Mexican Guacamole and Beef Wraps

You can not avoid it, whether you like it or not. At the moment it's football, on television, radio, in conversations and ... yes ... and food blogs, too. No worries, though, I will focus on the food here. 
Today we are concentrating on Mexico, although it would have been interesting to have some Dutch, Spanish or Cameroonian food. As you know, or maybe not, Mexican is one of my favourite cuisines and it ignited (not just because of the chillies) my interest for cooking in the first place.
Therefore, it's the only right thing to give you some Mexican food today and ... Guacamole and Beef Wraps it will be.

I show them unwrapped to you, so you get a better picture ... or was it just the fact I couldn't stand it any longer to wait to eat the food.

Ingredients:
One ripe avocado
Juice of two limes
3-5 red chillies, finely chopped
3-5 cocktail tomatoes, quartered
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
One small onion, finely chopped
Salt, pepper
Beef steaks
Olive oil
Wheat tortillas
Cheddar cheese
Fresh coriander, chopped up

Method:
First of all marinate the beef for at  least half an hour. Oh, yes, of course, with the following, the juice of one lime, a splash of olive oil, 1-2 garlic cloves, 2-3 red chillies, salt and pepper.
Then go for the guacamole. Spoon out the flesh from your avocado and mix it together with the remaining lime juice, chillies and garlic and while we are at it, the tomatoes and onion. Season according to your taste with salt and pepper.
Now, after the beef has marinated enough, cook the meat with some more olive oil in a pan. Leave to rest afterwards and cut into pieces.
If you haven't made fresh wheat tortillas for yourself, you need to heat them up a bit now. Spread some of the guacamole on each tortilla and add a few pieces of beef. Grate over some cheddar cheese and be generous with some fresh coriander.

Ready to eat. Fold it once and eat quickly or bother to wrap things up properly and eat. Don't forget to enjoy it. If it's too hot, you are too weak or you simply need to use less chillies.

Here we go again with Bloggers Around the World: World Cup 2014 Brazil.

Additionally I will send this post over to Karen's (Lavender and Lovage) Cooking with Herbs, which is hosted this month on Lancashire food.

A tiny little Tea Time Treat - Ginger and Lime Shortbread Sandwiches

How would you describe the difference between minimal, light, minimal to light and slightly when it comes to the absence of details in the picture on your television screen when playing back a progressive signal, 720p at 50 Hz, via your YPbPr input?
If you manage to figure out, you can understand what I have to go through at work sometimes.
Anyway, let us head over to something slightly more simple, tea time treats. What is a tiny little tea time treat for you?

Cocktails on a Stick - Blood Orange and Cuba Libre Popsicles

I have been invited to a party. Lovely! It's a popsicle party. Great! Really? I have eaten popsicles before, but never made any. I don't even have any popsicle moulds or something I could possibly use instead ... thinking ... So how could I possible enter this month's Sweet Adventures Blog Hop - Popsicle Party, which the lovely Swah from Love Swah is hosting?
Hm, right ... eh ... well ... eh ... have a look ...

So, how did I manage?
We will see ...

Still Summer - Zingy Chilli and Chocolate Gazpacho

I can't remember having a real summer last year, although the two weeks I was out hiking had been fine apart from the first day, where I got soaked completely. Fine, we had some rain, storm and sort of things this year, too, but mainly it was a real summer thing ... just a moment ... still is a real summer thing.
However, some people manage to complain all the time. "It's too hot", "I can't stand the heat" ... fine ... if you must. Should you belong into this category of people, you maybe also think, I would be too hot to stand in the kitchen at the stove and cook.
I'd say, it's no problem to have some more heat in the kitchen, but ... hey ... I can so also without and ... have some gazpacho ...

Underground Cooking and Hawaiian Luau time

Let me get one thing straight right away, this is not just a fooling around blog, but Cooking Around the World. Due to that fact, at times it's necessary to work hard for this.
So I got myself a shovel and went to the garden ...

A grave? Does this mean someone has to die or has died already?

