Fillets of rabbit with sherry-tomato sauce

As promised yesterday, I am here now with the first savoury meal of the new year. The Christmas menu should have contained 8 courses, but it got reduced to 6. The reason is simple: nobody could take one more bite after the main course, although the portions were really small. One of the courses supposed to be rabbit, but it had to stay in the freezer until now. The meat was marinated in fresh ginger, coriander seeds, lemon zest, thyme, allspice and cinnamon. The fillet was served among polenta and tomato sauce with sherry. In order to add something crunchy I made some deep fried sliced almonds flavoured with cayenne pepper.


Ingredients:
4 fillets of rabbit
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 allspice berries
1 piece of cinnamon
1 cm fresh ginger
2 twigs thyme
zest of a lemon
3 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion
1 clove garlic
70 ml sherry
200 ml chicken stock
250 g canned, chopped tomatoes
1 bay leaf
a splash of sherry vinegar
1 twig thyme
salt, pepper


Crush spices in a mortar, then add olive oil and marinate the fillets of the rabbit, and set aside for at least an hour. Season and fry it from both sides, then put it to the oven on 80°C for 5-7 minutes, depending on its sizes. For the sauce sautee chopped onion, garlic and bay leaf, allspice in the same frying pan where you fried the rabbit. Add sherry and reduce, then add canned tomaotes, stock and cook for about 20 minutes. Sieve and cook until it has reached the desired consistency. Season with sherry vinegar, thyme leaves, salt and pepper.

Chocolate Glaze

Yeah, I know that I wrote yesterday that I am not going to post many cakes this month, besides this is not a cake, but this dark chocolate glaze is definitely perfect for glazing one. I used it to glaze my cake that I baked during the holiday time, recipe is coming soon! Until then I only say a few words: coffee, chocolate, hazelnut, tonka bean and caramel! Stay tuned, it's worth it! The chocolate glaze (the photos were taken of the leftover glaze a few days later) I am talking about comes from one of the beautiful books by Pierre Hermé. When reading the recipe for the first time, I thought it is kinda complicated, but it is not! Besides if there is any left over, simply reheat in a hot water bath and it is ready to be used again. So now let's see the recipe, and tomorrow I'll be back with something salty. Really.


Ingredients:
125 g dark chocolate (70%)
50 ml water
15 g sugar
25 ml crème fraîche
80 ml cream
20 g soft butter


First of all chop chocolate, then put 25 g into a pot and bring it to the boil together with the water, sugar and crème fraîche over low heat and cook it until it is nice and creamy and covers the back of a wooden spoon. Bring cream to the boil, then add some of the leftover chopped chocolate and stir until molten, then stir in the rest in small portions, but be careful not to overdo it. Let it stand until it reaches 60°C. Now add the chopped butter and when it is incorporated stir in the chocolate sauce. The glaze should be used when it has the temperature of 30-45°C.

Whisky Parfait

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a beautiful holiday time enjoying great food and happy moments with the family and the loved ones. I have seen a few blogs that write about starting a diet, well I am here to share my newest recipe for a whisky parfait with loads of chocolate sauce! So if you intend to start a diet after the rich meals of the holiday season, well this is the wrong place to seek for recipes. However, I think at the begining of the year I also won't bake much, although I recieved a couple of gorgeous pastry books...so it is gonna be hard to resist, but I try to make my best!


Ingredients:
100 g sugar
100 ml water
5 tablespoons whisky
2 egg yolks
2 egg whites
10 g sugar
200 ml cream
2 tablespoons whisky


First prepare the syrup: bring the sugar and the water together to the boil and cook for 10 minutes, add 5 tablespoons whisky and cook for another 5 minutes. Set aside and let it cool. Beat egg whites with 50 ml of the syrup and 2 tablespoons of whisky over steam until fluffy. Beat egg whites with 10 g of sugar and fold it into the cooled egg yolk-whisky cream. Stir in beaten cream and freeze the parfait in the desired form for 3-4 hours depending on the size of the portions.

Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all and the best wishes for the coming year! See you with new recipes in January!

