Mostly In The Kitchen

Homemade Bread: Cheaper, Better (Recipe: Sunflower, Flax & Sesame homemade bread)

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Picture courtesy of shanidar.net

While Laia and myself were in Iceland, we tasted some of the best breads we have eaten (not counting German breads, of course), and decided to get a bread machine at home. I eat a lot of bread for breakfast, either toasts with butter or with olive oil and cheese, and this may definitely mean some money saving.

A very gross estimate puts the cost of a 500g French bread from the machine at 2.2€, probably closer to 1.5€ (I have also counted costs of seeds for flavouring) or less. While a pre-made sandwich style bread costs around 2€ for 450g.

Home made bread has a disadvantage in my case: it lasts less than the bought one. Why? It tastes definitely better, and I end up eating a lot more.

Below I have a recipe my girlfriend uses to do me, and I love it. I love the taste of sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, and the flax seeds give the bread a very interesting flavour. Check it out! Beware, it is a recipe intended to be done with a bread machine!

300 gr strong flour (bread type)
200 gr standard flour
5 tablespoons sunflower seeds
4 tablespoons flax seeds
4 tablespoons sesame seeds
4 tablespoons olive oil
300 ml water
1 sack active dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
a generous pinch of salt

Some day we will try to remove a little olive oil and a little sesame paste (tahini), because I love the sesame taste in my dishes.

Enjoy the World Bread Day:

Lemon Artichokes

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:05:00 +0000

Picture courtesy of Shanidar

This is a recipe from my girlfriend's blog (she writes in Catalan, you can check her post here). We love artichokes, and this recipe makes them very tasty. If you enjoy artichokes, give it a try now they are in season.

You will need the following ingredients

4 artichokes
1 garlic bulb
2 lemons
1 litre chicken broth
1 teaspoon thyme
2 bay leaves (thanks for the comment below!)
1/2 cup white wine (optional)
salt, pepper, olive oil and butter

Slice your lemons in half and throw a little lemon juice in a cup, mix it with 4 tablespoons melted butter. Set aside. In a big pot, pour the broth, thyme, laurel, garlic, wine a shot of olive oil and 3 lemon halves. Let it cook very slowly.

Clean the artichokes and remove the leaves from the bottom. Cut the ends of the artichoke leaves and rub the remaining half lemon on them.

Give a taste to the lemon broth, add salt and pepper to suit your tastes. Put the artichokes upside down in the pot (with the base pointing up) and cook for around 30 minutes, with the pot closed. They will be ready when they are soft when pricked with a fork in the base.

Serve with a cup with the melted butter we separated before, to dip the artichoke leaves in. If you like, you can add a little cumin or cilantro to the butter mix.

Homemade Pylsur Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:40:00 +0000

Back in June and July, we were on holidays in Iceland. A wonderful country, full of amazing landscapes and people. Also full of amazing food... Among it, the pylsur (or pylsa). It is a type of hot-dog, unique to Iceland and for me, it is the best hot-dog I have ever eaten.

Back at home I missed its taste, and (as the Wikipedia entry has the list of ingredients) tried to roll my own.

What you will need

Hot dog buns
Hot dog (preferably a boiled Scandinavian type)
Dried onion
Finely chopped fresh onion
Ketchup
Sweet mustard
Mayonnaise (or remolaði/remoulade if you can find it)
Powdered curry
Tablespoon olive oil (optional)

I don't put quantities in this ingredients list, because you should already know it it one hot-dog for each bun and a little of everything in all of them.

The preparation is easy, as you may already guess. Mix three tablespoons mayonnaise with a teaspoon curry and the olive oil, mix well. This makes for a remolaði substitute (although the original is better, if you can find remolaði/remoulade go for it!). Heat your hot dogs and remove a little bread from the inside of the buns to make place for the chopped onion and dried onion. Add ketchup, sweet mustard to and mayonnaise with curry to taste.

This is not as good as a real pylsur from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur but it is a very good appetizer. I hope you enjoy it, and remember to ask for "eina með öllu" (one with everything).

Icelandic Waterfall and Rock Wallpaper

Road Trip Through Iceland
Eating in Iceland (if you are not an Icelander)

Things you should read about before travelling to Iceland
The 100 Most Common Words in Icelandic (more or less)

Lime Pie Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:56:00 +0000

Does not like like that, but tastes great!

2 ripe avocados
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons vanilla (or vanillated sugar)
3/4 cup agave syrup (or sugar syrup)
1/2 cup lime juice
1/8 tablespoon salt
3/4 cup coconut butter (or coconut oil)
pie crust (below a recipe for it)

Mix all the ingredients (except the pie crust) in a blender.

