Chicken chow mein with fresh ginger

This is a very simple dish although it might seem complicated. I can't get bored of it ever, there are so many ways to make it, it's amazing. I usually go by the rule of lots of meat and veggies and less noodles, which I did not succeed at this time but I'm sure I'll be able to survive the horrors of noodles stir-fried in peanut oil ;) 

Ingredients for at least 4 people:

• 600 grs of chicken breast fillet
• 3 spring onions
• 3 smaller carrots
• 500 grs of mung bean sprouts
• 150 grs of frozen peas
• 4-5 bigger cloves of garlic
• two pieces of fresh ginger, the size of your thumb
• soy sauce or teriyaki
• peanut oil
• cashew nuts
• 250 grs of chow mein noodles

The secret to this dish is to stir-fry all of the ingredients in a wok or similar frying pan on high heat. You'll need a big bowl in which you can place the stuff which is already done, and is big enough to mix the whole thing in it at the end. 

Chop up the onions, the carrot, slice the chicken breast, chop the garlic and the ginger very fine, and with that you prepared everything you needed to. You can start the stir-frying part, adding some salt to each ingredients that passes the wok. I prefer if the veggies are cooked entirely soft in this dish but it's up to your taste of course.

A tip for the chicken: I always mix the raw chicken slices with half of the ginger and half of the garlic and some soy sauce before cooking them, they will taste a lot better. Don't forget to add some salt and pepper too. Stir-fry the bean sprouts and the peas as well. 

Boil some water and cook the noodles, then throw them into the wok on a tablespoon of peanut oil and fry them for a while, giving it a careful stir from time to time. The last step is to combine all the ingredients, mixing it very well. You can serve it with some extra soy sauce, a couple of lemon drops and cashew nuts on top.

Sweetcorn soup with spinach and sweet potato

I was planning on making this soup with chicken but I stumbled upon a sweet potato in the store while grocery shopping and I couldn't resist. The chicken was used in the above chow mein noodle in the end. It was a win-win :) 

Ingredients:

• 1 spring onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 sweet potato
• half a can of sweet corn
• 200 grs of spinach leaves, can be frozen
• 3 tablespoons of sour cream
• 1 talespoon of starch
• 1 coffespoon of
• 1 smaller chilli
• freshly ground nutmeg

Chop up the onion and the garlic and start cooking them in a bit of olive oil on low heat while you peel and dice the sweet potato. When that's done, add the potato to the onion and cook them together for about 10 minutes, addig some salt and nutmeg.

Add the sweet corn and the chilli, then you can add the water, should be about one litre or a bit more. Then you can add the frozen spinach, and bring it to a boil. It needs about 15 minutes after that, but pay attention to the sweet potato because it can be overcooked very easily. 

 

 

 The last thing you need to do is mixing the sour cream with the starch, and pouring the mixture into he soup, giving it a good stir. Let the starch do its job, needs about 2 minutes. Don't forget to taste, add more salt or nutmeg if needed. You can add some of the turmeric now to colour the soup a bit.

Gingerbread cake with dried prune filling

This is one of the rare times when I'm fully satisfied with what I've made, although usually I am my biggest critic of all. It's quite a heavy cake but meanly delicious and a bit out of the box too :) 

Ingredients for the cake layers: 

• 250 grs of plain flour
• 3 eggs
• 120 grs of unsalted soft butter
• 10 dkgs of caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons of honey
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 100 mls of milk
• gingerbread mix according to taste
• ground cinnamon and cloves according to taste
• zest of 1 lemon
• dried apricots chopped fine
• candied lemon and orange zest

Start whisking the sugar with the soft butter until it becomes fluffy and airy and then add the honey and keep whisking. Then add the eggs 1 by 1 and keep whisking. Add the lemon zest too. Measure the flour and mix in the dried fruit, the spices and the baking powder.  

They next step is to combine the flour mixture with the eggs and the butter. Give it a good stir, then pour in the milk and keep stirring until you get a homogeneous but quite thick dough. 4 cake layers need to be baked separately, they need about 15 minutes at 180 deg Celsius in the oven, and you must let them cool down before you fill them with the prune cream.

