Good Eats

Lately it's been so cloudy, as if winter is trying to drag us as far as it can before spring time.  As usual  the lighting is horrible but the good news is that it gets darker much later in the day!

These are a few dishes I've enjoyed making (and eating) in the last week or so.

Grandma's famous meat goulash recipe, my oven fries and fresh squeaky cheese curds come together in this Canadian favourite: Poutine!

Here's another dish that surprised me because it came together in 2 pots almost like a 15 minute meal! 

I started with white jasmine rice, set that on the back burner. 

1 1/2 cup rice

2 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups water

Bring to a boil, set on low, cover and let it cook until fluffy and liquid is absorbed. 

Stir fry: 

-1 lb ground beef, lightly seasoned with salt and rolled into tiny meatballs (do it really quick, even use a spoon or melon baller to scoop off bits)

- 1 container of button or cramini mushrooms, sliced

- 1 bunch of broccoli, stem removed and florets cut very tiny to cook evenly

- 1/3 head of cauliflower, same thing, cut into bite size pieces

- Snow peas or snap peas, a bunch of them

(baby bok choy or shanghai bok choy works great here too, anything you like, as long as it all can cook around the same time frame) 

- Fresh ginger, grated, about 1/2 tsp

- Fresh garlic, grated, about 1/4 tsp

Directions: 

Fire up the pan/pot, I use a large pot so that things don't splash.  Start frying mushrooms in a bit of oil, they like to cook in high heat and very quickly.  Lightly season with salt and remove to set aside. 

Add all the greens, season lightly with salt and add a bit of water to the bottom of the pot, cover and steam. This is done in less than 10 minutes.  Keep your veg a little crunchy for better texture. As soon as you can poke a knife into the stalky area of the broccoli or cauliflower you know it's done. 

Add to mushrooms or set aside separately. 

Make sure your pan is dry and then add a little oil to pan again, about 1 tbsp and fry meatballs until almost done through.  

Add: 

1 tbsp soy sauce

Fresh ginger, fresh garlic

A splash of rice wine vinegar

1/2 tbsp brown sugar 

1 tbsp apricot jam (I used a kind of puree in a bottle, mainly used for drinks) 

If you have a korean BBQ sauce on hand, the kind with the pear in it just use that, a couple of tbsps. 

Swirl the pan so that everything bubbles away and coats the meatballs.  

Remove and assemble bowls with rice, stir fry, and some meatballs. 

Garnish with green onion, and for a little spice add a drizzle of Sriracha! 

Enjoy! 

... and of course Goulash is just great on noodles!

Linzer Cookie

Linzer Cookie


Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
2 egg yolks
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup seedless strawberry jam
Powdered sugar

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 330F. Prepare cookie sheets with silpat or parchment paper.
In the work bowl of your stand mixer, cream together butter and powdered sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add in egg yolks one at a time, then lemon zest. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, almond meal and salt, then gradually add dry ingredients to the butter mixture, beating just until blended. Divide dough into 2 equal portions. Cover and chill 1 hour.
Roll each portion to a 1/8-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface; cut with a 3-inch heart-shaped cutter. Cut centers out of half of cookies with a 1 1/2-inch heart-shaped cutter. Make sure that you have an even number of solid and cut out cookies. Bake for 15 minutes; cool on wire racks.
Spread solid cookies with jam and then sandwich with a cut out cookie. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Courtesy of A cup of Sugar.. a Pinch of Salt 

For the complete cookie list this year check out the list for 2012 here

Mom's Schnitzel & my oven fries

Breaded steaks: 

Thinly sliced (and pounded) pieces of beet or veal (your choice!)   Usually it's the eye of round I believe, not sure but ask your butcher, or you can find it already sliced in the supermarket labelled schnitzel or frying steak.

However many you'd like to make, I'd do one per person if it's a bigger slice or two if they're smaller.

Take your meat and seaon with salt, black pepper and set aside.
Slice a large or medium onion in big strips and then toss all the onion with the meat in a casserole and set aside to marinade.  The onions will lend the meat great flavour  (if you are not a fan of onion - like some members in my family - you can leave it out although one person in my family doesn't mind the onion flavour and the other found it too oniony which caused heartburn)

Maybe use shallots, if you want, they're milder.

When ready to fry heat oil in wok or shallow pan for pan frying.

