Closure

I have stopped updating this blog for a while.
Maybe I'll continue posting new recipes, but for the moment, it's suspended.

Thanks for all my readers!

Chapati with carrot chutney and green beans

Wondering about what to prepare for dinner which is tasty, healthy and light enough (dinner should never put too much load on the stomach), I came up with the idea of having carrot chutney with chapatis. On the way to the fridge I decided to grab some green beans as well, so I could make 2 chutneys and... well, the more the better, right? Who can get enough of different chutneys anyway...

Note: I'm gonna skip explaining how to make chapatis, as there are wonderful explanations all over the web, like these videos.

Carrot chutney and green beans
Ingredients
3 bigger carrots
1 tsp grated ginger
4 Tbsp vegetable oil (organic virgin olive preferred)
1 clove garlic
10 almonds
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 salt

3 handful of fresh green beans
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 tsp sesame seeds
3 tsp soy sauce

Preparation
Grate the carrots and prepare the rest of the ingredients: cut the almonds into four, grate the ginger (fine), grate the garlic or use a big knife's blade to squish it. The preparation (as with all the chutneys) is very easy: heat the oil, sautée the carrots for 1 min, then turn down the heat to medium and pour some water (~1/4 cup) on it. Add the almonds, ginger, garlic and all the spices, stirring in between. Cook for about 15 minutes, or you can caramellize the carrots for 30 minutes. Set aside.

Wash the beans, heat some oil, add the beans and sesame seeds and sautée them for a minute. Then add the soy sauce, cook for about 3-8 minutes (depending on your taste), then serve with the carrot chutney and fresh chapatis.


p.s.: you may like drinking half a cup of fresh carrot juice along with the dinner, that would accompany the meal and also good for your stomach.

French onion soup

I've been in France for ~1.5 years now, and I haven't had a real French Onion Soup. Shame on me (or not)? Anyway, as Sylvie mentioned several times that she was eager to have that once, I decided to surprise her with a bowl of warm soup.

Even though I don't like onion (especially because it's hard to digest and can easily give you an inconvenient afternoon or evening), I was one hundred precent satisfied with this meal. And I just understood that cooking the onion quite a long time makes them easy for the stomach... small enlightments every day :-)

This recipe makes 2, so if you want to serve a family, make it double.

French onion soup
Ingredients
2 smaller/average white onions
1 Tbsp flour
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup Champagne (or white wine)
1 cube veggie soup base
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried basil
salt and pepper
Cheese crouton: French baguette and grated cheese
(for a vegan version, use your favorite seasoning or simply leave the cheese out)

Preparation
Slice the onions, as thin as you can (or, I'd say, 1-2mm is enough). In a thick-bottom pan, heat the oil and add the onion. After about one minute, turn the heat down, and caramellize the onion 30 minutes. Stir just ONCE or twice maximum during this 30 minutes. Don't worry, if your saucepan is good enough, it won't burn.
Add the flour, cook for about 1 minute and then add the champagne. I used champagne, but you can use white wine as well (not a big difference). Add the soup base - I usually use the veggie cube I buy at the organic store, with 2 cups of water added, but if you have soup in your fridge, you can use that as well. Add the bay leaves, salt and pepper, and cook for about 10-15 minutes.

Now as the soup is ready, let's prepare the croutons. Slice your baguette and toast it in your oven. Pour evenly the soup in your bowls and place the toasts on top of them. Grate cheese over them and finally: bake them in the oven until the cheese starts to turn golden.

Let them cool for at least 15 minutes, and then serve with a cool spoon and a warm heart :-)

Whirled spaghetti

Whenever you are out of ideas as what to put in the ingredients while inventing new recipes, you can always vary your existing ones as how to prepare them. This is the same I did and the outcome was surprisingly tasty and eye-candy.
The principle of this meal is to put the already-cooked spaghetti rolls in an oven pan, preferably with some fresh vegetables and cover them with either cheese or your favorite vegan sauce. Believe me, it will be quite a surprise...

Spring spaghetti rolls
Ingredients
500g spaghetti
4 big tomatoes
150g fresh mushrooms
1 small sweet pepper
5-6 tbsp olive oil (+ some for the oven pan)
2 cloves of garlic
fresh or dried basil
100g cheese or vegan cheeze
salt


Preparation
Begin by making the spaghetti. Once it's cooked, stir a few drips of olive oil in it to avoid getting sticky.
Take a medium sized saucepan, and heat the olive oil. Quick fry the sliced tomatoes for a minute, then turn to lower heat and cook them with the mushrooms. At this point, I used to add 1-2 tsp salt and some oregano. In case you are lucky enough to have fresh basil in your kitchen, you can add them later (or eat with the salad you may prepare with the spaghetti rolls), but if you use dried basil, you may add it now. After a few minutes, add chopped garlic and pepper, and cook for another 10-15 minutes.
In an oven pan, make the spaghetti rolls using a fork and a bigger tablespoon. I suggest using some olive oil to sprinkle on the bottom of the pan, just to make sure your food won't stick to it. Once the sauce is done, pour a little on each roll and finally cover them with grated cheese.

