Let's have a cookie, or two, or more: Peanut Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Give me three reasons why someone should buy cookies from a supermarket!
OK, make one reason start with an "X", one end with a "P" and one whatever. You're having difficulties with that?
Honestly, if you prepare your own cookies ... you have the power and are in control what gets in there, it doesn't take much time and they are much tastier, that is if you are no complete looser in the baking department.

Ingredients:
200 g of sugar (icing sugar, if you have)
150 g butter 
100 g peanut butter
250 g spelt flour
100 g dark chocolate

Method:
First of all, cream the sugar and the butter ... sort of.
Then add the flour and ... ah ... just go for it. Have the chocolate in reasonable sized chunks (whatever reasonable is supposed to mean) and put it in as well.
Mix all together ... do it well!

Making cookies by the size according to your liking and arrange them on a baking tray with ... reasonable ... distance in between and bake at 200°C for 10-15 minutes (depending on your oven - just remember: the cookies are not supposed to be black).

Allow sufficient time for the cookies to cool down so you can enjoy them to the full! I'm not sure, though, whether I should really have four of them.
Just think a bit about it ...
You can have any flavouring you like. If you don't try, you will never find out.

Quick Bagna Cauda Puff Pastry Pie

When cooking only for one person you quickly might end up with leftovers. On the other hand, that can happen to anyone, no matter for how many people you cook.
Anyway, I don't want to bother you with talk about leftovers. I might repeat myself and I don't like to check whether I wrote the same thing already. There comes a point in life, when you don't know anymore. Hm, well, there comes a point in life, when ... eh ... you have to do what you have to do. I'm not sure if I'm already there.
However, this has no relevance right now. 
In case you have been reading my blog already for longer then just this post (otherwise: Welcome to my blog!), you might remember those dishes from the Two Greedy Italians. One thing I had on the list was Bagna Cauda, which didn't turn out to be quite thin.
Having still some left of that and not wanting to simply dip bread into it, I planned for something else ...

How did I get there? Just read on about the Quick Bagna Cauda Puff Pastry Pie ...

Ingredients you may need (to adjust):
4 large potatoes
olive oil
3 onions
100 g cheddar cheese
100 ml bagna cauda (or few cloves of garlic, anchovies, double cream, butter)
about 300 g ready made puff pastry
salt, pepper
one beaten egg

Just do it:
Peel the potatoes and pre-cook them for 10-15 minutes.
Slice the onions in rings and soften them gently in a pan with some olive oil.
When the potatoes are ready and you are not afraid of the heat, cut them in cubes and add to the onions.
Away from the heat (we are finished with that heat now) pour the bagna cauda to it and grate the cheese in. If wanted, season with salt and pepper and mix well.
Line your pie dish with 3/5 of the pastry. Fill in your potato-onion-cheese mixture.

That is how it look in my case. Now it's time to cover it with the remaining pastry and then to brush it with the egg wash. After that sent it to the oven at 180°C for about 35-45 minutes until the pastry is nice and crispy (you'll figure it out).

Once it is ready, you can serve it with a simple salad. There might be leftovers again, when you are eating alone, though ... some things can not be avoided.
Well, we might have spent more then one hour cooking for that now. What in the world, does this have to do with QUICK Bagna Cauda Puff Pastry Pie?
Right! While that thing is in the oven, you can do something else and after all you don't have to prepare the pastry. That would have taken you still some more time.

More from The Two Greedy Italians: Salad, Vegs, Soup

Ah, this week I feel a bit Italian. Whatever that means!

Anyway, I'm not going to say "I should have been born Italian." as someone else used to say, but it's really nice to have a lot of Italian food. Already before I wrote you a bit of my experiences with the book Two Greedy Italians eat Italy. I'm not quite through with the book, but I am making progress. 

While browsing through the book I selected three dishes to try. The first one was Insalata della Valtellina or in other words: bresaola salad. I like bresaola. If you don't know it, it's air-dried beef. This meat is very lean and tender. The origin of bresaloa is the northern region of Italy, called Lombardy.

