Ingredients

This all started because I needed to make something that would use up 500 ml of milk. The milk hadn’t gone sour yet, but we’d just bought a new bottle at the farmers market, so it needed to be used up. I was initially thinking of making natillas which is basically a custard, still liquid but with a bit of body; the problem was that the recipes I saw asked for more eggs than I had. Then I remembered about flan!

You need 2 eggs + 3 egg yolks, which would be these

To my own shame I’ll freely admit that I later forgot to do anything with those 3 egg whites on the right. The just sat in the fridge for a week before they were thrown out.

The first step is infusing the milk with the vanilla bean (slit in half), so just quickly bring it to a boil and then turn off the heat.

Milk and vanilla

This smelled divine, though the vanilla flavor wasn’t very noticeable in the finished product. Next time I’ll try scraping out the beans, and bringing it up to a boil slowly. We’ll see if that makes a difference.

Meanwhile you whisk up the eggs with 120 gr of white sugar, until the color slightly lightens up and the top becomes frothy. Then slowly add the milk.

The custard

Then pass it through a strainer, and there you go, the custard mixture is almost done.

Preheat the oven to 350 F and start making the caramel.

Also, bring a pot of water to a boil. These babies need to be baked au bain Marie.

Caramel is one of those things that is supposed to be easy – only one ingredient, how much easier could you get. It took me 3 tries to get it to work. The book suggests slowly heating up 30 gr of sugar with one tablespoon of water – DON’T DO IT THIS WAY. I tried twice following the book’s directions and ended up with a mess of rock hard sugar that hadn’t even begun to caramelize. Frustrating, to say the least; specially when I remember that my mother did this in the frekin’ microwave, so it can’t be that difficult!

After some Googling, I came up with an even simpler option, which would only require more sugar and a clean pan. So I gave it a try.

Put sugar in a layer on a stainless steel pan. Heat over medium heat. Wait until it starts caramelizing. Mix to make sure no areas burn and it is all uniformly cooked.

That’s it. And it worked. I knew it had to be easy.

Finally - caramel!

Now comes another point where you have to deviate from the official instructions. Well’ not deviate as such, mostly don’t get frustrated that they don’t work. Or since you’re reading this, don’t even try.

You’re supposed to put a layer of caramel on the bottom and the sides of the containers you’re going to bake the flan in. Since your container will be cold, the caramel will become hard the moment it hits it. So just worry about having a thin layer that cover all of the bottom. And don’t fret about the fact that it becomes hard.

Maybe I should have mentioned before that this makes 6 individual flans. They will be a good size for dessert. But you can make 3 big ones, snack sized. Or one huge one, specially if you just double the recipe.

Oven proof containers, round. I suppose ramekins would be the idea option, I used wide mouthed 8 oz canning jars, and they worked great – specially because I could then store the already cooked flans in the fridge with lids on. So I recommend using canning jars if you aleady have them.

Into the oven they go

Remember to fill up the baking pan halfway with water (that’s what you were boiling it for). The book said to bake for 20 minutes, but mine were still liquid inside by then and needed a good 15 minutes more. So take a peek after 30 minutes and touch the top of one of them with a spoon – if it holds its shape then it’s done, if it still feels liquid below the top layer, leave 10 more minutes.

Be patient and let them cool

Once they come down to room temperature, the little flans are ready to be stored or eated.

Flan for a whole week

Getting them out of the cotainers is not as difficult as it might seem, though it’s almost impossible to avoid getting small pieces of the flan cut off. Insert a knife along the edge all the way to the bottom so that air gets in. Then turn over fast onto a plate. If air has gotten to the bottom of the container, the flan should just fall out with the caramel (which through some magic will now be liquid, even if the flan is straight out of the fridge) behind it.

It's not that hard to get it out

Even if you are tempet to eat it as is straight out of the container, try to pop it out into a plate. Otherwise you won’t get the right amount of caramel with every single bite.

Flan

Smiley salmon eggs

This is one of my to-go appetizers. Super easy to make, and really yummy. No cooking involved (unless you want to make it complicated).

