And so the cold arrived

I cannot explain how good it feels to finally breath the cold in the air and feel the earth smell of the first autumn rains. I know that in a few months I'll be wishing for sun and warm, but that's the beauty of it! Now all I want is the warm of the fireplace and comforting soups. Healthy and delightful soups.

There's no more comforting memory for me than the one of being at my gradmother's kitchen. It was a large boarding house kitchen, with a big wood oven and a long old table at the center, made of wood with a marble top, where we would get together every day. Specially during winter, that's where we would spend most of our time. Lunching, watching cartoons on the old small tv, doing school homework, or just watching my grandmother cook on the giant oven (as we, little ones, saw it then).

There was always a scent of smoke in the air mixed with fresh shop vegetables and roasted meat. When I was preparating the green beans for this soup, the air was invaded with that familiar fresh aroma and I was imidiately brought back to those days. My grandmother's kitchen smelled like fresh shoped green beans!

My turkey soup with green beans

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
A turkey wing or leg

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

a handful of green beans

1 carrot
1 bay leave

Parsley

Black peppercorns

Olive oil

Put the turkey on a pressure cooker, cover it with water, season with salt and add the bay leave and a few peppercorns (you can do this in a regular pan, but it will take longer). Let it cook until really tender (about 45 minutes). When done, take the meat out of the stock and let it cool, then strain the broth and put it on a soup pan.

Chop finely the onion and the garlic and add it to the pan. Slice the beans and the carrot using a food processor, or chop it finely by hand and add them to the pan too. Cook it until all the vegetables are perfectly cooked, but not falling apart.

Add water, if needed, check the seasoning and finish it with fresh parsley and a drizzle of olive oil. Shred the turkey and serve it aside to garnish the soup.

Now, light the fireplace, put on a oldie black & white movie and sit on the couch enjoying your warm soup.

**

all photos by me

A bunch of figs and a tasty discovery

Oh figs... Aren't they so beautiful? I love the colors, the texture, the sweet glossiness... And, obviously, I love to eat them. The trees are delivering the last ones this season and we are eating them gladly! Yummy!

I don't know why but when I look at them I think of autumn, even though they are more an end of summer treat. The ones we have here are kadota figs which have a balanced sweetness making them perfect for a sweet/sour combination. Salads, pizzas, smoked ham canapés, with goat cheese and nuts... you name it.

A few days ago I was craving for a snack and, as I opened the refrigerator, I saw them smiling at me. Them and a pack of sliced Edam cheese. I just grabbed them both and worked from there using my imagination and my little knowledge of what could work.

Sweet, sour, spicy, a bit acidity, a bit of crunchiness... and oh dear me, hello perfect snack! You know when you try to create something and end up with something so tasty you feel like you discovered it, more than you actually invented it? I think I made a discovery. And a damn tasty one.

Spicy figs, my way

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
Figs 

Cheese slices (I used Edam) 

Hot sauce (piri-piri, chili, tabasco...) 

Honey 

Mustard seeds (in vinegar)

Parsley

Freshly ground black pepper

Grab yourself a non stick frying pan. Dump a few dashes of olive oil in case you're worried about it sticking anyway, but with a good pan you can skip this. Lay the cheese on the bottom of the pan and place figs cutted in slices on top of it. Drizzle with the hot sauce and a bit of honey (two portions of hot sauce to one of honey). Drop a few nuts of mustard seeds between the figs's slices and finish with the ground pepper and chopped parsley.

Depending on how much you're making you can roll the cheese slices borders to cover the figs, or just place another slice on top. The important thing is that you have cheese all around the figs so that you wont need to mixed it too much on heat. Figs need to be handled gentle or they will totally break apart. Now, just light the fire and let the cheese melt and all flavors combine! When it looks delicious, its done!

