French Fridays with Dorie: Endives, Apples & Grapes

Well I am at a loss here.....I don't know what to write about this week's recipe for French Fridays with Dorie, Endives, Apples & Grapes. It's not that I hated it, but I didn't love it either. This is the first time, I think, that I feel so ambivalent about one of Dorie's recipes. 

Undoubtedly, this is a very easy recipe for a gourmet side dish. Sauté the endives, apples and grapes in butter (I used olive oil) and wait until they become tender and caramelise. I liked the sweetness of the grapes and the apples. Their sweet juices and aroma blended heavenly with the earthiness of the rosemary, but the endives were a touch too bitter for my palette. My main dish was calamari sautéed with onion, garlic and basil. Simple but quite tasty.

I have to apologise about the shortness of today's post. I have nothing more to say other than I will keep the apple and grape part of the recipe and try to combine it with another vegetable (courgettes or fennel maybe?). I don't think endives are going to make any more appearances in my kitchen any time soon...

Saffron & Cardamom Ice Cream

I swear to God...dermatologists have a secret yearning to psychoanalyse their patients. It's the third time this year that instead of prescribing a cream for my suffering face, my newest dermatologist started lecturing me about "taking the right path in life". As if I do this all my skin problems will magically disappear!! Sure, stress is a major acne multiplier but there are other factors like hormones,  digestive health, nutrition - only last week I realised that nightshades (peppers, tomatoes, aubergines) cause my skin to erupt like a volcano. I told her that, I was not able to get her full attention... And then asked me the dreaded question: "but why are you stressed...you are so young". Like stress is something that old-er people are entitled to and anyway I am not that young. I am 33 years old and I have had skin problems for most of my life. I just hate it when I have to explain and defend myself to strangers especially when it has taken so much time and effort to explain myself to "my people". Anyway I am a good-natured individual and I did not get completely pissed off with her. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and I am going to follow her treatment plan for a couple weeks, always hoping for good results.

What does this have to do with me making Saffron & Cardamom Ice Cream? Nothing. I just wanted to unload - thank you anonymous reader for listening to me - and direct my energy into making something sweet and aromatic to compensate for the sourness I felt after my encounter with the amateur "dermachologist".

I found this recipe in a magazine I bought in Greece during my vacation. It was a special issue devoted to ice cream. mmmm there were more than 30 recipes in there but the one that caught my eye was a simple cream ice cream spiced with cardamom and saffron and pistachios to give a bit more bite. Saffron I know very well. I grew up with its slightly medicinal aroma. It is precious and quite potent. It makes the phrase "a little goes a long way" stand true. As for cardamom, I have to confess that before we moved to Riyadh I had never tried it before, it being too strong for my mother's taste buds so she never used it in her cooking, even though there are countless recipes for traditional Greek dishes, savoury or sweet, that use it to invoke memories from times past and homelands lost. In Saudi, cardamom was everywhere! In coffee, desserts, savoury dishes. If you wanted to get away from it you had to try really hard. But I didn't. I loved the fresh, slightly sweet and earthy aroma. I brought back with me 2 big jars of cardamom pods and I used it all !!!

As for the ice cream...if you like cardamom you are going to be surprised by its taste, delicate, spicy and exotic!!

Saffron & Cardamom Ice Cream
From Mirsini Lambraki - Γλυκά Μυστικά, August 2012
Ready in: 6 hours
Serves 6 

Ingredients
75 ml fresh full fat milk
185 ml concentrated milk
20 gr blanched almonds, chopped
3 gr ground cardamom
500 ml cream (35% fat)
2 saffron stems
20 gr sugar
100 gr pistachios, chopped
Instructions
Blend the sugar and the saffron together until they become like powder. Put it in a small bowl.
In a large bowl mix the fresh and concentrated milk with the cream and mix them with hand mixer for 5 minutes on high power, until the mixture has acquired a creamy consistency.
Add the ground almonds, cardamom and the powdered sugar. Mix gently with a silicon spatula  with smooth round moves. When all the spices are mixed with the rich cream, empty the contents of the bowl into a big metal bowl and add a few chopped pistachios. Stir for one last time and put in the freezer for 5 - 6 hours.

