Tales of a spoon

Heidi’s ‘Magic sauce’ recipe

ksenia — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:55:09 +0000

It’s funny how the more free time you have, the less productive you are. At least in my case. I have been incredibly lazy when it comes to cooking (actually not only cooking) during all summer (although the fact that we had three months of suffocating heat also helped to keep me away from the kitchen) and now that I started college (yay!) I find myself thinking about what new recipes I could try…even if I know I won’t have that much time for it.

I tried this sauce last week, and absolutelly loved it. When Heidi wrote that it can go with almost anything, she means it: I tried it on potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and a dish of ‘Gypsy pot’ (chickpeas, pumpking and pear stew). And although it goes better with regular potatoes than sweet potatoes, it was delicious anyway.

Heidi’s ‘Magic Sauce’

Adapted from: 101 cookbooks
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 medium cloves of garlic, smashed into a paste
1 well-crumbled bay leaf (I used 1/4 of powdered bay leaf)
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon + fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Warm the olive oil

Mix everything. It can be used straigtaway, but it tastes better if you let the flavors mix and develop. Can be stored up to one week/ten days in the refrigerator.

And for those who don’t know it yet, I want to present you the newest member of our family:

She doesn’t have a name yet (we are still deciding it), but it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. And she’s growing so fast!
And yes, I started college already: a degree in Audiovisual Communication. I don’t want to bore you, so if anyone is interested I wrote a little about my first week there on my Tumblr

Lemon cookies

ksenia — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 06:36:36 +0000

I’m not a big fan of lemon. I love adding lemon juice to my smoothies, but I don’t like anything lemon flavored: lemon caramels, lemon drinks, lemon ice-creams. Maybe because they don’t really taste like lemon to me.

But the cookies were a success. They tasted lemony but not too much. The original recipe included lavander, but I omited it and didn’t miss it at all. Even my ultra picky when it comes to food friend said they were delicious, which means they really are. I am not so sure about the texture. I thought they needed an extra couple of minutes, but even then they get hard but then soften after an hour or so. I’ll try adding less milk next time; because I’ll repeat for sure. I loved them even in their mushy, melt-in-your mouth form.

Lemon cookies

From: have cake, will travel
Serves: 20-30 cookies, depending on the size.

1/2 cup margarine (113g)
3/4 cups sugar (150g)
zest of 2 lemons
1 1/2 (180g) flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp cornstarch (I used banana flour)
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp milk (soy, almond or any other of your choice)

Beat the margarine and the sugar with a mixer. Add the lemon zest and beat again until fluffy.
Sift the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, salt.
Mix the wet and the dry ingredients. Add the milk if needed.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper (my oven is small so I had to do it in four batches). Make the cookies: I used a teaspoon and they were big enough. Celine said that this cookies don’t spread too much, but mine did. A lot. So, just in case, flatten a little and be careful to leave enough space.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. Let cool a little before transferring. Enjoy!

Orange glazed tempeh

ksenia — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:23:57 +0000

How many of you have tried tempeh? I have been a vegan for more than three years and only tried it last week. Don’t ask me why it took me so long. Sometimes I don’t understand myself either.

And I actually liked it. A lot. It has a difficult to describe taste: some people say it tastes like mushrooms and nuts. I only know it tasted great, but as happens with tofu, it depends on how you cook it. The second time I just sauteed it with some olive oil and although it was tasty anyway, it couldn’t be compared to the orange glazed tempeh I did the day before.

Orange glazed tempeh

From: 101 Cookbooks

Serves: 2-3
Ingredients
1/2 cup orange juice (1-2 oranges)
1/2 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp sugar (I didn’t have maple syrup)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
2 small garlic, crushed
280 g of tempeh (5 ounces. In my case it was half of the package)
oil
lime (optional)

To make the sauce: Mix the orange juice with the juice of the grated ginger, not the pulp. Add the sugar (or maple syrup), coriander and garlic.
Stir fry the tempeh for 5 minutes on each side or until golden. Add the sauce and simmer for another 10 minutes or until it’s almost evaporated. Be careful not to burn it.
Serve with a squeeze of lime juice. I ate mine with some stir fried green beans and brown rice. I saved a little bit of the sauce for the beans, adding it a few minutes before finishing.

…………..

Besides being delicious, tempeh is also good for you health. It’s a good source of manganese (around 70% of the recommended daily intake in 100g of cooked tempeh), copper, phosphorus and riboflavin.

