I am not at all into whole food movement but I love a good, easy and comfort food type recipe. And this is one of those yummy comfort foods. And as I read that you could freeze it – I loved it! Perfect recipe to cook for my two little gourmets!
This recipe is from Martyna Candric’s e-book “My Wholefood Philosophy” (available for iPad and Kindle) from the Wholesome Cook blog. The book is a great start for anyone who wants to know more about what the wholefood is about. After I read through the recipes in Martyna’s book I actually felt compelled to change the way we cook. Martyna makes wholesome cooking sound like a very easy, reasonable, and tasty way of eating and living. Her recipes are all very easy to make. I feel a little bit more of a “good mom” when cooking from her No-More-Junk-Food cookbook. The book has something for everyone: gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, vegan… Just a few recipes for each of those options: enough to give it a go and see if you like it!
Ingredients:
1.2 kg pumpkin (I took butternut squash)
1 carrot
1 teaspoon powder ginger
1 liter of vegetable / chicken stock
1 red chilli
165ml coconut cream
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
Directions:
- Peel carrot and pumpkin. Cut into 5cm chunks.
- Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large stock pot over medium─high heat. Add pumpkin and carrot and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until
- lightly browned.
- Add 1 liter stock, along with ginger and chilli and allow to simmer for 20 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Take the soup off the heat and blend, using a stick blender.
- Mix in coconut cream and heat until the soup comes back up to the boil. Turn off heat and set aside.
In the original recipe you then are told how to make lovely croutons but I stopped right here and served my pumkin soup with fresh french bread. Boys loved it!
This is a post that I want to come back to over and over again when I will be making it … over and over again. I would have never believed only a month ago that I would make my own pizza dough – because I find working with yest scary. But here we go, I made it! The beauty of the recipe is that there will be enough dough for at least three large pizzas and I also made my own tomato base that doubles up beautifully as a quick pasta sauce. So, basically, I spend one afternoon in my kitchen and get 3-4 meals for the next couple of weeks out of it.
Ingredients for the dough:
650g flour
1 sachet of yeast (7g)
2 teaspoon of salt
25ml olive oil
50ml warm milk (not hot! just as warm as your skin)
325ml warm water (not hot! just as warm as your skin)
Directions:
- Make the dough: mix the flour, yeast ans salt together in a large bowl and stir in olive oil and milk. Gradually add water to form a soft dough
- Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for about five minutes, until smooth and elastic. Put the dough back into the bowl and cover the bowl with a wet towel so that the dough doesn’t dry out while proving. Leave it to rise for about 1.5 hours
- Know the dough back (just press the dough down in the bowl so it deflates) and knead it again until it is smooth and elastic. (I did it straight in the bowl). Cover the bowl again with a damp towel and wait for another 30-60 minutes until your pizza dough rises again.
- Divided your dough into 3-4 smaller balls. 1 ball is for your pizza today. Wrap each of the remaining balls in cling film airtight. These dough balls can be frozen until the next time. When you are ready to make your next pizza take one dough ball out of the freezer and defrost it in the fridge overnight.
Ingredients:
1.5kg ripe tomatoes (if you have black tomatoes then mix them half and half with “normal” tomatoes)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon garlic (I use grounded garlic, but pressed fresh garlic would be great too! If you use fresh garlic, I think I would go for 3 cloves)
1 teaspoon oregano (I use dried oregano. For fresh oregano I would use leaves of 2-3 tweaks, but I haven’t tries using fresh ingredients yet)
1/4 teaspoon of dried thyme (with fresh one I probably would try with using the leaves of one twig)
1 teaspoon of sugar
Directions (this sauce will reduce by at least 70% when you finished cooking it!):
- Skin your tomatoes (score the tomatoes’ skin in a cross and let the simmer in boiling water for about 3 minutes – the skin will peel off easily from these tomatoes)
- Cut skinned tomatoes in quarters and remove the stem from them
- Cook tomatoes for about 15 minutes, mashing them up with the fork. You want to get a mushy consistency puree that reduces by half of the initial volume
- Add all other ingredients and cook for another 10 minutes. (if you want a mellow tasting sauce add all ingredients 5 minutes before you finish cooking the sauce. You wan to get a consistency of a think paste so you would need to adjust your cooking times accordingly
Pizza Margerita ingredients:
Pizza dough
Tomato Base
Basil
Shaves of Parmesan
50g Pizza Cheese mix
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 200 degree Celsius
- Roll the pizza dough to be about 1cm thick (should be enough to just fit onto a 30×50 baking tray
- Line out the baking tray with some parchment paper
- Place your pizza base on the baking tray and spread the pizza tomato base all over it. ( prefer it quite thick for a margarita pizza)
- Sprinkle Parmesan cheese and the pizza cheese mix
- Add half of the basil
- Bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese is golden and the crust is light brown
- Sprinkle the remaining half of the basil once pizza is baked and out of the oven
Cheese Cookies are my favorite quick savory thing I make when I have friends coming around. Ever so often I would say “oh guys, why don’t you just come around!” and the minute I get off the phone I realize that I have absolutely nothing to offer for that “nice bottle of wine” that friends promised to bring along.