I've already done this as an afternoon snack, as an appetizer and even a light lunch with a salad and it never ceases to please me. The spiciness combined with the sweetness is just divine, and the mustard seeds crunch in the mouth is a brilliant surprise as they get confused with the little fig seeds. All in all, I love it! So, I'm sharing my secret with you. Enjoy!

**
all photos by me

Heavens ordered chocolate cake, and so I did

Did you ever had this feeling like a higher force is commanding you to bake chocolate cake? I had. Actually, I do have that often. Sometimes I even think I have psychic powers or something, because I also have visions of chocolate melting and I can feel the smell of it in the oven. No, I'm not pregnant. I don't even want to know what I'll become when I get to that. Dear me... Well, but so that you won't start thinking I'm crazy (unless you have the same psychic powers I have) I need to tell you that, this time, I had proofs. Yes, its plural. Not one, several proofs. Heavens ordered, and I obeyed. This is how it happened.

There I was, minding my own business, wandering over pinterest when I bumped into this chocolate cake. The picture itself isn't that much appealing, it's not like I was drooling over it (c'mon you see pictures of cakes every day on the web... at least I do), but still, for some reason I clicked it. Well, it said 'black magic cake'... that was probably it.

Then there was that title saying 'best chocolate cake ever!'. At this point I was already suspicious. Is this going to be one of those recipes that includes a ready made cake mix? (wait, is cake mix actually an ingredient? never mind...) So I kept on reading. Hum... This doesn't sound bad, I thought to myself, no cake mix, pudding mix, nor any stuff ready mixed like that. Oh, and it uses buttermilk! You see, this would be the kind of thing I would put aside for lack of ingredients. Finding buttermilk here is like trying to find a wool scarf on a beach, on a summer day. But then I found I could use yogurt whey as a substitute in many recipes, and has it happens I had just made labneh (yogurt cream cheese / greek yogurt) and had kept the whey on the fridge waiting for something to happen. And, you know, it doesn't last that long on fridge, so the recipe came right on time. So, you see, I was not looking for it, but the recipe came to me. I present you this as exhibit A.

So, I thought, I might just give it try... I was going to measure the amount of whey I had and then work from there. The recipe asked for one cup, and I had EXACTLY one cup. There you have, exhibit B.

Then there was that thing without which you can't do chocolate cake. Chocolate, obviously. The recipe asked for 3/4 cup of cocoa powder. I looked at the pantry and found two packages with some leftovers (don't know why but this keeps happening to me...), I crossed my fingers and measured it. Guess what? 3/4 cup, not more, nor less. This shall be exhibit C.

More? Yes, there's more. I also needed one cup of strong black coffee. I grabbed the instant coffee jar and there was just a tiny bit on the bottom. I could easily make some fresh coffee on the machine but that would take longer, and you cannot wait that long for chocolate cake, now can you? I knew I needed at least three tablespoons to make it strong, so I pour it carefully and without wasting a bit I had exactly three tablespoons. (I made it with boiling water and I needed it to be near cold to be able to use it, but no worries. I used that old technique of pouring the liquid from one cup to another repeatedly till the temperature drops. Quick and easy.) Finally, I present you this as exhibit D.

I could go on and present hubby's happy face as exhibit E, but I think this is enough. I rest my case.

Oh, you wanna know about the cake?? Ok. Saying it's the best chocolate cake ever it's an overstatement, but it's pretty close I assure you. It's tasty and incredibly moist like a cake you'd eat in a fancy french pâtisserie. Too bad the lousy photos don't show it, but trust me. And the best, it's deadly easy to make and make's you look like a baking queen. It really is magic! Do yourself a favor and try this.

Black Magic Cake

DRY INGREDIENTS
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 cup sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt 


WET INGREDIENTS
2 eggs
1 cup strong black coffee
1 cup yogurt whey
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven at 175º Celcius (350 Fahrenheit). Combine dry ingredients on a bowl. Add wet ingredients (coffee must be almost cool) and whisk by hand with a balloon whip, or with a mixer at medium speed for about two minutes. The batter will be really thin, more like a chocolate soup. Resist the temptation to eat it by spoon and pour it into a greased and floured pan. Make sure it is perfectly greased because the cake will be really soft and you don't want to ruin your work (yeah, stupid me). Bake it for 40 mins, not one minute more. Don't open the oven while baking to check cooking, it is too moist and you wont be able to tell. Just trust that in the end it will be perfect.

