Game Over?! Beer Butt Chicken with Cheese and Onion Bread

Do you like to play? I don’t mind a good game of … different things. I even used to like computer games a lot. I also used to have a dart board in my flat … I had to paste over a lot of holes in the wall. However, I still appreciate a game of darts once in a while. I’m not so good at it, but why not relax a bit and have some fun. The fun stops when you are playing a game of elimination and you have reached far some points and could even go as far as winning and then … someone scores your number and you go back to zero, nada, zip. 

There is simply no fun in starting at the bottom again.

Still, there is food, there is comforting food. Fine, a bit of chocolate once in a while isn’t bad, however, there is no way you get it away from your hips again at some point.

So, talk other food …

A lovely homemade pizza always works for me. For sure it also will settle on the hips, but at least you got something for it.

This time, I made double the amount of dough, though. Not to have more pizza, but to make some bread as well.

I just made my normal pizza dough with 1000 g of flour – a mixture of normal wheat flour, strong baking flour and semolina flour – 600 ml of water, a splash of olive oil, 14 g of dried yeast, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Well … eh … mix the yeast, olive oil, water and sugar together. Leave it for some minutes and then pour it into the bowl with the flour and salt and make your dough.

Now, all this pizza and bread making business takes a while with all that rising proving and baking and everything. Luckily I could enjoy the pizza right away after baking and while the bread went into the oven.

Well, in between I prepared some kind of dessert, which, though, could not be eaten right after the pizza. At least I can say, I poached my first pear …

Anyway, this post is not about poaching pears or pizza. It’s rather about a chicken that is going to be baked in a special … eh … way.

Still, before we go to this, some more details regarding the cheese and onion bread. Remember, I already showed you the pre-baked loaf. The dough had to make it’s way from pizza dough to cheese and onion bread dough. Therefore I fried some onions with a bit of garlic (no, now it’s not cheese and onion and garlic bread, although … technically) and added them along with some 100 g of grated cheese to the dough, kneading all the ingredients in.

Here is the finished bread. It had to wait for it’s turn a while, because part of it was going to be consumed with a Beer Butt Chicken.

So, here goes my meal planning … off to the shop, because there are some essential parts missing for next weeks breakfasts …

Here comes the meat area … “Oh they have some decent chickens on offer. I could take one home and stick a beer can up its -censored- … eh … well, I could do a Beer Butt Chicken.”

Home!

I know I have a recipe for it somewhere. It must be in one of Jamie’s book. So I leafed through all possible books and couldn’t find anything. Ask the Internet!

Oh, there we go with the recipe: It’s in Jamie’s America. Fine, could have taken that one from the shelf as well and have a look.

We’ll do that then!

As a bonus you are to drink have the beer before you start cooking. Well, you could set half a glass of beer aside for later consumption, but … what’s the point in that.

Important things done: beer can is ready.

Now we need a spice rub for the chicken. Basically it’s quite simple: Heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds and level teaspoon of cumin seeds bashed up in a mortar. Then add a level teaspoon of smoked paprika, chilli powder and a heaped teaspoon of brown sugar. Salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil to bring it all together.

Just before we go to the part were beer and butt meet, we gentle rub the chicken with the spice rub. The oven is heated to 200 °C.

Now the chicken is ready to go to the oven for 70 to 90 minutes on the lowest possible rack.

Sometimes, that is if you can and if you want to, it’s good to plan ahead. When you start with all this at the time you normally would be ready to eat, all this doesn’t sound like such a brillant idea.

I never said I was a smart one!

What to do in this 90 minutes, while you are in fact hungry? Good question, next one, please!

I had some grapes and got the idea for a quick dessert for later on. Additionally I prepared a tomato salad as some kind of alibi for my meal.

Still, so much time left!

In fact, quite often there is a lot of time left, but … I feel like I rather want to do nothing, just sitting there with some music blasting from the speakers. Today I feel a bit brave and have a surprise mix from all my music.

So it goes like quiet music maybe classic or a tune from a movie. Bam! A smashing hit with some music that wants you to dance. Blob! A tune that rather wants you to cry. Bam! Get up, some feel good music (didn’t know I would react to some songs like that). Blob! Oh that one makes you think about … eh … something. Speaking of thinking, today I saw a girl that reminded me of someone that I used to know … some 20 years ago. I was shocked at first sight, don’t know why, though. Bam! I should remove the chicken from the oven …

… get some smoke from the oven into the entire flat. I might consider opening a window or two.

