Becoming Brand Ambassador for Spice Kitchen!

Spices at the Grüne Woche, Berlin, 2018

I promised this year to be bold and successful, and for me it means also being surrounded, virtually or in my everyday real life, by positive highly motivated people. I always admire small creative companies writing their own story of success.

Spice Kitchen was one of my first collaborations as a foodie blogger, back in 2013. I was quite a beginner in the world of kitchen and tastes, but they entrusted me with a precious bag with their newly launched spices that I intensively learn how to use in my recipes. 

A couple of years back, they are a multi-awarded company, spreading their love for quality spices all over the world, with an over increasing catalogue of products created to accomodate even the most sophisticated tastes. It makes sense to be sucessful, when you 'put your heart and soul' and each and every one of the product you share. 

Besides the traditional collection of spices, they offer exquisite unique mix such as the complete set for mulled wine - especially if you are living in a cold country, it goes all round the year, believe my words, speculaas, or the rare - at least for the European kitchens - Sri Lankan curry powder, sumac and the precious safran. 

As a Brand Ambassador, I will try and test their spices in the next months, in recipes shared with you at least twice the month. For the beginning, I will have a great selection, which includes more or less known spices that I can't wait to feel and smell. I am humbled and honoured to be part of this project and can't wait to inspire other people, like me, the love of cooking and the boldness to try.

A new homemade bread recipe on the table

True is that for too many reasons, in the last months, I did not cook or bake as much as I wanted to. Being productive in the kitchen for me means that I am completely at peace and balanced and able to focus only on the ingredients I have in the front of me and the tasty ideas tempting me in my brain. Instead, I was more focused on other non-foodie projects and some family issues that had to deal as soon as possible. But as I should also eat from time to time, little by litttle, the hunger won over the lack of interest for anything food. 

As I usually make my own bread, I wanted this time something special, and eventually looking much more like a high-end product of patisserie. After browsing a lot of recipes from books in different languages, I decided over one miking corn and white flour and relatively easy to achieve. 

First, I started by mixing for 2 minutes 100 gr. corn flour with 400 ml. warm water. Meanwhile, I dissolved 20 gr. yeast in one glass of warm water. Added 1 kg. white flour over the corn flour mixture, plus the yeast. For taste, I also added 1/4 tablespoon kitchen salt. I added the white flour little by little, while kneading it with a big wooden palette till it turns into a dough. You can also use a mixer - which does things faster, but I am still very much into hand kneading.
After the dough is ready, I let it to raise for 2 hours, covered by a clean cloth. 

After that, I kneaded it by hand again, with the hand previously wet with oil (this is a tip shared by one of my baking friends on Facebook, while I was looking for the recipe and it worked out perfectly and left my hands perfectly cleaned; as a tip, olive oil does better to the skin than any hand cream) and kneaded it again for 3-5 minutes. When necessary, add more flour, for an easier kneading.

When everything is ready, I painted the bread with the content of 2 yolks. I spread some za'atar and sesame seeds for the artistic impression.  

Baked for 40 minutes in the oven at 120C. At the end of the process, it not only looks good, but also tastes great, what I really appreciated, the crust was both delicate and with a good taste. (If you want a stronger crust, you may need to bake probably 60 minutes).

Compared to the local bread variants on the market, this corn bread is original, delicious and tempts you to eat it all at once. In terms of baking lessons learned, I was more than happy with the results, as for the first time in a long time, my dough both looked and tasted almost perfect!

Bon Appétit!

Special challes for Sukkot

This is that time of the year, when things are different, full of joy and the cooking ideas are more than welcomed! If it's autumn, it is the time of renewal, regrets and optimism of the new beginnings. It is about time to say 'I am sorry' to those that you bothered during the year and invite them in your sukkah for a joyous celebration of life, family and friendship.

Each time during the Jewish holidays season, that it is about to end this week, I need to create new recipes and to challenge my cooking clumsy skills with something new. Besides the commitment for more kosher in the kitchen and more learning, I also want to do something new, like a new shape of challes. For the round Rosh Hashana challes, I added at the recommendation of a very skilful friend some cinnamon to the dough besides the honey. The result was aromatic, very pleasant and in line with the seasonal fragrances. 

