Comfort Food in January!

One way to survive the cold snowy days of January is comfort food that simmers for hours on the stove and is warm and hearty when served.  One of my favorites is Harira.  This is a Moroccan soup that is easy to assemble, simmers for two hours and is warm and perfect when served.  It can be served with a green salad or olives and with with any type of bread.  This version is adapted from one of my favourite cookbooks, David Tanis' A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes.

Harira

2 tbsp olive oil
1 pound boneless lamb cut into one inch pieces
1 large onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, chopped
1/2 tsp crumbled saffron
1 tsp tumeric
1 stick cinnamon
2 tsp chili pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 cup chickpeas (I prefer dried chickpeas soaked for a least 6 hours but canned chickpeas will also work)
1 cup red lentils, rinsed
8 cups of water (the recipe calls for 13 cups but I start with 8 cups and adjust as required)
6 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 cup parsley, chopped
1 cup coriander, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a deep heavy bottomed pot (Le Creuset pots are great for this).  Then sauté onions for 5-10 minutes.  Then brown lamb.  Add the ginger and garlic and cook for a further 5 minutes.  Then add the turmeric, cinnamon, saffron, chili pepper, salt and black pepper and sauté for a further 3-5 minutes.  Add the chickpeas, lentils and water and simmer for one and one-half hours.
Put the tomatoes, coriander and parsley in a blender and puree.  Add this to the soup and simmer for a further 30 minutes.  This is absolutely delicious.

Making croissants!!!

In my pursuit to learn new cooking skills, I've started taking classes.  Earlier this year, I had private lessons on making pizza and I will share these in an upcoming blog.  Last weekend, I had the honour of having a private session on how to make croissants from Iliana of Iliana's Kitchen.  It was an amazing experience and I now can add this skill to my repertoire.  It was absolutely fun and I look forward to making more croissants in the future.  As you can see from the recipe below, making croissants is not to be rushed. Essentially, you make a dough, allow it to rise, add the butter and through turnings and foldings, this creates layers between the butter and flour.  The water content in the butter will allow the layers to separate during baking. The minimum number of turnings is 3 and this creates over 80 layers.  Then the dough is cut and folded and allowed to rise even more and baked in the final step. Iliana taught me to make plain croissants, almond croissants and chocolate croissants.  The consensus from everyone who sampled our work is the almond ones were the best. I enjoyed the plain ones more...we made a raspberry coulis which went well with the plain ones.  The chocolate ones were also great.  But when is chocolate not great.

Croissants

500 g all purpose flour

1/2 cup lukewarm water

1 cup milk 

1 tsp dry yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp butter

300 g butter at room temperature (for about 10 minutes)

Prep

1. Place the 300 g butter on a large piece of plastic wrap.  Add another piece of plastic wrap on top.  Flatten the butter with a rolling pin and shape it into a square about 8 inches X 8 inches.  Place in the fridge until ready to use.

2.  Place the dry yeast in a bowl.  Add the lukewarm water and a little sugar (about 1 tsp)...this will feed the yeast and it will become bubbly.

3.  Meanwhile melt the 1 tbsp butter with a little bit of milk from the 1 cup (don't boil).  Add the rest of the milk.

4.  In a bowl, mix the flour with the remaining sugar and the salt.  Add the yeast mixture and the milk with butter from step 3 (make sure the milk and butter are not warm.  It has to be tepid or cold).

5. Mix everything together to make the dough.  The dough should be sticky...if it's hard, add a bit more milk.  Transfer the dough to a lightly floured clean surface.  Knead the dough until smooth.  if during the kneading, the dough becomes sticky, dust if with a little flour.

6. Place the dough in a clean bowl.  Cover it and let it rise until it triples in volume.  If you make it in the evening, put it in the fridge covered and it will rise slowly overnight.

7. Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface.  With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a large square.

8. Place the butter diagonally in the middle of the dough.  Fold each corner of the dough over the butter, corner vertices in the middle.

9. Turn the square upside down.  Roll the dough gently in an up down motion to form a rectangle.  Fold the rectangle in three.  Wrap the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

10. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it again into a rectangle.  Fold again in three.  Wrap and refrigerate.

11.  Repeat step 10 two more times.  It is this folding that creates layers of butter between the flour for the croissants.

12. Divide the dough in half.  Refrigerate one half (this can keep in the fridge for 24 hours and allows you to make a second set of croissants). Roll the dough into a rectangle about 6 inches wide.  

13. Cut out triangles out of the dough.  

14. Starting from the wider side, fold the triangle towards the vertices.  The tip should be under the croissant. 

15. Place the croissants on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until double in size.  This may take up to an hour.

16. When ready to bake, brush the top of the croissant with an egg wash (whisk an egg in a bowl with one tbsp water).

17. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake until bake the croissants until golden (about 20-25 minutes)

For chocolate croissants, at step 13, cut out rectangles instead of triangles. Add a square of chocolate of your choice to the bottom end and roll upwards.  Continue with steps 15-17.

For almond croissants, make an almond paste (below).  Make little logs of the almond paste almost as wide as the triangle. Fold as in step 14 and continue with steps 15-17.  Top with sliced almonds when out of the oven and dust with icing sugar.

Almond Paste

2 cups blanched almonds

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 egg white lightly beaten

1/2 tsp natural almond extract

Place almonds in a food processor with 1/4 cup of icing sugar.

Process the nuts until finely ground.

Stop the processor and add the rest of the sugar, the egg white and the almond extract.  

Process until completely mixed with the nuts and all comes together in a clump.

