Chocolate, Tahini & Dark Rum Super Moist Cake

Last week I made a zesty, tasty Hummus with chickpeas and tahini. I make hummus almost every week because...well I don't need a specific reason to make hummus...it is easy, nutritious - lots of Omega 3 oils from the sesame seeds -  and most importantly, spreadable - perfect on a slice of bread or a rice cake for a quick snack.  I keep a big jar of tahini in my fridge and sometimes I experiment in using it in marinades and various bean based dips. But what else can you do with it, apart from hummus? 

In Greece when you hear the word "tahini" you immediately associate it with halva. Dense and sweet, it is made from sesame seed paste mixed with sugar, cocoa or vanilla, toasted almonds or pistachios. It is very well known and loved not only in Greece but all over the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa. It is a traditional dessert, the best choice for those who fast during the period of Lent. For all its richness and sweetness, halva is a humble dessert for the pious no matter their religion.  

But I was in no mood for halva. I wanted something "less traditional" and I found it in this recipe from one of Greece's best pastry chefs. It is a Chocolate, Tahini and Dark Rum Cake and I can tell you that there is nothing humble and pious about it, apart maybe from that it is so easy to prepare. You don't even need a mixer. Just a big bowl and a whisk and you are in business. Tahini and rum complement each other perfectly. You get an explosion of unique aromas and flavours with every bite, sweet cinnamon, vanilla and cloves from the rum, bitter notes of sophisticated earthiness from the dark chocolate and finally that particular piquancy of sesame. It is a very rich and very moist cake perfect when warm from the oven, even better when cold the day after. 

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Chocolate, Tahini & Dark Rum Super Moist Cake

Recipe from Stelios Parliaros "Μαθήματα Γλυκιάς Αλχημείας - Πρωτότυπες και Δημιουργικές"

Serves 8

Ingredients

300 gr tahini

300 gr powdered sugar

300 gr flour

200 gr dark chocolate, melted

300 ml dark rum

1 teaspoon baking powder

Procedure

Pre-heat oven to 180 C.

Butter a cake pan and sprinkle it with white sugar. I used a long pan but you can use a round one if you prefer.

In a big bowl, mix the tahini, dark rum and powdered sugar. Add the melted chocolate. Whisk in the flour and baking powder. 

Pour the mixture into the pan and sprinkle its surface with white sugar (The sugar will caramelise while the cake is baking and it give it a nice crunchy texture).

Bake for 20 - 30 minutes, depending on the size of your pan. 

When ready, gently run a knife around the edges of the pan, put your serving plate on top and turn over. The cake should fall easily on the plate and it should be hard on the outside and quite moist inside. 

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

I am linking this post with                                                            

French Fridays with Dorie: Crispy, Crackly Pear Tart

Autumn has landed in Zagreb big time! The past week has been grey and foggy and very damp. I used to love this weather. It gave me the best excuse - not that I desperately needed one - to cuddle up with a cup of chamomile and read. I still like it, but right now I could give everything of a few minutes of sunshine so I could get a good enough photograph of this heavenly tart. 

I have to admit. When it comes to food photography I am even lower than a novice. I have just started to learn how to take photographs using natural light. But what am I to do if there is not enough of that inside my flat? Well... I picked everything up, opened an umbrella and photographed the tart in the garden with the neighbours and passer-by looking quizzically at me and my steaming tart.  

It certainly is a good thing that you cannot go wrong with this tart, because I had to give half of it to the neighbours. The recipe is very easy and even though I changed the apples to pears and the cream and butter to coconut cream and coconut oil it turned out just amazing! The almond cream is a dessert on its own. Don't be surprised to see me posting a dessert recipe based on this superb cream very soon!

I had to blanch my almonds and roast them - overroast them really - and then grind them in my coffee grinder so the whole process took a bit longer than expected. Then, while I was waiting for the cream to set in the fridge for 3 hours, I made another cake with the leftover tahini from last week's hummus. I am a busy bee...yes I am!!

I really loved this tart! It was one of easiest and tastiest I had in months! I will definitely make it again! 

