this along!

Whole Lemon Tarte

Basic Tarte Dough

2 cups of flour (about 240 g)
1/2 tsp salt
100 g sugar
145 g cold cold butter
3 tbsp icecold water

prep time: 5min, cooling time: 30 min, parbaking time 25 min*

metal mixing bowl and knife or food processor ( I beleive it’s called a ‘cuisineart’ in the english speaking world)

Make sure all your ingredients are very cold. Cut the butter in cubes and using a knife, cut it into the flour, salt and sugar, or mix it together in your foodprocessor until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add the cold water bit by bit until the dough starts to come together. Roll it together in a ball, wrap it in clingfoil and put it in the fridge to rest for 30 min.

Butter and flour the tin(s), to be extrasure, line the bottom with baking paper. Roll out the dough to the desired size, fold it and unfold it into your tarte or cake tin.

Now you have two possibilities: 1) prebake the dough and fill it with chocolate, or strawberries and cream or I don’t know what, and 2) dust some almond meal or couscous in the bottom, fill it with uncooked fruits (apples, apricots you name it) and bake it as a whole.
We are going to go with number 1), and I wil give you a better and detailed description for number 2) whenever I think of it.

To make the whole lemon tarte, prick little holes in the pie dough with a fork, line it with baking paper and fill it with beans or rice or actual baking weights if you are truly fancy. Bake at 180° for about 20 min. The crust should be semi-baked and still somewhat soft, but shouldn’t break if you attempt to remove it from the tin (if it did, and your crust is ruined, I am truly sorry…). Remove the baking weigts and baking paper and put it back in the oven for another 5 min. Let it cool. Take it out of the tin and put it onto a baking rack or sheet

Lemon Filling

adapted from Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan, via smitten kitchen
prep time: 10min, baking time: 45 min, cooling time: 20 min

1 medium sized lemon (about 130 g)
300 g sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp corn or potato starch
115 g of butter, melted and cooled

23 cm round cake or tarte tin

Preheat the oven to 160°C. In your foodprocessor combine the sugar and the lemon and whizz it until it becomes a homogenous and delicious smelling puree. Resist the urge to eat it all on the spot.
With a whisk, add in the whole egg and the yolk. Sift over the cornstarch and slowly add the melted butter, making sure all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Pour the lemon mixture into the parbaked tarte crust and slide it into the oven. Bake for about 20 min. Increase the heat to 180° and keep baking for another 15-20 min, or until the filling is bubbly and golden. take it out of the oven and let it cool for a while before serving.

* This recipe makes enough for a thickish crust in a 27 cm tarte tin, or two medium crusts in a 23 cm tin, or a covered ‘pie’, or one 23 cm tarte tin and 10 muffin sized mini tartelettes. phew, thorough, eh?

Peanuts

I don’t know where to begin with this other than to say that this is the sauce to replace all sauces for any asian dish, salads and other dips. You can add it to something healthy (like a tofu stir fry*) or slather it on something like fries or dip stuff — or cars, according to my older boy, because cars are pretty much the answer to everything these days!.

You can play around with proportions depending on how spicy you like it, adding more chilies, milk or coconut milk instead of water to thin it, adding in some chopped peanuts, cilantro or whatever other flavors you enjoy.
The essence of this recipe seems to be: I made peanut sauce, I hope you like it. Figure it out on your own! Does it seem lately that my recipes are vague? Hmm, anyone else but me, got the feeling I am being lazy here? Well,if so I am sorry and offer this as an explanation: I am starting work in a few weeks after a year on maternity leave and am feeling like everything around me is coming to a crashing halt before some wort of explosion occurs!

This sauce did make me feel better though, so that’s a start!

Peanut Sauce

prep time: 5 min tops

about 4 tbsp peanut butter**
2 tbsp water
1 small dried chili
1 cm fresh gingerpeeled and grated
splash of soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
a few drops or more toasted sesame oil

Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan, heating it up gently until it comes together. You can add more liquid if you want your sauce to be thinner, or less if you want it more as a spread/dip.