Tip: Be careful not to use more than 2 saffron stems because the ice cream is going to taste bitter. Put 1 gr of cardamom first and taste and then add more depending on how strong you want it to taste.

I am submitting this recipe to Kavey Eats Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream monthly challenge

I am also entering this post into this months Bookmarked Recipes by Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments and hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes.

Recipe: Pistachio & Orange Flower Pavlova

A few months ago, I came across a beautiful blog called Roost.  I bookmarked it, added it to my RSS Reader and promised myself that I was going to make at least one recipe from Caitlin's collection of delicious sugar free, gluten free, flavour full recipes. I remember that I was smitten by her beautiful looking Orange Flower Pavlova. When the time came to choose something that starts with P to bake for this month's AlphaBakes, the image of Caitlin's pavlova materialised in front of my eyes and I desperately wanted to make it. I have a lot of experience with.... eating pavlovas, they are after all something like my favourite "white" desserts. Crunchy and crumbling or spongy and light it makes no big difference, I love them all. This is the first time I had to make one. I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning. They taste so good they are bound to be complicated and difficult to make. Maybe. I cannot say for sure because this one was the easiest thing ever. Caitlin's recipe  has only 7 ingredients and one of them is water so....easy.

There is a twist to this recipe and it too has to do with water...Orange Blossom Water. When we lived in Saudi Arabia, I used to see it in the supermarkets all the time and taste it in the Saudi versions of Basbousa. I have never seen it in Zagreb though. I thought about using orange flavouring or even a few drops of orange liqueur to substitute it. Then one morning last week I passed by a new delicatessen shop and I saw it beckoning to me, Eau de Fleur d'Oranger from Tunisia. Magic. You only need 1/2 a tablespoon but it really makes all the difference. Nothing really can substitute the aroma of orange flowers. The moment I popped the cup open I was transported in time and in space...spring evenings on the streets of Athens. Athens? Yes, there are bitter orange and lemon trees all over Athens and their flowers smell heavenly making you forget that you are in the centre of a big concrete jungle but rather in the middle of a huge orange grove. This spring I am going to be in Athens and I am going to smell the orange blossoms again...

Pistachio & Orange Flower Pavlova

By Caitlin from Roost

Ingredients
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp orange flower water
1/2 cup light colored honey
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup pistachios, finely chopped
Zest of 1 large lemon
1 can of full fat coconut milk
Instructions
Preheat oven to 150C.
In a small saucepan add the water and honey and bring to 120 degrees C (measure with a candy  thermometer). Remove from heat and set aside.
In a metal bowl whisk with a hand mixer the egg whites until soft peaks form. Continue to whisk and slowly pour in honey mixture. Add orange flower water and continue to whisk until firm peaks form.
Pour mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper forming an imperfect circle. Sprinkle with half of the chopped pistachios. Place in oven and immediately turn heat down to 120C. Bake for 1 hour. Turn off oven and prop open the door and allow to cool completely. The pavlova should be firm and dry on the outside and spongy on the inside.
Place can of coconut milk in the refrigerator for a couple of hours (this will allow the cream to separate from the water). Remove the lid and carefully scrape out the top layer of cream leaving the coconut water behind. Place cream in a bowl and whisk to a whipped cream consistency.
Transfer the pavlova to a plate. Spread coconut cream over the top, sprinkle with left over pistachios and lemon zest.

I am entering this post into this month's AlphaBakes hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker

I am also entering this post into this months Bookmarked Recipes by Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments and hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes.

French Fridays with Dorie: Chicken Basquaise & the Revenge of the Nightshades

This dish surely tastes better than it photographs! For experienced photographers maybe it is the perfect dish, all colourful and glistening, but for me it was a nightmare to photograph.  I changed the background, the light and my aperture settings a hundred times and still could not get a decent photo of the plate. The smell, though, was mesmerising! Maybe that's why I could not get the picture right, I was too eager to finish with all these nonsense and get down to the serious stuff: eat it! 