That is how the salad looked like. Among the bresaola there are featured some black olives, hard-boiled eggs, some bread, sliced radishes and of course a few salad leaves.
I had something similar before.
This particular one here was lovely as well. I liked the different flavours and textures - meaty, crunchy, soft and ... well, it was worth making it.
Next on the list was Bagna Cauda. It's a warm dip containing ... hm ... yes, garlic was in it, quite a lot. It was warmed cooked with milk and then followed quite some oily and fatty things: anchovies, butter, olive oil and double cream.

I had it with some sliced up vegs and bread soldiers. I wanted to try bagna cauda already way before. So now, finally I made it and ... well it didn't really work as a dip. Something must have gone wrong. It was kind of thin. The bread worked well, because it has soaking power. Everything else was just minimally coated. Nevertheless, the taste was alright, but I would have liked it a bit more ... eh ... dip-like. Maybe I add some more double cream next time, or less milk.
Finally, I made a soup again. Yes, it might not be the weather for soup. Winter might not be the time to go outside with shorts, but I did it anyway. So goes the soup. Well, I'm only lucky I didn't do it three days before, when it was really hot, so hot we really had difficulties to sleep at night. Lucy was panting half the night, or something like that. Still, we both survived and now I am even able to eat a soup.

This soup is called Eisacktaler Weinsuppe or beef and wine soup. Actually, it's the very first recipe in the book (obviously it starts with soups). The preparation is clearly the opposite from what I had to do last time I made a soup. It really takes next to no time to put it together.
You just boil white wine and beef stock for one minute. Yes, just one minute. Then you add double cream and Parmesan and heat it through ... here you go. Right, you may need a bit longer when you want to have this fried bread in it, however, still it's no big deal.
From this explanation you can gather, that much depends on the wine and the stock as to the taste, because for sure this soup has a very strong wine taste.
That's for now!
For sure I try some more nice Italian recipes of those. What is your favourite Italian dish?
Let us know?

Now I'm really finished with this post. I take some more time to fight with myself, whether I'll do a spontaneous vacation within a few days ... can't decide yet ...

Waffles with Creme Chantilly and Strawberries

This year hasn't been the greatest success with my strawberries in the garden. As the main strawberry harvest was, there was next to nothing on my plant. After all the weather was like ... not worth to mention.

However, suddenly, already for a few days, more and more strawberries keep appearing in my garden. So it seems to be a late harvest and in the end not so bad.

Yet again it paid off, not to give up easily on my plants. I have a habit of keeping plants alive even when they look as if close to death. By that I already saved some. It would be good to apply this "not give up easily"-principle on other aspects of life. That, however, is a completely different story, which is not yet to be told.

Back to strawberries then. You could use them in a variety of ways, but nothing beats the pure pleasure of eating them just as they are. So I decided for these waffles with creme chantilly and some strawberries scattered on top.

First of all concentrate on the creme chantilly.

You need:

200 g crème fraîche

10 ml milk

1-2 tsp vanilla extract

2-3 tbs of icing sugar

You do:

Simply mix it all well together and put it in the fridge while you do the rest ... or put it even in the freezer, if you dare.

Job done! Now we go for the waffle batter.

You need:

125 g softened butter

75 g sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

125 g flour

140 ml milk

You do:

Cream together the softened butter, the sugar and the vanilla sugar. Make sure your butter is really softened. You don't want any ugly lumps later on, do you?

Then add the eggs.

Sift in the flour and the baking powder, while keeping in mind those ugly lumps. 

Finally pour in the milk and whisk it all to a nice smooth batter without any ugly lumps.

Why do I keep telling you about those ugly lumps? I didn't take the mentioned precautions, so I got them. Well, you still survive and will also manage to get nice waffles, but it's better without.

Once that is done you can go for your waffles and do them according to the instructions of your waffle-maker. What? You don't have one? Have pancakes instead.

Here a few suggestions on how to pimp your waffle batter by adding one of those:

1. a splash of rum

2. finely cut pieces of strawberries

3. a few tsp of raspberry jam

4. a few tsp of cocoa powder

Just have a try. I did. Somehow I liked to add the rum. It's not for the kids, though. That is if you have any.

Serve your ready waffles together with the creme chantilly and strawberries on top. Use amounts according to own free will.

