Tarte tatin

If you happened to read my recent post on kale frittata, you know I finally bought myself a cast iron skillet. It's one of those things I have dreamed about for a long time, but it took me  a long time to buy, as I thought I wouldn't have room for it. And to be honest, I don't have any extra room anywhere in my apartment. But I bought one of the small ones, so it doesn't take up that much space. And even if it does, who cares, because it's so cute and pretty and shiny. And above all great for cooking. Best steaks ever. The brand of the skillet is Lodge, and on my recent trip to SF, I found so many different types of cast iron cookware from this manufacturer that I would have loved to bring home. Particularly, I fell in love with their handle-less skillets, which were about single serving size and would have been great for direct to table cooking. Too bad the airlines pose weight restrictions on the luggage, otherwise I would have bought a few of those to take home with me. So I comforted myself by thinking I would get some from Amazon. Turns out I can't find that specific skillet anywhere online, not even on the Lodge website. So now I'm a little bit heartbroken.

My true inspiration for buying a cast iron skillet was my desire to make Tarte Tatin. I watched the bakers on the Great British Bakeoff making more or less successfull Tarte Tatins, and I really wanted to try it out. Despite the more exotic variations out there, such as banana or tomato, I decided to go for a traditional apple and pear variety. Partly because I wanted my first Tarte Tatin to be a classic one, and partly because I still had a bunch of apples and pears left over from my grocery delivery extravaganza a while ago, which really needed to be used up asap.

I have read from several blogs how hard the Tarte Tatins are to make, so I was feeling very insecure embarking on my TT journey. I read all the recipes I could get my hands on and all the comments sections if there were any. The recipes I ended using as a basis for my attempt were this one form BBC food and this one from Jamie Oliver. And the recipes from the Great British Bakeoff cookbook. You can actually find a few of the GBB recipes here if you want to have a look at them. And looks like I wasn't the only one inspired by GBB to make some TT, here is the blog of a fellow inspired baker. She even made her own rough puff, which I am very impressed with.

In theory, making a TT sounded really easy. Just add sugar and water, cook it without touching it at all, dump on the fruit and pastry, and bake. Ok, I guess I can do that, although the instructions for making the caramel were in general very vague. "Cook until a beautiful golden colour". Ok then, thanks for those specific instructions. Also, "don't stir the caramel while cooking as that will make it crystallise". Ok, fair enough, but how am I supposed to mix it when it only turns out golden in one quadrant of the pan? Given that I really had no idea of what I was doing, the end result turned out really great. I suggest you go through the process in your head once or twice before starting though. Just so that you have figured out each step in advance. And make sure you have all your ingredients all measured up and chopped and ready to go. Then just do it! I did cheat by using ready made puff pastry, as I thought the stress of making your own caramel would be enough of a challenge for my first TT.

Tarte tatin for a small (20cm) cast iron skillet (serves 6):
100 g caster sugar
3 tbsp water
1 apple
1 pear
1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla syrup

50 g butter
250 g puff pastry

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Roll out the puff pastry and cut a circle which is a bit bigger than your skillet. I used a plate which is slightly bigger than my skillet as a template. Slice the pear and the apple (peel first if you like). Grate the zest from the lemon, and also squeeze any juice you can get from it. Mix the fruit with the lemon juice/zest mix. Add vanilla syrup.

Make the caramel: put water and sugar in an oven proof skillet and heat on low until the sugar has dissolved into the water. Increase temperature to medium and cook until caramel turns golden brown. Watch it closely, as it will turn from light brown to burned very quick. Don't stir the caramel while it's boiling as this will cause it to crystallise.

Take the skillet off the heat, and add the fruit to the pan, making a beautiful pattern of the layer of fruit which goes on the bottom. Be careful, because the caramel is extremely hot! The rest of the fruit wont be visible, so you can just pile it on without arranging it. Cut butter into small pieces and add on top of the fruit. Cover with puff pastry, and tuck in the edges of the pastry to the edges of the pan, but be careful as the pan is really hot. Make a few holes in the pastry with a fork, and bake until puff pastry is golden, about 25 minutes. The caramel and fruit juices will bubble around the edges of the puff pastry while baking. Let cool for a few minutes in the skillet, then turn over onto a plate which is bigger than the skillet. Place plate against the skillet, and press the plate against the skillet when turning the plate-skillet combo. All recipes suggested wearing heat proof gloves when turning the tarte, as the caramel is really hot and can burn you if you get it onto your skin. I didn't have any problems with any overflowing or exploding caramel, but I guess it's a better safe than sorry moment.

Water and sugar added to the pan.