Before I start describing Dorie Greenspan's masterpiece of a recipe, I have to confess that I was not supposed to eat this tasty melange of peppers and chicken. I have recently discovered that my skin issues might be caused by a few of my favourite foods. Foods that I eat almost everyday.  Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers together with a few others (potatoes, tabacco, goji berries, gooseberries) belong to the nightshade family of plants. Nightshades... it sounds mystical, taken right out of the pages of a fairytale about wicked witches brewing deadly potions...It's scary but true. Nightshades contain alkaloids that can be harmful in heavy loads causing inflammation that in some people is manifested in joint pains and breaking skin. During my vacation I ate a lot of peppers, tomatoes and aubergines from my father's vegetable garden, I even brought home about 5kg to freeze for the winter!!! No wonder my skin looked like a bloody war zone!! After consulting my dermatologist I decided to go on a nightshade-free diet for 3 weeks to see if there is going to  be any difference and to my surprise there was. My face started to heal and clean up after the third pepper and tomato-free day! But now I'm torn. How am I supposed to give up tomatoes and peppers? Especially when there are recipes like this one around that make you want to eat the whole pot! All week I thought hard and tried to devise ways to change the recipe to suit the imposed nightshade ban but there was no way I could I take the peppers out of the "piperade". 

I gave up and gave in to temptation. I made no changes to the recipe and used my father's organic peppers and my mother's tomato sauce to make the most amazing smelling and  tasting piperade. The wine, bay leaves and garlic gave it depth and a bit more gusto and all together flavoured the chicken beautifully. All in all it was the perfect recipe! An ode to peppers and nightshades....

 I went a bit rogue on the rice...Actually a lot rogue since I used no rice to make it but cauliflower and parsley. 

To see how other bloggers liked Chicken Basquaise check out French Fridays with Dorie website where every Friday we make recipes from Dorie Greenspan's book "Around My French Table"

Peach and Vanilla Jelly

Peaches for me are the ultimate summer fruit. Bright yellow like the sun, juicy, sweet and aromatic, their appearance on the market stalls signals summer's arrival. I was lucky to grow up close to the biggest peach, apricot and nectarine producing region of Greece and every June on our way to our beach house in Fourka Beach we passed tens of small roadside stalls set up by local farmers selling their produce. On our way back, in early September, the same producers were there and this time they were also selling jars of jams and marmalades. My mother always made her own peach and apricot jam so we never really bought any from the roadside merchants, but I can still remember the lovely colours of the jars and the sticky sweetness of the air surrounding the orchards.

About a week after we came back from our vacation, I saw a box of beautiful, ripe peaches imported from Greece and I thought that I have to buy them and preserve them. I have never made jam before, actually let me rephrase that, I have never made a serious effort to make any kind of a preserve before. I planned and planned and even bought the jars but when the time came to pull up my sleeves and start chopping and boiling and canning I gave up and chose the easy option: buy them ready made from the supermarket or some local producer. Then I started blogging and I somehow became a bit more energetic and slightly more daring. Some of you might laugh, making jelly is not such a difficult thing. Well it proved it was not but it is somewhat more tiresome than simple baking and requires good planning.

I found the recipe for Peach Jelly on a site called Add a Pinch in July and I pinned it on my Pinterest board for Jams and Preserves with the hope that some day I will make it, a hope that is born every time I pin something on any of my boards. Fortunately for this recipe, and for a few more to come, I found a blogging challenge called Bookmarked Recipes. It was founded by Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments and it is now hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. This challenge "was set up to encourage food bloggers to revisit the recipes they have bookmarked from magazines, newspapers, cookbooks. websites, blogs, to try them out and post about them.".

Now lets get on with the recipe!!!!

I added a vanilla pod and halved the original recipe because it was my first time and I felt scared of failing and wasting 3kg of peaches. I was so wrong! It turned out wonderful, light and aromatic with a hint of vanilla. I gave a couple of small jars to some of Georgie's colleagues and they are asking for more and if possible bigger jars!!!!