180 gr plain cookies
200 gr butter

Melt the butter and crush finely the cookies. Mix and place in the bottom of a cake pan, also on the sides of it. Pour the blended mix and place in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

Gluten, Dairy, Egg-Free Dark Brown Cane Sugar Biscuit

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:54:00 +0000

Although this looks like a all-free / no taste cake, it is wonderful. And of course, at it is gluten, dairy and egg free, almost everyone can eat it. What you will need:

1 measure soy yoghurt
1 measure dark brown sugar (we used Tate & Lyle Dark Brown Sugar)
1 measure gluten-free flour
1/4 measure oil
1 teaspoon baking powder

Here measure depends on how much iogurt do you have. You can use the yoghurt cups to make all measurements. Mix well all ingredients, pour into a baking pan and put in the oven, 200ºC for 1 hour. Check very often... it is hard to tell when it is finished. It should be hard on the outside and soft on the inside, without leaving any trace on a toothpick. Enjoy!

Iced coffee with Nutella: The nutcafecocktail

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:52:00 +0000

Or, as Fabian Kruse has named it: nutcafecocktail

The recipe is easy, as there is no really a recipe, just a list of ingredients. You can do it with real coffee, but Nescafe espresso is quite a good coffee to make iced coffee. You'll need

Nescafe espresso
Sugar
Nutella
Ice cubes
Water

As for quantities, find your own levels. I like my iced coffee strong and long, thus I can add anything from 4 to 6 teaspoons of Nescafe for a whole cup of water. And I use a little more sugar than coffee (5 for 4, 8 for 6).

Put the coffee and sugar in your cocktail shaker, add the ice cubes and one tablespoon of Nutella, more or less. Add water to suit your coffee taste, close and shake for a while. Once everything is well mixed, pour in a nice glass and enjoy your caffeine and sugar high, you deserve it.

Related posts:
Key lime pie (vegan friendly)
Snickerdoodles (tea time nutmeg cookies)
Gluten,dairy,egg-free dark brown cane sugar biscuit
Crispy apple pie (similar to the Danish aeblekage)

Æblekage (Crispy Apple Pie)

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:51:00 +0000

A few days ago I found this recipe via StumbleUpon. I had two apples I would not eat, and decided to give it a go. But I didn't have oatmeal, so I improvised. This is my version, which I call Crispy Apple Pie.

If you have ever been to Denmark, they eat something named Æblekage. I ate it last November, and I loved it. This is very, very similar... with a little whipped cream it would be almost the same.

It is not a good-looking dessert, but it is the kind of dessert you can bake in a big plate for quite a few people... and when the party is over, there will be no Crispy Pie left. Guaranteed. Moreover, it does not take very long to do it (around 30 minutes only, plus 40 of baking time).

What you will (roughly) need:

Two apples
200 gr creamy cheese (Philadelphia or similar)
2 eggs
Crispy cookies (Graham crackers, galletas María...)
Walnuts or some other nut (optional, more if you are allergic)
Brown sugar (around 1'5 cups, but not all in one batch)
Cinnamon, powdered ginger, vanillated sugar or vanilla extract
Melted butter (around 7 tablespoons)

I know the measurements are wishy-washy. This kind of dessert allows for quite adding sugar, removing sugar, adding butter or removing it. So feel free to put whatever you want. This is just the blueprint, you are the architect.

The procedure is easy. Peel the apples and cut them like French fries Grease a pie plate liberally with butter, and place the apple sticks there. Add a quarter cup of brown sugar, a teaspoon cinnamon, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon ginger. Mix thoroughly (I used a fork for this).

Mix 200 gr of creamy cheese (Philadelphia, for instance) with two eggs, another quarter of cup of brown sugar and a teaspoon vanillated sugar or vanilla extract.

Once beaten, pour over the apples, extending evenly

Now crush some crispy type cookie (in Spain that would be Galletas María, in other parts of the world, Graham crackers... the kind of cookie you would use to make a cheesecake pie crust, crispy but not really sweet) to fill half a cup. Crush some walnuts (up to your taste), add 1/3 of cup of brown sugar, more cinnamon and 6 tablespoons melted butter. Mix thoroughly, all the cookie bits should be moist with butter.

Once you are done, spread it over the previous mix, as evenly as possible.

Bake for 40 minutes at 180ºC. It will be almost done when the sugar from the bottom starts to bubble at the top.

Let it cool down. When it is cold, the top will be crispy, the bottom soft and the taste amazing (if you like apple pies, of course).

Keep it in the freezer, it can last a few days... if you don't finish it before.

If you feel creative you can change the walnuts for pistachios or almonds, or the apples for peaches. The peach+almond combination is the next I'll try.

If you enjoyed this recipe and want to share it with more people, please consider thumbing it up in StumbleUpon or upvoting it in Reddit. If you don't use these, share with your friends!

