3 Favorite Recipes for this Autumn

Each season of the year has a different taste for me and a different set of favorite recipes. I make them every year, sometimes with variations.

Spring tastes of young vegetables and Easter cakes, Summer of rhubarb pies, cherries and butter beans, and Winter has all those amazing spiced cookies, mulled wine and the Polish "ryba w galarecie" (fish in jelly - way better than it sounds).

But Autumn, oh Autumn! I think taste-wise it is my favorite season of the year. The spices, the pumpkins, the squashes, the plums, the apples...ohhhh boy.

Et billede slået op af Maria Lind (@mariafurya) den 23. Aug 2015 kl. 5:58 PDT

These year, my favorite Autumn recipe collection has been extended by the following 3 recipes:

1. Pumpkin Truffles

A yummy vegan dessert that's an essence of Autumn. I added peanut butter to my version (what doesn't taste better with peanut butter, eh?).

Et billede slået op af Maria Lind (@mariafurya) den 14. Nov 2015 kl. 2:28 PST

2. Butternut Squash Muffins

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe from his 30-minutes-meals series. They take me a bit longer to make but they are super easy and a big hit with friends and family.

Et billede slået op af Maria Lind (@mariafurya) den 25. Okt 2015 kl. 7:05 PDT

3. Roasted Cauliflower, Leak and Carrot Soup

Delicious, hearty and warming creamy soup for the cold Autumn evenings. Perfect for the vegetarians but if you are meat inclined, add some crunch bacon, shrimps or even chicken - yummy!

And as a bonus, I have started baking my sourdough bread again. I heart Autumn! 

Testing New Recipes

The plan for trying 15 new recipes this month is moving ahead, although rather slowly. I am cooking in a frenzy during weekends. But during the week, it gets really hard to cook something new after I come home from work in the evening. 

Anyway, I have tried a couple of new things. First of all, I made this malt syrup. It was fun to make and it smells funky - kind of like sweet beer. I already used it for baking my sourdough bread. It tasted sweeter than usual and smelled nicely of dark beer - Irish breakfast style :D

If you're going to make it, remember that while you are boiling it, it will not get very thick. It's only once it cools down, that it sets and thickens. 

I also made cauliflower soup (good, quick winter food), coconut and ginger smoothy (eee...not exceptional), and also tried this quinoa stuffed portobello mushrooms. Quinoa is usually rather tasteless so I was very surprised at how yummy these actually were. The recipe is rather simple and is really a good idea for a quick, "fancy-ish" side dish when your friends are coming to dinner. 

The last experiment was with milk bread (or chałka) which is one of the tastes of my childhood. Unfortunately, it was a bit led down. The recipe takes quite a bit of time (and some energy) which necessarily means that it is a special kind of dish. And the braiding is harder than it looks. But the problem for me was that my bread got pretty badly burned despite the fact that I looked into it 10min before the time mentioned in the cookbook (I used Scandalicious baking). My oven usually needs extra time to get things finished so I really can't say what went wrong. The bread still tasted pretty good on the inside, but the outside was burned. At some point of time, I will try the recipe again, but for now I am somewhat discouraged. 

For this weekend I bought some really good-class tenderloin (never in my life have I paid that much for 300g of meat). I am also planning vanilla extract and caramel muffins (see my pinterest board for details). The saddest thing is that I will probably not have time to make Korma this month. But hey, there is something to look forward to in March.

And what about you guys? Have you been cooking something yummy recently?

Nutty Sourdough

Yesterday, I baked this nutty sourdough bread as part of my 15 new recipes project. It's not 100% new recipe but rather a variation on this one.

Ever since I made my own sourdough starter, I bake bread pretty much every week. I bake it on Friday evenings so that we have fresh, yummy bread for Saturday breakfast. But, having baked it so many times, I am getting bored and so I need to start experimenting.

I've tried adding chilli (somewhat disappointing), olives (yum) and now the time came for nuts. Instead of the 2dl of flour that the recipe calls for in the morning, I add about 250dl finely ground hazelnuts. On top of that, I add hazelnuts cut in half and some hazelnut shaving on top of the bread.