I like to add halved cherry tomatoes on each roll before covering them with cheese. If you are vegan, you can either use some vegan cheeze or anything that fits the tomatoes (you can leave them uncovered even).

Serve with fresh salad and some good wine :-)

Hungarian potato pasta

What do you think of eating potatoes with pasta? I bet you wouldn't think of a meal containing these two basic ingredients as a delicious one. However, it's one of my favorites I've always liked since I was a child. Also, the basic recipe is so simple that you HAVE TO make variations! 

Hungarian potato pasta

Ingredients

3 middle-sized potatos

1 chopped onion

200g pasta 

3 tbsp oil

3 tsp ground sweet pepper (paprika)

pinch of salt

Preparation

Cook the potatoes in boiling water until they become soft enough to easily crush them with a fork. Once they are ready, crush them (as you may have thought so). In the oil, fry the chopped onion along with some salt and optionally some black pepper. Once it's almost done, add the paprika and mix quite well. Then pour it on the potatos, mix again and then mix with the cooked pasta. Serve with ground pepper.

Note: it is best with some sour pickles or sauerkraut.

Yet another morning pancake

Admittedly, not all of us like corn flour - however, the taste of corn pancakes doesn't remind me of corns -, so the other day I made a bunch of "common" pancakes. That is, a mixture of flours, soy milk, some sweetening and some spices. So nothing special, but I thought I should publish my vegan version of the well-known pancakes. 

Vegan pancake recipe

Ingredients

2 cups flour (can be different types)

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup water

few drips of lemon

4 tbsp corn syrop

3 tbsp palm oil

pinch of salt

pinch of cinnamon

Preparation

Mix all ingredients in a mixer, and let it rest for a couple of hours, if you can do so. Then make small pancakes, 4 at once in an average pan. As it contains some oil already, it's not necessary to grease the pan all the time. 

Early sunshine bread

Phew, the past few weeks were busy. After she arrived, we left for a place called "Belle Ile", an island in the Atlantic near the French coasts. Spending 4 beautiful days was a great relief after the work we got over, and although it wasn't a gastronomical journey (eating galettes and pizzas for days is not so much fun), we had a great time and I enjoyed every single minute of it.

So.

Back to Versailles and the Parisian life, we began by baking some wonderful cakes and making holy dishes that tasted like heaven. Okay, that's just partially true, as we began by refurbishing the place, but after all the food we made together has been more than delicious. It's a shame I haven't made a post since... uh oh, 2nd April?

The other day I baked this bread, and the recipe I invented there turned out to be... more than delicious. So I decided to make a quick post on it.

Otherwise I'm back to blogging again, so I'll come up with new stuff here soon. Stay tuned! :)

Early sunshine bread

Ingredients (for a bigger loaf)

750g semi-whole flour

20g salt

22-25g dried sourdough

30g bran

20g oat flakes

3 tbsp sesame seed

2 tbsp gluten

460ml water

2 tbsp ghee

Preparation

As usual, begin by mixing the dry ingredients first. Optionally, you can add some other grains, but be careful with the water added: you may need to add some more, but don't pour in too much because that would ruin the dough.

Bake at 175C degrees for about 50-55 minutes (again, it depends on your oven).

Morning pancakes w/o sin (and gluten)

Eating gluten-free for some people is a must. I recall that few years ago I prepared and baked a lot of different dishes and cakes, as one of my acquaintances had sensitivity to gluten. I had found it quite difficult to prepare healthy and delicious pastries without a single touch of gluten.

Probably you haven't thought of cooking and baking with flours that contain no gluten. Most of us who are not forced to follow a gluten-free diet have never thought of it. This is perhaps because flours that are easy to bake with contain gluten. Just think of wheat or rye... Have you ever thought of baking without these?

Eating gluten-free from time to time is really a good idea, even for those who do not suffer from sensitivities like that. I discovered this a few years ago, and since then I've been taking some few-days-long gluten-free diets, not more than 4 times a year. I think this is one of the few things we should do for our health (not to mention liquid fast diets or low-protein diets).

So, as part of my gluten-free diet I'm taking these days, I decided to prepare a healthy and delicious breakfast.

A little secret before introducing the recipe to you: soaking corn flour (that is, preparing the base of the pancakes' pastry) overnight makes the outcome moist and tasty. If you don't do that, you will

still have delicious pancakes, but not so moist and with a bit of "flourish taste".

Corn pancakes

Ingredients

1 cup corn flour

1 cup water

3 tbsp butter (if you make it vegan, use organic vegan margarine or palm butter)

3 tbsp corn syrup (or any other syrup)

1/2 tsp baking powder (gluten-free)

pinch of salt

Preparation

Mix the flour, water, butter and syrup in a blender and place in your fridge overnight. In the morning, blend again with the baking powder and salt added. In a pan, make small 6-8cm diamater pancakes by dripping the pastry onto the pan. In an average pan, you can make 3 such pancakes at the same time.