Here we are with the chicken. Now remove the beer can. My first thought was to grab the can with my bare hand and pull off the chicken with the other … I told you … smart – not!

A more sensitive approach finally brought the chicken from can to plate. Finally, ready for eating. We just manage to avert starvation.

You see my alibi on the top edge and the cheese and onion bread at the bottom. Now I was willing to make use of my hands and dig into that chicken …

Already at the slightest touch the meat comes off the bones. It’s so tender and juicy and … ouch … yes, still hot.

Either I must have slept away most of my brain in the past few weeks or I have an increased willingness to take unnecessary risks or I was simply too hungry to be careful.

Anyway, these days I have to make the most of bright moments. Then I especially enjoy to drive my car like a racing car in day to day driving and … I enjoy some good food. I reckon, I succeeded this weekend. Already the pizza yesterday was a killer one (oh, I like the sound of it) and now the chicken: relish. Have a closer look again.

If you think I ate that chicken alone, then … you are … eh … forget about it.

I’d rather go to the fridge and grab my previously prepared creme chantilly with grapes …

And this is all for today … eh … Game Over!!!

Beware of the Dark Side ... Raspberry Chocolate Tart

"Is the dark side stronger?" "No! No ... no. Quicker. Easier. More seductive."

A long long time ago in a kitchen far far away ...

In fact, it wasn't so long ago and not far far away. Well, the kitchen might be just around the corner, but still ... you have to beware of the dark side, for it is very seductive ... eh ... this raspberry chocolate cake is very seductive and if you don't beware and have more pieces of it than you reasonably should, you can imagine what can happen.

Well, I show you anyway ...

This Raspberry chocolate tart is based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

150 g butter

100 g sugar

A pinch of salt

250 g flour

1 egg

30 g cocoa powder

For the filling:

100 ml full fat milk

400 ml cream

250 g dark chocolate

2 eggs

... and raspberries

Method:

First of all, we go for the pastry, naturally, for it has to rest in the fridge for at least an hour. So, cream together the butter and the sugar. Then add the pinch of salt, flour, egg and cocoa powder. Carefully bring all the ingredients together to form the dough.

After the hour, get the pastry into a greased loose-bottomed tart tin (you knew that would be coming one day again). Blind bake the pastry for 12 minutes at 180 ºC.

Now you can already prepare the filling. Add the milk, cream and sugar to a suitable sized pot and carefully bring to the boil. Stir once in a while. Then take the pot from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir it until the chocolate has melted away and you have a smooth mixture. Then whisk in the eggs one by one.

Pour the filling onto the blind baked pastry case and get it back into the oven at 170 ºC for 15 minutes. After that leave the raspberry chocolate tart some time to cool. Wait? Why raspberry chocolate tart? Fine, after a while, place the raspberries on top of the tart, pushing them into the chocolate filling. Use as many raspberries as you wish. Are you satisfied now?

When you go for it, you can even add a dollop of whipped cream, crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream., but ... beware of the dark side ... and May the 4th be with you ...

Now I have added this post also to Bake of the Week at Casa Costello.

While we still have time for thing, it's good as well to add this to May's Calendar Cakes, which is being hosted by Rachel at Dolly Bakes.

Life, Darkness, Randomness, Chocolate ... Apple Shortcake with Chocolate Chip Cream

I made it to the weekend again. Pah ... what's the use of it, nothing is ever going to happen. Fine, yes, fine, you are right ... then you have to make it happen yourself ... and so I did. The evening had already advanced a bit and so I took my bike for a right around town ... village ... hamlet ... whatever. You can imagine that would be quite some fun ... darkness ... winter ... bicycle-tour ... idiot me! First I went down the way past the office and after that unknown territory when it comes to the bicycle. Luckily I had my cap and gloves along. On the minus side I didn't bother to take my glasses along. Not seeing where you are going with the bike can give you some kicks of adrenaline from time to time. Anyway, the route went up and down, the little dog wasn't hit by a bicycle and the fact that I am writing things here right now proves that things didn't go that bad after all.
I reckon, even stupid exercise at night would entitle me for a sweet treat today ...
Ah, I need something anyway ... 

