Daring Cooks - Beef Wellington

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Our lovely Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute and to bring our kids into the challenge by encouraging them to create their own en Croute recipes!

This challenge was the boost I needed to try out a dish I had heard and read about but never tried myself :  Beef Wellington.  I made this dish for my parents on Mother's Day and it met with success at the dining table. So I think it is not the last time, this piece of beef will be prepared in my kitchen :o)

Vol-au-vent

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This weekend I made, what is considered a classic dish around these parts of the world i.e. vol-au-vent. Although technically, vol-au-vent is the name of the little puff pastry that accompanies the stuffing, it has given its name to the whole dish. 

Surf & Turf Pasta with Pistachio Pesto

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Since joining Daring Bakers and Cooks last month, I started to look all over the internet for more of these food blog related challenges. Because nothing gets me going better than a challenge to live up to.  These challenges however have proved to be rather elusive, or maybe it's just me using the wrong search words with google. Who knows. 

Either way, I hadn't seen many interesting ones until I stumbled upon the Pasta Please challenge; initiated by Tinned Tomatoes.  Now, pasta is always a welcome dish at our house : it's quick, easy, liked by almost anyone (quite handy when you have unexpected eaters) and yet very versatile.  So, any challenge involving pasta means that I am game :o)

Chicken Shawarma

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If you are running out of time to prepare dinner, the easy option which comes to mind is to grab some take away. After all who doesn't like some fastfood like kebab, pitta, shawarma or however you want to call it.

Preparing shawarma however is so easy, that it would be a waste of money to buy it ready made.  The additional advantage of home made food is moreover that you know at least what you put into it.  In these times where it appears that horsemeat has been passing for beef in numerous industrially prepared dishes, it takes an ever bigger importance.

Making this dish is so easy that you can hardly call it a recipe, but here you go.  I have had and used it for quite some time and I think it came originally from a Weight Watchers website, so to top all the other advantages, it is also a skinny dish :o)

Ingredients for 2 servings :

* 1 box of mushrooms
* 1 red bell pepper
* shredded iceberg lettuce (I also added some raw white cabbage)
* 2 onions
* 260g chicken fillet
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 1 Tbs of shawarma spices
* 2 pitta breads
* aioli

Preparation :

Slice the chicken fillets into strips, and dice the mushrooms, bell pepper and onions. Put everything but the bell pepper in a bowl and mix with the shawarma spices.

Fry meat and veggies in a teaspoon of olive oil. Add the bell pepper a bit later on, so that it keeps a bit of crunch (and isn't all mushy).

Heat up the pita breads in a toaster.  If you like to eat it as a sandwich, fill the warm bread with lettuce and the shawarma and serve with some aioli. Otherwise you can serve all the ingredients separetely on a plate.  The aioli can be homemade, but we always have a storebought jar in the fridge, so that's what I used.

That's all there is to it, quick simple and very tasty.

Chicken Pizzaiola

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Another simple dish that was featured on the TV show Dagelijkse Kost (Everyday meals), on the Flemish channel Eén. (for more info on this show see my previous post) and which met a frank success at our house tonight.

Pizzaiola is a classic tomato sauce, which can be used in numerous dishes. For this particular dish, it accompanies chicken fillets filled with creamy pesto and ricotta.

Ingredients for 4 servings :

For the pesto:

* 40 g Parmesan cheese
* 30 g pine nuts
* 30 g basil
* 1⁄2 garlic clove
* 8 cl olive oil
* a dash of lemon juice
* seasoning (salt & pepper)

For the filled chicken fillets :

* 4 chicken breast fillets
* 8 slices of smoked bacon
* 1 large Tbs of pesto (made with the ingredients above)
* 3 Tbs of ricotta
* a dash of olive oil
* seasoning (salt & pepper)

For the pizzaiola sauce :

* 1 large onion (at leat)
* 3 garlic cloves
* 1⁄2 red chili (used my chili flakes mill instead)
* 200 g cherry tomatoes
* 3 dl tomato meat
* 2 Tbs of capers (not used as we don't like them)
* a pinck of dried oregano
* 2 dl water (or stock - I used chicked stock)
* a dash of olive oil
* parsley
* seasoning (salt & pepper)

Preparation :

Pesto :

Put the pine nuts, the parmesan cheese, the peeled garlic and the fresh basil in your blender.  Pour the olive oil in with the other ingredients and blend everything to a smooth pesto.

Add a dash of lemon juice and season to taste with a salt and pepper.

Chicken Fillets :

Start on the chicken fillets, so they have time to set for a while in the fridge.

In a bowl, mix the ricotta and the pesto to a smooth paste.  Season to taste with salt and pepper. (The remaining pesto can later be used in order preparations)

If your bacon slices have a rind or cartilage, you should remove them.

Clean the chicken fillets, removing the possibly remaining fatty bits or the though film. Slice every filet horizontally in order to have a chicken steak when folded open.

Spread a layer of the ricotta filling on each of the opened chicken breast and close the steaks again.