Ingredients for the filling: 

• 300 grs of dried prunes 
• 50 mls of sweet dessert wine or any similar liqueur
• 150 grs of melted dark chocolate, at least 70%
• about a 100 grs of plum jam
• a bit of lemon juice
• a bit of cinnamon
• rum flavour

First, soak half of the prunes in the dessert wine. Then add the other half and in a food processor get it all  creamy. Add the cinnamon, the rum flavour and the melted chocolate and give it a good stir. Then you can add the jam, just as much as you need to make the filling a bit creamier and easier to handle. A bit of lemon juice is also needed, just a few drops, to bring out the flavours and to balance the sweetness out. 

Assembling the cake: 

Place the bottom layer on the plate on which you will serve the cake, and spread one third of the filling on top. Then you can place the second layer on the top of the bottom one, and so on. When the cake is assembled, cover it in melted dark chocolate, about 100 grs should do the trick. It doesn't need to be in the fridge but let it rest for a while in a chill place so that the chocolate can set.

Homemade naan bread and hummus

Remembering that you have everything you need for throwing together a quick naan bread and hummus can really make a difference in your Sunday. It doesn't take more than an hour including the kneading, blending and baking. This is the type of food that will make you lick your plate after finishing because it's just so goooood! 

Ingredients for 4 pieces of naan bread:

• 250 grs of bread flour 
• 200 mls of greek yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of warm water
• 1 tablespoon of dry yeast
• two pinches of salt
• a pinch of sugar
• a pinch of ground cumin

Mix the flour with the rest of the ingredients, and keep kneading until you get a flexible but not sticky dough. Set it aside to rest until you prepare the hummus.

Ingredients for the hummus: 

• 1 can/bottle of chickpeas
• 100 grs of sesame seeds
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• lemon juice
• 1.5 tablespoons of greek yoghurt
• salt
• ground cumin
• 1 small clove of garlic

One very important ingredient of hummus is tahini, a paste made of sesame seeds. It's very easy to make at home. All you need to do is to throw the sesame seeds into a dry pan and keep stirring frequently so that it doesn't burn. When that's done, you just need to grind it and add the olive oil and the lemon juice so that it turns into a paste. You will have to blend the chickpeas as well in another bowl (add some of the brine too to make it creamier), and then you can combine the two. Add the lemon juice, the smashed garlic, the yoghurt (you can leave that out if you want) and the cumin. Give it a good stir and let it rest until you bake the bread. 

Get your dough and knead it once more, then cut it into 4 equal pieces. Try to roll them out as much as you can with a rolling pin, or your hands, as you would do with pizza dough. It's the type of dough that can easily be shaped by hand, very easy to handle. Heat up a dry non-stick pan and place the first piece of dough into it, give each side a couple of minutes and then let the bread cool down. I usually serve the hummus with some yoghurt or sour cream, sprinkling some more ground cumin and Spanish smoked paprika on top.

Rum and coffee walnut cake - small sized

While most people bake bread on the 20th of August in Hungary (festival of the new bread amongst other things) that's when I usually get the walnuts out of the freezer. The reason behind is that I have a granny who celebrates her birthday today and she likes walnuts. It's a small cake, although everything depends on how big of a sponge cake you manage to bake.

Measurements are for a 18cms wide cake ring. Sponge cake is made of 5 eggs, which will rise quite high in this small ring but I think 5 eggs should be enough in case you want to make a bigger cake as well. You should have a bit more of walnuts than necessary for the filling so that you can decorate your cake with it at the end. 

Ingredients for the sponge cake: 

• 5 cold eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 100 grs of caster sugar 
• 130 grs of plain flour
• 1 coffespoon of vanilla extract or flavour

Separate the cold eggs to two different dishes. Start whisking the whites, gradually adding the caster sugar, this will make your whites be very stiff when done. You'll know they are beaten properly when you take the beater out and you can see stiff peaks. Then mix the yolks with the vanilla extract and pour the mixture over the whites. 

