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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!

Catering at Satsang with Moni and Tomas

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on May 16, 2008
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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

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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…. :)

Flyer

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on April 30, 2008
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We are getting serious now, with a flyer and business cards and all…!

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