Carrot cake

You won't need any other cake recipe. Cake for breakfast. Especially if you have a garden and especially, especially if you have toddles that hang on your skirt or pants every time they see you eating something (nevermind the fact that they already ate almost enough to not to be able to sit up for one hour... I guess I know who An inherited that from!).

I used yellow carrots which are sweeter than average but all the other times I used orange ones which also made it wonderful. For some reason this has a very subtle hint of orange taste, but only the one with yellow carrots...

I didn't come up with the recipe but I always use overnight soaked raisins in place of canned pineapples and I never ever frost my cakes because they are too pretty to be covered by anything else.

Here is the recipe:

Carrot cake

Fried chickpea with crispy buckwheat shell

As a semi-permanent traveler I used to long intensively for a way to travel with beans that didn't involve cans or hours of cooking, to have always a relatively big stash in my bag. Little did I know you could fry chickpeas.

Fried chickpeas??? was one of the first things I thought when I entered my first general Asian food shop ever. I was 20 (yes, I know, but they just don't have these things where I come from, except for Japanese). I was wild. Fried chickpeas, fried peas, fried chickpea dough strips, and fried mix. Everything piping hot, making me sweat like a popping popcorn, steaming (try making popcorn with a glass lid and you will see what I mean). And it made me pop too.

Well, the thing is, I know what I will make before my next trip. If I'm too lazy I will just take canned hummus but it is very likely I will get my hands on the dough. I always do. Next time with something other than a freshly cooked meal, since it goes partly spoiled, since we like to try new flavours we find on the way and end up eating it for breakfast and not wanting to repeat it for lunch (we already ate the same thing before leaving too).

Fried chickpea with crispy buckwheat shell

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked/canned chickpeas (can be firm)
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp spaghetti spices
• 1 tbsp salt (if chickpeas aren't salted yet)
• 5 tbsp buckwheat flour
• Coconut oil, for deep frying

Cooking Directions

1. Drain chickpeas, making sure they are still a bit wet.
2. Let the chickpeas marinate with spices and salt for 12 hours (1 is fine too but 12 is nicer).
3. Add the flour, mix well, making sure the flour is well distributed.
4. Heat the frying oil (my stove has 6 marks, I use the 5).
5. Throw a little piece of bread or a piece of onion peel in the oil, and if it fries immediately, the temperature is good. Take off the bead/peel (so it won't burn) and add the chickpeas carefully (so you won't burn :-) ).
6. Fry until it becomes a bit golden, about 3-5 minutes.

Yummy garden lentil stew

Quite often I soak lentils with no plans. It just makes me happy to have the possibility of eating freshly cooked lentils without having a mal plan.

I am completely not a meal plan person.

When I think before sleeping about breakfast that is an exception. I am way to driven and drawn by improvisation that I just can't figure out what to make, even for a party. I just make it.

Yesterday I just made lentils, with some veggies from our garden. Did I mention we can't get past all that zucchini? When we think we are finishing someone gives us some. And tomatoes. So many great tomatoes that the fellow gardeners throw away in the compost heap. Onion greens. Why would anyone plant chives and onions if they are going to throw away the onion greens which are, I must say, so crazily similar I would find it hard to distinguish in a soup?

I recommend cracking the coriander with a mortar and pestle but if you are like me and don't have one (and I call myself a cook), put them in a chopping board and crack them with your knuckles or whatever works.

Garden lentil stew

Yield: 3-5 portions
Ingredients

• 1 cup lentils (soak for a few hours, preferrably more than 6)
• 1 tbsp coriander seeds, cracked
• 3 carrots, chopped (a bit more than 1/2 cm, 1/4 in)
• 1 yellow (or green) zucchini, cubed approximately 2.5 cm, 1 in)
• 1 stalk onion greens (chives is also great), thinly sliced

Cooking Directions

1. Cook the lentils with the coriander, until very soft but not yet mushy. Check at 20-25 mins (depends on your stove and your lentils.
2. Add the carrots and stir.
3. After two minutes add the zucchini, stir.
4. Let the zucchini get soft. Add salt to taste.
5. Add the onion greens, stir and remove pot from the fire.
6. Let the pot sit, covered, for at least 15 minutes, a great way to blend taste a bit more in any stew.
7. Serve, drizzle with plenty of olive oil.

