La petite biscotte

Spring is approaching and normally markets should start to feature all sorts of asparagus. Since I absolutely love this vegetable I was looking for it a few days ago when I went to the supermarket, with a specific recipe in mind that I’ve always wanted to try. So while perusing the selection, I stumbled upon the most amazing jalapeños I had ever seen - a full basket of shiny chili peppers that simply begged to be taken home and cooked. But no, I told myself, I was there for the stunning, fresh asparagus they were supposed to have!

After searching for it for what must have been five minutes, I finally found five lots of it, tucked away behind all the potato-baskets where no one could possibly find them. Actually that was quite fortunate for the asparagus as it was so dried out and shabby that it looked like little bundles of straw. Quite amazing actually when you think about it. You set out to cook seasonal/local vegetables that should be available in abundance right now but instead, in this little supermarket in one of the most remote places of Provence, we had the choice between jalapenos, shiitake mushrooms and flown-in papayas :p

Anyway Mexican food is great and we weren’t going to complain. When we came home from University today we started cooking right away and whilst my husband loves to taste everything I’m chopping on the cutting board, he glanced at me rather dubiously when I asked him to taste how hot the jalapenos were. But you see, the great thing about men is that they’d never openly admit that something is too hot for them (lucky for me :p). So when he finally took a bite he told me it was quite hot but said that I should go ahead and put in two of them! And that’s what I did.

Suffice to say that the chili completely owned us. But still, with our eyes and noses running and our mouths literally burning we still chomped our way through the bowl because it was simply too good.

This is a quick recipe for a low-fat chili - something you can make for your whole family when you come home from work as it really only requires a little chopping in the beginning. The short cooking time is also one of the reasons why we chose ground beef, which doesn’t need to stew as long as chunks to be tender.

30-Minute Chili Con Carne (low-fat)

• 350g low-fat ground beef
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 pepper of each color (red, yellow, green)
• 2 tomatoes
• 1-2 green chili peppers
• 3 Tbsp tomato paste
• 200 ml tomato purée
• 250 ml quality stock, either beef or chicken
• a pinch of sugar
• 1 can red beans
• pepper, salt, thyme, sweet paprika
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

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Finely chop the onion and the garlic and heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onions and the garlic and cook them for several minutes until they become transparent.

In the meantime dice the peppers and the tomatoes and finely chop the chili peppers.

Once the onions have cooked long enough, add the ground beef and use a wooden spatula to break it up while cooking it. After about 3 minutes add all the vegetables you’ve chopped before as well as the spices (minus the salt).

Add the chicken stock, the tomato purée and the tomato paste and let everything simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered, over medium-low heat. Stir occasionally.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and add the sugar to cut the acidity of the tomato. Also fold in the red beans, then take off the heat.

Serves 4. Serve with grated cheese, onions, tortilla chips, corn bread etc.

When I was little, my mum used to make a gratin with spätzle, cauliflower and broccoli. Even though she used a ready-mix to make the sauce for the gratin, I couldn’t get enough of it. But which kid can actually get enough of spätzle?

Unfortunately I couldn’t make any spätzle because I didn’t have eggs left, but I used pasta instead and it tasted (almost) just as good! To replace the ready-mix sauce I made a thin sauce béchamel and flavoured it with an onion and a little stock powder.

One reason why I love this gratin so much is that it’s a delicious way of eating broccoli, which is an incredibly healthy vegetable. Its health benefits beat the ones of most other vegetables. I generally think that it’s quite important to find an alternative to the 2-3 sad florets of cooked broccoli, which we typically serve with our roast dinner. Actually I think that the broccoli feels mistreated and sad, having to share the plate with a big mean piece of meat!

Ingredients

• 500g broccoli, cleaned and cut in florets
• 500g cauliflower, cleaned and cut in florets
• 2 little carrots, cleaned and cut in slices
• 250g pasta, cooked
• 300ml of this sauce béchamel (infused with an onion)
• 2 tsp stock powder
• salt & pepper
• 125g of grated cheese, I used gruyère

Preparation

Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and add salt. Turn the heat to medium. First add the cauliflower and let it cook for about 2 minutes, then add the carrots and let both cook for 2 more minutes. Then add the Broccoli and let everything cook for 4 more minutes.

Drain the vegetables from the water and put them in a gratin dish. Add the cooked pasta.

If the sauce béchamel isn’t seasoned yet, season it and add the stock powder. Keep whisking as you don’t want the sauce to develop a skin.