Wrap two slices of smoked bacon around each chicken breast and fix it with a tooth pick.

Place the chicken on a plate and put it in the fridge to set. Don't forget to rince off your cutting board after have worked with the raw chicken!

Pizzaiola sauce:

Chop the onion.  Heat a dash of olive oil and fry the onion until it becomes translucent.  Feel free to fry them for a few minutes, so they can give the sauce a sweet taste.  Keep an eye on the heat though, so the onions don't colour.

Peal the garlic and dice it before blending it to paste.

If you use a chili, chop it in fine pieces. In the original recipe, he left the seeds in but as I said, I used my chili flake mill.

Add the chili and garlic to the skillet with the onion and stir.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and add them to the skillet, with a large pinch of dried oregano.

If you like capers in your sauce, you should add them now to the skillet and let them stew.

Add the tomato meat and the water (or stock).

Stir and let the sauce simmer for at least 20 minutes on low heat,  The longer it simmers, the beter is becomes.  Season to taste.

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta al dente.  In general, a regular portion would be 100g of dry pasta per person, but I only used 170g for two servings and still had a some left over.

Preheat the over to 180°C.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a skillet on medium fire and colour the chicken fillets in a few minutes.  Put the coloured chicken fillets in a oven dish and cook them further in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Serve hot.

Three Cheeses Macaroni and Savoy Cabbage

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This simple but filling pasta dish was featured at the beginning of February 2013 on the TV Cooking Show Dagelijkse Kost (Everyday meals), on the Flemish channel Eén. This daily show is hosted by Jeroen Meus, the Belgian chef of the restaurant Luzine, who has become increasingly popular since he began hosting this TV show and wrote several cookbooks (4 already, all of which I have on the shelf).  His dishes are not extremely sophisticated as he believes that you can make good food without having to spend fortunes on fancy ingredients.  Hence the name of the programme.

I choose to make this particular dish as I wanted something that I could use in my lunchbox and that wouldn't be too much of a hassle to prepare.  Moreover cabbage being in season right now, it was the ideal moment to give it a try.

Ingredients needed for 4 servings :

* 300g ground meat (beef/pork mix)

* 1⁄2 of a savoy cabbage

* butter

* pinch of dried sage

* pinch of dried rosemary

* pinch of dried oregano

* parsley

for the cheese sauce :

* 30g butter

* 30g all purpose flour

* 500ml milk

* 125g ricotta

* 75 g Comté cheese (the original recipe required mature Gouda)

* 75 g Parmesan cheese

* 1⁄2 lemon

* nutmeg

* pepper

* salt 

Bring a large amount of salted water to the boil.

Meanwhile melt a bit of butter in a skillet on medium fire.   

Season the ground meat with a selection of dried herbs (sage, rosemary and oregano) and mix it all together.

Spread the meat over the hot skillet in medium sized lumps, and let it fry untouched for a while.  After a few minutes you can stir it while take care not to crumble it up too much.  As soon as it has reached a nice golden brown crust, set aside .

Remove the outer tough leaves of the savoy cabbage.  Cut the vegtable into quarters and then further into large strips. Rinse the strips of thoroughly making sure to remove any specks of dirt or sand and let it drain.

Boil the cabbage strips for 5 to 6 minutes in the salted water.  remove the cabbage from the pot and bring the water to the boil again in order to cook the macaroni.

In a large pot cooking pot, melt a bit of butter and add flour. Stir until you get a roux.  Let it cook briefly (until it smells like baked cookies).

Add the milk and keep whisking.  Bring the sauce almost to boiling point, until the bechamel has thickened without lumps. Reduce the heat.

Grate the Comté and the parmesan cheese.

Stir the ricotta and the grated cheese into the sauce and keep stirring until they have completely melted.  Season to taste with nutmeg, pepper and salt.  Finish with a dash of lemon juice. 

Keep the sauce hot but avoid burning it.

Cook the pasta al dente.

Stir the meat and the cabbage into the sauce.

Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce as well.

Mix everything together and season a bit more if necessary.

Serve sprinkled with parsley.

Jambalaya

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A dish I make on a regular basis and which is always highly appreciated by those who get to taste it : straight out of the Creole cuisine,  Jambalaya.

Undoubtedly there are as many versions of Jambalaya as there are cooks in Louisiana and beyond. But this is the version I usually made, coincidentally also a rather skinny version of the dish.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

* 160g lean breakfast bacon (can be replaced by chicken as well)
* 1 red onion
* 2 garlic cloves
* 250g mushrooms
* 1 sweet ramiro pepper
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 125g brown rice (uncooked)

* 400g sifted tomatoes

* 150ml vegetable stock

* 400g gambas (pre cooked)

* 1 Tbsp parsley
* a pinch of sugar
* to taste : salt, pepper, thyme (and if you like spicy, you can add tabasco sauce as well)

Dice the bacon, the onion, the garlic cloves, the mushrooms and the bell pepper.

Bake the bacon in the teaspoon of olive oil, add the vegetables and stew.