Enjoy it! You could of course also use any other berries you fancy ... maybe blueberries. Or how do you like your berries?

This blog post is for this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop: Berry Nice to Meet You!

Bookmarked Recipes: Asian Dressed Aubergine

Every day, thousands of bloggers worldwide write down thousands of lovely recipes, which are in turn are read by ... well ... it would be nice if by thousands as well ... each.

However, a wonderful thing is to get to know that actually some likes your recipe and has tried it as well. Considering this, I would say Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments had a brilliant idea, the Bookmarked Recipes blog challenge.

 

This month it is hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. Thank you, you two, for that!

There is a long list of bookmarks on my Internet browser. So I am glad to try one and share my experiences with you.

For this I have chosen to try a recipe from Jacqueline (don't get confused here) from How to be a Gourmand. It is: Asian Dressed Aubergine (I guess you have gathered that already from the title of that post). 

There were these aubergines that fell into my hands. Well, I bought them to be honest. No miracles involved here. I would love to grow my own, but things do not always work out.

The recipe is not too complicated. It promises some nice Asian flavours to which I was looking forward to. After all I was in the mood for that kind of flavours.

Most of the ingredients I already had in stock. Only the aubergines had to be bought (I told you). Right, I could have bought some sweet basil and coriander. As I know, though, this is not an easy matter around here and since all this was very spontaneous after those aubergines were seen by me, I somehow had to do without those. Why not use normal basil and rocket? I don't know, we will see later, although under normal circumstances I would urgently suggest that you really use coriander (that is, if you like the taste).

My coriander on the windowsill was far from being ready to be used. And I didn't want to wait for that.

The aubergines were easy victims.

Coating them was also no big deal, although of course the marinade was slightly adjusted. Off they went to be grilled. Patiently I was checking again and again, whether the colour would be right.

As soon as that was the case I could do the rest. As Jacqueline mentioned in the recipe it would be optional to add some red chillies. That is what I did. after all I have a more or less large collection of plants on my windowsills.

When I harvested a few of the chillies the first time I thought, well, that is not like chilli, not really hot. It tastes rather like normal peppers. 

However ... things have changed ...

What do you think? Does this look nice? I simply had the aubergine without anything to it. After a long day most of the time just sitting around that would be fine. It tasted really nice, despite the few adjustments and ... of course the chillies did really burn ... and it took a while afterwards to let my mouth cool down.

Nevertheless it was nice. I wasn't disappointed. Therefore I can only recommend to try it for yourselves, making sure about the chillies before you use them, though.

Since you are finished reading here, why not read the original blog post.

The Dark Side, Pasta and Random Recipes #19

Oh what a day? The original plan was to stay in bed through the whole day. At least that is what came into my mind yesterday. However, as things are, there are certain responsibilities. Even little dogs don't feel satisfied, when they can't get out, may it only be to do their business. Well, otherwise it would have been quite ...
Yet, here I am, writing and writing and hopefully a bit of thinking in between and writing up my entry for Random Recipes #19 for August at Belleau Kitchen. Dom has done a fabulous job last month for this huge round-up and now we are going back to basics and cooking random recipes again.

Considering the beginning of this day, I can be really proud. It's just barely over the middle of the month and I manage to take part in Random Recipes.
OK, what do they say about pride? "Pride comes before a fall!"
Right then, before being totally satisfied, I have to go through with it, complete the cooking of the recipe and finish writing up this post.
Considering it from another point pride would not be classed as a good quality. The same is true for anger. Oh no, some things really can make me angry. It would be true to say that yesterday there was a day containing 'some things' like that.
But beware ...
"Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." At least that is what Yoda, a good friend of me, once said.
What has Random Recipes to do with Star Wars now?
Well, don't be quick to judge. I will give you a few reasons in a minute ... or less ... or more ... not quite sure up to this point.
Aha, for being in such a mood as he his, he is doing quite some talking ...

So ... Random Recipes: "Randomly select a cook book" 
Here we are: Classic Essential Pasta by Anne Wilson. It has just 64 pages. Now that would be about the size of a cook book I would start to write with, if someone would ask me to do so.