I just did a simple cream cheese and butter frosting instead of the chocolate one on the original recipe because I was lacking ingredients for that. But next time I will definitely try. Well, the only thing better than chocolate is chocolate-over-chocolate! Right?

**

all photos by me
I'm really annoyed for not having one decent photo of the inside of the cake. 
Give me a break here, it was dark, my camera sucks with low light, and well, I was more into eating it...


recipe from here

Get creative!

What do you do when the husband hates cream and you happen to love it?

No, I will not make him eat it without knowing. What are you thinking? That would be a mean thing to do! Ok, I like being bad sometimes... but in this case there's no way that would work. He really hates the creamy taste of milk fat even if slightly there, trust me, he knows! And if we can't distinguish the taste, then what's the point? Oh, I know, tricking him! But, lets skip this part, just this once.

We are working on tasting small bits. Maybe in a distant future he will be able to tolerate it and, who knows, enjoy it, or so I like to believe. In the mean time I need to be creative in order not to have to give up on recipes I love to do and eat. Or else I'll be craving for creamy food whenever we eat out!

For sauces I use milk with a teaspoon of cornstarch flour for thickening, in other cases yogurt, or coconut milk. And these have really been working for me, plus we gain in cutting of calories. Not so bad, uh? Still, I really like a generous spoon of whipped cream over a pie, or a chocolate cake, or a pavlova with fresh fruits sliding on the cream... How do you replace that?

One thing I think works very well is using a thick yogurt, like a greek. I've also tried different custards based on milk or yogurt. They worked, the taste was good, and they looked pretty spooned over the desserts. In some cases this is a very good option. Other thing that also works is whipped cream cheese with icing sugar. Still, for my taste, in both cases it lacked some freshness. I'm pretty sure crème fraiche would be a very good choise also, but I haven't convinced the hubby on that one yet. I'm taking it slow.

Back to the yogurt. It is, so far, the best choice. Listen, if you're looking for something to replace whipped cream, whether you have a picky friend like I do, or you just want to let go of cream for health/diet issues, first you need to face it: nothing will ever replace it. That being said, you can move on and search for something that is a feast to your eyes and a fresh delight to your palate, without comparisons, just enjoy it.



One thing about greek yogurt around here is that it can be pretty expensive and it is very likely that you'd find a fake one (with cream added, instead of the straining method used to thicken the original greek yogurt), so I don't have it very regularly on my fridge. What do I do, then? I do my own greek yogurt, well, something similar, just by draining it over night on the fridge to remove the whey (the liquid). Its the basic technique I use to make cream cheese, this is called labneh. It is a very useful technique, because from here you can do lots of things. You can add salt and herbs and get a very tasty cream cheese (I do this all the time), you can make Tzatziki dip, you can use it to replace mascarpone cheese, you can make balls and roll them on a mix of bread crumbs with parmesan and herbs and deep fry it... Or you can have your hubby doing you a delicious flourless chocolate cake for you to top with yogurt cream and fresh fruits! Have a try!

Labneh

(strained yogurt)

plain yogurt

coffee filter or cheesecloth

medium bowl

colander to fit the bowl

Put a coffee filter or a cheesecloth over a strainer and place it over a bowl. Pour in the bought plain yogurt, and cover with cloth or film. Keep in mind that the yogurt will reduce to at least half of what you started with when calculating the amount of yogurt needed. Let it drain over night on the fridge, or as long enough to get the consistency you want. For cream cheese I let it drain for at least 24 hours, for a greek yogurt consistency, to cream with sugar, usually 6 hours is enough. Simple as that.