What’s your favorite way to prepare tempeh? Any tips/recipes you want to share? I also like to grate it, stir fry and sprinkle on top of veggies or grains.

I hope you are all having a nice weekend. I’ll probably won’t move from the beach tomorrow; not that I have too many options, because the heat is unbearable. I have been running at 10pm lately and even that way it was too much. I wouldn’t mind if it was September already.

Barcelona at night. I still have to do that city guide I promised you.

No Related Post

Zucchini pancakes

ksenia — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:14:48 +0000

How have you been? This time I don’t have excuse for disappearing this way. I feel terrible saying this, but I just didn’t feel like posting. Or cooking, by the way. Well, I have been cooking: I need to eat like any other human. But not the kind of things you’d share on a food blog. Or maybe it’s just something I say to myself to feel less guilty.

So I tried to overcome my laziness/blogger block and finally give signs of life. The result? This zucchini pancakes. Nothing glamorous or spectacular but incredibly tasty. I don’t know where they originated, but they are a very popular dish in Russia. Traditionaly, they are made with eggs and served with smetana (a soured cream product similar to the crème fraîche). But there are good news: the eggless, vegan version is as delicious as the original. I used to add a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds as a substitute, but I recently discovered that you don’t need them at all. They hold together well even without an egg replacer.

Zucchini pancakes

I wrote a list of ingredients with the amounts, but I was tempted to leave just the ingredients. Why? Because I actually never mesure them. I never did, never will and it always worked for me: I just throw everything in a bowl in the proportions I think I should. Too thick? Let’s add another splash of soymilk. Too liquid? More flour! So don’t be limited by what I wrote here: experiment until you have a medium consistency, not too thick, not too runny. It shoud be but on the liquid side though. When puring the batter in the saucepan, it should come of the spoon easily. Think about it as what they are: pancakes. How do you cook your pancakes? That’s all you need to know.

Serves: 20-30 pancakes, depending on the size.

1 zucchini, grated
1/2 flour
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Oil

Sift the flour. Add the grated zucchini, the soy milk (or almond milk, milk or whatever you’re using) and the salt.
Mix the baking soda with the lemon juice in a small plate or the tablespoon itself. It will foam. Add it to the batter and mix but do not overmix.
Heat the oil in a saucepan (I used margarine this time, but it’s up to you) and form small patties. It should be hot enough so the batter stops spreading quickly. Cook until golden on one side and flip it.

….

Also, I tried Lolo’s (Vegan YumYum author) Lemon Maple Scones with Vegan Clotted Cream…minus the clotted cream and the maple. I must share my version someday (if I haven’t yet. I need to update the recipes index urgently because I no longer know what I have on my own blog)

As a sad note, today I discovered that I lost 4GB of photos. Including the ones I had here to go with the post and that have been missing since February. I was expecting to just rescue them from the CD but…surprise! It turns out it’s damaged. I still don’t know why, because it looks perfectly fine to me. But the computer doesn’t even recognize it. Boo.

Easy chocolate mousse

ksenia — Fri, 06 May 2011 21:53:48 +0000

If I had to name one thing I couldn’t live without…well, it would be difficult to decide, but I’m sure chocolate would be in the list of candidates. This is why I was so excited when I found this recipe: a chocolate mousse with only two ingredients: chocolate and water. Yes, no cream, no eggs, nothing. Sounds impossible? Give it a try. I didn’t believe it would work at the beginning either, so I used a 55% cheap chocolate …wrong! Since you only have chocolate and water, your mousse will be as tasty as the chocolate.

I recommend using an electrical mixer at the beginning: it can take a little to thicken (three or four minutes) and then switching to a hand whisk, because once it starts to thicken it thickens really fast. Actually, the first time I whisked too much and ended with a giant chocolate truffle which I had to melt to whisk again.

The key is the temperature change. You have to transfer the hot and melted chocolate and water mixture into a bowl inside another bigger bowl, filled with water and ice (like a bain-marie, but in cold). Be sure to use enough ice or even better, put water in a plastic bottle and put it in the freezer until it’s really cold (at least 30 minutes). If the water is not cold enough, you can be whisking forever. Oh, and use a big enough mixing bowl. It turned out that mine wasn’t, so after I finished my hands, arms, the kitchen sink and part of the walls were covered in chocolate. If the splashes where red instead of brown, it would have looked like the scene of a multiple murder.

