Orange Blintzes with Warm Strawberry Sauce

Blintzes, either sweet or savoury are ultimately a particular handling of the ever-so-versatile crêpe. They are a bit decadent and a little fiddly to make, but can be prepared a day in advance (or frozen, if you have the freezer space for it), and a wonderful item to look forward to - especially for breakfast or dessert. Their origin appears to be central and eastern European, with the Russians, Hungarians, and Poles (and maybe more) all laying claim (and infinite regional variations). They were popularized in North America by the Jewish population, where they are a holiday favourite (particularly for Shavuot) and are also a Shrove Tuesday classic for Christians.

Because this is meant to be a luxurious, festive dish, I am using my recipe for the egg-rich French-style crêpes, but after consulting a lot of references, I decided to go with what appears to be the standard method, namely cooking the crêpe itself only on one side until the top becomes somewhat dry, and using that as the inside surface of the wrapped blintz.

Living in Germany, quark is the natural cheese of choice for the filling, although ricotta would also work nicely. These are sweet, with both sugar and orange marmalade in the filling, but not too sweet. I've topped them with fresh strawberries that have been warmed in melted marmalade, but you do run the risk of the strawberry flavour dominating. The solution for that would be to use peeled mandarin slices instead of strawberries, so that the orange flavour stays consistent. We were pretty happy with the combination of flavours, although the orange was a little overwhelmed.

Orange Blintzes with Warm Strawberry Sauce

Makes 6 Blintzes

Wrapper

1/2 recipe egg-rich crêpes
butter for frying finished blintzes

Filling

250 grams quark
3 tablespoons cream cheese
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
1/2 egg, beaten
zest of one orange (optional)

Sauce

2 tablespoons orange marmalade
2 tablespoons water (or one tablespoon water, one tablespoon lemon juice)
6-8 fresh strawberries, sliced

First thing: I have not lost my mind when I call for half an egg in the filling. A half-recipe of the crêpes calls for one and a half eggs, and the filling calls for half an egg. I simply beat two eggs until smooth, and then remove 2 tablespoons of beaten egg to use in the filling, reserving the remaining 1 1/2 eggs for the crêpe batter. Easy. Of course, if you decide to double the recipe, you can operate in terms of whole eggs.

You can make the filling ahead and store it in the fridge while the batter for the crêpes rests, and then cook all of the crêpes before you start filling them. You do want to make sure the crêpes have cooled at least to room temperature before filling, though, or the filling will start to melt and slide around, and the rolled-up blintz will be super floppy and hard to transfer to a plate or skillet; I know this from curse-laden experience. Let your crêpes cool! Spread them on a cooling rack until they're all cooked, and then start with the oldest to fill them. By the time you get to the last crêpe, it should be cool enough to handle without melting everything.

Cook the crêpes according to the recipe in the link, but only cooking on one side. As soon as the top of the crêpe is dry looking, remove the crêpe to a cooling rack and start the next one. The dry "top" side of the crêpe will be the inside of the finished blintz.

Fill the blintzes by piling a couple of tablespoons' worth of filling on the lower third of the cooled crêpe. Fold the bottom up just to cover the filling, and fold the sides in, envelope (or burrito) style. Continue to roll up until the blintz is a tidy package. It may take a few tries to get the shape the pleases you most - longer and thinner, or shorter and squarer. Your choice.

Move the filled blintzes to a tray or plate, cover with plastic wrap, and chill up to one day. At that point you could move the tray to the freezer until they are frozen solid, and then pile them carefully into a bag for longer-term storage. Or, you could fry them up right away.



You can make the sauce ahead, too, but it is best made just before you fry the blintzes. Melt the marmalade and water together and stir until smooth. Add the sliced strawberries (or orange segments) and stir gently until glossy and coated with the glaze. Turn off the heat.

Blintzes should be fried in butter, for the best flavour. They don't take very long, so make sure your attention is not needed elsewhere. If you're also making other items, or you're making a double batch, you can make the blintzes and keep them hot in a warm oven until you're ready to serve.



Heat a knob of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter has foamed out, start laying your blintzes in a single layer in the pan. I find my 12-inch skillet works very nicely for 6 blintzes at a time. As soon as the blintzes are golden and starting to crisp on the underside, carefully turn them over using a spatula or flipper - don't try to use tongs, because they are far too delicate. When both sides have browned nicely, transfer to the tray in the pre-warmed oven, or serve immediately.



Just like with crêpes, there are many ways to finish blintzes. If you've made the strawberry sauce, go ahead and spoon that over the plated blintzes, but you could also go with powdered sugar with-or-without a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, or a pile of mixed fruit on the side, for example. A few curls of orange zest would be beautiful on these - I would have absolutely done that, if I had had a fresh orange on hand.

Enjoy.

Papaya & Camembert Quesadillas

There used to be a restaurant called "Latin Quarter" on Vancouver's Commercial Drive. In its heyday it was renowned as a place with great live music (and dancing on Fridays and Saturdays), cheap pitchers of sangria, and a tasty latin and latin-fusion menu. We became familiar with it really only in its dying days, but there are a few menu items that we ordered over and over because they were so good.

There were three quesadillas on that menu: Shrimp & Cheese (I cannot precisely remember what kind of cheese, but it was a creamy white melting cheese, perhaps Edam), Brie & Mango, and Camembert & Papaya. They were all good, although the fruit ones were my favourites. They came served with a fresh tomato salsa, and while I was happy to eat them plain, the salsa did add a surprisingly nice dimension.

This recipe is so simple that it's really more of a serving suggestion. Realistically, you could just look at the title and decide to make it. The only tip that might not be intuitive is that the papaya should, ideally, be sliced into large, thin half-moons, to ensure it doesn't slide out of the quesadilla while you're trying to slice (or eat) it. I've tried it both ways, and this works best.

We served this with pan-seared cumin and ancho chicken breast alongside, but it could easily have been accompanied by some thick beans and guacamole for a vegetarian option. Or on its own, as a snack or appetizer.

Since the flour tortillas that I have found here in Germany have been the terrible pre-packaged kind with a shelf life of six months, I now make my own. Generally I plan to make a batch of 9 at some point during the weekend, and then use them as needed throughout the week (all at once for enchiladas, of course). Having the tortillas on hand already made this dinner a super fast weeknight option.

Camembert & Papaya Quesadillas

Per person:

2 6-inch flour tortillas
4-6 thin half-moon slices of papaya (enough to completely cover a tortilla)
4 thick slices of Camembert
a little cilantro (optional)
vegetable oil

Preheat your oven to 180 C / 350 F (especially if you need to make these in batches) with a baking sheet warming in the oven.

Preheat a heavy skillet (cast iron is ideal) over medium-high heat.

Brush the tortillas very lightly with oil on one side each. If you are doing multiple quesadillas, only brush them with oil just before you're going to cook each one, so they don't get soggy.

Place the first tortilla oil-side-down on the hot skillet. Let it crisp a little, and get golden spots on the underside, and remove from the pan and set aside. Repeat with the second tortilla, but after it has been in the pan for long enough to get a bit warm, lay out the slices of Camembert across the tortilla. When the cheese starts to melt, add the layer of papaya. If you're feeling cheese-crazy, you can add more cheese on top of the papaya. Peek at the bottom of the tortilla by slipping a spatula under the edge, and if it is nicely golden, add the first tortilla back as a "lid" (golden side up) and transfer the quesadilla to the tray in the warm oven. The cheese will continue to melt and the papaya will warm a little as you prepare the next quesadilla.

To serve, remove the quesadilla to a cutting board, and cross-chop into quarters. Serve with fresh salsa (if you have it) or hot sauce on the side. Cilantro garnish is totally optional, but does go nicely.

Easy Weeknight Risotto Bolognese

This was inspired by Nigella Lawson's recipe for Risotto Bolognese from her book Kitchen, but to be honest, I didn't really follow it. I skimmed the ingredient list and directions and decided that it was more about the idea, the fact of combining two normally discrete dishes into a delicious juxtaposition, and then I just ran with that. Consequently, my ingredients, ratios and even my method ended up being quite different from hers.

