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.

Pecan 'Shortbread' Cookies

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Whoa! I bet you didn't expect another post so soon. I didn't, but I did some baking so I thought I might as well tell you about it.

This past weekend my club hosted the Berlin Open Lacrosse Tournament and since I love it when I have an excuse to bake cookies (it feels slightly ridiculous baking four cookies just for myself, I would rather bake two dozen for a group of people), I made cookies on Saturday and Sunday. The first kind were orange essence and almond cookies which I might tell you about at a later point. I'll tell you about the second kind today because I liked them better.

Think super light shortbread studded with pecans.
Think Mexican wedding cookies that haven't been rolled in icing sugar.

And now imagine eating one of those cookies after a semi-late night (cos I'm old) and a 9am game. Those cookies seriously hit the spot.

What can I tell you about those cookies...they come together in a pinch and are as amazing with a cup of tea on a cold afternoon as they are being eaten outdoors with some stale soda water. Oh, and the dough keeps in the fridge for at least 4 days (I used up the remaining dough last night so I don't know whether it would have kept even longer).
Let's make some cookies, shall we?

Pecan 'Shortbread' Cookies
225g Butter, cold, cut into small pieces.
225g All-Purpose Flour
25g Starch (I used potato starch, cornflour or rice flour will work just as well)
30g Icing Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp Salt
50g Pecans, toasted and broken into small pieces

75g Granulated Sugar (for rolling the cookies in, don't worry, you won't use all of it)

Cut the butter into the remaining six ingredients. Think shortcrust pastry. Work fast. You can also use the paddle attachment of a food processor. Either way, don't work the dough longer than until it is only just starting to come together. Do you remember the last time someone served you a really gross pie? Do you wanna be that person with the crap cookies? So don't overmix the dough :)

Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate for at least two hours or overnight. I prepared the dough in the evening and made the cookies in the morning. You have just enough time while they bake to grab some breakfast.

Preheat the oven to 175˚C and line preferably two baking sheets with parchment. I only have one and that worked just fine but it just means there is more waiting time involved when you have to work with two batches...

Form heaped tablespoons of dough into balls and roll them in the granulated sugar.
Arrange the unbaked cookies on the baking sheet, leaving about 4cm between the cookies. Oh, and you also have an option - the cookies barely spread - if you don't want them to be small mounds of cookie awesomeness, now is the time to flatten them slightly.
The cookies will need between 15 and 20 minutes in the oven. If you are using two baking sheets, rotate them after 10 minutes.

They are finished when the cookies feel firm and the edges are golden brown.
Allow the cookies to cool slightly before transferring them to a wire rack. If you move them too soon they might fall apart. Though, that gives you more reason to eat them while they are cooling down. With a glass of milk, or some coffee...

I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and an even greater weekend!
I know mine will be - my friends Judith and Mimi have invited me over for pork barbecue...I'm trying to convince them that they want to do us all a favour and go for some vinegar-based-barbecue-sauce awesomeness...but even if they don't I'm sure it's still gonna be awesome!

That brings me to a question I have been meaning to ask you guys for a while - what's your favourite barbeque sauce? Are you amazed by all things from North Carolina or are you (shock, horror) more a fan of the tomato and molasses further west? What's your favourite kind?

Strawberry Milk

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Growing up we didn't make milkshakes, we made fruit-milk. Banana, strawberry, raspberry, I think we even tried cherry once. Banana tended to win because my sister and I didn't have to try and convince our mum that some sugar would really help this not-quite-sweet-enough strawberry milk. Also, overripe bananas seemed to be sitting around way more often than somewhat overripe strawberries.
Somehow my parents never told us that there was this other mythical drink - The Milkshake. I'm sure I must have seen it on menues but I didn't have a milkshake until I was just about to graduate from college.
The first time I remember drinking a milkshake was pretty much exactly 5 years ago waiting for a train at Union Station in DC. The only way I can describe that time in DC is sweltering. Nobody hat prepared me for the heat. I had expected hot but not swamp-hot. I remember writing a postcard to my aunt telling her about how I had started to really appreciate coffee-shops for their airconditioning.
So after 4 days of living off iced coffee and coffee cake (another thing I discovered on that trip), trying to cram as much US history in as possible, I was standing at the station waiting for my train to Philadelphia (for more heat and even better history) and the humidity was starting to get to me.
And then I saw this sign at the Ben & Jerry's Stall. I could have a milkshake made from milk and any kind of Ben & Jerry's ice cream I wanted :)
I'm gonna leave it at this - an addiction was born that got even worse when I had my first malt shake a few years later at Ruby's at Chrystal Cove Beach.
Anyway, yesterday I went back to basics and made strawberry milk. It's hot in Berlin at the moment. It's especially hot in my office. So, when I got home, I made a big glass of strawberry milk. It was as good as I remembered, if not better because I added vanilla essence. It also made me realise - as good as milk shakes are, strawberry milk is better when it's really hot and all you want to do is cool down.
I'm giving you the recipe below for the quantities not for the single instruction :)

Strawberry Milk
100g Strawberries, hulled
200ml Milk
1tsp Vanilla Essence
Some Ice-Cubes (optional)

Blend everything together until smooth :)

Let's see, strawberry milk goes incredibly well with hot summer days, popcorn (made the perfect dinner yesterday), vanilla ice cream, non-chocolate cookies, and lazy evenings :)

I hope you have a fantastic weekend! I will be watching lacrosse, playing lacrosse and enjoying the weather at a tournament my club is hosting. Good times!

