There’s a pine tree in the corner of my living room, shiny with silver baubles. My ceiling has a string of orange lights hanging from it. There’s something on the television called “A Christmas Carol”. Why, it must be Christmas.
The reason I am sure that it is, indeed, Christmas-time (you never know, the gaudy decorations could be a style-statement and the tv-programme a re-run gone haywire) is that my dinner consisted of an oven-baked Vacherin Mont d’Or cheese with garlic.
The first time I had oven-baked Vacherin I was about sixteen or seventeen. I had a Saturday job in a cheese store and every week after the store closed, we would stay on and try one of the goodies we sold. One night, as a thank-you for working our butts off in the Christmas mayhem, we got a special treat: warm Vacherin Mont d’Or with garlic and kirsch. It was love at first sight. In fact, I might have shot dirty looks at colleagues who took more than two bites. It was creamy, pungent, warming and I was sad when we finished it. (Also, a little relieved; weekend-before-Christmas shopping in a posh cheese store gets ugly. Have you ever seen anyone with a Rolex quarrel for a full five minutes over a supposed over-charging of five cents? I have. After a day like that, bed-time is mighty appealing.)
I haven’t often had Vacherin since. Somehow, I never think of it until Wham comes on the radio. But then the craving starts to build and by 22 or 23 December it is time. I might have skipped a year since that first year, but I doubt it. Tonight, I paired it with a few slices of sourdough bread and Molly’s tarragon leeks and my Christmas holidays officially started. Here’s to hoping yours will be as soft, smelly and delightful.
Oven-baked Vacherin Mont d'Or
Serves 4 as a snack, 2 as dinner
1 small, whole Vacherin Mont d'Or (about 450 gr)
1 clove of garlic, minced
a splash of kirsch (optional)
Leave cheese in wooden container and place in a baking dish (to catch any spills that may occur.)Prick top all over with fork, to break up the rind. Spread minced garlic over the top and press into soft cheese with fork. Sprinkle with kirsch, if using. Place in oven at about 200C. Bake for approximately ten minutes or until cheese bubbles and smells incredibly good.
Serve immediately with slices of sturdy, crusty bread.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Current cravings
Sleepy time tea with milk and honey (thanks go to DaMomma for inspiring that craving, although the cause is not- I repeat NOT- the same)
Margherita pizza slices from the pizza place across the road from my office
Butter-fried onions
Margherita pizza slices from the pizza place across the road from my office
Butter-fried onions
Monday, December 8, 2008
Apple cake: Weird but Wonderful
Note to self: even a weird recipe can yield something mighty tasty. I wanted to bake for a birthday party and was planning on making chocolate cupcakes. However, I’d forgotten to buy chocolate (or, to be more precise, I’d eaten the chocolate I’d bought for baking and didn’t buy new- details, schmetails) and it was so cold outside that a trip to the store was not an option. So I collected the bakeables I did have and figured out I had just about enough for Sarah Raven’s Kentish Apple Cake. (Yes, another Sarah Raven recipe. I tried to stay away, but the siren-call was too strong.)
Sure, the recipe looked a bit weird, what with not creaming the butter and adding the fruit before the eggs. And sure, it did end up giving me a sore arm because the final product is more like sticky clay than like cake batter. But who cares when you end up with a cake that is crispy on the outside, moist on the inside and studded with bits of apple and raisin? I think it almost made the merrymakers forget all about the leather-like meat I served them as a main course, weird recipe or no.
Kentish Apple Cake
Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Kitchen Cookbook
Serves 8-10
225 gr unsalted butter (cold), plus a little for the tin
350 gr self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
110 gr of sultanas or raisins, soaked for an hour or two in water or fruit juice
175 gr caster sugar
75 gr toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped or halved (optional)
450 gr cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped roughly
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease or line a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin.
Sift flour into large bowl, add cinnamon and salt and mix. Cube butter and add to flour. Use cold fingers to crumble butter and mix with flour until it looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the sultanas, sugar and nuts. Add apple and lemon zest and mix. Lightly beat the eggs and stir them in.
Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for about an hour or until firm to the touch. Let cool before removing from tin.
Sure, the recipe looked a bit weird, what with not creaming the butter and adding the fruit before the eggs. And sure, it did end up giving me a sore arm because the final product is more like sticky clay than like cake batter. But who cares when you end up with a cake that is crispy on the outside, moist on the inside and studded with bits of apple and raisin? I think it almost made the merrymakers forget all about the leather-like meat I served them as a main course, weird recipe or no.