You will have to use a spoon to mix it, never a hand whisk. Sift the flour into the mixture, again gradually, and keep stirring carefully until you get a consistent mixture. Bake it for about 20-25 minutes at 170 deg Celsius, with the fans on. Make sure you bake it properly, you don't want an unbaked centre. 

The filling will consist of two parts, one is a traditional walnut filling that you would use for Christmas cakes, the other half is vanilla custard. 

Ingredients: 

• 200 grs of walnuts
• 100 mls of milk
• 100 grs of caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of rum flavour
• zest of half a lemon
• a couple of drops of lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of instant coffee
• 400 mls of milk for the custard
• 1 pack of custard powder, vanilla flavoured
• sweetener or sugar for the custard, according to your taste 

We will start by roasting the walnuts in a dry pan just until they start to smell really good, we don't want to burn them. When that's done, move them to a plate so they cool down more quickly. 

When they are cold, you will need to grind them. In the meantime pour the 100 mls of milk into a smaller pot and place it on low heat. Dissolve the coffee and the sugar in the milk and bring it to a boil. That's when you can add the walnuts, but you will have to give it a good stir too. Add the lemon zest and the tiny bit of juice as well. Cooking time is about 10 minutes but keep stirring otherwise it will stick to the bottom of the pot. After the 10 minutes have passed, let the mixture cool down. 

All you need to do now is to prepare the custard and let that cool down as well. The final step is mixing the two parts together in a mixing bowl. Don't forget to taste! :)

Frosting for the top of the cake:

You need one tablespoon of instant coffee and just a tiny bit of hot water, so that the coffee dissolves. Then add some caster sugar, keep stirring it and keep adding the sugar until you get a frosting which can be easily spread on top of the cake. 

Cut the sponge cake into 4 layers, and fill it with the walnut cream. You will have enough left to cover the cake from the outside as well. Then you can sprinkle the extra ground walnut on the side and the top of the cake. If you guys know a better way to spread the frosting on top of the cake then don't do what I did because the ground walnut on the top kept sticking into it. I somehow managed to spread it all over the top but it doesn't look so nice. You can also place full walnuts on top of the cake which you previously dipped in the frosting and the ground walnut.

Coffee cream cake with berries - sugarfree!

Another one of my cakes that you can make completely sugarfree if you want, but it works with sugar just as well. All the sugar I put in this one was two packs of vanilla sugar but you can leave that out and substitute it with xylitol.

I baked a sponge cake in a medium sized cake ring, the recipe is in one of the previous posts, in case you need a bulletproof recipe for a sponge cake. This one is made of 7 eggs, containing only xylitol and the above mentioned vanilla sugar that can be left out.

Ingredients for the coffee cream:

• 500 grs of mascarpone
• 400 grs of whipping cream 
• 1 pack of express gelatine fix
• 1 cup of coffee brewed in half a cup of water
• liquid sweetener 

Fruits on top: blueberries, raspberries, red currant and blackberries but obviously it's up to you what you want to decorate your cake with.

Whip the cream and carefull whisk in the mascarpone, add the coffee and the sweetener and give it a thorough stir. It probably won't be thick enough so you will have to use the gelatine fix. Just pour it in and mix the whole cream again thoroughly. Taste it, make sure it's sweet enough and that you don't need to add more coffee.

Cut the sponge cake in three layers, and top the bottom layer with the coffee cream, lots of it! :) Sprinkle some of the red currant on top of the cream and cover it with the next layer of sponge cake. Do it all over again, then place the last layer on top.

Cover the whole cake with the leftover cream and arrange the rest of the fruit on top, any way you like. I would recommend putting the cake in the fridge for a couple of hours, so that it can set and the sponge cake can absorb some moisture from the cream.