Veggies and pasta stew/soup

The delicious, comforting richness of tomato soup with pasta reminds me of one trip I had with my mother. I think it was the same one when I got the toilet clogged in the hotel and, failing to mention that it was my fault, we actually got an upgrade to a better room :-)

And when I was a child I only ate soup that had pasta in it. No meat. No veggies other than carrot and potato. And definitely no greens. Now my menu is quite richer (especially in veggies), since I have been experimenting with food for six years five of those vegetarian).

I love making things in huge pots; I think this can serve six!

I had put more liquid, I just wanted to show how pretty the veg=gies were :-)

Veggie stew

Ingredients

• 2 cups canned chopped tomato
• 3 carrots, chopped
• 3 onions, peeled and chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped (a bit of the leaves too)
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 bit oregano
• 1 cup elbow pasta
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Cooking Directions

1. Fry onions and garlic with oregano in olive oil, in medium high fie, stirring frequently until onions get transparent.
2. Add celery and keep frying until it starts having a stronger green color.
3. Add carrot, fry a bit, add the tomato and some water (up to 5 cups to begin with).
4. Wait for it to boil and add the pasta.
5. When it boils well, check if there is enough water. To make a watery soup add at least 2 more cups hot water (like from thee tap).
6. When pasta is al dente, remove and let it sit a few minutes (if you cook the pasta until soft it will be cooked even further since the pot is still hot).
7. Serve :-)

Veggie nasi goreng - big batch for freezing

Nham :-)

I have always been crazy about fried rice. Having eaten about a truckload of it, I never imagined how much this version would spin me around like we were dancing for a competition.

I actually got to know this one when sleeping over at a friends who lives on gluten (and I barely eat any), and to my surprise he wasn't going to let me live on eggs this time. And that was the start of a passionate love affair (with the nasi goreng I mean :-) ). I had the leftovers the next morning, sizzled in the butter from frying the omelette, and my dear breakfeast was born. By the way, if you want to make a failproof omelette, check this out.

This batch will yield loads of food, so make it for a party or freeze it (or both,depending on the size of the party or the freezer); you can also make 1/4 of it for a regular amount, then use only 1 bell pepper of your choice). Please don't hurt yourself converting everything to perfection; if making 1/4 us 1 clove of garlic on the bigger side and so on.

Veggie nasi goreng

Ingredients

• 2kg (4lb) rice
• 9 tbsp coconut oil
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 red bell peppers, chopped
• 2 yellow bell peppers, chopped
• 5-15 seeded chilis
• 2 thin leeks, or one regular, sliced (as thick as the flesh of the bell pepper, I wish I had done that)
• 5-9 carrots, chopped in thin strips or coarsely grated
• 1kg (2lb) frozen peas
• 250g (9 oz) soy sprouts (tauge)
• 1/2 cup kecap manis (I didn't have it, used soy sauce)
• 3 tbsp turmeric

Cooking Directions

1. Cook the rice in a giant pot, as instructed here - it will tak longer because of the great volume
2. Let it cool until at least body temperature (you might want to transfer it to a giant bowl/fridge drawer if you have one). In the meanwhile chop the rest. You might want to ask help :-)
3. Add the coconut oil to the giant pot, adding the onions and garlic, fry them a bit and then add all the peppers, the leek and the carrots.
4. Keep stirring and frying until the leek greens look brighter.
5. Add peas and keep frying.
6. After 1-2 minutes, add the soy sprouts and the rice (if it is too much for the pot, keep only half or a quarter of the veggies in there, repeating with the rest later.
7. Fry everything adding the kecap manis (or half or a quarter depending on how much veggies).
8. Repeat if needed.
9. Not all the rice needs to be fried, but certainly half and the best is at least two thirds. Stir everything very well with the remaining rice.
10. Let it cool completely and then freeze in freezer bags.

