New Year's Eve treats (part 2.)

As I promised now I’m gonna show you how to bake some last-minute coconut-white chocolate biscuits. Sadly, in the midst of today’s preparations I don’t have enough time to write a post about the coconut roll, but worry not, it’s gonna happen.

So. The recipe.

New Year's Eve treats (part 1.)

Although I hardly notice it, 2014 is just around the corner. Sure, the neighbours practiced their firework skills and I (with some help) made 3 different dishes in a couple of hours. That’s all well and fine and needed, even, but I’m not particularly in a New Year’s Eve kinda spirit. Of course I could look forward to drink some champagne, but the fact that I’m not fond of alcohol... well, it doesn’t help much.

Rolls and roulades

I’ve studied German for 10 years. That’s a little bit less than half of my life. It seems such a long time, doesn’t it? And yet, if you try to speak to me in German, I would ask you to try again in English. Well, thank you very much, Hungarian education system – there’s nothing better than wasting your time on a language you’re eventually going to hate and banish from your life altogether (and I won’t get started on the real baddies: the incompetent teachers).

So today I was chatting with a middle-aged lady on the train who happened to be of German or Austrian origin. And she asked with her light accent: why zon’t you speak German? And when I told her part of the truth, that I haven’t used it in about 6 years, she said: “Oh, so you make English better for you”. And in a way she was right. I was thinking about our conversation during the better part of the journey, even after we said our “Happy New Years” to each other. (Oh, she was lovely. A bit scary, like a mother dragon, but really nice.) I could revive my German knowledge, but I doubt I ever will. German is something that I don’t really like; therefore I’d rather stay away from it.

Pork with honey and ginger

Life has been really busy in the past few weeks. New job, new people, new challenges, so that’s why this post is so very late. But I hope the wait was worth it. The following dish is simple, yet amazingly tasty. One of my favourites and it’s surprising, because it contains pork. A lot of pork, really. But you know, at the end you get this meaty ... meat, and it doesn’t taste like one. It’s sweet, a bit savoury and not very pork-like. So those of you who aren’t exactly pork-fans: try it out! And be a convert.

Don’t be intimidated by the length of the ingredients list, the most expensive part is the pork itself. As you will notice, the preparation can be quickly done, since it’s just a matter of rough chopping.

Vegetable stock from scratch

So, as I said in my previous post, the time of comfort food has come. Thankfully there are some great recipes in Italian cuisine, like the one I’m going to talk about in my next post. But first, you will need to learn how to make some proper vegetable stock. And here’s how you do it the healthy way. If you can’t be bothered with the real deal, use a stock cube, but that’s cheating. Just sayin’.

Autumn apple cake

I don’t know about you, but I like autumn. Of course it’s more like winter these days, but at least we don’t die from the heat. The trees are slowly going to sleep, their dead leafs falling to the ground, golden and red and dark...

Fall and winter are a time of comfort food. Food that warms the heart when it’s raining or snowing outside. There’s nothing better than cooking up something tasty and then eating it with your loved ones, listening to the relaxing sound of the rain.

So this post will be about an apple cake that’s full of flavour and sweetness and happiness.

Roasted tomatoes on toast

As the summer of 2013 comes to an end we have to talk about this and that.

First of all – I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long. A lot of things were happening during these past few weeks, and I didn’t have that much time or energy to write a new post. Hopefully that will change once autumn, then winter kicks in and I won’t spend my spare energy on making sure I breathe and suchlike.

Second of all I’ve got a really easy recipe for you. I love tomatoes, especially during the summer – it’s one of the best things of the season, I think. They make the unbearably hot weather worth it. It’s been long since I’ve made this dish, and it’s probably not even a proper recipe, but here you go.

Oven-roasted tomatoes on toast

Ingredients:

5 big tomatoes

4 bulbs of garlic

2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary (or you can use dried)

1 ball of mozzarella

1 baguette (or just some slices of bread, it’s your choice)

olive oil

some butter

Step 1. Halve the tomatoes and put them inside an ovenproof dish on some baking parchment so they won’t stick. (And this way you don’t have to do that much washing up.)

Step 2. Inside the dish put 4 bulbs of unpeeled garlic. This way it will go really sweet and mushy and you’ll just love it. Sprinkle the tomatoes with some dried rosemary, or use fresh, it’s even better. If you use fresh herbs, lay the sprigs onto the tomatoes.

