Pumpkin-sun soup

Getting cold? Want to feel real warm in your stomach? Ask me and my Japanese colleague Pumpkin-sun how! :)

This is one of my favorite soups - even its color is life-asserting! Not to mention it is as spicy as one wants and easy to cook (better, if you have a blender). So, you will need

~500 g of pumpkin (a piece a bit larger then a palm of your hand)
Ginger (I use dried powder, fresh ground will do as good, or even better)
1 onion
200 ml of cream
all your favorite spices

Optional: carrots, potatoes, herbs, bullion, garlic, nuts, coconut milk.

If you want to make your soup more nutritious add 1-2 potatoes and a carrot. In fact, it doesn't affect taste too much. Use of coconut milk will make the taste more intriguing and allow for more spices - an option for the ones who freeze badly :) Herbs are good, boil them in your bullion but then filter it in order not to spoil the perfect orangitivity of your soup.

So, let the feast begin. First, peel the pumpkin. If it's too difficult bake the pumpkin for few minutes in the oven, it will soften. Cut the onion. In the pot, warm up olive oil with some cinnamon, then fry onions, garlic and carrots (if you want them in your soup) till they soften a bit, add potatoes (again, in case you want them. If not - just skip this step) and ~1 l of boiling water (or bullion), boil everything for 5 minutes and add pumpkin. Boil again, till the pumpkin gets soft (another 3-5 minutes). Now, fish out all the vegetables (keep the bullion!) and blend them with love and passion. Bring the orange awesomeness back to the bullion, add cream (or coconut milk), ginger (I put ~2 tablespoons of powder), cayenne pepper, a bit of salt (and whatever you consider appropriate, spice-wise), let it boil all together for couple of minutes - and enjoy!!!

Today there's no picture because when I made this soup the previous time it was over too fast. But theoretically you can serve it with sliced almonds or slightly roasted cedar nuts and parsley.

An idea for a late quasi-dinner

Some people have an idea of not eating much or tough after 6 pm. But, following the Russian piece of wisdom, the hunger is not an aunt or a random woman - there's an ambiguity in the original saying (meaning, you actually cannot get rid of it), so weak in body but strong in spirit, we have to indulge our stomachs after the sun sets. Especially justified in autumn and winter when the organism spends so much effort on keeping the blood above solidification point. To remind one how does the summer tastes here is an idea: some black bread, cheese (goat cheese in my case), a fig and a bit of red wine.

Taǧin a-la Robuchon

Taǧin is a traditional North-African dish named after a special pot where it is cooked (wiki). The idea is in a long simmering of water that makes the meat, vegetables seasonings and spices melting in one's mouth.

An adapted receipt from a french chef Robuchon includes, also, rice and is cooked in a usual pot. Adaptation is quite serious, but the result is still delicious. The proportions are given for ~6 portions. So, you will need:

600 g of lamb flesh
100 g of raisins
100 g of dry apricots
100 g of prunes (dried black plums)
lemon juice
1 tablespoonful of honey
salt, pepper, cinnamon, saffron, ginger, turmeric, cumin, paprika, pepper (whichever you have!)
250 g of rice (I think in my case it was more, I didn't measure it)
~500 ml of chicken bullion (I took beef bullion)
2 onions
1 section of garlic
butter and oil
mint

Start heating the oven (180 C). Cut dried fruits (except raisins) and keep them in some hot water with lemon. Meanwhile, take a big pot that can fit the oven (watch out for handles) and melt some butter in it. Fry 1 onion, add wet dried fruits, fry them around a bit. Add honey and spices, fry a bit. Add rice and bullion, close all this happiness with a lit and put it in the oven at 180 C for 30-45 minutes (depends on the oven), the point is to get rice ready. This rice part is kind of a fraud but it balances everything here (and reminds that this is just an abominable Western-world adaptation). Originally meat and seasonings are supposed to be cooked together in a tajine, but we don't have a tajine, this is why the meat is cooked separately and we have to add bullion in the pot. Check the rice from time to time and add more water, if necessary.