Besides all that I already had planned to join two lovely blog challenges this month ... Random Recipes and We Should Cocoa. In fact they have morphed into one challenge kind of for this very month of February. You will see ...

Ready for challenges? Floating Islands

Have you ever thought about applying for The Great British Bake Off or for MasterChef or any other cooking contest? Have I? Ha ha ha ha ... oh ... would I really be able to pass any of those challenges? Would I be ready for the challenge?
Well, I reckon I would never apply, but ... there would be no harm in checking, whether I can do certain things they have done on these shows. Let's pick something they did on The Great British Bake Off: Floating Islands or as you would say in French îles flottante ...

Still Plums - Plum Jam and Plum Muffins

Faithfully I keep on using those plums and ... keeping you posted about what you could do. I also checked my cookbooks on what possibilities where available. Well, In fact I only have five books available. All the others are in boxes waiting for a new place to be put.
So, what cookbooks would you keep, if you only could keep five?
To be honest, I just selected four, the fifth one (Tasting India by Christine Manfield) was buried somewhere on my desk and I didn't notice. 
Which four books did I choose then? Cook with Jamie by Jamie Oliver, Bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger, The Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo and Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking ... Scandilicious by Signe Johansen.
Did they have anything with plums on offer for me?

Go Swedish with Pickled Herrings, Köttbullar and Äggkaka

I'm having my Swedish days right now. I started by buying some Daim chocolate. Right now I am well stocked on it. I only need to be careful not too start eating from it in a non-self-controlled manner. So far things are working well.
In fact, I didn't just go and buy chocolate. Right while I was writing down the Bloggers Around the World post for Sweden, I knew what I was going to cook and, of course, bought things for that, too.
Somehow I had a travel brochure from 2011 about Sweden in my possession. Today I have no idea, how I came to have it. Blank, no idea at all. Anyway, there was a picture of Äggkaka in it and I thought ... I am going to have it ... whatever it is. What is it then? 

Jamie Does' Ratatouille-Style Briouats

How are you? That is a really difficult question. Well, it depends also on who is asking. Some ask and immediately move on. They wouldn't even notice when you say 'miserable'. Anyway, I feel miserable and things are good at the same time. While there are aspects in situations in life that can really make you feel bad, there are also other things that can help you keep going and still feel good. You know what I mean. I don't have to mention all the details. 
For instance when you are home alone, feeling lonely and having no power to cook something good for you, a ringing telephone can make a difference. So I really was happy yesterday, when that happens and I got a surprise invitation for dinner ... at once. So everyone can make a difference for someone else.
At times you also can make a difference for yourself, if you have the power to cook something. You can enjoy something really lovely. That's what I did the other day, enjoy something really lovely: Ratatouille-Style Briouats.

The heat is on! Have some Moroccan Chicken Kebabs!

Finally we have about 4000 °C outside. Great, that's what we always wanted. At least that is what we dreamt about when we still had -40 °C in March. Must have been somewhat like that. Anyway, now we have perfect weather for some Moroccan food. Therefore it is not coincidence we are having Morocco as the current theme for Bloggers Around the World. Very clever and smart of me, don't you agree? At least I'm still in control and am smarter than my phone and my television. However, that of course is of no particular interest at the moment ... as usual.
After all this still tries to be a food blog and not a wisecrack blog ... I suppose. Then it's food we are going to talk about and Moroccan Chicken Kebabs in particular.

Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions

Sometimes I get the idea I want a leg of lamb. Well, that happens not that often, maybe not even a hand full of times during the year. What do I do then? I go through all my cookbooks and see what I can do . The last time I did some French version with beans and something. That was very delicious.
Now I wanted to try something else. I ended up with a classic Italian way of cooking lamb with aubergines. Therefore I had to trust Jamie Oliver again to have a fantastic meal: Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions. You find the recipe in his book Cook with Jamie.

Apart from the lamb, the aubergines and onions, there were a lot of herbs involved, such as rosemary, oregano and parsley.
First of all the leg of lamb goes into the oven just rubbed with olive oil and salt and pepper.
After that the rosemary, aubergines and onions join.
In the meantime you have to prepare a tomato sauce with the usual suspects, garlic, chopped parsley stalks, anchovy fillets, tinned tomatoes, dried red chillies, vinegar, salt and pepper.
When the lamb is cooked, it gets removed from the roasting tray to sit around for some minutes.