The ingredients are pretty straightforward:

• Smoked salmon.
• Salmon roe – buy it at an Asian supermarket and it will be much cheaper that way.
• Sour cream – you can substitute for creme fraiche and it will probably be better.
• Chopped chives - optional, they’re mostly a garnish.
• Some sort of thin bread like base. I like to buy a baguette and slice it thinly. Blinis will work as long as they have the right consistency to hold them together. I once made mini pancakes omitting the sugar in the batter and adding dried onions and chopped chives – they pancakes were great, but their flavor didn’t really shine through the strong salmon flavor, so probably not worth the effort.

And the one and only step is to assemble them. Trying to make them pretty.

Version one of the canapes

My way goes: bread -> Smoked salmon on top -> blob of sour cream -> salmon roe on top of that -> sprinkle with chopped dill.

These are not small dainty one bite creatures; but rather two bite make-sure-the-cream-doesn’t-slide-off yummy pieces of salty salmony heaven. Or if you don’t care about looking graceful you can stuff the whole thing in your mouth. I’ve been known to do it with leftovers.

Depending on how much smoked salmon you have, it might not be enough to use up the whole bottle of roe, so you can make more just with the rest of the ingredients. They’ll be delicious either way – I just like how the bright salty pop of the roe in your mouth complements the smoked salmon.

Variations on a salmon theme

Though if you go for version 2, don’t make the same mistake I did in keeping the size of the bread the same as for version 1. These should be smaller – one bite.

These little canapes are also fun to assemble with friends, conveyor line style. One person takes care of cutting up the smoked salmon, another spoons the cream, someone else spoons the roe, and a last person to sprinkle the dill and eat those that don’t look so pretty. Just make sure that last person is you.

Salmon and salmon canapes

What’s there not to like? Its a change to eat out on the weekends, normally with friends, have a hearty meal that always follows the same guidelines no matter where you go (pancakes if you want them, eggs in various ways with stuff inside, and other such things), it’s a great way to nurse a hangover, it doesn’t make you feel bad for not waking up before noon, and you can have breakfasty food for what really is lunch.

But sometimes going out for brunch seems like too much work. I just want to laze about at home in my pajamas. My friends don’t seem to be awake anyway. And none of our usual brunch places sounds appetizing. On some of those days coffee is about all I can manage, in others I feel like having real food is worth cooking and waiting for it to be done.

Oeufs en cocotte

Lately I’m also having an obsession with baked eggs. They’re always good, no matter what they’re baked with. And if done properly, they go up to amazing. Runny yolks without the crispy whites – I know, blasphemy. What can I say, I never liked the Spanish style fried eggs. No need to have a side of potatoes. And the something else that goes in there is always good, be it spinach, ham, cheese, or – bacon. If you put bacon in there it just can’t be bad.

If we go out for brunch and there’s some kind of baked egg concoction on the menu, I’m likely to order it. Sadly, most places overcook the eggs to the point where the yolks are not runny any more. yes, I know that in a busy kitchen it’s hard to pay attention to the doneness of the eggs, but come on! Cafe Presse makes them pretty well, Smith and Oddfellows have nicer something elses, but overdo the eggs. But hey, if I’m going to be picky, I can always make them at home, right?

They’re actually pretty easy to make, but you’ve got to pay attention.

1. Butter the container you’re going to bake them in.
2. Put 1 Tbsp of cream.
3. Add the other. In this case it’s bacon. Spinach works well. Ham and cheese (something tangy, like gruyere) is a classic. If you have nothing, it’s okay too.
4. Put the eggs on top. Don’t forget a little bit of salt and pepper.
5. Bake at 350 F in a bain Marie – in a baking pan halfway full with boiling water.

How long – how do you like your eggs? I like the whites to be barely cooked; in my oven that takes about 15 minutes.

Maneuvering the water bath contraption can be annoying. So experiment. Try a small cast iron skillet if you want. Try a higher heat, or under the broiler. Just watch the eggs and pull them out when you think they’re done. Don’t worry, as long as they’re not raw, even if you overcook them the taste will be good – and you’ll learn not to overcook them the next time.

Last weekend I was feeling fancy, and had some asparagus sitting in the fridge and no visible meals where I would use them. So they bacame part of our eggy brunch. My favorite way to make asparagus is to roast them at 400 F lightly coated with olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice for 20 minutes. And so I did.

