Stuffed marrow

Ingredients:
- marrow, a.k.a. “the giant zucchini”
- rice
- tuna in spring water
- capers
- mayonnaise
- salt, pepper
- chilli flakes

Instructions:
1. Boil half the marrow in salted water for 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be completely boiled, otherwise it’s tok soft. Let aside to cool off.
2. Cook half a cup of (dry) plain rice.
3. In a bowl, mix 1 can of tuna, handful of capers, 1 spoonful of mayonnaise, salt, black pepper and chilli flakes.
4. Add the rice and mix well.
5. Stuff the marrow with the rice mix and cook in the oven at 180 degrees until the rice has a crisp crust.
6. Let cool off a little bit before cutting. Serve with a little olive oil and a couple of leaves of fresh basil as decoration.

Note: the marrow is quite watery and as you can see from the photo, it “shrunk” quite a bit in the oven. Leave the skin on to reduce the shrinking and help it keep the cup shape.

Zucchini Pie!

Ingredients

3 cups grated zucchini

1 small onion chopped

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup mozarella or provolone cheese (it will work with feta cheese too)

3 eggs beaten

1/4 cup vegetable oil

4 tablespoons grated Parmesan

2 teaspoons chopped fresh basil

1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Procedure

Simply combine all the ingredients in a large bowl.

Spoon the zucchini mixture into a pie plate that has been drizzled with vegetable oil. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes (350 F / 180 C) or until golden brown. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Cool 10 to 15 minutes before slicing. Really delicious!!

Summer bulgur salad

What we need (for 2 people):

200 g of bulgur

1 squash

1/2 small onion

2 chicken breasts

Sun-dried tomatoes

Grilling spices

Rosemary

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

 

How to prepare:

Boil the bulgur in salty water for about 10-15 min. Meanwhile, cut the squash in dices and grill it in the oven with salt, rosemary and some olive oil for 30 minutes (200 degrees).

Cut the chicken in dices, marinate it with olive oil and grilling spices and fry it slowly. Drain the bulgur and let it cool down.

Cut the sun-dried tomatoes in small pieces (you can also use fresh cherry tomatoes). Mix the bulgur with the chicken, squash and tomatoes. Add some fresh onion in the end, a bit more of salt, pepper and olive oil and let it in the fridge for about an hour.

 

 

 

 

Improvised sushi

Ingredients

Ingredients:

- nori algae
- “sticky rice”
- cucumber
- bell pepper
- carrot
- mayonnaise

Preparation:

Cook the rice with some rice vinegar and let it cool.
On a bamboo sushi roll mat, place one sheet of nori algae and one layer of rice. Cover the algae except 1 cm on one side.
Place the other ingredients along a line in the centre of your rice square.
Start rolling the entire mat and make sure the roll is sealed well.
Cut in smaller rolls and serve with soy sauce and wasabi paste

et volià!

This modified version was rather improvised. I had no crab meat or else, so the rolls are vegetarian. Also, I realised I had no mayonnaise, so I substituted it with a little cream cheese mixed with the tip of a spoon of chipotle paste: some Mexican smoky kick! Definitely not Japanese, but it turned out well

Gooseberry yoghurt fool!

A delicious summer treat  yet simple recipe to finish a perfect meal is the Gooseberry Yoghurt fool. Don’t be  a fool give it a try…..it is very light and healthy!!

ingredients

450 g gooseberries, topped and tailed

75 g caster sugar

100-140 g natural Greek yogurt

roasted almonds or strawberries to serve

method

1.Place the gooseberries, sugar and a couple of tablespoons of water in a saucepan and simmer on a low heat for about 15 minutes until the gooseberries are soft.

2.When the gooseberries are cooked, put them in a sieve and let the juice run out for two minutes.

3.When the gooseberry mix is cool, fold in the Greek yogurt you can add a bit of juice for more flavour (not too
much!!).

4.Just before serving, top the gooseberry fool with anything to hand. Roasted flaked almonds or strawberries or glace cherries all look great.

 

Lemon Drizzle Cake!

Lemon Drizzle Cake is Alex’s favourite (but we all love it ) it is so lemony and moist!! YUM!!

Ingredients

120g butter
180g castor sugar
180g self raising flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 lemons, zest and juice
Extra 2 tbsp castor sugar

How to make:

1.Cream butter and sugar
2.Add lemon zest, flour, eggs and milk and beat well.
3.Pour into lined loaf tin and bake for an hour at 180C.
4.When cooked mix the lemon juice with the extra sugar and pour this on the hot cake and allow to cool.

Pork fillet with honey and ginger

After watching the funny series Two Greedy Italians (BBC Two), I wanted to try this recipe. It’s easy and tasty, but I wouldn’t call it an Italian dish

Ingredients (4-6 people)

• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 100g / 3½oz pancetta or bacon, roughly chopped
• 800g / 1lb 12oz pork fillet
• 2 garlic cloves, left whole
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1cm / ½in fresh root ginger, peeled, finely sliced
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 4 shallots, halved or quartered, depending on size
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 300ml / 10fl oz vegetable stock
• freshly ground black pepper
  

  Preparation method

  1. Heat the olive oil in a lidded saucepan and fry the pancetta until golden-brown. Remove from the pan and set aside. Fry the pork (with salt and pepper) in the same pan used to cook the pancetta for 4-5 minutes, or until browned all over.
  2. Add the garlic, honey and ginger and continue to cook over a medium heat until caramelised.
  3. Add the carrots, shallots, rosemary, cooked pancetta, stock and black pepper, cover with a lid and cook on a medium to low heat for 30 minutes.
  4. Check the vegetables are tender, remove them and set aside.
  5. Continue to cook for another hour, or until the meat is tender and cooked through. Remove the pork from the pan and set aside to cool slightly. Carve into thick slices.
  6. Return the vegetables and the pork slices to the pan to heat through before serving. I also boiled some baby potatoes to go along.

