Hot Chocolate & a Video

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Hi there, it's been a while. I moved back home to get some work done, watched my friend Anna marry the loveliest guy imaginable, and then my friend Juliane and I made a video of me making spinach and pomegranate salad and had a blast.

Some of you encouraged me to make some more videos so this week my camera and I shot a video ourselves. Actually...of me and this new thermos flask of mine :)


Anyhow, if you want to cook along with me, I have added the recipe for the hot chocolate I made below. Let me know whether you want me to keep making these videos and if so whether you have something you want me to cook in a video. If you want to make me really happy, you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel or like the video. Or you can send me an email and tell me what you think...you know, real old school.

All right, do you want to make some hot chocolate?

For 750 ml you'll need:
250 ml Coconut Milk
500 ml Water
2 tbsp Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
4 tbsp Sugar (e.g. rapadura)
1/2 tsp ground Vanilla Pods or 1 tsp Vanilla extract

Whisk the cocoa powder into the coconut milk, add the water and heat over a medium flame. Whisk in the sugar and ground vanilla pods. Bring the mixture to a boil. I don't have a proper reason for this but this old recipe book I inherited from my great grandma says you're supposed to bring hot chocolate to a boil. Who knows whether you have to actually do that or whether that's a milk thing. Though, if you're going to fill it into a flask then you might as well heat the hot chocolate properly.
Anyhow, I hope you have a fantastic week. I have no idea what I'll be cooking next week, so stay tuned :)

Roasted Root Vegetables with Quince

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My mum and I made some super easy roasted veg the other day. In a way they were just your standard roast vegetables, but my mum added a few slices of quince to the mix. Best idea ever. The tartness of the quince goes super well with the caramel undertones of the root vegetables. A perfect combination in my book.
In case you are interested in this non-recipe, here are the things we used for two:

1/2 Sweet Potato
2 Purple Carrots
2 Normal Carrots
1 Beetroot
1/2 Quince

Preheat your oven to 220˚C.
Cut everything in wedges, then toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Bake/roast until the wedges have the level of crispness you like. Personally I like sweet potatoes that are very close to burning but that is a personal preference.
By the way, mayonnaise goes incredibly well with these :)

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

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Today was my grandma's 90th birthday and the whole family got together to celebrate. Instead of going to a restaurant we celebrated at my parents' house and had a local chef do the catering.
What can I tell you...the food was amazing.
We had made pumpkin soup as a starter - I'm not going to tell  you that much about the soup because my mum and I agree that we've had way better soup. We managed to save it in the end but I think we should have gone for a different type of pumpkin.
Anyhow, the reason I'm telling you about the soup is that we topped the soup with some roasted pumpkin seeds.
And those were rather amazing.
What we did was roast them in a dry pan and just before taking them out, we sprinkled some salt and sugar on top. The sugar ends up caramelising, making the salt stick to the seeds. Together the sugar brings out the saltiness and the salt brings out the sweetness. I think the end result is super nice and saves even a distinctly mediocre soup.
I can only imagine what it would do with a great soup.
In case you want to make pumpkin seeds for your next pumpkin soup (or for snacking), here is what we did:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
60g Pumpkin Seeds (the kind without the hard shell)
1/2 tsp Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt

Heat a heavy bottomed frying pan and add the seeds. Keep the seeds moving so they don't burn. I like flipping them in the pan, but that doesn't work in all pans. That or I'm too stupid to work all pans. I blame the pans. When the pumpkin seeds are fragrant sprinkle the sugar and salt over the seeds, making sure they are all covered evenly. Transfer the pumpkin seeds onto a piece of baking parchment and let them cool down. Don't try them before they are properly cooled. They get super hot when you roast them.

I hope your weekend was a awesome as mine. Now that I have a proper kitchen again, you'll get more recipes from me from now on :)

Moving and Banana Muffins

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I'm leaving Berlin in three weeks. This is partly why I have been so quiet lately - I've had way too much to do.

This is the current situation in my living-room.

Up to this morning it looked so much worse but my parents helped me pack lots of stuff this weekend. And I sold my washing machine. After carrying a the beast down four flights of stairs I am convinced I'll never do crossfit - seriously...why would I want to lift crazy-heavy stuff or my own crazy heavy body for fun (and yes, before today I was totally toying with the idea of giving it a go)?!?!?

Anyhow...on the up side - three weeks to go till the rest of my stuff descends upon my parents' house and three weeks to go till I don't have to wear the stupid ankle brace from stupid land anymore. Wanna bet I'll fall down the same set of stairs with yet another box the second it comes off? 

Before I packed up the muffin tins (they're getting a tour of East Germany right now) I made banana muffins. The original recipe was from Felix Olschewski's Urgeschmack Dessertbuch which you should have a look at irrespective of whether you have allergies, are following a Paleo diet or eat pretty much everything. Also, if you don't speak German, buy it anyway and use Google translate. The first half of the book is about ingredients and he discusses their pros and cons in a way I really liked (in two sentences he pretty much convinced me to use honey rather than agave syrup). 

Anyhow, a few changes and 20 minutes (18 of which were baking time) after deciding to make muffins I was staring at these beauties

There are a few caveats though:

If you are looking for super airy muffin-top heavy muffins, make something different, they're quite dense and I doubt you'd manage to get them to overflow properly even if you filled them to the brim.

