I’ve fallen behind on my updating a bit. It’s been a strange week, with a funeral service on Saturday, the actual funeral on Monday, the Dutch National remembrance day and today our Dutch liberation day. In between there was work and general chores at home. So busy and weird, and not so much time to update here. This weekend I’ll be going away Friday and Saturday with a group of friends, so then again I’ll probably not have too much to update about. This however, doesn’t mean we don’t eat. It doesn’t mean I didn’t cook. Okay, much of it has been quick and easy, but still, I should post something.
As I’m typing, L is picking out and resizing pictures. We had a lazy evening, just watching tv. We’d fallen behind on watching House, which led to us watching two episodes tonight. Yay, I love House. Anyways, L is making sure we have pictures of the food again!
Today, after actually working on my administration for a large part of the day, I wanted something easy and tasty. I still had some chicken in the freezer and I hadn’t actually made something with curry for some time. I had to go by the grocery store anyways, so I picked up a small package of coconut milk and figured I’d just wing it with whatever was left in the fridge and/or freezer.
All in all it turned out to be a tasty meal, which took about 15 minutes to make. Great for a day when you don’t feel like standing in the kitchen for hours.
Chicken Masala (recipe for 2)
- 2 small (half) chicken breasts
- small package of coconut milk
- ground chili pepper
- salt
- masala (or another type of curry powder)
- small package of (frozen) mixed vegetables (Asian preferred)
- vegetable oil
Cut the chicken breasts in smallish pieces. In a bowl, combine the chicken pieces, about a tablespoon of masala, 2 pinches of salt and some freshly ground chili pepper. Drizzle a little oil over the chicken and stir to coat with oil and spices.
Put a non-stick skillet on the stove, don’t add oil. Once the skillet is on the stove, put the chicken in the skillet and cook until slightly browned. Once the chicken has some color, add the coconut milk and let it come to a boil. Stir and add some more masala powder (another tablespoon or so, to taste) and more salt and chili powder if needed.
Let the chicken simmer in the coconut milk for about 5 to 8 minutes (until the chicken is cooked thorough and the sauce has thickened a bit.)Add the vegetables to the chicken and sauce and heat through. (If using frozen veggies, I recommend defrosting them before use).
Serve with rice.
Remember a couple of weeks ago? I found this recipe in my local newspaper. It sounded amazing and I posted it so I wouldn’t lose it. Last Saturday I finally came around to trying it out. We were invited for dinner at friends and I offered to bring cake for dessert. Since everyone loved coffee and no-one was allergic to nuts, I figured this was as good a time as any to try it out.
The recipe is super simple! You really really can’t do anything wrong. I ground the almonds myself, using Anne-Sophie and made the crumb layer using a dough blender. Seriously, if you like making cakes, biscuits, pie or anything with a buttery dough, buy a dough blender. Owning that little tool has made my life much much much easier.
Since I was only making the cake for 4 people, I only used 2/3 of the basic recipe for the cake recipe, plus the original amount for the crumb layer. It’s definitely worth making more crumbs, as they really do add something wonderful to the cake, and you can’t have too much of it.
Want to try out the cake? Check out the original recipe here!!
Sometime last week, on Foodblogs, I saw a zebra cake. It looked very very impressive, so I opened the post to see if I could figure out what kind of insanely difficult process was needed to create it. A few clicks of my mouse later, I found that it was a pretty simple system of layering cake batter. So I had to give it a try.
Obviously there are many recipes for Zebra cake, but I just used my general vanilla and chocolate pound cake recipe and added it to the pan in the manner shown in these pictures. Next time I’ll make a bigger batch of batter, as that’ll surely enhance the effect. Also, I might make the batter a little thinner by adding an extra egg, so it’ll spread better and therefor give a cooler result. All in all, it was still very very tasty, and cool to look at!
Valerie’s standard vanilla/chocolate cake recipe
- 200 grams of butter
- 200 grams of sugar
- 200 grams of self-raising flour (or 200 grams of plain flour and 1 package of baking powder)
- 4 or 5 eggs (depending on size and how thin you like your batter)
- 1-2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1-1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder (good quality)
Mix the butter and sugar until creamy. Mix in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour (and baking powder if that’s what you use) bit by bit, while slowly mixing the batter. Once all the flour is incorporated, mix for another 30 seconds or so.
Divide the batter in 2 and add vanilla extract to one half (and mix in well) and mix the cocoa powder well into the other half of the batter. Make sure it’s evenly colored (fairly dark). Since I’m in Holland I can’t really use anything else than Dutch cocoa, but I hear that anywhere in the world, that’s the preferred stuff.
Pour both batters into a cake pan in any matter you prefer (to get the zebra patterned cake, put it in in the manner shown in these pictures, layer by layer of different color batter). Place cake in a pre-heated oven (175 degrees celsius) for about an hour. Test doneness with a skewer. If you use a loaf type pan, let it cool a little bit before moving it out of the pan on to a cooling rack. If you use a springform you can loosen and remove the springform immediately, and move the cake from the bottom to the cooling rack after a few minutes (when it’s cooled enough so you can actually touch it with your bare hands).
Risotto in it’s original form is simple. It’s just the rice, onion, broth and some seasoning. It’s generally eaten as a primo, the first course (not to be mixed up with a starter) like pasta. The way you often see risotto served in restaurants, as a side or even mail dish, is far from the original form. But original or not, it tastes wonderful!