   

Rasberry Almond Cake!

If you like rasberries here is quick and easy recipe. I have found it at BBC Good food website and made it. It is very yummy!!

Ingredients

140g ground almonds
140g butter , softened
140g golden caster sugar
140g self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g raspberries
2 tbsp flaked almonds
icing sugar , to serve

1.Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and base-line and grease a deep 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin. Blitz the ground almonds, butter, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla extract in a food processor until well combined.
2. Spread half the mix over the cake tin and smooth over the top. Scatter the raspberries over, then dollop the remaining cake mixture on top and roughly spread – you might find this easier to do with your fingers. Scatter with flaked almonds and bake for 50 mins until golden. Cool, remove from the tin and dust with icing sugar to serve.

The Semlor Saga

As Fat Tuesday (or Pancake Day as it is known in the UK) is in two days, Sara and I decided to try making Swedish semlor — cardamom rolls filled with creamy marzipan and topped with whipped cream.

We had an adventure getting to the final product, but what we got is delicious.

The Original Semlor Recipe

Ingredients

Buns

25 grams yeast (fresh or instant!)
75 grams butter
200 ml milk
2 eggs, divided
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cardamom
500 grams sugar
700 grams flour, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder

Filling

Marzipan/almond paste
Milk
Whipped Cream
Icing sugar

Directions

Melt butter over low heat in a saucepan. Add milk and heat until lukewarm. Crumble yeast into a large bowl and add some of the warm liquid to dissolve the yeast. Add remaining liquid, salt, cardamom, 1 egg, sugar, and 600 grams of flour. Work into a dough, then cover the bowl with a cloth and let rise for 30 minutes.

Mix together the remaining 100 grams of flour and the baking powder. Knead into the dough. Divide the dough into 12 balls, place on lightly greased baking sheets, and let rise another 35-40 minutes.

Beat the remaining egg (or you can use milk instead) and brush on the tops of the buns. Heat oven to 250° C. Bake on middle rack for 10 minutes.

Allow buns to cool.  Meanwhile, mix marzipan/almond paste with warm milk until it achieves a smooth, creamy texture. Once buns are cool, cut a circular hole in the top of each bun, but keep the “lid”! Fill with some of the almond mixture, then top with whipped cream. Replace the “lid” and sprinkle with icing sugar.

What We Actually Did…

Firstly, the original recipe did not actually specify fresh/instant yeast, so we had dry yeast, which does not dissolve well in a butter/milk mixture. The package directions instructed us to add some hot sugar water to the yeast and let it sit until frothy. The trick to doing this successfully is to decrease the amount of liquid you add in the recipe by the amount in which you dissolve the yeast.*

We did not do this. The package told us to dissolve 15 grams of yeast in 500 ml of hot water with some sugar. 500 ml seemed like a lot, so we used… less. 200 ml maybe. However, with the extra liquid we got a nice batter as opposed to a dough. Hmm… Well, we let it sit for awhile, hoping it would magically sort itself out, but no such luck. So we added extra flour, but it quickly became apparent that we would need A LOT of extra flour to make a proper dough. So we experimentally spooned some dough-batter into muffin tins and stuck them in the oven at 200 C for 20 minutes or so until they looked golden and cooked.

*Even if we had tried this, we would probably have encountered the same problem, as the only liquid in the recipe was 200 ml of milk, so if we dissolved 15 grams of yeast in 500 ml of sugar water per the package instructions, we’d still have an excess 300 ml of liquid yeast even without adding any milk!

We also worked hard to get our cardamom. Ground cardamom isn’t sold here, and we weren’t about to buy a large jar of cardamom pods when we hardly use them. So we plucked the cardamom pods from an infusion mix of Sara’s, ground them, and ended up with a grand total of ¹⁄₈ teaspoon of ground cardamom. As we were only making a half-batch, this wasn’t as off as it could have been, but we supplemented the remaining ¹⁄₈ teaspoon with half-and-half cinnamon and allspice.

The result was a tasty (though probably much denser) bun, even without the filling. We managed to make the filling without mishap, and the final product is delicious.

Green asparagus with ham and cheese

Ingredients for 2 people:

Green asparagus

Sliced ham

Gouda cheese, in slices

Cherry tomatoes

Mushrooms

Garlic

Parsley

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Butter or margarine

Preparation:

Boil the asparagus until tender. I prefer steaming them. Keep aside.

Cut the mushrooms in quarters and fry them with some little olive oil, salt and pepper. Add parsley (julienne).

Cut the tomatoes in quarters and keep aside.

Drain asparagus and place them in groups of three (or four, if very thin) on a baking tray, spread with some butter or margarine. Wrap them with slices of ham and cheese.

Add the mushrooms and tomatoes on the sides. Cut one garlic in very small pieces and spread it over the asparagus. Grill in the oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes or until cheese is golden. Serve hot.