If you don't like coconut -  don't make them because they do taste of coconut.

If you are baking for a nut-free event - there are some almonds in there.

I'm sure there are lots of other things I could warn you about, the most important one is probably:

These are some of the nicest muffins I've made in a while!

 They are super moist from the banana, they don't have that baking soda taste to them most other muffins have (because the eggs and banana are used as raising agents), and last but not least, since I really like coconuts and bananas they are pretty much my personal version of the ideal food.

All right, you can preheat your oven now :)

Banana Muffins (adapted from Oschlewski)

4 Eggs

2 medium Bananas

50g Chopped Almonds

125g Desiccated Coconut 

40g Coconut Oil (melted)

Vanilla Extract (optional)

Pinch of Salt

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 180˚C.

Mash the bananas with a fork, then whisk the mush with the eggs until the mixture is frothy.

Add all the other ingredients and stir until things are just combined. I don't actually know whether that makes a difference for this recipe because I was worried I had combined them for too long and they didn't turn all solid and leathery or however you want to describe the weird state lots of other muffins go into if you over-mix the wet and dry ingredients.

Fill 12 lined muffin tins with the batter and bake for 18 minutes or until they start to brown.

Wait until they are cooled before you eat them. Trust me. It's worth waiting.

'Everything' Free Porridge

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Last time I told you about the grain free porridge I've been making. It's actually grain free and nut free. More importantly, though, it tastes really nice and makes for a really nice start of the day.
I prefer it cooked because that way the chia seeds thicken faster and it starts having a similar texture to millet porridge. But if you're in a rush, it's still really nice eaten cold.
That said, since I'm already venturing into allergy-land with this recipe, if you're doing Whole 30, you won't want to make this (chia seeds), if you are allergic to compositae, then I'm very sorry because that really sucks but more importantly, keep in mind that when you're replacing the sunflower seeds - they add a buttery touch to the mix so you might want to look for something that will do that as well.
Now to the fun part :)
This porridge is super nice with frozen raspberries added just before serving, but the other day I had no fruit left but some roasted butternut squash was staring at me from the fridge. That was a really lovely combination. You should try it.

'Everything' Free Porridge
1 cup Pumpkin Seeds (raw, not roasted and smothered with stuff)
1 cup Chia Seeds
1/2 cup Sunflower Seeds
1/2 cup Shredded Coconut
1/2 cup Ground Flaxseed
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract (optional)

Stick everything into a food processor or blender and whizz until you the texture resembles porridge oats. I am completely convinced this is part of why this tastes so nice - I mean if it looks like porridge it will obviously taste as good as porridge...
Done :)
When you're ready us make your porridge, use about one third to half a cup of the mix and cook with some water and/or coconut milk.
If you wait for a few minutes, the chia seeds will begin to thicken, the flavour doesn't change though. So if you can't wait, you could also just eat it cold.

How ice-cream made my day

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You were supposed to get a recipe for grain-free 'porridge' but the time since my last post tells you something about my motivation. It's actually super nice but it's kinda boring. That has been a general theme with the food I have been eating. I enjoy what I eat but whenever I ask myself whether somebody else might want to know how to make the same thing I never feel that's the case. I guess red velvet cupcakes are sexier than grain-free zucchini muffins. Please tell me if you disagree but I am currently operating under the assumption that there are enough allergy/paleo blogs around so I don't need to start writing about that stuff.
Anyhow, enough complaining for today. I made ice-cream the other night and it blew my mind. Perhaps that's because it was the firs time I have used anything other than fruit to sweeten my food in a month or so. It was glorious. And I sat around in that haze like a 5 year old who has just stuffed their face with way too much cake and gummy-bears at a birthday party (before the hyperness starts...).
I'm aware the photo doesn't look very exciting. I'm sure the chocolate version of this, which is my next project, will be more photogenic :)
That said, coconut and bananas - winner!

Coconut-Banana Ice-Cream
400ml Full Fat Coconut Milk (the stuff that doesn't come from the dairy alternative section of your supermarket)
2 very ripe Bananas
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 tbsp Honey (if you want the ice-cream to be super sweet you might want to use more)
1/4 tsp Salt (so the freezing-point is lower)

Whisk all ingredients together.
Done.
Not really, but nearly.
Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container (e.g. an old 500ml ice-cream tub - hence the quantities) and freeze for an hour or two before scraping down the crystals that have formed on the sides of the container with a fork. Over the next few hours keep coming back to break up the crystals that are forming so you end up with one giant popsicle. Personally, I prefer it slightly thawed because then the banana flavour takes centre-stage but that might just be me :)
This ice-cream goes really well with a cup of coffee after dinner. 
Have a fab evening! I'm gonna eat some more ice-cream.

Baked Coconut Chicken Pieces

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Have you missed me? I definitely missed you but I didn't really have anything to write about. At least on the food front and I wanted to spare you a German-election rant (since when is it ok to base your campaign on 'vote for us cos we are the party of your current chancellor' or 'if you want the current chancellor to be re-elected, then vote for us' (yes, that was actually a different party who pulled that one...) and don't even get me started on the things some of the other parties decided to talk about before the election)...or bore you to death be telling you all about my new haircut (which I love).