Roasted asparagus with lemon beurre blanc sauce

Since I was feeling fancy this particular Saturday, I decided to make a sauce. Lemon beurre blanc, to be exact. It’s a buttery sauce which includes lemon, white wine, and shallots (though the shallots are strained out at the end). I’m not going to give a recipe for it … it was bad.

Though I’ll admit it was my fault. At the last moment I decided to half the amount of butter (trust me, it was a lot of butter) without halving anything else. It was like sucking on a lemon and washing it down with a shot of butter. The asparagus themselves were good, though. And to make matters even worse, not even the photos came out all that well! I messed up the whites balance, and my very impatient post processing couldn’t fix it. And I’d rather not say what i think the sauce looks like in the above photo. Did I mention that the asparagus were fine once you got rid of the sauce?

Breakfast at our place is hardly even a meal. Grab some coffee if you’re not running late, maybe toast if you actually have time to spare. No frills, no trying to eat together. Watching the clock because we have to dash out of the door soon. There is great pleasure in making a real meal out of it, that’s for sure.

Brunch chez nous

If you’re a bruncher like us, don’t give it up when you have no-one to go out with, or getting out of your pajamas seems like too much work.

Very local tomatoes

After a couple of very failed attempts at making mozzarella that yielded a white goop, which whilst edible was definitely not mozzarella, I decided to sign up for a cheesemaking class. It was fun, somewhat hands on, and I came out of it with a few cheese recipes. Did I learn how to make mozzarella there? ….Kind of: I learnt what texture and look it should have. I also bought some real rennet, which is what made the difference. Moral of the story: forget that junket rennet crap.

During the Summer I was all about cheese. Soft spreadable cheeses, fast to make – fast for cheese. I would love to try to make some real cheese – I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s a cool idea to make something and then wait months to eat it; months of careful monitoring and fretting and wondering if it’s even going to work. But that requires things that I don’t currently have, and getting them would imply that I was somewhat serious about this whole cheese thing – how stupid would I look if a got a small fridge and did all the temperature and humidity setup just to make one wheel of gouda and then decide aged cheeses are just too much work? But Alex did promise to make me a cheese press when I passed my last university class – which I did, yay me! – so maybe I should hold him to his word….

Draining the curds

So I stuck mostly to soft cheeses: quark, cream cheese (so much better than anything you can buy at the store! Seriously. If you think you might actually make it – be warned, it takes about 3 days – ask and I’ll post the recipe), mozzarella, ricotta (okay, this one’s easy peasy), and a couple of others. Glaringly missing is goat cheese, but the truth is I never got round to it.

The one that was the most effort was not the cream cheese, those 3 days are spent draining and letting the buttermilk started cultures do their magic. The most effort was the queso fresco.

Lopsided queso fresco

Queso fresco is a somewhat-hard-but-not-really cows’ milk cheese that needs about 6 hours of pressing and draining. Did I mention that I don’t have a cheese press? Gallon sized milk bottles filled with water were my weights, and a couple of cutting boards strategically placed in an ideally shaped sink did the trick. A little lopsided, but who cares!

It’s a somewhat tart, mild tasting cheese that crumbles when you bite into it. After a few days, the taste becomes yogurty. Nice and fresh, goes with everything. The only downside is that it has to be eaten pretty quickly. Downside for me, that is: my friends were perfectly happy to receive pieces of it.

Queso fresco

And now … I’m not eating cheese. So I am not making it either. I blame the d- word, that’s keeping me apart from my first love and not doing much for me otherwise. But I will be back – once you’ve been bitten by the cheesemaking bug there’s no help! Just wait till the next time I want mozzarella, or  some cream cheese.

I will be back! BWAHAHAHA!!!!!

As you can see, I have kind of abandoned this blog. I could make all sorts of excuses and give tons of explanations – but lets just call it laziness.

This one started with leftover ravioli filling, and some weird looking squash I had no idea what to do with. Also a bit of leftover demi-glace. The filling was homemade ricotta, sundried tomatoes (out of a bottle – sorry, but I don’t have the patience or the amount of tomatoes for that), an egg for binding, and salt and pepper. Simple and good. The squash were those yellow ones that look like a cross between a squished tennis ball and an alien spaceship.

