Suco de abacaxi com pêra

Something from Brasil which I miss a lot in Belgium is fruit. In Brasil there is an enormous variation of tropical fruit with a fabulous taste, and on almost every street corner you can have a freshly made juice (suco).


Yesterday I bought a small pineapple so this morning I made a juice with pineapple and pear. Just peel the fruit, cut it in pieces, add a little sugar and water and mix it with a hand mixer. You can strain it in a sieve to get rid of the last chunks and fibers.
In Brasil you can have 'suco de abacaxi com hortelã': fresh mint leaves are added to the pineapple, very refreshing!

Stuffed courgettes

After a busy week and week-end, today I finally had time to cook again and I got inspired in the supermarket. I bought lots of vegetables:


Stuffed courgettes - zucchine ripiene

This is how I usually stuff courgettes, based on an Italian recipe.

Serves 2

2 courgettes
180 g ground meat (e.g. pork or beef)
chopped parsley
grated parmesan
bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
pepper & salt

Boil the courgettes for 3-4 min.
Slice them in half and take out the flesh with a spoon. Cut half of the flesh finely and put the remainder away for another use.
Mix the meat with the zucchini flesh and the other ingredients.
Fill the courgette halves with this mixture and put them in a dish, greased with olive oil.
Put in the oven at 180°C until the meat is cooked (around 40 min.).

Notes

If you use round courgettes, let them boil for a bit longer. They also need to bake longer than the long ones.
Tonight I left out the parmesan and I added a little bacon, but I prefer it without bacon.
If you make bigger quantities, don't use more than 1 or 2 eggs.


I had the stuffed courgettes with a carrot, turnip and yellow pepper tzimmes (see Fennel tzimmes on previous post, with cumin seeds and a little sugar) and steamed potatoes coated in olive oil.

Apple shalet

Shalet is a dessert with apples which I make very often. It's very easy to make and it's delicious. The recipe comes from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food'.


1 kg sour apples
100 g raisins
125 ml white wine
175 g sugar
4 eggs
100 g chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon

Peel the apples, remove the core and cut them in pieces. Put them in a pan with the raisins and white wine. Cook them for 15 min. on low heat until they are soft. Mash them with a fork and add the sugar. Cook for another 1-2 min. Let them cool off.
Add the egg yolks, walnuts and cinnamon to the apples. Beat the egg whites and add them too.
Put the mixture in a buttered dish and bake in the oven for 30-40 min. at 180 °C, until the surface is brown.
Serve hot or cold.

Variations

You can add a little lemon rind.
You can also add some old bread, without crust, soaked in water and squeezed out.

If you're in a hurry, you can add the apples uncooked, cut in small pieces. Leave out the white wine and use a little rum instead. Bake it for a little longer.

Pumpkin pie

Some time ago I made a sweet pumpkin pie. It was before I started my blog, so I don't have a picture. Anyway, everybody liked it! You eat it as a dessert and the taste is unusual but very nice.

Pie dough

Cut 100g butter in small cubes. Put 200g flour in a bowl, mix it with a little salt, make a hole in the flour, add 1 egg, 60g sugar and the butter. Mix with your fingers until you have a nice dough. Let it rest for 1h in the fridge.

Filling

Cut 500g pumpkin in cubes (this is the weight without skin or seeds). Steam or boil this until soft. Mash it and add a little freshly squeezed orange juice and lemon juice. Add 100g sugar, 1 egg and 1dl cream. Add a little vanilla seeds (you can buy them like this or scrape them from the pod) and ground ginger.

Pie

Roll out the dough and put it in a pie dish. Pierce the dough with a fork and cover it with baking paper and some beans. Bake it for 10-20 mins in the oven at 180° C. Remove the baking paper and the beans and add the filling. Bake for another 20 mins.

We ate it straight but you can serve it with sour cream or mascarpone.
I used soy cream instead of real cream and the result was nice.

Baked apples

I asked my aunt what I could do with all these apples and she sent me two recipes for baked apples. I sent them to Labelga and we ended up cooking together yesterday evening. She made fegato alla veneziana and I made the apples.