To see how other bloggers liked the "Crispy, Crackly Apple Almond Tart" check out French Fridays with Dorie website where every Friday we make recipes from Dorie Greenspan's book "Around My French Table"

Zucchini "Noodles" with Meatballs and Basil-Walnut Pesto

Before I start telling you about today's recipe, I have to say that Georgie, my lovely husband, used to be a big time pasta lover and eater! He could have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner! He even claimed that each different shape of pasta has its own particular taste!! To me that was just nonsense...pasta tastes like pasta it doesn't matter if it is long, thin, flat, round or looks like a mad professor's ill advised fashion choice. Then we discovered that his frequent lower abdomen troubles were caused by a gluten intolerance and that meant the end of his pasta love affair. I am sure he still fantasises about a huge bowl of steaming pasta with tomato sauce...I don't blame him, there is no harm in fantasising. Over the years I have experimented with many different alternatives to normal pasta. Rice noodles and spaghetti were pretty nice, better actually than some corn based gluten free pastas. They hold their shape better and have a good relationship with the sauce as long as you do not overcook them. 

Bear with me for a little while longer please....

Just before summer I came across a website called Balanced Bites. I was searching for a recipe to make meat or vegetable broth to freeze and use in my cooking instead of cubes. I found a great recipe and I also found a lot of other interesting information concerning some of mine a Georgie's health issues (chronic fatigue, acne, bloating and IBS). Diane Sanfilipo had a book coming out and on an impulse I pre-ordered it (I am a sucker for new cookbooks) and then forgot about it. It arrived about a week after we returned from our summer vacation happy and slightly heavier due to our summer indulgences. The book is called Practical Paleo. I had no idea what the paleo diet  was and I have to admit that even after reading the book (which is, by the way, very well written minus some spelling errors which I hope will be corrected by its second edition) I  still will be at a loss if someone asks me to explain what this diet/philosophy is about. The only thing I can say for sure  and from my own experience is that since I stopped eating grains and dairy and some nuts my skin problems almost disappeared and most importantly Georgie got his energy back! 

One book led to the next and that's how I got to find this very easy and flavourful recipe. Small, succulent balls of beef together with lively green, nutritious zucchini "noodles", sautéed together in a lemony Basil & Walnut pesto. Georgie's verdict....: "The best non-pasta pasta dish I've ever had. You have to teach me how to make this". My verdict...: amazing taste for an amazingly small amount of work, that is if you have a mandolin and know how to use it to make those noodles :)

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Zucchini "Noodles" with Meatballs & Basil-Walnut Pesto

Recipe from "The Food Lovers Make it Paleo" by Bill Staley & Hayley Mason

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 kg ground beef (or 500 gr ground beef and 500 gr ground pork)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 egg, whisked

4 medium zucchini

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

Basil & Walnut Pesto

Ingredients

2 cups basil leaves, washed and dried with a paper towel

1/2 cup walnuts

1/3 cup olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt & pepper

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. In a large bowl combine the meat with spices (salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder) and mix well with your hands. Add the egg and mix a little more until the egg is absorbed by the meat. Form small balls with you hands (about the size of a golf ball) and place them on a parchment-lined baking tin. Roast them for 20 - 25 minutes. 

In the meantime make the pesto by blending all the ingredients together for a few minutes. You may add more olive oil to suit your taste. 

Cut the zucchini into thin noodles using a mandolin. If you do not have one you can use a potato peeler and peel thin "tagliatelle" like pieces. One way or the other they still taste amazing!! Heat the olive oil in a large pan and sauté the zucchini for 2 - 4 minutes. If you leave it more it might turn mushy. 

Toss the zucchini noodles with the pesto and top them with the roasted meatballs. 

Enjoy!!!

Note: If you want the meatballs to become even more succulent you can add 1 teaspoon of baking soda to the meat and leave it in the fridge overnight before you shape it into balls. 

The Home Bakers #9

Today is Croatia's Independence Day...so Sretan Dan Neovisnosti to all my Croatian friends and readers. It is a public holiday, which means that everything is closed. I got to spent all day at home and catch up with some housework like ironing and other such mundane tasks I've been putting off for quite sometime now. 

