Coffee, Ginger and Spice
Just another food blog
07/05/2012 by Sarah

Lamb stew in a creamy almond sauce

I’m getting back again to my Indian influenced food – this time it’s lamb though, cooked in a sauce of almonds, cream and spices. This is more of a winter dish, although I was just thinking it may be a good idea to add some fresh mint at the end to lighten up the dish a bit. Having being vegetarian for quite a while, I haven’t had prepared red meat in about the past 15 years. It didn’t turn out too bad, though.

 

For 4 persons: 

Lamb, 800g to 1kg (preferrably shoulder)
Almonds, grounded, 50g
Fresh ginger, 3cm
Garlic, 8 cloves
Vegetable oil, 8Ts
Onions, 2
Allspice, 1ts
Cardamom, 5 pods
Cloves, 5
Cinnamon, 3cm
Coriander, grounded, 1Ts
Cumin, grounded, 1ts
Cayenne pepper, 1/2ts
Salt, 1ts
Cream, 200ml
Garam masala, 1/2ts

When there are relatively many ingredients to a recipe, I tend to prepare as much as possible before and set aside, rather than stressing out when actually being in the process of cooking the stuff. So, wash the meat and cut in cubes of about 2cm. Ground the ginger, and blend with almonds, garlic and about 6Ts of water until you obtain a creamy paste. Finely chop the onions.

Heat the oil in a deep pan or pot and add the meat. Fry at medium heat until all sides are slightly colored, remove and set aside. Add cardamom, cloves and cinnamon to the pan, using the same oil, and stir for a couple of seconds, then add onions and fry until they are golden brown. Add the almond-garlic paste, keep stirring the mixture for about two minutes until everything has a slighlty golden color. Add coriander, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, cream and about 100ml of water. Let it simmer with the lid closed for about an hour until the meat is tender. Make sure to stir frequently, especially in the second half of the cooking process, to avoid that the sauce sticks to the pot. When done, remove the entire spices (cloves, cardamom and cinnamon) and excessive oil floating at the top of the sauce. Sprinkle with garam masala.

Serve with rice or flat bread. It goes along well with red wine.

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29/04/2012 by Sarah

Chicken in a spicy red pepper and almond sauce

My vision of Indian food is very much influenced by my father’s Sunday rumblings in the kitchen. Having lived in northern India for a couple of years, he kept a strong relationship to the country and its food, even translating Madhur Jaffrey’s standard Indian Cooking into German (apart from having a publishing house specialized in Indian poetry). So Sunday was Indian food day at home, which meant that my dad would lock himself into the kitchen for a couple of hours in the afternoon – in my memory, he always did red lentil dal and white cabbage with carrots and mustard seeds, although there must have been other dishes as well. I recall what seemed to my eyes at the time massive amounts of sugar when he prepared apricot chutney, which was later stocked in the kitchen cupboard. I didn’t like it very much at the time.

He definitely did pass on to me a linking for Indian food, and many of the spices and the red lentils are part of the standard stock at home – although I use them in all sorts of context. A couple of months back, I grabbed this cook book again and came across a recipe for chicken I had never tried (I had been vegetarian for quite a while). I altered some minor things, according to availability on the market, and the result is just absolutely delicious. Mild red peppers add a fruity touch, almonds make for a creamy sauce, and lemon juice and ginger freshen it up a bit.

 

For 4 persons

Chicken, 1kg
Mild red peppers, 400g
Onions, 3 small ones
Garlic, 3 cloves
Grounded almonds, 40g
Fresh ginger root, 3 cm (alternatively, use dried, grounded ginger, 1TS)
Cumin, 3ts
Cardamom seeds, 2TS
Grounded cardamom, 1TS
Curcuma, 1ts
Saffron, 1ts
Cayenne pepper, 1/2 ts
Salt, 1TS
Vegetable oil, 6TS
Black pepper, 1 – 2 ts
Lemon juice, 3 TS

 

Wash the chicken, remove the skin and set aside.
Chop peppers, onions, garlic and ginger in pieces. Put everything into a mixer / food processor and add almonds, cumin, cardamom, curcuma, saffron, cayenne pepper and salt. Mix the whole thing until you obtain a creamy, orange colored paste.
In a deep pan or a pot, heat the oil. Add the vegetable paste and stir it constantly for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the oil makes tiny bubbles. Add the chicken, black pepper, lemon juice and about 500ml of water. Bring to boil, then cover it and let it cook at medium low heat for about 20min or until the chicken is down. If the sauce is too liquid, remove the chicken, increase the heat and let the sauce thicken until you reach the desired texture. Serve with rice or flat bread.

