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Pachamama @ Spring Fair

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on April 1, 2009
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springfair

Pachamama has channeled her inner merchant last Wednesday during Spring Fair at Finca Anemona! It was absolutely lovely and a huge success, so I’m aiming at doing more markets in the near future… I will keep you posted where and when Pachamama will be present with a stand.

I’ve offered home-made lemonade for sale, that the day before was still hanging on the tree. There were moroccan preserved lemons as well. Besides all those lemony things, I had 4 plates on display with food to taste, that could be purchased in little plastic boxes. There was a good old hummus, mojo verde (which sold out incredibly fast), spring salad with fresh artichoke hearts, fresh beans and preserved lemon, and an aubergine salad.

For those who have bought a jar of preserved lemons, here’s a recipe for a delicious grilled pepper salad with preserved lemon:

Ingredients:
-2 red bell peppers
-1 preserved lemon
-1 clove of garlic
-pinch of grounded cumin
-juice of 1 lemon
-large dash of olive oil
-salt

Turn on the oven as hot a possible, and put a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom of the oven. When  the oven is hot, shove in the bell peppers halfway up the oven on a griddle. Turn around every now and then so they get charred evenly. When mostly black all over, take them out and let them cool down.

In the meanwhile, take a preserved lemon out of the jar, remove the flesh and rinse the peel under a running tap. Chop in large chunks.

Take a mortar, put the garlic in with a pinch of coarse sea salt and grind until you get a smooth paste. Add cumin and lemon juice. Stir. Add olive oil, stir again. There you have your dressing!

Now back to the peppers. Remove skin and seeds with your fingers. Please don’t wash them under running water, even though that seems a practical thing to do, as they will loose some of their intense sweet taste. Tear in large pieces.

Now arrange the pepper and the lemon on a nice dish, pour the dressing over. This is typically a dish that improves over time, so you can make this one well in advance if you like.

Dragon Soup

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on March 18, 2009
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dragon-green1Last week I’ve been taking care of my 3-y old nephew and 1-y old niece for 10 days. I’ve had such a lovely time with them and have unleashed my maternal instincts on them!

I’m not really used to cooking for children, but it’s common knowledge that they’re not too fond of vegetables, especially if they’re recognizable as vegetables. Being a responsible auntie however, I thought it was important for them to eat healthily, and I refuse to give them anything I wouldn’t eat myself, like those horrid canned peas or processed foods.

I must say I was quite flattered with their appetite, as they happily munched away most of the things I cooked for them and didn’t complain about coriander and other ‘exotic’ flavors.

One day, I came up with a soup that went down surprisingly well, regardless the fact that it contained loads of green veggies! I think the secret was the story it came with. The recipe is inspired by the Lebanese Spring Soup from Claudia Roden, but I withheld that information from the kids of course. Instead I told them this was a soup made of a green dragon, It contained dragon scales and even dragon warts, as proof it was made from a real dragon. Ow, I’m such a witch, manipulating those innocent children with blatant lies to make them eat their veg…but it worked!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
-1 chopped onion
-2 cloves of garlic
-a large carrot
-2 stalks of celery
-2 potatoes
-half a broccoli
-2 big handfuls of spinach
-frozen peas
-bay leaf
-handful of chopped coriander
-handful of chopped mint
-1 liter of vegetable stock
-bread
-4 cloves of garlic
-pinch of salt
-olive oil

Put olive oil in a large soup pan, and slowly fry onion and garlic until tender. In the meanwhile, chop all the vegetables, except the spinach and peas. Add potato, carrot and celery and fry a bit more for a minute or 5. Then add broccoli and stir. Pour vegetable stock, add bay leaf, bring to boil and let simmer for about 10 minutes until the veg is tender.

In the meanwhile, cut bread into small pieces and fry with olive oil, garlic and salt, until crispy. Drain on kitchen paper.

Now comes the spinach part (make sure your kids are well away from the kitchen, because if they see you do this, the dragon story won’t go down anymore). Throw the spinach in the soup, take the bay leaf out and turn heat off. Get out your hand blender and blend the soup until smooth. Careful, or your kitchen and you will end up looking rather green as well. You will have a beautiful bright green soup by now!

Add the peas for dragon warts and chopped herbs for dragon scales. Serve in bowls and garnish with fried bread on top.

