And now for something colorful

Published
by
Sasa
on 1.07.2009
in Cooking
. 0 Comments

I love ratatouille to death. In fact, whenever I am at the cafeteria and they serve ratatouille, I would take it. It happened once that they did something utterly wrong with it, but usually ratatouille is the best at the canteen. It costs 40 cents or something so that the whole meal with rice would come to a total of 80 cents. It would be vegetarian, but delicious and healthy at the same time! I was sure it would be even more delicious and healthier when you make it yourself.


Does this look like something I spent 2 hours on?

Now, it was time to make it myself. I meticulously followed the recipe of Just Hungry but I honestly regret having done so. The problem is that I wasn’t quite good at getting rid of the liquid. It’s one of the things I suck at doing, because most of the dishes I have made up until today were all about keeping the liquid, and the simply thought of wringing out the liquid of vegetables into kitchen paper makes me feel wasteful. Ultimately, the ratatouille came out much more delicious than I imagined, but spending two hours on it is a little exaggerated for a dish that was supposed to be simple in my opinion. I do agree that the tastes of the vegetables in ratatouille should not mix too much prior serving, but I don’t quite see the point in baking everything for such a long time. If I happen to make it again, I would sautée everything, make a sauce and then put everything together. That’s it. :3

Finally, ratatouille reminds me of another thing I absolutely wanted to make this summer: gazpacho. It’s too bad we don’t own any of those mixer things that you can use to make vegetables into juice…

Ultimately, I prefer eggnog over advocaat

Published
by
Sasa
on 1.07.2009
in Cakes
. 1 Comment

And since nobody in the family seems to want to drink the advocaat we have at home, I quickly made a cake out of it. It’s one of those really simple cakes that you don’t need much time for - just a lot of expertise (which I lack). In the end, the cake came out good, but not super perfect, and it was delicious although the taste was a little bland; I should have poured more advocaat in it, but about 150ml was all we had left.


Gugelhupf forms are the best :3

What’s more important was that the cake broke at some point, and the liquid insides ran out of the cake and dripped onto the baking plate. Aaaahhh! However, it turned out to be a lucky thing: First of all, our baking plate seems to be in good shape as it was super easy to take off the ‘cake’ from the plate; and second, it turned out to be quite delicious. Furthermore, see the funny shapes of the result:


A woman lying on the beach.


A “I forgot the name of these”-bird


A random, cryptic script, possibly some Maya-like culture

Ultimately it’s not a cake I would necessarily make again, but I did like it and it turned out to be a good way to use some leftover advocaat.

Noodlesoup is the ultimate comfort food

Published
by
Sasa
on 1.07.2009
in Cooking
. 0 Comments

The only drawback is that it makes you want to go to sleep afterwards. While spaghetti with tomato sauce wakes me up and gives me new energy, noodlesoup in the Asian style always makes me want to go to sleep. But when taking an afternoon nap is what I want, noodlesoup is absolutely perfect.


I am still very bad a poaching eggs, but I love them! (Especially when they are a little runny.)

Here’s my “I just have to make something randomly and don’t have many ingredients at home” version: Thin westen spaghetti, Chinese cabbage, a poached egg and… Chinese miso in the soup! Honestly I can’t remember many other ingredients I put in, except for the standard soy sauce maybe, but it tasted surprisingly much like ramen you get in Japanese restaurants! All without any dashi! Okay, actually you could taste the difference (obviously), but the soothing and healing effect of noodlesoup has fully been achieved by this.

I claim this to be my current all-time favorite now

Published
by
Sasa
on 12.05.2009
in Cakes
. 1 Comment

For the longest time, I have loved strawberries and whenever I had something with rhubarb in it, I have loved it. Thus, this cake was highly anticipated, and it turned out just like I wanted. It absolutely has the taste I am striving for, and the pie crust turned out exactly the way I wanted it to be. (Then again, pie crust is the easiest to do of all cakes after all.)

It took me quite awhile to find my perfect recipe, and then I realized that there was a recipe on Simple Recipes, a marvelous site that focuses on simple but delicious food. This pie sounded the most delicious of all of them, and I was not wrong. In most of the times, the most simple cake is the very best.

Making this cake was a little bit of a mess though. I feared that the whole thing would not solidify enough and so I put a lot of starch in it. Later, I even mixed in some more flour, and another load of starch. Well, perhaps I have overdone it a little, but the filling came out great like that!


Red fruits are the best

Another shock was how I had no sugar anymore. All in all, the cake perhaps had about 20g of normal white sugar in it, and while making the pie, I have put in all kinds of sugar we had available. Brown sugar, powdered sugar, this sugar you use to make marmelade with… In the end, I lost overview of how much sugar I have put in, and the cake came out a little too sweet, ahahahaha.

Personally, I like the cake the most when it’s hot and the filling is running a little, but it’s delicious even when it comes right out of the fridge.  This is my new favorite indeed and I am considering making the cobbler afterwards.

The most interesting ingredients make the best cakes

Published
by
Sasa
on 12.05.2009
in Cakes
. 2 Comments

When I got my baking book about 6 years ago, I have been eyeing this cake, but always feared that it would turn out hard, because carrots usually are rather hard vegetables. However, I completely underestimated how long this cake would be in the oven, and how small the pieces of carrots actually are. In conclusion, this turned out to be one of the fluffiest cake I’ve ever had!