When the sugar has melted, up the temperature to medium,
and the mixture will start bubbling like this.

The caramel is starting to turn golden. This was when I ran into trouble,
as my cooker clearly has uneven heat distribution, and particularly
the lower left hand quadrant turned very dark quickly whereas other parts
of the caramel were still white. And I wasn't allowed to stir the caramel
so that it wouldn't crystallise. Quite a pickle. I took the caramel off
almost immediately after this picture was taken.

Add fruit and chunks of butter.

Last but not least, add the puff on top, and tuck in the edges.

The verdict:
The tricky part about a Tarte Tatin is the caramel. I seriously had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I wasn't supposed to stir it while it was cooking as this could cause it to crystallise. In all episodes of GBB, they cooked the caramel until it was quite a dark golden brown. My caramel cooked very unevenly as you can see from the pictures, and it started to get a funny burned sugar smell in one part of the pan while still too light elsewhere. I figured some sort of compromise was in order and took it off before the burnt part got too dark and bitter smelling. Also, if I wasn't imagining it, the caramel did crystallise a bit when I added the fruit on top of it. However, clearly baking it in the oven did something to return the caramel to a smooth state, there were no crystals anywhere to be seen in the finished product. And after letting the tarte rest in the skillet for about 10 minutes after baking, it turned out very beautiful, and didn't stick at all. Might be beginner's luck, as I have read many bitter comments about TTs that have refused to get out of the pan when turned. I guess if you burn your caramel that is what happens. Also, some of the tips said you shouldn't let the tarte cool before turning it, as the fruit will stick to the pan. 

Interesting enough, it looks like there are two methods for making caramel. One is the water and sugar method I have used here, and which has been demonstrated by Mary Berry in the GBB. And if Mary says so, that's what I'll do. But some recipes seem to use another method, where the sugar is melted into butter. I have read quite a few comments about people having trouble with that method, but also seen several very successful results, so I guess both methods are perfectly valid. Not sure if I'll ever be brave enough to try the other one now that I know I can make this one work. Now my mind is just jumping from idea to idea what other flavours to do next.

Blogosphere overview

I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, maybe making it a weekly or fortnightly feature, maybe alternating with my Friday quickies. I follow quite a few food blogs. Currently I have over fifty food blogs in my RSS feed, and the number is constantly growing. I get so annoyed if I find a great food blog which doesn't have a rss feed. I don't have time to go through a great number of individual blogs one by one, so if I can't subscribe to it, I will forget about that blog. Which is a shame, but then again this food hobby would get totally out of hand without the help of things like RSS feeds and Pinterest boards which allow for a quick overview of lots of things in a short time.

In my opinion, food blogs seem to fall into one of two categories. There are those which are as much concentrated on food photography as actual recipes, and these blogs usually are not updated very often. However, the photo shoots look absolutely professional, and as much effort has been put into making the photos look gorgeous as in the cooking and recipes themselves. Then there are food blogs which are updated more often and have more of a focus on the actual food, but the photos aren't always quite as impressive. For me, having a good mix of both types in the blogs I follow is important, as I want to ogle the gorgeous photos but also want enough blogs which are updated often to make sure I have some new blog entries to cheer me up and inspire me every day.

I guess this is as good a place as any to remind you of my Pinterest boards, which can be found here and the board for the blog specifically is here. Feel free to have a browse around or to follow if you feel like it.

Anyways, my point was that there are so many great blogs out there, and not nearly enough time to try out all the recipes. But I thought maybe if I highlighted some of my favourite recipes from my favourite blogs, this might help someone else find these great blogs and maybe try out some of the recipes. 

A lot of the American food blogs (and a lot of the ones I follow happen to be American) have only just recently got over their pumpkin and Halloween obsession, and are now full of Thanksgiving recipes. I bet after Thursday, the focus for the next few months will be on Christmas recipes. Trying to avoid pumpkin and cranberries, here are a few recent favourites of mine:

Baker's Royale recently published a recipe for Caramel Rum and Banana Bread Pudding. It's actually three recipes in one, as there is a recipe for the Caramel Rum, the Banana Bread and the pudding which brings them together. You could choose to make just one or the other, the Carmel Rum sounds great to eat with ice cream, or maybe stuff into cupcakes or in a cake as well. 

Brown Eyed baker impressed with a recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Cheese cake. This looks so good I could just eat the picture of it. Salted caramel anything is just genius, and caramel and apple is of course a classic combo. So salted caramel apple cannot be anything but absolutely awesome. 

