The postman must have questioned my sanity, witnessing the broadest smile he’d probably seen for weeks, delivering what he thought of as just another package. Well, he had no idea! What he didn’t notice was the fact it came straight from the US, Maine. A lovely and thoughtfully put together package from dear friend Mav over at port2port (a very inspirational website with a charming concept, maintained by the highly creative duo Mav and Arc!).
One item I’d like to pick out in particular is the wonderful Maine Maple Syrup, as it immediately reminded me of breakfasts O. and I had together while he lived abroad, including pancakes and granola with maple syrup. So those two sweet treats have been on our list since last week, but had to wait until just now because …of a fully consuming day job :) which kept both of us from having a decent breakfast lately, instead we had to mostly skip breakfast altogether and just so made it to the coffee shop next door for a little something.
On the pancakes front, I guess I took some creative liberty, they look more like the European version – that’d be at least my excuse for not matching exactly the original. They tasted great though. We made different variations, with raspberries, pecans and plenty of syrup, mhhhh, yummy! Usually I make them by guess and by gosh, but this time I weighed the amounts I used.
Combine dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar (regular sugar prepped with used vanilla beans/shells) in large bowl.
Whisk eggs with the milk and the melted butter together in a separate bowl and add to flour mixture.
Heat half of a tsp of butter in a (non-stick) pan and add a large scoop of batter as soon as butter throws bubbles. On top add the chopped pecans and raspberries. Bake until set (be careful not to burn the bottom), turn and bake until both sides have gained a nice light brown color.
Just before serving top with maple syrup. As the package contained some wonderful honey, I couldn’t resist and added some drops of it, too!
The granola turned out very nice, too. You don’t have to worry about adjusting the ingredients – almost anything goes.
Preheat oven to 175 °C (350 °F). Melt the butter in the saucepan, add the scraped out seeds from a vanilla bean, add the syrup and blend well. Then mix together oats, melted butter and the maple syrup in a large bowl. The amount of butter and syrup depends on how you want your granola – I used an amount that would evenly cover the oats (make them stick together), but not fully drench them.
Add all the nuts and the coco chips and spread the granola on a cookie sheet. Put it in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the mix gets dry and takes on a golden, brownish color. Stir occasionally and be careful to not let it get too dark.
Remove from oven, let cool and then add the dried fruit. The fresh fruit, yoghurt and milk is added just before serving.
Note: All amounts can vary based on both your personal taste and the overall yield needed. You can experiment with different kinds of nuts, dried fruit, and maybe even some spices (cinnamon, cardamom, etc.) to find the mix you like best. It’ll easily last for at least 2 weeks in a tightly sealed container (if it ever makes it that far…)
Raspberry Pecan Pancakes
Recipe source: inspired by Stephanie's pancakes
Required time: prep. 10 min., baking 15 min., serves 2-3
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Ingredients:
300-350ml milk
3 eggs
50g butter, melted
300g flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
50g vanilla sugar
pecans
raspberries
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All Nuts - Granola
Recipe source: own mixture
Required time: prep. 15 min., baking 15 min.
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Ingredients:
oat flakes
butter, melted
maple syrup
one vanilla bean
nuts etc: hazelnuts, almonds, pine, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, brazil, pecans, pistachio, coco chips
dried apricots and cranberries, chopped
fresh fruits: blueberries, granny smith apple
Greek yoghurt & milk
honey
Two things that in spite of the ugly weather made my day…
#1 was something I always had to have as a kid and incidentally discovered again at our coffee shop of choice. These wristbands consist of beaded bright little candy rings, each color a slightly different flavor on a stretch string with a candy dial.
Besides collecting flavorsome erasers, those colorful, edible fake-watches were my favorites at early school years. I thought they had stopped producing them back in the 80ies, but it seems, they are back for a revival or have they been around all along? Oh what fun childhood memories – nostalgia, here I come (not that I’d wear these today…)
#2 could be introduced as My boyfriend went to Prague and all I got was this lousy… were two beautiful, handcrafted crockery bowls. When O. returns from traveling outside the country I’m always happy to see if a new cooking magazine has landed, too – but these bowls are much better. ‘Glad I made him join me on some of my shopping sprees, it sort of paid off, very sweet picks, right down my ally ;)
When we have friends over for dinner, part of the pre-dinner routine always includes pondering over whether I should stick with officially rubber stamped (read: yummy) dishes I feel comfortable to prepare or tell myself, “Ah, what the heck“, give myself a shove and produce something new and exciting – even if it might turn out horrible and disappointing? I’m definitely a creature of habits, which also means that I can enjoy the whole evening much more, if I can predict its culinary development (outside of unexpected, freak failures…). Normally we experiment with new dishes on our own, occasionally perhaps with the exception of good friends, real good friends, who don’t mind taking a chance and who we then (ab)use as guinea pigs – but wait, they love it – at least that’s what they tell us ;)
One of my oldest friends from University joined us last weekend for dinner. Since we spent uncountable evenings cooking together and both share the same passion for our “tiramisu recipe”, I was looking for something new. Shouldn’t have been a problem with s o m e cookbooks at hand, but the needed hint came via airmail – our dear friends S+D from the States sent a donna hay magazine (You’re the best!!!). This edition features some variations of crème brûlée, a quick dash to the kitchen and checking on the ingredients, yep, done deal – chocolate crème brûlée it is! Odd, especially since I am neither too fanatic about this oh-so-adored dessert nor had I any successful experience in making one.