Heat your oven to approximately 180°C. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and the pasta and mix everything well. Sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven until golden brown.

Serves 4

Whatever the occasion, crêpes are simply always popular. They can be made quickly, in large quantities and can serve as savory dish as well as dessert. The crêpes in the above picture are filled with ham, grated cheese and mushrooms.

Some people confuse crêpes with pancakes but they are actually very different. Crêpes are almost as thin as a sheet of paper and mostly they are way bigger in size than a pancake. They are almost always served with a filling.

Now I’m often told that making crêpes is very difficult and that the result varies a lot. Common issues are:

• Clumps in the batter
• Batter sticks to the pan easily
• To prevent this a lot of oil/butter is often used
• Using a laddle, it is very difficult to dispense the batter equally over the frying pan so the whole surface is covered
• Crêpe breaks when one tries to flip it

Luckily I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error (while eating a lot of crêpes :D) and I discovered an amazing method that will allow you to make perfect crêpes, easily, every time.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 400 ml milk (lukewarm)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• 250g all purpose flour (perfect would be very fine flour which is made for liquid batters)
• 4-5 Tbsp vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Mix eggs, milk and salt in a Blender. Gradually mix in flour and vegetable oil. Blend well until you see no clumps anymore. Now add some of the water until the batter has the consistency of thick pouring cream. Scoop off the foam if there is any. Keep the batter in the blending container.
2. Use a paper towel to coat a flat skillet with vegetable oil (if you have a crêpière, even better). Heat up the skillet over medium-high heat. Wait until the pan is hot.
3. Remove the pan from the heat by lifting it. With the blending container quickly pour in as much liquid as you need to cover the whole surface. Pour back excess batter into the blending container.
4. Put the skillet back on the heat. As soon as you see that the crêpe is golden brown at the bottom, flip it. If your crêpe breaks easily, the batter was probably too liquid. Add a little more flour to the batter in that case.
5. If you are preparing a savory crêpe, add cheese and other fillings now on one side of the crêpe. Fold it in a half and make sure it’s golden brown on both sides. Remove on a plate.
6. Continue this way. Maybe you’ll need to reapply a little oil at some point but usually the oil in the batter is enough to keep them from sticking.

Useful Tips

• You can add a little butter too the batter to improve the taste.
• You can make the batter 2 days in advance and refrigerate it. Just bring it back to room temperature before cooking when you want to use it (and reblend a little).
• You can seperate crêpes with wax paper to keep them from sticking.
• Crêpes can be refrigerated in a plastic bag for 3 days.
• Crêpes can be frozen in a plastic bag for 3 months.
• To reheat crêpes, place them in an oven on a cookie sheet at 170°C.
• Ideas for fillings: Grated cheese, ham, mushrooms, all sort of vegetables, a fresh egg (yolk), Gorgonzola or Goat cheese. Sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, ice cream, nutella, fruit, marmelade, jam, peanut butter, maple syrup etc…

Let’s face it: as a student you sometimes open the fridge and there is nada :p Only the jar of marmelade and the egg looking at you like “dude, marmelade omelette sucks so give up right away and order pizza”.

Living on a tight budget does suck, however it’s exactly in those moments that you’ve got to be creative if you don’t want to end up eating crackers. So what did I have left exactly: Flour, 1 egg, melting cheese (gruyère), onion, +some cans and usual pantry stuff. Then the flash of insight hit me, why not make spätzle! Spätzle are self made egg “pasta” that are incredibly popular in Germany, especially in the south (they are also very popular in Austria, Switzerland and Alsace). I grew up eating those and I still love them. It’s often baked with cheese and some even add fried onions. It’s godly stuff really and very easy to make… well that is if you follow Yakumo’s 3 rules to making spätzle:

• The traditional way of making spätzle consists of pouring the spätzle batter on a cutting board which you hold over a saucepan with boiling water. You then need to rapidly cut off pieces of the batter with a knife. As you might have guessed already: this requires a lot of training and if you work too slowly half of your spätzle will be mushy. Spätzle batter sticks like hell too (fun, fun). Luckily nowadays technology saves us from all that pain and lets us create perfect spätzle quickly without stick-fest. This technological wonder comes in the form of a piece of metal with a lot of holes: Norpro Stainless Steel Spaetzle Maker :p It’s that easy!