The bread comes out lighter than when regular flour is used. On the other hand it is also less compact and falls a bit apart. The nutty taste is there but not as strong as one would expect. The sourness of the sourdough is less pronounced, which I like but it might be a minus for others. I would also advise using a bit extra salt than normally as the nuts seem to make the taste a bit too bland otherwise.

The one super fantastic thing about this recipe is the smell of the bread while it is baking. Truly fantastic.

Rhubarb!

I love seasonal fruits and veges. There is truly nothing more enjoyable on Saturday morning than a visit to farmers' market. I love browsing around the stalls, smelling fresh, earthy smells of roots and herbs, and picking up what's in season.


May is the season for asparagus and rhubarb. And boy, do I love rhubarb! So many good things you can make with these sweet and sour sticks.
Yesterday night, I turned the fresh batch of rhubarb into this delicious rhubarb sour cream cake. It is a very easy to follow recipe, but the outcome is orgasmic. The cake gets better on the second day, if kept in the fridge. And I strongly recommend you serve the cake with whipped cream, vanilla ice-cream, or sour cream and vanilla sugar. Mhhmmmm...

Honey Vodka for Cold Winter Nights

The weather here in Denmark is truly sad nowadays. It's wet and grey and there is not much sun at all. So to get myself up I decided to brew me Honey Vodka!!!

It is a fantastic drink to savour in the long, dark, winter evenings. It warms you right up. And it smells like Christmas :D

PS. Because of the lack of light, I did not take any pictures myself. The image above is curtsy of Kacper (accessible under Creative Commons licence). Click on the photo to see it on Flickr.

Honey Vodka Recipe:
Ingredients
- 0,5 l. vodka (you can use spirit instead if you like it stronger)
- 1 glass of honey
- 2 oranges
- 1 lemon
- 3 tbls of grounded coffee
- spices (carnation, ginger root, cinamon bark, nutmeg, vanilla pod...etc. - you should experiment and find your taste).

Preparations:
- Warm honey on a slow fire till it becomes clear (use saucepan with thick bottom)
- Add 1/2 glass cold water
- Add grated peels of 2 organes and 1 lemon
- Cut organges in slices and add them too
- Add juice from half a lemon
- Add spices and adjust for taste
- Brew coffee in 3/4 glass of water and add it to the saucepan (but without grinds)
- Boil everything together and then cool it all down
- Pure it in a large jar and store it in a cold place.
- After two weeks strain through a fine sieve and store the clear liquor for another two weeks.

And enjoy! :)

Celebrating Autumn: And What if I Get Ill

It is hard to celebrate or enjoy autumn if you have to do it from your bed with a sore throat, headache and 40C degree fever. In the capricious autumnal weather it is easy to catch a cold. Luckily, nature provides us as well with a lot of natural remedies and immune system boosters. Today 3 ideas of how to go through the fall using your own kitchen stock.

The Terrible Mixture

What for:
Sore throat, general cold and muscle soreness. Garlic has the qualities of natural antibiotics and can kill germs! Ginger and honey smooth the aching throat and lemon provides your system with C vitamin.

Ingredients:
1. garlic
2. ginger root
3. honey
4. lemon

How-To:
1. Chop garlic and ginger
2. Pour hot water over it and let it brew for 5 minutes
3. Add lemon and honey
4. Drink while warm

Onion Milk

What for:
Does wonders for sore throat.

Ingredients:
1. onion
2. milk

How-To:
1. Peal onion and cut it to several pieces
2. Boil the onion in milk
3. Drink milk while hot
4. You can add honey to sweeten the drink

Zombie Elixir

What For:
Kills the germs and makes sure your cold won't develop.

Ingredients:
1. 40% vodka (any kind, the taste really shouldn't be your main concern)
2. 250g of garlic

How-To:
1. Chop garlic
2. Pour alcohol over choped garlic and keep it in closed jars for two weeks. The jars should be kept in warm place, possibly in the sun.
3. After two weeks throw away the garlic and keep the alcohol (it will reach the color of muddy kiwi juice...yummy)
Hint: don't use jars or bottle you actually like - you won't be able to get rid of the garlic smell.
4. When you feel a cold is coming on drink 10 drops of elixir in a glass of water before every meal.