For some reason, it tasted better the next day. Because I must warn you: this is a mousse for serious chocolate lovers. It’s so thick and rich that you will have enough with a few spoonfuls. But strangely enough, after a day it lost part of the overpowering chocolate taste. Next time I’ll try with a higher quality chocolate and maybe orange juice or soy milk instead of water. It would also make a perfect cake filling and this morning I used it as a chocolate spread on my toast.

Easy chocolate mousse

Be careful to don’t overbeat it! It must have the consistency of a double cream. There is a video on Youtube when you can see how it should look. Use a high percentage cocoa chocolate, at least 70%.

From: Café Fernando
Serves: 4-5

Ingredients
130 ml water
150g chocolate
1 tbsp sugar (optional)

Put water with ice into a large bowl and set aside. Or put a bottle in the freezer for half or until is very cold (but obviously not frozen)
Melt the chocolate, the water and the sugar (if using).
Put the mixture in a smaller mixing bowl and the mixing bowl inside the bigger bowl with water. Whisk until you see it begins to think. It can take a few minutes, but be patient.
You can use it as cake filling, chocolate spread or eat it as a traditional mousse.

….

I hope you fogive me (again) for my Internet absence, but I’ve been busy walking along streets in pyjamas and a pillow and hanging upside down. I have many photo ideas in mind, but some of them present serious complications. Like the necessity of a ridiculous amount of cotton wool. A consequence of having more imagination than resources. Sigh.

Insomniac

Vertigo

Running barefoot have some minuses too.

Broken

ksenia — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:41:05 +0000

This week will make one month since I’ve been without my camera, although it seems like a lot more. That has been the reason why, even after coming from Russia, I haven’t posted any recipe yet: we all know that a food blog without photos is not the same. To keep it short, I’ll tell you that I travelled eight hours by bus to see a friend, slipped with the ice ten minutes after arriving (damn sudden changes of temperature: they turn all the streets in a giant skating rink), fell and the camera went down with me. My friend asked me if I was alright because it was a terrible fall (even the people passing by were worried) but surprisingly (or not) I only could think about my camera.

I must be jinxed or something, because of course it broke. Not completely (meaning it didn’t broke to pieces), but the screen doesn’t work. And a DSLR without a screen is a useless DSLR. I took it to repair and it should be ready in week or so.

I always thought that if something like this happened, I’d cry and shout and get hysterical. Instead, I just couldn’t believe it was actually broken. Like if all was a bad dream and I was going to wake up in any moment. If you think that you can’t go through a phase of denial with an object, it’s because you haven’t lost yet an object you really can’t live without (it’s not a pleasant experience, believe me). And I don’t mean for comfort, like the dishwasher or the washing machine: sure, hand washing your dishes will put you in a bad mood, but it won’t cause you an opression in the chest, like if something was missing.I understood I can live without my laptop (I can always borrow my brother’s PC to use Photoshop) but I can’t live without my camera. Photography became a way to see world. I found myself so many looking at beautiful sunsets and gorgeous skies, thinking how beautiful would the light look in the photo, which exposure I should use and how I’d edit the pic, uncounsciously composing the shot in my head.

This is when you know that your camera became an extension of yourself, actually a part of you. Because even if it is said that it’s not the camera but the photographer what matters, you still need one to create.

So until I get my camera back, there will be no new recipes, but you can check my last photos on my Flickr and Tumblr (which, by the way, has a new design) and even another stop motion. Enjoy

The new design of my tumblr. It took me many, many hours to finish but for once I’m happy with the result.

A journey in pictures

ksenia — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:00:09 +0000

I owe you all a big apologie for not disappearing for almost two months, not commenting on your blogs and being away from the blogosphere in general. But I have been too busy working, being with relatives and friends, getting an opera and museums overdose that will last me until next year and even being chased by a crazy cat (no kidding. We had to close her in a room…which she didn’t like at all and got even more mad. I hope next time they will remember to give her the tranquillizers in time).

Remnants of a past life

I’m coming back to Spain in less than twenty day and I will hopefully start to upload once a week again. I don’t have recipes to share but I do have lots of photos and even a stopmotion. I even got one of the best presents I could get for 8th March: the 50mm f/1.8 lenses I have been craving for months.

I hope you enjoy seeing the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Meet my new lens

I don’t know where I would be without my camera and photography.

PS: I am still uploading to my Tumblr regularly. You can see all the photos there.

Untitled

Infrared
Experimenting with infrared photography.