So, food - I've been cutting out everything that makes me sick again and while I feel ten times better, I am also keenly aware that most of the stuff I eat these days is not what any of us would consider exciting. At least that was until I had the idea of coating pieces of chicken breast with shredded coconut. Think the texture of buttermilk chicken inside and a crispy coconut layer on the outside. It's like going on a holiday for dinner...well, not really but it's made a huge difference to me actually wanting to eat dinner rather than forcing myself to eat another plate of boring food.
Oh, and it's dead easy to make.
If you are making potato/sweet potato/beetroot wedges to go with the chicken, you can put those in the oven before you start making the chicken, that way they will be done around the same time.
Also, when I talk about coconut milk I talk about the stuff that has coconut and water in it (the kind that normally comes in a tin and if you're lucky in a tetra-pac, not the stuff you buy in the dairy section of the supermarket that is full of sugar and other weird stuff). I buy mine at an Asian market because they sell a brand that has no E numbers or thickeners in it.

Baked Coconut Chicken Pieces
1 small Chicken Breast per portion
Coconut Milk (enough to coat the chicken breast pieces 2 tbsp tend to be enough for 1 chicken breast)
Unsweetened Shredded Coconut (desiccated works just as well)

Preheat your oven to 220˚C.
Cut the chicken breast into chunks the size of a matchbox (I literally can't come up with another description...I've been thinking about this one for 5 minutes...I just cut them in a way that feels natural with the meat I'm working with but that is approximately the size I tend to end up with), put them in a small bowl and cover them with the coconut milk. You don't need crazy amounts of coconut milk here. Put the shredded coconut onto a plate. Here you'll need enough to cover the chicken pieces which varies for me depending on how much coconut milk ended up on the chicken. Start off with three tablespoons and use more if you need to. Transfer the chicken pieces onto the plate and coat them with the coconut. I tend to coat them individually because that way if I run out of shredded coconut I can just pour more onto the plate. Also, I have less of the leftover coconut milk end up on the plate.
Lay the chicken pieces out on a non-stick baking tray or a brownie tin if you're only making one portion and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Check with the biggest pieces to make sure they're not still raw on the inside.
These chicken pieces go incredibly well with sweet potato wedges and some guacamole but I'm sure you can come up with better combinations yourself :)

Lemony Sweet Potato Wedges

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In line with my lack of cooking lately this is more of a non-recipe. It's one you should try, though. Like really :)

Have you ever noticed how when you make sweet potato pie or cheesecake and you add lemon zest it really makes the sweet potato flavour pop? I ended up wondering whether that would work as well when making wedges. Short answer - it does. Really well.

The long answer is that you don't loose the sweetness of the sweet potatoes but I find these work better with savoury stuff than their overly cinnamony siblings.

Lemony Sweet Potato Wedges (perfect for one)

1 Sweet Potato

Zest of 1/2 Lemon

1 tsp Salt

1/2-1 tbsp Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 220˚C.

Peel the sweet potato and cut it into wedges.

Rub the salt and lemon zest together using your fingers. Combine with the olive oil. What I do is start off with half the oil and safe the rest for later.

Toss the wedges in the lemon-mix. If you feel they are not properly coated add a bit more oil but keep in mind that you don't want the oil dripping off the wedges either.

Bake for 20 or so minutes (until the the edges are crispy).

Now, the wedges are lovely on their own with some humus, but they work particularly well with some ragu or some other stew you found hiding in your freezer.

I hope you have a fantastic week!

Strawberries, Honey & Vanilla

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Can you still get good strawberries where you are?
Strawberry season is nearing its end and I am enjoying every second of it. So much that I actually got up at 8 this morning to get one of those super cheap 2kg baskets this stall near my house has been selling (if you don't make it there in time they have sold out and you're stuck with the 1kg ones that are nearly the same price).
Since getting back from a super quick trip to London earlier this week I might have made more strawberry milk, strawberry ice-pops, strawberry infused iced-tea, and the strawberries in the picture above. I got the idea for this on one of my flights back where I had a strawberry and pineapple salad with a 'honey and vanilla marinade'. It was such a lovely combination.
As much as I love a really elaborate meal (if someone else has to stand in the kitchen for it) I was just blown away by the  simplicity of this combination. This is obviously really nice on its own but some ice-cream doesn't hurt either. How else are you supposed to deal with this heat?!? :)
This is obviously more of a non-recipe. These are the quantities I went for so feel free to experiment. Also, pineapple obviously works really well with this...

Strawberries, Honey & Vanilla
2 tsp Honey for every
1/2 Vanilla Pod and
1lb Strawberries

Hull and quarter the strawberries.
Scrape the vanilla seeds into the honey and stir until the two are combined. Mix with the strawberries and allow the strawberries to macerate for 10 minutes or so.
Now get out that tub of ice-cream :)