The shortest possible version of this recipe goes something like this: Build a bolognese sauce, and then use that as a base to build a risotto on top of. That of course depends on the cook knowing what normally goes into both of those things, and otherwise being willing to take the rest on faith. Fortunately, that's me. This is a true skillet dinner, without the need to remove anything to a separate plate or pan at any point during the cooking process.

I won't claim that this is a really serious Bolognese (note the use of "Easy Weeknight" as a modifier), but it's a meaningful nod in the general direction, and for this dish, that's good enough for me. Although, if you happen to have some genuine Bolognese tucked away in your freezer that you want to use instead, go for it. It's not a lightning-fast dish to make - risotto takes time, after all, but it's very straight forward, and if you use a chop-and-drop method, it all comes together surprisingly quickly.

Easy Weeknight Risotto Bolognese

Serves 4

4 thin (or 2 thick) slices of bacon, finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, very finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or minced
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
400 grams minced beef/pork blend (or meatloaf mix)
2 teaspoons beef stock paste (such as Better Than Bouillon or Alnatura Rinderbrühe)
pinch dried oregano
big pinch dried basil
big pinch ground white pepper
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup vermouth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 400 gram can of finely chopped tomatoes
1 cup arborio (or other suitable risotto rice)
4 cups hot water from a recently boiled kettle
Fresh basil, for finishing and garnish
Freshly grated parmesan

In a large heavy skillet, over medium-high heat, fry up the bacon until it is a bit crispy and releases its fat into the pan. Add the olive oil and stir through. Add the onion and garlic, and stir through. Stir and cook until the onion is thoroughly softened and translucent. Add the grated carrot, and stir through, cooking for about five minutes until wilted and starting to become tender, and the excess liquid has evaporated.

Add the minced meat and stir, breaking it up with a big wooden spoon as you go. Fry and stir until the meat is a little browned, and then add the stock paste, oregano, dried basil, white pepper, and the vermouth. Stir and scrape up the bottom of the skillet while until the vermouth has evaporated. Add the milk in two stages, stirring until mostly evaporated in each case. Add the tomato paste, and stir through. Add the chopped tomatoes and their juices and stir through.

Let the mixture get completely hot and bubbly, and then stir the rice in. Reduce the heat to medium. Add a bit of water from the kettle, and stir until the extra water is absorbed by the rice. Basically, at this stage you just keep repeating that, adding the water a bit at a time, stirring between additions until the water is mostly absorbed, until you've either used all the water, or the rice is cooked to your liking. The rice will slowly absorb not only the water but the juices from the sauce itself, the grains swelling to full size and taking on a creamy appearance. The combination of the carrots and the tomatoes will give the finished dish a uniquely orange-red tone, quite different from most meat/tomato based sauces, but it coats the rice grains beautifully.

When all of the water is absorbed and the rice grains are cooked to your satisfaction, spoon into shallow bowls and garnish with basil and freshly grated cheese. And maybe some garlic bread.

If you have leftovers of this, it reheats very nicely in a covered casserole in the oven (you will want to add in a bit of water, and poke some holes to allow speedier reheating), and I imagine it would reheat well in a microwave, too. If you must reheat it on the stovetop, try not to over-stir it. While it's stirred to death during the making, after it is fully cooked, cooled, and reheated again, it can get a bit mushy if you stir it too vigourously.

Garlic-Braised Pork Belly

This recipe is one component of the intriguing multi-step Vampire Slayer Ramen-Express recipe by the wonderful Lady and Pups.

While I wasn't quite prepared to make the entire ramen recipe as written, the pork belly on its own seemed worth trying immediately, and that was exactly correct. It will make your house smell insanely good, and is definitely worth the long wait after it goes into the oven. I note that the original recipe calls for 30 cloves of garlic (and there's another 14 in the rest of her finished dish), but I felt that 20 was plenty given that the ones I was working with were giant mutant German garlic cloves.

Because pork belly is a bit tricky to slice when freshly cooked, it's a great idea to make this ahead, and then simply slice and gently reheat it to serve.

We had this the first night with veggie yakisoba made from homemade ramen noodles (which I completely forgot to photograph, once cooked) and reheated the leftover pork belly to serve over rice with carrot kinpira, a few nights later, to make the donburi above.

The original recipe recommended a cooking vessel just barely big enough to fit the pork, which is what I did. It did mean that I had to be quite careful later on, not to smash to paste the fragile braised garlic cloves. My piece of pork belly fit perfectly into the oval dutch oven when raw, although once it had been seared on all sides, it drew itself up, becoming narrower and taller. I would probably cut it into two chunks next time, for ease of handling and more surface-contact with the braising liquid.

Garlic-Braised Pork Belly

minimally adapted from Lady and Pups

Serves 4

4 whole dried shitake mushrooms (or 16 small ones) + 1/2 cup hot water
400 grams skin-on pork belly
20 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup sake
2 tablespoons less-sodium soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon mirin
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 tablespoon peanut oil

Trim any excessive stems from the shiitake, clean them well with a damp cloth, and let them soak in the hot water for 20-30 minutes. Peel the garlic cloves, but leave them whole. Combine the sake, soy sauce, mirin, salt, and white pepper in a small bowl and set aside. Now remove the mushrooms from their soaking liquid, retaining both separately.

Preheat your oven to 330 F/ 165 C.

In a heavy (preferably cast iron) pan that's not too big for your piece of pork, heat the peanut oil and then carefully sear the pork belly on all sides (start skin-side-down). The pork skin should be nicely blistered and a little freaky-looking, if you're not used to that sort of thing. Remove the pork (browned on all sides, now) and add the whole garlic cloves to the pan. Give them a quick stir about and then scoot them to the sides to make space, and put the pork back in the pan. Add the mushroom soaking liquid (pour it in carefully, and don't let any sludge in the bottom go into the pan) and the sake mixture to the pan, and then tuck the mushrooms in around the pork, submerged where possible.

Cover the pan with its lid, or cover tightly with foil if there's no lid, and put the pan in the preheated oven. Allow it to braise for 2 1/2 hours, turning the pork belly over every 30 minutes, carefully not smashing up the garlic too badly.

Remove the finished pork belly from the dregs of the braising liquid, and let cool. If you are making it ahead, once it is cold you can wrap it up tightly and put it in the fridge. If making ahead is not an option and you want to serve it right away, you will need to be okay with the fact that the slices will be rather messy-looking.

I used the remaining braising liquid and the mushrooms to make yakisoba, with a few of the garlic cloves thrown in for good measure. The slices were a mess, because I sliced it warm from the oven, but the rest was packaged up to make the donburi that you see above, and the slices are much, much neater.

In order to reheat the pork belly, I first sliced it, and then lay the slices in a small skillet with a quarter-scaled version of the braising liquid (minus the mushroom liquid). I then reheated it, slowly, covered, over very low heat on the stovetop. A couple of times I gently swirled the pan to make sure the liquid had contact with the cut surfaces of the pork belly slices.

This is without a doubt the best pork belly dish that I've made yet. I can't wait to make it again.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

These little darlings were adapted (extremely minimally) from Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake. I must confess, 99% of the work that went into making these was my friend James, and I mostly provided the kitchen space, air traffic control, some washing up, and (she said optimistically) engaging banter. Well, and the butter icing recipe. And some bossiness, which was part of the package deal, because I cannot shut up in the kitchen, it turns out.

The cupcakes themselves turned out very nicely, with a good texture - tender, with a nice even crumb and a desirable bit of springiness - and the recipe is quite generous, which meant we got 24 cupcakes out of a recipe originally for a single 10-inch springform pan. And, of course, a shorter baking time.

The icing in the original recipe is a cream cheese version, which I really don't care for at all (despite being a fan, generally, of both cream cheese and icing). There is literally no instance of cream cheese frosting that I think wouldn't be better served by a butter icing, and that includes carrot cake (if you must), red velvet cake, and cinnamon buns. Further, James had brought a bottle of Orange Truffle Bailey's specifically to use in the icing, and so it made much more sense to use an icing recipe whose flavours are conducive to such switch-outs.

