Broccoli curry

I am a big fan of veggie curries after I have been living in the UK for 1½ year back in 2001-2002. This Sunday evening it was time for a broccoli curry, which has some great colours. This broccoli curry is one of the recipes coming as a new letter with my weekly vegetable box from Aarstiderne.

Due to my English experience I prefer my curry to stronger than the "normal" Dane. So this is the reason I use strong curry in this curry. And I use one tablespoon instead of ½ tablespoon.

Broccoli curry (recipe from Aarstiderne) - serves 4:

 

• 1 broccoli
• 3-5 tomatoes
• 2 onions
• 3 cloves of garlic
• ½ chilli
• 1 teaspoon fresh grounded ginger
• 1 can coconot milk
• 1 dl water
• 1 tablespoon curry
• salt

1. Cut the broccoli into bouquets
2. Cut the onions into small pieces
3. Cut the cloves of garlic into thin slices
4. Cut the chilli into small pieces, remove the seeds
5. Cut the tomatoes in bigger chunks
6. Sauté the onions, garlic and broccoli  at low heat i oil for 5 minutes
7. Add the curry for sauté for another 2 minutes
8. Add tomatoes, chilli and ginger
9. Turn up the heat
10. Add the coconut milk, use the water to remove the last part of the coconut from the can
11. Cook up the boilling point
12. Cook untill the vegetable  are soft
13. Season with salt
14. Serve with rice

Enjoying sweet pickled walnuts

Enjoyed the sweet pickled walnuts, which I made one month ago, together with a cheese & sausage platter as an easy evening meal.

The taste of these sweet pickled walnuts is quiet delicate with a perfect balance between the honey bringing sweetness and flowery freshness coming from the orange juice and orange peel. The sweet taste is not dominating.

If you would like to make these sweet pickled walnuts (recipe by Mai Knauer) have a look here: Pickled sweet walnuts



Easy evening meal 1

Today my evening meal was very easy to prepare after a busy day at work with a afternoon full of various meetings. Bresaola, Parmigiano Reggiano Parmesan cheese, oil with lemon juice, bagel and green olive tapenade.

Hannibal the cat and I could not quiet agree about who should be first in line for eating the Bresaola. Hannibal became first to eat his fair share of the meat slices and I got peace to finish of the remaining part, while he was busy looking after the surrounding neighbourhood.

TUC cake

I have received this cake recipe from a rowing friend. I really likes this cake from the very first bite of it. And when I heard, what kind of ingredients is inside, I was quiet surprised !!!!! Are you actually able to cake a bake from biscuits, nuts, sugar and egg white ? Yes, it is possible.

Another of my rowing friends is a big fan of this cake, as it apparently should lower in cholesterol compared to "normal" cake. However, if this is true or not, I have not idea about.

Ingredients:

• 150 g TUC biscuits / salty biscuits
• 350 g sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 200 g hazel nuts
• 7 egg whites

1. Grind the hazel nuts.
2. Crush the biscuits into a fine powder
3. Mix the biscuits with hazel nuts, sugar & vanilla
4. Whip the egg white stiff
5. Blend the egg white into the dry powders
6. Pour into a baking form, diameter 22 cm
7. Bake at 175'C for 30-40 minutes

 

Breakfast in bed

I loved it, when I can "slow" start the day by having breakfast in bed instead of the usual hurry durin the workings days. You have the time to really enjoy the food as well as read either the new papers, some magazines or a book.

This morning was one of these "slow starting" mornings. The breakfast tray contained a glass of milk, a smoothie made from frozen strawberries and blood orange juice, tea, soft boiled egg, a bagel and honey glazed red grape fruit. I am a big fan of both blood oranges and red grape fruit, as they have that extra touch of sweetness.