How to make the perfect omelette, every time

There is nothing better than nasi goreng leftovers and an omelette for breakfeast.

Yes, breakfeast. Started as a typo but i just realized that maybe whoever wrote the word first, this one, had a serious typo. It's just the best meal of the day (alright, dinner too...). I can't grasp that I grew up eating white bread with margarine for breakfast. These things you just don't do to yourself. Do yourself justice.

Anyway, eggs will keep you full and load you with protein so you can have a great active day without craving food after two hours, and a nasi goreng loaded with veggies will help you in the kick. The rice is just yummy :-) I fry the omelette, put it in my plate, and follow with addind the nasi goreng to the hot, buttery pan and let it sizzle for a bit while stirring, and smelling all the warm spicyness in the air.

I had a lot of unintentional scrambled eggs before I saw Kris, a friend of our best friend making an omelette; I based my method on his (it's almost the same). Thanks :-)

The perfect omelete recipe (amount per person)

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 bit salt
• 2 tbsp butter
• A bit of filling (optional)
• A spatula
• A skillet, plain, inclined sides, flat bottom. Very important!

Cooking Directions

1. Add butter to the skillet, enough to cover the pan bottom with minimal swirling.
2. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a tiny bit of salt. Make it 3 at a time if you are making for more people to ensure equally sized omelettes.
3. When the butter is very hot (after it has been crackling for a while, careful to not to burn too much (a bit is fine), pour the beaten eggs in and wait until it's almost completely solidified.
4. Add then the fillings of your choice if any. If you want to fold the omelette, add fillings only to half of it. You can even make an omelette pizza with tomato sauce, cheese and whatever :-)
5. If you want to fold, this is the time. If you want flip, throwing it in the air, do it at your own risk - better train with pancakes first until you get the hang of it, they don't break as easy.
6. Let it fry a few seconds more (if with cheese, make sure it's melted)
7. Slide a spatula underneath to make sure it's all loose and slide into your plate.

Enjoy! What is your favorite omelette filling?

Buckwheat and veggie yumballs

I have grown up with croquettes, especially the kind with a ham and oozy cheesy filling, enveloped by an oh-so-yummy thin layer of dough, coming in giant (snack bar) and tiny (party) sizes and every time I had a birthday party they were always snatching my attention, and the lucky ones that survived until the next day didn't escape my merciless delight. I at them at school. I ate them in my afternoons out. I ate them whenever I could.

I have made many kinds of croquettes; I started with rice croquettes to use leftovers, when I lived in the mountains and was learning to cook with a guy that teached me to like veggies. I have tried a few times, often making them very spicy for yumminess and digestibility, and today I came up with these.

The food naming police is going to say these aren't croquettes because there is no breadcrumbs involved. You can. I just felt like calling them yumballs because that is what they are. But they are also croquettes to me.

I used leftover homemade baby food (sorry An) from yesterday which was already delicious per se. It consisted from mashed potatoes, carrots and belgian endive (witloof, if you ever come across go for it, it is delicious - if you are into bitter leafy goodness like I am, at least).


I'm a disaster with frying, even more than with baking bread, but this one actually worked (yay!)