For Sukkos, I wanted to create something close to the arba minim but to be honest, except the esrog - not exactly the Chazon Ish type - I was not extremely impressed by the results. But the taste is good and the quality of the dough significantly improved over the last months and thus, I am sure that the next year I will do much much better!

Bon Appetit and moadim l'simcha!

The case against eating unhealthy

Why will someone prefer to eat fast food instead of slowly prepared food? Because, as the name said, 'fast food' is ready at any time to affect your stomach. You pay 2$ or maximum $5 and you have a well portioned slice of poison as a meal. 

The serious part of this life threatening joke is most often, with a busy schedule to cope with every day, a noisy family and a lot of chores to be done, the time for preparing the food, or even more, for acquiring the skills for preparing the food is considerably limited. 

The fast food industry should not be blamed and hated, as it answers certain needs that appeared in the society following the development of the industry and the increased degree of complexity of our lives. Compared with a decade ago, more salads and healthy alternatives entered the menus of the big chains and the consumers are more responsible when it comes to the choice of their daily food. 

At the same time, we may realize that by making a salad in the morning, instead of dreaming about a cheeseburger breakfast, is not so difficult and not even so expensive. In ten minutes, your healthy portion is ready. While preparing the salad one may get the calm and quietness needed for preparing for the hectic day ahead or for thinking what program you will do with your kids. 

As for special skills? Unless you pay enough attention to do not hurt your fingers while mincing the tomatoes, no building blocks will stop you having a delicious meal. Thanks to the Internet, you can easily find a lot of easy tutorials about almost everything - including about how to cut an avocado (a problem I faced when I was at the beginning of my cooking life) or the pineapple and many other strange yet easy situations you will go through. 

As for me, I realized early in the morning today that I don't have any bread left - Pesach preparations on the way, when no leavened products are allowed. Checked what it is left and found some barley. Prepared it in a couple of minutes, plus added: cherry tomatoes, cheese, a boiled eggs, olive oil and parsley and in 10 minutes I was done. While preparing I thought about writing this post and thus, I kept the track with my professional life as well.

Happy healthy day everyone! 

Aromatized chicken

What I had in the mixer (this time)

I do not eat too much meat and when I do, chicken is our family choice no. 1. The breast is the most wanted possibility, but the legs are highly appreciated. And the creative cook in me wants to offer each time a different surprise, the last time I explored the following combination:

- salted peanuts

- parsley

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil

- garlic

- sesame

Mix the combination in the mixer for 2-3 minutes. 'Paint' each leg with the combination and cook it in the oven for 30-45 minutes.

Bon Appetit!

Fast salad with pine seeds

I tried this salad recipe for the first time Friday morning, trying to combine in the most tasty way a lot of ingredients gathered on my cooking table.

What I did was to mix:

150 gr. pineseeds
cut finelly 6 scallions
cut in 4 each of the 16 cherry tomatoes
cut finelly a bunch of fresh rucola - or rocket, for the Englishmen around here
2 spoons olive oil
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

The salad is ready!

Another way to say how much I love salmon

I am this kind of simpleton that I do not care too much about sophisticated methods to prepare and serve the salmon as long as I do have salmon on the table. Usually, it is the easiest product on my Shabbos list and I insist to have it on the menu on other occasions as well. 

When I am waiting for guests, I should be creative and wrap even a modest and tasty piece of salmon in a more sophisticated way. But Sukkot makes me always happy because I add a lot of vegetables and fruits on the plate and many of my worries are naturally solved.

As I was - as usual - out of time, I made the following marvelous combination:

avocados

slowly roasted pepper - red and yellow

olive oil

sesame seeds

salmon

I kept it in the overn for a couple of minutes to allow all the ingredients communicate and melt a bit properly, but I served it cold, as an hors d'oeuvre. The preparation did not take more than 15 minutes, the roasting stage included. It gives you the feeling of being full (the avocado is guilty for that) and you need a talking break before the next meal. 

That's all. 

Why to bake garlic?

As I can hardly resist to add more than 2 cloves of garlic to almost every salty meal, this question does not make too much sense for me. What do you mean by that? Why not baking garlic?

For turning the page to very serious problems, baked garlic is a good idea for eliminating the surplus of water and to make its cooking smoothly. 

The following tip I got while looking reading my Middle Eastern recipes about how to prepare tahini. Thus, I started the cooking by unpeeling the garlic and placing it on the tray of the oven for about 10 minutes. 