Baked apples

Remove the core of 4 apples. Mix 50g corn flakes (or any type of biscuit) with 25g walnuts and 25g raisins. Chop this mixture coarsely.
Add 1 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp maple syrup or cane sugar and 1 tsp lemon juice.
Taste the mixture and add more sweetener if it's not sweet enough.
Fill the apples with the mixture and add some butter and cinnamon.
Bake them in a buttered dish 45-60 min in the oven at 200°C.
Serve with sourcream.

I used honey and Labelga's agave syrup as a sweetener, very nice.

Fennel, sweet potato and oats

Today I bought sweet potato and fennel in a Turkish shop. These are two vegetables which I really love, just like pumpkin. I made a fennel tzimmes, inspired by Claudia Roden's carrot tzimmes, and a sweet potato mash, based on Claudia Roden's ajlouk de potiron.
I was wondering what to have with this and then I remembered one of my grandfather's recipes with oat, so I decided to try that. My grandfather loved to cook, especially desserts, and he wrote up his recipes in a notebook. After his death, my grandmother gave me his notebook and I've tried out many of his delicious recipes.

This is what my dinner looked like:


Fennel tzimmes

Fry the fennel in butter or oil for a few min. on medium heat. Keep stirring. Add boiling water until the fennel is half covered. Add salt, pepper and fennel seeds. Let it boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer for 30 min. At the end, you can leave the lid off to let the liquid evaporate.

Sweet potato mash (ajlouk)

Peel and chop the sweet potato. Steam it for about 10 min. until it's soft.
Mash it with a fork.
Then season with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, chilli paste, cumin seeds, chopped parsley or coriander. You can also add a little crushed garlic and some ground coriander.
You can use all or just a few of these seasonings in the quantities you like.
Claudia Roden has a recipe with pumpkin and another one with courgette. You can use any vegetable that mashes easily.
Serve on toast or just as a side dish.

Labelga made me discover the ajlouk recipe, on a beautiful September evening. We made three different ajlouks: from carrots, sweet potato and courgette. We had them on her terrace outside. She is also a big Claudia Roden's adept. A long time ago I gave her 'The book of Jewish food' as a birthday present and she was very enthusiastic about it. I only got it for myself a few years later.

Oat cake

Serves 1-2

Rinse 2 tbsp of oatmeal in water, then add 1 egg and a pinch of salt and mix with a fork.
Heat a little butter in a small pan and pour the mixture in the pan. Fry on low heat until golden brown on one side, then turn over and fry the other side.


Today I also went to an Arabian shop and bought lots of delicious pastries.

Apple cake and starlings

With the apples from my mother's garden I made an apple cake.



I used the recipe from the cookbook of the 'Boerinnenbond', the Flemish Farmer's Wives' Association. This was the cooking bible of many generations of Flemish women and men. My grandmother gave me her copy when I was a kid.
It's a very basic recipe so I don't bother copying it here.


While I was setting up my blog yesterday, a flock of starlings came for a rest on the crane outside my window.

Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Last weekend I went to my mother's house in the countryside with some friends. We picked chestnuts and walnuts and my mother also gave me apples and a pumpkin and home made quince jelly, all from the garden.
All of this tastes fantastic and I wondered what I could cook with it. So I checked my cooking bible, Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food' and I found a recipe of lamb with chestnuts. I also found a recipe with pumpkin and chestnuts as a side dish for couscous, so I decided to combine things.
Peeling chestnuts is a real pain and it takes ages, but the result is worth it!



Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Serves 3-4

600 g lamb meat
1 onion, chopped
sunflower oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1 chilli, chopped
20 chestnuts
500 g pumpkin, chopped

Cut the meat in cubes of around 3 cm.
Fry onion and chilli in oil on low heat until golden.
Raise the heat, add the meat and add pepper and salt. Fry the meat until brown on all sides.
Add boiling water and cinnamon. Let the mixture boil, then let it simmer for 1,5-2 h until the meat is very soft.
Make a cut in the form of a cross in each chestnut on top and boil them for 5 min. Peel them while they're still hot.
Add chestnuts and pumpkin to the meat and simmer for 10 min. until they are cooked.

Getting started

Labelga who posts her cooking exploits on Leafy Cooking, has been subtly pressurizing me to start my own blog. I've always said that if I do it, it will be with pumpkin recipes. This week I made such a delicious dish with pumpkin that I felt ready for blogging. Let's see where it goes.