Urlaubsmeldung

Ich mache ab Morgen 2 Wochen Blog-Urlaub. Das heißt, ich fliege nach Deutschland und da habe ich weder Küche noch Internet. Einstweilen, denke ich, habe ich bereits genug geschrieben, durch das sich Interessiert hindurchlesen/-koche/-backen können. Und jetzt, da die Fastenzeit beinahe vorbei ist, kann man ja bald essen so viel und was man will.

Erinnern möchte ich noch daran zu VOTEN für meinen Käsekuchen.

Bis dann ... und ein fröhliches Osterfest.

Waiter there's something in my.....Easter basket!

For the third time the blogevent Waiter there's something in my pie takes place. This march Johanna from the passionate cook is hosting it and wants to know what dishes you make for Easter, traditional or not, sweat or savoury. And what you are going to do in the Easter time. She extended the deadline of this event until the end of this week for the reason that she was sleepless for some nights since her kids had that scarlet fever. I hope that they will get well soon and her daily routine (and nightly sleeps) can take place again.


For this WTSIM's-event I made something traditional Italian with my own twist. No, not a paloma di pasqua. Maybe you know those nests made from yeast-dough nicely centered with a boiled egg. From this I took my inspiration for:

Baked easter basket with chocolate-nougat eggs

Ingredients for the dough:

100 mlmilk, lukewarm
25 gfresh yeast
110 gcaster sugar
500 gunbleached organic all-purpose flour
1lemon, the grated rind of it
½ tspsalt
125 gbutter
125 gquark/curd cheese or blanc battu or cottage cheese
2eggs (carefully open the eggs by only removing the top of the shells with a sharp knife to use them for the "decoration")

1eggwash (made with an eggyolk and 1 Tbsp milk)
some scopped nuts and
sugar crystals (and additionaly, for Easter, some sugar decoration)
as a topping


Preparation:

Crumble the yeast into the milk and stir until combined. Add a pinch of sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour, let stand in a warm place for about 5 to maximum 15 minutes until the mixture starts to have bubbles. Add the remaining ingredients and knead together until you have a smooth dough. Cover and let stand for about 30 minutes on a warm place.

Knead the dough once again and on a floured working surface form some strings with several bathes dough to create a nice wreath or several ring cakes. (I made only one wreath with 4 strings.)






Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and sit the dough-wrenches on it. Brush the eggwash over them and let stand until risen about further 30 minutes.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200°C.

Bake the wrenches depending on their size about 15 to 30 minutes.



In the nests for Easter you'll find normally praliné-eggs, nougat eggs, fondant eggs, and so on. In my nest you'll find some chocolaty eggs as well. Eggs with a kind of hazelnut-nougat ganache.



Ingredients for the egg-decoration:

7-8eggshells (including the two from the dough-recipe), thoroughly washed

80 ghazelnuts, blanched

180 gdark chocolate pestils or cuverture with about 60% cocoa content (you can use a chocolate mixture as well - i used pestils from Michel Cruizel)
150 gwhippening/heavy cream

45 gicing sugar


Preparation:

Add the hazelnuts for about 10 minutes to the yeast-wreaths in the oven to toast them. Let cool.

Over a double boiler/baine marie heat the chocolate together with the cream until molten. Stir carefully to avoid folding air into the mixture. Set the ganache aside.

Blend/grind the nuts together with the sugar until powdered (as I did it for the marzipan). Then add one teaspoon water at a time (or if it is for adults, cocoa, coffee or nut licquer) until the mixture forms a smooth praliné filling-like paste (the more liquid you add the more smooth it will be).
Alternatively or additionaly fill the eggs with marzipan blended together with some shredded dried apricots and a ganache made with white chocolate.



Fill the chocolate ganache and the hazelnut paste in alternating layers into the prepared eggshells. Refrigerate them until firm.





Final assembly:

Fill the baked yeast-wreaths with edable wafer grass (if you have) and place the eggs in it.



So dear waiter, this is what's in my Easter basket.

waiter there's something in my pie

Easter cake bake

For the first time Julia from a slice of cherry cake is going to host her newly invented event "easter cake bake". Hmmm, I think I have to calculate a bit: Eastern that means rabbits and rabbits mean carrots. Eastern and carrots mean

carrot cake

it's just that simple - for me.
You can vary this recipe with different nuts and of course any other decoration. Instead of the jam and marzipan you can use only icing sugar or make a fondant/icing with icing sugar and egg whites, it's up to you.


