Panna cotta

Here's an easy dessert, the only drawback being you have to do it a few hours ahead. I made some one night, and had one for breakfast the next day. Put some milk over medium heat, add sugar and some vanilla, stir every now and then so that it doesn't stick, until it is close to a boil but not boiling. In the mean time, dissolve some gelatin in cold milk. When the milk is almost boiling, take it off the heat, add the dissolved gelatin. Pour the liquid in the ramekins and put in the fridge overnight. I made some caramel syrup and poured on top in the morning, it would have been better with marmelade or fruit syrup, but I didn't have any. A light, refreshing dessert.

UPDATE: I just thought you might want to know that gelatin is not vegetarian food, it's a meat product.

Vegetable couscous

A few days ago, I returned home from work late and wanted to make something fast, but I didn't want to fry a steak again. So I opted for couscous. In a tablespoon of olive oil, add half a teaspoon of yellow curry powder, and set it over low flame in a pot. As the curry started smelling nice, add a finely chopped shallot and a leek, and soften them in the oil. Then add a tomato chopped in half-inch cubes, two cups of vegetable broth, and salt. As soon as it comes to a boil, turn off the heat, add the couscous and stir. Cover it and wait until all the liquid is absorbed. The curry colored it a nice yellow, and the vegetables add bits of color, here's how it looks.
Then I had an artistic inspiration, and added a bit of carrot.

Lentil experiments, part II: bread

As I wrote in the previous post, I saved half the lentil-paste to make bread. I used a bit of lukewarm water to dissolve a pack of dry yeast, added some olive oil, salt, the paste, and enough flour to make a soft dough. I kneaded that for around 15-20 minutes. It's easier if you have a bread machine, but kneading is a good exercise for the grip, i.e. good for climbing :-)
Then I let that rise until almost double in size, punched it down, and made a loaf. I gave it around 10 minutes for a second rise and put it in the (hot) oven.

It's ready when tapping on the crust with your finger sounds hollow.

I let it cool for 5 minutes covered by a towel, just enough time to write this post. I cut a couple of slices (you can see the corner slice is already missing). It tastes good, more interesting than simple bread. The lentil and ginger flavors are definitely there, and the olive oil in the dough adds too.
I'm now going to have some hot bread with butter...

Lentil experiments

I like lentils a lot. I usually cook them into a stew, but I felt like experimenting last night, so I started browsing for lentil recipes. Almost all that I found online are for stew variations, or for using them boiled in a salad. Since I was in the "really crazy experiment" mood, I looked up lentils on wikipedia to get some ideas. It turns out lentils have a lot of protein and fiber. So, I googled for "lentil bread" and, lo and behold, there's plenty of recipes for that. So I set out to try and make lentil bread.

First, I washed, then boiled about a cup of lentils, drained the water, and put them in a blender. I added a bit of fresh ginger, and blended everything until it was a smooth paste. I moved it in a big bowl, and started adding flour.

Just when I was about to add yeast, I thought about pasta. So I kept half of the lentil-ginger paste to make lentil bread, and the other half to try and make lentil-pasta.

Lentil pasta
For the pasta, add salt, and enough flour to make a kneadable dough. I didn't add egg to make egg-pasta dough, I'll try that next time. I've made pasta without egg before, it just comes out more white, and less al-dente, but otherwise OK. I was hoping that the extra protein from the lentils would partly make up for the egg, too. So, I kneaded the pasta dough for about 7-8 minutes, until it was somewhat hard and elastic, let it rest for another 10 minutes, and then I rolled it to be 1cm-thick.

Then I cut it into squares to get 1cm-edged cubes, and I rolled those into small balls.

Then I pulled some into gnocci with a fork, and others into shell-pasta using two fingers.

I boiled 2-3 from each, to check which shape is better, and I decided to go with the shells. Gnocchi didn't cook to the center, and there's no starch in lentils, so it doesn't come out as good as potato gnocchi. Shells are not particularly thick at any point, so the pasta cooked more evenly. So I pulled the rest of the dough into shells, and boiled it al-dente (about 1 or 2 minutes in salted boiling water). No sauce, I wanted to feel the lentil and ginger flavor. I only grated some Swiss gruyère on top.

As for the lentil-bread, I'm waiting for it to get baked as I'm writing this post. I'll report on that next, if it comes out any good, that is.