Chocolate covered Katie is a blog with healthier variations of desserts, cakes and sometimes other things as well. This time Katie is sharing a recipe for making oatmeal in the slow cooker, which I think is a really great idea. 

This recipe from My Little Kitchen is not quite recent, but I just love these piggy buns, they are too cute to be true so I had to bring them up here. 

That's all for this time, a bit heavy on the sweet stuff. I'll try to get in some recipes for proper food next time. However, I have to admit the blogs I follow are quite heavy on the side of sweets and baking. Hopefully you found a new blog to follow, or a recipe that inspired you.

Foodie party at the Frisco Bay

Before starting for real, I'll just warn you. There will be no recipe at the end of this post. This will just be word vomit all the way. So if that disgusts you, turn away now, and come back in a few days when I promise you there will be another recipe. Anyways, on to today's topic. I just came back after spending a few days in San Francisco because of work. I was really excited to see SF, as so many people have said wonderful things about it. Many have said that in addition to Boston, it's their favourite US city. And these are not just random people, but friends whose judgement I tust and value. So I was quite excited. Maybe it was a case of too high expectations, but I can't say I was particularly impressed.

Ok, to be honest, I did like the layout of the city on top of several hills. The steep hills make the city look great. As long as you don't actually want to go anywhere, at which point they are just a great annoyance. But I can't blame the city for the fact that I'm lazy and unfit. When I arrived, I was wondering why all runners looked so incredibly fit. After having walked up the same hills they seem to run up and down, it all started making sense though. I had a great walk around the city with a good friend, and as soon as I got past the crazy steep hills, it was really enjoyable and pretty. But downtown was quite depressing. Architectonically ridiculously ugly and dirty. And crowded. But many other US cities are crowded and dirty too, and it doesn't bother me too much. But the one thing which I found absolutely disgusting was the countless homeless people everywhere. I'm not a timid person, and I can't say I have been scared many times in my life. I like to explore cities on my own, and I'm not usually scared to walk around anywhere even late at night. Obviously I stay away from known dangerous neighbourhoods and use my judgement of where its safe, but I wouldn't say I have been scared many times in my life. But in SF I was scared, several times. It's not just that I think the huge number of homeless people reflect very bady on a society in general. But these people were clearly even worse off, having psychiatric problems and acting really irrationally. I ended up not wanting to walk around the city at night, even though I didn't even live anywhere close to where my guide book consideres to be the 'bad' part of town. I'm very lucky I have been out with gentlemen who have made sure I have gotten back home to my hotel safely. Well that,or I've been in bed by 6pm suffering from a severe but thankfully quick bout of food poisoning. However, even walking in the city early on Sunday morning was quite scary, not to mention all the weird people I ended up sharing a bus with early on Sunday morning. 

In general I don't consider myself to be a very compassionate person. I'm all for an individualist society, everyone making their own luck, being responsible of your own success and all that stuff. But I have also grown up in a true welfare state, where we pay a steep price in the form of taxes to take care of everyone in our society. That's what we do as human beings. And I do think in some things, the Scandinavian model goes too far. We shouldn't have to pay for some of the things we do. But for people to be able to have the tools to build their own success, we need to provide them with an equal opportunity to do that, in the form of free and equal education. And I'm happy to pay quite a bit of taxes to also make sure society will take care of people who are too sick to take care of themselves and to make sure they are not out on the street threatening law abiding taxpayers.

In general, I don't think politics should go on a food blog. But my trip to SF has really made me think about these things. Maybe partly because my first night there was election night. And looking at all those clearly mentally ill people out on the streets, I can't believe Americans were so close to *not* elect a president who wants to improve health care. Well, this is something I could write about at length and I have quite a few adjectives I would like to use about what thakfully turned out to be a minority of Americans, although only by the width of a hair or two. But I won't. Because there are food related things I want to touch upon. That might be a safer topic. And also something I consider myself to be much more knowledgeable about than politics. And endlessly more interested in.

So to be perfectly fair to SF, I think part of why my time there was so miserable was because of work. I have made it quite clear before, but I'm really unhappy with my current line of work. And I am going to start looking for something else soon enough. I was miserable sitting at the conference, listening to the talks. But there were good things as well. I got to see many of my wonderful colleagues from my old job back home, who I am lucky enough to also call my good friends. It was great to get to spend time with people I feel absolutely comfortable with and have such a great time with. And I did find a few things and places in SF that I enjoyed as well.