I used organic ingredients, purified water and organic cherry jam to serve.

Nourish yourself and make these sweeties as a morning kick-off! ;-)

Ghee

I've been busy preparing the place for Her arrival. It is still one more week, but I'm already making everything to be ready for that moment.
Actually it's funny that freeing up space by just rearranging stuff takes quite a lot of time. I wouldn't think that taking things out of a wardrobe, cleaning that, and then putting things back in took hours, while the whole process of cleaning-arranging-moving-selecting adds up to days...
Anyways, being busy with that doesn't allow me to spend time in the kitchen preparing tasty and good-looking meals (which I love to do). However, I made ghee yesterday, so I thought publishing a post of it would worth doing.

Ghee is something seriously good. Not just delicious, handy in the kitchen, good to fry and bake with, but you can eat it as a sandwich spread or as-is. And really, it's the HEALTHIEST kind of oil I've ever came across with. It does so much good to your body that taking a ghee-cure (when you swallow 1 tbsp of ghee on an empty stomach in the morning for a week or two) is one of the best things you could do with your stomach.

Anyway, I should stop describing ghee, firstly because you may already know about it, secondly because a lot of people did that before me. Here is a good description of ghee.

Making ghee at home
Ingredients
500g (or more) organic pure butter (unsalted)
1 very clean pan
1 very clean pot or bottle to store

Preparation
Make sure your utensils are clean enough, and your pan is big enough to boil the butter. Begin by warming up the butter in the pan (low / medium-low temperature), and be sure the temperature is not too high. The best is not to touch the butter while boiling.
Low setting of the hotplate should be okay. I have an electronic one (not the best, I know), and I always set it to 2 (the max is 6), and it's perfectly enough.
So your butter should be boiling already. Don't worry about the foam on the top of it, it's the result of all unwanted stuff that are lighter than the oil itself (water, for example). Also, you can see some "spots" on the bottom of the pan, that is in fact the protein, which is heavier than the grease we need.
While boiling, the butter makes some nice popping sounds. That's normal. So how do we know when the ghee is ready? Once the sounds are over and the smell of oil is the closest to fresh croissants...
Once you get to this point, remove the pan from the hotplate and let it cool until just warm. Prepare a perfectly clean pot, cover it with a cheesecloth and pour the oil on the cheesecloth so that it filters that. And: voilá! You have the fresh ghee itself.
The ghee, if clean, keeps quite well in the kitchen (room temperature) for more than a year.

Applie pie

During the first twenty-something years of my life I thought apple pie was the one which my mother, grandmother, and all the people I knew used to make. It happened just recently that I realized: apple pie is a very common expression.

In fact it's so common, that almost every nation in Europe have their own variety, that is, their own way to make this hilarious yet so simple dessert. There is the "traditional" (better to say: well known) English type, the classical German or Dutch one, then there you have the French tarte tatin, and, of course, the Hungarian one, which I was used to for so long. Most of these are very similar, except for the French one, as that's an upside-down cake. For the others we can say that the pastry is quite similar in each country, just as the proportion of the apples to the pastry. Well, all in all, most European desserts are quite alike, huh?

I have to say that although it's not a recipe suitable for spring, I couldn't resist the temptation after I saw Parvati's pie. The recipe here is almost the same, I made some slight changes (and translated it).

Hungarian apple pie
Ingredients (pastry)
500g semi-complete flour
1 bag baking powder
pinch of salt
150g unrefined cane sugar
250g butter (or palm butter, if vegan)
1-2 tablespoons of water

Ingredients (filling)
2kg sweet apples
3-4 tablespoons of any syrup (I used corn)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
optional: juice of 1 lemon, raisins

Preparation
First, mix the dry ingredients of the pastry, then add the butter (room temperature!) and the water, and start kneading. If you feel it's quite hard to knead, you're probably right. This pastry is not as easy as the bread dough, however, the result will be something very light and surprisingly delicious...
Knead for a few minutes, then set aside. Clean the apples and grate them, mix with the syrup, cinnamon and the raisins (if any). I like adding raisins in this pie, as raisins fit quite well with the apples.

Separate the dough into two equal pieces, and start stretching it out. The goal is to fit your pan, as this is going to be the bottom of the pie. Don't forget that we are making a 3-layer pie, so we need a large enough pan. Do not worry, if the dough breaks or splits; it will be just fine anyway.
Once the bottom is in the pan, put the apples as the second layer, and cover the "sandwich" with a third layer of the dough, which is almost the same in size like the first one was.

Make some holes on the top, and put in a pre-heated oven for 45-55 minutes at 180°C.
Keeps well for days, even without cover... (if you can resist eating them up at once!)