Serano Ham Croquettes

An other Tapas Recipe, slightly changed to my preferance.

Serano ham is one of my favourite kinds of ham together with Parma ham. During my trip through Andalusia, I visited the area where the ham was dried in special sheds in the mountains.

Only sea salt is used for curing. Which is good for me, because I react allergic to Nitrite curing salt. Keep in mind that the sauce needs to chill out for 3 hours in the fridge.

Recipe:

3 tbsp butter, 3 tbsp flour, 460 ml whole milk, 40 ml dry Sherry

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, smoked paprika

100 g Serano ham, 1 tbsp olive oil

2 eggs, 200 g breadcrumbs

Oil for frying, sweet chili sauce.

In a small pot make a roux with butter and flour. Add milk step by step and then Sherry. Cook for 10 min to thicken. Season well. Chop the ham and in a small pan in 1 tbsp olive oil fry the ham fir 90 seconds. Mix with the sauce and keep cold for 3 hours.

Prepare a bowl with breadcrumbs and one with beaten eggs. Form croquettes and roll them in breadcrumbs first, then eggs and again in breadcrumbs.

Heat the frying oil to 170 C and fry the croquettes in batches until golden brown. Serve with dipping sauce. 

Peanutbutter Gochujang Noodles

A quick evening dinner.

A peanutty, garlicky and spicy treat that is done in no time. I had 100 g of Asian noodles sitting around. Just the amount for one portion. But not much ingredients to prepare a stirfry. 

Sauces and condiments are plenty at home. Bring them together and create something very tasty.

Two small pots, a knife and spatula and a serving bowl, not much to wash up later.

Ingredients:

100 g wheat noodles or rice noodles

1 tbsp toasted sesame oil, 1 garlic clove

2 tsp peanutbutter, 2 tsp gochujang

1 tsp agave syrup, 3 tbsp light soy sauce

60 ml pasta water, 1/2 lemon

Sesame seeds, parsley

Mussel and Sherry Soup

The Sherry fino bottle is sitting in my fridge. I needed some for the mushroom dish.

I took a small glas of sherry to drink, but not my choice. I did not like it at all. Now 3/4 of the Sherry was still in the bottle, I looked for recipes to cook with Sherry.

I had an opened bag of frozen mussels in my kitchen freezer. Everytime open the freezer this bag fell out. Now no longer!

Recipe for 2:

250 g defrosted mussels

2 shallots, 1 garlic clove

2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour

100 ml double cream, 100 ml whole milk, 200 ml Sherry fino

250 ml veg stock, salt, pepper, nutmeg

3 tbsp parsley

Chop shallots and garlic and sauté it in butter for 3 min. Add the flour and cook it for 2. Gradually add milk, then cream and later Sherry. Bring to a boil again. Pour in hot stock and bring up to heat, add the mussels and just heat them up. Season.

I had some cooked rice and added it too. Finish with parsley.

Pasta Salad

Today is the day of Daylight Saving Time. A Sunday out of the usual timeframe.

Heavy rain, storm and thunderstorm warning the whole day. But for a couple of minutes the sun is shining. That brought up the idea of some kind of Party food. Pasta Salad.

Nothing complicated, just a run though the fridge and fresh cooked short pasta.  

The dressing was kept very simple. 

These kinds of salad represent summertime and gatherings for me. Telling people to bring some food often ends in potato salad or pasta salad. Not very creative, but party goers often are not. Do not think about a salad, just throw it together.

Ingredients:

100 g short pasta

1 spring onion, 2 medium tomatoes without the wet middle bit

6 cm white from a leek, 4 stalks basil

250 g cooked green asparagus

Dressing:

4 tbsp mayonaise, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 60 ml cream, 4 tbsp apple cider vibegar

Salt, pepper, Italian herbs

Cook the pasta. The last minute throw in the chopped onion and leek. Drain and douse in cold water. Chop everything else and toss all of it in the dressing.

Bananas with Pecans and Havana Rum baked in Paper

Served with Maple Cream Sauce. It sounds a lot more fancy when you read the original French title of this recipe:

Papillote de Banane Sauce Érable et Noix de Pécan

I used my Air fryer to bake the two paper encased bananas. Easy and no need to heat up the oven.