Almond Banana Bread

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Life has been crazy for me (the good kind) so whenever I have actually been at home I have been living out of my freezer (also - Mum, Dad - I'm running out of fancy Italian Pasta...I need to come and visit you soon so I can 'borrow' more from your store cupboard...).
There are exciting things happening in my freezer. There are pasties filled with ragu, there's amazing frozen strawberries for smoothies, there's loads of different kinds of bread and soup...oh, and most importantly, there are coconut and cookie ice-creams. I could probably feed myself for a week relying only on my freezer but the one thing I have been incredibly thankful for whenever I open its door has been this almond meal banana bread that I made a few weeks ago and luckily had the foresight to freeze.
This is a simple unsweetened banana bread which once started it's life as Elana Amsterdam's Paleo Banana Bread. It's still paleo, gluten-free and dairy free but that's not the reason why I like this bread. I am somewhat in love with this bread because it works as a normal bread with cheese or with a bowl of soup (lending an intriguing sweetness to the mix) but if you toast it (which I highly recommend you do, especially if you're defrosting frozen slices) the banana-flavour becomes a lot more pronounced and it is incredibly nice for breakfast with lots of fresh fruit or with my mum's strawberry jam :)

Almond Banana Bread (after Amsterdam)
6 Ripe Bananas, mashed
6 Eggs
2 tbsp Vanilla Extract
100ml Vegetable Oil (I use rapeseed)
400g Almond Flour
1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Bicarb

Preheat your oven to 175˚C.
Mix together the bananas, eggs, vanilla and oil using a food processor or your trusty hand-held blender.
Then add the almond flour, salt and bicarb - if you were using a hand held blender, switch to a spatula.
Grease a large bread tin and scoop the batter into the tin.
Bake for 65-70 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. If the top of the banana bread browns too quickly you can cover the top with tin foil.
Allow to cool before removing from the pan - if you take it out too soon it will most likely break into two or more pieces.
Anyhow...you know what works well with banana bread...
Have a fantastic rest of your week! I will be enjoying the heat in London for the next few days.

Wild Rice Pudding

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Is there anything better than a bowl of warm, sticky rice pudding when it's cold outside? Or cold rice pudding when it's way too warm?
Unlike lots of other places Berlin seems to be in the middle of the next ice-age. Whenever you think the cold is over, you wake up in the morning and there's another five centimetres of snow. I don't remember it ever snowing as late as my birthday. Right now I don't expect the snow to be gone by the time I get to blow out even more candles than before.
Anyhow, I made this rice pudding one evening after I got back from the gym all freezing because I had forgotten an extra pair of sweatpants for my way back. It's like a warm hug in a bowl. And since you'll be waiting for an hour for the rice to cook you might as well make more so you'll get to eat rice pudding for a few days :)

Wild Rice Pudding
150 g Wild Rice
1 l Milk
3 tbsp Agave Nectar
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Cardamom
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Vanilla Extract

Wash the wild rice. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 45-60 minutes stirring occasionally.
I like this rice pudding best when it's still sticky but it's still not as solid as baked rice pudding.
Oh, and while fresh fruit would be amazing, the part of me that cares about seasonal produce made me use local tinned peaches for the photo and it worked like a charm. If you close your eyes it will taste almost like summer is already back :)

Velvety Beetroot Chocolate Brownies

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If the thought of beetroot in baked goods leaves you somewhat bewildered, let me tell you one thing - whoever first used beetroot in brownies was a genius! They are velvety, super chocolatey, sweet but not excessively so and they are also quite pretty. I think they even beat the double chocolate ones and the vegan ones. And I would say they are about equally awesome as the aubergine chocolate cake. And they are adapted from a recipe from the same cookbook (Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache). A couple of years ago a few of us in St Andrews were somewhat obsessed with this book. All the cakes in it are made with vegetables (mostly root vegetables) and the all have an amazing texture and taste even better. Most of them actually taste way better than their non-vegetable cousins.
Beets, carrots and courgettes lend these cakes structure and airiness and a sweetness that you don't really get when you are using normal sugar. For those of you who like using agave syrup for baking. I feel like the effect is similar to the one you get when you replace sugar with dark agave in a cake.
Anyhow....I made these brownies after a long day at work. When I came home I found a couple of beets looking at me wanting to be eaten but I had no motivation whatsoever to roast them so I chopped them up, stuck them in the microwave and made some brownies. And after brownie number two I felt like it had been a good day after all :)

Velvety Beetroot Chocolate Brownies (adapted from Harry Eastwood)
400g Raw Beetroot (weigh them after peeled, topped and tailed them)
100g Almond Meal
3 Eggs
220g Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
150g Cooking Chocolate (the dark kind)
70g Cocoa Powder
2 tbsp Potato Flour or other kind of starch (rice or corn will work just as well)
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat your oven to 160˚C. Line a large gratin dish (approx. 27x20cm) with baking parchment.

Cut the beetroot into 2 cm pieces, place it in a microwaveable bowl with a tablespoon of water, cover with some cling film or a plate and microwave for 7 minutes (the original recipe says 10, my microwave is from the stone age (a.k.a. really slow) and whenever I have made these brownies and left them in there for 10 minutes I have ended up with mush, after 10 they are cooked through already).

While you are waiting for the beetroot, break the chocolate into pieces and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, and salt until their volume has tripled. If you are using an electric whisk, this should take about 3-5 minutes, if you are using a balloon whisk and are using your own muscle power, I am a) totally impressed with you and b) have no clue how long things are going to take so whisk away until the volume has tripled or your arms fall off :)

Drain the water the beetroot has been cooking in, then puree until smooth. A hand held immersion blender works wonders here. Once you have beetroot puree staring at you, mix in the chocolate, recover the mixture and set it aside so the chocolate can melt.