You can keep the whey on the fridge and use it for any recipe that asks for buttermilk. That's great too, because I was passing by too many recipes for the lack of buttermilk (that thing just can't be found in here), and besides I like the idea of using everything.

If you're interested on the recipe of the chocolate cake go to  Delicious Miss Dahl. She knows how to do it! No point in copying it here, we haven't changed a bit. For the yogurt cream, just cream the labneh with sugar as you like, and if you want a bit extra creaminess just add a tablespoon of butter to the mix. Enjoy!

**

all photos by me

A refreshing summer soup

Soups take a very important role on the portuguese diet. Tradicionaly every meal begins with one and usually that means a vegetable soup. Ocasonaly it can also be a chicken or a fish stock based soup.

This is one of the reasons why the mediterranean diets are amongst the most healthy in the world. Unfortunatly the stress of the modern life is causing the lost of very good habits, such as this one, and I'm affraid that the next generations won't grow as healthy as we did. Still, I hope it won't get to that, and that this growing conscience that we need to take care of our bodies will change the habits of the coming generations.

When we got married, we made a pact to live an healthier life. Step by step we will make our journey to live a long, and quality, life with each other and the family we are creating. The obvious way is to start with what we eat. Cooking is no stress, nor sacrifice for me, on the contrary, thats a job I gladly take at home and everywhere. So, we're of to a good start, or so we hope. Soup is one thing we really love (no sacrifice here either), and we have the fortune to have acess to home grown veggies the hubby's mom (that in law thing sounds so bad..) grows at her kitchen garden. Yay!

We are really fans of a spanish cold soup caled gazpacho that is basically raw veggetable soup, we love it when the weather get's hot. I've been searching for other cold soups, with an acidic bite like that, but I find it hard to fall for a cold soup. I came across a recipe of a cucumber soup when the kitchen garden provided more cucumbers in a week than we could ever eat in salads, and I whent recipe search. Its diferent than gazpacho, as it is a cooked soup, but the iogurt gives it that acitity that totally brings a cold soup to life. We loved it, don't know if you will... but give it a try and tell me what you think! Here's my adapted version:

Cucumber Soup

2 cucumbers

2 medium potatoes 

1 zucchini

2 onions

2 garlic cloves

1,2 l of water

1 yogurt (120g)

salt
pepper

olive oil

Peel the the cucumbers, the potatoes, the onions and the garlic cloves. Remember to wash the vegetables several times. Cut a few slices of cucumber and set aside. Cut the ends of the zucchini (do not peel it) and chop all vegetables in small pieces. Take the them to cook in salted water over medium heat. Once everything is cooked remove the soup from the heat, reduce it to a puree and strain it through a sieve. Ahust the salt and season with pepper and two table spoons of olive oil. Set aside in refrigerator until very cold.

To serve transfer the yogurt to a bowl with one table spoon of soup and mix well with a fork. Wrap it in the soup and serve each plate with some pieces of the reserved slices of cucumber. Enjoy your healthy meal!

**

photo by me
recipe adapted from here

Spinach + Goat cheese = Heaven

Look at this. Are you mouth-watering? Lets start from the beginning of the story...

It's saturday, nothing particular stands in your agenda for the day, so you indulge yourself with some laziness and stay in bed until all sleepiness has gone away and your skin looks fresh and recovered from the week.* You stretch all your muscles and pop your bones. You're ready.

Sometimes, you just feel so good that you wanna jump out of bed and make pancakes or bake a cake... Other times you get surprised by the sun light slowly invading the room, as a tray full with fruit and warm toasts gently slides next to you. And then there are those days. In those days you are literally kicking each other out of the bed, till you decide to toss who'll be cooking breakfast.

That's basically where we were. By that time, it was more lunch time than actually breakfast, but none of us cared. Without an agreement, we both dragged ourselves out and just swallowed a few toasts with jam.