Since James had already purchased the Union Jack muffin-tin liners, we went ahead and used those instead of my usual habit of not using liners at all in favour of butter (or canola spritz). This of course made cupcake removal from the tin a much speedier process, which helps when you are making two batches even if you have two tins. One of the cupcakes got a doubled liner, and so the flag didn't darken quite as much under the influence of the dark, wet batter, so that one was extra patriotic, I guess. Certainly a touch more photogenic.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Orange Truffle Bailey's Icing

Adapted from Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness Cake from Feast

250 ml Guinness (or stout of your choice)
250 grams unsalted butter
75 grams cocoa powder
400 grams plain granulated sugar
142 ml sour cream
2 large eggs, beaten well
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
275 grams cake flour (405 flour, in Germany)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Orange Truffle Bailey's Icing

This recipe can be halved for smaller batches of cupcakes

500 grams (4 cups) icing sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
125 ml Orange Truffle Bailey's Irish Cream (or regular Bailey's, or ordinary dairy cream with a splash of vanilla, if you prefer)

Obviously, you need a good digital scale to take on this recipe. Start with a large saucepan, because otherwise you will need to transfer to a larger bowl mid-mix, as we did. Learn from our mistake!

Preheat your oven to 350 F/ 180 C. Place a rack in the middle of the oven. Place liners in the muffin wells of your 12-cup tin, or, grease the tin thoroughly if you are not using liners.

Warm the Guinness in a large saucepan, and slowly add the butter until it is all melted. Remove from the heat.

To the warm Guinness/butter mixture, whisk in the cocoa powder and the sugar, and whisk until smooth. It's a lot of sugar, but don't be scared: it's making 24 cupcakes.

Separately, mix the eggs and sour cream together until smooth, and then add the vanilla extract and beat that in well, too. Yes, it's a lot of vanilla extract - it has to stand up to some pretty intense flavours, so just go with it.

Also separately, combine the flour and baking soda, and whisk together. There's no salt in this recipe, and it doesn't appear to need it. This seems weird to me, but it turned out just fine.

To the Guinness/butter mixture, add the eggs/sour cream/vanilla mixture, and stir until just combined. Then add the flour and baking soda mixture, and carefully whisk that in until just combined, preferably using a folding motion to minimize any unnecessary gluten development. When there are no longer any streaks of flour (the mixture will be a bit bubbly from the combination of stout and baking soda, but don't worry about it), spoon the batter into the waiting liners. Don't fill them completely to the top, just about 3/4 full is perfect. You should only get half way through your batter for the first batch. If you have a second muffin tin, you can prepare it while the first tin is in the oven. If not, you'll have to wait until the first batch comes out and the cupcakes are removed before you can proceed to get the remaining batter spooned out.

Bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes. If your oven is a bit slow, they might need a smidge more - you can always test them for doneness with a strand of spaghetti or a toothpick. Or, you know, a cake skewer. If they are ready, pull them out of the oven, and as soon as they are cool enough to handle, remove them from the tin and place them on a cooling rack.

When all the cupcakes are cooked, and all have cooled to room temperature, it's time to make the butter icing.

In a medium mixing bowl, place the icing sugar, the butter, and the Bailey's (or cream and vanilla). If you have an electric mixer, use it on high until the mixture becomes a thick, spreadable icing. If you are using manpower, as we were, we found using a wooden spoon far better than a whisk for thoroughly combining everything. If the icing is too stiff, you can add a bit more liquid of your choice - more Bailey's, or more cream, until it reaches the desired consistency.

When the cupcakes are cool, cover the tops with frosting in whatever manner you like. I don't currently have a piping bag, so we simply used table knives to sort of spackle the icing onto the top of each cupcake. We probably could have added more Bailey's and made the icing a little smoother and swirlier, but these were going to be transported, and a stiffer icing seems to hold up better under those circumstances, I feel.

Barley & Tomato Risotto with Marinated Cheese

As you can see, I'm still very much enjoying the Jerusalem cookbook by Ottolenghi and Tamimi. This is, in fact, one of the recipes that leaped out at me while I was still leafing through the book in the store, so it's no surprise that it should make it onto the table as one of the first few recipes tried. We had this with the Kofta B'siniyah from the previous post on the first day, but the leftovers were reheated on their own for a nice vegetarian dinner with a green and leafy side salad to add a bit of fresh crunch.

Barley is a very hearty grain, which is to say that it is quite filling, and it usually takes about 40 minutes to cook (as does risotto, generally). It is not a true risotto, of course, as the liquid is added all at once, but the net effect is very similar.

I decided to use a seasoned Turkish cheese that I can easily get locally in place of the feta, and it went very nicely as a garnish. We had a slightly larger amount of cheese on the leftovers, since it was a main course at that point. It also meant that I could leave out the caraway from the original marinated cheese recipe, which I felt would be too strong for my tastes.

As an editorial comment, I think it could use much less passata next time - maybe 100 ml tops, but I've written the recipe here as we made it, with 300 ml. In that case, with less liquid going in, I would definitely keep an eye on the cooking process to make sure it didn't burn (and might give an extra 100 ml water at the start).

Barley & Tomato Risotto with Marinated Cheese

Adapted from Jerusalem

Serves 4

200 grams pearl barley
30 grams butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 stalks celery, finely diced
2 small shallots, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaf (or a few sprigs of fresh)
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
4 wide strips lime rind (the original calls for lemon)
1/4 teaspoon chile flakes
400 grams diced tomatoes
700 ml vegetables stock or broth
300 ml passata
200 grams seasoned feta-type cheese, crumbled
fresh oregano leaves (optional)

Rinse the barley well, and drain thoroughly.

In a large saucepan or dutch oven, melt the butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil together over medium heat until hot. Add the celery, shallots, and garlic, and sauté until tender. Add the barley and stir about well until the barley grains are glistening, and then add the rest of the ingredients, except the cheese, the fresh oregano leaves, and the remaining olive oil. Everything else, though, in the pot.

Bring it up to a gentle simmer, lower the heat, and cook for 40 - 45 minutes, stirring frequently, until the liquid is mostly absorbed except for a bit of sauciness, and the barley is tender.

While the barley is cooking, add the remaining olive oil to the cheese, and stir gently to combine.

Serve it up in a shallow bowl with a dollop of cheese (with the oil!) on top, and finish with a few fresh oregano leaves if you are using them.

Don't remove the citrus rind before serving - try to get one into each bowl. After the long cooking time, they become tender, aromatic, and delicious.

Kofta B'siniyah - Beef & Lamb Meatballs with Pine Nuts

This is another fantastic recipe from the Jerusalem cookbook by Ottolenghi and Tamimi. I do wish that my serving platter were a bit bigger, because they're a little crowded-looking here, but this was a spectacular dish that we're very keen to make again as soon as possible.

Do not hesitate to include the tahini sauce that provides the bed for the kofta to lie upon - it goes so beautifully with the kofta that you'll probably find yourself dabbing each bite into a little more sauce.

You can find the original recipe here on The Telegraph's website.

Kofta B'siniyah

adapted from Jerusalem

Makes 10 Kofta

300 grams minced lamb
300 grams minced beef
1 small red onion, very finely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
50 grams toasted pine nuts, divided, half roughly chopped
3 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped, plus extra for garnish
1 large hot red chile pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)
1 tablespoon canola oil

Sauce
4 tablespoons tahini paste, well stirred
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons water

To Finish
2 tablespoons butter, browned
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
Toasted pine nuts (the whole ones, from above)
sweet paprika, to garnish (or you could use sumac instead)

If your pine nuts aren't toasted, do that first, in a dry skillet over medium heat until golden and fragrant. Then prepare your mise en place - mince the onions, crush the garlic, mince the parsley and the chile, prep the seasonings - everything but the oil.

If you can buy the meat from the butcher already combined, that will ensure the greatest level of integration of the beef and lamb, but not to worry if you buy them separately. Into a large mixing bowl, break up the meat with your fingers - pinching a little bit off the packet at a time and dropping it into the mixing bowl - so that when it has all been pinched out, you have a fluffy, aerated pile of ground meat(s). Add the prepared mise ingredients for the kofta and mix together lightly with your hands to distribute all of the "bits" evenly throughout the meat. The smaller your onion pieces the better they will integrate (although don't crush them to mush in a food processor, or you will make the mixture too wet).

