Glazed Vegetables Revisited

Baby potatoes, bugs-bunny carrots, bird eye chili, lime, and lemon

Pinterest is a great website to roam around and get some ideas on how to make and be creative with cooking/baking. When i was checking the pins added by the people i followed on pintesrest i came across to a beautifully taken picture of glazed carrots. They glazed the carrots with olive oil, cumin, and lime. It was so beautiful so i decided to make my glazed vegetables with lime juice as well. 

Glazed vegetables with olive oil lime juice and bird eye chili

When i was on my everyday grocery shopping i saw the carrots as my friends calls the bugs bunny carrots and i picked them up to make glazed vegetables.  i cleaned them get rid of the green part and boiled them and boiled baby potatoes with skin on. once the carrots are boiled then it is easy to peel the skin of the carrots. I peeled it because it is more shiny and the color is more vibrant on the inside. Then i lined my tin with baking paper, added some bird eye chili (it is extremely hot use it with caution), olive oil, sea salt and left them at 350 F /180 C in the oven. And for potatoes i used the same procedure but left the skins on and cut them in  half. After 15 mins i took both of the vegetables out and added lime juice and finely chopped parsley on top of the veggies. It was looking good and tasting good as well :) Highly recommended. 

Glazed baby potatoes with bird eye chili, parsley, and lime juice

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Choclate Chip Cookie Dough Chilled in the Fridge for 24 Hours

I would like to start by expressing my graditude to Esma for making the beautifully taken pictures possible. 

We all have a love relationship with chocolate from early ages. I can't recall the first time i met chocolate but i remember the big box of chocolates with hazelnuts that my parents used to keep in somewhere i can not reach. As years go by, i started to fell apart with chocolate and still unless it is not orange flavoured i don't really have much affection for it. I am now trying to re-establish my relation with chocolate by following the path led by artisan bakers. Although the chocolate chip cookie sound like a not so serious step for my ambitions on chocolate, I believe that on anything in life you have got to get the fundamentals right to move forward. So if you can do the fundamentals perfectly, then you can add on it. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Truffles

According to the NYT article the chocolate chip cookie is coming from a local baker living near Boston, Mass and since then it has been the regular item on bakeries and your local coffee shop. Even the packaged versions are sold in the selves of the supermarkets probably packed with loads of preservatives. In the NYT article they interviewed with several bakeries and try to understand the  best technique used to make the perfect cookie. According to the article the secret is chilling the dough! 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I used the recipe given in Cafe Fernando because it was using the least amount of eggs that I could find on the internet. I used a mixture of chocolates to make the cookies including the leftovers from the strawberry tuxedo recipe so there was white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate. Later on, when I was eating the cookies, I would say I like the taste of the white chocolates probably the most. So next time i am baking cookies, I will try to use the cocoa in the dough and use only white chocolate chuncks. The cookies turned out pretty good crunchy on the outside and inside is moist and chewy. I think I kept them in the oven a bit long. I think it would be more chevy if I took the tray out when the cookies were melted and still looking white and fluffy.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients (makes 20 cookies): 

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/2 tsp. baking soda (you can use less, loads of it makes the cookies bitter)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp of vanilla powder 
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chunks

1. Put the butter in a bowl and add the sugars and beat it with an electric mixer in high.
2. Add the eggs mix until you get a  creamy textured mixture. 
3. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet while beating with the electric mixer
5. Add the chocolate chunks and fold them into the dough with the help of a spatula. 
6. Refrigerate the dough 24 to 36 hours or more.
7. After 36 hours set the oven to 360 F /180 C, line your baking tray and take the dough out and make truffles out of it. 
8. Leave generous amount of space between truffles and bake 10-15 mins. 
9. The cookie should be still fluffy, soft, and tanned a little or white when you take out of the oven.

Strawberry Tuxedos and Strawberry Selection

Lately I have been trying to make cookies, cakes, frozen bananas involving or covered with chocolate. After this experience I would say I am not the biggest fan of chocolate.  I am a fruit fan, veggie fan, naked food fan but chocolate is not in that list. However I like to combine chocolate with berries and I like using chocolate in cakes. When doing so I think it is important to use the best chocolate I can find. I used green black organics for this particular recipe but you can alternate it with some other favorite brand of yours. I have to make an exception for divine orange flavored milk chocolate i would say it is my favorite. I have strong feelings for the orange flavored milk chocolate, I must admit.