Related posts:
Snickerdoodles (tea time nutmeg cookies)
Matjessalat recipe
My grandpa's doughnuts
Curry and cheese bread
Key lime pie (vegan friendly)

Tibetan flatbread: the easiest flatbread recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:50:00 +0000

The easiest flatbread, really

I bet you have felt like this some day. You just prepared a soup, one of those soups in need of crumbs of bread. Or you prepared a nice meal, asking for bread to dump in the sauce. And you have no bread at home! Not a single piece of bread.

This is the answer

This bread, soft in the inside, slightly crispy in the outside and chewy, only takes 20 minutes from taking ingredients out of the cupboards until breaking it into pieces with your hands. Please consider thumbing up on StumbleUpon or upvoting in Reddit. Thanks!

What you will need:

1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking power
1/2 teaspoon salt (add a little more if you want it saltier)
1 cup water
2 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon olive oil
add your preferred spices here (curry, thyme...)

That's all. Preparing it is a breeze: mix the flour, baking powder and salt, then add the cup of water and mix thoroughly. Take out a cold pan (it has to be a cold pan) of around 20 cm wide (around 9 inches) and spread the olive oil in it. Pour the dough and put the two tablespoons of water around the edges of the dough. Close the pan with a tight lid and turn on the fire on medium-high. Wait for 10 minutes and flip over. Cook for 5 more minutes, and you are done!

If you think you will try this recipe, please consider thumbing up on StumbleUpon or upvoting in Reddit to share it with your friends. Thanks a lot!

Related posts:
Snickerdoodles (tea time nutmeg cookies)
Matjessalat recipe
My grandpa's doughnuts
Curry and cheese bread
Key lime pie (vegan friendly)

Snickerdoodles

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:48:00 +0000

Maybe the best coffee time cookies?
Picture courtesy of Shanidar

Snickerdoodles are probably the best coffee time cookies I have eaten, and also one of the simplest cookie recipes to do.

What you'll need:

125 gr butter
110 gr sugar (+ 1 big spoon later)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or change some sugar for vanillated sugar)
250 gr flour
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
a pinch of salt

Preheat the oven at 180º. In a bowl, mix the flour (previously sifted), salt, baking powder and nutmeg. Mix and set aside.

Soften the butter in a microwave (or double-boil it) and mix it with the sugar, until it turns white and smooth.

Add the egg (in 2 or 3 batches), mix and add the vanilla extract (if not added to the butter).

Add (very slowly) the flour, while mixing. When the mix is firm and detaches from the bowl walls, it is ready.

In a small plate, mix the remaining sugar with the teaspoon cinnamon. Make small balls of dough (ping-pong ball sized) and batter them with the sugar mix.

Put all balls in a cookie pan, spread around 3cm each. Smash them (slightly!) with the bottom of a glass.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the sides look done. Turn the pan around, to bake uniformly the cookies.

Let them cool a little before putting them in a cooling tray.

They may last something like 3 days in an air-tight container, but I bet they will be finished by the end of the first day, beginning of the second at most. Keep in mind that they are better the same day they are cooked and that the batter can be kept frozen in the refrigerator

You can find the recipe in Catalan in Shanidar's site.

Matjessalat recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:47:00 +0000

2 or 3 fillets of marinated herring with onion (typical scandinavian)
3 marinated cucumber, polish (sweet) style
1 Golden (yellow and somewhat sweet, not acid) apple
3 boiled potatos, diced
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
Optional: a little mustard

Slice finely the cucumber, cut the apple in dices and the fillets in small pieces. Mix the mustard, mayonnaise, a little vinegar from the herring and then add the fish, mix well. Add the potatoes and apple dices, and revolve a few times.

If you are in Spain, you can find the marinated herring and cucumber in El Corte Ingés.

Related posts:

Pasteli (greek sesame and honey candy) recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:46:00 +0000

Pasteli
The Greek home-made energy bar

Ingredients (yields around 500 gr, can be scaled down or up):

250 gr honey
250 gr sesame seed, shredded pistachios and almond (I used: 50 gr shredded pistachios, 70 gr shredded almond and125 gr sesame seed)
Peel of half a lemon (optional)
Cinnamon (optional)
Some place to put it all on (A mould with parchment paper is perfect)

Bring to a boil the honey and optionally a lemon peel and some cinnamon. They will add a special flavour to the base. Mix all the nuts well in a plate

When the honey starts boiling, wait for around 5 minuts (stirring occasionally) and remove the lemon peels and cinnamon. I used chopsticks for this, they come in handy later. Add the nut mixture, and keep mixing them thoroughly with the honey. Keep it at medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring and moving often. The chopsticks come handy to stir, because they are easier to clean than spoons. It will turn darker as the honey starts to caramelize.

