Soup time! Altough, I am not so much a soup fan, lately I cook them often. This time I would like to share a herb soup based on sunchoke. I tend to buy an overload of herbs so there is always a lot left that need to be used before it gets yellow. It is a light and smooth soup with a delightful colour. As far as the herbs are concerned use anything you like, but be careful with herbs that have a strong flavour, for example do not add an overload of thyme. I prepared a mixture of fresh parsley, chervil, basil, sage, a bit of tarragon, rosemary and a touch of thyme.
Ingredients:300 g sunchokes
1 shallot
1 tablespoon butter
450 ml vegetable stock
2 handful herbs of your choicesalt, pepper
Peel and cut sunchokes and among the diced shallot stew in a bit of butter for 5-7 minutes. Add vegetable stock and cook for 15 minutes. Puree the mixture among the herbs, but do not cook it any longer! Season with salt and pepper.
It is getting cold outside! I mean really cold. Is there anything better than a nice bowl of hot soup waiting for you at home after a rainy afternoon walk in the forest? Probably not, unless a cup of hot chocolate...or a chocolate soufflé that I served for my guests at the weekend.
Ingredients:50 g dried porcini
650 ml chicken stock
250 g potato
2 shallots1 tablespoon butter
2 thyme spirgs150 ml cream
salt, pepper
Soak porcini in chicken stock and let it stand for an hour. Dice shallots, potato and stew in butter for about 5 minutes. Add chicken stock with the soaked porcini, thyme spirgs and cook it for 20 minutes. Purée it together with the cream and season with salt and pepper.
The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge. I am absolutely not a vegeterian, but because I am against overfishing and (the tuna used for sushi is a big a part of the problem) I decided to go for vegetables.
Overripe bananas. It happens again and again and again! Usually, I buy bananas every week. These were in my fruit basket for almost 3 weeks now! I completly forgot about them, and if they wouldn't have been green when I brought them home, probably they must have ended up in the compost. So it was pretty urgent to prepare something out of them. Last time I had overripe bananas I baked banana bread, another time banana-chocolate beignets, but I also liked the idea of making ice cream. Well, at the end I decided to go for a banana jam. First I was sceptical, but the result is amazing! I haven't expected such a flavour carnival and such a great texture!
Ingredients: 450-500 g bananas
350 g cane sugar150 ml water
2 lime
1 piece of ginger, grated
20 ml white rum
Peel and slice bananas. Bring water together with the sugar, lime juice and grated ginger to boil. Add bananas and cook on medium heat for 20-30 minutes. When ready stir in rum and fill in jars and let them cool covered by a blanket over night.
Well, I haven't been posting for almost 5 days, although I think I haven't ever cooked so much like I did these days. Almost every day I stood in the kitchen from morning till evening and I kept on cooking, baking and doing the dishes. If not, then I spent my time reading cookbooks. However, I am going to post a dish that I totally forgot about and I do not even remember when I made it: horseradish crusted entrecôte with potato gratin and Bordelaise sauce. By the way my freezer project is stuck. To be honest it is full again! 
Ingredients:
4 beef entrecôte1 shallot10 g butter
1 egg
20 g horseradish, freshly grated
20 g cream
1 teaspoon mustard
1 tablespoon breadcrumbs
salt, pepper
butter oil for frying
For the crust peel and dice shallot and stew in butter, then let it cool. Mix egg yolk, horseradish, cream, mustard, breadcrumbs and shallot, season with salt and pepper. Let is stand for 10 minutes. Beat egg white and stir in to the horseradish paste. Leave it in the fridge until you need it. Melt butter oil, season the entrecôtes with salt and pepper and fry for 2 or 5 minutes from both sides (depending on the way you want them). Heat the oven to the highest possible grilling temperature and grill the crusted entrecôtes until golden brown.
Happy Birthday Weekend Herb Blogging! The weekly blog event created by Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen and meanwhile managed by Haalo, of Cook (almost) Anything At Least Once celebrates its 4th year! Unbelievable! At this point I also would like to say thank you for the opportunity of hosting! I was wondering what entry should I send, and as it is a birthday, I decided for a dessert: a blue poppy seed ice cream with lemon-white poppy chocolate cakes and a lemony caramel syrup.
Poppy seed is used in many different foods either whole or ground. Opium poppy is a very old plant and its botanical name means "sleep bringer". Poppy seeds are less than a millimeter in length,and minute: it takes 3,300 poppy seeds to make up a gram, and a pound contains between 1 and 2 million seeds.