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Peach & Vanilla Jelly
Adapted from Add a Pinch 
Servings: Makes about 1.5kg

Ingredients
1.5 kg peeled, pitted and finely chopped peaches
1 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 3/4 cups sugar
85 gr pectin
1 vanilla pod cut lengthwise

Instructions

1. Put the peaches and water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to medium-low heat and simmer for 5 minutes. 
2. Remove from heat and skim off any foam with a stainless-steel spoon. 
3. Cover and allow to stand for 20 - 30 minutes.
4. Strain the juice through a very fine mesh sieve over a large bowl. Use a fork to mush up the peaches and get more juice our of them. 
5. Line the sieve with two layers of cheesecloth and strain the juice two times.
6. Combine the peach juice, pectin, lemon juice in a large pot and throw in the vanilla pod. 
7. Bring to a boil, stirring gently. 
8. Add the sugar and stir until it gets completely dissolved. 
9. Bring to a boil for 1 minute. 
10. Remove from heat and skim any foam that forms with a stainless-steel spoon.
11. Ladle the hot liquid into hot jars leaving about 1cm of space between the juice and the jar cap. 
12. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

PS: Don't throw away the vanilla pod. You can leave it to dry and then put it in you sugar jar and you will have vanilla sugar!!!!

Walnut Liqueur

When we moved into our apartment in Zagreb, our very kind Croatian landlady gave us, as a house-warming gift, a bottle of home-made walnut liqueur her mother had made the previous year. Thus, I discovered the bitter sweet, highly addictive, liquid heaven that is walnut liqueur a.k.a orahovica. 

Walnut liqueur is dark in colour, aromatic and quite fiery in taste. It is made from unripe (still green) walnuts and lots of good quality alcohol. Over the years I have made several fruit liqueurs from cherries and sour cherries, strawberries blueberries and cranberries, with walnuts thought I never tried it. When I tasted Zrinka's orahovica I was hooked by the rich walnut, coffee and vanilla aroma which becomes spicy and bitter-sweet with a long coffee finish when it hits your palette.

I asked for the recipe and in June last year I raided one of the dozen walnut trees growing around our building and gathered a bucketful of small green walnuts. A word to the wise...wear gloves when picking and handling the walnuts, their tannins are so strong they are going to colour your skin brown for a very long time. 

I found it very difficult to cut the walnuts, they are hard and slippery and I really treasure all my fingers, so I crushed them with a stone.