Source: thesisterscafe.com via Tuba on Pinterest

On the weekend my friend and I went to church street and whole foods happened to have the Spanish strawberries (250 grams for 99p). The strawberries were massive so we didn't want to buy it in the first place but the smell and the free tasters tricked us so we ended up buying some. I wasn't planning to try anything new with them but roaming around pinterest I saw this (shown left) gorgeous strawberries covered with white chocolate and dipped into blue crystal sugar, they looked absolutely amazing. Then I ended up in a grocery store picking up chocolates but couldn't find beautifully colored sugar crystals. By the way it just down on me that this strawberry features the colors of French flag. Oh well... 

There are plenty of blog posts/videos available on the web showing how to cover strawberries with chocolate and many of other things such as coconut flakes, different sugar crystals but I think the chocolate itself looks very elegant and you can be creative with it. I have found a nice video on YouTube showing how to make strawberry tuxedos. This gentleman explains very well how to melt chocolate in a microwave, how to make a disposable paper cone from baking sheet and how to dress Mr. strawberries with tuxedos.  All of them are recorded in three different YouTube videos i am giving the links since the embedding of the videos are disabled. 

For paper cone:

http://youtu.be/-nTfBV_jHho?t=1m3s

For dressing the berries: 

http://youtu.be/Zk0aMP_gNNI

Recipe: (makes 5 tuxedos, 7 selection berries)

• 100 grams of white choclate
• 100 grams of 50% dark choclate 
• 11  good sized strawberries (take 3-4 strawberries extra incase you can not get the hang of it in first place  )

1. Wash the strawberries and lay them on a paper towel and leave them on for 15-20 mins make sure the strawberries are dry before you start working on them. 
2. Chop the chocolates and put them in two different bowls. 
3. Melt chocolates in microwave at 50% power by stopping the microwave and stirring every 30 seconds. You do not want to burn the chocolate so it is very important to check every 15-30 seconds making sure it is melting without getting burned. 
4. For tuxedos dip one side of the strawberry to white chocolate then set it in a tray covered with baking sheet. 
5. Once you are done dipping to white chocolate refrigerate the tray for about 2-3 minutes. 
6. When the white chocolate is nice and firm take them out of the fridge and dip both sides to dark chocolate then with the help of a cocktail stick draw the buttons and the bow-tie.
7. For the selection dip them into the chocolate, let them rest in the fridge and fill the paper cone with melted chocolate of your choice.
8. Squeeze the paper cone from back like a toothpaste tube and draw lines with the chocolate as it pours from the tip of the cone. 
9. Try to eat them in the same day otherwise keep them in the fridge the strawberries get spoiled easily. 

Pasta Salad with Halloumi and Mushroom

Let me mention Mark Bittman again, I might look like i am obsessed with Bittman but really i think his approach is admirable that is why in this blog i always mention his recipes and his food philosophy. Bittman says he prefer more sauce and less pasta and i would say i am at the same wagon with him. However, there is an exception on this rule, if we are talking about the quality, freshly made pasta then the equation changes. In this recipe i am making a pasta with loads of veggies and i would like to call it a salad, or a veggie dish rather than a pasta. Because essentially it is a veggie dish rather than pasta. I don't want to give the exact reipe for this since i want you to mix the ingredients on your taste.

I used pasta shells on this dish, around 250 grams. 2 big and 12 small  mushrooms, 2 courgettes, 150 grams of hallomi cheese, half a bunch of parsley and some coriander, you need to have chilies in this dish and even garlic would be very nice i didn't put any but do add them if you are willing to try it.

I chopped the mushrooms and courgettes and drizzled extra virgin olive oil seasoned with sea salt. I left them in preheated oven for about 25-30 mins at 370 F/ 180 C. Hallomi cheese i baked in oven 8-10 mins at 370 F/ 180 C but you can grill it if you like. Then i cooked the pasta shells for about 6-7 mins until al dente and mix all of the ingredients. Finally add the finely chopped parsley and coriander, you can use basil instead of coriander and you can also add some freshly grounded black pepper.  If i had chilies i would add them at this point too. Again it is up to you play with the amount of the ingredients you can use shiitake or chestnut mushrooms instead of button ones and you can add different herbs. If you want more cheese or different cheese types you can go for feta cheese. You can even change the cheese with yogurt or sour cream. I really like this light pasta salad and te best thing about this recipe is you don't fry anything once you are done with the chopping everything is pretty easy an straightforward. 

An Experiment Fails: Frozen Chocolate Covered Banana Bites

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY IT AT HOME! 