Take a big pan. Melt some butter and add some oil and cinnamon, cut and fry the second onion. Add a section of garlic (don't clean or cut it, it will go away at some point). Cut meat, fry it shortly, remove the garlic, add some water, salt, spices and let it stew till it gets soft enough (my source skipped the stewing step, but I think it's absolutely necessary, because the idea of tajine is to make the meat as tender and moist as possible).
When everything is ready, put some rice on a plate, treat it with the sauce from the meat, add meat, serve with fresh mint.

If you don't give a shit about Robuchon but want to make a tajine closer to the original, then you need a bit less effort and a bit more time. Take a big pan (a lit of an appropriate size required), and prepare the dried fruits, add meat there (not necessarily lamb, chicken and turkey will do perfectly as well), add all the spices, some water and leave it to stew on a small fire with a lit closed for 2-3 hours. Then add the rice and a bit more water and let it stew for another 30 minutes. Then  - enjoy!

Carrot cake or my happy autumn

The good thing about autumn is orange. This is why one of the straightforward ways to celebrate autumn (yes, it's followed by the winter but it's not a reason not to celebrate) is a carrot cake! Easy, tasty and odorous.

2 cups of flour + baking powder
~1 cup of sugar (depends on how sweet you want your cake to be. I put slightly less and everyone's happy)
4 eggs
100 g of walnuts (I broke them in pieces and fried a bit with some cinnamon)
1 cup of sunflower oil
350 g of ground carrots
cinnamon, ginger, a bit of salt, 
a spoon of cointreau or orange peel
(whatever you think fits with carrots)
250 g of mascarpone 
(well, any other cream cheese can do, too)
50 g of sugar powder 
(or even more, if you don't like your icing sour)
peel and juice of a lime

Start to heat the oven at 180 C. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Mix eggs with sugar (better, with a mixer), add the oil to the mixture. Add the flour blend little by little, add carrots and nuts, mix again. Bake for 40 minutes (till the dry toothpick) at 180 C. Wait till it cools down. Mix mascarpone with sugar powder and peel and lime juice, distribute it over the cake and enjoy!

Pear Dainties "Farewell feast" or "This looks suspicious"

This receipt my mom has found on the web (in English but the web-site was so epilepsy-unfriendly that I decided to repeat it here. If you want to see the original, please go ahead). I gave them such a good-byeish name because of the occasion for which I baked them (I was quitting my research group). Baking them is fast and easy (you don't even need a mixer) and they look good. And I think that list of products looks pretty, too.

170 g self-raising flour
30 g cocoa powder
200 g sugar powder
150 g butter or margarine, melted
5 egg whites
1 teaspoon pear liqueur
12 canned minipears


I cook in the common dorm kitchen, so my measure is a random clean cup, so I took a bit less then a cup of flour + baking powder. Canned minipears are as rear as white siberian tigers, so I took usual canned pears and cut them in quarters (and a picture of a tiger is here because they are badass). Egg whites should be cold and the melted butter cooled. If you don't have a pear liqueur, mix pear syrup with some vodka and feel happy (well, this is a general recommendation).

So, turn on the oven at 180 C, sift the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, sugar powder, a bit of salt, spices (I always add cinnamon and muscat, unless otherwise stated), mix well with butter and then add egg whites, one by one, mix very well after each. Add the liqueur, mix again and distribute the dough among 12 baking cups. Put a minipear in each cup. Bake at 180 C for 10 minutes and then at 160 C for 15-20 minutes (till golden-brown or dry tooth-pick).

Before serving, apply some apricot jam on top of a dainty and treat it with a bit of sugar powder and chocolate chips (for technical reasons, I skipped this step). The result looks as if the Big Brother watches you through these pear eyes (as my friend Masha says, if you suffer paranoid schizophrenia it doesn't mean nobody's following you)

Sable cookies for Masha

This is a receipt from a book "Essentials of Baking" or something like that, I have found it in one blog and now copy it to this blog (as usual I make my corrections to anything I cook, it just happens).