The Last Crusade - Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake

It's time again to put these glasses aside, hang the suit into the cupboard and get the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip ready. Well, usually I don't wear a leather jacket and a hat for baking, but sometimes you have to whip things up. By the way, now it has been quite some time someone called me Professor or Doctor, but that doesn't matter now.
Anyway, I didn't want to call this post 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Cake'.
Just remember: "We do not follow maps to buried treasures and X never ever marks the spot." We are just baking an Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake (note: Arabian-styled is just for the atmosphere and for a reason revealed later).

This now is a 'leap of faith' ... "Only in the leap from the oven shall it prove its worth." Kind of. Let's start our cake adventure ...

What we need (apart from the leather jacket, hat and bullwhip):
3 eggs
100 g sugar
300 g spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
100 ml olive oil
1 tbs rosewater
40 g dark chocolate chunks (feel free to use more)
Juice of 3 lime
3 tbs honey (feel free to use more)
100 g dried soft figs, chopped up
2 tbs water
50 g pistachios, roughly chopped up

The quest begins:
Originally, the whole idea was, to bake something with chocolate and honey and ... soon things got out of hand. Such things happen, when the mind gets the chance to roam freely (ah, I hate those long drives to work).
Get yourself the average round cake tin, line it with baking parchment and - just to make sure - lightly oil it.
To the cake batter...
Cream the eggs with the sugar ... time for some whipping. Then sift in the flour and the baking powder. Pour in the oil and rosewater and while you're at it, toss in the chocolate chunks as well.
While your oven is heating up, spoon your batter together completely ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ... "Ten. X marks the spot." The marked spot is first the cake tin where the cake better goes and then secondly the oven where the cake tin goes (together with the cake batter ... obviously). 35 minutes shall be the time for the cake to remain in the oven to prove its worth.
Do you believe? I mean, will it be a nice cake? I mean not 'nice' in the 'sense' of 'okay', but ... will it taste good?
As the cake comes from the oven we are far from being through. Let the cake take its time to cool down.
Meanwhile we whip up some kind of lime, fig and honey syrup. Cast those ingrediens together with the two tbs of water into a saucepan and heat it up until most of the liquids have been evaporated. Spoon this over the cake. Time for some chopped up pistachios. They follow ...

Now you could go on and enjoy your cake. Really? Yes ... although we could have used a little bit less lime juice and a bit more honey ... hm ... eh ... maybe - that is in case you have - you could also use more chocolate. Obviously, 40 g chocolate can't be enough. 100 g would sound better. Whatsoever, I did what I did and next time there would be the chance to change it.
Before we proceed we still want to have a closer look at the cake ...

Is that close enough? Well, you can always go and whip up some cream and throw on a dollop of it. 

Now we go back to the roots ... eh ... to the original reason we started all this ... We Should Cocoa #32 featuring chocolate and honey.

Hm ... I just noticed, I had all the ingredients here I got rid of some figs, limes and pistachios. Good job! You could call this quite a deal of money saving and ... "You can never have too much cake:-)" Therefore, here is another cake for Credit Crunch Munch from Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All  ... right, not Fab Foods 4 All :-) 

It isn't over yet. We already know, that I'm not a food wasting kind of guy. Due to that fact and because of figs being fruits this post enters also Elizabeth's Kitchen's No Waste Food Challenge - Fruit.

For a moment you thought now, it would be over, but wrongly concluded so. I made this all from scratch and with a lot of luv. So it would be a shame not to enter this cake to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays.

We nearly forgot. The other reason - apart from the atmosphere - for calling this cake Arabian-styled. You may call me cheeky now (or crazy or ... make a suggestion), but the AlphaBakes April 2013 has the letter "A" for ... Arabian-styled Chocolate, Fig and Pistachio Cake.

Give me just a moment. I need to think a bit ...
...
Yes, I reckon that's all. Really? I guess so!
Ah, just to make sure that no one starts to panic again. The title of this post isn't suggesting that this is my last cooking adventure here. In fact the post doesn't really have anything to do with any kind of crusade. It's just a title ... just a crazy title.
By the way, should I change the blog title to "CCC - Crazy Chef Chris"? Nah, I don't think so. See thee!