Step 3. Season with salt and pepper. Pour some olive oil or other vegetable oil over the tomatoes and bake them until they’re shrivelled and not-so-juicy. (You’ll probably be fine on 180-190°C for about 45 minutes, but it all depends on the size of your tomatoes. It could be worth it to try roasting them at 200°C or a bit higher.)

Step 4. A little bit before the tomatoes are done, slice up the baguette or your bread. If you’re using a baguette, slice it at an angle so its surface will be slightly bigger. That way it will look much fancier. Then heat some butter (or margarine as I did) in a pan with some oil, so it won’t burn. When it’s hot, fry the slices until golden brown. It’s best if you’re using slightly stale baguette or bread, because the butter will resurrect it instantly and give it a nice bit of crunch. While they’re frying, slice up some mozzarella.

Step 5. Take your tomatoes out of the oven and start plating. My method was: baguette – mozzarella – tomato – garlic – mozzarella. For me not all of them got mozzarella on top, but that doesn’t really matter. After you’re ready, start eating!

Well, the thing is, I didn’t bake my tomatoes long enough, so they stayed a bit juicier than I intended them to, but they tasted heavenly! Of course the little sandwiches were so high it was almost impossible to eat them in a slightly less barbaric manner, but wow, it was a good breakfast. They say that these roasted tomatoes are even better when they’re cold – I can’t confirm, they didn’t last that long.

Enjoy!

Gelato all'italiana

I think ice-cream is the best thing about summer. There’s nothing better than eating it on an unbearably hot day. Of course by the end of the season you can get fed up with the whole ice-cream business, and that’s okay, because everything will start again next year.

This year I’ve been thinking a lot about making my own gelato, especially because shop-bought ones are full of unwanted additives, and if not, they’re really expensive. But of course making ice-cream can be really difficult if you don’t have the right recipe, because then you would need an expensive ice-cream maker. So finding the best and easiest recipe was essential for me.

About a week ago I’ve been watching a program called Made in Italy: Top 10 Classic Dishes in which the beautiful Michela Chiappa introduced the viewers to a real Italian delight: home-made, no-fuss chocolate and hazelnut bacio gelato. And it is what it says on the tin: easy, quick and delicious.

The base of the ice-cream is double cream, condensed milk and good quality vanilla extract. The rest depends on your taste. And that’s a good thing, because I couldn’t find hazelnut bacio, and it would’ve been too expensive anyway, so I just put in some dark chocolate instead. I also changed the quantities a bit, so the ice-cream would fit in our really small refrigerator.

Take an onion...

Everyone has to eat. And eating is such a basic element of our lives that we should enjoy every single minute of it, especially when we’re eating something really tasty.

Cooking is the prerequisite of eating. Most of the time. But it’s all about fiddling in the kitchen, isn’t it? Sometimes I wonder why some people just doesn’t like to cook, or why they are too lazy to do something in their kitchen? Why is it better for them to order food? Okay, making pizza is time-consuming and requires a bit of technical knowledge, but making a pasta dish? Or a soup? Yes, at first this cooking-thing can be scary, but with a bit of practice it’s not a big deal. There are always shortcuts! I’m not saying I’m a kitchen god, most of the time I have to phone my mum to ask her questions about measurements and things she can’t even answer because cooking is like second nature to her, she’s cooking by instinct. And that’s a good thing, and I think everyone can reach that point with years of practice.

So I’m inviting you to join my culinary journey. I want to reach that point where I don’t care about measurements anymore because I can cook anything even in my sleep. But beware, I’m a home cook, so you probably won’t see any restaurant-food here. Or the skills of a restaurant chef. I don’t think real cooking requires great knife skills or expensive ingredients. Believe me: to cook and to bake like a kitchen god you don’t have to be Gordon Ramsay. But you do have to be patient, fearless and adventurous.

Okay, you’ll soon realize that I’m hardly any of those. I’m probably the most impatient person in the world, I’m fearful when I try out new things and I rarely like to change recipes that worked before. So here I am, a 24-year-old librarian from Hungary, who attempts to cook a lot and then write about it in English, although it’s not even his native language.

It’s gonna be fun, isn’t it?