While that is happening and having some room in the roasting tray, the tomato sauce is going to assimilate all the flavours and vegetables in it. So you pour the tomato sauce to the aubergines and the onions and cook it for a couple of minutes on a gently heat.
Afterwards it's time to eat. Get your usual lovely bread to it and dig in. If you fancy a salad together with it, fell free to do so.

For one person or for even two persons, you have quite some food here, the chance to eat a few times from it. It would be perfect, delicious and fantastic as it is, but you could have it as a pasta dish, too.

All in all I can say, Jamie hasn't disappointed me. Once more, it worked out totally perfectly.
Do you like to have a leg of lamb at times? What is your favourite way of having it?

Going digital - randomly - Tonno di Nonna Fangitta

Analogue or digital? When you have to write a letter do you use a typewriter or even a pen or your computer? Is your television reception analogue or have you gone digital? What about your phone? Analogue or digital? Or is it now even smarter than you? Hm ... could have mentioned the same about the television these days. That is all irrelevant now! Although it would be quite nice these days to spent more time in nature instead of the virtual world ...
However, today it's time for random recipes #27 - Get Random Baby!

For random recipes I used to take out my analogue randomizer (dice) and go on with choosing a recipe to cook. This time, though, Dom decided to let us go digital with his
random recipes number generator thingamidoodah he put up on his post. No worries! Here we go ... 27 ... what a coincidence. Counting backwards from my cookbook collection brings us to Jamie's Italy by Jamie Oliver.
Well, I would never think of cheating at random recipes. That would take away all the fun. So, what's cooking then? Just take a moment and think about it ... Last time we had an Indian fish curry. Last year in June we had grilled mackerel with pomelo salad. Oh, I checked it, the result was not so much what I expected. There was also some lasagna and some chicken. Nevertheless, random recipes makes me think of fish ... and that's what is going to be again: tonno di nonna fangitta. That is a tuna dish from a lady called Nonna Fangitta, who lives on the island of Favignana off the coast of Sicily. I would like to imagine myself sitting down somewhere around that area now.
It was as it should be I opened the book randomly and came to this very recipe. First thought: How am I going to make that? Where shall I get fresh tuna? That isn't going to be a cheap meal. I might not do it. Since I don't cheat, the other option was not to participate in random recipes this month. I left a marker in the book and went about with the usual business.
Now, here I am, having a whole day off. A good chance to get a hair-cut. No, I don't have so much hair, it takes a whole day, but strangely I rather go in the morning instead of after work.
Nearby ... in the vicinity of the hair-dresser ... there is the farmers market. Checking the fish stall wouldn't harm. If you have a half-decent farmers market around, that's the place to go. The fish monger had tuna on offer. I went for it ... after the hair-cut.
Back to the kitchen ...
Peeling 1 kg of tomatoes isn't that funny, but not so bad either, if you know how to.
The tuna is prepped with some garlic, chilli and rosemary.

Don't get me wrong now, I like Jamie Oliver, but the photo of that dish in Jamie's Italy is somehow a cheat photo. It doesn't show the cooked dish, but rather the raw materials arranged in a pot. That might look cool, but isn't food reality. On the other hand, that might be intentionally, because it helps you to prepare the tuna correctly.
Anyway, in the end, mine will by far not look so nice as in the book. Still it represents the cooked dish more correctly.
With some more garlic, chilli and rosemary and some other things like a cinnamon stick, dried oregano, capers and anchovy fillets, we start out with cooking a tomato sauce. Of course we add the peeled tomatoes as well and above that as a bonus some tinned tomatoes. Seasoning with salt and pepper is obligatory, too.
The tuna is poached in the tomato sauce in under 30 minutes. That will definitely look like that.

Jamie was right, it tastes lovely with some bread. Dig in!

You can't go wrong with tomato sauce ... Thank you Nonna Fangitta, thank you Jamie, thank you Dom.
The recipe said 'serves 4'. Lately, I'm really lacking help in that department. That means leftovers. According to Jamie, it can be used well for pasta. That reminds me, I still have another post in the pipeline in pictures waiting to be written and published. It is about lamb and the never failing tomato sauce business. Watch out for that!
Meanwhile, enjoy that tuna dish. Have you cooked with fresh tuna before? For me it was the first time and ... I luved it! Going digital with random recipe was really fun again! In other areas, I'll rather be careful with going digital. Those things that are still analogue, shall remain that way. I really don't want my phone or television to be smarter than me! Really!

