Mandarine Orange Pan Cake

I bought a 2,5 kg bag of mandarine oranges, they were on sale. But the dry out very fast, when you do not have a cool room to store them, but never in the fridge.

I saw a video on FB a while ago with a mandarine orange cake prepared only on the stove. Getting the ingredients together was not a problem, but the cooking temperature was less precise. Cooking for 10 minutes on low heat ?? How low? 

Cooking the batter on medium heat is much better. Turning it is much more difficult than shown in the video. 

Recipe:

6 mandarine oranges

20 g butter, 20 g sugar

Batter:

1 egg

50 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

100 ml milk

60 ml grapeseed oil

170 g flour

8 g baking powder

Use a pan with a lid and check if the mandarine oranges will fit. 

Cream the batter together and set aside.

Melt the butter and add the sugar and give it 1 min. Set the halved mandarines in the pan and cook them on high during you spread the batter

Put the lid on and reduce the heat to medium and cook for 10 min. Use a plate and turn the cake and set it back in the pan.

That may work or not. It did not work so well for me. But the endresult was tasty, even if it did not look so perfect.

Close the lid and cook 10 more min. Check if the color is good, if not increase the heat for a bit.

Purple Sweetpotato with Cheddar Pecans and Dill

I found a bag of purple sweetpotatoes at Kaufland supermarket. It is very rare to get them and I had to take them over the usual orange colored ones.

I treated then like the others. Just poking some holes in them with a knife and stuck them in the microwave at 800W for 5 min.

Brushed with coconut oil and put in the air fryer at 180 C for 15 min.

The filling is:

Cheddar cheese

Pecans

Green onions

Dill

Sour Cream

Salt and Pepper

Garlic Prawns on Cream Spinach Pasta

A comforting dish and ready in 15 minutes.

Cream spinach is a thing here in germany for a long time. Many kids hated spinach, me too when I was a child. Later when I cooked myself IGLO Rahmspinat mit dem Blubb (spinach with cream) was in every freezer in the Supermarket. And I started to love it. My Mom never bought it, even it was new on the market since 1961. 

The spinach is good as it is, when microwaved. But it gets a lot better when it is combined with a sweated onion, a bit of garlic and good freshly grated nutmeg.

The cooked pasta, just al dente, went in with the spinach to mix. 

Prawns in oil and chopped garlic and a lot of Caribean seasoning marinated for 30 min and just cooked in a pan for 3 minutes.

Ingredients:

200 g cooked and shelled prawns

2 garlic cloves, 1 tsp Caribean seasoning, 1 tsp oil

225 g cream spinach

1 shallot, 1 tsp oil

Salt, pepper, nutmeg

Velouté aux Verts de Poireau or velvety Leek Soup

The French title of this recipe is even longer:      Velouté aux Verts de Poireau a L'Oeuf mollet et aux Noisettes

The green parts of a leek with soft boiled egg and hazelnuts.

The top greens of a leek usually go in the freezer for stocks. This time I used them together with a whole leek for a soup. To get it more substancial potatoes were added too. 

The original recipes was vegetarian, but I added some thin slices of Guanciale to the soup. That intensified the flavour. Cooking it is very strait forward. Just start with butter and Guanciale and after 3 min toss in the bite size chopped veggies. Season and let it get some heat for 5 min. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and cook for 25 min. Use a blender to make the velouté.

The addition of hazelnuts and an egg made this soup a very rich one. 

Recipe for 2:

1 1/2 leek

3 medium potatoes

35 g Guanciale

1 knob of butter

650 ml vegetable stock

Salt, pepper

3 tbsp chopped hazelnuts

2 soft boiled eggs

Parsley

Quiche with Pudding and Apples

Sometimes you buy ready made pastry dough for a recipe, but that never comes to life.

This was such a pastry dough. A bit over the estimated due day, but I have a good nose and a clear view and I deemed it good to go. No food waste.

I baked it blind for 10 minutes with ceramic balls on top. During this time I checked my ingredients for a filling. 

Vanilla Pudding for baking is a thing here. Just add milk to the powder and whisk it for 1 minute and it thickens. Now that cream can be spread on any kind of pastry dough and baked.

An apple in thin slices, with some lemon juice is arranged on top of the pudding. I wanted to add a banana too, but that would have overfilled the dish. To prevent the apples from burning, I covered them with a thin layer of curd mixed with egg yolk, vanilla sugar, lemon juice and some kind of sugar substitute. 

Ingredients:

1 readymade quiche pastry

1 package DrOetker Backfester Pudding

250 ml whole milk

1 apple

1/2 lemon juiced

3 tbsp curd, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 scoop sugar substitute

Focaccia with Za'atar

I needed some bread for my soup today. Two weeks ago at the Italian Deli I bought CAPUTO flour(Aria Typ 0). This is for Pinza, Focaccia and Pizza. I had to give it a try.

My BFF is baking Focaccia in the moment, but the results were not so good. I wanted to look if I could help her with a foolproof method.

Only a good sprinkle of Za'atar on top with a little olive oil brush. 

Today it is cold outside and I rested the bowl with the dough in it in front of the heater for 45 min and it doubled in size.

Olive oil and a little flour on a smaller baking dish and the dough dropped upon it. Spread out and pressed some indentations in the dough, oiled and seasoned.

Baked at 250 C for 5 min with steam and  230 C for 15 min.

Recipe:

320 g Typ 0 flour

55 g semolina flour

10 g fresh yeast

1 tsp basil salt

2 tbsp olive oil

4 tsp Za'atar

Merry-me Haloumi

If you know Merry-me Chicken, you know what I am writing about.

A tasty vegetarian version, even for me who usually steps far out of the way, when I should eat Haloumi. Especially the one from a BBQ. Tough like rubber.

But here the Haloumi was seasond and baked in olive oil first, taken out of the pan and later drenched with the sauce.

The Merry-me sauce is very simple, but so tasty. Just a couple of very basic ingredients and seasoning and some fresh herbs. The whole dish just takes 20 minutes from start to finish.

I had some Italian bread at home. That was very good to mop up the sauce.

Recipe for 2:

200 g Haloumi

Seasoning salt

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic

200 g tomato passata

60 g double cream

Italian seasoning, salt and pepper

Fresh basil and parsley

When the slices of Haloumi are done, get them out and toss in chopped onion and garlic. Let it get translucent and season with salt and pepper. Pour in tomato passata and cream and stir well. Add Italian seasoning. Put the Haloumi back in. Finish with basil and parsley