* The stir fry you see in the picture is simply green onions heated up with sunflower oil in the wok, cubed tofu added in and fried until slightly crispy and raw broccoli florets, tossed in at the last minute. I added a splash of lime juice to keep the green color of the raw broccoli.

**I use natural peanut butter, which is basically pure peanuts, ground to a paste. It has no additives, salt, sugar or other oils in it and it’s a source of good proteins and fat. In Europe, you can find it in health food stores and just like ‘normal’ PB, it comes in creamy or crunchy versions. Of course, you could also use regular ‘american style’ peanut butter if you prefer. This kind is super-processed and not very good for you, the taste is a little more kind though!

Spargelzeit…

In Germany, there is a fifth season. During the spring, there is a time dedicated solely to asparagus (Spargelzeit), which in Germany is the absolute symbol of spring. A huge deal is made out of this by marketers and consumers alike (speaking of marketers, I now have the stupid jingle for Thomy hollandaise sauce for Spargel in my head, and I know everyone who has ever watched TV in Germany in the spring knows what I am talking about), and this was very intriguiging to my husband when he moved here, since every single restaurant was advertising it and you could
eat it just about as ubiquitously as Berlin’s n°1 food — the curry wurst. The region around Berlin is particularly known for a thick white asparagus, the Beelitzer Spargel; but I personally really like the green kind, which has only been available for a few years here.

Anyway, enough silly stories. I like asparagus in a risotto, so here goes.

Asparagus Risotto with Herbs

prep time: 10min, cooking time: 20-25 min

heavy saucepan

a bunch of asparagus (about 500 g), washed and roughly chopped with heads reserved
3 tbsp of various fresh chopped herbs (I used basil, parsley and cilantro)
1 small onion, diced
2 cups of risotto rice
5 cups of chicken/vegetable broth, hot
2 tbsp of butter
lots of parmesan
olive oil

Break of the ends of the asparagus, remove the heads and chop into bits. Melt 1 tbsp butter with some olive oil in a heavy saucepan and add the onion and about half the herbs. Fry on low heat until translucent. Add the rice and stir until translucent. Add the chopped asparagus, stirring until everything is well coated in the butter/olive oil.

Slowly add about 1 cup of the hot broth to the rice, stirring until the liquid has been absorbed. Kepp adding broth while stirring, until the rice has softened. When the rice still has some bite to it, add the reserved asparagus heads and the rest of the herbs. Turn of the heat, add the other tbsp of butter and parmesan to taste. Cover and let it rest for a few min before serving.

This is my basic way of doing risotto, you can subsitute the add on ingredients and some wine/vermouth for one cup of liquid if you like. You could also be extra indulgent and serve it with a dollop of mascarpone

More From the Healthy Ones

After having made this salad (and yes, I am quoting myself — sue me!) approximately 100 times in the last weeks, we all got a little bored of broccoli. This is when I remembered a similar take on raw vegetables with fennel. It’s more of a guideline than a recipe and (i feel supremely pontifying typing these words) you can use the base with many different vegetables.

The fun thing about this salad and the other one, is the classic combo of acid and salt, somewhat like a salt and vinegar chip. You could replace the fennel with carrots, or green beans or cooked potatoes even.

Fennel Slaw with Toasted Sesame

prep time: 10min, marinate for as long as you can stand!

1-2 fennel bulbs cut in thin slices, with a mandoline if you have one you showoff, you!
juice of one big lemon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sesame seeds
olive oil

In a salad bowl, mix the lemon juice and salt. Add the sliced fennel and toss to combine. Heat up a pan on high heat and toast the sesame until fragrant. Sprinkle still hot over the fennel and add olive oil. Eat straight up or let it marinate a while.

A Quarter Pounder By Any Other Name

Hmm, ok, maybe the title is a bit misleading, since the photo is clearly showing a cake! This cake is called a four quarter cake in french, and a pound cake in english and it’s so simple, a child can do it.

And a child did, since the big boy was instrumental in bringing you this cake today: his poor little hands replaced the coveted kitchenaid standmixer as he was allowed to hold the whizzing and mixing machine ALL BY HIMSELF, all the while telling me that he was a BIG BOY NOW!