Tortilla wraps with tuna and chicken seasoned with herbs

I like wrapping things in tortillas because there's no limit to the versions that you can come up with. There is only one trick to it: you have to warm the tortillas up otherwise they will break. I don't recommend microwaving them, it's a lot better if you throw them in a dry and hot pan, and give each side no more than 30 seconds. It's healthier and they will taste even better. If you don't know how to wrap a tortilla, you might find this link useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GOnGbTHqN8  

 6 tortillas (25 cms in diameter) should easily serve 4 people.

Ingredients for the tuna filling:

• 1 can of tuna in brine
• 2 tablespoons of mayo
• juice of quarter of a lemon
• salt
• freshly ground pepper

Drain the tuna and with loosen up the chunks with a fork, add the mayo and the lemon juice, the salt and the pepper and give it a thorough stir. You want to taste it and add more lemon juice or salt, if needed.

Ingredients for the chicken:

• one chicken breast fillet
• salt
• freshly ground pepper

Slice the chicken breast up any way you like really, I cut it into thinner slices, and cook each side for only a couple of minutes so that they don't become dry. Don't forget to sprinkle some salt and pepper on top of each side.

Ingredients for the sauce with herbs:

• 3 tablespoons of sour cream
• 1 tablespoon of mayo
• 1 handful of chives
• 1 handful of thyme
• a bit of parsley
• salt
• freshly ground pepper 

Chop all of the herbs fine, the thyme leaves you only need to pick from the stems, and add everything to the mayo and sour cream. Add the salt and the pepper, stir it and then taste!

There's only one thing left to do: fill the tortillas and wrap them up. What I added to the one with chicken was iceberg salad, ruccola, cherry tomatoes cut in halves, finely chopped spring onions, some cheese and of course the sauce. The one with the tuna also had some ruccola in it, along with spring onions, tomatoes, cheese and I tried one with sauce in it, it was awesome!

The secret to the perfect apple pie and its recipe

It's not hard to make a good applie pie, you only have to pay attention to a couple of minor details. Based on my experience with different kinds of applie pie I can say that there are 3 very important characteristics that make an apple pie the best one you can make:

1. The filling has to be sweet and sour enough at the same time. There's nothing worse than when you can't taste the apples because the whole filling is just too sweet. 

2. You mustn't overcook the apples for the filling. It has to be soft and it has to have the right texture for a filling but you mustn't cook it until it all falls apart. 

3. The crust needs some whole grain flour in it, it will taste a lot better than when you only put plain flour in it. 

And of course you always have to apply the golden rule: lots of filling, with a thin crust! :) 

Ingredients for a medium sized pie:

• 300 grs of plain flour
• 100 grs of any kind of whole grain flour
• 50 grs of fresh yeast
• 150 mls of milk
• 100 grs of granulated sugar
• 100 grs of cold butter
• 1 coffe spoon of ground cloves
• 1 egg for the egg wash

•  3 kgs of apples approx., mix sweet and sour kinds if possible
• 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons of xylitol
• zest of one lemon
• juice of 1,5 lemons
• two handfuls of raisins
• 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

 It's best to prepare the dough first and while it rests you can make the filling. Measure the two types of flour, mix them with the cloves, also add the butter, crumble it into the flour mixture. Heat the milk up a bit, not too hot though, and add a bit of sugar and the yeast. You have to let it rise, then you can add it to the flour mixture. When that's done, you can just be lazy as I usually am, and throw the whole thing into the machine so that it kneads it instead of you. If you don't have the possibility, you will have to go in and do it with your hands. You can add warm water if it's not sticking together but in the end it has to be a flexible, easy to handle dough, so if it's too sticky just add some more flour. Put it away until you make the filling so that the yeast can do its job. 

For the filling you will have to peel the apples and grate them. When that's done, you will have to squeeze the juice out of the apple (by the way if you drain it in the end you get a pure, 100% natural apple juice and it's delicious!) which you have to put into a pan along with the raisins, the cinnamon, the lemon juice, the lemon zest and the sugar (and the sweetener), on low heat. Let it cook for about 15 minutes, give it a good stir every now and then and taste it, that's very important. You can add more sugar/sweetener or lemon juice if needed. When done, let it cool for a while. 