Honey glazed grape fruit: (recipe from Brunch by Lynn Andersen)

• 1 grape fruit
• 2 tabelspoon of honey

1. Heat the oven to 250'C
2. Cut the grape fruit into two halfes.
3. Cut with a knife along the peel of the grapefruit as well as between each section of the fruit pieces.
4. Put honey of each surface of the grape fruit
5. Place the grape fruit in a ovenproof dish
6. Bake for 5-10 minutes in the center of the oven

Wauuw - 500 pageview on my blog

I am celebrating, that my blog has been having 500 pageviews today 16 February 2011, since my very first post 13 November 2010, so within a time frame of approx 3 months.

First of all a big thank you to you for spending your valuable time on reading about life in the pots and pans of my kitchen, it is pretty amazing. And thanking for sharing your comments with me :-))

Out in my professional life colleagues and managers are discussing KPI (= Key Preformance Indicators) on a regular basis. So how are the KPIs for my blog looking:

Review day: 16 February 2011
Start day - first posting: 13 November 2010
Pageviews: 500
Publish posts: 49 excl. this
Followers: 2
Blogs followed: 10
Top 5 of published posts:

1. Marzipan muffin with pear and cardamon
2. Preparing for gløgg evening tomorrow
3. Almond orange cake
4. Home-made vanilla sugar
5. Starting 2011 with sharing my last two Christmas recipes

Pageview per country:

• Japan: 1%
• Croatia: 1%
• Germany: 1%
• Canada: 1%
• Slovenia: 1%
• Russia: 2%
• UK: 5%
• US: 7%
• Netherlands: 9%
• Denmark: 72%

So all in all I pretty happy with all your visits to my blog :-)) Thank you and hope to see you soon :-))

Home-made vanilla sugar

What do you use your empty vanilla pod for ?

I either add the empty vanilla pod together with the vanilla corns into the food, which are heated afterwards and try to remember to remove the vanilla pod after cooking. This is increasing the vanilla taste.

Or I "save" the empty vanilla pods, until I need a new portion of home-made vanilla sugar. I simply add my "collection" of empty vanilla pods into a glass jar, which I afterwards fill with cane sugar. I use cane sugar due to the colour, which I find more nice compared to the plain white sugar produced from sugar beet.

When I try to be patient for approx. one month, before the vanilla sugar is ready for use. The vanilla "strength" of this vanilla sugar is lower compared to the commercial vanilla sugar, which you will buy in the Danish supermarkets. As a general rule of thumb, I need to use 2-3 times more of my home-made vanilla compared with the commercial vanilla sugar.

Marzipan muffin with pear and cardamon

I "won" the right to bake cake for my work colleagues in our X Factor (Danish Idol) cake competition, as my participant got voted out as the very first participant at the TV show Friday evening. It was exact the same situation last year. The good thing is, that I will have "free" cake for the coming weeks to come, until end of March.

I found this recipe on marzipan muffin with pear and cardamon in the weekly newsletter from Aarstiderne. As I could not find my grounded cardamon among all my glass with herbs and pieces, I decided to ground cardamon kernel in my new coffee bean grounder. This just smelled sooooo great, and I have been smelling to the coffee grounder the entire day in the kitchen.

Normally I have not been very successful with using melted butter in previous muffin recipes, which I have tried. So fare I have been having a preference for using oil. Until now I only facing issues with melted butter crystallising again giving a lumpy texture, when mixed into the milk as many muffin recipes describes. However, it worked perfect this time, as the melted butter first were added after the wheat flour had been mixed into whipped milk, sugar and egg.

The ratio between sugar and marzipan is also just perfect in this recipe, as the sweetness level is just right. Many times I have experienced over sweet taste, when working with marzipan in cakes and muffins.

The combination of lemon zest and cardamon is excellent. The pear flavour is very, very difficult to pick up, but pear is also quiet mild in it's flavour.
Hannibal the cat is not a great fan of the noises from from a working coffee grounder, as they woke him from from his midday nap.