Despite warnings by She Who Shall Not Be Named (my self-appointed blog consultant — you know who you are), that it was a boring cake and recipe, I actually really really like the quatre-quart. It’s simple in taste, you can use it as a replacement for bread at breakfast, have it with tea in the afternoon and use it as backdrop for layered trifles of any kind.

It’s also the perfect recipe for someone who has never baked anything before, because there is no way that you can mess it up! You can also add some vanilla, lemon zest or dried fruit, but then it wouldn’t really be a pound cake anymore, or would it?

Simple Pound Cake

prep time: 10min, baking time: 50 min

mixing bowl, loaf pan

4 eggs
weight of the eggs in butter plus more for the pan
weight of the eggs in sugar
weight of the eggs in flour
half a pack of baking powder (about 7 g)

Preheat the oven to 180° and butter and flour your loaf pan. Mix the butter and the sugar until fluffy and white. Add the eggs one by one with the handmixer still running. Sift the flour and baking powder over the Mix and fold in. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 min or until a knife inserted in the center stays clean. Let cool in the pan before unmolding. The cake is great warm, cold, the next day and even toasted!

Spring!

my day so far:
- hoping that the little boys would stop teething and thus be able to go to daycare.
- my hopes being shattered as I changed the n-th diaperblowout.
- getting a cancelation of my lunchdate by a friend who I have’t seen properly in months
- changing another diaper
- deciding to make something out of the rhubarb I had bought on saturday
- forgetting the rhubarb on the stove because of, you guessed it:
- changing another diaper
- making a load of laundry
- changing another diaper…
You get the picture.

But i digress, back to the rhubarb: after having forgotten it on the stove and nearly reduced it all to what closely ressembled the content of the above mentioned, I managed to salvage some of it and set about making a crumble - similar to when one frosts a cake because it just looks somewhat… unpleasant. I had high hopes for this crumble, considering the day I’d had so far, thankfully, it didn’t let me down!

Here is my first taste of spring:

Rhubarb Crumble

prep time: 15min, serve hot or cold

For the Rhubarb

5/6 stalks of rhubarb
brown sugar, to taste

saucepan

Peel the rhubarb, cut it into bits and put it in a saucepan. Cover with a lid and cook until it starts to soften up. Add sugar to taste. Eat as is, or:

For the Crumble Topping

1 cup of uncooked rolled oats
1/4 cup of flour
1/2 cup of brown sugar
75 g of butter (room temperature)

mixing bowl, 20×20cm gratin dish

Preheat the oven to 180°. In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients for the topping until ‘crumbles’ start to form. You can do this by cutting into the mixture with a knife, or with your hands.

Pour the precooked ruhubarb into the gratin dish, cover with the crumble topping and bake for 40 min, or until the top begins to look golden.

Serve hot or cold, with ice cream, cream, yoghurt or just straight up.

You can substitute any fruit for the rhubarb, and you mostly need to precook only the tougher ones such as quinces etc.

Still Going Strong!

alright, that’s the third post in three days. Am i on a roll, or what? are you taking bets as to whether I will disappear again for a few weeks after this one, blaming another ‘technical malfunction’? Well, who cares, I had a backlog of a few dishes, and haven’t posted anything savoury in a while.

The dish I am about to post is the dinner equivalent of that awesome top/jeans/jacket that you got on sale at h&m and that gets you compliments each time you wear it. A dinner that you will get everybody ooohhing and aaahhhing on you, while you can be all like ‘oh, that old thing? Psshaw, it was done in no time!’. Seriously, all you’ll ever do for this dinner, is slapping some fish in tinfoil, sprinkle some glitter here and there, and open 2 cans of beans.

You can also totally decide to get all pretentious with the name and call it Fish Pillowed in Smoked Hot and Sweet Paprika with its Canellini-Cilantro Mash. Notice how that little fish pillow thing has ITS very own mash? Fancy, huh? In that case, I recommend taking the oohs and aahs very seriously as well as waxing about where exactly the smoked paprika is from, and how you imported those beans yourself, and soaked them. And gently boiled them in kabbalah water or something. Anyway, you get the picture. This dinner, it is dead easy, anyone can do it and so they should. On to the ‘recipe’.

