Archive for May, 2008

Ditching the plastic!

Thank God for Ikea, or more precise: thank God for Ikea on half an hour driving distance from my house! Until last year a pilgrimage to Ikea took half a day, but since a couple of months we are blessed with our own Ikea. It’s no surprise I really like going there.

Now with my own catering business it’s even more legitimate for me to go there, as I am converting from plastic cups, plates and cutlery to the real thing: Glass, earthenware and stainless steel! Easy to clean, much nicer to eat and drink from and – most important – much better for our planet.

Take a look at the nice glasses I bought this morning! They go by the name of Pokal…

Lunch @ Debra’s yoga retreat

It’s been a while: time flies when you’re having fun! Just a quick post here to let you know I’ve been doing lunch last week for Debra’s yoga retreat. I’ve served a light lunch, because putting your legs up your neck goes much better on easily digestible food! ;

Here’s what the people ate:

-Tomato dip from Marrakech (yes, the same one everybody devoured on the Satsang. I knew the people at the retreat did not have it before, so could safely repeat this one)
-Courgettes marinated in Chermoula (also a repeat-recipe, for the same reason as the tomato dip)
-Salad with fava beans, artichoke hearts and preserved lemon
-Jewish Egyptian salad with fennel, celery, potatoes and parsley
-Bread

Everybody really liked it and later that day I even got a phone call from one of the attendants who wanted to share her enthusiasm about the lunch with me!

By popular demand: Juicy lemon cake

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!

Catering at Satsang with Moni and Tomas


Last weekend (and the days before the weekend) we’ve been busy preparing, cooking and serving a lot of food for hungry people at the Satsang, that was given by Moni and Tomas from Canada. My friend Michaela came over from Holland to join me, which was great fun and handy too because I could not have done this one on my own!

We continuously prepared fresh Chai and Morocan mint tea, which were served with juicy lemon cake, carrot cake and banana-rama bread. Especially the carrot cake has caused a couple of serious cases of addiction over the weekend! ;)

On both days we served lunch. To those of you who were not there, you have missed the following:

Saturday:
-Sweet tomato dip from Marrakech
-Hummus al Tahini
-Beet lemon salad
-Courgettes marinated in Chermoula
-Spicy fava bean salad
-Moroccan potatoe salad
-Empanadas with spinach and feta

Sunday:
-Fava bean puree with cumin
-Ajlouk de courgette
-Carrot cilantro salad
-Salad of roasted peppers and preserved lemon
-Chickpea salad with parsley
-Tabouleh
_Mock minced meat empanadas with sultanas and pine nuts.

We also threw in some Pachamama merchandise! We sold the most delicious fresh organic olive oil in beautiful little bottles (the olives come from Menno’s garden and are handpicked by Michaela) and I made raw crackers with linseed, sunflower seed, pumpkin seed and sesame seed,flavored with onion and tamari: a healthy, tasty snack for everyone, and especially for the gluten-sensitive amongst us!

We’ve gotten rave reviews on the food and had great fun while doing all this! What more can you ask for?

From Asilah, with love

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

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!