Fold the almonds, starch, cocoa powder, baking powder and vanilla extract into the eggs. Make sure you have a homogeneous mixture.

Follow this by folding in the beetroot-chocolate purée until combined.

Pour the batter into the gratin dish and smooth out the top.

Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Allow the brownie to cool before you cut it into pieces because it breaks quite easily while it is still hot.

Milk obviously works really well here, but so does wine :)

I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and that your Halloween costume was less ridiculous than mine (the 80s were somewhat alive). I will be back with another (yes, another) chocolatey recipe :)

Plum & Bourbon Jam

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I know it has been a while, and I wish I could tell you about all the exciting things I've done, but the truth is I was spreading myself a bit thin so I decided to focus on the 'important things in life' - work, sleep and practice. So it's pretty much been a couple of cereal-three-times-a-day weeks. Actually, that's not quite true - I went to a wedding near Paris a week ago where I had some of the best food I've ever had. We stayed at this amazing castle and it was simply amazing. I might not understand why you need not just one moat, but two of them...but hey...

Anyhow, I made this jam when I was still excited about fall (right now I'm just cold...) and to me it pretty much tastes like one of those sunny-but-still-foggy mornings that scream for warm jumpers and perhaps a hot toddy after a long walk through the woods. I got the idea from this jam but decided that booze is always a good idea, so in went the bourbon. I think any kind of whisky would work quite well here.
I used Zwetschgen rather than normal plums because I prefer them. But rather than writing a paragraph or two about the differences, this time I remembered to take a picture in case you still have no idea what I'm talking about.

A note on sugar. I use sugar that has pectin added so you use twice as much (weight-wise) fruit than sugar. I prefer the jams you get that way even though they are, technically, not jam anymore. I also like the 3:1 type because you get a super fruity spread but the one time I tried to make one myself it wouldn't set, so now I just try to convince people who are good at making that kind of jam to spread the love and give me a jar or two :)
Anyhow, what I am trying to say is - if you are using normal sugar follow the instructions on quantities somewhere like Food in Jars because both the cooking time and the amount of sugar you have to add change.

Plum & Bourbon Jam
1 kg Plums, stones taken out and cut into small pieces.
500g 2:1 Jam Sugar/ Gelling Sugar (Gelierzucker)
5 Star Anise Blossoms
50ml Lime Juice
80ml Bourbon

Mix the plums, sugar and star anise in a large, heavy bottomed pot and let it sit for an hour or two so you end up with a sirupy mixture that smells faintly of star anise.
Next you remove the star anise from the mixture and bring it to a boil over a medium heat. Don't worry, this will take a while. Once the the sugary mixture is boiling, set your timer to 4 minutes and keep stirring. After three minutes, add the lime juice and 50 ml of the bourbon, stir it in and taste. I feel like 80 ml was a good amount of bourbon but you might like things less smoky. If you feel like it could do with more than the 50 ml you just added, keep adding until you are happy with how the sweetness of the sugar and the plums balances with the tartness of the lime and the smoky flavour from the bourbon.
Take off the heat and fill into sterilised jars. I come from a family where we re-use old jam glasses and then seal them by letting them cool down upside-down (which creates a vacuum). I have seen a lot of blogs talk about how the jam won't last as long as it would if you added the extra canning step. I think you should do whatever you feel comfortable with but I have rarely seen a mouldy jar of jam (and the one I actually remember also looked like someone had been hoarding it since the 1950s...) so I think if you're planning to eat the jam within the next year or two it should be fine without the extra canning in a water-bath.

Half-Baked Blueberry Pie

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Are you enjoying the end of a lovely blueberry season as much as I am?
Two years ago this blueberry pie recipe was making it's way around the blogs I was reading. People were raving about how amazing it was. And the trick was that part of the blueberries were cooked (giving you the amazing depth of flavour you get in a baked blueberry pie) and then uncooked blueberries were folded into the cooked mix (giving you the tart, juicy, incredibly fresh flavour you get in those blueberry tartlets). To me that sounded like the best of both worlds. But by the time I had some time to give it a go all I found were super expensive blueberries from Namibia (or wherever they grow blueberries in the winter). And then I forgot about it. Until I was confronted with boxes upon boxes of blueberries. I tried to trace down the blog where I first read about the recipe but I was unsuccessful but I found the post things seem to have originated from (on Shockingly Delicious). And then I changed everything....
I used Elana's gluten-free tart crust recipe but if you don't like almonds, just make a standard one or buy one. For the filling I used ground chia seeds as a thickener because I read about that the other night and wanted to give it a go, but if you can't find any or if you don't like them, the original recipe uses cornflour so just follow that recipe. And lastly, I used agave syrup and stevia as my sweeteners but if you want to use sugar, again, have a look at the original recipe.

Half Baked Blueberry Pie
-Elana's Tart Crust (from Elana's Pantry)
200g Almond Flour
1/2 tsp Sea Salt
2 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 Egg

-Blueberry filling
500g Blueberries
150 ml Water
3 tbsp Chia Seeds
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
Stevia (equivalent to 2 tsp sugar, I find when I use more it becomes too sweet)
1 tbsp Agave Syrup
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 tbsp Lime Juice

To make the crust:
Preheat your oven to 165˚C.
Mix all ingredients together. Elana suggest pulsing them in a food processor. I ended up kneading the mix together with my hands because I only have one of those hand blender sticks and while they're amazing for lots of things - pulsing dry ingredients is not their forte.
Pat the dough into a 23cm/9inch flan dish and bake for 10-15 minutes (mine needed the whole 15 minutes).
Allow the pie crust to cool before you fill it.