Kentish Apple Cake
Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Kitchen Cookbook
Serves 8-10
225 gr unsalted butter (cold), plus a little for the tin
350 gr self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
110 gr of sultanas or raisins, soaked for an hour or two in water or fruit juice
175 gr caster sugar
75 gr toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped or halved (optional)
450 gr cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped roughly
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease or line a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin.
Sift flour into large bowl, add cinnamon and salt and mix. Cube butter and add to flour. Use cold fingers to crumble butter and mix with flour until it looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the sultanas, sugar and nuts. Add apple and lemon zest and mix. Lightly beat the eggs and stir them in.
Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for about an hour or until firm to the touch. Let cool before removing from tin.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Winter breakfast quinoa
This morning I took my egg timer for a run. I’ve been on a ten-week scheme to learn to run for twenty minutes- for about seven or eight months now. Last week, I decided enough was enough and that the scheme will be finished by the end of the year. This means I have to go running about every other day or so. Normally, I time the intervals on my phone’s stopwatch. Yesterday I forgot my phone at my man’s house, though, so I was faced with a choice: skip my run or find something else to measure time.
The obvious choice, you might think, would be to strap on my watch and call it a timepiece. And it would be, except for the fact that my watch has been sitting in the windowsill for months with a broken strap. (Yup, I have an unfortunate tendency to let small tasks take forever. Moving on.) A search of my box-of-useful and my cupboard-of-miscellaneous did not yield a stopwatch or other such device. I’d almost given up getting any timed exercise when I wandered through my kitchen and the egg timer caught my eye. Aha! Not only would I be able to time my run, there would be sounds to tell me when to stop. You know, because I have a tendency to keep running and not heed time. (And by “keep running and not heed time” I mean obsessively checking my timer every twenty seconds or so, pouting when time obviously slows down just to spite me.)
So I took my egg timer for a run. Around the block and into the park we went, beeping and huffing and puffing along nicely. I was feeling quite pleased with myself, hiding the timer up my sleeve, only surreptitiously pulling it out when it made noise. To the casual onlooker, I might have looked like a real (if red-faced and panting) runner. And then I ran into these folks, just as I had the timer out, shooting it pleading looks to slow down so I didn’t have to start my last stretch of jogging. Right. Okay. Maybe they thought it was a mini-dumbbell?
Anyway. To take this story back into the realm of the culinary, I could liken the color of my face at the end of my run to red cabbage, or maybe an anemic egg plant. But that would be lame, so I won’t. Instead, I will share with you the recipe for my post-exercise breakfast: warm quinoa with cinnamon, maple syrup and apple (based on this recipe Heidi at 101cookbooks.com brought us). Another fitting use for my egg timer, if I do say so myself.
Warm breakfast quinoa
Adapted from 101cookbooks.com
Serves 1
¼ cup of quinoa
¼ cup of milk
¼ cup of water
dash of cinnamon
1 apple, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tbsp of maply syrup (or more to taste)
Combine quinoa, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes (stick around, because the mixture is prone to bubbling up and you might need to remove it from the heat briefly to prevent spills) or until most of the liquid has been absorbed and quinoa is cooked through. Add more water if liquid is absorbed before quinoa fully cooks. Remove from heat and let stand for a couple of minutes.
Stir in cinnamon and maply syrup to taste. Put apple in a bowl and pour quinoa over the top. Serve warm.
The obvious choice, you might think, would be to strap on my watch and call it a timepiece. And it would be, except for the fact that my watch has been sitting in the windowsill for months with a broken strap. (Yup, I have an unfortunate tendency to let small tasks take forever. Moving on.) A search of my box-of-useful and my cupboard-of-miscellaneous did not yield a stopwatch or other such device. I’d almost given up getting any timed exercise when I wandered through my kitchen and the egg timer caught my eye. Aha! Not only would I be able to time my run, there would be sounds to tell me when to stop. You know, because I have a tendency to keep running and not heed time. (And by “keep running and not heed time” I mean obsessively checking my timer every twenty seconds or so, pouting when time obviously slows down just to spite me.)
So I took my egg timer for a run. Around the block and into the park we went, beeping and huffing and puffing along nicely. I was feeling quite pleased with myself, hiding the timer up my sleeve, only surreptitiously pulling it out when it made noise. To the casual onlooker, I might have looked like a real (if red-faced and panting) runner. And then I ran into these folks, just as I had the timer out, shooting it pleading looks to slow down so I didn’t have to start my last stretch of jogging. Right. Okay. Maybe they thought it was a mini-dumbbell?