Add the uncooked rice, tomatoes and vegetable stock.  Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar (and tabasco if you want) and cook for 15 minutes.

Add the gambas and heat for an additional 5 minutes, finish with the tablespoon of parsley (and thyme).

Daring Bakers - Dutch Crunch Bread aka Tijgerbrood

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Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

Since the challah baking had me on a roll, I decided to tackle this challenge from the Daring Kitchen as well :o)  Dutch Crunch Bread, known as Tijgerbrood (or Tiger Bread), has been a very popular bread type around here for the past few years. And I have to admit that I always buy this type of bread as I like its crunchy crust and I find it stays fresh longer than the other breads available in the grocery stores.  I thought it was a special type of bread, but thanks to this challenge I discovered that using this topping can make any bread special.

Because the challenge also consisted of making a sandwich, I choose the Soft White Rolls recipe supplied on the Dutch Crunch Challenge Sheet.  Next time I will double the ingredients though, because I was left with too much topping for the amount of dough, this recipe yielded. I am sure than I could have topped a dozen rolls. 

The rolls right out of the oven looked fabulous and I found it hard to resist the urge to sink my teeth into this crunchy goodness.  Nevertheless I waited because I wanted to use these tijgerbroodjes for a tuna burger.

And this was the final result.

The recipe for the tuna burger was taken from Burgers Faits Maison from Sandra Mahut, which I tweaked slightly.

Ingredients (for 2 burgers)

* 1  large can of tuna in brine (net weight 220g)

* 1 garlic clove, diced

* 1 small onion, diced

* 1 cm of fresh ginger, chopped 

* 1 Tbsp of chiseled coriander leaves

* 1 Tbsp of sesame oil

* 1 Tbsp of sesame seeds

Mix all the ingredients of the list. Form 2 balls and flatten them in not too thick patties. Fry them slowly in a hot skillet with sesame oil. When they are golden brown, sprinkle them with sesame seeds.

Dared to bake Dutch Crunch Bread. Challenge completed !

Daring Bakers - Empanada de atun

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This past week, I have been nosing around the challenges on The Daring Kitchen and quite a few on there have caught my eye, making my baking fingers itch.

Tonight I decided to try my hand on a Daring Bakers Challenge from September 2012 : the Empanada Gallega.

[Although this is posted way after the closing challenge date, I am still adding the blogchecking lines to this post should someone do a google search on them.]

Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!

I have made empanadas before (with various stuffings), but up to now I have only used ready made doughs.  To make it more of a challenge, I wanted to make them from scratch this time and I used the recipe for wheat dough from the September 2012 Challenge Page. 

My personal tuna stuffing is fairly similar to the one suggested by Patri. I only reduced the amount of oil by 1/4 cup and tweaked the ingredients a bit.

For my tuna stuffing I used :

* 1 large red onion, diced

* 2 sweet red ramiro peppers, diced

* 3 garlic cloves

* 2 hard boiled eggs

* 200g of tomato frito
* 1 Tbsp olive slices (leftover from Friday's pizza making)

* seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg

I had some issues with overstuffing some of my empanadas (making them burst while baking), but overall they came out rather nice.  If next time I remember to prick the dough, before putting them in the oven, they will even be better :o)

Dared to bake Empanada de atun. Challenge completed !

Tagliatelle a la carbonara

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[First published on Bento Bliss on March 29, 2010]

 

I made Tagliatelle a la carbonara for last night's dinner, and I did it the Italian way i.e. with eggs and NO CREAM. I wonder why they always insist on putting cream in carbonara in my neck of the woods, when it's obviously unnecessary. Now I won't pretend that my version is the only legitimate one, because in the end it's just the taste that matters.  But this one was really good.

Googling up recipes for this dish, will lead you to hundreds of different recipes and variations, something for every taste. I'm going to add my version to that pile of recipes as well, who knows one of you might find it useful :o)

Ingredients I used (for two servings):

* tagliatelle (or any other larger size pasta - fettucine, linguine, ...)

* 3 eggs (if you want to make it in larger amounts, count 1 to 1,5 egg per person)

* 180 g of bacon (you should use pancetta if you have it available, but I couldn't find any)

* 60 g of grated pecorino cheese

* 1 tsp of garlic paste

* lots of ground black pepper

* chopped parsley

Separate the whites from the yolks and put the yolks in a bowl. Whisk them as if to make scrambles eggs, season with salt and pepper, add the grated cheese, mix well and set aside.

While cooking the pasta (in salted water), fry the bacon (or pancetta) sticks with the garlic paste in olive oil until it's nice and cripsy .

When the pasta is al dente, remove from the cooking water (without draining it too much) and add it to the skillet with the bacon, still on medium heat. Toss the pasta and the bacon, season with fresh ground black pepper.

Remove from the heat, pour the egg mixture on top of the pasta and toss until everything is coated with the eggs. The residual heat of the pasta will cook the eggs. If it seems to be too solid, add a bit of the pasta's cooking water to "loosen it up".

Add some freshly chopped parsley and serve hot.