I just got another idea after publishing this already. This dish goes also well for the April Herbs on Saturday April from Lavender & Lovage.

Cheesy Meatballs with 'disgusting' all-in Chili Sauce

Disgusting! Since I was disposed to this word spoken by a friend of mine in his typical Yorkshire accent at various occasions I came to use it too often as well. Yes, I know, that is disgusting!
While I don't want to classify the following cheesy meatballs as disgusting, you have to judge for yourself as regards the chili sauce.

The meatballs themselves are based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver: Mountain Meatballs. I simply adjusted at to my personal amounts and availability. 
The chili sauce contains a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I will roughly state the ingredients, but the real content has to remain shrouded in mystery.

Ingredients Meatballs:
1 red onion, finely diced
300 g minced meat
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp dried oregano
A few bashed cumin seeds
1 tsp bashed up coriander seeds
1 handful of breadcrumbs
1 egg
Salt and pepper
50 g grated cheese

Ingredients Chili Sauce:
1 onion, finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Tomato puree
Honey mustard BBQ sauce
Water
Curry ketchup
Sweet chili sauce 
Coffee liquor

Method:
Heat up some olive oil on medium heat and then soften the red onion dice in it. 10 minutes will do. Remove the onion pieces from the pan and put away to cool down.
Then start the sauce and do the same with the stated onion as you did with the other onion. Hm ... sounds strange to me ... ah ... forget it ... no worries ... just do it. Then add the garlic.
Meanwhile you can also start heating up your oven to ... eh ... let's say 250 °C.
Now add all your other ingredients for the sauce to the pan, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Back to the meatballs ... mix all the other ingredients apart from the grated cheese together and form ... eh ... 4 large meatballs out of it. Get a quarter of the grated cheese ... wait ... that's about 12,5 g and press it into each meatball and close with meat around it so the cheese is more or less in the center of the meatball.
Throw your meatballs into an oven-proof dish and transfer ... no throwing here ... to the oven for 25 minutes.
In the meantime the sauce is disgustingly bubbling away. It gets more and more sticky ...
The 25 minutes are over. Remove the meatballs ... don't burn yourself ... and pour the disgusting sauce over the meatballs and ... shove the dish back to the oven for 15 more minutes.
After that you still can decide whether to eat it or not. Well, surprisingly the sauce didn't taste disgusting as to be expected or announced. It rather tasted interesting.
Oh, I know what people mean, when they say interesting. It's the polite way of saying disgusting. But, really, it didn't taste like that. Frankly, it was rather good. It simply was a sticky mix of sweet and hot and ... there is only one way of finding out ...

Chocolate Surprise with Vanilla Mascarpone Topping

Do you like surprises? I guess as long as they are of the pleasant kind, who doesn't? Maybe you get a lovely gift from your mate or a friend. Your husband brings home some flowers for you - without you haven given a hint beforehand that he hasn't done so for quite a while now. Something else, you meet someone on the street you haven't seen for ages. Or you get a notification, that you won a price in a contest after you already have forgotten about it. 
What I mentioned last just happened to me. I won a new cookbook in a recipe contest. Well, they had sent the notification in a message via Facebook, but somehow I just got to see it nearly a month later. However, I still got the book.
Now we want to talk about a surprise in connection with a cake I came up with. It happened to be the case that I received some samples from Sugar and Crumbs. They have a wonderful supply for your baking needs.

With a part from these samples I whipped up this Chocolate Surprise with Vanilla Mascarpone Topping. When thinking about what to bake originally it wasn't my intention to use a bit of everything that Sugar and Crumbs had send me in one cake, but it just happened to be. Here is what I got the chance to test: Creamy vanilla icing sugar / plain chocolate blossoms / chocolate orange cocoa powder.

On Sugar and Crumbs they say: "Flavoured Cocoa Powder? At sugarandcrumbs.com we are committed to developing new products for the adventurous bakers! We have developed a UK first flavoured Cocoa Powder which offers you guaranteed flavour consistency for all your bakes and toppings."
Let's get adventurous then ... and on the way you will see where the surprise in the cake is. Go for it ...