 All you have to do now is get your rolling pin and roll the dough out so it can fit into the tin of your choice, lined with baking paper. Add the filling and decorate it in any way you want! It needs about 20-25 minutes at 180 C in the oven.

Salmon & lemon spaghetti in 15 minutes

This might be the quickest spaghetti recipe I ever tried, it's very minimalistic but if there is salmon involved, there is never need to add so many other ingredients. 

Ingredients:

• 1 piece of salmon fillet, about 100 grams, without skin
• 1 thicker spring onion
• 1 big handful of whole grain spaghetti
• juice of half a lemon
• 2 tablespoons of sour cream
• salt and a bit of oil 

While you wait for the water to boil, slice the spring onion fine and start cooking it in a saucer pan on low heat with only a bit of oil. Once you got started on the onions, you can prepare the salmon. It needs to be cut into small cubes (if there are any fish bones in the fillet you will find them when cutting it up), and thrown into the pan with the onions. 

Give it a good stir, then add the lemon juice and sprinkle some salt on the pieces. They need only 5 minutes to be fully cooked, then you can stir in the sour cream and add the drained spaghetti.

Dried fruit and chocolate milk loaf

This milk loaf is basically another version of this recipe, so I will write the recipe down now, which I didn't do the first time I uploaded it on the blog. It's a bit time consuming but definitely worth the effort.

 Ingredients:

• 350 grams of  plain flour
• 100 grams of whole wheat spelt flour
• 50 grams of fresh yeast
• 70 grams of butter
• 100 grams of caster sugar
• 1 egg for the dough
• 1 egg for wash 
• 200 mls of lukewarm milk
• all kinds of dried fruit
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• zest of one lemon
• zest of one orange
• 2 tablespoons of rum
• 100 grams of dark chocolate 

Measure the two types of flour for the dough and then mix it with the sugar. Then you can add the butter and the yeast, cut into pieces, and crumble it into the flour. Add the cinnamon, the nutmeg, the egg and the milk. Give it a good stir with a wooden spoon and when it starts to combine well, keep kneading it with your hands. It has to become this soft but not sticky dough, so you can add a bit more flour, if needed. Place it in a bowl, cover it and let it rise for about an hour. 

In the meantime mix the dried fruit with the rum, so they can soak it up and be even more delicious ;) Also, line a middle sized cake ring with parchment paper. When the dough is double its original size, give it another round of kneading, and then cut the dough into 8 pieces. What you need to to with each of them is stretch them out with a rolling pin so they are more or less 10 cms wide and  25 cms long and have a rectangular shape. Then fill the pieces with the dried fruit and the chopped up chocolate. Then roll it up starting from the longer side of the rectangle, and roll the whole thing up so it's shaped like a bun. 

 

 

Place each of these in the cake ring, next to each other so that there's not space in between the buns. When you have all of them inside the cake ring, give the whole thing a good egg wash. Bake it in the oven at 180 C for about 45 minutes. When done, take it out of the ring, let it cool down and ice it with icing sugar dissolved in a bit of cold water.

 

Grilled mozzarella wrapped in Black Forest ham

Not having access to Parma ham and buffalo mozzarella, I had to re-design and make this amazingly delicious dish with regular mozzarella that you can buy in any store and Black Forest ham. Ruccola and balsamic vinegar lovers will appreciate this recipe, I hope :)

 

Ingredients, serves 2: 

• 3 mozzarella balls 
• fresh ruccola, the amount depends on how much you like it... :)
• 9 slices of Black Forest ham
• dark balsamic vinegar 

Cut each mozzarella ball into three pieces and wrap each of them in one slice of ham. If it wants to fall apart,  you can stick a toothpick in each piece. Heat up a tiny bit of oil in a pan and grill both sides of the ham, and when that's done, pour in the vinegar. Let the acid boil away, so that it thickens and becomes very sticky. 

Pile the ruccole up on a plate, and place the hot pieces of wrapped mozzarella right on top of it. Pour the remaining "dressing" all over it, so it can mix with the ruccola too.