Some of the things I enjoyed included a walk across town with Friend, as well as my walk all through the rather extensive Golden Gate Park in my single minded attempt to get all the way out to the ocean. On our walk over the steep hills of SF, me and Friend half accidentally ran into several sights that were listed in my omnipresent Lonely Planet travel guide. Which of course means that they are worth seeing. It has actually become a tradition for me to get the Lonely Planet guide for wherever I'm going. And I like to scribble notes in the margins, adding nice restaurants and cafés which I have found on my travels. Unfortunately for most places, I haven't had a chance to go back so that I could return to my favourite haunts.

Honey Honey had a line out the door on Saturday morning.

Part of the menu at Honey Honey.

Talking about favourite eateries. This one was not listed in the guide, but was recommended to Friend by the hotel concierge. It was around the corner from our hotel, and I'm glad we only discovered it the day before leaving. You know how I lovelovelove big breakfasts, and I think the Americans have the whole breakfast routine down real good. Pancakes, eggs, French toast. Heck, throw it all together. And as you can see from the picture of the menu (which filled a whole wall), I could have come here every breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole trip and still have things left to try out next time I'm in SF. The place is called Honey Honey and is located on the corner of Post and Taylor, only a few blocks from Union Square. Thumbs up! Together, me and friend ended up trying quite a few dessert crepes, with caramel and toasted pecans, with strawberry, and my blintz which was a crepe made into a parcel containing strawberry jam, ricotta, sour cream and orange marmelade. Talk about a sugar bomb for breakfast. The freshly squeezed orange and carrot juice were also really good. I guess it's a sure sign that you are in California when even the smallest cafe has a orange juice squeezing machine thingy instead of serving horrible canned juice. Another sure fire way to know you are in CA is the avocado. I'm used to avocados being these ridiculously expensive things which usually are hard as rock even if you buy the "ready to eat" kind. But not in SF, you could always have a burger, or sandwich, or crepe with avocado. And it was always great soft ripe silky smooth avocados. At one creperie, I was mesmerised by the crepe cook carving avocado out of the shells, over and over again. It was hypnotic. I could have stood there all day. He must have thought I was out of my mind, my eyes following his every move as he scooped that green soft flesh out of the shell. Oh mine, here we go again...

The Ferry building

The Ferry building from the inside

Another food experience I would have liked to expand on was the Ferry building. It is a beautiful old building originally finished in 1898 as the port building. Nowadays it's been converted to a marketplace where local shops sell their produce. There are artesan dairies, butchers, wineries, chocolatiers. And several restaurants which I didn't get around to trying out, but which seemed to come highly recommended and looked wonderful. This would definitely be the place where I would buy all my food if I lived in SF. And if I happened to be filthy rich.


Talking about chocolatiers, SF is the home of Ghirardelli chocolate. I am not an expert on American chocolates but just had an overall feeling that I can't remember ever having had very good chocolate in America. However, many of the food bloggers I follow go on about Ghirardelli and Scharffen Berger chocolate, so obviously I had to give them a try. And as I remembered, the Ghirardelli is not anything very impressive. In fact in my opinion it is at best mediocre (the dark ones) and at worst horrible (milk and white) and absolutely ridiculously overpriced. Scharffen Berger I liked more. But a particular favourite I found was the Dagoba chocolate, they had some good flavoured chocolates. The chai one was brilliant, such a balanced mix of spices but again, the milk chocolate was a bit disappointing. I didn't know this, but perusing the Dagoba site online, it turns out it's owned by Hershey. So I might stay clear of it in the future. But there is no denying the flavour combinations were great! Looks like it might be a bit hard to get hold of in the UK though. Amazon seems to carry a few flavours, but not the chai one. However, the price is absolutely ridiculous, the 56g bars cost £3.99 which currently seems to be $6.33, whereas I paid $3.50 for the bars I bought in SF. But in general, chocolate seems to be cheaper in the US, the Madecasse chocolate I bought a while ago I think I paid £4.99 for, whereas in Wholefoods it cost $4.99, which is about £3.14. When I got to the airport and realised my bag was almost 5 kg under the allowed weight limit, I just wanted to jump right back on that shuttle and go get myself more chocolate. One local chocolatier which seemed to be highly recommended was Recchiuti confections, located in the Ferry building. I didn't buy any of their chocolates as they were priced completely out of this world. I did however bring back a jar of their extra bitter chocolate sauce and burnt caramel sauce, so I will give them a try at some point. Now I just have to decide whether to eat them with ice cream, cake, waffles, pancakes, or just with a spoon... But right now I have to admit I have overdosed on chocolate, so I will save my sauces for later. Much later. I have always said I have no upper limit to how much chocolate I can take, but I was clearly wrong. One week in SF seems to be pretty much my limit. Although I bet by tomorrow morning I'm back to my sugary cravings. 

