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!)

Simple spring noodle soup

Spring is absolutely here, with all the sunshine and happy faces all over... I was so delighted at seeing fresh and lively carrots, roots and those big, green lettuce at the market this morning, I immediately knew I was going to make a tasty noodle soup for lunch.

Ingredients
90-100g noodles (or spaghetti)
100g tofu
1 carrot, 3-4 sticks of celery
1 small leek
half teaspon of Marmite (or yeast extract or yeast seasoning)
1 generous tablespoon of ghee (or use canola oil, if you want a vegan soup)
salt

Preparation
Fry the sliced tofu on the ghee for about 5-8 minutes. Add the carrot, and fry for 2 more minutes. Carefully pour about 1L water on it. When boiling, add the noodles, the sliced celery, the salt and the Marmite (don't worry, even if you don't like Marmite, you won't feel it on the soup!). When almost ready, add the sliced leek. Serve with fresh parsley.

This is a basic recipe, the principles of the soup are the ghee, Marmite and the finely sliced vegetables. You can add garlic, spinach, even some spices if you like, but don't forget to keep it light as it is supposed to be a simple spring soup.

Early spring bread

I love March, especially because of the first wind of spring. It's the time when we can wave goodbye to winter, and welcome the rising Sun. Oh yes, it's the time when I start to live again.
(needless to say, I don't like winter)

Anyway, what kind of bread could fit this energizing season? The season of growth and awakening? A light and fluffy bread with grains, bran, seeds and a bit of Sunshine.

As we should take seasonal vegetables and fruits all the time, here is something that should be seasonal as well. So be it, I named this recipe
Early spring bread.

Ingredients
500g semi-whole wheat flour (French type 110)
30-40g bran
11g salt
6g sourdough powder
4g dried yeast
about 2-4 tablespoons of mixed seeds and grains
2 tablespoons of gluten
1 tablespoon of oil
300ml water

Preparation
After mixing the dried ingredients, pour the oil and the water, and start kneading. As I didn't let the yeast rise before mixing it with the flour, I let the dough rise twice. That is, after kneading it for about 10 minutes, I put it aside for 30 minutes, then kneading again for another 5 minutes, putting aside again for 20 minutes, then kneading for 2-3 minutes and then finally shaping the bread and letting it rise for about 2 - 2,5 hours. Perfectly baked in the oven, 50 minutes at 180°C.

Glance at flours

Let me begin by emphasizing that I do love baguettes, those crispy and tasty fresh rolls coming from my favourite bakery... Yummm! For sure I'll make a post later with my favorites in the bakery.

But this time I have to skip the making of breads and baguettes, as there is pretty much stuff about flours as well, and I really dislike long posts...

So, about flours. As we all know, a lot of different kinds of flours exist all over the world. In Europe for example, there are more types of flours as grains. Just from corn we may find 2-5 different types, depending on the market and the country, of course. Not to mention the endless varieties of wheat, buckwheat, rye and other flours...
Wheat flour, as the most common of all, can be found everywhere, from the smallest shops to the biggest supermarkets. The well-known classification of them is based on the "richness", in other words, the bran- and germ content of the flour. Also, we can divide wheat flours into bread flours (that is, high gluten content, making a hard flour) and soft- or cake flours (that is, low in gluten and makes a soft texture).

The richer the better - usually. Two very important aspects that we should never forget about whole wheat flours are the origin and age. First, if the flour is coming from a farm where fertilizers are used habitually, we shouldn't replace white flours with whole grain ones. As chemicals are stored in the kernel (bran) of the wheat, whole wheat flour may actually contain too much of them, so in this case mixing it with white flour could be a good idea. Also, the age counts, as more time passes by after milling the grains, the higher the risk that the flour would contain fungus. Fungus generate toxins, which are harmful...

Let's just not get too far. The healthiest choice is fresh milled, organic whole wheat flour. In the case of cakes and pastries, we may use white or semi-whole flour (I often use the latter one for cakes only).

So what to buy, and where to buy, if you are living in France? Most bakeries ("boulangerie") sell different kinds, but you shouldn't buy if you're not sure whether the flour's fresh or not. Personally I prefer buying in stores where there are a lot of customers so I can be sure the products are fresh. Also, there are some towns where you can buy directly from the mill. An example on that is the "Mills of Versailles".

Don't forget that the French have a different numbering for the types of flour than other nations. Wholemeal flour has the number of 150, while 45 and 55 are supposed to be white flours (personally I've never tried type 45, as it contains almost no vitamins at all). However, the most common types are 55, 80 and 110, which you can find all over the country.
No need to mention that flour type 150 is quite hard to find; it is not surprising, as France is - in some ways - the country of refined goods.