I had some kind of negative experience with these cookies - I have put too much sugar there. Now, I've chosen a different strategy (see below). Anyhow, these cookies are indecently easy to make and there are 1000 and 1 variation of what you can do to them. This is why I dedicate them to my best friend Masha :)

So, you will need 250g of soft margarine (or butter), half-cup of sugar (I took sugar powder this time to obtain a fine consistence), vanilla, 2 big egg yellows (I took 3 small ones) and 2 cups of sifted flour. The procedure is close to trivial: mix margarine with sugar, a bit of salt and vanilla, add one by one yellows and the flour. Form 4 cylinder-shaped pieces, ~4 cm in diameter and ~20 cm in length, wrap them in the cellophane film and put in the freezer for at least 3-4 hours (up to couple of months). When the time to bake comes warm up the oven to 180C and unwrap the dough (if you see ice crystals on it let it for 10 min at the room temperature), slice it with a sharp knife in 4 mm slices, put them on a layer of a backing paper (which is supposed to cover a baking tray), keep the distance between slices ~2.5 cm and bake it for 12-14 minutes (till it gets a beautiful golden color) then take it out, let it cool on a tray for some minutes and then... well, you know what to do if you read this at all!

Now, the interesting part about these cookies. The version above is a classic vanilla sable. You don't have to confine your desires to this taste, you can add whatever you feel like to the dough. This time, I've made three versions: lemon peel and lemon juice, almond and candied orange peel (pictured) and cacao and cashew. I think, I have put a bit more flour than the previous one, so the cookies are more sable (it means sandy). The ones on the picture have a very strict taste - not too sweet but odorous. They go nicely with coffee with spices.

Rich and odorous.. cake!

Cakes are right, cakes are always good and they make people feel better. This is a huge cake, it's a perfect one for the end of summer or beginning of autumn, and it feels like a Big Hug of a friend.

For this cake, you need a blender. I made it without one, and it was a bit of a torture. On the other hand, there is always a place for a deed in everyday life. So, the cake is full of fruits and nuts and it's very nutritious. I made it just with plums but the original receipt recommends to take 3-4 kinds of fruits (pears, apricots, plums, peaches, better - no apples), 2-3 of each. Cut fruits in big pieces. Warm up the oven to 180C.

Mix 200 g of margarine (or butter, if you prefer) with 1.5 cups of sugar and vanilla, cinnamon and muscat till you have a homogeneous mass. One by one, add 3 eggs. Don't add the next egg before the previous one is not united with the whole mass in the proud flight of the uniform happiness. Prepare 350 g of sifted flour with baking powder and a teaspoonful of salt and 250 ml of buttermilk (or 1 cup of milk with a tablespoonful of lemon juice). Add some flour to the dough and mix then add some buttermilk and mix, and so on till you finish all the flour and buttermilk. The dough should be homogeneous and quite liquid.

Put half of the dough in the form (make sure you've placed there the backing paper or applied some butter on it) and distribute all the fruits there. Put the rest of the dough on top and finish the composition with nuts. I used the mixture of walnuts, pecan, hazelnuts and cashew. Any of them would do. Put the cake in the oven at least for 50 min. After that, check if it's ready with a toothpick or a dry knife. When it comes out of the cake dry it means the cake is ready. It took me about 1.5 hours to bake it, so after 40 minutes I've covered the cake with foil in order not to let the nuts burn (also, it would be a good idea to remove the "peal" from hazelnuts).

Oatmeal porridge for real mammoths

The other day I had a weird dream. My grandmother told me that I had to teach Geography in my school for the 5-th grades. I learned this half of an hour prior to leaving home in order to be on time. Like a crazy I was thinking over the structure of a lesson - for some reason my initial idea was to start with not very straight-forward example of how Geography works (but something that would fascinate kids) - to discuss mammoths - where and how they are discovered, how they look, how they related to other species, etc. I have found some pictures as supplementary material and have realized that I was being late. I have arrived to the classroom (the one that looked quite like my Physics classroom) - there were no kids, just some teachers of mine and former classmates (oh, God, people of whose existence I have forgotten). Before I could pull myself together they forced me to start, I was trying to introduce myself but they were interrupting me all the time and were very unfriendly. After 2 minutes they have asked me to stop and take my place. I felt confused, humiliated and totally unprepared. Someone was showing a trial Math class with a pupil solving something at the blackboard. I have seen disappointment in my high-school Math teacher (towards me, as it always had been), so I felt like apologizing: "Sorry, I didn't know it was a trial session, I've just knew I have a lesson 1 hour ago". She looked surprised and  told that it would be fair to give me another chance. I couldn't recall the logical connection between mammoths and Geography, so I've started with asking the auditorium what they though Geography was. They were writing their answers on the chart and getting points for that - three points were equal to 1 excellent mark, three minus points for misbehavior and interruption - to 1 "fail" mark. Then I woke up and felt hungry like hell.