• Normal spätzle batter is made of eggs, flour and salt (+ oil maybe). Nothing else. This naturally means that you need to add a large amount of eggs. Whilst I’m convinced that eggs are healthy, I still think they should be consumed in moderation. Beside, I don’t always have 5-10 eggs lying around. You can actually reduce the amount of eggs and substitute with water. Of course the less eggs you put the less the spätzle will taste of egg but in my opinion 1egg-spätzle taste delicious already. I’ll still tell you the original recipe so you can make “authentic” spätzle, should you wish to.

• If you fry onions to accompany your spätzle, cut the rings equally big :p Like the tart that I am I cut mine pretty unevenly… needless to say that some rings were slightly burned while others were just nice and crispy and some weren’t cooked at all. I could have guessed so before but hey, I’m here to make mistakes so you don’t make them ^^

You are probably wondering right now why the heck I’m getting so excited about eating some form of pasta :p Well spätzle do not exactly taste like pasta. They have a very distinct flavour that goes so well with their particular texture. That and they are very cheap and quick to make. You can use up the rest of eggs or cheese that you have, you can even add some spinach to the batter to color the spätzle… they make a great main course if you bake them with cheese but they are fantastic as a side dish with meat or with a vegtable gratin as well.

Ingredients

How I made my batter:

• 250g flour (I used whole wheat but you can use all-purpose too)
• 1 large egg (you can add more eggs, however you must add proportionally less water then)
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 Tbsp of oil (do not use olive oil, the taste doesn’t really fit here, use sunflower for example)
• 125 ml of water (+/- some, depending on the flour you use)

For an original spätzle batter, you’d need:

• 250-270 grams wheat flour
• 5 large eggs
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp oil
• up to 50 ml water

Other than that:

• 1 large onion
• a little flour
• 1 Tbsp of butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 Tbsp of melting cheese (I used gruyère)

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Preparation:

1. Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and salt it.
2. Cut the onion in equally sized rings.
3. Mix the ingredients for the batter and whisk them well until you’ve got no lumps left. The batter must have the consistency of a frozen yogurt or a very thick pancake batter that sticks to the mixer and is heavy.
4. Use the batter with your spätzle device according to manufacturer’s instructions to make the spätzle. Just be careful to work as quickly as possible once the batter is over the hot water. If you take too long, the batter will just cook/harden on the device and you won’t be able to push any spätzle through anymore.
5. Once the spätzle are in the water they are cooked very quickly, as soon as they swim on the surface of the boiling water they are done and can be drained through a sieve.
6. Keep the spätzle warm and heat about 4 Tbsp of oil in a casserole. Dust the onion rings with flour and put the them inside the hot pan, do not salt them yet and let them (deep-)fry on medium-high heat until they are golden brown.
7. Put the onion rings on kitchen paper to dry and remove the frying oil from the casserole. Salt the onions if you like.
8. Add a little fresh oil and heat the casserole up again. Now add the Spätzle and fry them until they take on a golden brown color. Add the butter and the cheese and let it melt nicely. Season to taste.
9. Remove the spätzle from the heat, serve them on a plate and garnish with onion rings.

Serves 2-3, enjoy

Today my husband asked if we could make some cookies together for the coming week. We very much enjoyed the ones I made last week because they were so versatile. Sometimes we ate them quickly on the way to university as breakfast (not healthy I know :p), sometimes we took them along as dessert for lunch and sometimes it was simply enjoyable to sit down with a cup of tea and a nice cookie. There is something comforting about having self baked cookies at home, can’t really explain why.

This time I tried out a recipe from allrecipes.com (Steven’s Chocolate Chip Cookies). I altered it slightly to fit my tastes (I prefer less sugar in general, more vanilla extract and less chocolate chips) and the result was very good. Still I used about 100g more chocolate chips than last week and whilst the cookie is perfect for people who are really fond of chocolate, it was a little too much for me. I’ll reduce the amount to 150g next time. Also I think that I’ll try to chop up some quality semisweet chocolate (70%+) instead of using ready-made chocolate chips.

Last week’s recipe is my favourite so far, not only because there were less chocolate morsels but because the cookie itself had a nicer texture, was less crunchy and the flavour felt cleaner. Have fun trying this out and if you’ve got a perfect cookie recipe, please share

Ingredients

• 225g butter (soft)
• 110g brown sugar
• 100g white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 160g all-purpose flour
• 150g whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 150g chocolate chips (white, milk or semisweet, or mixed)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

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Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 175 °C.
2. In a medium bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flours, salt and baking soda). Mix them and put aside.
3. In a medium bowl whisk the soft butter along with the different sugars until you get a creamy texture. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
4. Stir in the dry ingredients from before and mix everything well. Fold in the nuts and the chocolate chips.
5. Lay out a baking tray with an ungreased baking sheet. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough on the sheet making rows with enough space for each cookie to expand.
6. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes - until golden brown. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. This recipe yielded about 44 cookies for me.

