Junglefrog Cooking » Challenges

DHSPC #5 results!

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:10:44 +0000

Meeta's interpretation of this lovely soup

I’ve been really blown away by the results of this months challenge. We had a lot more participants this time then in december, which was no surprise, but still it makes me happy to see that you’re all having fun with the challenges! I’ve just prepared the next one today so stay tuned for more fun! Now on to this month; I’ve decided to change the ‘picking of the winner’ a little bit. What I will do, and you can see all entries below, is that I will let you choose which one you like best. Click the like under the image of your choice and the ones with the most likes will have won. It’s not really about winning so I figured that this is a better option then letting me pick my favorite.

Ofcourse if I had to choose; Meeta’s image above is definitely one of my favorites as it’s warm tones go really well with the (delicious!) soup. If you’re looking for the recipe of the soup go here.

Now you’ll have an extra week to vote for your favorite. After one week the voting will be stopped and the winner will be showing up in the same list… So vote for your favorites now!

Quinoa, feta and walnut salad

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:42:46 +0000

Delicious and healthy salad with quinoa, feta and apple

It’s no big secret that I love quinoa as it has been featured here a couple of times, as you can see with this delicious quinoa salad with courgette, the quinoa salad with pomegranate and most recently the pumpkin stew. I was reading a couple of blogs on my Iphone this morning (don’t you just love the possibilities of wireless internet??) when I came upon this delicious recipe from Reeni of the blog Cinnamon spice and everything nice. She had this quinoa salad on and I immediately knew what I wanted to make for lunch. I had everything in house so it was perfect.

I knew I would be baking the entire day for a customer who wants to have all the recipes on their site re-shot, so I figured I could do with something NOT sweet for lunch. I’ve been pretty good too, despite being covered in flour and buttercream most of the day. I have not eaten anything of the sweet goodies!! Proud of myself…. I’ve lost 9 pounds so far and want to keep the momentum going. It’s not that I don’t allow myself anything “bad” but all in moderation. And if I have to choose between – for instance – a good piece of cheese or a cupcake, I would go for the cheese anytime, so I’ll stay of the sweets for a while.

And I gotta say that after having this delicious salad I did not feel the need to snack on anything so that was all good. This salad is definitely going to be on my list of favorites. I changed the dressing and the qty’s a bit from the original but I’m sure it was just as lovely!

And I can say that in terms of the Living Leaner project, this did not cost me anything, but that is not entirely fair of course as I have bought these ingredients at some point in the past. I’m pretty sure that it would fit nicely below the 10 euro budget as the most expensive ingredient in here is the feta of which I used about 1/4 of the package, so still some left for more yummy salads this week! The rocket cress we grew ourself on our window sill. Love rocketcress! So tasty and so easy to grow too (and trust me when I say I do not have green fingers at all.!)

Quinoa, apple and feta salad

Print recipe

Serves:	1
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	15 minutes
Total time:	30 minutes
Dietary:	Vegetarian
Meal type:	Lunch, Salad
Region:	Worldwide
Website:	Cinnamon spice and everything nice

Ingredients

75g quino (cooked and cooled off)
50g feta
a fewwalnuts (roasted and chopped)
2 tablespoons dried cranberries
1 head apple (I used half an apple here)

Optional

1 tablespoon rocket cress

Dressing

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon coarse grain mustard
salt
pepper
1 teaspoon honey

Directions


In a small skillet over medium heat toast walnuts about 5 minutes stirring often. Remove and allow to cool. Chop the walnuts into smaller pieces. Chop the cranberries also into smaller pieces. Crumble the feta cheese and peel, core and cut the apple into bitesize chunks. In a large bowl combine quinoa, apples, cranberries, feta cheese, and the walnuts.

Make a dressing of the oliveoil, limejuice, pepper, salt, honey and mustard and taste to adjust seasoning to your liking. Pour the dressing over the bowl of quinoa and enjoy!

Note

This is an incredibly tasty and really healthy lunch salad that is quick to put together. You can also use another grain such as couscous or pearl barley for this.