Ok, I know I have been going on and on and on. I still have a few other things I wanted to touch upon, but I'll do it very quickly. One of my favourite touristy spots was WholeFoods. Yes I know, I'm crazy, but I do love perusing grocery stores. And this one is definitely one of the more worthy of aimless wandering from isle to isle. I bought some absolutely delicious cream cheese made from milk from non-hormone fed cows, which after enjoying it with some bagels, I just ate on it's own.. Oh, and the all American apple pie. It was so ridiculously good, that I can't reveal how much I ended having in one go. Lets just say I wish ihan only bought one piece instead of... More. And I finally got to buy myself a jar of Biscoff spread, which seemed to be all the rage in all US food blogs earlier this year. So yes, I'm a bit late with that food fad, but I just had to try it out. I find it so funny it is marketed as European, but I haven't been able to get my hands on it anywhere despite some extensive googling efforts. And I also bought myself some pumpkin. You know, the canned pureed thing, which is used for pumpkin pie. I'm trying to remember if I ever had pumpkin pie. I think I had one many years ago in Boston when I happened to be there for halloween. Now I will certainly bake myself a pumpkin pie at some point, although I realise I should have moved on from pumpkin (aka Halloween food) to cranberries (aka Thanksgiving food). But since we don't have any of those food traditions over here (at least I don't with my Finnish heritage), I think I can cook pumpkin pie any time I want. I'm still surprised there isn't any pumpkin in any of the grocery stores over here, as I would have thought the UK and US food cultures would have some things in common, but pumpkin doesn't seem to be one of those. So I'm really excited to get to try it out. Other things I dragged across the pond was pancake mix and maple syrup. Things you can get here as well, but American pancakes are better. And buying maple syrup in the UK just seems wrong. Well, not sure if it's any less wrong to buy it on the west coast. At least I had the pleasure to drag my heavy suitcase across town and up the 50 stairs to my apartment.  

Last thing I wanted to say. SF is clearly a very environmentally aware place. I love it that you have to pay for plastic bags. It's one of my pet peeves over here when people can't be bothered to take their own bags for life with them when going shopping. And then they use at least 20 plastic bags for their 10 items of shopping. I mean, first of all it's ridiculous to have those really thin plastic bags which only hold a few items. But it's even more annoying when people can't put their box of crackers and bag of crisps in the same plastic bag. I would like to strangle them with their plastic bags. So every time a salesperson very apologetically informed me about the SF $0.1 bag fee, I just smiled at them and told them I think it's a great thing. And I do. The other thing I loved was that unlike the rest of the US, there were no styrofoam plates and takeaway containers anywhere. Everything was recycled cardboard. That made me so happy. So there were definitely some things we should adopt here in the UK as well. Back home, there has been a charge on plastic bag for as long as I can remember. And not a styrofoam container as far as the eye can see.

Ok, if anyone made it this far, thanks for reading, and like I said in the start, sorry for the lack of a recipe this time. I promise I will report on my experiments with pumpkin, Biscoff and Recchiuti sauces when that time comes. Although that time won't come until I can close my jeans again, so it might be a while. Until then, it's a good thing I have some old recipes in store.

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Kale frittata

I'm very fickle in my affections. I know me and the slow cooker only just fell in love. And I'm not saying I don't still love it (made a delish pineapple and onion pulled pork just the other night. And when I say night, I literally mean night. I even woke up a few times to the wonderful smell in my apartment. Ok, to be honest, I woke up to leg cramps, but the pork still smelled amazing). But me and the slow cooker are past the initial infatuation, you know when you want to spend every moment together and tell each other everything. I also have to admit, I'm in love. Don't tell my slow cooker, but I found something else. And that something is my brand new shiny, black beauty. My cast iron skillet.

I have wanted to get a cast iron skillet for ages, but I'm still trying not to overcrowd my super tiny kitchen. Apparently I'm very unsuccessful at that... After watching the bakers on Great British Bakeoff make Tarte Tatins I finally cracked. Off to Amazon I went, and ordered a cute little 20 cm skillet of a brand that had quite good consumer reviews. It was also important to me to get a skillet which was ready to use and did not require seasoning as all reviews of pans that were not pre-seasoned said that it makes your apartment smell horrible, and having only just got rid of the smell of smoke from my apartment, I was not too keen on inducing any new smells.

A Tarte Tatin was going to be the first thing I made in my brand new skillet. However, I can't justify that kind of decadence in the middle of the week. But I still wanted to give my new pan a trial run. And I happened across this recipe for Kale Frittata on My Kitchen in the Rockies which was perfect as I had ordered some curly kale and had no idea what to use it for. I modified the amounts of ingredients slightly, and omitted the cheese from the original recipe.