 

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29/04/2012 by Sarah

Rice

It’s one of these basic things that easily go wrong – it took me ages to get rice done decently when switching from an eletric stove to gaz, even though the procedure is pretty much identical.

I generally prefer Basmati rice, which I soak for about half an hour to an hour, then bring it to boil with the same quantity of liquid like the rice and a bit of salt. If you don’t have the time to let it soak before, use a ratio of rice : water of about 1 : 1,25. In both cases, bring the rice to boil, then cover and let it simmer at the lowest flame when using a gas stove, or switch off the heat completely when using an electric stove. Do not open the lid for the first 2/3 of the cooking process, then carefully stir with a fork.

When using long grain rice, don’t let it soak and use a ratio of about 1 : 1,66, then proceed as described above. The cooking process will take a bit longer.

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29/03/2012 by Sarah

Dried fruit salad with cheese

This is basically a standard Middle Eastern dessert, customized a bit by me and some Italian friends of my mother. They came in when it came to the cheese… It’s easy to prepare and you can do it in advance.

To start, put the fruits (I prefer to use only abricots, but you might also use dried apples, prunes, … ) in a bowl and add water until they are just covered. Add sugar and, if you like, pomegranate syrup. Let them soak for 24 hours. Stir the fruit once or twice while soaking to make sure that the fruit on top don’t try out. The water will thicken and turn into a syrup. Take the salad out of the fridge an hour before serving it. Add dried walnuts or pine seeds and mix with the fruits. (Some people let them soak with the fruits for the entire time, but I prefer their texture when you add them towards the end only). To top it up and give it an unexpected salty touche, sprinkle with crumbs of Gorgonzola cheese before serving. If you consider the taste of blue cheese too strong, give it a try with Ricotta.

 

Ingredients (2p) :

Dried fruit, 100g
Nuts, 2TSp
Sugar, 2-3 TSp
Pomegranate Syrup, 1 TSp
Gorgonzola, 50g

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25/12/2011 by Sarah

Quiche with eggplant, prunes and gorgonzola

I stumbled over a slightly different version of this pie on Nour’s blog and immediately thought I wanted to try something along those lines. While she only used eggplants and prunes, I thought of gorgonzola straight away (I love cheese, I must say, and think it goes very well with sweet flavours, too). And as I like quiches in winter, I tried it out today. I think the cheese adds a nice flavor to the rather sweet prunes and balances the whole thing even a bit more than the eggplants already do.

Starting with the dough: cut the butter in small pieces and knead with the flour and salt until you get little crumbs, then slowly add a bit of water an continue until you have an even dough. Spread in a round baking form, pre-bake for roughly 15min at 200°C. This avoids that the dough gets soggy when you add the topping later.

For the topping, cut the eggplants in cubes of about 3cm (they shrink a bit when baked), salt them and spread on an oiled baking sheet. Put in the oven (preferrably also use the grill) and bake them until golden brown. Spread them on the dough, then cut the prunes in halves and equally spread them. Mix sour cream, eggs, salt, pepper and nutmegg and pour over the topping. [Just a thought: a bit of garlic in the sauce might not be a bad idea either.] Then cut or crumble the gorgonzala in small pieces and spread equally over the topping. Bake in the oven at 175°C for about 20 to 30min until the egg-sour cream mixture is stiff and golden brown. Serve with salad.