Christine & Christian - Episode 4: Up and running

After a few hours of warm up by leafing through the pages of Tasting India, I started cooking from it on Thursday April 11th. 
I mentioned there would be over 250 recipes in the book. Now after carefully counting ... that is if I really was that careful, but that would be too many 'ifs' ... I came to the number of 283 recipes in the book, not counting any variations. I added, though, also individual recipes for spice mixes and pastes, of which I might need some more then once. That also means there are also some quite simple recipes in it.
While cooking for 5 days I managed 8 so far, including one for garlic and ginger paste ... or was it ginger and garlic paste. No worries. I was also invited to cook some Indian food with some friends. On that day, there was also butter chicken on the menu, which tasted very very luvly. Fine, that doesn't count for the recipes, because I didn't make it from the book.
I contributed a gorgeous dal, which tasted as luvly as the chicken, although one of my friends said, it was even better than the chicken. Ah, whatever, very lovely.
I leave you with some food impressions before I have a few more words.

 

Dal Makhani - one of the best dals I ever had ... with that ginger and garlic paste, tomato puree, butter and cream it promises a lot of taste and ... guess what? Have no fear!

Butter Chicken - I wonder, why it has this name. There were a lot of spices, yoghurt, milk and obviously chicken.

Just give me a large plate of it ... anytime!

Sweets for the sweet - Wholemeal Halwa. Don't ask, just taste ... there is a touch of cardamom to it ... if you do it right. All that stirring was some good exercise. Was it half an hour? It was supposed to be less.

 That would be something for hot days - Ginger Lime Soda. I just hope we will have some days this year, so I can put that drink to proper use. It's really refreshing. The ginger isn't too intrusive.

Eggplant (Aubergine) Masala - There were two green chillies and two dries red chillies going into it. I wonder what that will do, if you have properly hot chillies. Those fresh green ones from my windowsill need some more sun. This eggplant masala is delicious how it is with some rice ... good I have a rice cooker.

I hope, that gives you also some good inspiration for our current Bloggers Around the World - India. If you like to know more about one of those dishes, ask away ...
 
Now I had also chance to stock up some things. While sitting at home unprepared and pondering about what to cook, I was still in need of some vital ingredients and there was no chance for shopping. By now, it's fine! I'm up and running ... as you can see above as well.
What about fresh coriander, though? That might cause a problem, searching through shops for some. Parallel to that I started my coriander growing program again. Better late then never, although it will take some time before I can use some of that ... if it works at all. I definitely should get some more ready plants for the garden, when the time is right.

Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake

I was thinking ... yes, for a change ... and it came to my mind ... right, I haven't lost it completely ... that there was this lovely blog hop I used to join in once in a while. It is called The Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, in short SABH.
The SABH is presented by Delicieux, The Hungry Australian, Dining With a Stud, The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader, and 84th & 3rd. I had a look and ... the theme for this month is cake and three veg.
Here I am now, somehow I have to bake a cake with veg in it. The only things that come to my mind are carrots and beetroot in a cake ... that is, a sweet cake. If you have a look at the other blogs later (as would be recommended) you see how inventive others have been.
After some research through various books and taken the ingredients I have at home I came to this: Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake.

Well, lemongrass is used as a herb in the Asian cuisine and you for sure wouldn't call it a veg. What about the veg then? I used carrots. In fact you could call this cake also: Lemongrass-Lime-Ginger-Carrot-Chocolate-Cheesecake.
However, that would not sound as intriguing as the name I came up with friends from the net. I try this cake exclusively for this Blog Hop. I have no experiences with it, as I never did it before. We will see, how things end up. So, let's do Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake. 
Ready, set, bake ...