Kale frittata (serves 4):
2 tbsp oil
1 onion
100 g curly kale
1 clove of garlic
65 g pepperoni
6 eggs

One serving contains 285 kcal (22g fat, 8.5g carbs, 14g protein).

The howto:
Preheat the grill. Chop the onion, garlic, pepperoni and kale. Whisk eggs, season with salt and pepper if you want, although I thought the pepperoni was plenty of flavour and no extra seasoning was needed. Heat oil in an oven proof skillet, and cook the onion for a few minutes until translucent. Add kale in two or three batches and cook until kale begins to wilt. After adding all kale, add garlic and pepperoni and cook for a few minutes more. Turn down the heat to medium/low and add the eggs. Stir so that the eggs distribute evenly, and cook until set on the sides of the skillet but not in the middle. Add cheese if you want to, and finish cooking under the grill for a few minutes. Let set for a few minutes in the skillet before serving.

The verdict:
During the last year or so, I have eaten eggs in pretty much any form. Hard boiled, runny yolk, poached, fried, scrambled, in the form of omelettes, mini muffins, oven cooked in tomato sauce, with banana... You name it, if it's got egg, I've done it. So this was a really nice change. I think I have pinned a few different frittata recipes and am excited to be able to finally cook them.

This isn't the healthiest start to the morning, as the pepperoni has quite a lot of fat and salt. But just for a change, this was nice. It can't be helped, but the salty and spicy pepperoni complements the kale and eggs perfectly. Next time I think I might add a bit more onion, as I really liked the combination of kale, pepperoni and onion. Also, I think I might have slight overcooked my frittata, so next time I will leave it a bit more runny in the middle before putting it in the oven. If you don't have kale, I think spinach would also work perfectly, although the kale adds a nice crunch. And replacing the pepperoni with bacon would probably also work perfectly. So as a summary, I now have one more way to cook eggs. And the good thing with the frittata is that leftovers can be re-heated the next day, either for brekkie or as a light lunch together with a green salad. I think my new love will see a lot of use in my kitchen.










 

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Banana breakfast muffins

I constantly keep doing this. I swear in the morning I won't have anything sweet that day. And it always starts innocently with a chocolate after lunch, or some biscuits with tea. Not that I would ever buy any dessert chocolates or tea biscuits, but today when we got off the bus coming to work in the morning we were offered chocolates because it was "travel to work in an environmentally friendly way" day, and in the afternoon we had an afternoon with people from all across our department giving talks with a tea and biscuit break in between. Then I snack on some nuts and dried fruits in the afternoon because I'm so bored at work. And I keep silencing that little voice in the back of my head saying I shouldn't be eating this. After all nuts and fruits are healthy, right? Then I come home, and for some strange reason a big handful of dates or sultanas just fly into my mouth. So I have no chance but to eat them. I mean, they just viciously attacked me. Sometimes I'm so desperate that I go to my baking ingredient stash and eat a few candy melts or some caramel chunks. And once again, the day which started healthily with an omelette for breakfast and a salad for lunch ends up with a thousand calories more in my food diary than was intended. Are there any self help books for developing some self control? Something along the lines of Self Control for Dummies?

Today was one more of those days. When I came home from the gym, I was attacked by a bag of dried dates. And then there was the problem of those two over-ripe bananas sitting on my kitchen counter. They would not last long, so something had to be done. And that something was of course hitting my Pinterest boards as I knew I had pinned several recipes for banana bread and muffins. After much pondering, I settled on a recipe for Vegan Banana Muffins from Minimalist Baker. And again, I fell deeper into the depths of self deception, convincing myself this recipe is almost health food. I mean it has no added fat and very little sugar. Healthy, right? And replacing the white flour with rye and whole wheat makes it almost acceptable to eat the whole batch in one sitting? Well, health food or not, those bananas had to be used in some way, and this seemed like a decent enough way to help them find the reason for their existence. I made a few changes to the recipe, replacing the flax egg with a regular egg, excluding the butter and replacing the white flour with half rye flour and half whole wheat. I also doubled the recipe to make 4 big muffins as I had two bananas that needed to be used up asap.