Game Day Compost Cookies

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I first had these cookies at Momofuku Milk Bar a year ago or so. They were quite amazing but I had been on a sugary-stuff bender and ate one of them after already having eaten a piece of crack-pie with some cereal milk the night before and after having come back for some cereal milk ice-cream and one of those super chocolatey cookies earlier that day. The compost cookie was my mid-afternoon snack and it was good but I was not really blown away. Regardless, I had been meaning to make my own from the cookbook for a while now. I mean you have to give every cookie a second chance. Last week I finally got around to making some and after people in my lab loved them (including me - if you don't eat lots of sugar beforehand they are actually quite amazing :) ) I decided to make some for Saturday because we had a match. It was sunny, it was warm enough for me to contemplate playing without a base-layer and we sat around having a fantastic time eating cookies. We had a fantastic time playing later on but there were no cookies involved so that part is less important for now. 

Because the comments were so amazing/hilarious I thought I should share them with you.

'What is in those cookies?' 

'Why would you put potato chips into cookies?!?' 

'Did Katharina make those cookies? Only Katharina would put mini pretzels and potato chips into a cookie!' (well, no, Christina Tosi obviously thought about that one first, but over here people are a lot less adventurous where cookie flavours are concerned).

And my favourite of all times: 

'I ate too many cookies! I think if I run too fast I'll end up throwing up cookies all over the field' 

'As long as you puke in the direction of the other team that should be fine'

You see, it was a good Saturday :)


Compost Cookies (adapted from Tosi)

Before we start, I know that is the longest ingredient list in quite a while. If you can't be bothered to make cornflake crunch you could also leave out the cornflakes. You could also use butterscotch chips or peanut butter ones…or mini marshmallows. That's what is so fantastic about these cookies. I can't think of many combinations that I wouldn't want to try. The coffee adds depth of flavour and a really interesting texture. Also, the combination of sweet and salty with some maltiness from the cornflake crunch turns these cookies (as some of the quotes might have already given away) into something else. 

225g Butter (at room temperature)
200g Granulated Sugar
200g Light Brown Sugar
1 Egg
½ tsp Vanilla Extract
225g Flour
½ tsp Baking Powder
¼ tsp Bicarb
4g Salt
150g Chocolate Chips
100g Almonds (toasted in your oven until they are fragrant, then broken up into pieces)
40g Rolled Oats
5g Ground Coffee (yes, you are not dreaming, trust me on this one. DON'T USE INSTANT!!!) 
40g Cornflakes or Cornflake Crunch (see this recipe or better: buy the cookbook because it's awesome!)
50g Potato Chips (the simple salted kind, kettle chips work better because they are more sturdy)
50g Mini Pretzels

Cream the butter and the sugars (give them some time to become all fluffy), then add the egg and the vanilla extract and beat until the mixture has nearly doubled in size. This will take some time. Give it 5 and things will look good, apparently if you give it 7 or 8 minutes things will be amazing but I'm always too lazy to do that.
Add the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt. And mix until just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips, almonds, rolled oats, and ground coffee.
If you are using a food processor for this be careful to not overmix things and be very careful to definitely not overmix things when you add the cornflake crunch, potato chips and mini pretzels.
If you are using a spoon or spatula by now, I would crush the potato chips and pretzels just a tiny bit. I don't know about you, but I don't like having a cookie that has more potato chip than cookie dough to it and they didn't break down at all when I mixed them in - I had to specifically break down some of them with the spatula which was a bit of a pain.
Scoop out 2 tbsp size portions, slightly flatten them and either set them on a sheet pan or stick them in a tupperware box. Cover and refrigerate for an hour. They last for up to a week in the fridge. That way you can have fresh cookies whenever you feel like it! How cool is that?!?
Apparently this step is crucial. I haven't tried baking them sooner but what's the point in trying to find out whether that's true if you can just clean your kitchen or watch some TV while you are waiting...
Preheat your oven to 190˚C.
Stick the cookie portions onto a lined baking sheet. Leave at least 2.5cm between them, I would probably go for something closer to 5. 
Bake until the tops are nice and golden and your kitchen smells amazing. This should happen after 15-17 minutes but check before. I took mine out after 17 minutes in the end but I didn't feel like my oven was actually giving me the temperature it said it was giving me. 

Now, go and make some cookies and then tell me all about it!
I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week!