"Open the cook book to a random page"
And ... the winner is ... Fusilli with bean sauce. Ha, that should be an easy one.

"Cook the exact recipe on that page... do NOT cheat... you are only cheating yourself"

In fact, I had a look already at the beginning of the month. When I came to this recipe I thought, well, that might be a recipe too easy or too boring to do.

Was I thinking of cheating?

Maybe I would forget the randomly selected recipe until I would actually do the challenge. My memory might not be as good as an elephant's one, but I did remember. Therefore no chance to do the random part again.

So it may be then: Fusilli with bean sauce.

What did I need? The pasta, broad beans, speck, leeks, olive oil, cream, lemon zest, salt and pepper. After I have gathered all things together it's time to start to cook ...

... not yet, not. First of all some background music. Here it is, were we come back to Star Wars. The soundtrack of Return of the Jedi Knights is already in the CD player ... PLAY!

Again a quick glance at the recipe ... or did I study it carefully? Anyway!

Broad beans have not been my favourites when my mother used to cook them when I was a kid. Nevertheless, I can try again. After all, the way you prepare them is it what makes it to like or hate it.

The recipe calls for peeling the beans. Great! First put the frozen beans in hot water, then in cold water and then peel them. But, hey, no fear, have a try!

Simply remember Yoda: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Besides that: "No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." OK, then I just go for it!

That was a lovely job ... not! Up to now, my sympathy for the beans is not rising. It takes some time to complete the task.
By the time I was finished with the beans. The CD was already just before a certain track. The video fitting to that you can watch on YouTube. 
Just one word concerning that video: no parallels are to be taken from that one.    
After finishing the beans, the remaining part was no great challenge. The speck goes together with the sliced (with the right knife, I love slicing) leeks into the pan while the pasta is started as well. 

 

We are getting closer to the finish line ... just the lemon zest, cream, salt and pepper and shortly afterwards the ... eh ... well ... beans.    
Then mixing the sauce with the ready pasta and then we are ready to eat.
 

 
The end result was not bad, although I wouldn't class it as an essential pasta dish. It tasted fine, but doesn't make it into the category: Well, I have to do that one again, absolutely.   
It was a pleasure, as always, to take part in random recipes.    
What more is there to say: “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.” - Yoda.    
As far as I am concerned, cooking and writing up a bit here on this blog has always helped me so far to conquer the dark side or bad moods. You can't be cooking all day, though, but ... at least ... you can do it every day!   
Another small note: All parallels or relations to any appearing characters in this post are just ... ah ... well ... random ... just as the recipe.  No worries!

From the Cake Laboratory: Orange-Almond-Chocolate Cake for Julia

Of course you remember the few things I did lately for #CookForJulia from Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. After all it was only a few days ago. How could you possibly have forgotten the flaming Crêpes? 

I had even a few inquiries to get some of those or to be invited to dinner by me. Well, I would love to, but ... you know how cruel reality is at times ... well, very often. However, who knows what the future will bring, what opportunities there will come up.

Until then I had to face the question on what to do with the leftover orange-almond butter I didn't use up for the crêpes. I guess I had been to stingy with spreading the butter on them. So here I am with quite some orange almond butter and have to come up with an idea to use it up without doing more crêpes.

What follows is the solution ... an Orange-Almond-Chocolate cake.

What I used (if I got it right):

250 g orange-almond butter (about 150 g butter, 70 g pulverized almonds, 2 tbs orange liqueur, zest and juice of one orange, 30 g sugar)

200 ml cream (I had a strange mixture of cream, milk and condensed milk - wanted to get rid of those)

2 eggs

2 extra egg whites (they were somehow lingering in the fridge, you could use 4 eggs instead, I guess)

100 g sugar

200 g flour

2 tsp baking powder

100 g dark chocolate

Zest of one orange

Some slivered almonds

How I did it (must have been like that):

Well then, I got my favourite cake form, the round one ready, properly greased and ready to go.

The orange-almond butter went to a hot pool of water in it's bowl, because I had stored it in the fridge. In solid form the butter would be of no use in the process.

First of all, the egg yolks (how many ever you may have) are creamed with the sugar. Then you add the flour (sift it, if you want) and the baking powder.