Ingredients:

250 gbutter at room temperature
345 gsugar
2eggyolks
500 gcarrots, grated
2organic lemon, juice and peel of it
1 tspvanilla sugar
800 gmunbleached organic all-purpose flour
4 tspbaking powder
2 tspcinnamon, ground
1hint salt
140 ghazelnuts, ground
250 mlmilk
2egg whites


400 gapricot jam
For the cake cover you can use ready made marzipan and colour it with liquid food colouring. I tried to make it myself since I usually make marzipan in small amounts.
300 galmonds, blanched and grounded to a fine powder
150 gicing/powder sugar
1carrot, juice extracted, if it's very think reduce it a bit over medium heat
16pandan leaves, shreddered and blended with about
50 mlwater and press it through a muslin/cheesecloth (as you can see it at the page I linked "pandan" to), if it's very think reduce it a bit over medium heat
alternatively make only half the amount almonds and powdered sugar and make a "pistazan" instead..
some pistachios, blanched and cut in two pieces


Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
Mix together the butter and sugar until creamy and white. Blend in the eggyolk, carrots, lemon juice, lemon peel, and vanilla sugar one a a time.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt and pour it in the batter alternating with the milk.
Whisk the egg white untill firm and fold it carefully into the batter.
Pour the batter in a buttered 28 cm-springform, even the surface out with wet hands and bake for about 75 minutes. Let cool on a wired rack.

Heat the apricot jam and pass it to a fine sieve.

Blend the almond flour together with the powdered sugar until it is a fine powder and the nuts start to release their oil.
Dive the nut-powder in two portions and blend/colour one with the carrot juice, one with the pandan water until it forms a oily ball.
Roll out the green marzipan in a size to be able to cover your cake between two parchment papers or in a plastic bag.
Spread the apricot jam over the cake and lay the green marzipan on it.
With the orange marzipan and the pistacios create some carrots and decorate the cake with them.



The cake will enhance it's flavour if you let it stand for 1 or 2 days. - Happy baking Eastern.

Centerpiece of the month - February

This COTM event is hosted by Janelle from Talk Of Tomatoes. For this I'll show you my Eastern decoration. Still without food ;-). I hope you'll like it anyway:





Since I usually post about decoration I uploaded some other ""-pics as well:

centerpiece of the month

Weekend herb blogging #75

Number 75 of Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging is on the way and Kate from Thyme for Cooking will host it.

Rezept auf deutsch

My doughter "forced" me to make something Swabian/Bavarian called Schupfnudeln or Buabaspitzle. Don't ask me what Buabaspitzle means. The shape of the dumplings should resemble this. But I'm sure if you dive into the internet with some googles on you'll find an answer. She loves this kind of potatoe-dumplings, related to the Italian gnocchi, pan fried and served with a green salad. You can eat them with cinnamon sugar and/or apple sauce, panfried in butter with poppy seeds, with sauerkraut and bacon dices, as a side dish to meat, and with many other things. If you ask where are the herbs. They are in the salad dressing I adopted from Tamy which is initially from "Barefoot Contessa at Home". "Tons" of freshly harvested basil. And Kate herself chose pepper for this event. I have the mildest form of the pepper family in my salad, a regular capsicum vegetable with the lowest concentration of capsaicinoids. For the Dumplings I used a recipe I found on an German webpage Kochbären.
I made only half the amount of the dressing since we are only three at home these days. My husband is in China, my oldest son in India and my doughter will leave us to go to Malaysia the following week. The mayonnaise, the recipe is calling for, I made on my own since I normally don't use it and I'm honestly not a fan of ready prepared things like store-bought mayonnaise in a jar.

I'll call this dish:

Swabian potatoe-dumplings on salad with anchovy paste-basil dressing

Ingredients for the Schupfnudeln:

750 gstarchy potatoes
150 gwheat all-purpose flour, or more, it depends on the used potatoes
3eggs
½ tspnutmeg, freshly ground or ground mace
1 tsp
salt

1½ Tsoil or lard for pan frying - I used goose lard


Preparation:

Cook the potatoes one day ahead. I cooked them without the use of water in the oven until the peel starts to shrink. Like I used to do it with my plum stuffed-potatoe dumplings.