Untitled

The stopmotion

Hot amaranth cereal with raisins

ksenia — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:15:25 +0000

Being a breakfast person, usually I don’t problems to find something to eat. Some people eat the same breakfast every single day and are fine with that. My mum always have two toasts, never something sweet and a strong green tea (she gave up coffee after having a nervous breakdown because of it). My dad, a sandwich with cheese/ham and coffee. Always something sweet after it.

One of my friends eats a toast with fresh orange juice. Every morning, seven days a weeks. Just the idea sends shivers down my spine. I suppose I can consider myself lucky. A hearty breakfast? Perfect. A iogurt or a piece of fruit because there is no time for more? I won’t suffer because of it. I can have a huge green smoothie one day and hot cereal the other. Even rice or beans don’t sound like crazy options to me.

But I like variety. I discovered amaranth not such a long time ago. The truth is that I wasn’t thrilled about its texture at the beginning. A little bit bigger than poppy seeds (actually, amaranth is not a cereal: what we consume are seeds), it didn’t resemble to any other cereal I tried before. But that was before I had the brilliant idea of adding soy milk.

Voilà! It was like a different dish: with a rich nutty flavor yet a creamy and more delicate texture. I added raisins and chocolate and felt like if I had discovered the wheel…before googling it and realizing that people was already driving sport cars. But since I took photos of it, here is an alternative to your classic oatmeal breakfast.

Hot amaranth cereal with raisins

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients
1 cup amaranth
2 + 1/2 cups water
1/2 to 1 cup soymilk
raisins (to taste)
chocolate and nuts (optional)

Cook the amaranth with water in a 2.5 to 1 ratio on a medium heat for 30 minutes or until done.
Add the soy milk (or any other milk of your choice), the raisins and cook for 5 minutes more until reaching the desired consistency.
Decorate with chocolte and/or nuts.

About the dangers of babysitting and other technical problems

In case you didn’t notice, all my images disappeared for a time. Some of them are still broken. The reason? The kid I’m babysitting decided that the keyboard of my laptop was too irresisitble and pressed everything he could before I could stop him. Filezilla was open. Result? The images folder was gone. I have been able to restore only some of them because I dididn’t bring my CDs to Russia. So my blog will look that way until March, when I’ll come back to Spain.

The photos of the amaranth cereal are old: I haven’t cooked anything in weeks. The 3 years old boy gives me headaches (and not only metaphorically speaking: the other day he hit me with a wooden hammer), the salary doesn’t amount too much and since I live with the family five days a week, the line between work and leisure is too thin. But it was this job or nothing.

My brother, in the airport of Barcelona. We all look tiny next to him…and he’s only 18!

At least I had two wonderful weeks of Christmas break and took tons of photos. I’ll be uploading them on my Tumblr. I even did a stopmotion.

Winter

I strongly recommend watching it in HD.

Captures from the stopmotion.

Jeera aloo (Cumin flavoured stir-fried potatoes) and greetings from Russia

ksenia — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:22:41 +0000

Happy (late) New Year! I know, I know. I haven’t posted in ages (it seems like I begin all my blog entries with that sentence. Ugh), but you all know that with all the preparations, Christmas is the busiest time of the year. Especially when you’re leaving for three months: a lot of people to meet with, too many cakes to bake, lots of handmade gifts to finish.

Right now I’m writing from my aunt’s flat in Moscow. Everything is covered in snow outside (I’ve never seen so much snow, even for Russia!). I haven’t been cooking too much but I have recipes that are waiting to be posted since half a month ago, so it’s not a problem For instance, these potatoes. I’m not a huge fan of (regular) potatoes. I can spend months without tasting them and suddenly I eat potatoes two days in a row. It must be Christmas

Jeera aloo (Cumin flavoured stir-fried potatoes)

Even when ommiting the whole chili, the potatoes are quite spicy. Two teaspoons of whole cumin can seem a lot at the beginning, but once it’s cooked and mixed with all the other spices and potatoes they give the right amount of texture. They taste even better the next day. I’d definitively cook them again.

Serves: 3-4
From: Quick Indian Cooking

Ingredients

750 gm raw new potatoes, sliced into 1cm thick discs
2 tsp whole cumin
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
Half tsp chilli powder
Quarter tsp asafoetida (hing)
2 tbsp sunflower oil
Salt to taste
Hot water
*Malli’s recipe included 1 whole red chilli, which I omitted.