After of about an hour of steaming, tacking and folding I was thoroughly bored and in desperate need of something creative. Normally I would paint, but I think I suffer from "painter's block" - if there is such a thing - because I haven't painted anything new since June. Maybe it's my impending move to Athens, that is interfering with my right brain signals making it difficult to visualise anything  other than suitcases and to do lists... 

Still a need is a need and in order to satisfy it I decided to bake this month's chosen recipe from The Home Bakers group. Cinnamon - Apple Walnut Torte was Jasline's from Food is my Life choice and a very appropriate one I might add, because it was exactly what I needed to get my creative juices flowing again. There is no photograph of this torte in Lou Seibert Pappas book "Coffee Cakes", the book from which The Home Bakers are going to bake all the recipes, and immediately I had to think what a torte might look like. I noticed that there is only a small amount of flour involved so it must be something like a crumble or a very moist crust-less tart. 

To be safe, I decided to use a spring-form baking pan. It was a good call. The torte is really moist, there are 3 apples and lots of cranberries in there and as you can see from the pictures (not my finest hour I admit) it is quite hard to keep everything together. But I was so damn tasty!!!! Because of the lack of flour you can really taste the apples, the walnuts give it a crunchy, more substantial feel and the cinnamon is just the right amount to make your mind and heart warm. Overall, I can say that I really liked this one, strange as it might sounded and looked. Next time I will bake it in small individual sized baking pans, just to make serving a bit easier and to set some boundaries because you can easily eat the whole thing in one go!!

If you would like to try the Cinnamon - Apple Walnut Torte for yourself and I strongly urge you to, please visit Jasline for the full recipe.

French Fridays with Dorie: Hummus & more

First I made the hummus...

It didn't take much time! Chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, salt & pepper. Simplicity never tasted so good.

Then I made the sweet potato chips...and I burned the first butch. I doesn't matter how interesting Angela's post for her Pumpkin Seed Oil Bunt cake is, when the timer goes off you have to go and check the oven...

Then I baked a few more sweet potatoes. Here in Zagreb I can only find red-skinned, white-fleshed sweet potatoes, they are not very photogenic but they taste yummy. I baked some thinly sliced celery root to supplement the vegetable quota of the day :)

Then I made the chicken...Trevor reminded me last week that I have a bush of rosemary thriving on my windowsill which is in desperate need of trimming... so Balsamic Rosemary Chicken was born.

You would think that's enough. I made this week's FFwD chosen recipe, a zesty hummus. I have sweet potato chips to dip into the hummus and I even have chicken to make everything a full meal. But no. I want more...I want...grapes and apples and fennel. So I made it again. Last week's recipe, that is, only this time I swapped the bitterness with the drunken sweetness of fennel. I am going to say just one thing...grapes and fennel are a match made in taste heaven. 

I cannot give you the recipe for the wonderful hummus I made today. You have to buy Dorie Greenspan's book "Around My French Table". But I promise it is worth every cent...I mean who would have thought grapes and apples in butter....magic....

I can give you the recipe for the Baked Sweet Potato & Celery Root Chips and the Balsamic Rosemary Chicken so here you go....

Baked Sweet Potato & Celery Root Chips
For 4 - 6 people
Ingredients
1 kg sweet potatoes
1/2 celery root (about 300gr)
Olive oil or coconut oil (2 - 4 tablespoons each)
Turmeric
Thyme
Paprika
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Ground cumin
Sea salt & ground pepper
Procedure

Pre-heat oven to 150 C.

Slice the sweet potatoes very thinly using a mandolin.  If you don't have a mandolin you can use a very sharp knife but please be very careful.  I left the skin on but you can peel it if you want. 

Peel the celery root and slice it thinly with a knife or a mandolin. 

Put the sweet potatoes in a bowl.  Add half of the olive oil and whatever seasoning you like. I used paprika, garlic powder and thyme. Mix them very well with your hands.

