Bara Brith - mottled bread

I was touring through Wales by rental car a while ago. One thing I found in many bakeries and small cafes was a dark heavy fruit bread. It took me a couple of days to find the time to try it and I fell for this bread the moment I tasted it. Since then it is on my baking agenda more then once every year.
There is no fat in the bread and so you can eat the slices with lots of cold butter. Now it depends if you are the sweet type, have some jam or marmalade on top of the butter, or as I am more the savoury kind of girl, have some Stilton or mature cheddar to go with the butter.

recipe:
450 g dried fruit (raisins, cherries, figs, plums and apricots)
300 ml hot strong black tea
200 g brown sugar

Mix the hot tea with the sugar and pour it over the chopped dried fruits, let them sit over night or for 24 hours.

450 g self raising  flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp spices like cinnamon, allspice, vanilla, nutmeg, tonka and so on
2 tbsp apricot jam and some for brushing later

Preheat the oven 170 C

Use a 900g loaf baking dish and get baking paper in and around.

Fill in the dough and bake for 1,5 hours, use foil to cover after 50 min.
When it comes out of the oven and is still a bit warm, use a bit more apricot jam to brush the outside.

Buddha Bowl

This is a new trent on the foodie pages, I saw it on Pinterest. Today I bought all the trimmings for the bowl of food.

It is not Fast Food! It takes a lot of time to prepare all the different ingredients. Colourful and very versatile.  It is very important to have graines and pulses, some fresh veggies and cooked ones. Make a nice dressing and sprinkle some seeds and nuts on top.

recipe:
50 g cooked quinoa
50 g cooked rice
100 g cooked sweet potato
40 g red beets
30 g lambs lettuce
30 g bean sprouts
50 g cooked romanesco
50 g cooked cauliflower
80 g meatballs in sweet chili sauce
50 g baked beans in tomato sauce
dressing:
2 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp Greek yogurt
1 tsp fresh tumeric
1 tsp green pumkin oil
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp light vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp Agave syrup
1/2 tsp dried salad herbs, salt and pepper
1 tbsp seeds and nuts
2 tbsp boiling water

Cook everything which has to be cooked, prepare the meatballs and dress them with sweet chili sauce, marinade the beets and wash the salad.
Make the dressing and loosen it a bit with boiling water.
Bring everything together in a bowl and sprinkle it with seeds and nuts.

Buttermilk Coconut Cake

This is a cake the wife of a coworker made now the second time for us. He brought it and we all went to get a piece or two of it. This cake is great for large parties, summer fests and other events or hungry coworkers.

recipe:
180 g sugar
400 g flour
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
250 g buttermilk
1 pinch salt
topping:
120 g dessicated coconut
100 g sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
400 g double cream

Preheat the oven  200 C or 180 C fan.

Beat eggs and sugar until it is a white creamy  mix.
Mix buttermilk and salt and mix the flour with baking powder.
Get the buttermilk into the cream and then add the flour mix.
Use the deep baking dish from your oven and place baking paper on it.
Pour in the batter.
Mix coconut and vanilla sugar and sugar and sprinkle it on  top.

Bake for 20 minutes.
When the cake comes out of the oven, pour the double cream on top- the cake should still be piping hot.
Cool it down and cut it into squares.

Steamed Salmon topped with 4 citrus flavours

If you are able to use a steamer, this is a recipe for you. It is fast and you have wonderful succulent fish.

Use orange, lemon, lime and clementine and grate the zest on top of the fish fillets.

Do not season it before you put it into the steamer, just before you serve it. Have some salted rosted nuts at hand, just give them a quick second roast in a dry pan. Use a specialty salt and some rare pepper and you have a taste, that is awesome.

Serve it with a yellow and red bell pepper risotto.

recipe for 4:
640 g salmon fillets
1 orange
1 lemon
1 lime
1 clementine
1 tsp lemon salt
1 tsp kampot pepper freshley ground in a pestel and mortar
4 tsp roasted salted mixed nuts, chopped

Put the fish onto a steamer tray. Use a microblade and zest the citrus fruits on top.
Heat up the steamer to 100 C and put the salmon in for 9 minutes.
Sprinkle with lemon salt and Kampot pepper and toss some nuts on top.

Risotto:
3 yellow bell peppers
2 red bell peppers
300 g Aborio rice
1 large onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic chopped
200 ml white wine
750 ml chicken stock
30 g parmesan cheese grated
2 tbsp butter
salt , pepper, smoked paprika

Roast the yellow peppers in the oven until the skin turns black, cover with clingfilm for 10 minutes and let it steam out. Peel the skin away and put the flesh into a blender and make a puree.
Heat up the chicken stock and add the puree to it.
Melt the butter in a wide pot and add the onions and garlic cubes and soften them, add the risotto rice and give it a good coating in the butter.
Pour the wine in and let it reduce.
Ladle hot stock over and let every ladle reduce before you add an other. Keep stirring often.
Cut the red bell pepper into fine cubes and add them after 15 minutes.
When the rice is done, add the Parmesan cheese and eventually a bit of more butter.