Divide the meat mixture into ten pieces, and shape each one into an oval or "torpedo" shape.

Heat the canola oil in a large skillet, and, working in batches if necessary to not crowd the pan, fry the kofta over medium heat until browned on all sides.

If you want to be doubly sure that they are cooked through, you can pop the pan into a hot oven for five minutes or so after they're well fried, but if you have good quality meat from the butcher, a little rare in the middle is delicious.

While the kofta are frying, stir together the ingredients for the sauce, and separately brown the butter.

Spread the sauce onto a serving platter, and arrange the kofta evenly over the surface. Scatter parsley and pine nuts over top, and dust with a pinch of paprika or sumac. Spoon a little of the browned butter over each kofta, and serve.

Hot Cross Buns

Hot Crossed Buns, or Hot Cross Buns? I guess it depends on whether you prefer a noun or an adjective. I grew up saying "Hot Crossed Buns" but now I find myself saying "Hot Cross Buns" so somewhere along the line I guess I gave way to what I hear around me.

My mother used her classic bread recipe to make these buns (with a little extra sugar), but as I've lamented before, the exact formula for that is now lost to us. Over the years, I've made a few different types, from using Challah dough to plain pizza dough, and they've been fine, but never quite what I wanted. This year, I decided to go with the classic from The Joy Of Cooking, and I'm very pleased with the results (although, next time I would use altogether more fruit, and possibly be a bit more heavy-handed in the way of spices).

In any event, these are a pleasing, not-too-sweet holiday bread that is both a perfect teatime snack as well as a charmingly festive alternative to eggs, eggs, and more eggs (which I say with love, because I adore eggs, of both poultry and chocolate varieties).

Hot Cross Buns

adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Makes 18 buns

1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt (coarse sea salt would be fine)
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup raisins (or any other raisin-sized dried fruit) (next time I would use 1 cup)
1/2 cup candied orange peel (or mixed peel)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (next time I would use 1/2 teaspoon)
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg (next time, 1/4 teaspoon)
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm water (not boiling)
1 egg, beaten, plus 1 egg, separately beaten until smooth (to be used as an egg wash at the end)
2 2/3 to 3 1/2 cups flour (depending on your flour - start with the lower amount)

Scald the milk and remove from the heat. Stir in the sugar, salt, butter, raisins, peel, and spices. Let stand to become lukewarm.

While the mixture cools, in a large, warmed mixing bowl, prove the yeast by sprinkling it over the warm water. When it foams up, sprinkle a little flour over it (no more than a half-teaspoon) to keep it "fed" while the milk mixture cools down. Add the now-lukewarm milk mixture to the yeast mixture, and stir. Add the beaten egg, and stir very thoroughly to combine. Add a cup of flour and stir it through. Add another cup of flour, and stir that through. Add 2/3 cup of flour and, if that looks like enough to bring it to being a soft but manageable dough, stop there and knead it for about five minutes. If not, keep adding flour until you have a workable dough. Living in Germany, I find I often need more flour than is called for in North American bread (and cookie) recipes. When your dough has been kneaded until nice and satiny, clean the mixing bowl, oil it lightly and put the dough, covered with plastic, someplace slightly warm to rise (such as an oven with the light bulb on for added warmth).

When the dough has doubled (about an hour, but start checking after 45 minutes), turn it out onto your workspace, and divide into 18 buns. I only got 17 because I wasn't paying attention, but it works better in the pan if you have full rows, as the buns cling together as they rise. I was short one bun, so the two buns on one end didn't keep their rows straight, and they rose a little wonkily. No matter. Shape the buns into tight, smooth balls, and lay them out in either a 9x13" glass baking dish or with sides just touching on a metal baking tray, Cover with plastic, and let rise for about 20 - 30 minutes, until not-quite doubled.

Preheat the oven to 425 F / 220 C, and while the oven pre-heats, use a table knife to gently press a cross into each bun. Do each bun separately, rather than trying to score a whole row at a time; each bun deserves individual attention. Don't press too deeply - you're just creating a guideline for adding the glaze later. (Although, in some cultures, the cross lets fairies, or variously the devil, out of the dough before it's baked.)

Brush each bun lightly with egg wash, trying to keep the egg was from pooling in the crosses.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until nicely golden brown, and remove to a rack to cool.

When they've mostly cooled, glaze the crosses:

In a small bowl, put 3/4 cup powdered sugar (or icing/confectioner's sugar). Add enough lemon or lime juice to make a thick glaze. Spoon the glaze along the crosses. You can use an icing syringe for nice, smooth crosses, if you like. Be generous enough with the glaze that it flows a little over the sides of the buns on the edge, but no so much that it just runs freely all over the top of the whole batch. Again, glaze each bun individually for best effect.

Devour at will. With some tea, would be nice.

Roasted Chicken with Mandarins & Ouzo (Plus: International Bento: Jerusalem)

One of our Christmas gifts this year was the gorgeous cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I've been petting the pages for weeks now, but finally got it together to make something from it. This was a wow-factor recipe, turning simple chicken parts into a feast.

As I didn't have a lot of time to source Arak, the ingredient in the original recipe, I went with ouzo (mentioned as an acceptable substitute, and super cheap in these parts) and have zero regrets. I didn't have true clementines, but the Spanish mandarins were a bit tart, and a surprisingly good substitute.

I served this with an easy version of jewelled basmati rice - cooked basmati stirred through with butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, raisins, and a pinch of salt, and it played very nicely with the flavours of the main dish (and, mixed together the next day with some of the leftover fennel and orange slices (chopped up) it made a fantastic salad, too.

The original recipe calls for a whole, disjointed chicken, but I went with three whole chicken legs, and simply divided them into drumstick and thigh pieces.

Wonderfully, this dish can be prepped in advance, so you just need to tumble the marinated chicken into a prepared (ie. lightly oiled) roasting tray (a BIG one), and cram it into the oven.

Roasted Chicken with Clementines & Ouzo

Serves 3-4

100ml ouzo (or arak, per the original)
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons grainy Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons raw sugar
2 fennel bulbs, trimmed (fronds reserved)
3 whole chicken legs, thighs and drumsticks separated
3 mandarin oranges, sliced (unpeeled) into thin rounds
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
2 1/2 teaspoons fennel seeds, half-crushed
salt and pepper
Fennel fronds, to garnish

Combine the ouzo, olive oil, orange juice (I just squeezed some of the extra mandarins), mustard, and sugar in a bowl, and mix well to combine.

Slice the fennel bulbs (each one into 8 wedges) and the mandarins, and place them in a big bowl with the chicken pieces. Pour the marinade over the chicken, fennel, and orange pieces, and then sprinkle with the crushed fennel and fresh thyme. Turn everything about to get it evenly coated, and then cover and let sit for a few hours (or overnight).

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Spread the chicken pieces (skin side up) and the fennel and oranges in a single layer in a large roasting pan. Pour the extra marinade evenly over the pan, then sprinkle the whole dish lightly with coarse sea salt (or kosher salt).


Bake for 45 minutes.


Remove the chicken and other solid items to a platter, and pour the juices from the tray into a saucepan or small skillet. Cook over high heat until the juices are reduced and become a syrupy textured pan sauce. Serve the chicken with the fennel and orange pieces onto individual plates, and drizzle with the pan sauce. Decorate with reserved fennel fronds, and a good grinding of black pepper. I served this with a slightly fancy rice, but a plain one would be beautiful, too. Couscous would probably also work very nicely.

Reheats wonderfully the next day (it's a good idea to remove any meat from the bones before putting leftovers away), as in this international bento below:

Roasted Vegetable Bowl with Tahini Dressing

This wonderfully veggie-packed, one-pan meal was inspired by a number of different online recipes, including Smitten Kitchen's Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad and also generally by the amount of reading I've been doing about tahini and the growing realization that I really, really like the flavour of sesame.