I used rakija - the Croatian version of a non-anise flavoured grape brandy, which is almost the same as the Greek Tsipouro or the Italian Grappa  - but you can use very good quality vodka if you cannot find any of the above.

~~~~~~~~~~

Walnut Liqueur

Ingredients
1 litre of grape brandy (without anise for example rakija, tsipouro, grappa) or good quality vodka
15 large whole green walnuts, crushed with a stone
1 whole lemon, quartered
1 vanilla pod, halved
200 g white sugar
10 toasted espresso coffee grains
10 cloves

Instructions

1. Mix all the ingredients in a large glass jar, cover and leave it exposed to the sun for 40 days. 
2. Try to shake the jar every couple of days for the sugar to dissolve. The liquid will turn dark brown gradually as time passes. 
3. When it’s ready to bottle, filter the liqueur through a cheesecloth or a coffee filter and pour into a clean bottle. 
4. This liqueur will keep for years stored in a cool, dry place, that is if you don't drink it all in one go....

French Fridays with Dorie: Spiced Poached Apples

What a difference a week makes!!! Last Friday I had summer on my plate with the colourful and delicious Eggplant Tartine. This week I seem to have Autumn. Apples and pears are definitely autumn fruit. And the weather, here in Zagreb, is definitely in tune with this lovely dessert.  For the past two days it's been raining non stop and the temperature is stuck around the 10 degree Celsius mark. Brrrr. It's chilly and windy out there. But inside it's warm and smells like...Christmas. I know it's way too early to think about Christmas but I could not help myself...cinnamon, vanilla, and orange, are surely scents of Christmas.

This dessert is really, really easy and quick to make. You can just make the syrup (water, honey, star anise, cinnamon, vanilla, orange and lemon zest) and use it in other recipes. It is light and incredibly aromatic. 

I chose to use apples and I did not use the sugar but just the honey. I spiked it a bit with two tablespoons of home-made Walnut liqueur. It was fantastic. The perfect dessert for a chilly autumn Friday afternoon. 

I just love the tiny vanilla seeds

To see how other bloggers liked Spiced Poached Apples or Pears check out French Fridays with Dorie website where every Friday we make recipes from Dorie Greenspan's book "Around My French Table"

Black Forest Manhattan

Happy Birthday We Should Cocoa and congratulations to Choclette and all the other lovely bloggers who have kept this very nice group going for two years now.

September being a month of celebration, the special ingredient was...yes you've guessed it...Cocktails. I was so excited when I read Choclette's post announcing it! I love cocktails, all types of cocktails, Alexanders, Cosmopolitans, Daiquiris, Manhattans, Martinis. Unfortunately I don't get the opportunity to make them at home as often as I'd  liked to so it's useless to say that I immediately jumped at the opportunity to make one to celebrate We Should Cocoa's birthday! 

I can imagine that some bloggers would go ahead and bake cakes and muffins and cupcakes inspired or infused with their favourite cocktails. I went the other way around and made my favourite chocolate cake into a cocktail. Oh! it was so..so good!!

Black Forest is my favourite cake. I adore the combination of chocolate and sour cherries and off course the fact that it is moist and creamy at the same time! And I like it even more when it is "drunk" with Kirsch or Cherry Brandy. I can eat a whole cake by myself and order another one for dessert.

If found this recipe for a Black Forest Manhattan on Saveur.com a while back and I immediately bookmarked it. I knew that the day to make would soon come and thanks to We Should Cocoa, I got the chance to try it. It was amazing! Now, I'm no expert , but I think the secret in making an amazing Manhattan is the quality of the whiskey. The other ingredients and mixers are also important but the aroma and the "punch" of the whiskey is the one that lingers and can transform it into a velvety, luxurious experience. I must confess, I used my husbands Single Malt for this one, but I did not regret one bit. It was worth it!

I also used my mother in law's home made Cherry Liqueur which was sweet enough to make me decide to skip the 1 cup (!) of sugar used in the original recipe to make the cherry syrup. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Black Forest Manhattan

Adapted from here

Serves 2 or 4 (depending how generous you feel)

Ingredients
1 cup sour cherry juice, plus a little bit more to rim the glass
1 cup cherry liqueur or Kirsch
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon fine sugar
85 ml whiskey
1 teaspoon chocolate syrup

Instructions

1. Mix the sour cherry juice with the cherry liqueur and chill.
2. To Rim the Glass: Mix the cocoa and sugar in a small plate. Pour some sour cherry juice into a wide, shallow bowl. Dip the rim of a martini glass into the juice, then dip it into the cocoa and sugar mixture. This will create a thin chocolate ring around the rim of the glass. 
3. Fill a cocktail shaker with 3/4 ice, add the whiskey, the cherry juice and the chocolate syrup. Shake and pour into the rimmed martini glasses. 

Cheers!

This is how things looked after a few of these babies *hick*

