White chocolate - ginger milk rice with blueberries and lime

Spring, where are you? What are you waiting for? If at least the sun would shine more! Just a little more sunshine could make things so much better. Anyway, I was pretty keen to boost my mood with some kind of sweet treat. Luck me found the last bag of frozen blueberries. And when it comes to blueberres lime is a must. I grabbed a bar of white chocolate and some ground ginger and so this fragant milk rice was born.

Ingredients:
for the milk rice:
400 ml milk
100 g short grain rice
1 teaspoon vanilla paste or a vanilla pod
1 lime
for the white chocolate sauce:
100 ml milk
100 ml cream
2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
200 g white chocolate
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
bluberries and coarsly chopped pistachio for serving

Bring milk together with the vanilla paste or the vanilla pod and the scrapped seeds. Add rice, reduce the heat to low and cook it with the lid on for 30-35 minutes. Do not forget to give it a stir once in a while. Once the rice is cooked remove from the heat and stir in the zest of a lime. For the sauce start to warm milk and cream. Whisk together egg yolks and sugar until pale. As soon as it has reached 85°C stir in the egg yolk-sugar mixture and keep on stirring for 2 more mintues. Set aside and add chopped chocolate and ground ginger. Let it stand for minute, so that the chocolate gets the same temperature like the mixture and stir until smooth. Stir half of the sauce to the milk rice. Warm blueberries with sugar and lime juice, do not cook it. Remove from the heat as soon as sugar is molten. Serve milk rice with blueberries, some of the leftover sauce and coarsly chopped pistachio.

Ricotta fritters with rosemary-orange syrup

Okay folks, I am finished! I quit the sugar and white flour free month, I just had enough! I am not keen to eat sweets, it is not the point but I miss baking extremly! I can't help it. My mind is full with ideas, combinations and I gotta let myself go and bake! Yeah, sure I could bake and give it as a gift to a friend or something, I normally anyway give away half of the cakes or cookies or anything I bake. But I must try it if I experiment around! So today I am here with ricotta fritters, that I actually made using Hungarian túró. The recipe is pretty popular at the moment among a couple of fellow Hungarian foodies, so I had to give these ago. I had the idea to serve it with rosemary-orange syrup, let's enjoy the last days of the citrus season!

Ingredients:
for the ricotta fritters:
original recipe of the fritters here
500 g ricotta or Hungarian túró
100 g vanilla sugar
3 eggs
250 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
zest of 1 lemon
peanut oil for deep frying
for the syrup:
100 g sugar
100 g water
1 orange
1 twig rosemary

For the fritters whisk together ricotta (use real ricotta, not the creamy stuff!) with vanilla sugar, eggs and lemon zest. Finally fold in flour and baking powder. Form small balls out of the batter with wet hands and fry them in 180°C hot oil. Serve with the syrup or sprinkle with icing sugar.
Bring sugar with water to the boil and cook for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Peel orange and add it to the syrup among the rosemary and let it infuse for an hour. Drain and fill into a bottle.

Breaded chicken drumstick confit with pommes frites

There is actually nothing that I do not like doing in the kitchen, even the washing up is fine with me, however what I absolutely dislike is breading. It takes me hours to overcome my "i hate breading"-mood and get going. And no, it is not because it sticks to my fingers and afterwards you have to scrub, no. In fact I can not even explain why! Maybe the mess, though it does not actually have to be a messy task, but still, there is always some breadcrumbs and flour flying onto the kitchen flour. Grrr! So it is rare that we have Wiener Schnitzel for lunch on a Sunday. In Hungary it is pretty common to eat rántott hús on Sundays, so in my family.  As a child I enjoyed helping mom with breading meat or veggies, but not nowdays. But when my mom is not there to preapre my most favourite breaded chicken wings for me, I do not eat. That simple it is. However, now I simply could not resist to try this thing out. Chicken confit breaded and deep fried. I bet, you have never had such a tender drumstick under crisp breadcrumbs, like this!

Ingredients:
6 chicken drumsticks
1 liter olive oil
1 clove garlic
2 twigs rosemary
salt
pepper
flour
eggs
breadcrumbs
for the pommes frites:
4 large potatoes
peanut oil
salt

Remove the skin from the chicken drumsticks, season with salt and pepper. Put drumsticks into a bowl, and pack them really thight. Add halved garlic clove, rosemary and pour the olive oil over it. The drumsticks should be covered completly. Preheat the oven to 140°C. Cover and leave it in the oven for 2 hours, then allow to cool until lukewarm, remove from the oil and dry with kitchen paper. Roll drumsticks in flour, then in beaten egg and finally coat with breadcrumbs. Deep fry within a few minutes in 190°C hot oil. You can do this right after you fried the last batch of pommes frites. Peel and cut potatoes in sticks and place in a bowl filled with ice water for at least 30 minutes or over night. After wash it again under running water and dry with a help of a kitchen cloth. Heat the deep fryer to 140°C and fry potatoes in small portions for 6-8 minutes. Let them cool for 15 minutes while heat the deep fryer to 190°C. Now it is time for the second frying for 2-3 minutes. Place a kitchen cloth into a bowl, add fries on it, sprinkle with salt, remove the cloth and shake it for a moment or two. Serve immediately.
 