There's a bit of prep and chopping involved, but you can also do that part in advance and hold the prepared vegetables in the fridge for a day or two, ready to be seasoned and put in the oven. Doing the prep ahead of time makes this a reasonable dinner to make on a weeknight when you might be wanting something both easy and healthy. The above iteration was made using Hokkaido squash (aka Red Kuri), but butternut is also really nice (and a bit less intense).

You could probably describe this as "steam roasted", since there's a bit of liquid in the roasting pan, which hastens the process of the vegetables becoming tender. You could make this without that bit of liquid, also, simply omit the water from the instructions relating to the squash and cauliflower. You may, in that case, require a little longer of a roasting time (ten minutes or so).

Roasted Vegetable Bowl with Tahini Dressing

serves 3-4

1 small butternut squash or Red Kuri/Hokkaido squash
1/2 head cauliflower
400 grams cooked chickpeas (1 small can)
1/2 red onion
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon your favourite curry powder
coarse salt to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
toasted sesame seeds for garnish (not shown)

Tahini Dressing

3 tablespoons tahini
2 big cloves of garlic
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon of olive oil
big pinch of salt
Enough water to make a smooth sauce

Prepare the squash by cutting in half, removing the seeds/strings/guts, peeling, and dicing into bite-sized chunks. Store in the fridge in a bag or freezer-type carton if not using immediately.

Prepare the cauliflower by cutting into medium-small florets. Store in the fridge in a bag or freezer-type carton if not using immediately.

When you are ready to cook, turn your oven on to 400 F/ 200 C, with a rack in the middle. Get a large, open roasting pan prepared with a thin film of olive oil.

Place the cauliflower, cumin, a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a tablespoon of water into a large bowl, and gently stir until the cauliflower is lightly coated with the oil/water/spice mixture. Carefully spread the cauliflower out on one side of the roasting pan. Pour any liquid in the bowl over top the cauliflower.

Rinse out the bowl, and place the squash chunks, curry powder, pinch of salt, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a tablespoon of water, and gently stir until the squash is coated. Spread the squash out on the other half of the roasting tray. Pour any liquid in the bowl over top the squash.

Roast the veggies for 20 minutes. You can prepare the chickpeas and onion while the vegetables are roasting:

- Drain and rinse the chickpeas
- Peel the red onion, and slice into short lengths (I slice thinly in one direction, and then cut into thirds, crosswise)

After the vegetables have roasted for the 20 minutes indicated above, scatter the chickpeas and red onion evenly over the cauliflower and the squash. Put the tray back into the oven and roast for another 10 - 15 minutes, or until the cauliflower pieces are tender, the chickpeas are heated through, and the sharp edge is off the onions.

Once everything is in the oven for that last 10 minutes or so, make up the dressing. Crush the garlic (or press, or pound with a mortar and pestle), and add it to the tahini. Add the lemon juice, the olive oil, and a good pinch of salt. Stir well. You will notice that the mixture starts to become thick and then appears to separate. Do not panic! Simply add cold water, one tablespoon at a time, as needed, stirring until the mixture become smooth and silky. Taste, and decide if you want to add more salt or lemon juice.

Once the vegetables are out of the oven, drizzle a third of the dressing over the pan, and gently stir to (partially) coat the vegetables with the dressing. Dish up into bowls, and drizzle with the remaining dressing. Scatter a few toasted sesame seeds over the top for texture and visual appeal (not shown, sadly).

Leftover reheat very nicely in the microwave.

Pasta & Cauliflower with Brown Butter and Sage

Sometimes really great dishes come simply out of the desire to avoid wasting food. I can't remember quite what I was cooking last week, but I do know that I turned my back on it for a moment, and the butter I was melting turned nutty and golden brown. Which was exactly what I didn't want. While inventing new curse-words, I poured the hot, browned butter off into a shell of tinfoil, wiped out the pan, and started again. Then later, when I was cleaning up, I looked at it and thought - there's got to be a use for that.

There's rather a lot of browned butter recipes flying around on the internet - everything from muffins to frosting to ice cream, but I wanted something simple - something I could do on a weeknight, when I get home at seven o'clock, starving and wanting easy answers. Pasta naturally sprang to mind.

Pasta with brown butter sauce (and sage) is a classic Italian dish. In my experience, it is almost always long noodles that are served this way, and that was my original plan, too. Then I realized that I had a half-head of cauliflower that was quietly aging in the crisper, and decided to go for a short, chunky pasta instead.

It's a pity you cannot see the sage in this - it seemed to mostly drift to the bottom of the skillet (probably because I shredded it), and what didn't hide beneath the pasta and roasted cauliflower, quickly got snowed under with a thick blanket of parmesan. If I had been less hungry, I might have arranged it more attractively, but nope.

This was a dish that used up leftover cauliflower (freshly roasted), accidental brown butter, and a weird pasta shape that I had already lurking in my refrigerator. The fact that it was also delicious made it into end-zone dance category.

I also served this with lamb cutlets (not pictured), because it seemed like a nice combination. They were delicious, but probably unnecessary. If I were serving this as a a vegetarian entree, I think I might add a few toasted pine nuts, as well, for heartiness (and delightful crunchiness).

Pasta & Cauliflower with Brown Butter and Sage

Serves 2

100 grams short pasta
2 tablespoons browned butter
1 small handful fresh sage leaves, in chiffonade
1/2 small head of cauliflower (freshly roasted with olive oil and a good pinch of salt)
parmesan cheese for finishing

Cut up the cauliflower until the pieces are just slightly chunkier than the pasta you are using. Toss well with a little olive oil and a big pinch of coarse salt, and roast at 400 F for 20 minutes or until tender when pierced with a fork (and ideally, golden brown where they touch the pan - a metal pan works best for this).

While the cauliflower is roasting, heat up the water to boil the pasta, and warm the browned butter (or, starting from scratch, brown the butter) in a medium skillet. Add the sage leaves to the butter once the pasta is almost cooked.

Cook the pasta to your preference (remembering to salt the water), and then, using a wire skimmer/spider spoon it into the brown butter and sage. Stir well. Add the roasted cauliflower to the pan, stirring gently but thoroughly to get everything coated with the browned butter. Dust thoroughly with freshly grated parmesan, and serve.

Leftovers reheated beautifully in a microwave.

Pita Bread

My Ful Medames post included home made pita bread as a serving suggestion, so it seems reasonable to follow it up with a recipe.

Pita bread tends to be either a thick, soft, solid-piece flatbread, or a thinner bread with a pocket created by steam pressure. You could of course use either style quite handily for serving with your Ful, but this version is for the pocket-style. It is tremendously fun to watch through the door of the oven as the breads slowly inflate before your eyes into bread balloons. When you pull them out of the oven, they immediately start to deflate, leaving behind the pocket created by the ballooning effect.

This recipe is really very close to my pizza dough recipe, and you can in fact use that one (just follow the instructions here for rising and baking).

Pita Bread

Adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Rheinhart

Makes 4 large pocket-style pitas

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 tablespoon honey or agave syrup (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup room-temperature water (plus extra)

Combine the flour, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Drizzle the honey and the olive oil over the flour. Add the water gradually, stirring with a big wooden spoon (depending on your flour, you might need less than 1/2 cup or you might need more - I needed a couple of tablespoons more). When the flour and water come together into a fairly firm dough, turn it out onto a counter and knead for about ten minutes, or until smooth and silky feeling. If it is too wet (ie. sticky), add a bit more flour as you go.

Return the dough to your cleaned and lightly oiled mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let stand at room temperature for about 90 minutes - the dough should double in size.

Put a large, clean, dry baking sheet in the middle of your oven, and preheat to 500 F. The pan must be very hot for the pita-pocket effect to work properly.

Turn the dough out onto the counter, and gently press the air out of it. Divide into four portions, and roll each one into a ball. Flatten each ball into a thick disk, and cover three of them loosely with the plastic wrap.

Take the remaining piece of dough, and gently roll it out until it is very thin - not paper thin, but no more than 1/4 inch thick (a bit thinner is better). This means a round of dough that is about seven or eight inches across.

