Strudel with blackcurrant conserve and frozen berries

 

I do not often bake strudels, in fact I don't think I did any beforehand, apart from Xmas stolen. The original recipe comes from White Plate- a beautiful polish blog and it sounded wonderful however not having any orange marmalade I did mine with blackcurrant conserve and frozen berries.

 

Strudel with blackcurrant conserve and frozen berries

 

Ingredients:

125ml warm milk

1tsp of instant yeast

1 egg

50g of butter melted and cooled

300g all purpose flour

20g sugar

pinch of salt

1tsp vanilla extract

 

For the filling:

2 handfuls of frozen berries

few tbsp. of blackcurrant conserve (approx. 100g)

1 tsp brown sugar, muscovado sugar or vanilla sugar

 

Glaze:

egg white mixed with 1tbsp of water

little sugar to sprinkle, the same as used for the filling

 

Let's do it:

Dissolve yeast in the warm milk, in a big bowl mix dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar. Add milk, butter, vanilla extract and egg - bring all together and knead briefly until smooth. Put in a clean bowl cover with cling film and leave to double its size - this will take approx. 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted) On a lightly floured surface using a roll pin roll the pastry to 1cm thick rectangle. Leaving 1cm but the fruit and then scatter the frozen berries finishing with sugar of your choice. Roll the strudel from the longer side, make sure that the seal underneath and the very gently roll "on the spot" to seal well, squeeze the sides together. Put on a flat baking tray with baking parchment and allow to rest for 30 - 40 minutes. Just before putting into the oven glaze with the egg white and sprinkle with little sugar the same you used for the filling. Bake for 25-30 minutes. 



 

 

Veggie butternut squash, chickpeas and spinach curry with tarka dhal and homemade naan bread

All to say about this combo is that it's simply delicious and perfect for when it's cold or it's raining. It's reviving and revitalising! Absolut perfection of veggie curries:) Based on Allegra McEvdy's recipe published in the guardian: Sweet potato curry

Veggie butternut squash, chickpeas and spinach curry with tarka dhal and homemade naan bread

Ingredients:

Naan
Makes 4
340g of all purpose flour
1 tsp of instant yeast
1tsp sugar
190ml warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp of olive oil
2/3 cup of plain yogurt
Nigella seeds
20g of butter melted

Tarka dhal
3 tbsp of oil
8 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
4 cardamom pods, crushed seeds removed and the shells discarded
1 tbsp of mixed seeds: coriander, cumin, mustard seeds
250g of green split peas

Curry
400g butternut squash, peeled deseeded and cut into 2cm chunks
400g carrots, peeled and sliced
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
200g of fresh spinach
1 tin of coconut milk
3 banana shallots, peeled and chopped
60 ml of oil
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tbsp of mixed curry spice, or make your own using ground spice (except for mustard seeds) as follows: 1tsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander, 1/3 tsp fenugreek, 1/3 tsp chilli powder, 1/3 tsp ginger,1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1, 5 tsp of chilli flakes
squeezed juice of a half a lime

Let's do it:
Start with naan. In a bowl mix warm water with yeast and sugar, leave to stand for 30 minutes until frothy on the top. Add flour, olive oil, yogurt, salt and mix well. The dough is very sticky but try to briefly knead it on a floured surface. Put in a clean oiled bowl and leave to rise for 1-2hours.

Now it's time to get your tarka dhal started. Heat the oil in a pan, add garlic, cardamom seeds and the mix of seeds. Gently fry for a few minutes until golden and stir the split peas coating well in the oil, seeds and garlic. Pour in approx. 700 ml of water, bring to boil and simmer for 1 hour until the water has evaporated and peas are soft.

When tarka dhal is cooking and naan dough is still rising start the curry - heat the oil in a big pan add the chopped shallots and fry for 5 minutes with the lid on. Next add the spices and chilli flakes followed by the carrots and squash stir well to cover vegetables and fry on a high gas until sticks to the bottom. Stir the spinach in, when starts wilting add some salt, chickpeas, coconut milk and mix well. Bring to boil and simmer on a medium gas for up to 30 minutes until carrots and squash are tender. Season well and add the lime juice.

Preheat the oven to 220C (fan assisted) When naan dough has risen and doubled or tripled it's size knocked it down on a lightly floured surface and cut into four balls. Flatten each of four balls using your fingers and shape them into naans. Arrange on a oiled flat baking tray or foil, sprinkle with Nigella seeds and using your fingers gently pat into the dough. Leave to rest on the baking tray for 15 minutes. Bake for 12 minutes until golden brown. Brush with melted butter.
Serve all together in a big bowl with plain yogurt and rice.
 