(remove meat from the onion - some moisture may be drawn out of the meat so just lay them on a paper towel)

This is assembly work so set out 3 shallow plates

- Flour  (season with Aromat- it's a German/european seasoning salt type thing, it may not be healthy but the flavour is too nastolgic for me to give up)   If you don't have it use salt, a dash of garlic salts and black pepper.
- Egg, beaten (add a dash of worstershire sauce, if you want)
- Panko or ground corn flake crumbs (this is what we use!)

..  and begin dredging the slices of meat in that order, flour, egg, and crumbs and then frying on both sides until golden and draining on more paper towel.

My Oven Fries: 

Heat oven to 425 F.

Peel (or you can keep the peels on) and slice potatoes into fries, not too thick or thin and they MUST all be equal in size as to cook evenly.

3 large potatoes works great, or 5 smaller potatoes.

Prepare a large baking pan, as not to crowed the fries and line with a sheet of parchment, make sure it's bigger than the pan for easy cleanup and so oil does not go everywhere.

- Toss sliced potatoes in a large bowl and add 3 tbsp oil or so and a big pinch/dash of salt. Toss and then pour them onto the tray and arrange so they're in a single layer.

Bake and flip over when bottom side is golden so the top can also brown.  If you have convection settings in your oven use it, as for me both in my oven and toaster oven both sides brown at the same time cutting down on baking time and yielding some crispy fries.  It takes about 30 mins of so on regular bake.

Kalter hund

Here's a fun recipe! Great for kids too, no baking required.

My mother used to make a few variations of this German cake, but this time I did a simple melted chocolate and cookie (there were some hazelnuts in the chocolate) and it made a perfect snack for gaming on the pc (Yes you heard that right, I prefer the PC to console gaming :))

Basically it's very simple, just melt your favourite type of chocolate and get some of your favourite cookies, we usually use the social tea cookies (we call them "Baby cookies" in our house) but you could do an arrow root cookie, or digestive biscuit or graham cracker, whatever you like!

Layer the chocolate with cookie and set in the fridge then slice it, it may break a bit but it's ok because the crumbs make a nice topping for ice cream ^_^

You could add some heavy cream to your chocolate for more of a softer "ganache" or my mother did a chocolate pudding cake like this where the cookies softened up nicely like layers of cake while it set in the fridge.

Enjoy!

P.S it was a super rainy day today, drizzle would not stop so it made it hard to take some good shots but I gave it my best shot. The rain is great for the garden but I hope the sun returns soon.

Black Forest cake

Black forest is one of the easiest cakes to make and it's very tasty and impressive.

All you need is the sponge cake (recipe below) and then whipped cream about a litre and a half.

Dark chocolate for shaving and to make curls.

For the filling we mixed some leftover cherry filling from the pierogi (it is just fresh cherries pitted and boiled with sugar) with some cherry jam and the juice from a jar of sour cherries (you'll find it in a european store)

The cherries from the jar also went into the cake but we sliced them in half and reserved them.

Also we mixed some cherry kirsch into the jam and soaked each layer in this mixture then layered with a third of the chopped sour cherries (from the jar) and some whipped cream. We had 4 layers of cake and 3 layers of filling.

Then we covered the whole cake in whipped cream and coated the sides with shaved chocolate.

The large curls of chocolate were reserved for the top and we piped roses on the top and topped with stemmed maraschino cherries.


Black forest sponge cake:

6 oz Bittersweet chocolate; cut

6 tb Unsalted butter

1 ts Vanilla extract

1/3 c Water

6 lg Eggs; at room temperature

1 c Sugar

1 c Cake flour

1/2 ts Salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Butter 3 pans of 7" measurements and place a round parchment in the bottom of each.

Alternately use a 9 X 13 pan (as I did)

- In a double boiler melt the bittersweet chocolate with the butter & the 1/3 cups water

- In your mixer bowl whisk the eggs with the sugar for 10 mins until very fluffy, adding in the vanilla at the end.

- Meanwhile place a piece of parchment onto the counter and sift your flour and salt.

Now cool down the mixture in the double boiler and then add it into the eggs, and also gently fold in the flour.

Bake the round pans for 10-15 mins and the rectangular pan baked for about 20-25 (I kept an eye on it!)

I made this recipe twice yielding 2 rectangular pans and slicing each cake horizontally for 4 layers in total. It was a big cake but it goes fast!

** IF you do not have bittersweet chocolate substitute for a mixture of the following ingredients in your double boiler.

1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp plus 1 1/2 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar

3 tbsp and 2 tsp butter (in addition to the butter that is already in the recipe mentioned above)