Carefully peel the disk of dough from the counter, slip on an oven mitt, and place the round of dough on the oven mitt. Open the door and slap the dough onto the hot baking sheet, quickly closing the door again.

Watch through the window of your oven in astonishment as the dough rises before your eyes, becoming fully inflated in about two minutes. When it is fully inflated, let it continue cook for the slow count of ten, and then remove from the oven (using a spatula). Place the hot, puffy (and rapidly deflating!) pita on a rack to cool. If you like a bit of colour on your bread, you can simply use a spatula to flip it onto its other side instead of pulling it out right away, and let it stay in the oven for an extra ten seconds or so.

Prepare the next round of dough, and repeat, until all four pitas are cooked. Once all the pitas are done, wrap them loosely in a clean kitchen towel so that they stay soft.

Serve right away, or allow to cool completely. When completely cool, pop them into a plastic bag to keep them from drying out. If you want to use them as pockets, cut them in half, and gently pull the two sides open to fill as you wish.

Ful Medames

Ful Medames (also transliterated as Foul Mudammas, or Fuul Medammes, amongst other spellings), commonly referred to simply as Ful (pronounced "fool"), is a middle-eastern bean dish that deserves broader recognition in the western world. It is a popular breakfast dish in Egypt, but its reach extends easts through Saudi Arabia, north throughout the eastern Mediterranean countries, and south into the horn of Africa. It is cheap, filling, and delicious.

As can be expected from a dish that reaches through so many disparate cultures, there are countless iterations. The essentials appear to be fava beans, olive oil, cumin, and lemon juice, but there are variations that include any of (or a combination of) garlic, chopped onion, parsley, tahini, and even chopped tomatoes.

Ful is most commonly served with flatbread, which is used as a utensil to scoop up the beans. The type of flatbread used is going to vary by whichever culture you're in - the good news being that you can safely use whatever flatbread you've got on hand. I served mine with freshly made pita bread (because it was Sunday and I had no choice but to make it if I wanted it), but you could easily use lavash, Somalian canjeero, or heck, even tortillas or chapati. You can also spread it on toasted sandwich bread.

Ful is often served on its own, but equally often as part of a larger, tapas-style meal, especially at lunch or dinner.

While sometimes other beans are used to make Ful, depending on culture and geography, the fava appears to be dominant. Fava beans are a bit more intensely flavoured than chickpeas. They are quite earthy tasting, and therefore pair really well with cumin, and stand up very well under the pungency of fresh garlic and the sharpness of lemon.

You can store it in the fridge for a few days without ill effect, simply adding a little more water to loosen it up as you reheat it. I find that I can make a double batch on Sunday, and have it for breakfast for the rest of the week.

Ful Medames

Adapted from Serious Eats

Serves 2 - 4

2 cups cooked fava beans (or a 400 gram can)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small cloves garlic, lightly smashed
pinch of salt
1/2 tablespoon cumin seeds
juice of 1 lemon
1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
In a small skillet, toast your cumin seeds until fragrant, and then carefully pour them out onto a cutting board (or into a mortar).

Into the emptied, unwashed skillet add your beans (with their liquid if they're canned, otherwise with about 1/3 cup water) and heat over a medium flame.

On the cutting board, add your garlic cloves and a pinch of salt, and run your knife through a couple of times until the garlic is finely chopped (or, in a mortar, pound the garlic and cumin together until the garlic is a smooth paste). Scrape the garlic/cumin mixture into the beans, and stir through. If you like things spicy, feel free to add in a few chile flakes, too.

The beans should be gently bubbling away at this point. Once the garlic and cumin have been stirred around a few times, add the tahini and olive oil, stir through, and continue to cook, stirring. At this point, you can mash up some of the beans against the side of the skillet, to make a thicker gravy, or if your skillet is looking a bit dry, you can add a little more water to thin it out. Add a tablespoon or two of the lemon juice and stir through. Taste, and decide if it needs more salt (if you use canned beans, probably not, but if you cooked them up from dried, probably yes). Stir and mash the beans as needed until everything looks well heated and the texture is somewhere between baked beans and thick soup. I know, that's a lot of leeway, but you really do get to choose how thick or thin you want this to be. This shouldn't really take more than about five minutes total cooking time.

Pour/scrape the beans into a bowl. At this point, you can add any final finishing touches that you like (an extra drizzle of olive oil, Egyptian style, or a sprinkle of Aleppo pepper, Syrian style, for example, or maybe some carmelized onions, or some parsley).

Serve with warmed flatbread.

Prawn & Pumpkin Risotto

This is the traditional Hallowe'en dinner in our household, but really, you can make it all winter long when the winter squashes are cheap and plentiful. I've used a butternut squash here, but you could of course use any cooking pumpkin with firm, dense flesh (acorn or muscat squash might not be at their best here, because they would likely turn to mush with all the stirring). The final colour of the dish will depend greatly on which squash you decided to use, but usually ranges from an intense yellow to a vibrant orange.

For the shrimp, please check out this Oceanwise resource page for prawns/shrimp if you need help making an informed choice about sustainable harvesting.

If you're vegetarian/vegan, or just not a fan of seafood, you can omit the prawns and still have a beautiful, delicious side dish. Either way, don't drown in in cheese at the end - it really doesn't want or need it.

Prawn & Pumpkin Risotto

Serves 4

4 cups diced-small pumpkin or winter squash
250 grams risotto rice (arborio, carnaroli, or similar)
1 small onion, finely diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup white vermouth or dry white wine
2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
250 grams raw prawns or large shrimp (frozen is fine)
Hot water from a recently boiled kettle (just in case)

If you've read my other risotto recipes, you will know that I am extremely particular about the size of ingredients in my risotto. My theory is, broadly, if it's not a featured ingredient, it should be no bigger than a (cooked) grain of the rice that you are using. Basically, onions, I'm looking at you. Because the squash and prawns are features, they get to be bigger, but I do find having a small dice for the pumpkin here makes a more visually and texturally pleasing choice.

First step, as always, is get your mise en place ready: Peel, clean, and dice your pumpkin, and set aside. If you have a little less pumpkin than 4 cups, it's still fine, although 4 cups gives the best result. Finely dice your onion, and mince your garlic. Warm up your broth and keep it on a low flame on the stove, so it's ready to be ladled into the rice. Clean the shrimp, removing shells (if necessary) and veins. If frozen, rinse them in a sieve under cold running water until they are mostly defrosted. Basically, get all ingredients prepared, measured, and standing by, because you get no further time to prep once you've started cooking. Be sure to boil a kettle, and have the hot water standing by in case you need it later.

In a large saucepan, heat the butter or olive oil over medium heat until quite hot, and then add the shrimp and quickly sauté them until they just barely change colour. Remove to a nearby plate/bowl to add into the risotto later.

In the same saucepan, without cleaning it, add the onion and garlic, and sauté just until the onion begins to turn translucent. Add the salt and white pepper, and stir through.

Next, add the rice and stir well, to get a nice, thin coating of fat on the rice grains. Add the tomato paste, and stir through until it is completely integrated and there are no streaks of red running through the rice. Add the diced squash, and stir it through gently. (You can also reverse the order of adding the rice vs. the squash, no biggie as long as everything is nicely coated in the end. I find it easier to add the tomato paste before adding the squash, though, to get it evenly distributed.)

Add all of the wine/vermouth at once, and stir, carefully scraping up the bottom of the pot so that nothing sticks. Lower the heat to medium-low, and begin to add the warm vegetable broth, one ladleful at a time, stirring gently but pretty much constantly in between each addition until the liquid has been absorbed before adding more. It should take about 25 - 35 minutes to add all of the liquid, and that variable is based on how hot your burner is.

If you get to the end of your broth and find that the rice is not quite cooked enough to your taste, add a little of the hot water from your recently boiled kettle, and continue until the texture is just right - a little bite to the rice, but not crunchy. Next time, you might want to lower the heat a bit more.

When the rice is ready, stir the prawns gently into the risotto. If you want an especially luxurious dish, add in another tablespoon of butter or olive oil, but it's not strictly necessary. Cover the risotto, and remove from the heat. Let stand for five minutes, and then spoon into shallow bowls and serve. Feel free to add a garnish of parsley if you like, but steer clear of the parmesan.