Ingredients:

• ½ teaspoon cardamon
• 125 g butter
• 1½ dl milk
• 1 egg
• 125 cane sugar
• 225 g wheat flour (cake version)
• 1 nip salt
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• 100 g marzipan
• 2 pears

• 1½ teaspoon lemon zest

1. Melt the butter in a cooking pan and cool it down.
2. Whip milk, egg and sugar together in a bowl.
3. Add wheat flour, salt, baking powder and cardamon in the whipped part of the muffin mix.
4. Stir it together. Add the melted butter and stir it together to a homogeneous muffin mix.
5. Ground the marzipan and add it to the mix.
6. Cut the pears into smaller pieces and add it to the muffin mix.
7. Fill into muffin form.
8. Bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

Soup of Jerusalem artichoke with mascarpone

I really enjoyed it, when my vegetable box contains Jerusalem artichoke, because makes it possible for me for make soup of Jerusalem artichoke. This soup is one of my favourite soups. The recipe serves 4 persons.



Ingredients:

• 500 g peeled Jerusalem artichoke
• 1 dl dry white wine
• 7,5 dl vegetable broth
• 2 thyme twig
• 1 parsley twig
• 100 g mascarpone
• salt & pepper

1. Peel the Jerusalem artichoke. Cut those into smaller pieces and add them directly into the cooking pot filled with white wine and vegetable broth.
2. Add the herb twigs
3. Cook the soup for 15 minutes, until the Jerusalem artichoke pieces are soft.
4. Remove the herb twigs
5. Add mascarpone. And blend the soup together.
6. Add salt & pepper. Cook up to the boil.
7. Serve together with grissini and some thyme twigs.



Hostess gift 6 - chocolate tea

Rooibush Tea - After 7:

Sweet tea with mint and pieces of chocolate.

This tea really smells of After 8 mint chocolate, so why not drink it together with a few pieces of After 8.

Great combination :-))

Muesli shopping in UK February 2011

Even for a one-day business trip - out early morning and return in the evening with flight - it can be necessary to bring a suitcase !!! I had the "pleasure" yesterday of a windy/stormy flight between Billund and Manchester. And here I needed my big suitcase. Since I have been living in UK, I have not been able to eat any other muesli than Alpen No Sugar Added muesli (the blue version) for my breakfast. And this specific muesli is impossible to buy anywhere in Denmark.

So after the customer meeting I emptied the local supermarket for all their Alpen muesli, they "only" had 7 bags of my preferred 1.3 kg bag size.

Beside from buying muesli I also found some tea incl. pukka tea, which is else than ½ price compared to Denmark. On top of inside detox I also brought some Sanctuary Spa perfect skin product for some outside detox.

And finally I "helped" the British Airways lounge with removing some small chips bags of the Kettle Chips in my favourite taste - sea salt and balsamic vinegar. This bag size fit perfect into my travel bagpack.

Hostess gift 5 - chocolate from Chocolatier Friandises in Maarstricht

While I read "Hidden Depths" by Ann Cleeves I sip tea and enjoy two pieces of chocolate from Chocolatier Friandises in Maarstricht. I have received these chocolates as a hostess gift from a girl friend living in Maarstricht (at the time being). This chocolatier should also deliver chocolate to the White House, so I could in theory be eating the same type of chocolate as Obama !!!!

Picking up new tea 1

Went to a candle-light dinner concert yesterday evening, where I found this tea bag on the coffee/tea table. As usual I picked up an extra tea bag for trying a new tea at home. This time it was a white tea with elderflower and apricot.

I am drinking the tea now. Yes, I can taste the apricot flavour, but I can not taste the elderflower any where in my tea cup, so I am disappointed, as I am a big fan of elderflower.

My weekly vegetable box

On a weekly basis I received a vegetable box at my kitchen door from Aarstiderne (a Danish company supplying organic fruit, vegetable and various food direct at your door step). It is always a big surprise for me, what will be the exact content of my box. I could check it one or two days before on the company homepage, but in my opinion this equals opening your Christmas gifts on the 23rd December !!!!

Each box will also contain a newsletter with recipe suggestions as well as a list of your exact content of your selected vegetable box. And I do from time to time need this list in order to figure out, what certain vegetable and/or fruit actual is ???

Tomorrow afternoon I will start my planning of how to use this week vegetable box.