Earlier this year I laid my hands on a recipe for lavender crème brûlée and although the result tasted surprisingly well, the texture turned out slightly strange and flaky (I did follow the recipe precisely – hey it wasn’t me…). But the sound of a breaking caramel layer was so promising – I knew, I had to try it again, and this chocolate variation came in handy. The recipe in the magazine uses volume measurements – which I don’t feel comfortable with, so I took those amounts and put them on my kitchen scale. I made a best attempt in converting the equivalent amounts to the metric system, grams or milliliters – all rounded amounts. No risk, no fun! And … the overall result was heavenly. Period. The consistency almost reminded me of chocolate mousse and although the caramelized brown sugar looked a tad too dark for my taste, it wasn’t bitter at all. Despite my early and initial reservation and not necessarily caring much for the whole procedure of baking it in a water bath, it will be my primary choice, when craving for a chocolate dessert :) ..and our friend (the guinea pig…) loved it!
Weren’t men, a long time ago, in charge of making fire? Anyway, the blow-torch is O’s (aka Mr. Fearless Technician) toy;
O: Can’t have chocolate crème brûlée without the caramelized sugar coating, right? And here is the funny part: no one tells you how to best do it. Not to derail the topic, but I had used up almost all of the brown sugar in my trial runs before (I think) I had figured it out. So many variables: flame temperature, distance between the custard and the flame, speed and movement of the hand. Trying this before on a piece of aluminum foil is a good start, but the sugar behaves differently when on top the custard…anyhow what I think worked out well was to keep the flame at a medium to high temperature, keep it close to the custard and move it with constant speed across (it worked in one go, I didn’t have to torture the same spot twice). After completing a few more field tests with regular white sugar, one thing is for sure: white sugar is a much easier candidate, as it allows for better “color control”, it doesn’t turn dark so quickly and it melts more evenly.
1 Preheat oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cook cream, milk and the vanilla bean (shell & the scraped out seeds) in a small pot and bring to a boil. Although the original recipe called for a whole vanilla bean, I just used one half as vanilla only plays a supporting role in this dessert. Remove from the stove. Start melting the two sorts of chocolate over a bain-marie – another change in plans, as the original recipe only uses dark chocolate, but I wasn’t in a bitter mood…taste-wise high quality chocolate always pays off.
Combine egg yolks and sugar and blend well, until the mix becomes pale and thick. Add the warm (not hot) cream mix to the eggs and blend well. Return the mix to the pot and stir over low heat for 5-10 minutes (do not boil), until custard coats the back of a wooden spoon, then remove from heat.
Now add it to the melted chocolate, blend well and pour the mixture into ovenproof ramekins and align them in a deep baking dish. Add enough water to cover half the sides of the ramekins and bake at 160 °C (320 °F) for 25 to 30 minutes.
When done, remove from oven and chill in refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight. Just before serving, add a thin layer of brown sugar and have fun with your blow torch!
Chocolate Crème Brûlée
Recipe source: adaptation from donna hay magazine may/june 2005, p.160
Required time: prep. 30 min., baking 25 min., serves 4 to 6
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Ingredients:
200ml milk
250ml heavy cream
half of a vanilla bean
4 egg yolks
50g sugar
60g milk chocolate
30g dark chocolate
fine brown sugar for caramelizing
I’m not a super big potato chips fan, I must admit, so we rarely have them at home. But self-made ones are a different story. I got inspired by a new cookbook (“Kartoffeln” by Lyndsay and Patrick Mikanowski, p.77) that mysteriously found its way into our apartment now sitting on N’s cookbook shelves (with a smirk on its face) – probably at a late hour, in dimmed light, it sneaked in via the front door unseen – a cloak- and- dagger operation. My take is, it must have had an inside person on the job. So the latest cookbook addition focuses on potatoes only and the very first image that caught my eye inspired me to keep an eye out for the blue Vitelotte potato.
It’s an old French kind, already cultivated before 1850, with a longish oval shape, medium sized with little tubers and a deep blue peel (due to the naturally occurring anthocyanin pigment). Unfortunately it’s not a very fruitful kind. I’d say that these relatively uncommon potatoes have a subtle nutty flavor (a little like chestnuts, too). I also accidentally came across an online shop that primarily ships to the US and Canada. So if you can’t get them at your favorite luxury local farmers market it may be an option. Despite the various specialty stalls at Viktualientmarkt we couldn’t find it there and finally got lucky at a restaurant supplies store which you have to have a specific permit for – gladly a good friend of ours helped out and got them for us (usually, anything you buy there, you buy in large and very large quantities).
The ingredients part I skipped, since outside of peanut oil, blue potatoes, coarse sea salt and optionally some Cheddar or old Mimolette cheese, there is nothing else to add.
Wash and cut the Vitelotte unpeeled in thin slices – the thinner the more crispy they get while maintaining their great color. Soak slices in salt water for 5 to 10 minutes, then pad dry.
Deep fry in peanut oil at about 160 °C (you can spot little bubbles on a wooden spoon, but the oil should not be smoking… ;). The thinner the slices are, the less time they need to be deep fried. If they start to develop brown patches better get them out quick and drain on paper towels. I’ve also tried to double deep fry them (with a bit thicker slices I had left over), with an interesting result: They became even more crispy and started to throw bubbles.
Then arrange on a baking sheet and sprinkle some cheese crumbles over the chips. Bake for 2 minutes (or until the cheese melts) at 180 °C with additional top grill on. Optionally add some sea salt or other spices to the chips.
Resume: That night we had friends over and barely a little plate with a handful of chips was left for them to try. We made a promise to make more soon and behave… :) . Definitely the best chips we ever had, with a not too spicy, but delicious and natural taste. And a great eye catcher, too. O.