The next stop, in the mixer, together with the other ingredients of the tahini.

Tip of the week: how to make vanilla sugar

Source:  hiphostess.blogspot.com

When I've read for the first time that even me, the humble chef with a problematic cooking background can have her own vanilla sugar, I was very skeptical. But after reading the recipe, I become fully aware that nothing could be easier.

For instance, you need the following ingredients: 

8 cups of white sugar

one vanilla bean

Pour the cups into a large container with the vanilla bean in the center, tight it and let it set for the next two weeks in a dry space. That's all. You can use the vanilla beam thereafter for other cooking purposes. It is cheap, easy and I can already feel the smell...

Cutting instead of grinding

I am a big fan of various kinds of flavour and I can hardly miss any opportunity to try to smells and tastes, even not necessarily included in the original recipe. I have various old time utensils that help me to do the grinding, but sometimes it doesn't work properly. I want to surprise my guests by offering them the choice of guessing what fine ingredients I used and this is possible only if the spices are finely cut. The ingredients should be cut in a way that will enrich the food by the different aromas that are melt together. 

Through my wonderings from a shop to another, I discovered the products offered by SchneidWerk. From the technical point of view, it is the kind of product that helps a lot the beginner chef, and offers a lot of satisfaction to the professionals in the domain of cooking. It is provided with a stainless steel blade with sharply etched teeth designed to cut spices and dried herbs very fast and efficiently. It works very well with both hard and dried types of spices, such as: anise, chilli, ginger, fennel, coriander, caraway, mustard seed, black and white sesame and  thyme. 

Foto credit: SchneidWerk

The prices are affordable and they are designed to last long. You can find at least six models available, with a friendly design and very easy to use. 

Chocolate Coconut Balls

Usually, I try desperately to change as much as I can from the recipes I apply. This time, it was not the case and I religiously followed this recommendation of Chocolate Coconut Balls made in Australia. 

The picture looks like it was some snow in my house, but this is because of the rich coconut I got (made in Germany).

If you are curious to know how did the whole snow ball taste I will answer that I would like to know as well. In a matter of only a couple of minutes, the miraculous balls disappeared. Melted, probably. 

Bon Appetit!

Velvet scrambled eggs

Today was not the best day in my life, but I'd end it up in a gracious way, with the lecture of an interesting article about how to make better scrambled eggs: use a saucepan, add butter and be ready to eat only after 30 minutes. 

Honestly, I wondered for a long time why my scrambled eggs are always looking pathetic. This recipe gave me the hope that one day I will be able to make a good morning omlette with the texture of the velvet.

Bon Appetit!

Rice Latkes

This Hanukka I kept a very classical menu and when I've read this Rice Latkes recipe the last week, I couldn't stop thinking about preparing it as the sweet part of the Shabbat menu. This time, I used the recipe without too many modifications - maybe more sugar and cinnamon than recommended.

2 coups white rice, cooked. If you want to know more about cooked rice, I found a very good and simple reference here.

2 eggs, well beaten

3 tablespoon wheat germ or whole wheat flour

2 tablespoon sugar

generous pinch of cinnamon

oil, for frying

Combine all ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Drop by tablespoonful into hot oil and fry on both sides until golden brown. Yields 8-12 latkes. 

Bon Appetit!

Sponge cake with orange

I couldn't resist and wanted to taste the original variant of sponge cake with orange.

The orange juice from a big orange is added to the beated yolks, before blending the flour, baking powder and vanilla extract. This time - because of temperature variations - the texture wasn't as spongy as the first time - as usual in my case, the first time I am trying a recipe I obtain the best results, but the taste was fresher. 

You can try to have this delicious sponge cake with orange with a mint tea. Or with some hot milk with honey. We all need some extra warm during the winter season.

The source for the recipe is from Classic Kosher Cooking, by Sara Finkel, p. 216

"Classic" sponge cake

This is a recipe I gently adapted from Classic Kosher Cooking, by Sara Finkel (p.216)
Ingredients
6 large eggs, room temperature, separated
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup sugar

1 cup cake flour, sifted
1 teaspon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract - I used 2
the 1/4 cup orange juice from the original version was skipped, maybe the next time; the same with the grated rind of 1 orange.
I was adding little by little sugar, while beating egg whites and lemon juice for maybe 3 minutes. Separately, I beat the yolk. I added the baking powder, the salt and the vanilla extract and then mixed with the yolk mixture. Beat together for another 6 minutes.
The whole combination was poured into a pan greased and then baked in a preheated oven - 150C - for around 50 minutes, until turned brown.
I am planning to serve it with some slices of mango and papaya. And definitely will try it once again. It looks puffy and soft.