The process was pretty simple: first you cut the squash in half, empty them a little bit, and steam them till they become slightly soft (if you’re lazy like me, that’ll be done in the microwave). Then stuff with the ricotta mixture, and put in a 400F oven. Some grated parmesan on top will fo wonders for looks.

Looking good

Bake until it looks good. Or until the parmesan starts to crust. If you want me to give a number, I’ll say 20 minutes; but I have no idea how long it was. Writing it down would have been way too organized for me.

The demi-glace was reduced a bit more, with some balsamic vinegar.

Voila le sauce!

Aaaaaaaaaand … that’s it. Plate and make it look pretty if you’re going to be taking photos of it. It wasn’t a quick meal what with all the steaming and baking time, but it was certainly simple.

Ricotta stuffed Summer squash

Lots of stuff for this one

As you can see, a lot of things are needed. So this is not a dish you can whip up at a moments notice (unless you have a fabulously well stocked kitchen), it requires some planning. Let me stress this again: it’s worth it!

The list of ingredients I have (that my mother sent me) is for the stuffing of a capón, which is a huge bird which ends up looking like a vulture when stuffed. As far as I know, there is no such chicken this side of the ocean – and I can’t say I’m really that sorry, as the way they make / raise them seems quite cruel. Anyway, the amounts I had are too much to make meatloaf or stuff a bird – they’re about right for doing both these thins though. So I will give the amounts I used this time that fit the meatloaf like pan perfectly. If you are using it to stuff something, modify accordingly, and you’ll need less for a chicken.

• 0.5 lb ground beef
• 0.5 ground turkey or chicken
• 1/3 of a packet of bacon, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, very finely chopped or grated
• 2 eggs
• 1 or 2 dl cream
• 50 g pine nuts, lightly roasted
• Between 5 and 10 dried prunes, you can either coarsely chop them up or leave them whole, whatever you want (I chop ‘em)
• 1 truffle, very fineley chopped – my mother says this is optional, but I think that if you’re going to make such a complex meatloaf you might as well go for it and get the truffle
• Salt and oil
• Spices: white pepper, ground nutmeg, a little bit of ground cinnamon and ground ginger
• 1/4 cup brandy
• 1/2 cup oporto or sweet sherry
• If you’re using this as stuffing: foie gras. you’ll slide in a couple of pieces with the stuffing, on top of it, close to the breastbone.

The preparation can be summed up as: MIX EVERYTHING. But I can give a few more details.

If you remember, this first step should be done the day before. I didn’t and it came out perfectly fine.

Mix in a bowl the ground meats, bacon, prunes, truffle, spices, salt, liquor, eggs (mix them before). Also slightly saute the onion and garlic till translucent, let cool, and add to said bowl. Refrigerate till the following day, when you need to take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before making the meatloaf so that the mixture can come up to room temperature.

The "day before" mixture that wasn't

If you forgot to roast the pine nuts, now would be a good time to do it.

Almost there

Into the bowl they go. My mother says to mix everything by hand as that’s the best way to make sure everything mixes thoroughly. I used a spoonula and it worked fine.

On day #2 you add the missing ingredients: cream and pine nuts. Mix everything well, untill it has an almost doughy consistency.

Ready for the oven

And now you bake. At 350. No idea for how long, but I think mine needed about 40 minutes. Put a bigger dish underneath, because there’s a high chance that liquid will over flow. If you play it by eye, use the usual knife-comes-out-clean technique and you should be fine.

If this looks good, you should have smelled it!

Let rest for about 15 minutes so that it can reabsorb some of the liquid you’ll see down the sides.

If you’re making stuffing, my mother suggest making a sauce with white wine, port, chicken stock, squirt of lemon juice, sal and pepper, and a little bit of truffle if you have leftover. Baste the bird with it.

Meatloaf

This meatloaf is something else. I don’t think it even plays in the same league as most meatloafs. In fact, it deserves some sort of posh, French sounding name, so that it is no longer associated with a vulgar meatloaf. It can be eaten warm or room temperature (good in sandwiches with a little bit of mild mustard and mayo).