This particular recipe makes butter soft, salty cookies with a sharp note of the cheese on your palate. This is that sort of snack food that makes people drink another glass of wine so that they have a reason to eat more of the cookies.
Ingredients:
200g hard cheese (I use a selection of what’s in the fridge. Usually Parmesan, cheddar and Gruyère)
200g flour
50g soft butter (just leave it out of the fridge when you just preparing to bake and it will soften a bit by the time you need it)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper of chili
up to 2 tablespoons of milk if needed (just to add if the dough is too dry)
Directions:
- pre-heat oven to 190 degrees Celsius
- To make the dough just put all the ingredients into a food-processor and blend the mix for about 1 minute. Your mix should be even, crumbly and stick together when you press it with your fingers. If the mixture is too dry and doesn’t stick together add just one spoon of milk and see if it helps to make your dough stick. Add the second spoon if it’s still too dry.
- Dump the dough on a piece of parchment paper and roll it into a log of about 4 cm in diameter (if you have time, then chill your dough in the fridge for about 30 minutes. This will help to cut it into shapes later).
- Cut the log to make 1 cm thick cookies.
- The cookies will expand when baking so leave about two fingers space between them when arranging cookies on the baking tray
- Bake for 10 minutes
This recipe takes maybe ten minutes to make and another 10 in the oven, wait for 15-20 minutes until these lovely, soft and salty yummies cooled down a bit and you have a great treat fresh out of the oven. They tend to be eaten up quite quickly, so don’t worry about storing them.
When Henry was younger (as if it is possible to be in “when I was younger” age when you are 3.5) several people recommended we submit his photos to model agencies as he is quite photogenic. I did, and three agencies wanted to see Henry.
But then my dad said something like: “if you start focusing on his looks you might miss something more important, a talent or an interest in something that might be hidden… If you focus on the prettiness you might never discover what’s behind the facade” That thought did stop me from pursuing Henry’s modeling career any further. But what if it is something HE really likes (and not his mom?)
I am all so worried that my two and a half men won’t have anything to eat when over in London without me! I know it’s ridiculous :-) I know there are plenty of stores just around the corner and even if my husband chooses to feed them from take aways for a week – they still will be absolutely fine. But nothing tastes better than home. So here I go – a walnut pesto whizzed in the food processor in under 5 minutes. A jar of mummy’s love “to go”.
We had friends visiting us in Zurich last weekend. What a great opportunity to go and explore a bit more of the country before we leave it for good. On Sunday we went to Zurich and utterly enjoyed it. Blessed with sunny and warm weather we walked around the old town for hours. At the end I even started to question if moving away was such a good idea. Once the reality kicked in on Monday I knew that moving away still is the right thing to do… lucky for us:-)
Walking around meant a lot of snacking, lunching and coffee drinking.
The city was buzzing with music, scores of tourists and ex-pats exploring the narrow, pretty cobble stone streets. With all shops closed the city makes you enjoy its character, architecture, cafes and atmosphere free from consumerism – a perfect Sunday…
On my way out of the French-styled Peclard cafe I snapped four freshly baked croissants to make a perfect Sunday morning cake. I first saw the recipe over at the stone soup blog. With a few amendments I have created our future all times favorite likely to replace the usual French toast.
Ingredients:
4 croissants
handful of dark chocolate buttons
for the custard:
3 eggs
300ml of single cream (25% fat)
100g sugar
Directions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
- Make your custard by whisking eggs, cream and sugar together
- Cut croissants in 5 cm wide pieces , cutting off the tips on both sides first
- Soak cut croissants in the custard and arrange soaked pieces in a baking tin (I used a square 30×20 cm tin)
- Place chocolate buttons in between the pieces as well as in the middle of some of the croissant cuts pressing them into the bake
- Bake for about 30-40 minutes
Enjoy!
Anastasia
A lot of people love raspberry jam as their ultimate comfort early morning treat – that comfort food for me is a dollop of blueberry jam on a piece of still warm freshly baked white bread. This recipe also has the warmth and the spice of cloves and cinnamon. And the kitchen smells delicious after wintry glue-wine clove while the jam cooks.