For the raspberry coulis, we put a pint of raspberries with one tsp sugar in a small pot and simmered until the fruit had cooked and formed a jam-like consistency.

At the end of the class, we made many croissants.  We enjoyed them piping hot with Earl Grey tea with blue flowers.  They were delicious. After this magical afternoon, the rest of the croissants were shared with family and friends.

Ginger Cake

I love baking cakes and I also love ginger.  Ginger is refreshing, warm and comforting at the same time.  I made this cake a few years ago and loved it.  Somehow it slipped from my repertoire but I recently came across a version of the cake in the Chocolate and Zucchini blog.  I like my version and decided to make it today.  Both versions are adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz, who is well known for his dessert and ice cream recipes (a future blog will definitely be devoted to homemade ice cream).  I am currently experimenting with different types of flours and tried using one cup of buckwheat flour with one and one-half cups of all-purpose flour instead of the two and one half cups of all purpose flour in the original recipe.  This worked out well but I've made this with all-purpose flour in the past and it was also great.  I made this today and it was delicious served with my favourite tea - Earl Grey with blue flowers.  I highly recommend this cake.  It is very easy to make and is a lovely treat.

Ginger Cake
2 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour (or 1 cup buckwheat flour and 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 cup molasses
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup peanut oil or any other neutral oil such safflower oil
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup minced peeled fresh ginger

Preheat oven at 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, mix flour, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper.
In another large bowl, mix molasses, sugar, eggs and oil with electric mixer at medium speed for about 2 minutes until well blended. Add the flour mixture and mix at low speed until well blended.
Boil water.  In a small bowl, stir baking soda in one cup boiling water and add to batter.  Then add ginger and mix until blended.
Pour batter into greased and floured 9 and 1/2 inch pan.
Bake for about one hour until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool for about 30 minutes before serving.

Ramps

Ramps are wild leeks.  These are a true sign that spring is here.  I look for them in April and May and their appearance along with lily-of-the-valley and peonies are the happiest signs of spring to me.  They grow in North America and can be found in farmers' markets and in many supermarkets.  They have the flavor and scent of a combination of onion and garlic and look like scallions.  They can be used in recipes in place of scallions or leeks.  For the first ramps of this season, I chopped them and stir fried them with another favorite of mine, swiss chard.  I served with brown rice for a simple and comforting meal.  Other uses can include using in scrambled eggs or omelettes.  Ramps are available for a few weeks in the early spring and are truly wonderful greens!

Gateau au Yaourt (Yogurt cake)

Gateau au Yaourt is a cake that is baked widely in France and appears in a number of cookbooks.  I first learned about this cake from one of my favorite blogs, Chocolate and Zucchini.  The beauty of this case is its simplicity.  It needs very few ingredients and they are all pantry staples.  It's also very easy to assemble.  One can also add any number of additional items to the basic mix to give it a special twist.  I've added blueberries and raspberries in the past.  Some other recommendations are cranberries, chocolate chips or your favorite nuts like walnuts or pecans.  Simply fold in 1 cup of your chosen ingredient to the batter before pouring into the baking pan.  This is best baked in a 10 inch round pan but on occasion, I've used a loaf pan.  It will take longer to bake with a loaf pan but the results are just as delicious.  This is a great cake if you crave something sweet with tea on the weekend or a special weekday afternoon.

1/3 cup vegetable oil (I like sunflower oil)
1 cup plain unsweetened yogurt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp rum (optional)
1 and 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease 10 inch round cake pan.  Line bottom of pan with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together yogurt, sugar and eggs.  Then add vanilla, oil and rum if you are using rum.
3. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder,  baking soda and salt.
4. Pour the flour mixture into the yogurt mixture and whisk until just combined..
5. Pour batter in greased cake pan and bake 35-40 minutes until the top is golden brown and knife inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Farmers" Market Flowers

This blog is devoted to my food discoveries but I will veer from the path occasionally.  These are beautiful flowers from the St. Lawrence Market that I picked up this morning.  Some flowers are edible (but not these).  These are a feast for the eyes!

Sweet potato hummus

As my few followers are aware, the past few months have been difficult and my poor blog has been neglected.  Thank you for your patience.  My energy has returned and I am ready to resume my posts.  One of my current goals is to stock my fridge with healthy and tempting foods.  One of my favorite standbys is hummus. While it's easy to buy, it's also very easy to make.  The finished product is delicious and you can control the ingredients. This recipe was adapted from Martha Stewart's Whole Living Power Foods.  It uses both chickpeas and sweet potato.  I prefer dried chickpeas but the canned product is also good if you are in a pinch.  If using dried chickpeas, soak overnight, rinse in the morning, bring to a boil in salted water and simmer for about an hour until tender.  This recipe calls for tahini, a sesame seed paste, that is available in most grocery stores. 

Sweet potato hummus
1 pound sweet potato
1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas
1/4 cup lemon juice (from 1-2 lemons)
1/4 cup tahini
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 small garlic clove finely chopped
coarse salt (sea salt) and ground pepper to taste

1. Fill a pot with about 2 inches of water.  Bring water to a boil, add sweet potatoes, simmer and cover until cooked (10-12 minutes). Drain when cooked.
2. Transfer sweet potatoes to food processor.  Add chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, olive oil, cumin and garlic.  Puree until smooth for about 1 minute.  You may add up to 2 tablespoon water to get a thinner consistency. Add 1/4 teaspoon salt and season with pepper.  Cool. Refrigerate for up to 1 week in an airtight container.

This is a delicious spread on whole wheat pita.  I've been enjoying it recently as a spread on apple slices.  I highly recommend it. Enjoy!