To make the blueberry filling:
Mix the water, chia seeds, salt, and cinnamon in a saucepan  and bring to a boil. Add 250 g of the blueberries and and heat until the blueberries are heated through. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Next you need a hand blender stick or a blender that is ok with high temperatures. Blend the mixture until it is smooth. By doing this you not only get a really pretty filling for the pie but, in my opinion, more importantly the chia seeds end up broken down into little pieces and you are less likely to have chia seeds stuck to your teeth after eating the pie :)
Add the stevia, agave syrup, vanilla extract and lime juice, then fold in another 150 g of the blueberries.
Pour the blueberry mixture into the cold pie crust and distribute the blueberries evenly within the mix. Top with the remaining blueberries (100g), cover with cling film, and refrigerate for a few hours. This allows the filling to become slightly less liquid.

When you are ready to serve the pie, allow it to come back to room temperature and then serve it with sour cream, ice cream or whipped cream (can you detect a trend here?). We had it with sour cream at our lab lunch today and I was a big fan of that combination.

I hope you have a fantastic end of your week!

Boozy Grilled Peach & Sour Cream Ice Pops

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Even though I'm complaining about the 'heat' at the lab or during practice in the evenings, I am actually really enjoying the summery temperatures we've been having.
Partly because that means I'll have a chance to wear my new text-marker-coloured shorts, but mostly because I have an excuse to eat ice-cream pretty much every day. Rather than making even more granita or ice-cream, I have switched to making my own ice pops. I made some amazing avocado ones after a recipe from Fany Gerson's Paletas but ate them before taking a decent picture. But then I also made some with grilled peaches, bourbon, and sour cream (inspired by Fany's sour cream, cherry, and tequila ones) and I thought we could make them together today.
If you don't have any popsicle molds, don's worry, I don't have any either (because I'm having this stupid argument with myself where the stubborn version of me refuses to buy molds that don't look like the ones I really want to have but I can't find them anywhere in Germany...) so I use shot glasses and this really cool ice-cube mold from the 50s I pinched from my mum.
All right, let's get cracking.


This recipe makes enough for 12 normal popsicle moulds or 6 shot glasses and said ice-cube mould.


Boozy Grilled Peach & Sour Cream Ice Pops
3 Peaches (about 450g after you take out the stones) 
3 tbsp Agave Syrup
2 tbsp Lemon Juice (freshly squeezed)
4 tbsp Bourbon
450gr Sour Cream
350ml Milk
1/4 tsp Salt
100g Raw Cane Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract


Half the peaches and grill them until the side near the heat is charred and the flesh is relatively soft. Allow them to cool slightly, then peel off the skin (you should be able to pretty much rub the skin off with your finger - hence the cooling).
Cut the peaches into small pieces - about 0.5 cm thick and 1.5 - 2 cm wide and cover them with the agave syrup, lemon juice, and bourbon in a smallish bowl. Allow the peaches to completely cool down, then refrigerate them until you are ready to continue.
Mix the milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Take the saucepan off the heat and whisk in the sour cream and the vanilla extract. As with the peaches, allow the mixture to completely cool down, then refrigerate it until you are ready to continue.
Take out whichever molds you are using and spoon in enough of the sour cream mixture to fill the bottom of the molds (about 1.5-2.5 cm deep depending on the shape of the mold). Freeze for about 30 minutes. This will stop the peaches sinking completely to the bottom.
While the mix is freezing away, drain the peaches and keep the liquid. You could probably make an amazing grilled peach old fashioned but if I'm perfectly honest with you, poured over some ice with some more bourbon this is very close to what I consider the perfect drink. 
Anyhow, back to the ice pops. Spoon the peaches into the molds, dividing them relatively evenly. If you have any left, have a party and eat them while the popsicles are freezing.
Spoon the sour cream mixture into the molds, leaving some room at the top.
Insert the sticks and freeze for at least 3 or 4 hours. Fany  suggests freezing them for an hour before inserting the sticks if you are using shot glasses but I didn't have the time to do that and I don't know about you - I'm not planning to sell these, I want to eat them - who cares whether the sticks are slightly wonky or not?!?


I hope you have a fab weekend with lots of ice-cream and I hope you are just as excited about Sunday as I am! After receiving lots of very positive feedback on the 'thoughts' posts I have decided to have a series of posts that will be called Sunday Salon. I have invited some of the amazing people I know who either blog themselves or who write amazing other stuff to write posts about something they care about. About something that makes them think. I hope you'll enjoy this project as much as I already have organising the first few posts. 
So now, you can be excited about Sunday as well :)

Yu Xiang Eggplant

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I'm really excited about today's post because my friend Jorge is sharing one of his favourite recipes with us today. Jorge and I went to a summer school together a few years back and since then he's been one of my favourite people I see at conferences. Partly because he's plain awesome and studies stuff that is way cooler than my stuff (there was a poster about magicians a while back...need I say more?!?!?). But also because he likes food as much as I do. And you need conference buddies who will go and eat good food with you! 
Anyhow, I hope you'll be as excited about this recipe as I am already. If you give it a try, let us know in the comments!