Sauce:
2 tsp icing sugar
125 ml white wine
30 ml  white Port wine
100 ml cream
2 tbsp cream cheese
1 piece of peel of an orange, a lime
1 piece of ginger
1 clove of garlic in slices
1 dried chili
1/2 cooked cool potato
salt 
 
Pour the wine in a small casserole with the icing sugar and let it reduce to 1/2.
Add the cream and reduce it again.
Add the Port and the cream cheese.
For aroma, add the spices and let them sit in the sauce without cooking, just warm it through.
Pour the sauce through a sieve and grate some cooked potato in to thicken the sauce a bit.

Pork Loin Sous-Vide

For Christmas some new kitchen gadgets found the way into my home. Today I have time to figure out the technology. And time is the mayor factor when cooking Sous-Vide.

Before you can start to cook, you have to get the goods into bags and put them into a Vacuum Sealer.
That was one of the new gadgets together with a box full of bags.
It took me two rounds before I had the handling down.

Then comes the Sous-Vide stick, together with a big pot.
The pot is also good for a large party, I can put it on the Induction hob and make batches of Chili con Carne or Soups.
The method is easy, just fill the pot with warm water to the max of the stick, dial the temperature you want to cook with and press start. When the water has reached the point then put in the veg or meat. Veggies need a higher temperature to get done, so do them first, then scoop out some hot water and pour in cold, reduce the temperature and put the bag with the meat in.

At 80 C I had a package of celery with some knob of butter and salt and pepper in the vacuum seal bag and it was in the hot water for 50 minutes. Then I scooped it out of the bag with the buttery liquid and put it into an ovenproof dish with goat cream cheese and some Pecornino I chucked it into the oven for 12 minutes.

Great is that you have free space on your hob to cook other things, because you can put the pot with the stick near any electric outlet. Just make sure, it is on a heatproof surface.

recipe:
500 g pork loin
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp Herbes de Provence
salt and pepper

400 g celery sticks
1 tbsp butter
salt and pepper
30 g Pecorino
30 g fresh Goat cream cheese 

Get some of the hot water out of the pot and pour in some cold and reduce the heat to 60 C, put in the bagged meat with the butter and spices for 50 minutes.
Get a pan on the hob and on high heat brown the meat on all sides.

Cheese Making for the New Year

I found some raw cow´s milk at a farm store. Usually you only get milk which is pasteurized and homogenized.

The moment I saw it, I knew making a batch of soft cheeses for the first days in the New Year would be great. Since there was not so much to do on New Years Eve I could spent the time in the kitchen babysitting my cheeses.

I´ve got the ingredients from the fridge and freezer from the basement and all the other equipment I needed. I started with the milk and warmed it to 35 C and added the starter and calciumcloride at 9 AM sharp. You have to follow a strict timetable when you make cheese and an early morning start makes it easier. I kept the temperature for an hour and added the rennet. Then I used a thick bath towel and covered the pot and it sat without any moving for 80 minutes.

The comes the fun part, get off the towel and stare into the pot. Is there a big solid slab of white?
If yes, you did something right. Take a big knife and cut through it a couple of times.
Let it rest for 10 minutes, use a big spoon and get rid of some of the whey. Cut again  and so on 4 times.

Use cheese containers that strain the liquid and fill them up and set them on to a rack over a large container.

After the first cut

fresh filled containers

after an hour

next morning at 6 AM I turned them

At 11 AM the next day I rubbed them with salt for the first time, and hour later for the second time.
The last salt an hour later was from Iceland and has tiny herbs and flowers in.

I packed the cheeses away in the evening and stored them in the fridge.

Today I tasted one - delicious!

Fondue Chinoise

For a long evening is a Fondue a great way to pass the time. So many New Year Eves here in Germany see a Fondue this time.
It is a lot to prepare, but you can do most of the work during the afternoon.

recipe for the broth:
2 cubes of beef stock
1 tbsp white miso paste
1 package dashi stock
6 shitake mushrooms
100 g leek
1 garlic clove
1 knob of ginger
1 red chili
1 stalk lemon grass
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sake

When the stock is done, use a strainer spoon and fish out all the veggies and spices.

ingredients for the fondue:
fine rice noodles cooked
3 mini ravioli per person cooked
pok choy
daikon raddish
fine strips of turkey breast precooked in the stock for 2 minutes
king prawns 2 per person precooked

Dipping sauce:
2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1 knob fresh ginger
1 clove garlic