Cabbage rice

After a trip to the US and a trip home for a job interview, I'm back for good. I haven't cooked much since I returned, I'm at work all day, and only have an easy baguette+cheese snack when I get home, usually late. But, I went skiing last Saturday. It was good and fun, albeit a bit colder than I could stand. The temperature was around 0C in the city, and around -5 at the village on the mountain where the ski resort was. We took the cable-car (télépherique) to the first plateau, where it was around -10C. And then, we took the lift to the second top, to a freezing -15 to -20C. Ouch. That. Was. Cold. Unfortunately, I wasn't dressed warm enough for that, maybe well enough for -5C, but not good enough for -20C. So, by the time I skied down to the -10C plateau, I thought I'd freeze solid, and they'd find me when I unfroze some time in Spring... Anyway, apart from the low temperature, it was fun to ski, I fell less times this time, I only got a couple of small bruises.

I got back home around 8pm, tired and hungry. I've been browsing a book on traditional greek recipes my grandma gave me, and I came across a winter-food recipe, for cabbage-rice. This one is vegetarian (vegan, even), and turned out easy to make and quite tasty and filling, plus cabbages are in season now, I'd got one from the farmer's market.

• 1 small cabbage
• 1/2 onion
• 1 leek
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• salt, pepper
• 1 cup of rice
• 3-4 tbsp of tomato puree

I started by finely chopping half an onion, a leek and the cabbage. If you don't have leeks, use one full onion, if you don't have onions, use two leeks. Set a pot over low flame with the olive oil, the leek and onion and sauté them for 5 minutes. Then add the cabbage, and stir for 4-5 minutes. Add the tomato, salt, pepper, and enough water to boil a cup of rice, depending on the kind of rice you use. I used long grain pilaf-rice, it said 2.5 cups of water per cup of rice on the pack. When the water comes to a boil, add the rice, and stir every now and then, until the water is gone and the sauce is thick. I didn't want the cabbage to be too crunchy, so I used 3 cups of water and let it simmer for 10 minutes before adding the rice.

Tasty, light, vegan, and probably healthy. OK, I admit I had a bit of sausage and cheese to go with it, but why not? I was out on the mountains freezing all day, after all...

Chocolate truffles

These chocolate bites are very easy to make. I experimented with them yesterday, and the end result came out pretty good, for a first attempt. The main idea is mixing chocolate with cream to make a ganache, add some flavor or liquor, and then mold it into bite-sized chunks after it starts solidifying. Flavoring can be whatever, I've seen recipes that use orange zest, sweet liquors like cherry liquor or Grand Marnier, mint (yuck), even whisky!

In my case, whisky-flavored truffles were out of the question--why waste a nice single malt by mixing it with anything? So, as I didn't have any sweet liquor or zest, I decided to use vanilla and honey to flavor the truffles.

1. A bar of dark chocolate
   
2. A bit of crème fraîche (about 5 tbsp)
3. A bit of butter (1 tbsp)
4. Honey (about 1 tbsp)
5. Vanilla (1 tsp extract)

First, chop the chocolate in a bowl.
Then melt it in a bain-marie or carefully in the microwave, with the butter. Add the honey, vanilla and crème, and stir until smooth.


Put it in the fridge for a few hours, until it sets a bit. It thickens without hardening, and becomes like moldable plastic, in texture.Then, with two teaspoons, make small bite-size pieces, scraping one teaspoon with the other, and roll them in cocoa powder. You can also use confectioner's sugar, but I didn't have any.
Put them in the fridge again, until they harden a bit more (they'll still be soft).

Enjoy. They are good with a bitter espresso.

See you all soon!

Happy new year!

Hello everyone, and a happy new year! I'm back from the break, 4 kilos heavier. I went home for the holidays, but unfortunately I didn't cook at all there, so no new cooking posts yet. I started with all the good intentions, planning to cook a lot and post a lot of recipes, but I hadn't counted on one factor: proximity to mothers' food. So, instead of cooking a lot, I was just eating a lot, for almost two weeks.

I'm back for almost a week, and believe it or not, I haven't cooked yet, still eating the food I brought with me from home... So, I'll try to do the next best thing, and list some of the things I had during the break, that I'm going to try and replicate in the future:

1. Stuffed pumpkin with chestnuts, pinenuts, rice, minced meat, pulled chicken, raisins, various herbs and spices (I couln't tell all of them), melted cheese, dried plums and probably other stuff that I've forgotten now. It was unbelievable.
2. Lamb fricassée with wild bitter greens.
3. Grandma's leek-pita (of course with home-made fyllo).
4. Slow-roasted beef with dried plums, cooked for a few hours in a cast iron pot in a wood-oven (and other roasts in the wood-oven).
5. Eggplant and tomato-wrapped pork "bites" with melted cheese on top.
6. Soufflé with cheeses.
7. Stuffed turkey.

No wonder I gained weight... I still feel like I won't be hungry for some time.