Ingredients:

Dough:
Butter, 125g
Flour, 250g
Salt
Water, 1/2 cup

Topping:
Eggplants, 400g
Olive oil, 1 Tsp
Prunes, 100g
Sour cream, 200ml
Eggs, 2
Gorgonzola (or any other strong blue cheese), 100g
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

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21/12/2011 by Sarah

Chicken in onion-beer-sauce with thyme potatoes

I first came across this chicken recipe years ago when a Spanish friend was preparing it. Meanwhile I had forgotten about it until a conversation turned to the use of beer and wine in food the other day. So I had a quick look around on the net about the famous pollo con cerveza and modified slightly what I found.

Preparation is easy and doesn’t take long. First remove the skin and clean the chicken, chop the onion, peel the potatoes and cut them in cubes (they should more or less all have the same size to be done at the same time). Heat some olive oil in a large pot and fry the chicken for a minute, then put it aside. Fry the onions in the same oil, then add the potato cubes and fry them for another one or two minutes. Add the beer and the chicken again and bring to boil. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary and some bay leaves and let it simmer.

Remove the chicken when done and keep it warm. Bring the onion-beer-sauce to boil again and reduce it. I like to take out the potatoes again and fry them quickly in a mixture of olive oil and thyme to make them crispy, but you can also simply leave them in the sauce.

For 4 persons, you’ll need:

1 chicken (about 1kg)
Potatoes, 1 kg
Olive oil, ~ 5Tsp
Beer, 500ml
Bay leaves
Rosemary (dried)
Thyme (dried)
Salt
Pepper

It looks much better in reality, I just didn't have a decent camera with me....

 

This dish is also also goes well with rice, just leave out the potatoes. You’ll need a little less beer for the sauce in this case.

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04/12/2011 by Sarah

Chili con carne

Wannabe Mexican, but originally Southern-US food that I have [surprisingly maybe] eaten a lot since I live in Tunis (which is due to someone here who likes it a lot and the fact that I’m not a vegetarian anymore). I usually prepare the very standard version with beans, corn, and minced meat, and like to eat it with rice and optionally a bit of sour cream or grated cheese.

For the chili, chop onions and garlic and fry them in olive oil until tender, then add the minced meat. Keep stiring and fry until the color becomes a greyish brown. Add the tomatoes (whether you use fresh ones or tomato puree) and stir for a bit, then add the beans, corn, chili and spices. Add water and bring to boil, then let it cook at reduced heat till the sauce thickens. If you like, add a bit of beer or red wine. I prefer to add more liquid and let it cook for longer, I have the feeling the taste gets more intense this way. When done, serve with rice, bread or nachos and a drop of sour cream or some cheese if you like.

For three persons, I usually use the following quantities:

3 Tsp olive oil
1 – 2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
200-300 g minced meat
4 large tomatoes (or a small can of about 100g of tomato puree)
400-500 g beans (canned)
250 g corn (canned)
3 to 4 chili peppers
salt
pepper
1 – 2 bay leaves
cumin
4 spices (Tunisian mix)
1/2 tsp sugar

For the rice, I prefer Basmati, which I soak for about half an hour to an hour, then bring it to boil with the same quantity of liquid like the rice and a bit of salt. If I don’t let it soak before, I use a ratio of rice : water of about 1 : 1,25. In both cases, bring the rice to boil, then cover and let it simmer at the lowest flame when using a gas stove, or switch off the heat completely when using an electric stove. Do not open the lid for the first 2/3 of the cooking process, then carefully stir with a fork.
When using long grain rice, don’t let it soak and use a ratio of about 1 : 1,66, then proceed as described above. The cooking process will take a bit longer.

 

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27/11/2011 by Sarah

Hello…

This is just another one of these food blogs. I’m not an expert or anything, I just write about what I’m experimenting with and preparing in my kitchen. Quantities are usually a bit arbitrary.
I’m German, but don’t like German food very much, so the food is mainly a mixture of general European stuff with some Indian and North African influences. I like ginger – in tea, with red lentils, in carrot salad,…. and cumin, coffee, and tea as well.

Content is to come soon, check back one of these days if you’d like to.

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