Seriously Don't! :) 

During my typical journey to school I take London overground and i can check the pictures at pinterest on this part of the journey. The other day i was roaming around pinterest  and I was also looking for some easy snack recipe ideas. Then I saw a gorgeous picture of chocolate covered frozen banana bites and clicked for the recipe. The recipe was using pure peanut butter and bitter chocolate to cover the bananas. I don't have any allergies and the picture was amazing so i thought i would give it a try. On my way to home I stopped by in the grocery store picked up the purest peanut butter i could find which was unsweetened peanut butter with palm oil and sea-salt. Oh well it is sea-salt it can not be that bad. Then i picked up bananas and 70% chocolate. When i came home i chopped the chocolate measured 1/3 cups, 1/3 cups peanut butter and microwaved those two for about a minute. I chopped the bananas and dipped them into this mixture and lied them into a baking paper covered tin. I sprinkled unsweetened coconut flakes on top and froze it overnight. According to the recipe it was suppose to taste like vanilla ice cream. Although they looked very pretty the taste was quite horrific. So if you are going to dip fruits in chocolate don't use peanut butter, if you are going to then use just 1 tbsp for 1/3 cups chocolate. I think that is enough to give flavor. The taste was quite bad but i think i have got some nice pics and a lesson out of it so it was worth to try. 

Feta Cheese and Curled Parsley Muffin

Last night after I met up with an old friend I stopped by in John Lewis, although i am not big fan of department stores and especially not a fan of chains, I love to look at the kitchen utensils at oxford street BHS, John Lewis. There are tons of beautiful utensils such as marble mortars, wood grinders, measuring cups, french presses,cutting boars all of them amazes me. So beautiful and inspiring. While i was there I saw hearth shaped silicone muffin tins probably remained from the valentines day. It was a bit expensive but i got them anyway and dreamed about making lemon and raspberry muffins. But i ended up with savory muffins, it is perfect for breakfast/brunch and most importantly they are hearth shaped. The recipe is inspired from the Cafe Fernando's ricotta basil recipe. I used feta cheese and added pumpkin seed, fresh curled parsley. It turned out pretty amazing. And I would like to give all photo credits to my housemate Rumeysa. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients: (yields 9 muffins)

• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup milk 
• 1 cup diced feta cheese
• 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp apple cider
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp dried wild thyme 
• 1 egg 
• 30 grams of curled parsley (finely chopped )

1. Set the oven to 360 F/180 C and grease or line your muffin tin 
2. Toast the pumpkin seeds with salt 
3. Leave the salt at the pan and take the toasted pumpkin seed out to a bowl
4. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and wild thyme to the bowl mix it lightly
5. Crack the egg to another bowl and add the apple cider beat it with a whisk 
6. Add the milk and keep whisking
7. Add the finely chopped parsley and diced feta cheese to the liquid mixture mix it with a spoon 
8. Add the liquid mixture to dry mixture and spoon it to the muffin tins 
9. bake it for 15-30 mins mine took 20 mins

Pancake Madness Party

In the previous English Pancake post I mentioned my friend letting me know about the Shorve Tuesday and she wanted have a pancake party and we organized it through twitter! Oh how i love the power of online social media platforms. So when I came back from work to home i found out another friend of us was at home too, which was a really nice surprise. We had arguably the most amazing pancake party, and later on we realized the role of food is so important, it brings people together. Take the example of BBQ parties, why people enjoy the BBQ parties the most? Because you get to engage in activities like cooking at the outdoors, eating outside, and you might even play some games... So there is something primeval about it but it really satisfies the soul and the following day you are ready to go to work, plus you will be more efficient on what you are doing. Also cooking and eating together is so much fun, as a member of small family, I grew up with no siblings, I can not describe the joy i have when we have big eating parties. 

Last night two of my friends took these pictures Emine and Esma I would like to thank them for this beautiful pictures and also special thanks for cooking the English pancakes for us. Last night I wanted to try something different so i decided to go for North American style pancakes. However instead of using eggs i used ripe and finely mashed bananas.  The smell and taste was heavenly but we had some problems during the cooking process. I tried to cook them in high heat and messed up couple of them but then i managed to cook fairly properly couple of them. Next time i will cook them in low heat. I won't give you the recipes in this post but will sneak out some lovely food pictures. We really enjoyed our pancake party, have you ever had a pancake party before? If so what kind of pancakes/toppings did you use? Comment below or send us some pictures to publish in Your Experience section.  

English Pancakes

English Pancakes

Egg - free North American style pancakes with banana, strawberry, and cream-cookie 

ice-cream toppping