PS: What about the post-Hanukka diet? Maybe the next week...Promise

Roasted tomatoes time

This is a very fast and easy meal - preparation time of maximum 15 minutes - and nevertheless tasty and fresh.
The ingredients are:
tomatoes
dried oregano
salt
(sometimes also some sesame seeds could add a specific taste)
olive oil
Head the oven to 150 and wait for a while, till the tomatoes are a little bit roasted. To be served with some fresh Greek cheese.
Bon Appetit!

Eat, memory

This is exactly the kind of the book that you need when you ask yourself skeptically what are you writing for. As I didn't write on the blog for almost two months - altough I often felt guilty for my laziness - I tried for a couple of times to go beyond the limits of my - sometimes - clusmy words. I was not happy with the content - excepting the pictures - with the wording and everything related to language. I even stop making intersting meals, resuming our dinners to boring pasta and maybe some creative eggplants. 

The alarm clock was the cheesecake for Shavuot. Once upon a time I did 2-3 recipes, all of them being considered a pleasure for the palate of my guests. This year, I did only one and I was completely unsatisfied with the result - maybe too salty - despite the hungry rush of my dear ones to finish it in just a couple of hours.

And I waited again, for more than one week, for inspiration to reshape my timid life of juggler with words. This book, I bought more because of the very cheap price instead of the quality of the writings - I didn't know none of the writers - reminded me that writing about eating and food and cooking is not only cooking the right recipe, but also about telling the story of the food you make, the thoughts you have - not necessarily related to food - and the translation into words of sounds and smells and tastes. 

I will fully recommend it to anyone fighting writers' block or any other kind of block. Welcome back in my world of boiled words! Happy to be back here and promise to continue the good work.

My CSN status (P)

Thanks to CSN's generosity, I ordered recently two very useful tools for making my pizza days and evenings more pleasant. First, for preparing the pizza, I wanted a special pan and second, after the pizza was ready, I wanted to introduce it to my eyes on a colourful big (31cm) plate. The order made its way to me in approximatively 10 days (only me it's the lazy one in writing the post, but believe, me I was too busy to eat the pizzas). 

The conclusion of the happy and successful user(s): both products are matching the needs of me and my family in terms of fast but very delicious meals. The plate is so nice and practical that I would like to assign it new functions: for serving fruits, sandwiches, salads, cheese...Big challenge for the imagination, so at least for the last weeks I didn't visit too many restaurants lately.

Ideas about risotto

I must recognize that in the last 2 weeks I've been more focused on style than on content. In other words, I tried to work a bit for improving my knowledge and bibliography and writing qualities, instead of posting regularly (as I wished to). But this area is still very new for me and lots of changes are more than necessarily. If you want to hear a secret: not even cooked too sophisticatedly (call it cook's block), but I have some reserve recipes right in my left pocket.

During my wondering across the city libraries, I stumbled upon this book about Risotto. My personal encounter with risotto took place a couple of years ago when I visited for the first time the wonderful city of Milan and since then it was hardly for me to repeat the olfactive experience of a right rice combination.

After reading this book - with careful notes, as for any serious (almost academic-wise) approach, I am nurturing the hope that I will reconstruct my Milan memories every two days. In some of my dreams I see, smell and taste Risotto with: Gorgonzola and figs; raspberries and goat cheese; pears and chilli; pumpkin, mushrooms and lemon.

An extra disclosure of two tips: add some butter (I knew), but also some white wine (I didn't). 

I have prepared another book review, but after writing this I can't switch my mind from my risotto memories...

Do you need a new saucepan collection? CSN Stores have the sollution (P)

Image by nate steiner via Flickr//The joy of cooking is only one saucepan away

If yes, just have a look at this variety of saucepans offered by the CSN Stores. Hard decision, as I would like to test at least five different models. Even if you are not a dedicated cooker, you would like to learn how to prepare your own tasty food.

As for me, would be back soon with a fresh review of some products!