The white poppy seeds form part of the Indian spices. They are added for thickness, texture and also give added flavour to the recipe. Commonly used in the preparation of Kurma, ground poppy seed, along with coconut and other spices, are combined as the masala to be added at the end of the cooking step.
In the countries belonging to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, poppy seed pastries like traditional bejgli rolls. Poppy seeds can also be used like sesame seeds to make a bar of candy. The bars are made from boiled seeds mixed with sugar or with honey. This is especially common in the Balkans, Greece.
The seeds can be pressed to form poppyseed oil, which can be used in cooking, moisturizing skin, varnishes and soaps, or as a carrier for oil-based paints. In the 19th century poppy seed oil found use in products such as paints, soaps, and illumination, and was sometimes added to olive and almond oils. Its most important use these days is as a salad or dipping oil. In Indian traditional medicine (Ayurveda), soaked poppy seeds are ground into a fine paste with milk and applied on the skin as a moisturizer. (source:wikipedia)
Ingredients:
100 g poppy seed, ground
zest of 2 lemons
350 ml full fat milk150 ml heavy cream
130 g sugar 4 egg yolksHeat milk, heavy cream, 3/4 of the sugar, ground poppy seed and lemon zest until it starts cooking. Whisk egg yolks with the rest of the sugar and slowly add hot milk mix to the eggs while whisking. Take it back to the cooking plate and cook until it thickens (it should be 85°C). Let the mixture cool and leave the rest of the work for the ice cream maker.
While I was browsing for more information about the Choron sauce, that is actually a Béarnaise flavoured with tomato purée, I found some interesting facts about its creator Alexandre Étienne Choron who was the chef of the celebrated restaurant Voisin on the rue Saint Honoré. He is also remembered for his dishes served during the Siege of Paris by the Prussians in which began on September 19, 1870. During the siege, Parisians were reduced to eating cats, dogs, and rats. The bourgeois were not content to eat on such low animals, and demand at the de luxe restaurants remained high. As food reserves dwindled, these restaurants, including Voisin, improvised. Choron eyed the animals kept at the local zoo, and served exotic animal dishes at Voisin. For the midnight Christmas meal of 1870, Choron proposed a menu principally composed of the best parts of the animals kept in the Jardin d'acclimatation – stuffed head of donkey, elephant consommé, roasted camel, kangaroo stew, bear shanks roasted in pepper sauce, wolf in deer sauce, cat with rat, and antelope in truffle sauce – has become legendary. (source:wikipedia) Glaring huh?!
Ingredients:
2 shallots
6-7 spirgs tarragon10 sprigs chervil
150 ml dry white wine
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
2 tablespoons tomato purée150 g butter
3 egg yolks
juice of 1 lemon
salt, pepper
Melt butter and remove the whey. Chop shallots and together with the wine, vinegar, chopped tarragon and chervil bring to boil and reduce to 2 tablespoons, sieve and set aside. In a pot bring water to boil and in another bowl add egg yolks, the reduction and 1 pinch of salt. Over steam beat egg yolks until it gets thick and foamy. Add butter in thin spurt and keep on whisking. Stir in tomato purée. Season with lemon juice, salt, pepper and fresh chopped tarragon.
There is a book. It is not just a book, but it is the 3 Star Chef by Gordon Ramsay. I have recieved it some days ago! It is gorgeous. Period. Of course my first thought was: I must cook everything! Or at least try to...! Yes, I am going to cook through this book, except those recipes that call for tuna, swordfish or snails.
As I was lucky enough to get some gorgeous St. Pierre tomatoes last weekend, probably the last ones this season, and as I always buy a lot more tomatoes than planned, it was the perfect opportunity to cook the first dish of the 3 Star Chef: chilled tomato consommé with asparagus, peas, tomato concassé and basil.
Of course I left out the asparagus as it is not in season. The consommé? Well, I have never tasted anything like that before, though I already prepared a white tomato foam earlier, so I had an idea how clear tomato liquid tastes. This consommé was a huge firework that explodes in your mouth. It is made using ordinary ingredients such as basil, garlic, carrot, celery, onion, tarragon, thyme and so on. It is also not tricky in the preparation. Stew veggies, add tomatoes, season and cook with tomato juice. Strain, let it cool, and cook it with the clarifying mix that uses egg whites like in on a meat based consommé. The result? A fantastic tomato consommé.