Cayenne pepper spiced chicken breast with avocado, mango, sesonal salads and basil-yoghurt dressing

After I managed to put an end to my sugar and white flour free month, which frankly I do not really mind, I thought to prepare something light for lunch. It is time to enjoy winter salads as long as they are still available, though I know most of them you can buy throughout the year, but mâche and red chicory taste best right now. Agree? There is not much to tell about this salad: a spicy and hot chicken breast served with bunch of different greens, mango, avocado with a basil-yoghurt dressing. Perfect on a busy day, as you are done within 10 minutes with the whole thing!

Ingredients:
per person:
half of a chicken breast
1 handful mâche
1 radicchio
1 red chicory
1/2 mango
1/2 avocado
1 small onion
saltcayenne pepper
peanut oil

for the dressing:
100 ml yoghurt
1/2 garlic clove
handful basil leaves
juice and zest of 1/2 lime
3 tablespoons rapeseed oil
salt
pepper

Season chicken with salt and cayenne pepper. If you do not want it to be very hot mix cayenne pepper with paprika powder. Wash and drain salads, slice avocado and mango. Sprinkle avocado with lime juice to prevent it from turning brown. For the dressing put the ingredients into a mixer and blend it and season. Fry chicken breast over medium heat and serve on the salad.

Kakaós csiga - a guest post for samtundsahne

I think it was more or less a week ago, that I've received a mail from Nancy, who is the author of the inspiring blog samtundsahne. Although, I am on a sugar and white flour free month, I had to take a tiny break to bake these cocoa rolls. I was wondering for a while about with what kind of treat I should surprise Nancy, but for a couple of reasons it was absolutaly clear, that it must be kakaós csiga and nothing else! I hoped to wake up some childhood memories with it, and I think I managed to do so! If you would like to know more about kakaós csiga, then please head over to her blog!

Potato salad with chorizo

Two of my very favourite ingredients meet in this salad: chorizo and sherry vinegar. For quite a long time I am totally crazy for chorizo, its piquant taste is so addictive! But before I start to write an ode to that Spanish sausage, I rather come to the details of the salad. Needless to say that chorizo and sherry vinegar are amazing together, so it was more than obvious that I must include them in one dish. Look for rather sweet onions for this dish, you do not want anything that might want to compete the hotness of the chorizo. Fresh parsley is a absolute must for this potato salad, without it would be just naked and it brings so much flavour. Dijon mustard with seeds, fennel seeds and black olives add to the excitement of each bite.

 

Ingredients:
1 kg red skin potatoes
150 g chorizo
2 onions
bunch of parsley
4 tablespoons rapeseed oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 tablespoons dijon mustard with seeds
100 ml stock or leftover bouillon
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
handful of black olives
salt
pepper

Boil potatoes and peel them as long as they are still warm. Slive chorizo and fry it over medium heat until crispy, but be careful that the ground paprik don't burn, then let it drain in a strainer. Peel and slice onion thinly. Roast fennel seeds and crush with a help of a pestle. For the dressing mix everything together and pour it over the lukewarm potato slices. Season with salt and pepper and fold in onion, olives and coarsly chopped parsley and let it stand for 7 minutes. Fold in fried chorizo right before serving. In case the potatoes soaked in too much of the dressing (depends on the type you use), then just prepare half of the dressing and pour it over the salad before serving.

Thai fish curry

Well, I certainly have no clue how authentic this fish curry turned out. Unlike to my usual routine, this time I did not do any reserach about the food, just headed over to the kitchen and started to cook. So maybe I should simply call it fish in coconut milk with thai flavours. After all it is full with delicious ingredients from the thai cuisine. Served it with jasmine rice, fresh coriander and chili. 

Ingredients:
3 red chili
2 cm ginger
3 lemongrass
1 onion
1 bunch of coriander
2 kaffir lime leaves
3 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
400 ml coconut milk
200 ml fish stock
1 lime
500 g white fish - in my case zander

Half and scrape out the seeds of the chillies. Cut ginger, 2 lemongrass and onion in chunks and put it into a blender. Add kaffir lime leaves - if not available add a zest of a lime- koriander and 2 tablespoons of peanut oil and puree. Heat oil and fry curry paste for 1-2 minutes, then add fish stock and coconut milk. Add lemongrass and cook for 10 minutes. Finally add diced fish and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. Season with fish sauce, lime juice and serve with coriander, chili and rice.