Let's get to the business:

Buckwheat and veggies yumballs

Yield: +- 25 balls
Ingredients

• 2 cups mashed veggies (I used potato, carrot, belgian endive and egg - yes it is a veggie, on this recipe :-) )
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup + extra buckwheat flour
• 1 tsp-tbsp garlic powder or finely chopped garlic if you like it sharp
• 1-2 tbsp curry powder

Cooking Directions

1. Start heating the oil; be sure to not to let it smoke! Steam is fine. My stove has 6 settings, I put it on 5 for coconut oil and lower to 4 when it reaches the right point
2. Add the egg and the salt and spices to the mashed veggies and mix well.
3. Add half of the flour, mixing well and adding extra until it forms a dough that doesn't stick to your hands when they are well dried.
4. Make sure everything is venly mixed.
5. Throw a tiny piece of dough into the oil when it starts bubbling and if it starts frying right away - like in immediately - then make balls about 1.5" or 3.5 cm diameter (can vary), throwing each one directly into the frying oil, keeping them on a single layer and frying until golden brown. Count on a few minutes.
6. Fish them with a frying ladle or a fork and put in a plate covered wth a kitchen paper towel to keep them crispy, rolling them around a bit.
7. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper if you wish.
8. Yummier when hot but still awesome the next day; it won't be crispy but it will be still full of tasty goodness.

Black eyed peas healthy chili

I remember the first time I ate chili; we were starving after hitching to the Sfinks world music festival in Boechout, close to Antwerpen, and food was not allowed inside so we had to drop our bags at a nearby bar (not that we didn't at before coming in, but hitching can use a lot of energy!). There were wonderful food stalls and the most appropriate fuel there was chili (can't survive on pancakes!)

It was our last money and it was well spent :-) We had train tickets for after those two days partying and hanging out with supernice long-time-no-see friends of my husband and sleeping in the bushes after walking around in the middle of the night. We were planning to go picking cherries afterwards but it was raining like something broke up there and we didn't go (I'm glad, I'd pass out after arriving, I was really tired).



We lived on a few pots of chili and that was a great fuel; in the morning I even tried to reproduce it with cans of foods but there is nothing that beats slowly simmred chili, where the flavors really brew and blend like there is no tomorrow. But there is always tomorrow, tomorrow's chili and tomorrow's party (even if that means being cozy in the couch with buttery popcorn). The chili you cook today is tomorrow's, because even though it is amazing and mouthwatering when freshly cooked, it is twice as much in the next day, or at least a few hours later. It was a little on the dry side but very tasty anyway! I will definately make it again.

Well, I love foods that bring sweet memories. I created my own version of chili (with a bit similar flavors but more and different veggies), after buying a package of black eyed peas in the new Turkish shop here. I have never eaten it before, so I had no clue what to do with it.



Here it is:

Black eyed peas healthy chili

Yield: 5 portions (at least)
Ingredients

• 1 cup (dried)/2 cans black eyed peas
• 1 big chili pepper or a couple of small ones (can always add chili powdr later)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp cumin (powder)
• 2 medium onions

Cooking Directions

1. If cooking the black eyed peas from scratch: Soak them for 6 hours or overnight, drain and rinse well. Canned: Jump to step 5
2. Add fresh water, without salt otherwise they will stay hard (it will be added later in the chili)
3. Bring the beans to a boil, and lower the fire. Add the pork to a pot and meanwhile chop all the veggies, keeping the tomatoes and courgettes/zucchinis apart..
4. Let it simmer for half an hour to forty five minutes. When almost perfectly soft, drain
5. Put the pork in a pot, stirring a bit to separate while it is over the fire in the lowest setting
6. This will make a bit of the fat melt so you can use it to fry everything.
7. When you see some of the fat melted in the bottom of the pot, add all the veggies, except for the courgette and tomato.
8. Fry everything in medium high fire until the onion is soft
9. Add everything else along with salt
10. Adding an extra can of tomatoes will make it stewier
11. Let simmer for at least 15 minutes, 25 is better
12. If you want it spicier add extra dried chili
13. Enjoy :-)

I got a little help to make a "studio" for my food photo shooting; I will get an extra lamp and looking forward to a decent camera too. It's a lot more of an detailed part of food blogging than I ever thought.

Making the perfect buttery popcorn

I have grown up on popcorn. Plain, with salt, at 3 in the afternoon, almost every day. I just loved it!