For the love of pumpkin…

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on October 12, 2008
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…and the love of easy to prepare dishes, I’ll give you my super quick and easy Pumkin Soup recipe!

Ingredients:
-a large piece of beautiful fresh orange pumpkin, cut in chunks
-a big sweet potato – or a couple of smaller ones, again cut in chunks
-a few carrots in small pieces
-2 chopped celery stalks
-1 chopped onion
-2 cloves of garlic
-1 teaspoon of ground cumin
-1 teaspoon of mild paprika
-1 dried chili pepper
-1 liter of prefab supermarket vegetable stock
-fresh coriander
-and – if you’re into dairy – a generous blob of creme fraiche.

Take a soup pan and throw in a dash of olive oil. Sauté the spices, along with the onion on a medium fire, until the onion looks glassy. Add garlic, chopped carrot and celery and leave it for about 5 minutes, stirring every once in a while, until you can smell all the flavors.

Then add the chunks of pumpkin and sweet potato. Stir so everything is covered with spicy oil and sauteéd veggies. Empty the pack of vegetable stock in the pan and bring to boil. Once boiling, temper the heat and let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes. Taste. I find I don’t need to add extra salt because the stock I use is already salty, but maybe you will want to use salt if your stock doesn’t contain it.

When ready to serve, fill some nice big bowls with soup, drop a generous blob of creme fraiche in each bowl if you’re not on a calorie restriction program, and sprinkle with fresh coriander leaves. Delicious with crusty wholemeal bread. Get ready for a heartwarming autumnal experience…!

By popular demand: Juicy lemon cake

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on May 19, 2008
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Mint tea and lemon cake
This juicy lemon cake has all the qualities you can expect from an old-fashioned cake: it’s easy to make and delicious! Ask the people who were at Satsang, they loved it, and asked me for the recipe. After some nights of deep thought I decided to share it here with you! I confess right away that it is not entirely my creation, but very inspired by a recipe from the lovely Nigella Lawson, with some minor twists and tweaks.

Ingredients:
-125 grams of butter
-175 fine white sugar
-2 large free range eggs
-grind of one large biological lemon peel
-175 grams of flour
-1 small bag of baking soda
-pinch of sea or Himalayan salt
-4 tablespoons of milk

For the syrup:
-juice of the lemon you used for the peel (about 4 tablespoons)
-100 grams of white sugar

Tools:
-1 preheated oven (180 degrees)
-1 cake tin of about 23×13x7 cm (please allow yourself the luxury of a silicon one – if you don’t already own one; they make baking, well… uhm, a piece of cake!)

Preheat the oven and use your clean hands to distribute a tiny bit of sunflower oil over the surface of the baking tin.

In a food processor, beat butter and sugar until a white and creamy mixture. Keep on beating and add eggs and lemon peel until you get a beautiful eggy creamy frothy mixture.

Pour this mixture in a large bowl. In another bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt, and gradually put this flour mix through a sieve, while folding it in the eggy mixture with a spatula. Fold in the milk and add the cake mixture to the tin.

Bake for about 45 mins, or until golden brown and risen in the middle. When you put a skewer in the middle of the cake, it should come out clean. Then it’s done.

In the meantime, while your kitchen starts to smell divinely, you make the lemon syrup. That sounds so much more elaborate than it really is! Just put lemon juice and sugar in a little sauce pan, and heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool down.

When your cake is ready, take it out of the oven, and make little wholes all over with that same skewer you used to check if it was ready. Pour the syrup as evenly as possible over the cake so it absorbs the sticky juice entirely.

Let the cake cool down completely before you take it out of the tin, or it will fall apart.

That’s all there is to it. The result is a very juicy, zingy, moist lemon cake!