Saffron Pilaf with Rose Water

During the past days my spice box from the pantry has moved into the kitchen, although there are at least fifty glasses of different spices on the shelves. Sometimes forgotten spices surprise me such as fenugreek or sumac. Actually, I only planned to cook pasta with a mushroom sauce, but I didn't have enough fresh mushroom and the dried was out of shelf life, so I needed a new idea. I decided to prepare fish and not only because it is Friday. Strangely, this week it was the third time that fish got onto the plate. As I have found fresh ginger, lemongrass and half a box of coconut milk, I felt like cooking something Asian inspired. The fish was flavoured with garam masala salt and fried. I cooked a simple coconut milk sauce flavoured with onion, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, coriander seeds and cumin. I only needed an idea for the rice. I cooked a pilaf flavoured with saffron, rose water, cardamom and served with a nice portion of roasted almonds, macadamia nuts and pistachios.


Ingredients:
180 g long grain rice
300 ml chicken stock or water
2 ek oil or ghee
1/4 teaspoon cumin
2-3 curry leaves
1 small piece of fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon saffron
1 tablespoon rose water
80 ml cream
1/4 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
1/4 teaspoon black pepper


Crush saffron and mix it with the rose water, add cinnamon, cardamom, clove, pepper and pour cream over it. Heat ghee, add cumin, curry leaves and grated ginger. Add rice after a few a minutes and let it brown while stirring. Pour stock over it, season and cook it uncovered. As soon as the liquid has absorbed, add the spicy cream, cover and let it stand on the switched of stove for 15-20 minuets. Stir in roasted almond, macadamia nuts and pistachios before serving.

Chocolate Cake with Cranberries

So far I have only had dried cranberries and as I do not like raisins I was pretty sure that this is going to be the same with those too. However, I have to say, that some years ago they did a great job in a fish dish with lentils and that was a great surprise, but still dried cranberries are not my cup of tea. Since a while I was planing to buy some fresh ones, however I always postponed it to the next time. Finally, I managed to buy a bag and of course I planned to use some in a cake. That is how this cardamom spiced chocolate cake was born. The cake is prepared pretty fast and you do not even have to wait until it cooles completly. The only thing that is missing on top is a nice portion of beaten cream!


Ingredients:
4 eggs
150 g sugar
200 g chocolate (70% cocoa)
40 g flour
100 g ground hazelnut
150 g butter
150 g cranberry
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom


Preheat the oven to 180°C. Beat egg yolks with sugar and cardamom until pale, add soft butter, hazelnut and molten chocolate. Stir in the flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites and the cranberries. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Cod poached in red and port wine

This year I am not going to bake Christmas cookies, probably on the honey cookies and the beigli is going to be baked. Of course there will be other sweets during the holidays, like a chocolaty cake with toasted hazelnut, a couple of ice cream and other treats, but no cookies. The reason is pretty simply, the whole family likes beigli and the honey cookies most, and rest is usually left in the pantry until end of January. Besides, I am a lot behind with the preparations, because I had a tiny accident and broke my small toe and therefore I could not stand in the kitchen, and still can not. But today I had enough and no matter what I decided to cook something, as I miss it so much. I wanted to use holiday spices in my lunch, so I had the idea of poaching a nice fillet of cod in red wine. I also found a beautiful radicchio and some fresh porcini in the fridge.


As far as the porcini is concerned, well it ended up in a puree, without cream but with porcini liquid, as I also added some dried poricini to the puree. Besides I saved some of the liquid and cooked a mushroom sauce with veal stock. The whole thing was served among balsamic vinegar flavoured black lentil and some sauteed radicchio with parma ham.


Ingredients:
500 ml port wine
300 ml red wine
1 staranise
2 pods brown cardamom
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 tablespoon coriander seeds
1/4 stick cinnamon

Put all the ingredients into a pot big enough for the fish fillets. Let the liquid simmer over low heat for about half an hour until it is reduced by a quarter. Place fish fillets into the poaching liquid, that should be barley simmering and let the fish poach for 6-8 minutes. At the end feel free the reduce the poaching liquid and bind it with some cold butter, season and there you got your sauce.