Banana muffins from Minimalist baker (makes 4 big muffins):
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda (I didn't have any soda so I used baking powder)
pinch of salt
2 ripe bananas
3 tbsp dark muscovado sugar (the original recipe had 3 tbsp sugar for two muffins, but I reduced it a bit)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla paste
4-5 big pieces of crystallised ginger
about 10 pecan nuts, coarsely chopped, for topping

The howto:
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Use a fork to mash the banana, and mix in baking powder, salt and sugar. I used a fork to mix. Then mix in the eggs, ginger and vanilla paste, I gave them a good swirl with the fork. Last, work in the flour. The batter was still easy to mix with the fork even after adding all the flour. Pour into single serving ramekins or big muffin moulds, and top with the coarsely chopped nuts. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

The verdict:
I have never been a big fan of banana bread. At least not until I made this chocolate and banana bread, which I pretty much ate in one day. Every time I passed by the bread, sitting there all innocent on the kitchen counter, I couldn't help but to have a slice. And another. And another. It was just so moist and soft and decadent. And with some butter on top... oh that was good. That also encouraged me to try some other banana recipes, despite my prejudice.

This recipe does bring out the taste of banana. I was first thinking of adding some cinnamon, cardamom or dried ginger, but I'm glad I didn't. I did add some finely chopped crystallised ginger though, as I have a bit of an addiction to it right now. Chocolate chips would also be a great addition.

The only thing I will do differently next time I'm baking these muffins is I wouldn't bake them in my rose cake moulds, instead i would make them in ramekins as was done in the original recipe so that you would get that beautifully risen domed top of the muffins up on top. I really can't figure out what to bake in the rose moulds, it would have to be something that doesn't rise too much so that you would get a flat bottom to your rose cakes. I'll have to experiment, and I'll get back to you.

I'm really surprised how high the muffins rose in the oven. I probably measured my baking powder a bit on the generous side, but I think that was necessary because I was using rye and whole wheat flour, which don't naturally result in light or fluffy muffins. But I actually think the texture of these muffins was spot on, not too fluffy, but still light and moist. Of course with rye flour, you will always get a somewhat more dense texture compared to all white flour, but I like the almost nutty flavour it brings. And these muffins actually didn't taste healthy, they tasted really good. These muffins were perfect for breakfast, they are on the large side but at least you are not left hungry. And they are perfect to take along and enjoy while sifting through your morning emails at work.

 

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Baked autumn apple oatmeal

Last week, instead of going to the grocery shop, I ordered delivery. That's one of the things I consider an absolute luxury in this country, ordering groceries to your front door and only paying a few quid for it. Obviously the delivery price varies depending on your time slot. Fortunately the cheapest ones are the ones late in the evening, which is the only time I am at home anyways. So delivered groceries always mean too much groceries. As I don't have a car, weekly grocery shopping for me literally means some heavy lifting. So when I'm ordering online, I tend to pile on anything stockable. Beans, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, flour... If it keeps, I will order it.

Sometime (ok, ok, every time...) I go a bit overboard with my grocery delivery orders, just out of the joy of not having to carry it all home myself. Currently my kitchen is stocked with several kilograms of flour, several kilograms of chopped tomatoes, half a dozen packs of chickpeas. And right now, also at least three weeks worth of eggs. I mistakenly ordered two 15 egg cartons, when I was going to buy two 10 egg cartons. So right now I'm trying to come up with lots of recipes which require eggs. For some strange reason I only come up with super-unhealthy foods... Pasta carbonara, meringues, custard, lemon curd, macarons. I also managed to completely overdo the fruit order this week. A big bag of pears, apples, bananas and two big bags of satsumas. The bananas are no problem, I will ignore them until they are over-ripe, at which point there is only one alternative left - banana bread! But the apples and pears... They will keep for a while, but I'm trying to use them up as much as possible. I would love to bake something and pop it in the freezer, but my tiny little freezer is packed to the brim with salmon and chicken from said grocery delivery. And my slow cooker is loaded with mustard and chilli flavoured pork loin with pineapple, vinegar and onions. It will be slowly bubbling away all night, which means that when I wake up in the middle of the night to my inevitable leg cramps, I will also have to fight the urge to pick up a fork and just start chewing away on that lovely smelling porky pork.

And off I went on a tangent again. Back to the apples and pears. I've been working hard trying to get rid of them, I made a wonderful apple and pear crumble for two and some pear and chocolate scones. But there was still more. And I have been wanting to make baked oatmeal for quite a while, ever since the almighty Pinterest threw this recipe at me. It's a recipe for almond and blueberry baked oatmeal and it's from a blog called Healthy Food for Living. I don't like almonds, and I don't have blueberries, but I do love the idea of baked oatmeal. It's almost like a healthified version of my earlier crumble. And I got another chance to use my lovely pink single serving ramekins, which I love love love.