Spinach and chard tart and unexpectedly some biscuits

Ideal for a snack, ideal for a lunch box, ideal for a comfort of homemade tart in a very long month such as January is.
 
Spinach and chard tart

Ingredients:
For the pastry:
- 200g all purpose flour
-  125g chilled butter cut in small cubes
- 1/2tsp salt
- 1 yolk
- 2 tbsp cold water

For the filling:
- 50g of butter
-250g of mixed spinach and chard leaves
- 3 banana shallots peeled and finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic crushed
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp lemon thyme (leaves only)
- salt and pepper

For the cream & cheese mix:
 - 3 eggs
- 250ml soured cream
- 25g pecorino cheese grated 
- 125g of mozzarella or feta (a packet from any supermarket)
- salt and pepper

Let's do it:
Pastry - sift flour and salt into a bowl, add butter and with your fingers rub until fine breadcrumbs. Next add the yolk and water, bring together and wrap in cling film, chill for a half an hour.
On a dusted with flour surface roll the pastry so it bigger than your 25cm tart baking tray. Line the pastry in the tart tray, cut off the excess of the pastry and prick the base with a fork, chill for 30 minutes. When chilling preheat the oven to 190C (fan assisted) Next line the pastry with a baking paper and baking beans. Bake for 15 minutes then remove thepaper and beans, bake for 5 more minutes and leave to cool.
Meanwhile for the filling melt the butter with a little bit of oil add shallots, garlic and dried thyme and lemon thyme - fry on a low gas for around 5min. Keep gradually adding the leaves until wilted and season well. Leave to cool.
In a bowl lightly beat eggs, add soured cream, cheese, salt and pepper and beat well.
Scatter over the tart case greens and pour over the creamy mixture. Torn mozzarella ball with your fingers or if using feta crumble feta with your fingers and arrange bits evenly on the top.
Bake for 25 minutes until golden and set. Great with a simple salad or as a part of a bigger meal with boiled potatoes. Enjoy!

And here is some little extra from the remained excess pastry - biscuits! Hurrah!

Now for the pastry we cut off - I personally do not like throwing away anything so if you want some biscuits for a dessert and little to do add to the remaind pastry 1 tbsp of muscovado sugar, 1/4 tsp of vanilla essence and optionally a little bit of any colour (red for me) food colouring paste and then quickly bring it together and chill until you are done with the tart and it's in the oven. Next roll the pastry on the lightly floured surface and cut individual biscuits using whatever shape of biscuit cutter.
Bake in 160C (fan assisted) for 10-12 minutes.
Here you are not much more work and lovely biscuits to accompany your weekend cuppa:)

Do you remember XMas cake

It's got a bit cold so I decided to make a cake in a bit of a nostalgic post Xmas spirit, it is a pumpkin puree and Xmas spices tea loaf.

It was inspired by a recipe from a polish blog Mala Cukierenka

Spiced pumpkin tea loaf

The measurements are in cups - a cup is 250ml glass

Ingredients:
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp of baking soda

pinch of salt
2/3 glass of caster sugar
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
1/2 tsp of gloves
1/2 glass of dried cranberries or barberries (smaller and more sour berries)

3/4 glass of pumpkin puree 
1/2 glass of  honey or agava syrup
1/3 glass of half fat creme fraiche or yogurt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
1/4 glass of sunflower oil
1 tbsp of mixed peel
2 tbsp of almond flakes

Let's do it:

Preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted), brush with a bit of oil a tea loaf cake tin and put a strip of baking parchment on the bottom of the tin.
Mix dry ingredients in one bowl - flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, spices and add berries.
In another bowl mix wet ingredients - puree, honey or agava syrup, creme fraiche, eggs, vanilla extract and oil. Stir the wet mixture into the dry one and mix briefly until fully incorporated. Transfer to the tin and sprinkle some mixed peel and almond flakes on the top. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until the skewer comes clean.

Goodbye dry January welcome wet January!

Hubby and I have been testing dry January for 10 days. We read about big improvement in sleep quality, the way skin looks, and all sorts of other benefits. For 10 days we saw hardly any of that. Perhaps because we don't drink every day and have a relatively healthy life style therefore on Saturday we decided that it was time to say goodbye to dry January and welcome wet January!