So, this half-failed mammoth intended but not realized lesson took so much energy that something large-scale had to be done. Imagine, cold autumn morning, urge to get/produce/share knowledge thrills inside and stomach is about to propose an ultimatum. Fast, infinitely warm, nutritious and healthy way to deal with it - a good old oatmeal porridge. Most of people use milk for this porridge and then hate it. Try both of ways and choose by yourself, but my way is "milk - no way!" Milk is for drinking it with cookies.

If you are very hungry take a cup and fill 3/4 of it with oatmeal (a full cup would do for 2 moderately hungry people), add 1 teaspoon of salt, sugar and some cinnamon. Turn on the heating plate (strong or medium power, depending on how much time you have and how fast you're ready to stir). Put the mixture to the pot, add some dried cranberries (matter of taste - apples, bananas, peaches, any dried fruits or pieces of chocolate will do) and half-cup of water. Stir in order not to let the whole thing to stick to the bottom. When you see steam rising add another half-cup of warm water (some people use milk at this stage), reduce the heat to the medium and continue stirring. When the porridge starts to form exploding bubbles it's ready. Best, if you can add a spoonful of butter, mix, close the pot and let it rest for some minutes (help yourself with coffee meanwhile). Personally I never have neither time nor patience or butter, so I eat the whole thing as soon as it's not burningly hot.

For aesthetic reasons I will not show you a picture of any porridge :)

Sandwich "No, zombie, no, eat my food and take my women but don't you dare to lay a finger on me!"

Imagine, it's kind of summer and you are hungry. Not so hungry to have something serious but still it's bad enough. Now, imagine, you accidentally have an avocado and maybe a piece of salmon. Does this ring a bell? Right (or no-no-no, wrong, how could you think of that!), it's a sandwich time! What our life would be without sandwiches? A fainting pathetic parody on itself! So, remove the peel from avocado (it's easy if you use a tablespoon), add a bit of salt and lemon juice or concentrate to it and turn it into a greenish mass as if you were trying to come up with how to mimic the alien brain in a B-movie about a clash between aliens and alien zombies. This mass is called a mysterious word guacamole and if you put it on your door post not a single iguana will invade your house. But if you spread this mass on a piece of bread and put a slice of smoked salmon on top then you will get a delicious and super nutritious sandwich. Highly not recommended after 9 pm!

  

Risotto "tear out your tongue or whatever you feel like tearing out"

The world around us changes rapidly. People are not who they used to be anymore, our society evolution takes odd turns every now and then. Though, one thing is constant: we get hungry every few hours. This time I will not tell you about something extraordinary and exotic because I have 1 week exactly till the deadline to submit my master of science thesis (at this point I would like to send warmest greetings to my fellow master students who write day and night and whose reality perception is narrowed to the 60 pages of "if I have more paragraphs and pictures they will occupy more space"). My point: there is a random set of food items in my fridge and after that 10 hours that have passed after lunch the stomach sends hints to what is regarded as brain in those fancy anatomy books: "Food! Taste does not matter, really, and, hey, food!". Weakness is essentially a human feature, so I grabbed what I thought could make something eatable and went to my awesome kitchen that I share with approximately 20 other people.

So, to make my as always long story short: I boiled rice with saffron, warmed up olive oil with cinnamon and pepper, fried a red onion, mushrooms, risen, walnuts, a bit of salad and added a good portion of sweet chili sauce. The time of preparation is equal to how long does it take to boil some rice. Et voilà! A bit spicy, but this is up to the cook. Can contain whatever you have in the fridge, really, unless it's a frozen piece of the piranha who ate up you ex-boy/girlfriend.