Remember: the remedies work and can support your immune system in fighting the head cold but they are not a substitute for medical advice in case of prolonged illness.

Celebrating Autumn: And All That Jam...

So I live near this botanical garden, which is in fact a big park, and no one pick up the apples from the trees in there ... anyway, long story short: I had a few spare apples on my hands. I am not the biggest fan of jams, jellies, marmalades etc. but the apples were a bit too sour to eat them like just like that - so jam it is. The recipe below was taken from Polish newspaper but then considerably modified and adjusted by me.

The recipe for Spicy Apple and Ginger Jam (For roughly1,5l of jam):

Ingredients:
1kg apples
300g of ginger (or less if you don't like the jam too spicy)
500g sugar (or less if you don't like your jam too sweet)
1 table spoon of dried ginger
a few cloves
3 table spoons of cinnamon
(you can also add vanilla or cardamom - depends on your taste)

Preparation:
1. Peel and cut the apples removing the seeds and put it in a large pot
2. Peel and cut ginger and add to apples
3. Add 0,5l water and boil until soft (around an hour). Don't boil it too hard and consider adding more water if you see there is not enough left in the pot (don't overdo it or you'll make the jam too watery)
4. Add spoonfuls of sugar and stir. Add as much sugar as you think is necessary for your taste.
5. Add the spices and stir - let it boil for another 10 min.

If the jam comes out too watery you can either boil it longer until the water steams away or you can add a bit of jelly fix powder.

Ginger has the tendency not to get entirely soft during boiling - if you prefer you can put the apples and ginger into food processor before cooking or use hand blender after.

6. Put the warm jam into clean jars. Screw the tops tight and boil the jars in hot water for 10 minutes - the jam is now pasteurized and can keep in closed jars for up to one year.

This jam is ok for sandwiches, waffles and crumbles but I also like to add it to my black tea.

Let me know if you tried this recipe and what came out of it!

Celebrating Autumn: The Pumpkin

First of all, I love pumpkins! This is what it will say on my grave...or at least in my post-mortem biography.

I love everything about pumpkins: the colors, the shape, the smells and the tastes. And most of all I love the fact that so few people in Europe know what to do with pumpkins which makes them at cheap and, at the same time, exotic food.

There are many pumpkin varieties but here in Denmark you can only buy two kinds of pumpkins, the halloween kind (they are destined to end up as jack-o-lanterns) and the hokkaido. The former one is watery, large and very cheap and is perfect for pumpkin curry soup (recipe below) and the later is more expensive but sweet and is prefered for the pies.

So, the other week I took a trip to a place called Bazaar (a topic for whole other post) and bought myself some pumpkin, Baby! And here is what I did with it.

Jack-O-Lantern/Halloween Pumpkin Preparation

1. Cut pumpkin in half and remove the seed nest with a spoon
2. Roast it in the oven, skin up, for 1h at 180C - remember to roast pumpkin in a deep dish. It will give out a lot of juice and can flood your oven otherwise.
3. After an hour check if the pulp is soft and let the pumpkin cool down
4. Scoop out the pumpkin pulp, divide it in portions and freeze for further use

Sweet and Spicy: Pumpkin Curry Soup

You will need:
- pumpkin pulp
- curry powder (or ingredients for curry powder)
- olive oil
- onion - sliced
- 2 carrots - sliced
- 2 potatoes - sliced
- you can also use other root vegetables such as celeriac or parsnip
- salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat up the oil in a large pot, add curry powder and let it fry for 2 minutes
2. Lower the heat to medium and add onions
3. When onions are glossy add carrots and potatoes (and any other roots) and steer well
4. Add pumpkin pulp
5. Add water and boil till the vegetables are soft
6. Blend the soup and spice it to taste (cayenne pepper fits well with this soup)

You might also want to add some vegetable stock with the water. You can also use fresh (not roasted) pumpkin - in that case cut pumpkin in smaller pieces and remember that it will take a little but longer to boil until soft.

Serve with roasted pumpkin seeds or garlic bread croûtons (mhhhmmm).