Hello everybody! Katharina has kindly invited me to write a guest post on her blog and I am very happy to bring you one of my favorite Chinese dishes.

I have liked Chinese food for a while but it was after I came to the US and especially after I met Jin (now my wife) when I really started to love it and appreciate it. On the way I also learned that the Chinese food in most restaurants is Cantonese food (from the South East of China, near Hong Kong) and that there are many more types of food in China. Among the different foods of China I totally fell in love with Sichuanese food. If you like spicy food and fish and have the chance to go to a Sichuanese restaurant please try the water boiled fish.

This recipe is special for me because it was the first recipe I learned on my own, without Jin’s help. I cannot take any credit for it. It is a traditional Chinese recipe (from Sichuan of course), and I learned it from the great book “Land of Plenty” by Fuchsia Dunlop (http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/books/land-of-plenty-sichuan-cookery/). I totally recommend it.

These amounts can probably feed 2 or 3 people with some white rice but usually, in a Chinese meal, there would be more dishes so you could share everything among 4 or 5 people.

Yu Xiang Eggplant
4 Asian Eggplants (I have never tried to do it with regular eggplants, I am not sure they will work as well)
Oil
Salt
1 and ½ tablespoons of Sichuan Chili Bean Paste, aka chili broad bean paste or pixian paste
3 cloves of Garlic, finely chopped
Ginger, also finely chopped, same amount as garlic
4 Scallions, only green parts, sliced into rings
½ cup of Chicken Stock, I usually don’t have it handy so I just use water
2 teaspoon of Sugar
1 teaspoon of Soy Sauce
2 teaspoons of (Chinkiang) Black Rice Vinegar
2 teaspoons of Starch (corn, potato, tapioca … I guess it doesn’t matter) diluted in a little bit of water
1 teaspoon of Sesame Oil

© Jorge Otero-Millan

First, cut the eggplants lengthwise in two halves and cut each half in 3 or 4 pieces. Then deep fry them until they are golden and soft. Don't do them all at once of course! I usually let them rest in some paper towels to take some of the oil out. If you want to go more health but of course less tasty (everything is better deep fried) you can just stir fry them until they are soft.

Now is when the nice smells will start. First heat some oil, like 3 tablespoons, and add the chill bean paste Let the paste 'melt' into the oil but don't burn it! Then add the garlic and ginger and stir fry for around 30 seconds until the are golden and you get the amazing smell. Again, careful not to burn the stuff.

Add the stock, sugar, soy sauce, and salt to taste (many 1 or 2 tablespoons). Mix everything well and add the eggplants. Move them carefully, they will be delicate, and simmer them for a few minutes. 
Add the starch mixed with water and let the sauce reduce and thicken. Then add the vinegar and the scallions and cook them for just a moment. 
Finally, take off the heat and add the sesame oil and enjoy! 
If everything went right, the eggplants should just melt in your mouth.

© Jorge Otero-Millan

Watermelon & Cucumber Salad

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I told you - I'm into watermelon right now.
When I was little I would only eat watermelon. I remember sitting out on the front steps talking to my neighbour about which types of fruit we liked and wondering why on earth anyone could like honeydew melon. Luckily that has changed (you need a vehicle for all that parma ham) but I still have a soft spot for watermelon.
So, today we'll be making a salad. It's really quick, really refreshing and is really lovely for dinner on a balmy summer evening.

Watermelon & Cucumber Salad (for 1 person)
100g Cucumbers (I used those really thin ones that look like mutant cornichons & taste of cucumber rather than water)
100g Watermelon
1 tsp Lime Juice (lemon works just as well, though)
1 tsp Condimento Bianco
1 tsp Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Some Mint Leaves (I used strawberry and ginger mint but normal mint will work just as well)
Some Basil Leaves

Cut the cucumber into £1 coin slices and the watermelon into 1.5cm cubes.
Mix with the lime juice, vinegar and olive oil.
Season with the salt and pepper and sprinkle with the leaves.

See, that was easy!

Watermelon Margarita Granita

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Phew..last week just flew by. I spent the week editing chapters, puzzling over applications (neither for my own work which was surprisingly relaxing), watching my tomatoes grow at an alarming speed, enjoying the warm morning air, cursing the warm night air...the usual :)
Today's recipe is just perfect for those warm summer evenings (and hot summer afternoons) so I suggest you go and buy a watermelon. Right now. Because I've decided this week will be watermelon-recipe week.
You know how sometimes you get an overripe watermelon that still tastes amazing but is all weird and grainy? I picked the wrong watermelon at my greengrocer's a few weeks back and was left wondering what to do with it. Tape Five's Tequila remix was playing and I was staring at a bottle of tequila so what is a girl supposed to do on a warm summer evening? Watermelon margaritas!
Since I had quite a lot of watermelon juice in the end I decided to freeze things and turn it into a granita.  The nice thing about calling it a granita is also that you can pretend that you're being all grown up rather than having frozen margaritas on a lazy afternoon with friends :)

Watermelon Margarita Granita
Enough Watermelon to get 1 litre juice (I had a two litre bowl full of watermelon wedges that then gave me roughly a litre of juice in the end)
50 - 75 ml Simple Syrup
50 ml Lime Juice
100 ml Tequila
A pinch of Salt

Make the watermelon juice. I simply cut the pink flesh into chunks and then I used my hands to squish them together until the juice came out. I'm sure there is a better way of doing this but since I was only interested in the juice and nothing else that seemed like the best idea at the time.