Summer leave

Things come and things go. Some of them barely come but nevertheless certainly go. Mostly, it's a question of one's perception. People say there was no summer in Dresden, I disagree, but there is one point which is for sure - the summer's gone. This night, cold, cloudy, heavy and humid, breathed like winter. For such an occasion, I decided that my ears need to warm up with beautiful vinyl jazz and my beloved stomach deserves something warmer than salad.

The art of improvisation is relevant not only in jazz music but in the kitchen, too. The experiment that I made today has half failed but at point which was successful it proved to be worth trying. So, my initial idea was inspired by Georgian cheese bread (kind of) called hachapuri (even though it sounds Indian). I had some layered dough left from one of my previous experiments, some champignons, cottage cheese and chicken. I decided to fry chicken and mushrooms, mix it with cottage cheese and to stuff it into a pocket made of the layered dough. Even after a half of an hour in the oven my "pie" dough was kind of raw. I was hungry so I sent it to hell and ate the filling which turned out to be truly delicious! So, below I will describe in more details how one can treat his or her stomach with warm blessing of chicken and celebrate yet another summer leave.

On a pan warm up some olive oil with cinnamon, basil, black pepper and a bit of what people call curry powder. Start frying an onion, then few mushrooms and grinded walnuts. After couple of minutes add chicken cut in small pieces and fry it for another 3 minutes, it should be half ready. Let it cool a bit, cut some green stuff - salad leaves, for example, and add it the fried mixture, together with cottage cheese. Now, you should keep it at moderately high temperature for a half of an hour in order to let the chicken to get to the perfect condition and all the flavors to interlace. In my case, it happened inside the dough that I had to discard later, so for the next time I'll wrap it in the foil and keep it at 180C in the oven for this half of an hour.

Sandwich "Love me tender"

I want to confess that I'm in love - I'm in love with long summer nights when you can stay awake till early hours and enjoy very simple pleasures of living. This usually renders a person hungry at some point! Here it comes, one of the greatest meals invented by humans - simple, tasty and nutritious: a sandwich. This one is not for lazy time, when you just want to send some degradable carbohydrates, lipids and probably proteins directly to your stomach missing a blessed step of preparing and enjoying.

So, first it's necessary to get some grapefruit flesh. Peel one, and remove the film that divides the segments. I am a peeling maniac, so I do it one by one by hands. If you don't enjoy this subtle pleasure of treating your food just cut it out with the knife then (before dividing a grapefruit in pieces).

From this point it becomes fast - take a piece of bread (I prefer darker sorts), apply some creamy goat cheese on it, put one layer of grapefruit pieces and cover the construction with a slice of smoked salmon. After this the only thing left to do is to enjoy the fresh and tender taste!

Cheese cake muffins with berries "Sister to love"

Some of us are lucky and have siblings. These are very special people, we love them and they break our nerve (or vice versa). When love overcomes all other feelings that are inevitable after, maybe, tens of years of being confined in one place, we want to treat them. This was my motivation for these very tenderly sweet muffins. (original receipt is from here, but it's in Russian and I felt like modifying it a little bit).

So, what you need is:
100 g of biscuit cookies (grind in very small pieces) If you don't have a blender it will take some time to do it by hand, just take something that will help you to destroy the unity of a cookie!
50 g of melted butter (margarine does as good)
300 g of Speisequark (if you live in Germany) or just Almette cheese (if you are fan of Ricotta or Filadelfia they will also do, but this one is cheaper). In Russia you just need to take творог.
60 mg of cream (~30%)
1 egg - just an egg!
0.5 cup of sugar powder (we want things to be tender, right?)
100 g of fresh or frozen cranberries or any other sour berries. I took a mixture of frozen forest berries.
~200 g of white chocolate - half of it you break into small pieces and another half will be our icing.

First you mix what used to be cookies with butter - the substance will appear crumbly, that's ok. This will be a base of our muffins, so distribute the mixture among your muffin forms and press it there with fingers so it would densely cover the bottom. Layer of 5-7 mm thick is ok. Put it into the fridge for ~20 min - meantime prepare the rest of the stuff.
So, blend quark, egg, sugar powder and cream together adding each ingredient one by one. If you don't have blender it's ok to just mix it with a spoon. Start warming up the oven to 150C. Add berries and grinded chocolate. If your berries were the frozen ones first defrost them. Don't discard the juice that they yield upon warming up - you can use to color the icing!
So, when the base is cool just put the blessed mixture on top and bake it for 30 min at 150C. When ready cover each muffin with melted chocolate (I mixed with berry juice). Let them rest in the fridge for 3 hours and enjoy!!! (on the picture - the last survivor)

Salad-not-a-hat

There is an old saying that a true woman is able to make a hat, a salad and a scandal out of nothing. Hats and scandals are not in the scope of this post (sorry to disappoint).