The butter has softened and can go in as well. Time to mix everything through, properly.

The egg whites are whisked as well until they look like they should ... you know, not going anyway when you tilt the bowl by 180°. Then you fold in the egg whites and let it all flow into the cake tin.

The oven is heated up at 180° or, if not, you have to wait until it is, of course.

Bake the cake for approximately 50 minutes. Check whether it is done. Remove the cake from the oven should that be the case and let it cool down a bit.

That gives you the opportunity to melt the chocolate and grate in some orange zest.

When you are ready and the cake as well, the chocolate goes onto the cake.

Throw some slivered almonds on top and grate over some more orange zest and ready we are.

If you would ask me, that looks quite gorgeous and delicious and ... but it would not be fair to ask me, I reckon, since it was my idea in the first place.

So let me know, what you think instead? Just leave a comment!

Cooking with Friends a la España

For me, cooking is very nice and enjoyable, but it is even greater to cook together with friends. We used to do this more often, when I was still younger. I even went several kilometres by bike to cook together with friends. Nowadays, everyone seems to be more busy and such events have become seldom. Well, another thing might be, that I live in another area than back then and it now would take a several 100 km to travel to do the same with them.
Whatsoever, it is good to have friends and even more important is to have time for each other and do things together. Finally then, we managed again. OK, the idea was to cook and eat together. Last time we did it, we just mixed a few recipes together to have a small menu.
This time we (well, I had the idea) wanted to have it themed, like maybe French, Italian, Turkish, Thai, Spanish or something else. We settled for Spanish. After going shopping for a few things then, in the evening we were ready.

Here is the menu a la España:

Jamon serrano
Lomo
Olivas verde
Almedras al pimiento
Queso con miel y tomillo
Chorizo al ajo y miel
Champiñón al ajo
Aioli y pan
Dátil frito
Brochetas de pollo y tomate

Chuletas de cerdo al estilo de Aragón

Churros con chocolate con naranja

Well, it might be all Spanish to you, but the first section were tapas, then the main course and of course finally the dessert.
As to the tapas, a few things were very simple ... only putting things on plates like with the jamon Serrano and the Lomo or transferring the olives from the glass to a bowl.
The cheese with the honey and thyme was only a tiny bit more effort, but with great effect.

Originally we would have used manchego cheese here, but unfortunately the shop we selected was poorly stocked. Instead we decided for Gouda, in fact in this case a so-called May Gouda. We didn't pay any thought as to what that would mean. Anyway, we ended up with a very very strong smelling cheese. After touching it with your fingers, it would take several thorough washings of your hand to get rid of that smell again.
Whatsoever, the taste and especially in that combination was totally delicious and for a cheese lover such as me, it was addictive.
So far to the simple things. The paprika almonds called for blanched almonds, which we didn't get. Consequently we went for blanching them ourselves. Just put them for a minute or so in hot water and then you can remove the skin easily. Really!

This was the beginning. It didn't go so well as expected ...

... about one hour later. Hm, not exactly, but it took quite some time. After putting them again in hot water and ... here comes my brave friend, which we will call Mr S, into play. He took the almonds directly from the hot water and removed the skin ... ouch, but a lot quicker.
Before we went into the other tapas it was time to get the main course, the pork chops a la Aragón, ready for the oven.

Slices of potato in an oven proof dish. Maybe a few slices too many, but ... whatever!

The seasoned pork chops go on top after some white wine was poured over the potatoes.

After that a mixture with parsley, garlic and almonds on top and it's ready for the oven. 
That gives us the opportunity to go back to the tapas.

Here we have the garlic mushrooms. From this point on everything went in quick succession.
After the mushrooms had left the pan, the chorizo came in. Obviously I didn't bother to take a photo. The chorizo slices were fried with garlic and finished with honey and sherry vinegar.

Out of the pan into a bowl they went to make room for the dates filled with chorizo and wrapped in bacon to be fried. Strange, for that I have a picture again.
Once they were finished and the chicken tomato skewers as well, the main course went to the oven at 200°C to be left there for 45 minutes - at least.
After about two hours of preparation and cooking, it was time to eat. If you have a look again at the menu at the tapas section, you maybe can imagine what followed.
Well, somehow, we were already quite filled, once the pork chops came back from the oven.