The bananas I bought were tiny. They came from the Dom Rep and been

Fairetrade. But they tasted very intense. That worked well with the dark 7 year barrel stored Cuban rum. That bottle was a holiday souvenir from Varadero many years ago.

Recipe:

2 bananas, 8 pecan pieces, 3 cl brown rum

50 ml double cream, 50 ml maple syrup, 30 g cold buttecinnamon

Use baking paper and cut the banana lengthwise and stick it on the paper, place pecans on top, fold the sides up and pour rum in. Close the package. Put it in the air fryer at 200 C for 15 min.

The sauce is easy. Heat up cream and maple syrup together and reduce a bit. Take off tge heat and stir in the cold butter. Fill in a bowl and sprinkle cinnamon on top.

Sherry Mushroom Tapa

I will try to cook some Tapas for party I plan in the future. Doing various dishes alone takes some planning to get the timeframe right. 

This are just a plate of button mushrooms that get a good dosing of Sherry. I had no mushrooms neither Sherry at home and went grocery shopping in the morning. The supermarket is under construction in the moment and it took a while to find the spirit section and the Sherry in it.

I cleaned the mushrooms by taking the outer skin off and cut them in wide slices. Just shallots, parsley and garlic were needed with a little oil and some seasoning.

Recipe for 2:

400 g button mushrooms

2 shallots, 1 garlic cloves, 2 tbsp parsley

Salt, pepper, thyme, 1 tbsp olive oil

The pan should be hot and no oil in it. Drop the mushrooms in and let them sit in the heat. They will not loose water that way, but they get intense that way. After 5 min add oil and season. Let them sit just 2 more min. Take them out and add a little more oil to the pan and sauté the shallots and garlic. Add the mushrooms and then the Sherry.

Finish with parsley.

Flatbread Flammkuchen style

Flammkuche is a special dish from the Alsace region of France. It has a very thin crust and is topped originally with creme fraiche, onions and bacon. Baked in the large stone ovens to test if the heat is ready to bake the loafs of bread.

Flammkuchen is a party snack and often served at festivals. You can get ready to bake options now everywhere. But the industrial versions take many shortcuts to increase the profit margins and do not taste as good as the homemade ones.

I made flatbread in February and put one doughball in the freezer for an other day.

That came today. After taking it out in the morning to give it enough time to defrost, I rolled it out on a floured surface and put it on baking paper. Just a very thin layer of dough.

The dough recipe is on the blog.

Toppings:

Squeezed out blanched chopped spinach

Creme fraiche, salt, pepper, Italian dried herbs

1 spring onion, smoked bacon bits

Grated cheese

Heat up the oven to 240 C, drop the temp and bake it at 210 C for 10 min.

Veggie Stock Paste homemade

The final jar of bought organic veg stock paste is finally empty. It was very economic and lasted a couple of month.

I was checking the supermarket a while ago and could not find it there. I asked one of the staff and she told me that the company went out of business during Covid.

Checking the internet for other manufactures showed mostly processed stuff with all kinds of aromas. 

Now the solution was making it at home myself. So easy, just a lot of veggies and herbs and the right amount of salt.

Ingredients 800 g:

Carrots, celeriac, leek, parsley root, small yellow onion, shallot, 1 garlic clove

Parsley, 1 fresh bay leaf, lovage, thyme, 1 sage leaf, majoram

160 g salt ( per 100 g veg use 20 g salt)

The way you mix and match it is your own taste. I love more carrots, so I used more carrots.

In a strong blender mix salt and all veggies and herbs together. That takes a bit of time.

Use clean sterilized jars and keep them in the fridge. Only use a clean spoon to take stock out.

Lentils and Boulgour or Makhluta - vegan

This is a  vegan dish from Kurdish people. Simple, easy, filling and tasty.

I saw a Reel on Facebook and watched it two times. Then I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote the recipe down. The ingredients were all at home. No extra grocery shopping needed. You need to stay at the hob to stir often. But the cooking time is not too long.