Ingredients:
Sweet Pastry:
125 g butter
100 g creamy vanilla icing sugar (or just icing sugar)
A pinch of salt
250 g plain flour
2 egg yolks
2 tbs cold milk

Chocolate filling (the surprise):
100 g dark chocolate
50 g butter
50 g sugar (optional)
4 tbs chocolate orange cocoa powder (or whatever flavour you desire)
50 g plain flour
2 eggs
2 egg whites (I simply didn't want to store them)

Vanilla mascarpone topping (kind of):
250 g mascarpone
250 g curd cheese
4 tbs creamy vanilla icing sugar

Plain chocolate blossoms for extra decoration

Method:

The sweet pastry is a standard pastry, which you can find for example as well in Jamie Oliver's book The Naked Chef. I simply substituted normal icing sugar with the creamy vanilla icing sugar.
I enjoyed putting the dough together. You already get this lovely vanilla aroma while doing it. First you cream the butter with the sugar and the salt.
Then you get in the flour and the egg yolks and work carefully work it so you get a crumbly mass. Add the milk and somehow manage to get one lump of dough with too much kneading action. Best would be to just push things together, so you get this lump. 
Now I'm sorry to say, we need some time. Wrap the dough in cling film and transfer it to the fridge for one hour. What do you do with one hour? Find out for yourself ...

... the hour is over. You got a round cake tin and lightly oiled it with cooking oil. Fit the dough into the cake tin producing a one centimetre high edge at the wall of the tin. You can get another hour, if you want and put the cake tin with the dough for another hour into the freezer this time. Otherwise you can do this blind baking thing with chickpeas or beans ...

... say you got your tin from the freezer. The oven is hot with 180 °C. You transfer the cake tin to the oven for 12 minutes.
Meanwhile you set your mind on the chocolate filling. In a bowl over hot water melt the chocolate and add the butter, sugar (if you want) and cocoa powder and mix well. Once everything has transformed into a smooth chocolate mass, you can remove the bowl from the heat.
Thoroughly incorporate the flour, eggs and egg whites into the chocolate mass.
The first baking is already done? Good. Get your chocolate mixture onto the cake bottom and bake it for another 35 minutes at 180 °C. Enjoy the chocolate orange aroma while the baking takes place.
Remove the cake from the oven and allow time to cool down. You see, all this is taking quite a while. Will it be worth it? We have to proceed!
Mix the mascarpone, the curd cheese and the creamy vanilla icing sugar together. Oooooohhhhh, this tastes gorgeous!
Don't eat it like this right now, although you could whip such a cream together separately and have it for pudding. Nevertheless, in this case we are using it on top of our cake.
Finally we finish it off with the plain chocolate blossoms. I imagined making these blossoms by myself (which I have done before) with chocolate and a knife. Well, this is not funny. The chocolate starts melting before I'm finished and I always end up eating the unused chocolate. So, it's a very good and convenient thing to have these ready chocolate blossoms from Sugar and Crumbs.

Was all this work worth it? At least I liked it very much. There was a hint of chocolate orange from the cocoa powder - it really did it's job. The greatest punch, though, brought the vanilla mascarpone topping with the creamy vanilla icing sugar in it. 
I could imagine as well taking this chocolate surprise cake to a cake event, if I would get an invitation or get the chance to invite myself.

Now that you have seen the surprise - the well hidden chocolate center of the cake - how did you like it? You can surprise me with some comments about this ...

Ravinder, Jamie and trying a few recipes

In the last few days I have been thinking again ... yes ... for a change. Since I have a few cookbooks it wouldn't be bad to try some recipes again. So I had a look through some books and made a list of what to try. Then I went shopping and after not getting everything on that list, cancelled a few projects again.
Anyway, there still remained something on the list. Let us start with Ravinder Bhogal and her book Cook in Boots. Actually, Ravinder Bhogal is the only person I have a cookbook from, which I met already. That was this year in London, when she was doing 9 course meals at a restaurant in Aldgate.
The first dish I selected from the book was pork roast with grenadine glazing.

I just had to get some pork and the remaining ingredients were already on stock. I took the grenadine from the bar and the rest was mainly spices and things.
On the side I wanted to have some potatoes and fry them, but they ended up being mashed. To have some vegetables I tossed in some carrots with the roast into the oven.
Overall I liked it very much. It was sweet and spicy for some chilli and garlic was included as well.
There was another recipe from Cook in Boots on my list, but before I tell you about this, let us move over to Jamie Oliver.
I selected something very simple from the book Cook with Jamie: chicken breast wrapped in bacon with leeks.