Ingredients (for 1 250ml jar)
250 g blueberries
250 g preserving sugar
1/4 teaspoon of ground clove
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
juice of 1 lemon
Directions
- mix all the ingredients together
- boil for about 5 minutes
- test if your jam reached its setting point (cook for another 2 minutes if it hasn’t and test again)
Enjoy is on a piece of white bread and with a glass of milk!
There are two cook books I go to when I want to try something new and I can’t deal with a disappointment of the dish not working out. One is the pasta book from Dino D’angelo (actually all his books are great I would cook blindly anything from his books any time)
The other one is the 101 Mediterranean Dishes from GoodFood magazine, which recently is even available on Kindle.
This savory potato cake is one of the 101 Mediterranean recipes. It tastes great warm but would be good cold too – nice picnic food. I’ve changed up the recipe a bit and below is my version.
Ingredients:
1.3kg floury potatoes
175gr pancetta
250ml milk
4 eggs, beaten
2 garlic cloves (crushed)
200g Parmesan, grated
85 g provolone cheese diced (I went with strong fondue cheese because I have no idea what povolone cheese is and they didn’t have it in the store anyway)
140g mozzarella, diced
50g of breadcrumbs (which I didn’t have so I used semolina to spread around the baking form)
handful of basil and thyme leaves
Directions:
- pre-heat oven to 170 C
- peel potatoes and boil them until ready
- meanwhile fry pancetta until golden
- mash potatoes and mix it with pancetta, milk, eggs, all the cheese, basil and garlic
- Butter baking tin (23cm/9inch) Coat the bottom and the sides with breadcrumbs/semolina and fill with potato mixture. Smooth the surface and put more breadcrumbs/semolina on the surface
- Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes (mine took good 2 hours). The middle of the cake should still be a bit soft (“with a slight wobble in the middle”). Let the cake rest (aka take it out of the oven and let it cool down without doing anything to it) for 5 minutes
- slide it onto a plate and sprinkle with thyme leaves
Enjoy!
Anastasia
It all started with a need for a super quick and easy savory pie. Somehow everyone here doesn’t want to eat sweet stuff anymore. Also, I prefer puff pastry because it really works well store-bought (unlike shortcrust pastry that works somewhat for pies and not at all for cookies).
I found a Barefoot Contessa recipe of ham and Gruyère puff pastry pie. I followed the recipe to the dot and it didn’t turn out very nice. In particular the temperature and baking time were way to high and too long for it – I nearly burned it. But the combination of ingredients tasted lovely even though bland.
I’ve changed up the recipe – quite a lot actually – and created a very yummy ham and cheese pie with a spin-off of pesto mozzarella pie (which still needs just a bit of tweaking before I share it with you).
Ingredients (the precise measurements will depend on the size of your pastry)
2 squares of puff pastry about 25cm x 25cm each
2 teaspoons of Dijon Mustard
100 gr strong-tasting ham (smoked, salty, bold)
100 gr grated Grueyer
1 tablespoon of Chili Mirabella Plum Jam (or sweet chutney)
1 egg and a teaspoon of sugar to coat the pie
Method: (super simple)
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees
- Spread mustard on one sheet of pastry using the backside of the spoon or pastry brush leaving about 1-2 cm around the edges free
- Cover your mustard square with ham
- Top the ham with grated cheese
- Spread chili jam or chutney on the other piece of the pastry
- Cover the ham and cheese pastry square with the other pastry peace jam side down
- Beat the egg in a bowl and add the teaspoon of sugar (this is something I learned from my grandma – always add sugar when coating a savory pie)
- Close the edges of your pie by simply pressing firmly with the thumb
- Coat the top of the pie with the eggy mixture
- Score the top of the pie to allow steam to escape while baking
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper before placing your pie on it and
- Bake for about 15-20 minutes on the middle rack
Keep a close eye on your bake. I’ve found that nothing happens for quite some time and then suddenly the pie rises in the middle and withing 2-3 minutes form that moment it can start burning on top.
Tip: Buttery puff pastry tends to soften all the flavors of the filling. You want to fill your pie with strong, bold flavors. Put generous teaspoons of mustard, pick strong flavored and salty ham, go for strong cheese and add another edge to the flavor mix by using sweet chutney or as I did – Chili Mirabella Plum jam. You want a bouquet of bold flavors which together are just a bit over the edge. When you taste your ready pie these flavors will become quite mellow and will offer you a hint of what’s hidden between the puffy sheets of pastry.