Another photo, I can’t have enough of it!

Meatloaf

Ingredients

I’m not really sure about how to give measurements for these ingredients. Because the recipe called for a lot more shallots than I had, so I just eyeballed the rest of the stuff. Also, I think the shallots my mother buys are much smaller than these. So I’ll give her measurements, but feel free to eyeball it a little.

• 18 shallots (ha! this is a side dish, so 2 per person, plus a couple extras just in case)
• 1/2 glass of chicken or vegetable stock (I use store bought because I’ve never made it myself – well, I did try to make vegetable stock once, but it ended up being more like vegetable soup)
• Salt
• 1 tsp butter
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 glass of Pedro Ximenez, or oporto, or another dessert wine (I decided to use Marsala as I’d just bought it out of curiosity and have never been able to find either of those two in this side of the pond)

Now this can be made with any type of onion. But if you’re going to use normal onions you might want to julienne them instead of using them whole like I did for the shallots. If you are using shallots, peel them trying to keep them as whole as possible.

Shallots

These gave enough for 3 or 4 people. Alex and I each had two with the meatloaf that night, and we froze a small container with the rest to have whenever we unfreeze our beef Bourguignonne leftovers. Yes, they freeze well. Or at least my mother says so, and everyone knows mothers are always right.

Onto the fire

Put everything but the wine and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil for about 10 – 15 minutes. Then add the wine and sugar. Mix in and cook uncovered over high heat, moving it frequently.

Keep a close eye on it, because if the sugar starts to burn you’ll have to turn the heat down.

Once most of the liquid is gone, they are ready.

Caramelized shallots

They’re delicious. If you’re cooking them whole like this there will be a really nice contrast between the slight crunchiness of the inside and the sweetness of the outside. If you have julienned them (do it thinly!) they go great with foie gras mi-cuit – specially on thin toast with some other kind of sweet reduction (the aforementioned Pedro Ximenez, or maybe try some raspberry red wine combination).

Ingredients

This one is taken from a different blog: Under the High Chair. I’d already made it before and knew the results would be very good. It was a challenge finding a rice pudding recipe that did not involve cinnamon (as the classic Spanish rice pudding does), as Alex doesn’t like it. And making a dessert just for myself feels too piggish.

Also a big plus was using rose water. I’d bought it out of curiosity, but didn’t know what to use it for. Orange essence (agua de azahar) – which I bought at the same time – I knew went great in cakes and other spongy bakery stuff, but this? No idea. Though be warned, this particular brand of rose water (and same with the orange water) is quite weak, so you might want to be very generous with how much you use.

And the goat milk in the photo? I was curious about it when I saw it at the grocery store (it’s normally out of stock) and decided to try it. I didn’t like it. At all. But in this dish it was fine. I normally have milk in my coffe, and the warm milk meant that I was smelling it not only before drinking but also as it went down my throat. Lets just say that it smells like goat. As far as I’m concerned that’s not a good smell.

Begin by bringing to a boil

It’s actually a pretty simple recipe to make and does not take as long as the recipe says. I would say it takes around 30 – 45 minutes. If I let it simmer for 2 hours all I would have at the end is burn mushy rice!

Let it boil, and then add the rest of the stuff. I also added lemon zest. Just because.

Throw them all in

What? I just like lemons!

And then let it simmer till it reaches the consistency you want. Spanish rice pudding is quite liquid, but I decided to let this one get more dense, like in the recipe’s photos.

Done!

The weird thing is that this time I turned the heat off when it was more liquid than that other time I made it, and yet when I went to eat it (once it cooled down) it was more dry than before! Crazy. Also the rice texture was different this time, more firm. Not hard enough to make it bad, ust different. The first time I made it I also improvised and used coconut water (sold as coconut juice) instead of plain old water, but you couldn’t taste it in the finished product, and I didn’t want to waste that watery goodness this time. Maybe I’ll try adding some coconut milk next time I make it…

Cardamom and rose water rice pudding

The result? Yum! Subtle flavours and chewy rice goodness. More filling than you would think (that bowl up there, for example, is too big a portion).