Baked apple oatmeal (serves 2):
50 g porridge oats
1 cup milk of choice (I used skimmed, although I guess almond or rice milk would also work)
1 egg
2 tbsp maple syrup (can be halved or omitted if you want to be super healthy)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 apple

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Mix oats, milk, egg, maple syrup and spices. Chop the apple into small cubes and add to the oatmeal. Divide into two single serving ramekins and bake for about 20 minutes.

The verdict:
I try not to eat oatmeal too often, as I'm trying to minimise the amount of grain in my diet. But I absolutely adore all forms of porridge. I love rice porridge, semolina porridge and oat porridge. And this is definitely pimped up oat porridge. Baking it in the oven, and adding egg really gives it a wonderful texture. Also, this is much easier to make in the morning, as regular oatmeal needs stirring while it's cooking (unless you use those pouches of microwavable oatmeal, with all that added sugar and whatnot) but this just needs a quick whisk and can be left in the oven while doing whatever it is you do in the mornings.

The spices and maple syrup gives the oatmeal a wonderful flavour that complements the apples really well. And the apple goes lovely and soft, but still retains a bit of chewiness giving the dish a wonderful texture together with the soft oats. I will definitely be making this specific oatmeal again, and also develop other flavour combinations. Blueberry, strawberry, pear, possibly even banana (although I'm slightly suspicious about banana, but will probably try it at some point). Maybe banana and almond butter? I think berries probably release enough liquid to justify decreasing the amount of milk a bit to make sure the oatmeal it doesn't get soggy. Next week I'll probably do an pear and vanilla variation. Oh and maybe at some point do a weekend version with chocolate chips. There we go, chocolate is back in my thoughts. But I'm quite proud of myself, I think I made it through several posts without a single mention of chocolate. Could I be starting to heal from my chocoholism? Meeeh... not going to happen. Ever!

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Friday quickie: Pan fried fennel and onion

I have so many weird things and oddities when it comes to cooking. Well, to be completely honest, I think I'm just weird in general based on how different my conception of life, love and everything else seems to be to the majority of people on this planet. But without going more into detail about that (because it would take a week long therapy session), the one food weirdness I was specifically referring to in this case is how I love love love when you come across a recipe and realise you have all the ingredients readily available at home. No need to nip of to the store to buy just a little bit of this, a jar of that or a tin of some sorts. 

I also love buying foods that stay good in the fridge for a while. Salads, lettuce and tomatoes all have to be eaten very quickly. But then you have your carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbage, celery. They will nicely keep in the fridge for more than a week, and you can turn to them when you have eaten all your foods which go bad quickly. And this time, in my fridge, I had very little else than a lonely bulb of fennel. I had planned to use it for a soup or stew or whatnot, but because of the great fire of 2012, I forgot all about it. Until I had eaten pretty much everything else from my fridge. And I try not to grocery shop during the week, mostly for practical reasons. First of all, if you only shop once a week (and have to carry everything home for the duration of a 35-40 minute walk from the supermarket) you tend to focus on the essentials, and not grab too many impulse buys. I always try to plan my eating ahead for one week, jut it into my food diary and make a shopping list. This works well if you have the whole weekend free to shop and cook. But that hasn't quite happened in the last... say four months or so. Funny coincidence that.

So there it was, the lonely fennel. The fridge light casting harsh shadows on the triple protruding fingerlike extremities. Poor fennel, feeling lost, alone and forgotten. But fear not! There is a place for you, dear fennel, a reason for your existence. And that place is of course in a pan, with some butter. It took me a while to figure it out, but Google helped me find this recipe from Eatpress. And dear fennel, because I didn't want you to feel lonely, I decided to add an onion to the pan to keep you company.

Pan fried fennel (serves 1-2):
1 bulb of fennel
1 onion
1 tsp oil
1 tsp butter 
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar (I used 12 year aged pomegranate balsamic vinegar)

The howto:
Slice fennel and onion. Heat oil and butter in a pan, and add fennel and onion slices when butter has turned golden. Cook until desired consistency, about five minutes. Move fennel and onion onto a plate, and add balsamic vinegar to the pan. Make sure to scrape off all that butter and burned bits from the pan. Cook the vinegar for a minute or two until it has thickened a bit. Pour on top of the veggies and serve immediately.

The verdict:
I rarely use butter for frying, I always go for vegetable or coconut oil. So this really tasted like restaurant food to me, with the lovely flavour from the butter combining with the sweetness from the balsamic and the aniseed flavour of the fennel. Really simple ingredients, simple and quick to make and tasted absolutely divine. This will be my preferred way to serve fennel.