Ingredients, here they come:
Cake base:
300 g flour
14 g baking powder
Pinch of salt 
1 tbs cocoa powder
50 g brown sugar
100 g of carrots
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
150 g yogurt
2 tbs of vegetable oil
2 eggs or 4 egg whites

Cheese topping:
400 g cream cheese
100 g sugar
2 eggs
2 tbs milk
1 stalk of lemongrass
Zest of one lime

Chocolate topping:
100 g 25 g of chocolate (I thought I needed more, but I didn't)

How the experimenting went:
First of all we like to concentrate on the cake dough.
I mixed all dry ingredients together in one bowl, that is sifted the flour with the baking powder in, added the brown sugar and cocoa powder, and, not to forget, the pinch of salt.
Then I concentrated on the other ingredients with a different bowl. I put in the yogurt and the oil. Time for grating ...
The carrots and the ginger were grated to the yogurt. The oil and the eggs (or egg whites) joined. A little bit of mixing was due then.
It's time for the contents of both bowls to join forces together. Therefore I added the yogurt mixture to the flour mixture and ... of course ... mixed everything together into a brown and sticky dough.
Already before all that, I had a spring tin form greased. This was ready now to receive the dough ... sometimes, though, I wish afterwards I had used baking paper, but ... I didn't.
With a rubber spatula I tried to level things out and once that was accomplished more or less, the cake went to the oven for 10 minutes at 200°C.

That 10 minutes is exactly the time I wanted to use to prepare the cheese topping.
No need to panic! Really?
We just have to mix all the ingredients for the cheese topping together. Well, not exactly. The lemongrass needs chopping up, as fine as possible. Of course, I didn't forget to grate in the zest of the lime.
10 minutes over. I made it!

I removed the cake from the oven and turned up the heat to 225°C.
Now the cheese topping goes onto the cake ... on top. Oh, oh, it seems quite liquidish. Will it set properly? No worries, we will see.
Back goes the cake into the oven for 15 minutes. Then the heat is reduced to 125°C and the cake stays in the oven for another 30 minutes.

After that the cake needs cooling down and somehow we have to figure out to remove it from the tin without destroying it again ... hard job.
Anyway, I couldn't even wait properly for the cake to cool down. It was getting late. I wanted to eat the cake at a proper cake time ... what nonsense am I talking ... cake time could be anytime.
Whatsoever, I grated some chocolate over the cake. Somehow it melted partways, but i wasn't bothered. After all I had to take some pictures and have cake.

What would you say? Will such a cake taste nice, delicious, wonderful, or whatever good?
It did! You will not be disappointed.
Although now, it was the first time I tried this cake, I can only say, it's worth a try ...

 Now back to the SABH ...

I hope you enjoyed the Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake!

For sure you will enjoy the other entries ...

Ouzo Cookies

I must be out of my mind. One minute I thought, now would be the time to retire for the night and get enough sleep, next minute I'm in the kitchen and prepare cookies with aniseed schnapps. Maybe this would be a good recipe for a cookbook: "The drunken baker". It should be next to the Scottish whisky cake. This reminds me of a sketch comedy I once was forced to perform at a wedding. It was about baking the Scottish whisky cake. In between testing the whisky was necessary, which resulted - of course - in deteriorating speech quality.

Anyway, here I am in the kitchen preparing this cookies using up all my leftover Ouzo from the bar. Actually, the following is a Mexican recipe. Nevertheless I have refrained from using chillies in any form (but maybe I shouldn't have).

Ingredients:

250 g butter

250 g icing sugar

500 g flour

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

90 ml of aniseed schnapps (Ouzo, I didn't want to use the Ricard)

Juice of one lime (you may try as well lemon or orange, using also the zest)

Vanilla sugar for icing

Method:

Whisk together the butter and the sugar until it gets creamy, sort of. Then add the bit by bit the flour, the schnapps, the juice, and the cinnamon. Don't put all ingredients in at once. Always mix together in between. Then form a nice ball of dough, which you can roll out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 1 cm. If you have time you can also let the dough rest for half an hour, wrapped in cling film, in the fridge. I didn't bother though.

Then I used a small cup to cut out the cookies. If you have a more professional way, just do it. You could use even different shapes. I kept it simple, though. Arrange the cookies nicely on a baking tray. The oven should be heated up to 220°C by now. Transfer the tray to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. This is if you trust your oven. What you want to achieve are nice and golden cookies. Therefore the time might be longer or shorter.