For the celebration we choose Sicilian whites, wonderful Malvasia which is one of my favourites among whites and typical Sicilian catarratto grape. Both great Malvasia absolutely brilliant - full of flavour, round and rich. Catarratto lighter, more mineral very good for a warm day like today in London was around +3C in the night;)
Both from a really great wine shop in South Kensington Handford Wines

We did a wonderful walk today and it was all in all such a beatiful and full of small adventures day. We discovered this amazing little museum house which belonged to a Victorian artist Frederic Leighton. Throughly worth recommending - Leighton House

New Year's Eve wine and Dry January

I am not a big fan of bubbles so this year hubby and I decided to buy a good (or two) bottle of white to welcome 2014. As it happened that we were in Wimbledon we went to the local wine merchant and here is what we got.

Bandol - this was a curious one, strangely oily to start and very soft to finish. It was a good one but at a price of £32 I may not be buying it again and frankly I know many better wines for less than that. I love Bandol rose and for now it will remain my favourite Bandol. Eventhough I will try to find Bandol white again just to see if it might be a better one just to make the final judgement on it.

The other Sicilian Gruali was a beautiful one, straw color, rich - I absolutely loved this one and will happily buy it again, even for £20. However this will need to wait for a while, at least until February as hubby and I signed up to Dry January so no alcohol for us for 31 days! Bring it on!

Happy New Year!

Xmas baking - stollen and spiced sables

There's been so much baking and cooking going on in my house recently and I feel ashamed that I did not do a post since 17 November. Oahu time flies!

For Christmas I baked a few cakes but these are very worth noticing. One is by Ruby Tandoh's Cherry stollen with pistachio marzipan and the other is for spiced sable biscuits by Will Torrent from his amazing book Patisserie at Home

Cherry stollen with pistachio marzipan

Ingredients:
250g strong white flour

 ½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp cinnamon¼ tsp ground cloves
1 (7g) sachet instant dried yeast
20g sugar
¾ tsp salt
150g butter, divided in half
115ml milk
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 1 orange
125g dried cherries, roughly chopped
75g mixed peel
30g icing sugar, for dusting

For the marzipan
150g pistachio kernels
130g icing sugar
⅛ tsp salt
30g egg white

Let's do it:
In a bowl combine flour, spices, yeast, sugar and salt remembering to not to put together or directly on each other yeast and salt. In a small pan melt 75g of butter, remove from the gas and add milk, vanilla extract, orange zest and egg. Mix well and then check if the mixture is tepid to warm which should be. If not gently heat it up and add to the dry ingredients. Mix well until all ingredients are well combined and form a dough, move to a kitchen top and knead for 10 minutes and then knead in the peel and dried cherries.  Put the dough ball in a bowl, cover with cling film and leave until doubles it size. This will take up to 2 hours.
In the meantime to make marzipan: using a food processor blitz pistachio kernels until breadcrumbs, add icing sugar, salt and blitz very briefly, next transfer to a bowl. Add 2/3 of the egg white and mix well. My marzipan was too wet so I rescued it with adding ground almond. Form into a 20cm log and leave on the side.
After the dough doubled its size gently knock it back and roll into a 20x30cm rectangle. Put in the middle the marzipan log and roll the dough around to ensure the seam being in the bottom and fold the ends underneath. Transfer to a baking tray with a baking parchment on and leave to rise for 45 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted)
Bake for 35-40 minutes checking towards the end. Melt the remaining 75g of butter and as soon as stollen is done brush all the butter into the cake including bottom and sides. Once cooled dust with icing sugar.


Cinnamon, orange and cloves sables

Ingredients:
75g icing sugar
150g softened butter
1 vanilla bean
grated zest of 2 oranges

2 eggs lightly beaten
250g all purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Let's do it:

In a bowl beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy, you can use a wooden spoon or a hand held mixer. It will take 5-6 minutes.
Split the vanilla bean, scrape seeds out into the bowl and beat in the orange zest.
Gradually add eggs until well incorporated then fold in the flour, cinnamon and cloves with a metal spoon. Make sure that all ingredients are well combined but don't over mix it. Form dough into a bowl wrap in a cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for 1 hour. In the meantime prepare a big or two big flat baking trays with baking parchment on and lightly dust with flour.

Preheat the oven to 170C (fan assisted). Take the dough out of the fridge and on a lightly floured surface roll out with a rolling pin until 5mm thick. Using cookie cutters cut out the sables and arrange on the baking trays. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
When cooled you can either dust with icing sugar or make a quick icing and decorate like I did:-)

Happy Festive Season!