Enjoy

“Does the perfect cookie really exist?” A truly existential question if you ask me. A good cookie can save your life. No really. For instance, imagine you walk home through the rain, a car splashes you with water, your socks get all soggy and when you come home you realize that your neighbour decided to use the loudest electric screwdriver he could find to assemble his new IKEA shelf. Basically you got two possibilities: grab a frying pan and run after your neighbour (who is at least one foot taller than you) or follow the seducing smell of freshly baked cookies and forget all your troubles. See? A cookie can cheer you up in any situation!

So what are the characteristics of a perfect cookie? Well, that’s the problem: everyone likes their cookie differently To me the perfect cookie has a soft texture, a color between dark beige and light brown, a fragrant smell of butter and vanilla and once you decide to devour it, there must be the flavour of deep dark chocolate chips rounded up by the not too sweet aroma of brown sugar and the earthy flavour of chopped nuts.

Am I dreaming? Oh well, guess I am. Or not, because I think I managed to find a recipe that comes veeeeery close to what I call a perfect cookie. Try it out on your very own quest to the perfect cookie and tell me how it went!

(Recipe adapted from the authentic Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe)

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 pound (250g) butter
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 150g chocolate chips/morsels (or chopped chocolate - you can use white, milk or dark chocolate, or a mix)
• 125g chopped walnuts (you can use any nuts you like)
• 2 Tbsp of milk (only add this if you like your cookies soft)

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Preparation

1. Put the butter in a little saucepan and make it melt over low-medium temperature.
2. Meanwhile combine both flours, baking soda and salt.
3. Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large mixer bowl.
4. Add eggs - one at a time - beating well after each addition.
5. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
6. Add the milk (if you are using any) and beat well.
7. Fold in nuts and chocolate chips.
8. Refrigerate the dough for an hour or two.
9. Preheat your oven at 180 °C approximately. Make a few tests with your oven to be sure you’ve got the optimal temperature. This strongly differs depending on the oven you got… and temperature matters a lot for cookies.
10. Lay out a baking tray with ungreased baking sheet.
11. Depending on which size you like your cookies to have, drop a spoonful of the dough on the baking sheet. Repeat until you got the sheet covered with several rows. Be careful to let about 10 cm of space around each cookie.
12. Bake for 9-11 minutes until they are golden brown. Let stand for about 2 minutes and remove them from the tray. If you make small cookies you’ll get about 4 batches out of this recipe.

Enjoy and if you have a “perfect” recipe for cookies, please share

“Indian curry is really the best!”

“Nah, I love the curry they make at the Chinese restaurant not far from here…”

“Personally, I prefer Japanese curry :)”

“What??!!? Japanese don’t make curry!”

As a matter of fact Japanese do have a curry dish :p It’s actually one of the most popular dishes over there. According to some recent surveys the average Japanese family eats curry about 2-3 times a week. If right now you think “probably some variation of Indian curry, boring -_-”… you couldn’t be further from the truth. Japanese curry has a completely different taste. The texture, while thicker than other curry types, is much lighter and has a sweet distinct flavour that hits the taste buds when you eat it for the first time and you just go like “wow, I like!”. Surprisingly though, Japanese style curry is the least known over here.

Approximately 2 years ago, I ate my first curry. It was one of those premade curries from house that you heat up in the microwave and then just pour over freshly cooked rice. I found out later that the taste of that curry was far from what you can produce yourself, but still, I liked it so much that I started cooking curry every week. Bit by bit I improved and I managed to get it just right. The perfect curry!

I can say, without exaggarating, that Japanese curry is my favourite dish. By far. Even though I grow tired of just about any food if I eat it too often, I can’t get enough of this one. If you’ve never eaten Japanese curry before, I can only urge you to try it out. You are missing out on a piece of heaven on a plate!

To make Japanese curry, you need very simple ingredients. However there is one thing, that might be a little difficult to get: the curry roux. Curry roux is a sauce mix (mostly in the form of a dried block) which gives the dish its particular flavour and which thickens the sauce at the same time. Of course you can make this yourself (click here for a recipe) but let me tell you from experience: it’s tedious, takes long, requires a lot of trial and error and the final result will be far from what you can make with curry roux cubes. You can find curry roux from two different brands: S&B Foods Inc. and House Foods Coorp. Both offer good sauce mixes which you can buy in about any Japanese/Asian supermarket.