Pour it on the mould (beware, it will be really hot), cover with some parchment paper and press until it is more or less evenly spread.

Let it cool down for a while and then move to the fridge for at least 2 hours. Then, let it stand out of the fridge for 30 minutes (it will be hard as a rock just after taking it out), cut in small pieces and store in an airtight container. In the fridge, better.

The generic recipe is just the same proportions (in weight) of honey and sesame seeds (or a mixture of other nuts and sesame). Scale it as you wish!

Links to nutritional information about these ingredients:

The whole 500gr bar has around 2100 kcal, thus each piece has around 140 kcal (I made 16 pieces), which comes mostly from non-saturated fats (nuts) and sugar (from honey). Quite a lot of minerals (mostly calcium and iron from sesame, and manganese, phosphorus and copper from all ingredients), vitamins (B6 pistachio and sesame, E almond, a little from almost every other) and fiber (from all nuts). This is an amazing treat, both in taste and in nutritious value.

I got the original recipe from about.com and grouprecipes.com and changed a few things to suit my tastes. If you enjoyed this recipe, leave a comment to tell me how did it turn, give a thumbs up, reddit or whatever you feel like doing. Thanks for your attention!

My grandpa's doughnuts

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:44:00 +0000

This is a recipe my grandfather used to make for me (and my cousins) when I was a child. I hope you like it as much as I liked it, and enjoy making fun figures with your children or grandchildren.

What you will need

3 eggs,
3 tablespoons of olive oil,
3 tablespoons of sugar,
grated lemon skin (clean it before grating), or something to add flavour,
1 tablespoon baking powder,
white flour,
sunflower oil or some similar light oil for deep frying.

Mix all the ingredients, and keep adding flour and mixing until the dough is firm and only just a little sticky. If you have ever made your own pasta, you should aim for the same kind of stickiness. Form doughnuts, or dough-men, or whatever. Heat about 1 inch of oil in a deep pan (enough oil to cover one doughnut) and fry them, one or two each time. Wait until soft brown, and turn them a few times to let them cook well.

Beware of burning them. Anyway, tastes great.

Place them in a deep plate with some paper towels. After a few minutes they will look dry, not oily. While they are still oily, sprinkle some sugar over them (this way it keeps from falling). If you enjoyed this recipe, leave a comment to tell me how did it turn, give a thumbs up, digg or whatever you feel like doing, it will be a kind of homage to my grandpa. Share and enjoy!

Oven dried tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Ruben Berenguel) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:37:00 +0000

Name one great asset to your cupboard. One you can put in a pizza, in almost every salad, you can make omelets out of it, can put over a toast and could be a side dish to almost every meal you can think of. Well, sun dried tomatoes come close to it. Tasty, nice and they smell as good you get hungry just opening the jar. Well, they are really easy to do at home, with just your oven! This way you can put just the salt you want, the herbs you want, and get them as dry as you want. And of course, eat them as often as you want.

First thing first, what you will need

Oven, of course. Should be able to go as low as 100ºC (around 200ºF),
Tomatoes, any kind (for this particular post, I got medium sized yellow tomatoes, next time I will use cherry tomatoes),
Thyme (I guess they can be also good with basil, try if you don't have thyme and let me know),
Ground pepper,
Salt (coarse grained, better),
Olive oil (plenty of it!),
A relatively big oven pan to put your tomatoes in. Get one which is deep enough to allow space for the olive oil,
At least 4 hours you can have your oven running (depends on the size of the tomato)

The first step, is clean thoroughly the tomatoes with water, and then cut them in halves. Now put these halves in the pan, sprinkle liberally salt, thyme and pepper over each one of the halves and pour olive oil over them.

Now put in your oven with 100ºC (around 200ºF). While they are drying, your oven will get wet in the inside. I opened and cleaned it every hour, to avoid dropping water in the kitchen.

Be prepared, they will take a lot of time. Mine took 5 hours, and weren't completely dried. But I like them this way, they taste really good and get very well over a toast. I think with cherry tomatoes you can stop after 3 or 4 hours. When they start to wrinkle, they are ready to take. The longer you wait, the drier they are.

Now, here they are. Let them cool for 10 or 15 minutes before jarring them. You can put them in a zip-lock bag in the freezer (they will last for months, even years), or in a tightly sealed jar in the fridge as I did. To do so, pour in the oil in the pan and add oil until they are covered

Beware, olive oil gets solid in the fridge. I didn't believe it... until I did this and after one day it got solid white. After 3 hours at ambient temperature it returned to its usual state. Eat them in less than a week.

If you prefer to conserve them in your cupboard, use a sterilized jar with tight sealing. Put in your tomatoes and add olive just until the top. Close it (some oil will drop when you close) and double-boil the jar completely. This way the can last for months, but after you open your jar, put it in the fridge and eat in about a week.

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