Even though there's not much of excitement going on, not fun stuff to do, these are pretty much perfect days for me. Our world just stops for a moment without rush. What do you do in days like this?

One thing I like to do is go grocery shopping. (You're probably imagining hundreds of better thing to do, yeah...) It would be perfect if we had a really cool street market, which we don't. But, anyway, it's just nice to go calmly pick what we need, smell the fruit and touch the veggies and talk with each other along way. And nothing like lets-hurry-the-supermarket-is-closing.

Back home, way passed lunch time and those jam toasts long gone, there's a tick-tack in our stomachs. Need to prep something to eat. Quick.

Luckily I predicted that at the market, so I was prepared. In my mind I had a yummy looking pie I've seem Jamie Oliver cook in his 30-minutes meal show. It was supposed to be easy peasy, thats what the show is all about anyway, so I gave it a try. And well, it was everything I had in mind. Easy, quick and delicious.

I made some adjustments to work with what I had in hand and what I've bought. More important ones: I used puff pastry instead of filo because I wanted to go the easy(est) way this time; I also replaced the feta cheese for some portuguese goat cheese, I could have bought the feta, but I love goat cheese... and I felt like using something national, plus the cheese I chose has a consistency and saltiness very similar to feta, so I had a feeling it would work; lastly, I replaced the pinenuts for walnuts, just because thats what I had in hand.

No more talk, here's the recipe. Be aware, it looks harder then it is indeed. Just follow the steps. If you feel the need, watch the video, it helps. There's a link at the end of the post. Enjoy!

Spinach and Goat cheese puff Pie

100g walnuts

3 eggs

300g goat cheese

50g grated cheddar cheese

Dried oregano

400g spinach

1 pack of puff pastry ready for pie 

(I used a 230g pack, circle shape aproxm. 45 cm diameter, 
but it would work with a square shape beautifully, don't worry) 

Cayenne pepper

grated nutmeg

Salt

Olive oil

rosemary leaves

Preheat the oven on 200°C/400°F/gas 6. Toast the walnuts in small chunks in a dry pan (oven proof if you have one) over high eat. In a bowl crack the eggs, had both cheeses  and season with pepper, dried oregano, and a lug of olive oil (I added no salt at this point, it was salty enough). Add the walnuts and mix well but don't mind a few chunks of the goat cheese.

Put the frying pan back on the heat with a table spoon of olive oil and a knob of butter and add the spinach. If you can't do this all at once, let them wither on the heat and then add the rest. Season lightly with salt and keep stirring (at this point you can add lemon zest, I forgot it but didn't miss it). They'll be done in few minutes.

Meanwhile, take a large sheet of greaseproof paper, approximately 50cm long, scrunch it up and wet it under running water so that it slightly softened. Lay it out flat again on your worktop, rub a little olive over it and season with salt, pepper and a pinch of cayenne. Lay your pastry over the seasoned paper.

Take the pan off the heat, add the spinach to the cheese mixture and some grated nutmeg (best if grated at the moment). Make sure you let the pan cool a bit. Carefully move the paper with the pastry into the empty frying pan so the edges spill over. Push it down into the sides of the pan, then pour in the mixture and spread it out. Fold the pastry roughly inside, never mind being too perfect, let it do it thing, it will work out beautiful in the end, and sprinkle the rosemary leaves as you please. Put the pan back on a medium heat for a couple of minutes to get the bottom cooking. Take to the oven if it's oven proof or just transfer the paper with the pie to the oven tray. It needs to stay in the top shelf to cook for 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden and crisp. And you're done!

Let me tell you, in my world spinach+goat cheese=heaven!



Edited to add: I've done this twice so far and I tried it with and without the lemon zest. I must say I like it better it minus the zest. Also, jamie's version uses more eggs, so I tried that way the second time too, again I must confess I prefer it more gooey and cheesy, than perfectly set but more eggy. Trust your instincts and do what works best for you!

**

all photos by me 
You can find the original recipe here and watch it here

  *This doesn't happen all that often? Well... at last, for me it doesn't. I better enjoy it when I can.  