Once the cookies have the appearance you want them to have, remove them from the oven and let them cool down. A good opportunity to go for a short walk with the dog.

When you are back (that is, if you have a dog). You can sprinkle the cookies with vanilla sugar.

And remember: Don't eat this cookies and drive! That is if you eat all the cookies on your own in one go. Whatsoever, I don't know anyone who would do this, do I?

Finally, if you try them, let me know whether you like them or if they should be any different!

Gnocchi with carrot-rosemary sauce

It’s heating up again. The temperatures are rising. I didn’t benefit too much from it today, a day spent at the office with no view to the outside world, typing away on the keyboard. Must have done that several million times on certain keys, because the writing on them starts to disappear (it's from a certain standard for Ergonomics of Keyboards: a key is supposed to endure 5 million times typing on it before abrading). In other words, it was again a busy day at work.

What does it mean? Coming home and having a quick meal? Eating out? Ordering something? Warming up leftovers? Many options indeed.

In fact there were some leftovers in the fridge. For example in one corner, some baked potatoes were lingering. There came an idea up in me. Some days ago I read something about making gnocchi in the book “Cook with Jamie”. Easy thing to make gnocchi. I have never tried it before, though.

First of all I had to get rid of the skin of the potatoes and mash them up and season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. The recipe stated to add a medium sized egg yolk. Wasn’t there some leftover egg yolk in the fridge as well? No, only leftover egg white. I added another one to that to get my egg yolk. To finish off the gnocchi dough some flour is needed. Depending on the amount of potatoes you need one or two handful (two, if you are using 8 medium sized potatoes). I didn’t have so many potatoes, so I just put in some flour and kneaded until I got a nice dough (or as I have read lately somewhere: until it looks “doughy” - Signe Johansen).

The “doughy” dough gets rolled out until it looks like a sausage and then you can cut it in 2,5 cm pieces. Those go to rest on a bed of semolina flour in the fridge.

Well, here we would have some nice gnocchi. However, what goes with it?

I must admit, they look larger then they should be

Ingredients:

250 g of bought or rather self made gnocchi

100 g  Bacon (or just take more if you want to)

3 large carrots (or more smaller ones)

1 shallot

100g of Crème fraîche or double cream

1 lime

A few sprigs of rosemary

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Some Parmesan (if you like)

Method:

To start off the sauce heat up a pan on high heat and add some olive oil. The bacon joins the oil at first. Meanwhile you can cut the carrots into thin slices. Take yourself some time to do it. No need to rush. If it takes longer, the bacon gets more golden and crispy. On the other hand, if you take too long, it will get black. That we don’t want to achieve. The carrots go to the pan, when you are ready. Then go for the shallot. Slice it thinly. If you don’t manage so thin, no worries. Add them to the pan and reduce the heat. Throw in the rosemary leaves. That smells nicely.

Now is the time to get your water for the gnocchi boiling. Once the water is ready you can add the Crème fraîche to the pan and the gnocchi to the water. After 4 minutes they should be ready. I didn’t watch the time, though. They are also ready, when they start floating in the water. Before that happens, squeeze your lime to the sauce and season with salt and pepper.

You have to see for yourself in which direction you want to have the taste. Accordingly you have to adjust the seasoning. Maybe you are also happy with half a lime. Best to try it first.

When the time has come and the gnocchi are asking to be removed from the water – they are floating – carefully do that and add to the sauce. Mix it and plate up. Grate some Parmesan cheese on top if you want to and dig in.

Did it taste nice? I was thinking about something that Jamie Oliver usually says, about certain ingredients loving each other and being good friends or mates. I thought carrots and rosemary are good friends, if I remember right. I was satisfied with that.

Additionally, I would be ready for a holiday. Maybe I don't have to wait too long for it ... 

Now I found this Blog Challenge on the net:

 

Well, I thought, I could take part and use the above recipe. Now really the time is coming up to get some fresh herbs again from the garden. The windowsills, however, are already getting overcrowded...