I still do. As a matter of fact, it is one of my standard midnight snack (the other is kuttu ki puri). That is the snack for lazy people, easier than the 5 minutes walk to the shop to get chips and much healthier, besides filling you with not much density so it is easily digestible and it won't hurt your waistline.

I have a little secret here.

If you tried to make popcorn with butter before you know how disappointing it can be to burn your last corn and having all the shops closed or far away. Making popcorn with vegetable oil and making it soggy with butter is not really fun.

My secret ingredient is ghee.  That is clarified butter, or butter fat. The butter is simmereed until the solids separate. I will post a recipe in the future, but I need to make it again (I only post tried and tested recipes and for me it was so long ago that I don't even remember anymore). In the Indian or Asian shops you can find it sometimes cheaper than butter itself, in cans, and since it can be stored at room temperature (as far as the tradition goes, and that is how I do) like olive oil and the like, since it has no water it lasts longer. Make sure you read well the package and that you are buying butter ghee, as they sell shortening as vegetable ghee.

Butter popcorn

Yield: 1 quart/1 liter
Ingredients

• 1/3 cup popcorn kernels
• 3 tbsp ghee
• Salt to taste
• Pot with fitting lid
• Bowl (optional)

Cooking Directions

1. Heat the ghee almost on maximum (wait 2 minutes)
2. Add 3 popcorn kernels
3. Put on lid
4. Wait for them to start popping
5. If they don't after 2 minutes and burn add other 3 kernels, they will pop
6. When they do add the other kernels, spreading them around so that they are in an even layer
7. Let them start to pop
8. If you want to keep them on the pot to save you dishes fill the sink or a heat resistant bowl half as deep as your pot with cold water
9. If not just sit and enjoy the show
10. Shake them every two minutes
11. When there are several (ten to fifteen) seconds between pops add the popcorn to a bowl or pot the pan into the bowl with water.
12. If you put it in a bowl, enjoy
13. If you keep it in the pan, wait five to ten minutes and enjoy!
14. It also works with coconut oil

It's quite easy, and you will probably notice that the ghee will yeld you bigger, airier popcorn. I have tried several oils  (coconut, butter, olive, peanut, sunflower, soya, grapeseed - be careful with refined oils because they carry hexane residues but that is a talk for another post) and ghee deserves by far the first place, and secondly coconut.

I usually make the double for me alone because it is just so good, and it's also great for a picnic in a sunny day (just let it cool down a bit before putting the lid on the container or use a big paper bag after making a couple of small holes in it for thee crunchiest results).

Have fun,

Beet

Making yoghurt on a thermos

I like yoghurt. A lot. I also like to sit back and relax and go to sleep to find myself in the kitchen in the next morning peeking at a fresh batch of yoghurt and that divine good-for-you fermentation scent. I am a yoghurt scent junkie.

And it will save you bucks from buying yoghurt and it will save you space in the kitchen (yay, no need for a yoghurt maker!) and it will save you bucks from buying the machine and it will make you a happy person.

After all, it's an easy way to make yoghurt in small batches, since you are free from the ever-so-lasting temperature checks. It will be fine overnight, you can rest assured, and if your cheapskatiness goes along on your trips you will be glad to have seen this even more.

All you need is:

A thermos bottle/mug (at least 2 cups capacity, preferrably, but works fine if less). If it was used for coffee, wash it until odorless or better choose another, or your yoghurt will smell/taste like it (yikes!)
Milk just enough to almost fill the thermos
1 to tablespoon of plain yoghurt for each 2 or 3 cups (no need to be strict here, just estimate)

Warm the milk until a tiny bit over the body temperature, but so that you can comfortably hold your finger into it for at least 10 seconds. Add the yoghurt, gently whisking or mixing with a fork until it gets dissolved.
Pour into the thermos, close it leaving the lid in the open mode but still covered, and forget it for 8 to 12 hours (nice thing to make for breakfast!). Check the taste then and if you would rather have it more sour just leave it a bit longer until it gets how you like it and refrigerate or remove the lid so the heat will escape.