The recipe of a good salad is at the same time easy and difficult: just put whatever you have together and dress it with oil or vinegar or sour cream. In fact, there are two points about making a salad:
1. Be adventurous! Sometimes ingredients that are unthinkable together make a great combination. Like blue cheese and dried fruits. But this will be another story.
2. Main ingredient is not salad leave or tomato but, surprise-surprise, - love. If it is present your salad will be unforgettable. I, for example, can barely forget any of my salads.

Today I want to share a salad that became my classic number one. It doesn't have a name yet, so you can suggest yours. The option that came to my mind - salad-not-a-hat.
I will just list the ingredients because I always measure things kind of randomly when it comes to a salad. A small note: when you cut the tomato add 1 small spoonful of sugar to it to neutralize the acidity and soften the taste.

Tomato, champignons, feta cheese, salad leaves, walnuts, dried cranberries, basil, black pepper, olive oil and a tiny bit of blessed truffle oil.

Lemon Muffins

I will start with one of the recent muffins. They have very nice lemon taste and a cool-looking icing!

First of all, you will need a form for muffins - the easiest way is to get a silicon form for 12 muffins. If you like, you can place paper cups inside to make your muffins more colorful and add you a pleasure of removing this paper from muffins before you eat them. Also, would be good to have a mixer or a blender - you know, to mix or to blend. Be aware of that it might happen that you have more dough then for 12 muffins. In such cases I usually make a supermuffin just on the foil substrate.

Now, what else do you need? About an hour of time (if you have some skills in baking, it's less) and some products:
butter or margarine - 100 g - it should be soft, so take it out from the fridge with some anticipation. In case you forgot, simply melt in in a pot.
sugar - 3/4 of a cup - ok, it's a quite arbitrary measure but count a cup to be 200 ml.
2 eggs
yogurt - 250 ml - sour cream or buttermilk would do as well. After all, it doesn't matter that much.
1 lemon: remove the rind (the yellowish layer of a peel. the lemon will look whitish) and juice the lemon. Put 2 tablespoonfuls of the juice apart - for the icing
also, you can brew ~50 ml of very very very strong coffee in order to make some taste contrast to the lemon. If you want it to be actually distinguishable - reduce the amount of yogurt and make it 100 ml of superstrong coffee.
flour - 2 cups + baking powder - half of a package
a bit of salt, cinnamon and vanilla. Also, couple tablespoonfuls of poppy can do a good job
sugar powder - half of a cup - this is also for the icing.
So, now it's kind of easy. Turn on the oven - let it warm up to 180C.
Take a blender and mix the butter and sugar. One by one, add eggs and mix very well after each. Add yogurt, lemon rind and juice.
In another bowl mix the flour, baking powder and spices.
Now, add the liquid part to the dry part. Mix with the spoon but only till the dough has even consistency. If you mix too long your muffins will not rise and will look pathetic (still, being tasty, of course). Distribute the dough in the muffin form and bake it for ~20 min.

How to find out if muffins are ready? Take a clean and dry knife and poke one of them till the bottom. If the knife comes out clean and dry, it's ready.

Meantime, let's take care of the icing - add 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice to the sugar powder and mix. Voila! When the muffins are ready, apply the icing. Be careful, first it becomes more liquid, so there might be some mess. Enjoy! 

Good news, everyone!

Ok, I was thinking of doing this sort of a commitment for quite a while. The fact is that I cook (from time to time) and people eat it (occasionally) and even like it (also, occasionally). My long-term memory is not so strong, so I think it'd be nice to have some sort of a database for the stuff that I cook. And if it helps anybody else to get inspired and maybe bake a chocolate cake then this lj would even be of social good. So, here we go go go!