Cajun Chicken Fricassee

It's no secret that we love the food of New Orleans. Cajun and creole dishes are slowly but steadily seeping into our rotation, from the very first Jambalaya through Smoked Duck Étouffée, and of course further versions of Jambalaya, and all points in between, many of which I have yet to share with you.

The real trick is learning how to make a roux (some patience is required), and not balking at the amount of fat that goes into it. I do confess, though, that I often use less roux in my versions of recipes than is called for, to no discernible detriment to texture or flavour. Once you've got the roux down, the possibilities expand significantly. As an important public service announcement, I'm here to tell you that bacon fat makes a really delicious roux. So, if you like to save your bacon fat, this is a fantastic dish to squander it on.

This is a luxurious tasting dish, and seems more closely related to Étouffée than to its French cousin, also called Fricassee, a creamy, somewhat more subtle dish. Garnish with sliced green onions (not shown here) for maximum traditional bonus points.

Cajun Chicken Fricassee
Adapted from "Cajun — Creole Cooking" by Terry Thompson-Anderson

Serves 4 (with gravy leftover for another meal)

8 pieces of chicken (bone in, skin on, legs/thighs are optimal)
seasoned with salt, black pepper, and cayenne
1/2 cup cleaned bacon fat* or lard
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 medium yellow onions, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced or diced
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaf (less, if powdered)
OR 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
3 cups hot chicken broth or stock
4 green onions, sliced (garnish)

*If you keep salvaged bacon fat in a jar in the fridge, it usually ends up with stria of little burned flecks and lumps. Once you have a full jar of fat, it's easy to warm up it up until it becomes liquid again, and the impurities settle to the bottom. Then you can carefully pour off what you need, leaving the nasty bits behind. (Pour any extra into a clean jar to store in the fridge until needed.)

Once you start cooking, you will have no time to prep. Therefore, prepare and measure out everything that you need in advance, including heating your stock. This is your only warning.

Season the chicken pieces on both sides with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Open a window, if possible, so that the smell of frying chicken does not haunt you for days.

In a large dutch oven, heat the fat until it is shimmering (but not smoking), and fry the chicken briefly until golden on both sides (but not cooked through). I work in batches, browning the thighs first, then the drumsticks, removing the pieces to a paper towel-lined plate as they are done.

When all the chicken has been browned, turn the heat down to medium-low and sprinkle the flour over the hot fat, and get right in there with a whisk to smooth it into a roux. Switch to a wooden spoon and stir, pretty much continuously, scraping the entire bottom surface of the pan to prevent catching and scorching, for about 25 minutes, or until the roux becomes caramel-coloured. If the roux is really catching on the bottom of the pan, turn the heat down further, or remove it from the heat altogether (for a few minutes). Using bacon fat instead of lard gives you a jump start on colour, but don't trim the time, as it is necessary to cook the flour through properly and develop the flavour.

Once the roux is caramel-coloured, add the onions, garlic, and celery, and cook and stir for about four minutes, or until the vegetables are wilted and the onions have turned translucent. The roux will thicken rather a lot as this happens, so constant stirring is necessary. Add the remaining dry seasonings - bay leaves, cayenne, black pepper, thyme - and stir them through.

Add the stock, slowly, stirring constantly, until it is all integrated, and the gravy is bubbling nicely. Return the chicken to the pot, stir through, and once the dish is gently bubbling, reduce the heat to the lowest setting, cover, and let cook for an hour. If you are anxious, you can peek at it now and then, and give it a little stir. No biggie.

In the meantime, while the fricassee cooks, you have a chance to clean up a little, and make any side dishes. Rice goes wonderfully, but so do noodles, mashed potatoes, biscuits, or dumplings. Your choice. Shown here is Cajun Spinach Rice (adapted from the same book), and Ukrainian pickled tomatoes (because they are delicious).

When the hour is up, stir the dish through (there may be some chicken fat settling out on the surface, just stir it back in), and garnish with sliced green onion.

This recipe makes a lot of gravy, so after dinner I set aside the extra in a freezer container, ready to become a fast weeknight dinner by adding boneless chicken breast, and serving over biscuits, with some sort of extra vegetable on the side.

Devilled Eggs with Feta

Devil(l)ed eggs go in and out of fashion, party-wise. However, they are easy enough to make and, it seems, always gladly received, even when they are not at their most popular. Call them Eggs Mimosa, Russian Eggs, Dressed Eggs, or Stuffed Eggs if you will, add your favourite twist to the garnish, and customize them to your specifications, but do find a place for them on your appetizer table. Even folks so jaded as to roll their eyes and say "oh, devilled eggs, I see!" can seldom resist taking one...or two. And of course, if you have dyed easter eggs (thinking ahead here, obviously), you will find devilled eggs a delightful way to quickly use up the leftovers.

I guess it's not a real shocker that I like devilled eggs, since I've used a photo of them as the banner for this blog for years and years. Perhaps it is a shocker that I've never posted a recipe for them until now. While I do make several different variations, depending on the needs of the moment, this version which incorporates tangy feta cheese into the filling has been a stalwart of my bring-along arsenal for quite some time. The feta gives the flavour a bit of a lift, as well as adding bulk to the yolk mixture, enabling you to pile the filling up prettily.

Scale the recipe to suit your needs.


Devilled Eggs with Feta

Makes 8 pieces

4 eggs, cooked in their shells (plus an extra, for safety, if you like)
2-3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1-2 tablespoons mild Feta cheese
pinch white pepper
pinch mustard powder (optional)
dash Tabasco pepper sauce
1 tablespoon finely minced green onion (or chive)
paprika to garnish (optional)

Cook the eggs gently, so they don't become over-hard and end up with green-grey rings around the yolk. My favourite method is to put the eggs in a pan of cold water, turn the heat on high and bring to a very gentle simmer, cover, turn the heat off, and set the timer for 10 minutes. When the timer dings, drain the eggs and cover with cold water. Leave for about 10 minutes for the eggs to thoroughly cool, and then peel. To peel easily, tap each end on the counter to shatter the shell, then roll the egg gently under your palm to break up and loosen the shell around the middle of the egg. Usually it works great - sometimes it just won't, so it's a good idea to start with an extra egg, just in case one of them is a jerk.

Slice the eggs in half lengthwise, and pop the yolks into a waiting bowl, taking all possible care to avoid tearing the whites. Place the egg white "boats" on the serving dish (some folks like to put down a bed of chopped lettuce or green kale to help stabilize them, and if you're serving for a party, that's a fine idea. If we're just having them around the house, I don't usually bother). If you have a really well equipped kitchen, you might even have one of those lovely little platters with the specially egg-sized divots, in which case go for it, no lettuce required.

Place the yolks in a medium-fine mesh sieve, and use a spoon to press them through into a bowl below. Essentially, this works just like a big garlic press. The yolks will have a slightly stringy, slightly pellet-y look about them, but that largely dissipates once the other ingredients are added. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the sieve to make sure you get all of the yolk into the bowl.

When the yolks are pressed through, and consequently nicely aerated, do the same with the feta cheese. If you feta is mild, you will probably want the full two tablespoons for this many eggs, but if it is quite sharp, you might want to go with one tablespoon, at least to start.

Add the remaining ingredients, except for the minced green onion. Start with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, and add one more if it seems a bit dry, as much will depend on the size of the eggs yolks, how firmly they were cooked, and the type of mayonnaise you are using. Stir in the onion last. Taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary. With both mayonnaise and feta in there, you probably won't need any more salt, but you might want to adjust the amount of pepper or add a bit more green onion. If your egg yolks are very pale, you can always add a pinch of turmeric to the filling to strengthen the yellow colour.

Use a small spoon (or a cake-decorating syringe, if you're feeling fancy, and you like swirled ridges) to heap the filling back into the egg white boats. Garnish with a final pinch of paprika (smoked or regular) if you wish, or any other topping you please (although I wouldn't recommend caviar for these ones, since I don't think it would play nicely with the feta).