Usually I do make my risotto’s the original way, mostly a variation on the traditional Milanese recipe, just using chicken stock and wine instead of beef stock. Very plain, very simple, very tasty.
We spent the day working on our balcony. Cleaning it up and getting it ready to sit there and have a drink, or even dinner in the sun. After a day working in the sun, I didn’t want to bother with two courses. With the ingredients I still had, I figured I could make a much jazzed up risotto as a main (and only) course. Not as plain and simple as a regular risotto, true blooded Italians would definitely frown upon my idea (or refuse to eat it), but I figured it’d still be tasty. It was. (And L, being half Italian, didn’t complain until after he finished his plate. His complaint was that he’d eaten too much – and obviously he blamed me for that!)
Risotto Milanese with a big twist (recipe for 4)
- 1 whole (2 half) chicken breast
- 1 zucchini
- saffron powder
- risotto rice
- 0.5 liter chicken stock (from a cube)
- white wine
- olive oil
- onion
- garlic
- pepper
- parmigiano
Cube the chicken and the zucchini into faily lage chunks. Chop a quarter of the onion and a clove of garlic. Place the chicken in a bowl, drizzle some olive oil on there and sprinkle a good amount of saffron powder over it. Mix so that all the chicken is visibly covered in saffron (it’s all very yellow).
Pour a little olive oil in a sautéing pan, add the garlic and onion and then the zucchini. When the zucchini is slightly cooked, but still has a lot of bite, remove from pan.
Add the saffron chicken to the pan, cook it until it’s slightly browning on the outside. It doesn’t matter if it’s fully cooked yet. Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.
Add some more olive oil to the pan, chop another clove of garlic and the remaining 3 quarters of the onion and add to the pan. Add enough risotto rice for the amount of people you’re cooking for and cook the raw dry rice in the oil/garlic/onion mixture for a couple of minutes, until the outside of the grains of rice turns glassy. Add about a cup of wine to the pan. Stir until the rice has taken up all of the wine. Add some of the chicken stock, keep stirring until the liquid has disappeared into the rice. Repeat this process until you’ve used about half the stock. Add the chicken to the pan and keep stirring. Add some more stock, stir, when you’re down to the last quarter of the stock add the zucchini (you just want the vegetable to get warm again, it doesn’t need to really cook anymore. Start tasting the rice. If it’s not soft enough yet, add some more stock, or if you’re out of stock some more wine. Once the rice is nice and soft (but still with a little bite, al dente) add a generous amount of grated parmigiano. Stir the cheese through the risotto and serve immediately!
!! The risotto needs to be a little runny, if it’s too dry, add a little more stock or wine at the last minute and stir it through so you’ll have a nice, runny, creamy dish.
My hair appointment yesterday ran late. Way late… The result of this was that the grocery store was closed by the time I had the chance to pass by. Now I did have dinner material in my fridge, but no breakfast. I usually go for a sweet or savory bread or roll on saturday. Maybe I’ll roll my own croissants, maybe I’ll pop a half-baked focaccia in the oven, something like that.
After sleeping in pretty late this morning (I guess I needed the sleep!) I woke up with a growling tummy. It wanted food. Trying to come up with things to make, I quickly figured that everything was going to take at LEAST half an hour to make. Probably even longer as I much prefer yeasted breads and rolls. Browsing through the little remains in my fridge (Saturday or Sunday is usually ‘shopping-for-the-week-day’) I found some flour tortilla’s that were still nice and soft and some cream cheese.
When I still worked in an office far-far away from any bakers, grocers or cafe’s, I regularly brought my own lunch. The in-house-cafeteria wasn’t terribly, but it generally resulted in the same food every day. It inspired me to buy a bento box and combine my own meals a couple of times a week. Something that regularly appeared in my little bento box, was wraps. Basicaly leftover tortilla’s from the previous night’s meal with whatever I could find and wouldn’t go bad in the few hours before lunchtime rolled up and sliced. I actually inspired a lot of co-workers to make those for their own lunches or brunches.
So this morning, with a growling stomach, I saw the tortilla’s and remembered. There was still some cream cheese, I found some thin-sliced chicken that had it’s expiration day yesterday (I once heard that by law they need to put an expiration date on things that’s at least 2 days before it’ll actually go bad). Sure enough breakfast, or brunch, was coming together. Some tomato, pepper and salt and a wonderful, simple dish was done. Then I recalled the pesto, desperately waiting to be used and figured that’d be great with the chicken and tomato, so I added a couple of dollops of that. And presto, food was ready. It tasted wonderful!
Brunch wraps
- Flour tortilla’s (1 per person)
- Cream cheese
- Pepper
- Salt
- Fish meat, chicken
- Vegetable(s)
- any condiment you like
Lay our 1 flour tortilla per person eating (or 1 per 2 people if you add this to a multi-dish lunch). Smear a thin layer of cream cheese over the entire tortilla. Add thin sliced chicken, meat or fish over the entire tortilla, maybe some regular or grated cheese too if you have it and it goes well with the rest of the dish. Add vegetables such as lettuce and/or tomato (or peppers or whatever you like) to 3 quarters of the tortilla (leave one strip on the side empty of that, for rolling and sticking purposes). Add some pepper, salt and condiments to taste. Roll up, starting at the side with vegetables, cut into 4 pieces (lay the seal on the bottom so it won’t open itself up) and serve.
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