Ashtray Wednesdays - Nothing to do with Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a beautiful city. I wouldn't know, because I've never been, but my friend Ioannis, who has been there 3 times, told me that it  is really  a lovely city to spend a weekend break. This is the ashtray he bought for my collection. Just so you know, Ioannis has multiple entries in my ashtray collection, not only because he travels a lot but also because he is a really good friend who thinks about me and my crazy obsession every time he sees a souvenir shop. And I mean every time...by now I have 4 ashtrays from Brussels and 2 from Vienna with his name on them. Ashtrays are not the only things that Ioannis has given me over the years. He has been a loyal and trustworthy friend and more or less he's been the reason I am where I am today... But let me first tell you how I met Ioannis or John as his name translates in English. 

In 1999, I was studying for my MA at the University of Leicester and at the same time was working as the London correspondent of one of the biggest Greek TV networks. I had to commute almost every two days between Leicester, where I studied and lived at the University's dorms, and London, where I had appropriated the apartment of another friend, who was on a sabbatical in Greece. I was always in a hurry and so busy that I did not have time to get to know and hang out with any of my classmates. But I was young and eager to jump-start my "career" and having no friends at that time did not really matter to me. What mattered most was that I had to be able to read about 10 newspapers everyday between 7:00 and 9:00am and talk to my editor before my classes started. So every day at 7am I was the first one in the student shop, buying my newspapers and trying to balance them between books and notepads. There was a lot of talk in the university campus and especially among the Greek students about the girl with the newspapers. Who was she? What was she doing with all those newspapers everyday? Off course I was oblivious to everything other than David Beckham's fancy for Victoria's lingerie and I didn't know that people were talking about me.

One morning, as I was perusing the papers, looking for a piece that could make that days news, a guy approached me and outright asked me why was I reading so many newspapers everyday. I was a little embarrassed to tell the truth. I didn't think he immediately believed me, me being a completely unglamorous, plain looking girl, nothing like the polished, sharp looking TV personalities. That guy was John. He had finished the same MA I was studying a couple of years before and was now doing a PhD on something I cannot remember even if my life depended on it! We became friends and he introduced me to the rest of the "gang" who also became my friends making my year in Leicester the best year of my student life. 

Fast forward to 2003. I moved from London to Athens. John was among the very few people I knew there. I have to say at this point that he is the most friendly and sociable individual I've ever met and he is always surrounded by people most of whom he introduced to me. But the single most important person I met through John was Georgie who was and still is his best friend. So there you have it, since 1999, John has been a very good friend to me and has given me the most priceless present, the opportunity to meet and fall in love with my husband.

French Fridays with Dorie: Eggplant "Tartine" and the Return of the Prodigal Dorista

It's been more than a month since my last post for FFwD. In normal life, this is not such a long period. In the blogosphere, though, is nothing less than an eternity. Just consider how many clicks and unique visitors I've missed during this past month of cyber inertia...

Who cares, though, really? Not me. I was on vacation and vacation for me means vacating my life and mind of all the things I do everyday. It doesn't matter if these are activities that I actually enjoy, like cooking, photography, maybe writing, I need to get away from them, forget them and rediscover them when I come back. I spent 20 days going to the beach, swimming morning and afternoon, reading Murakami's 1Q84 and sleeping, a lot... I know that this is a type of "luxury" not available to everyone, especially in these challenging times, but you have to agree that the guilt free sleep of vacation, when you don't have to get up to go to work or do any errands is priceless. 

What is also priceless about vacation is that it ends. Don't frown. Take it from me, someone who's been on a non intended, semi-permanent vacation (it's really called unemployment but this word is so unimaginative and crushing) for the best of 7 years now. Vacation is meant to be short and sweet, like a chocolate fondant. A precious something that you cannot have everyday so that you savour every tiny bit of it. Even the best chocolate in the world would seem tasteless and even make you puke if you ate it by the bucket-full every day. Now that my box of Valrhona truffles finished I feel a sweet longing for them. I crave the peacefulness of midday naps in the shade by the sea. I am content, though, and wait for next year's delivery. 

Today's recipe has nothing to do with chocolate, but it has everything that my family and I have been eating for the past month. Eggplants (that's aubergines in my part of the world), tomatoes, olives, cucumber, capers. It is my summer in a plate ! I loved every bit of it. 

To see how other bloggers made the "Eggplant Tartine", check out French Fridays with Dorie where we make recipes from Dorie Greenspan's "Around my French Table".

On Cats and Giant Slingshots

I've been sitting in a Giant Slingshot, waiting for the launch, expecting the launch, anticipating and dreading it. Slingshots are not very comfortable places to sit. Maybe because they were designed to hold the projectile for just a few seconds until its target is chosen and locked. 

I definitely overstayed my welcome in my Giant Slingshot. I felt it more and more as the days turned into weeks, then months and I was still there. The muscles that held me tight and secure became stiffer and stiffer. But I couldn't let go...