Mix the watermelon juice with the lime juice, tequila and a pinch of salt. Add some simple syrup to taste. I used about 60 ml but depending on whether you make your syrup with higher or lower percentages of sugar and also the sweetness of your watermelon you will want to adjust the amount. Add about a third of the syrup, then taste the mixture and add some more if you feel like it could do with some more. You'll want to aim for something slightly sweeter than what you find optimal because once we freeze things it will taste less sweet.

Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container and freeze for a couple of hours. If you have the time you could come back after some time and break up the ice-crystals with a fork. And if you're feeling very energetic you can do this a few times. Or you could just freeze it and attack it with a fork about 5 minutes before your guests show up a few days later (which was obviously not what I did...).

I hope you have a fantastic start of your week!

Rhubarb Mascarpone Ice-Cream

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All right, let's put the ice-cream I've been talking about for the better part of the last few weeks together.
All the different parts taste lovely by themselves, but trust me with this one, once you put this darling together you'll never want to go back.
I'll talk you through the timeline but if you are looking for the recipes of the various sub-recipes, follow the links below.

Rhubarb Mascarpone Ice-Cream
Lemony Mascarpone Ice-Cream
Rhubarb Compote
Caramel Sauce

If you have all three of these sitting in front of you, perfect, if you are just getting started I would make them in the following order:
Make the ice-cream and freeze.
Then you make the rhubarb compote.
Allow the compote to cool completely.
Make the caramel sauce and, again, let it cool completely.
After a few hours, check how your ice-cream is doing. If it is well on it's way to being frozen (i.e. if you are looking at something that is more slush than a very solid semifredo, it is not ready), find a freezer-proof container that is large enough to hold all three ingredients.
If you want to make the ice-cream the day before, that works just as well. In that case you might have to give it a few minutes to soften up a bit.
Using a large tablespoon, spoon some of the ice-cream into the new container. Don't worry about getting an even layer of ice-cream because that is not what we're after.
Add spoonfuls of the rhubarb compote, filling the dips in the ice-cream layer. Drizzle with some caramel sauce.
And then you repeat this until there is nothing left. I went for 3 'layers' but if you want the flavours to be more evenly distributed, you could also go for 5 or so.
Freeze for a few more hours or overnight.
Now, because we didn't churn the ice-cream and because it doesn't have a custard base, it will probably be fairly solid when you take it out of the freezer. I give mine about 15 minutes in the fridge before scooping the ice-cream into bowls. If you're really desperate, though, you can also scrape off thin shavings which taste just as nice but won't look as pretty.

Caramel Sauce

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Do you love caramel sauce as much as I do?
I love how it's ridiculously sweet and how it makes pretty much any ice-cream better (pretty much all my favourite flavours of Ben & Jerry's have caramel in them...now you can go and figure out which ones I like) it is amazingly fun drizzled over cake and obviously I don't eat leftover caramel sauce out of the jar...noooo....that would be bad and decadent and obviously even worse before dinner and would ruin your appetite ;)
But today, rather than buying it at the supermarket, we're going to make our own.
Before we start I have some bad news for you. If you are hoping to make this a low-calorie / low-fat affair, then you'll be disappointed.
After about 5 attempts a while back of making this caramel sauce with semi-skimmed milk (which the internet kept promising me would work...so much for believing anything that the internet tells you) and throwing out varying incarnations of lumpy caramel sauce that wouldn't turn into anything resembling a homogenous sauce, I gave up and made it with heavy cream.
And guess what - it turned out perfectly the first time I tried.
I found this recipe on Thrifty NW Mom (don't ask how I end up on those blogs...) and it's very similar to what Julia Child suggests just easier. You see, Julia Child makes you cover the pan with a lid 'until the bubbles are thick'. Well how thick is thick?!?!? And then you set the pan in cold water. I don't know about your sink, but mine isn't big enough that I can set my saucepan into some cold water without the caramel just spilling into the water.
This recipe solves all those problems. And many more.
So let's get started, shall we?

Caramel Sauce
200g Sugar
250ml Water
1 tbsp Butter
125ml Heavy Cream

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan mix the sugar and water. Heat over a medium high heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved in the water. Now we get to the really boring bit - let the mixture boil until it's a lovely caramel colour.
This is going to take forever.
You can probably watch the better part of an old episode of One Tree Hill while you wait. Or write the discussion section of the paper that has been annoying you for the better part of the last month. Or wash a gazillion dishes. Or read a paper. Or straighten you hair and do your makeup :)

Once you have a caramel coloured sugar mixture in front of you, take it off the heat and stir in the butter. Add the cream and keep stirring. The caramel will turn into a lump, but keep stirring. It will dissolve in a bit and if you're really worried, you can heat it over a low heat while you keep stirring until you have a homogenous caramel sauce in your saucepan.
The sauce will be fairly thin, but this is ok. It will thicken as it cools down.

Pour the sauce into a heatproof container (like a jam jar) and allow it to cool down. I keep mine in the fridge.

What's your favourite dish that contains caramel sauce?