It goes all in one dish, is for one person and really not complicated. Well, on the picture it looks like there was a lot leeks, but it was alright. It all could have been a bit more spicy, but you don't have to use chilli on everything, although you can. After all it's good to get in some other flavours as well.
Now back to Cook in Boots. On the program now: Cappelini with garlic, chilli, lemon and olive oil. That again sounds like quite some flavour.

It doesn't look very spectacular. That's because I didn't bring out the chillies and apart from that there is no much colour in it due to it's simplicity. The whole things doesn't even take ten minutes to prepare. Of course, a little bit depends on your speed in chopping the garlic and the chilli and grating the lemon zest and the cheese, but the parmesan is just for serving. The boiling of the pasta itself takes just three minutes.
I can say, that pasta dish tasted very lovely. Since I refused to just cook the pasta for one person and didn't have anyone for dinner, there were bound to be some leftovers. No worries!
Inspired by a recipe from Jamie's Italy I went for fries pasta at another day. You just need the leftover capellini (you could use spaghetti for that as well) and added some chopped cherry tomatoes, a bit of bacon, chopped parsley, an egg, some extra salt and pepper just to make sure and then you go and fry it in a pan.

That was very lovely as well. I should go through the books again and make a new list ... but I guess I should rather go for some Caribbean dishes, since we still have our Bloggers Around The World going on this month with some Caribbean inspired dishes. Are you in for it this month?

Don't cry for me little cupcake ... cheeky one

Cupcakes seem to be very famous. Now someone might say, cupcakes are just muffins with a frosting or a topping. That something to think about. What's your opinion on that?
Well, we don't want to argue right now. Originally they were called cupcakes, because they were baked in cups. Why not try it, next time you have cupcakes. I will! But for those, I didn't.

Already without using cups for my cupcakes, I had enough adventure in my kitchen. The smoke just subsides. Just only a few days before I did some sage anchovy fritters from Jamie's Italy. 

As it happened to me before that I had leftover batter I decided right beforehand I will only do half the amount of batter. No use, if you reduce the sage leaves as well. Therefore, once more I was stuck with leftover batter. What now? Fry other things.

Onion rings were my first choice. It worked fine. Meanwhile, I got strange ideas ...

Have a guess as to what this is! One clue, it's NOT a fried lizard. No, not even a tail of it. What is it then? You tell me first!
Whatsoever, still there was batter left and I fried some more or less thinly sliced potatoes with an anchovy filet sandwiched in. For that I don't have a photo as evidence. Wouldn't have been so good anyway, with all that smoke.
Ah, you were expecting cupcakes here in the post. I mean, not just a photo, but a recipe. However, beware of those cupcakes. They are cheeky and sneaky!
Right while I'm writing this down, muisc is playing from the loudspeakers: Evita!

'Don't cry for me Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don't keep your distance'

I don't know, whether this or the following recipe or my post in general or whatever will make you cry, but I just wanted to mention it. Anyway, there were some wild days (frying and some other undisclosed occurences) just behind me. Besides that, around here on my blog, things are a bit mad at times (only a bit? judge for yourself).
Looking back at all this chitchat, I gather that I kept you already long enough and it should be time to get serious (as hard as it is) and do some baking.
When you are having cupcakes, the first thing that would come to your mind would be something sweet. However, I already warned you (didn't I) that these cupcakes are cheeky and sneaky.

Ingredients (makes 8 cupcakes):
300 g flour
A pinch of salt
pepper - amount prone to own will and desires
1 tsp baking powder
Leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme (yes, sorry I want to get rid of some of it)
5 tbs olive oil
200 ml milk
100 g grated cheese (according to taste, cheddar or whatever you which to try or have locally)
200 g curd cheese mixed with various herbs
8 black olives

Method:
Heat up the oven to 200°C and ... hurry to get everything ready when the temperature is reached (You don't want to waste any energy, do you?).
Thoroughly mix the flour, baking powder, thyme, salt and pepper in order to get a homogeneous mass.
Make a whole in the mixture to pour in the liquids, that is the milk and the olive oil.
Then add the cheese as well and finish the dough by mixing/kneading it to completion.
Divide the dough between your cupcake moulds.
Then they go off to the oven for 30 minutes.
Give them some time to cool before you get the topping ready.
With a piping bag put the curd chees frosting onto the cupcakes and finish it off with a black olive. The result is a cheesy savoury cupcake.