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the asafoetida and the whole cumin.
Add the cumin, coriander and chilli powder (be careful not to burn them!) and then the sliced potatoes.
Pour the water, cover with a lid and cook for 20 minutes or until done. Stir the potatoes from time to time to avoid them sticking to the pan.

I cooked these for December’s Tried & Tasted. This month the blog being tried is Quick Indian Cooking and the hostess is Sudeshna of Cook like a Bong. You can find all the information on Lakshmi original post or Sudeshna’s post here.

You can use the logo I did for this month.

I also decided to bake some of the potatoes. Just wash as much potatoes as needed. Usually I bake 3-4 per person if they’re small and 2-3 if they’re medium, but if you can, choose the small ones: they bake better. Put them on the oven tray or an oven dish, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and black pepper and bake for an hour/one hour and half or until cooked, on a small to medium heat. Serve with some more oil or margarine. I think the best part is the skin so I don’t peel them, but it’s up to you.

For those who don’t know, I have a Flickr and a Tumblr. I’ll be uploading most of my photos (and I have lots of them!) there, so stay tuned. If you’re not familiar with Tumblr, it’s something between a blog and a Twitter account, although I use mine more like a blog (I hardly ever reblog and post once-twice maximum a day). You can add it to a RSS reader as any other blog.

How has been your Christmas/New Year? You can see some photos of mine on my tumblr. I’ve been resting so far, but I’ll be working as a babysitter once holidays are over. It was impossible to find anything in Spain…so I went to Russia. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Pumpkin and adzuki beans stew

ksenia — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:00:53 +0000

The most difficult part about stews is not the combination of spices, cooking enough the beans but without transforming it in a paste or finding the right vegetables.

It’s photographing them.

Soups are tricky to photograph too, but nothing beats stews. Especially stews made of beans or lentils. You can always puree a soup, put it in a cute bowls and throw some nuts on top…and voilà! But with stews is more difficult. You can put in a bowl, throw something on top and it will still look like a brown, shapeless mass.

I tried to throw something on top (you can see the sesame seeds in the photo), choosing a cute napkin (since I only had a white, plain bowl) and praying that it will look as great as it tastes. There is nothing too exotic about this stew…unless you consider adzuki beans exotic. I did for a long time. Actually, I didn’t know about its existence until I went vegan. Made of seasonal ingredients, it’s the perfect comfort food for rainy (or dry) fall days.

And if you are wondering why I haven’t posted anything in a month, my laptop crashed, I dropped out of university, I almost fell in a depression and we are about to lose our house. We are still about to lose our house, but at least now I have a computer again. Well, actually is not mine: the servant of the woman who let me live in her flat in Barcelona (for free) has a brand new 1000€ HP and allows me to use it.

In case someone is interested, I wrote more about my decision of leaving university here. And an article about how I edit my photos. I also changed the domain of my portfolio: klykovaphotography.com

Pumpkin and adzuki beans stew

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

1 cup dry adzuki beans

1/2 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped

1/3 medium pumpkin, cubed (mine weighted 340g)
4 Tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp peanut butter
Oil

Spices:
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/4 curcuma
1/4 cinnamon
1/4 mango powder

1. Soak the adzuki beans overnight. Cook for 1 hour or until done. Do not overcook.
Heat the oil in a big skillet, add the spices and the onion; sauté for 5 minutes on a medium heat. Add the two peppers, chopped, and sauté for 5 min. more.
Add the pumpkin and after a couple of minutes the tomato paste and peanut butter. You may need adding some water.
Finally, add the adzuki beans and cook everything together for 10-15 minutes or until the pumpkin is done.

Last photos uploaded on Flickr

Tales of a spoon

Heidi’s ‘Magic sauce’ recipe

Heidi’s ‘Magic Sauce’

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Lemon cookies

Lemon cookies

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Orange glazed tempeh

Orange glazed tempeh

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Zucchini pancakes

Zucchini pancakes

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Easy chocolate mousse

Easy chocolate mousse

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Broken

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A journey in pictures

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Hot amaranth cereal with raisins

Hot amaranth cereal with raisins

About the dangers of babysitting and other technical problems

Winter

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Jeera aloo (Cumin flavoured stir-fried potatoes) and greetings from Russia

Jeera aloo (Cumin flavoured stir-fried potatoes)

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Pumpkin and adzuki beans stew

Pumpkin and adzuki beans stew

Ashes

Ephemeral

Let it go

Untitled

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