Pumpkin goes bananas in the oven

I woke up not in a such good mood yesterday. I mean, is kind of hard to have a good mood when you have something ringing loud at your hears, telling you to get up, and the bed screaming even louder for you to go back in. So I told everybody to shut up and dragged myself in to the kitchen. And there I was, swallowing a glass of light pinnaple yogurt*, and there she was looking at me. The banana.

You see, I'm not that fond of bananas. I like them plenty if they are not that much ripe, just like that, pretty natural, fresh and peeled at the moment. But any other way I pass it out. No bananas in the fruit salada, no bananas in my pizza, no banana pie, no banana flavoured yogurt, not even banana ice cream. Nop, none of that. And that banana was pretty much on the ripe side, and asking me to do something with her. Now I'm struggling between my hate of banana flavoured stuff, and my pledge not to throw out good food.

I went to the computer, tryed to do some work, but that mood I woke up with was not helping, and even there in the living room I could hear that banana calling. Yeah, I'm weird like that. And well, if nothing else works to brighten my mood, cooking and baking always does. Back into the kitchen. A brief look into my recipe notebook... hum... oh... lovely pumpkin standing there on the counter, you're going bananas! Pumpkin biscuits with smashed banana and chocolate chips it is.

By the amount of pumpkin compared with the banana, I was hopping the flavour would be disguised. Anyway, someone (read, the husband) will eat it. The recipe was really easy. My mood changed right away. And the house smelled like christmas. The way I like it!

The smell was great but it tasted better. They are soft, more on the cakey side, but I already knew that, so I was not expecting something crunchy. When warm, they almost melted in the mouth, and no signs of that banana! It turned out better than I anticipated cause I got to impress the husband's granny. Score! The thing is, granny is very picky, like very very picky. When it comes to sweets she only goes for simple sponge cake with no cream, no icing no crunchy bits, no nothing. Plus, she is a non-chocolate lady (I know, how can that be?). I can see your eye brows frowning over the chocolate chips, I'll get there.

The other day she was bragging how about in her young days she would bake a bunch of cookies and fill a box to have at home every other week, and as nowadays no woman does that. The sweet husband told her right away that it was not true because I happen to do that at home. Score for the husband. Sweet, right? Not that much for me, cause I was not really sure she bought that. She made that smile, like... yeah, right, if you say so...

When I started to line up the spoons of batter on the baking sheet, stupid me, noticed the lack of chocolate chips. They were lying quiet over the counter waiting to be added. Ok, I said to myself, this ones are going to granny, lets see what she has to say about it!

There's no need to say that the husband jumped right into the plate with joy when he came home from work. He's easy to please. Thank God for that! And granny? Well, she ate the first one without chocolate and seemed happy but said none and just threw a naughty smile. Then, as we were talking and distracted with the tv I could see, from the corner of the eye, her sneaky hand disappearing on the paper bag and into the mouth went another, and another biscuit. And those had chocolate chips. Double score!

So here's the recipe for you to impress your granny, your lover's granny, someone else's granny, or simply indulge yourself.

Pumpkin biscuits**

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 pureed banana

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup pureed pumpkin

1 tea spoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tea spoon baking soda

1 tea spoon baking powder

1/4 tea spoon salt

1/4 tea spoon cinnamon powder

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350º. Beat the eggs with the sugar, then add banana, oil and punpkin. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients, except for the chocolate, and, carefully, add it to the punkin mix. Do not over beat. When done add the chocolate, and then line tea spoons of batter on a baking sheet with 2 inches between each coockie. Bake it for 10 to 12 minutes. Enjoy!

**

all photos by me

*I'm in a kind of pre-summer-weddings-regime. it sucks... I'll tell you about that later
** I have no idea where this recipe came from, it was just a handwritten scratch on my recipe notebook with no info from where I got it from. If you happen to know the author of it, please let me know!