White Fish Fillets with Smoked Paprika

Prep time: 5 min, Cooking time: 12 min

2 white fish fillets (mine amounted to 500 g, and easily served 4)
1 tsp of smoked paprika*, hot or sweet, depending on your taste
some olive oil

tin foil to make ‘parcels’

Preheat the oven to 180°. Take enough tinfoil to make an envelope for each piece of fish. Place the fish on the tinfoil, sprinkle some oilive oil and half the paprika. Close the parcel as hermetically as possible. Repeat with the other fish. Stick in the oven for about 12 min. When the fish is done, it will be all tender and fallin apart. Be careful not to burn yourself when you open the packages.

White Bean Puree with Cilantro

Prep time: 2 min, Cooking time: 5 min

2 cans of white beans, drained.**
100 ml (a scant 1/2 cup) of chicken broth
lemon juice, to taste
cilantro, to taste

saucepan, masher

Pour the drained beans into a saucepan, add the broth. Heat up until the beans are hot. Mash up, add some lemon juice and the cilantro. Serve.

Arange the fish and the purée on a plate and reap the reward of your hard work!

* I had to really, really look for smoked paprika powder — Berlin isn’t exactly full of gourmet supplyiers. In the end, I found both sweet and spicy smoked paprika, and generally use a mix of both.
** You really don’t need fabulous beans for this. The simple storebrand will be enough, no chichi-italian import necessary!

In Honor of the Upcoming World Nutella Day… Chocolate Pizza and Basic Pizza Dough

Did you know, that there is a World Nutella Day? I read about it on Ms. Adventures in Italy, and I had to applaud the initiative. An entire day to celebrate Nutella is only right and proper!

As a child, we were never allowed to have nutella, which resulted in me developing a lifelong addiction to it - so much so, that one of the first things of my own that I bought when I moved into my own apartment, was a giant jar of nutella. Because I polished it off much too quickly, I have since tried to restrict myself to desperate times only. Hence, the appeal of a World Nutella Day.

I’ve had this recipe in my must-try folder for about a year and it seemed to be just the thing for this celebration: chocolate pizza.

Pizza, Nutella, and more chocolate to top it off sounded like my idea of a good time — but while it did not disappoint, it is not quite the dessert it was said to be. In my opinion, it is much better suited for goûter (the snack that most french children take after school, around 4 pm) or maybe even for a decadent breakfast.

It’s very quick and easy to make, I used my go-to basic pizza dough recipe, nutella and subsituted ribboned orange zest for the hazelnuts which gave it a more refreshing taste.

Basic Pizza Dough

Prep Time: 30 min baking time: 15 min

2/3 cup of lukewarm water
1/ Tbsp active dry yeast (amounts to one envelope)
1 Tsp of sugar
2 cups of flour
1/2 Tsp of salt
3 Tbsp of olive oil

baking sheet

In a mixing bowl, mix the water, yeast and sugar together and set aside in a warm place until bubbles form at the surface (5 min)
Add the flour, salt and olive oil to the yeast-preparation and beat with the wirehooks of your handmixer until an elastic dough forms (5 min). You can of course mix the dough by hand, but it will take about 5x longer.
When the dough has come together, roll it into a ball in the mixing bowl, cover with a teatowel and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size (20 min).
Preheat the oven to 200° and line your baking sheet with parchment paper.
You will have enough dough for either 4 small pizzas, 2 medium sized ones, or one big one. If you are making pizza, proceed to top the rolled out dough with the topping of your choice and bake for about 20 min.

Chocolate Pizza

Prep Time: 2 min baking time: 22 min

1 Tbsp of melted butter
about 1/4 cup of Nutella or to taste
2 Tbsp white chocolate chunks
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chunks
1 Tbsp of orange zest

baking sheet

When your dough is done and rolled out into the desired size, prick it with a fork and brush the top with the melted butter. Bake it in the oven until golden and baked through - for about 15 min
When the pizza is done, take it out of the oven and spread it with your choice amount of nutella. Sprinkle the chocolate chunks and the orange zest on top. Bake it in the oven for another 2 min, or until all the chocolate has melted. Serve warm.