Use only the large kind of boulgour. The red lentils will cook to a mush, but the boulgour keeps its structure. That is important. Also important is the pan beside the pot where the onion is cooking in lots of olive oil. The soup thickens after a while. When the onion is translucent, pour all of it in the pot and stir until no more olive oil is on the top. Just season with more cumin and pepper and salt.

Ingredients for 2:

1 glass red lentils

1/2 glass large boulgour

1250 ml hot water, veg stock paste optional

1 tsp cumin, pepper and salt

6 tbsp olive oil, 1 large yellow onion more cumin

If vegan is not your first choice, eat the Makhluta with Labneh topped with some Zataar.

Risotto with caramelized Pears

A French recipe from my new magazine. It sounds much more plesant when you read the original title:

Risotto sucré aux Épice et aux Poire caramélisées

Recipe for 4:

200 g Carnaroli rice, 1 litre whole milk, 200 ml double cream

30 ml dark rum, 30 g butter, 40 g brown sugar, pinch of salt

1 cinnamon stick, 3 cardamom pods, 1 pinch grated vanilla

3 hard pears, 1 organic orange zest and juice

30 g butter, 40 g sugar, 60 g honey

Start this dish with the pears. Peel them, quarter them and take the core out.

In a medium pot zest in the orange and add the juice. Add butter, sugar and honey and heat it up. Drop in the pears and on medium low heat cook them for 20 min. Cool down in the syrup.

Risotto is usually cooked in a pot with adding the liquid step by step and stirring often. I did that a couple of weeks ago with the Belgian Rice Tart and hated it. I used my Thermomix and made the risotto in it. The process is more or less as usual. I added the butter and the washed rice to the machine and cooked it for 2 min. But now the first difference. The rum was added to the rice before anything else. That way there is an intense flavour to the rice in the finished dish.

The liquid with the spiced milk is heated on the hob and poured then over the rice. 35 min on 90C speed 1 left turn cooked.

Pour the rice in a serving dish and place the pears with some syrup on top. Enjoy.

 

Banana Coffee Oats Breakfast Smoothie

In the morning I usually have my large mug of hot milk, honey, cinnamon and lots of strong espresso. That is the only coffee of the day.

Today I made a different aproach. A smoothie with coffee. I juggle many kinds of breakfast ideas around to keep breakfast from beeing boring and onedimensional. But this is the first time I have coffee mixed in something.

Ingredients for 2:

1 cup cold espresso

1 cup milk

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 tbsp linseed

1 banana

3 pitted dates

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Fridge cold sparkling water

Except the sparkling water, toss all ingredients in a strong blender (Thermomix)

Pour in 2 jugs and top off with the water. I used that because I do not have ice cubes at home. I never use any.

I must say: I do not understand the trend of liquid food for breakfast. Even when I had to leave the house at 5:15 AM, I always carried a travel mug of coffee and some breakfast for later with me. 

Broccoli and Lambs Lettuce Soup

This was my Saint Patricks Day soup. A recipe idea I found in the latest Gourmand magazine issue.

I kept to the original recipe in the beginning, but after tasting the soup while cooking, I decided to add a couple of tablespoons of Velveeta cheese to it. That gave some creaminess and the soup no longer tasted like a hot smoothie.

There are so many recipes for broccoli soups. Some of them here on this blog. But salad as a component of a soup is rare.

The cooking steps are easy. Just clean and cut all the veggies. Layering the flavour with the help of a good olive oil starts the process. Cook everything for 20 min and use a stick blender to make a Velouté de Broccoli et de Mâche.

Recipe for 4:

500 g broccoli, 200 g lambs lettuce, 2 medium potatoes

1 onion, 1 spring onion, 1 shallot, 2 garlic cloves

Veg stock or chicken stock

Salt, pepper, thyme

50 g Velveeta, 40 g cream cheese, toasted sunflower seeds, basil leaves

When the soup is creamy, add the Velveeta and serve. Add a tsp cream cheese to each bowl, some sunflowee seeds and basil.