My Mom's Chinese Beef & Greens

My mother used to make a version of this quite regularly, served over brown rice as was the custom of our household. I don't know where she got the original recipe, or what modifications she might have made to it. As both her knowledge of and exposure to Asian cooking of any kind was severely limited during the time we kids were growing up, and the availability of such ingredients in our small town was quite restricted, her version did not contain either sambal, fermented black beans, or even fresh ginger, and it was thickened with flour rather than cornstarch or tapioca flour (my version still is). It still tasted wonderful, and was a family favourite.

As I began to make the dish for myself as an adult, I gradually added the black beans, sesame oil, and exchanged some of the ground ginger for freshly grated ginger root. Plain button mushrooms were switched for shiitake, straw, or shimeji/beech mushrooms (although I'll still use buttons if that's what is available to me).

Normally there's about twice the amount of bok choi that you can see in the picture - it turns out that I had less on hand than I realized when I went to make the dish. It was still excellent, but had slightly less greens than usual. The baby corn is the most recent addition to recipe, and it's an absolute keeper. This recipe continues to be requested on a regular basis in our household.

Mom’s Chinese Beef & Greens

Serves 4-6 (over rice)

500 grams extra lean ground beef
1 large onion, halved and sliced, pole-to-pole
3-5 cloves of garlic, sliced or pressed
200 grams mushrooms, sliced or quartered if necessary
1 large head of bok choi, washed & sliced or 4 heads of mini bok choi
1-2 carrots, peeled & sliced into coins
200 grams fresh baby corn, sliced once each horizontally and vertically (optional)
1 thumbs-length of fresh gingerroot, sliced, minced, or grated
1/2 teaspoon dried, ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce (preferably a less sodium type)
1 tablespoon black bean sauce or Chinese fermented black beans, rinsed and mashed
1 teaspoon sambal oelek or other chile paste or chile oil
1 cup stock – beef, chicken, bouillon cube – whatever you’ve got
1 large tablespoon of flour
1/2 cup of cold water
1/2 teaspoon toasted pure sesame oil

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet or cast-iron pan, over high heat, brown the beef until any liquid has boiled off and the meat is frying gently. If you are not using extra lean ground beef, you may wish to drain any excess fat.

Add the chopped onions, garlic, ginger root, baby corn, and carrots, and stir well until the onions are translucent. Add the mushrooms, white pepper, ground ginger, black beans (or black bean sauce) sambal oelek and soy sauce. Stir well. Add a smidge of water if it’s starting to stick on the bottom, and/or lower the heat a little.

Let the mixture fry a little until the mushrooms start to get tender, and then add the stock or broth. Stir well, scraping the bottom of the pan so that nothing burns on. Bring to a gentle boil. Mix the cold water and flour together with a whisk, or shake together in a plastic lidded container until smooth. Pour into the meat mixture, stirring constantly, and bring back to a boil to thicken the gravy. If it gets too thick, you may need to add a little more water or stock. Reduce the heat and let simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Taste the gravy and adjust the seasoning to taste.

Slice the bok choi is sliced into large, bite-sized pieces (they will shrink a bit as they cook). Pile the bok choi on top of the meat mixture – don’t stir it in – and cover with a lid. Cook over medium-low heat for about five minutes, or until the greens wilt and decrease in volume. Then, stir carefully into the beef mixture underneath. Add sesame oil and stir through.

Taste to adjust seasoning, then serve over rice. My family liked to add a final drizzle of soy sauce at the table.

If you have leftovers, they can easily be reheated in the microwave or the stovetop, but my mother's usual approach was to combine the rice and beef mixture thoroughly, and then reheat it in the oven, covered, in a casserole dish (with maybe a tiny sprinkle of extra water to keep it from drying out. We liked it just as much on the second day as the first, even though we referred to it as "horse mash" because my sister thought the combined dish looked much like the cooked porridge that was fed to horses recovering from strangles (equine distemper), in the stables where she worked.

Cong You Bing: Chinese Scallion Pancakes (with bonus Scallion Pancake Duck Tostadas)

I learned about these lovely Chinese flatbreads while walking hurriedly through Vancouver's Chinatown, some years ago. The image of them being rolled out and fried, seen through a take-out restaurant window, stuck with me for quite a while and I regretted not stopping to try them. I eventually had to get some, of course, and became an immediate fan -- they were everything I wanted them to be: crisp, flaky, with a shimmer of sesame flavour and that satisfying mild green onion bite.

Here in my current location, a small city in Germany, good Chinese food is hard to come by. So, when the craving hit, I decided to learn how to make my own.

The first recipe I tried was for smaller, cocktail-sized ones, but had a dodgy methodology. They were tasty, but oddly fiddly and got oil everywhere. I ultimately decided to simply apply the proper technique for making the large ones, despite it meaning more work for me in terms of rolling, seasoning, coiling, and rolling again. While it did take a bit longer, the results were much better.

I'm sure that every fan of duck, and/or Chinese cuisines, is familiar with Peking Duck with Mandarin Pancakes. The pancakes in that case are soft crêpes, and comprise one of the traditional Peking duck courses. I enjoy them, but the overall dish is very soft, and often a little sweet for my taste. Instead, I imagined a version of Mexican Tostadas, but with duck and Chinese flavours, using the crispy, savoury, cocktail-sized Cong You Bing as a base. For the duck, I had leftover roasted duck meat, which we shredded and reheated - tossed with a combination of Hoisin sauce, sesame oil, golden mushroom sauce (you could use Oyster sauce instead) with a delicate hint of Sriracha (I would have preferred a Chinese-style chile oil, but had none to hand).

Top the freshly fried Cong You Bing with a little of the shredded duck, top with a bit more sliced scallion, and presto! Scallion Pancake Duck Tostadas. They were delicious, and they turned out exactly as I had pictured them (see photo below).

Cong You Bing

(Chinese Scallion Pancakes)

Makes: 2 large or 8 cocktail-sized pancakes

1 cup all-purpose flour (plus extra for rolling)
1/3 cup hot water

1-2 finely sliced scallions
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
coarse sea (or kosher) salt
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

2 tablespoons peanut oil (for frying)

In a mixing bowl, add the hot water to the flour all at once, and stir rapidly with a wooden spoon until it turns into a soft, pliable dough (add more flour if necessary). Turn out onto a floured board/counter, and knead for about 10 minutes until smooth and silky feeling. Place it back in the (now cleaned and lightly oiled) bowl, and cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let it rest for half an hour. It will not rise - there's no yeast - but it does need to fully hydrate the flour.

When the dough has rested, turn it out onto a floured work surface, and divide into either two or eight. The instructions after that are the same for either size. Yes, of course you could do four. Divide the dough as you will.

Shape the dough pieces into disks. Working with one at a time, roll a disk out as thin as you can. Roll it up into a tube, as though for a jelly roll or cinnamon buns, and coil the tube into a tight spiral, tucking the end under. Mash it flat with your hand, and then roll out very thinly again. Brush a little sesame oil over the rolled out surface, sprinkle with a bit of salt and a few sesame seeds, and scatter scallions over the surface. Roll up into a long tube again, coil it tightly again, tucking the end under, mash it with your hand again, and then roll out gently until it is a pancake thickness (about half the diameter of the thinly rolled dough you started with). For the smaller sized ones, that's about palm-of-my-hand sized. Do not worry if some of the green onions poke through - they totally will and that's okay. Transfer to a side board, and repeat until you have completed each pancake.

Technically, the first "empty" roll-out is not entirely necessary, but it does add a bit of flakiness to the final flatbread. If you're impatient, or pressed for time, you can skip that one, and go straight to filling them.

Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet until shimmering. Add one, or up to four small, pancake(s) and fry, turning frequently, until golden and crisp on each side. Remove to a paper towel to drain, and repeat until finished. For the larger ones, slice them into quarters to serve.

Serve with a soy-based dipping sauce (example below) or use as delicious tostadas.



Dipping sauce

2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 small clove garlic, pressed
pinch freshly grated ginger
1 large pinch chile flakes (or cracked Szechwan peppercorns)
small pinch ground white pepper

Or any favourite Chinese dipping sauce you like.


Enjoy!