Open the potatoes and scratch them out using a tablespoon. Mash them, and mix them together with the other ingredients to a smooth dough. You may need more flour if the starch-content of the potatoes is not high enough.
On a floured working surface roll out the dough in small portions to a 1½ cm string. Cut the strings in 4 cm pieces. Roll the pieces away from you using your palm. The ends should be thinner then the rest of the dumpling.
Bring water to a boil in a pot. Reduce the heat and cook the dumplings in batches in simmering water until they swim on the water surface. Put them out with a slotted spoon and let them drain in a sieve.
Heat the fat in a pan and fry the Schupfnudeln, carefully turning around, in it until golden brown and slighty crisp.



Ingredients for the mayonnaise:

1eggyolk (freeze the leftover egg white for using it in soufflés, marshmellows , meringuen/baiser/pavlovas or something else)
½ Tbsmustard (Usually I make mustard with fine to coarse grounded mustard seeds, vinegar, and water. But in this case I decided to use only the mustard seeds, grounded to a fine powder, in a slightly smaller amount than the indicated ½ tablespoon.)
1pinch salt
1pinch black pepper, fresh ground
80 mlsunflower oil, cold pressed
½ Tbstarragon vinegar or white wine vinegar or lemon juice


Preparation:


Whisk the eggyolk together with the mustard powder, salt and pepper. Let half the amount of the oil drip in, whisking vigourously. When the mixture thickens add the remaining oil little by little, whisking constantly. When the mixture is glossy and smooth pour in, still whisking, the vinegar or lemon juice. Season to taste.



Ingredients for the basil green goddess dressing:

½ cupmayonnaise
3spring onions/scallions, peeled, washed, and the white part chopped ~ ½ cup
½ cupbasil, chopped (fresh from my window sill)
1lemon, the juice of it ~ 1/8 cup
1clove garlic, chopped ~ 1 teaspoon
1 tspanchovy/white bait/ikan billis paste (I think you can substitude them with capers if you don't like it "fishy")
3/4 tspKosher Salz
½ tspblack pepper, fresh ground
½ cupsour cream


Preparation:

Blend together the mayonnaise, spring onions, basil, lemon juice, anchovy paste, salt, and pepper to a smooth cream.
Add the sour creme and mix just until combined. Chill.


For the salad I washed, drained and cut in bitesize pieces butter head salad, red coral salad, cherry tomatoes riped on the vine, cucumber, radish, and of course yellow capsicum.

Serve it with the dressing and top it with roasted onion rings.









Instead of this dressing I usually make a simple vinegar-oil-vinaigrette and add some yoghurt and chopped herbs.

By the way if somebody deserves a "spicier" sauce with Jalapeno peppers I can recommend a salsa roja. But seriously I think a great way to serve the Swabian "Gnocchi" ist to serve them with a pesto made from roasted red bell peppers (to stick with Kate's own theme), garlic, basil, parmesan cheese, and maybe some chopped nuts. So this dish would fit the event this week as well. But the prepared salad with this goddess dressing is simply divine - ask my doughter.

Trackback to the event, Technorati tagWeekend Herb Blogging.

Does my blog look good in this?!?

For the month of February this Question is asked from Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity. Last month I can't present good looking pictures yet. But most of my February post-pics are already shot with my new camera a Canon PowerShot S3 IS with 6.0 mega pixels. I haven't read the instructions of it so I try to get used to it by "playing around". Hence don't expect professional looking photographs. Why - not only that I have just a little time to make my pictures - we don't want to eat the dishes cold. And we used to eat in the evening after 7 pm which means, for Singapore, after sunset. This causes dim light and particularly darkness. Additionally the wheater condition (always about 30 °C and 90% humidity) exact it's toll. Maybe I should consider to buy a PC-programm to overdo them referring to sharpness, depth, brightness, backround, and so on..., another lens and a tripod. (Hello dear husband!!! As you know my birthday is just around the corner. Only one day before I have to sent my picture for the contest.)

My first choice from my February posts felt on these pics:

Amongst those pictures 4 left to choose from:

I decided to take part with that:

?

Could anybody help me to make a final decision?

Nachtrag vom 22.03.2007:

It seems to me as almost nobody has read my post. (Even if I know some folks especially in Singapore checking my blog regularly and even cooking or baking some of my presented recipes.)
My hubby and my kids favourite different pics.
And I love the photograph with the "sharp" pepperoncino.
But the picture of those simple yet delicious Thai nibbles seems to be a clean and clear composition suitable for this dish. And it looks a bit funny like a "Thai merrygoround". So as one comment suggested I sent this as my entry for the mentioned event.

Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity: Say Cheese! - DMBLGiT March Gallery
does my blog look good in this?does my blog look good in thisdmblgit