Can you see carrots in them? I don’t

Normally you would grate carrots into small pieces, but I didn’t have my grater available, and so I had to cut them with a knife! *cries* Now, I have amazingly learned how to julienne carrots, but it was not exactly a pleasant experience. Finally, the pieces I had were still about 3×3mm large in average, ugh.

I have read on the internet that it is the almonds that gives the cake its fluffy consistency. I believe that quite well, but taste-wise I actually think that carrots and almonds don’t go that well together. Or is it because I dislike almonds? (I usually don’t.) All in all, I am considering making the cake differently next time, although I really don’t want to forfeit this beautiful fluffiness that makes the cake so immensely good when it’s warm.

Our family Chinese New Year dish

Published
by
Sasa
on 6.02.2009
in Cooking
. 3 Comments

First of all, happy new year! It’s a little unfortunate how I was unable to find time to make something myself, but then, unexpectedly, I spent an evening with my parents forming and deep-frying these incredibly delicious sweets.


Which version I like the most? I cannot decide.

There is not much to say about them, except that we have made two different types: The ones on the right were made with just water in the dough and the ones on the left (they are a little puffier) with milk or oil, I forgot. Although it’s not so easily visible on the picture, the watery ones are much crispier while the ones with oil are somewhat sweeter and, well, easier to chew. Haha. The general consensus among my parents is that the chewy version is better - it doesn’t surprise me, they are more ‘luxurious’. Back in the day, they said that oil was rare and so all the oil was used upon the deep-frying process. (The rarity of something like oil was also the reason why this is a once-in-a-year New Year dish.) And so, obviously the less healthy version with more oil would be more popular.


After writing this blog post, I could not help but eat some more.

I remember from my childhood that the Germans have sweets that look very similar to these (there also is this slit in the middle and you have to fold them through like that). I suspect that it’s a East German/Polish dish. But from what I remember, they are mostly baked and not deep-fried? I also forgot the name. XD

The grand Christmas/New Year posting

Published
by
Sasa
on 5.01.2009
in Cooking
. 4 Comments

First of all, I am a fool. Here’s a list of the things I made over Christmas and New Year:

The problem is: I have forgotten to take pictures of some of them, aaaah! And so, here is a commentary on all of them in one post.

Continue reading ‘The grand Christmas/New Year posting’

My first christmas cookies this year

Published
by
Sasa
on 4.01.2009
in Cakes
. 4 Comments

This weekend, I was in Bamberg to visit a friend and brought some cookies for her. I still feel like this was a really, really bad idea, because the cookies her family made were so incredibly much better than mine, aaaah! Nevertheless, I will be showing them here :3

At least they turned out how they are supposed to look like. :3

When I saw the recipes for these “cocoa snowflakes”, I immediately fell in love with their looks. Somehow, these white cookies with the black cracks in the middle look so delicious and lovely, I had to make them. Also, I had no suitable gift for my friend’s family, and so I made three baking trays full of these cookies:

The first baking tray turned out way too hard, the second a little bit too soft, and the third one… too hard again. Oh, I think I blame the recipe, haha. Also, I am surprised how the taste of nuts actually completely disappeared within the chocolate. I have put a lot of nuts into it (just as much as flour, in fact), but you can’t really taste it that much. Compared to that, the taste of orange was extremely strong, but this is actually a good thing, heh.

But, I am determined to bake these cookies again and make them better.

I should not make things that I know I am bad at making…

Published
by
Sasa
on 8.12.2008
in Cooking
. 2 Comments

Wraps are quite a good example. In fact, I think I did an okay job with the dough itself, and I learnt surprisingly fast how to spread and shape the wraps. The only thing I really am not good at is to fry them, eek. So, there was one single wrap that turned out rather nice-looking, which you will see below.

 

Actually, this dish did not involve tomatoes at all. It’s a first!

Taste-wise, I don’t think there was anything I could really have done wrong. I randomly chose some vegetables that we had in the fridge as well as the ground beef my parents are always buying when I make food (cough), and so it became a ground beef + red bell peppers + champignons wrap. With tabasco sauce and some other seasonings (chosen randomly as always), I have managed to produce something edible again, but didn’t look like that.

With that said, this is probably my last time cooking for this year! Wah! However, there are cakes and Christmas pastries that I am planning to make… maybe :3

It turned out good, but what the heck?

Published
by
Sasa
on 1.12.2008
in Cooking
. 2 Comments

As can be seen below, for some reason I completely forgot to take a decent picture showing the insides of the stuffed bell peppers. Uh oh O.o

Oh, don’t mind the blackened parts - it was absolutely great like that.

So, without a picture, I guess the insides need a little explanation. First of all, the meat stuffing is basically the same as last time. As you might have realized, my food always looks the same: Curry (x2), pasta (x2), pizza (x1.5) and everything is in a warm color, preferably red tomato sauce. This time, the insides of the bell peppers contained:

  • Couscous
  • Dried apricots
  • Ground beef
  • A zucchini
  • A carrot
  • Tomato sauce and random seasoning: thymian, oregano and the likes

I think that’s it! Somehow I felt this was even more delicious than last time - I wonder why? One reason might be that the shape of the casserole (which, by the way, fits the color of the bell peppers perfectly) made it possible for the bell peppers to be baked rather homogeneously.

And now I have come to quite a dilemma because I am not sure what I want to make next! Hmm…