From Asilah, with love

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on May 2, 2008
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Morocco is not too far away from here, and makes a fantastic getaway for the weekend. Last year we went over a couple of times. On our last visit, we ended up in this amazingly cute village facing the Atlantic called Asilah. A lovely traditional Medina with lots of Spanish and Portuguese influences where you can find loads of really beautiful murals because of the international art festival that they have each year in August.
Asilah - facing the Atlantic
We had a simple dinner on Saturday night in a tiny restaurant, with a very delicious starter! I asked for the recipe, which the owner of the restaurant was happy to share with me. The funny thing was that we had kind of a language barrier, so he invited me into the kitchen. Saida, the cook, demonstrated how it was done, while I took notes and smelled spices to determine what it was! Here’s the recipe:

Salade Boudenjel

Ingrdients:
-5 small aubergines (the really small variety)
-clove of garlic
-teaspoon of paprika
-teaspoon of grounded cumin
-handful of chopped parsley
-pinch of salt
-olive oil

Cut aubergine in small cubes and steam until tender. Put olive oil in frying pan, add garlic, paprika and cumin and fry on a low fire for a minute. Add aubergine and salt, and fry some more on a medium / low fire until there are no more cubes visible. Then add the parsley. Let cool off a bit, garnish with (preferably Moroccan dried) olives and eat with bread.

Another classic

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on May 1, 2008
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I just love tapenade, even though it’s a bit ‘last century’. However, I’m not a real food fashionista and to me taste is timeless. So here goes – don’t know if I’ve got the traditional recipe here, but this is how I do it:

Ingredients
-1 can of stoneless black olives
-1 can of anchovies
-a scoop of capers
-clove of garlic
-1 dried chili pepper
-some good quality olive oil

Put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a food processor, together with the garlic, the drained anchovies and the crumbled chili pepper. Blend until you have a paste. Add drained olives. Blend quickly. I like my tapenade to be chunky, but feel free to blend until the mixture’s got your preferred texture. Put in a bowl, and add capers. That’s it! The taste becomes deeper when you leave it for a couple of hours. Serve on room temperature with some crusty bread. Great company for a glass of wine and a sunset!

Mojo, baby!

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on April 30, 2008
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Even though my main specialty is cooking Moorish food, I pretty much like anything Mediterranean, so today I’m giving you the recipe for Mojo. No, not Austin Power’s mojo – groovy baby! – but a green sauce made from loads of parsley, that tastes great with (almost) anything. There’s also a red variety, great tasting too, but I’ll keep that one for another day.

Mojo is standard staple on La Gomera, they have in in restaurants on the table like you find ketchup elsewhere. Seems like they can’t live without it, and I can see why, as it is not only delicious but very healthy too.

I got this recipe from a local from La Gomera, who had invited me to a BBQ at this little finca in the middle of a banana tree plantation! He had prepared all the food and the Mojo, and while we were eating, we ran out of Mojo. So he stood up to prepare some new! Of course I was following every move he made to get to know this recipe! He went to a lemon tree and picked a lemon, he grabbed a handfull of fresh parsley and went into his kitchen. Here’s how he made it:

Ingredients:
-Loads of parsley (Can’t tell you exactly how much. Just loads, 4 bunches or so.) without the hard stalks (smaller stalks don’t matter). Make sure you get flat-leaved parsley and not the curly stuff because the curly one is bitter.
-Juice of 1 Lemon (if it’s a small one. Make it 1/2 lemon if it’s large)
-1 Small dried chili pepper
-1/2 Teaspoon Grounded cumin
-2 Cloves of garlic
-Salt
-Good quality extra virgin olive oil

Take a blender and put in the lemon juice, the salt, the cumin, the chili pepper and the garlic. Blend until fine. Than add some olive oil and all the parsley. Blend again until the parsley is fine. Then add more olive oil until you get a thick sauce, with the consistency of pesto. Taste. Add more salt, lemon, salt or cumin to taste.

(The traditional way of making Mojo involves a mortar and lots of grinding. It does affect the taste in a positive way, but you have to be really, really in the mood for half an hour of grinding… I prefer the 21st century method.)

Yummmmm! Keeps in the fridge for about a week.

Tastes really good with grilled veg, seafood and….Papas Arrugadas!

Now that is a real simple way to prepare delicous poatoes. Ow, what the heck, I’ll give you that recipe too:

Ingredients:
-Potatoes, preferably not too big and young, washed and brushed
-500 gr. course sea salt

Put potatoes in a pan, cover with water and add 500 gr salt. Yes’ I’m not exaggerating here! Boil until the water is almost evaporated. Then drain the potatoes, give them a very quick rinse and let them dry. They end up a bit wrinkeled, hence the name, and have a salty skin and a sweet taste in the inside…

That’s it for today, now I’m hungry…. :)