You can choose among three different levels of “heat”: hot, medium and mild. In America S&B’s Golden Curry seems to be more popular, whereas Japanese seem to like House’s Vermont Curry better. The choice is up to you, personally I like both equally. If you have troubles finding Japanese ingredients, please check out this post.

Japanese curry is actually always eaten with rice. The sauce, once done, is poured over one side of the plate while the rice is on the other side. I’ve found out that this way the rice actually doesn’t get mushy from the sauce and stays firm until you are done eating. You can use any type of western style rice, but I highly recommend you to eat this with authentic Japanese rice. It simply mixes perfectly.

Ingredients

• 3 cups of uncooked Japonica rice
• 1 box of curry roux (the one that yields 6 portions, however sizes differ so check the manufacturer’s instructions)
• 2 potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• two pieces of chicken breast (you can use beef, veal or shrimp if you prefer)
• water
• oil

______________

1. Wash the rice and cook it according to these instructions.
2. Cut the onion.
3. Cut the meat in bite sized pieces.
4. Heat up the oil in a pot at medium-high heat.
5. Cut the potatoes and carrots in bite sized pieces.
6. Once the oil is piping hot, put the onions in the pan and cook them while stirring. It is very important that you do not put the onions or the meat in the pot before the oil is hot. If the temperature is too low (aka if you don’t hear a psssssshhht when you drop the meat in the pot) the meat will turn to rubber.
7. Add the meat and continue to stir everything. Cook the meat with the onions until they get a nice brown color.
8. Add the potatoes and carrots. Cook those along with the rest for about a minute while stirring.
9. Now fill up the pot with water. The amount is specified by the manufacturer on the package of the curry roux. Cover the pot with a lid and let simmer for 20-30 minutes (again check package).
10. Finish the curry sauce according to instructions on the package. (Because Golden Curry cooking method differs from Vermont Curry… etc.)

Serves 6. Enjoy!

[image to come soon]

“Ok, what would you like for dinner tonight?”

“Pasta, Pasta!”

“Again? :p”

“Yes :)”

I’m sure you know this type of conversation just too well. What can you do if your family likes Pasta a lot but if you’d still like to cook something healthy?

While strolling over the vegetable section of a local shop here in Aix en Provence, I found a bunch of different vegetables which all looked very appealing but I simply didn’t know how to put them together. So while browsing the wonderful foodblog of Elise I stumbled on a recipe that I’ve always wanted to try out: Pasta Primavera.

Pasta primavera is an Italian dish that consists of pasta and fresh vegetables. A meat such as chicken, sausage or shrimp can be added if desired, but the focus of primavera is the vegetables themselves.

This recipe is so interesting because it is a healthy, low-fat alternative to all those pasta dishes with heavy sauces. Refreshing, light, a taste of autumn and italy on a plate. A great recipe to use up vegetable leftovers you might have in the fridge.

Ingredients

(You can substitute/adjust the following vegetables in any way you like)

• 2 carrots
• 1/2 zucchini
• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 1 green pepper
• 1 onion
• 7 cherry tomatoes, cut in a half
• garlic (if you do not like garlic, don’t put any)
• olive oil
• 200 ml tomato purée
• 200 ml water
• thyme or herbes de provence
• salt and pepper
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 200g pasta (penne for example, you can also use whole-wheat pasta)
• grated parmesan cheese (optional)

_______

1. Chop the onions finely. Wash and cut the vegetables in bite sized pieces, stripes for example. Put a large pan on the stove and heat the olive oil in it. (medium heat)
2. At the same time bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add some salt and a bit of olive oil.
3. First put the onions along with the garlic in the hot pan, stir them once and cook them for 30 seconds. Then add the rest of the vegetables and stir to cover with the olive oil. Let the vegetables cook like that for approximately 10 minutes (while stirring once in a while), until they are almost soft.
4. Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook them according to manufacturer’s instructions.
5. After the vegetables are soft enough for your taste, add the tomato purée, the water and the vegetable stock cube. Stir well and let everything cook for a minute while adding some thyme (or herbes de provence) and salt/pepper.
6. Drain the pasta and add it to the vegeatables. Mix everything well and adjust seasoning if needed. Add the cherry tomatoes and remove from heat.

Serves 4. You can add some parmesan cheese but personally I left it away. Enjoy