That's what they looked like. Somehow the potatoes didn't soak up the white wine as promised in the recipe, but ... anyway. No one was willing anymore to have a proper main course.

So we did some 'fine dining' portions.
Strangely, though, there still was the call to have the dessert, which would take a while to prepare anyway. After that most probably there would be the slight possibility that more food will fit in. 
As to making churros. Making the dough is fairly easy. You have 500 ml of lightly salted boiling water and sift some 300 g of flour into it and then combine it with an electrical hand mixer. Leave it to rest for let's say ten minutes.
After that you have the churros dough or a self-made paste for wall papers as well. If you don't want to use it to hang wallpaper you put it into a piping bag and pipe it into screaming hot oil and fry it. What shall I say ... that stuff killed my piping bag. I need to get a better one.

Despite that they go well with melted chocolate and if you add some orange zest to the chocolate it tastes divine ... if you still can take it. The recipe book gave some extra information about churros. It's popular to have them with chocolate after you have danced through the whole night, which we didn't do, or you can have them for breakfast with coffee, which I did the next day.

At the end we had a wonderful evening and on top of that we have created a bit of leftovers ... I still have to deal with some potatoes and pork chops.
Why not come together with friends and have a great evening together with cookin. Do you like to do something like this as well? What have you done? Leave a comment and let us know ...

Crêpes Fourrées et Flambées - #CookForJulia

Previously on #CookForJulia ...

... cutting mushrooms ... simmering ... Lucy ... the Muppet Show ...

... as I said we are going to have some action in the kitchen with orange liqueur and fire for a dessert. Did you already recover from that Swedish Chef? Are you ready now? I hope so.

What is it it then, we want to do today? Eh ... just a moment ... I did it already yesterday! I just wanted to mention that detail.

Alright! Yesterday! It was: Crêpes Fourrées et Flambées. Or in other words (that is English): Crêpes with Orange-almond Butter, Flambées (OK, I didn't translate everything, but you get it anyway).

First of all we need the Crêpes batter. In fact Julia's book gives three variations: normal, with beaten egg white, or with yeast. Guess, which one I selected? I wanted some exercise.

It doesn't look too spectacular, but don't let you put off by this. We are working on it. In fact, it is not a quick thing. The lid goes on and the batter disappears for at least two hours in the fridge.

That gives as plenty of time to prepare a mushroom soup and ... the orange-almond butter.

Here you already see sugar and orange peel on a chopping board. I only wished I had taken the larger one ... well, cleaned the larger one to be able to use it.

Whatever, this one had to do the job. And it did, in a messy kind of way, but it worked.

Together with 250 g of softened butter and the juice from the oranges and orange liqueur (some of the liqueur already went into the batter) and ... of course ... pulverized almonds combine together with that.

About two hours later we can start with doing the Crêpes, after folding in some white substance taken from eggs. Now you can use different sizes of pans for that. You only need to be aware that things can go wrong.

So after a bit of trial and error I decided for the smaller pan. There things were looking already better.

After finishing a Crêpes and starting already the next one I spread some of the orange-almond butter on it and roll it together.

On the side an oven-proof dish is already waiting. A couple of these Crêpes join forces together in it and get sprinkled with sugar just before they make their way into the oven for a couple of minutes.

Now we get some orange liqueur (what? we already used some before? no worries!) ready and heat it up a bit.

Then there comes the time where the Crêpes return from the oven. That is the time for FIRE! We pour a bit of the alcohol over the Crêpes and light it.

Oops! That didn't look so impressive on the photo. If you look hard enough, you see some flames actually, but this is far from being action. What can I do about this?

Does this look better? Here you see the fire clearly, not on the Crêpes, though. We have to resist the temptation to pour more and more liqueur over the Crêpes, for they will taste or get rather boozy! You wouldn't want that, would you?
Anyway, those orange-almod filled Crêpes are absolutely a winner, wonderful flavour and dangerously yummy.I hope, you enjoyed it: "Bon Appétit!"