Anyway. To take this story back into the realm of the culinary, I could liken the color of my face at the end of my run to red cabbage, or maybe an anemic egg plant. But that would be lame, so I won’t. Instead, I will share with you the recipe for my post-exercise breakfast: warm quinoa with cinnamon, maple syrup and apple (based on this recipe Heidi at 101cookbooks.com brought us). Another fitting use for my egg timer, if I do say so myself.
Warm breakfast quinoa
Adapted from 101cookbooks.com
Serves 1
¼ cup of quinoa
¼ cup of milk
¼ cup of water
dash of cinnamon
1 apple, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tbsp of maply syrup (or more to taste)
Combine quinoa, milk and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes (stick around, because the mixture is prone to bubbling up and you might need to remove it from the heat briefly to prevent spills) or until most of the liquid has been absorbed and quinoa is cooked through. Add more water if liquid is absorbed before quinoa fully cooks. Remove from heat and let stand for a couple of minutes.
Stir in cinnamon and maply syrup to taste. Put apple in a bowl and pour quinoa over the top. Serve warm.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Nutty cauliflower soup
Ouch.
I’ve burned my tongue.
I worked late this evening and had to go for a run when I got home. You know those nights when it feels like your shoulders are glued to your ears? It was one of those, and nothing but exercise would do. When I got back I was Hungry (and also Sweaty). Luckily, I’d planned to make cauliflower soup. From start to finish it took about thirty minutes to make and I even had time to hop in the shower while the white florets were boiling away. Still, with onions, garlic and two kinds of paprika it smelled so good that there was no time to wait for the soup to drop to somewhere closer to body temperature before I took a bite.
And that’s where you get hurt.
But it’s okay. Smoky, slightly spicy and with a nutty flavor to enhance the cauliflower’s natural earthiness, this soup was worth it. It is based on a recipe from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, which includes almonds and bay leaves. I’ve always thought cauliflower has a bit of a non-descript flavor so I replaced the subtle bay leaves with two kinds of paprika for more oomph. Swapping the almonds for hazelnuts was born out of necessity (no almonds in the kitchen, no intention to leave the house again before I was fed), but worked well. Paired with a few buttered crackers, this soup was just what the doctor ordered after a long day.
Nutty cauliflower soup
Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook
Serves 2
1 smallish head of cauliflower, broken into large florets
1 tbsp of butter
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp spicy paprika
30 gr roasted hazelnuts, ground fine
½ litre of chicken stock, or more
Melt the butter in a soup pot. Cook the onion in butter until soft. Add garlic, both kinds of paprika and hazelnuts. Stir. Add stock so that cauliflower is completely covered. Simmer for about fifteen minutes or until cauliflower is tender. Use stick blender to liquidize soup. Serve warm (but don’t burn your tongue).
I’ve burned my tongue.
I worked late this evening and had to go for a run when I got home. You know those nights when it feels like your shoulders are glued to your ears? It was one of those, and nothing but exercise would do. When I got back I was Hungry (and also Sweaty). Luckily, I’d planned to make cauliflower soup. From start to finish it took about thirty minutes to make and I even had time to hop in the shower while the white florets were boiling away. Still, with onions, garlic and two kinds of paprika it smelled so good that there was no time to wait for the soup to drop to somewhere closer to body temperature before I took a bite.
And that’s where you get hurt.
But it’s okay. Smoky, slightly spicy and with a nutty flavor to enhance the cauliflower’s natural earthiness, this soup was worth it. It is based on a recipe from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook, which includes almonds and bay leaves. I’ve always thought cauliflower has a bit of a non-descript flavor so I replaced the subtle bay leaves with two kinds of paprika for more oomph. Swapping the almonds for hazelnuts was born out of necessity (no almonds in the kitchen, no intention to leave the house again before I was fed), but worked well. Paired with a few buttered crackers, this soup was just what the doctor ordered after a long day.
Nutty cauliflower soup
Adapted from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook
Serves 2
1 smallish head of cauliflower, broken into large florets
1 tbsp of butter
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp spicy paprika
30 gr roasted hazelnuts, ground fine
½ litre of chicken stock, or more
Melt the butter in a soup pot. Cook the onion in butter until soft. Add garlic, both kinds of paprika and hazelnuts. Stir. Add stock so that cauliflower is completely covered. Simmer for about fifteen minutes or until cauliflower is tender. Use stick blender to liquidize soup. Serve warm (but don’t burn your tongue).
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