Do you see the row of cupcakes. Of course you do. One after the other are going to be eaten! Yum yum!
Going to be eaten? Ha! There are all gone. Yes, gone! Apart from one little tiny cheeky sneaky cupcake.

Don't cry for my little cupcake. I don't see any reason, why it should, even if it could. We can conclude that the little cupcake will definitely not cry for me. But who would?
No worries! We should have put it rather the other way round. Who will cry, when this last cupcake is gone?
You didn't have a chance to get it anyway. In fact you are left with doing your own. Did you have savoury cupcakes before?

'Have I said too much?
There's nothing more I can think of to say to you.
But all you have to do is look at me to know
That every word is true'

Eating flowers

Flowers - so beautiful to look at ... 

 

Yes, great, that's the way to do it. Let flowers talk! I like that. Then I don't have to talk so much, as I am very shy ... I think so.

Well, of course we can not go on like this forever. Sometimes it is even necessary to talk. However, flowers can be used to say "sorry". Maybe those who are married have heard about it. Whatsoever, flowers are a real delight!

Delight? Are they also delicious? What about eating flowers. OK, those shown above are not for eating. Still there are many edible flowers. When you think about herbs, usually you can also eat the flowers they have. You could for example put some chives' flowers in a salad.

Yet there is much more available. What about lavender flowers to decorate cakes?

Then there are corn flowers, borage, and for sure many more. Last year I sowed out some of those on my tiny garden patch. Some of the borage flowers went to a salad and some were frozen to be used in ice cubes to make a drink look lovely.

Not forgetting to mention courgette flowers which can be stuffed in a lovely kind of way. I will have a go at that one as well as soon as I manage to get hold on some nice flowers of those.

Now, at this time of the year there is something else available - at least around here - for free. What is it?

Elderflowers. Just make sure, when you go pick some, that you leave enough hanging in order to make it possible to have enough elderberries later on in the year.

Good, it's free. What are we going to do with it? Elderflower cordial or syrup. I read about this in the latest Jamie Oliver Magazine.

In here apart from sufficient elderflowers, lemons, oranges, 1 kg of sugar and 1 l of water is involved. The recipe in the magazine mentioned 1,5 kg of sugar, but I didn't have that much available. No worries!

It took me over 24 hours, to get to the final result.

Well, it's about 2 l of it. You can mix it with mineral water or if you want to have it in eating, you can use it for a nice cake. There was a recipe as well somewhere in the above mentioned magazine.
As things are, I'm not so much into baking - mid-week. I would rather do it at the weekend, and most probably will have a go at that cake.
In the meantime I thought about something else: mixing some cocktails. As the general opinion is, though, alcohol is no solution. Fine, it might help at that moment - for a brief moment only.Therefore, better have a bit of it just for taste sake.
First try was with a bit of peppermint liqueur and mineral water. I put about four cubes worth of crushed ice to a cocktail glass, added some peppermint liqueur and filled the remaining part with mineral water leaving just enough space for a splash of elderflower cordial.

OK ... you have to try it to find out how it tasted. The elderflower syrup was clearly recognisable.
Second try: a Elderflower Martini: extra dry vermouth, gin and elderflower syrup.

Wait, wait! I've got another idea: Elderflower Caipirinha. Just do a Caipirinha as you would do normally (a quartered lime into a glass, slightly crush it, crushed ice on top, ...). Simply replace the brown sugar with elderflower cordial and balance it with the Cachaca until it tastes perfect.
Of course there would be many more options. Considering that I still wanted to write down these few lines, not ending up in complete nonsense, I had to stop. The result would have been fatal had I tried to go through my whole collection of spirits. You might come up with ideas of your own. Just let me know, when you found something worthwhile trying.
Did I call this post "Eating flowers"? From what I wrote down here, I could have rather called it drinking flowers. On the other hand I don't want to give the impression that I always need alcohol ... oh, oh, I have quite a lot of recipes on here that involve alcohol, when I just think about the red wine cake or the ouzo cookies.
Let us not dwell on that to much! It can add a nice taste, but you have to know your limits. By the way, you can use a lot of other things to get a nice taste ...

Oh, just found that here ...




So why not take part in this ...