In another bowl mix the celery root slices with about 2 tablespoons of coconut oil turmeric, cumin, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Lay the slices out on a oven pan covered with baking paper. It is better for the slices not to overlap with each other. This will mean that you have to bake them in batches. If you are pressed for time and don't care about how crispy the chips become you can put them all together but there is a big possibility that they will turn out a bit soggy. 

Bake the sweet potatoes for about 35 minutes, checking frequently, or until they are nice and crispy.  

Balsamic & Rosemary Chicken
Recipe from "The Food Lovers Make it Paleo" by Bill Staley & Hayley Mason
Serves 2

Ingredients

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 200 C.

Rinse the chicken breasts and pat them dry with a paper towel. Place them in baking dish.

Drizzle the olive oil over them and rub them to evenly distribute the oil. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Rub them with the garlic and rosemary and put them in the oven.

Roast for 20 - 30 minutes (depending on the oven) until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 75 C. 

Remove from the oven and pour the balsamic vinegar over the cooked chicken. Prepare yourselves for a bit of sizzling action!!

Enjoy!

Recipe: Quinoa with Peppers, Capers & Smoked Salmon

I've been doing a bit of "blog-keeping", you know, deleting old draft posts, checking up on links and adding a few more, replying to comments (I cannot believe that I have comments, from actual people !!! thank you all so much !!!) and I found this little beauty tacked between a couple of unpublished ramblings. Those I deleted, they were hopeless, but this one, I have to publish. Actually, I feel sorry that I did not do it earlier. It was such a lovely dish! 

Back in July, I was supposed to cook and post a recipe for Lemon Barley Pilaf for the "French Fridays with Dorie" cooking group. Barley I cannot have, ah...you know, because of gluten, so I thought  that I will make the pilaf with quinoa. Everything was ready in my kitchen, water boiling, quinoa weighted and waiting to be boiled and then I received a text message from a friend inviting me to have lunch with her. I could not say no so I boiled the quinoa, left everything as it was (yes I switched off the gas - this is not this type of story :) and went out to lunch. I mean how long can lunch be? Well that one was quite long, 5 hours to be precise. We started with a salad and a glass of chilled Malvazia at our favourite lunch spot in Zagreb, Lari & Penati, then one glass led to another, they eventually turned into not one but 4 bottles of amazing refreshing wine. Another friend joined us and Georgie came to fetch me home but stayed and helped us finish off our forth bottle. By the time we returned home I was pleasantly intoxicated by the wine and in desperate need of dinner!  I had cooked quinoa though, the perfect base for a cold salad. I sautéed a small onion with a red pepper, added two tablespoons of capers and made a super quick basil and lime oil dressing. When everything cooled down I added a few slices of smoked salmon. It was perfect! I don't remember why I did not post this as that week's entry for FFwD. I guess I thought I changed the recipe too much to count. But reading through the draft today I think it is a shame not to share it. I mean, it's been two months and I still remember how yummy it tasted!!!! 

 

Quinoa with Peppers, Capers & Smoked Salmon

Inspired by Dorie Greenspan's "Lemon Barley Pilaf" from her book Around My French Table
Serves 2
Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1 large red pepper, diced
1 large white onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons capers, washed
150 gr smoked salmon, cut into medium pieces
For the Basil & Lime Oil Dressing
1 lime, juiced and zested
1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt & pepper
Procedure
In a medium pot boil the quinoa in 1/2 litre of water, until ready. You might need to add a bit more water until it is done. If you do that then strain the excess liquid and fluff up the quinoa with a fork. Set aside.
Heat the olive oil, in medium heat, in a shallow pan and toss in the onion and peppers. Sauté for 5 - 7 minutes until the vegetables soften. Add the capers. Cook for a further 2 minutes and remove from heat.
Mix the quinoa and the vegetables and let them cool before you toss in the smoked salmon.
Drizzle with Basil & Lime Oil Dressing.
For the Basil & Lime Oil Dressing
Put the basil leaves, lime juice and zest in a blender and blend well. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil. You can use more if you like or less. Season with salt and pepper.

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.