Potato cakes and cooking club #6

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:35:07 +0000

Potato cakes

It’s been said before and I will say it again but sometimes the simplest things in life are also the best… Last night was our 6th session of our cooking club, with the fancy name of Kookclubbie (maybe we should come up with another name??) and it was great fun again, good cooking, lots of laughter and some serious things in between as well. The group is still in the original shape as it was a year ago when we started. One person left due to other priorities but we’re still with 14 men/women. The menu yesterday was:

potato cakes with creme fraiche and trout eggs
Mushroom veloute
Lemon spoom
Dorad with ovendried tomatoes and tapenade
Creme brulee with icecream

Ofcourse all those drinks are purely water or soda...:)

The menu was fairly laid back this time, so we had some time to catch up with the news after New Years. Our cooking sessions are only once every two months, so while we do see some of the people on a more regular basis, others we only see at the cooking club, so that means lots of things to talk about! Saskia and I were responsible for the potato cakes and truth be told, she did most of the work. Lol.. I think I whisked the eggs, does that count for anything? To make up for that lack of eh… cooking, I made the potato cakes again today for dinner. They were totally delicious and they fit well within a budget too. Yesterday we had these with trout eggs but since those are fairly expensive I left them out today and we spiced up the creme fraiche with spring onions, mustard and some chili pepper instead. Also totally delicious!

New Years, group hugs!

These cakes are easy to put together and we’re having them tonight with some fresh mackerel fillets (with an orange and harissa glaze) and pak choi that will be quickly stirfried in the wok. All in all in a delicious dinner that costs a little and goes a long way. And it’s also within the budget for Mona’s living leaner challenge!

Potato cakes

Print recipe

Serves:	12
Prep time:	10 minutes
Cook time:	30 minutes
Total time:	40 minutes
Allergy:	Egg
Meal type:	Side Dish
Misc:	Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
Region:	Worldwide

Ingredients

500g potatoes
6 pieces egg
salt
pepper
250ml creme fraiche
6 pieces eggs (hardboiled)
1 spring onion
1 red chili
2 teaspoons mustard

Optional

few teaspoonstrout eggs

Directions


Peel and wash the potatoes and then grate them finely. Crack 6 eggs open and whisk together. Season with salt and pepper generously. Add the grated potatoes to the eggmix and stir everything together. Taste and add more salt and pepper if you want. If you do want to taste raw eggs, bake one cake and taste if it needs additional seasoning

Boil the other 6 eggs till hard. Peel and keep yolks and whites separate, mashing them finely with a fork.

Cut the spring onion and the chili pepper finely and stir through the creme fraiche together with the mustard. Add the trout eggs if you want. Since these are very salty, make sure you keep that into consideration when your seasoning your potatoes. Taste your creme fraiche mix and add seasoning where needed.

Heat a frying pan on medium heat, add oil to the pan and with a spoon form little rounds of your potato-egg mixture. You can use a baking ring if you want or go freeform. Bake until golden brown, flip and bake the other side until done and transfer to a baking tray.

Once all your potato cakes are done you can leave them on the baking tray until you're ready to eat. Heat them through in the oven and serve with the creme fraiche. Add the egg crumbles to your plate and - if using - you can also add some additional trout eggs too.

Note

At the cooking club we had these with the trout eggs, but at home I prepared them without since those eggs are fairly expensive. Instead of the eggs we added some mustard, spring onions and chili to the cream, which works just as well and makes it a vegetarian dish too!

Marinated chicken on a stick and living leaner

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:00:32 +0000

Delicious meal

Now that the new year has started the term Living Leaner that Mona started on her blog Wisewords, takes on a bit of a double meaning for me. In fact, it takes on a triple meaning… I’m no different then anyone else around the world who wants to get fit and healthy in the new Year. Maybe with this difference being that I actually started right after Christmas (with just a short break at New Years) so this doesn’t count at all as a New Years resolution. I don’t do New Years resolutions so this just happens to be in the same period. And let’s face it, we’ve been here before now haven’t we? But in terms of living leaner; I could be a lot leaner myself and since Tom is still unemployed we have to live a lot leaner ourselves to. The budget has a limit!

And quite frankly, the way we were spending money before was – at some point – quite ridiculous. That’s the thing with having enough money; you tend to start living according to it. And that’s fine really but it also means that taking a step back is a bit harder. And it’s quite a big step back too. Finding a job in these days is hard. December is not the best month in any year to find a job but with the crisis everyone talks about, it is even harder. We’re still hopeful all will turn around soon but as of this month Tom is on unemployment benefit for the first time in his life (and I bet he also wishes it is going to be the last time too)

Skewered chicken with orange fennel salad

And the worst thing is that we do not know at this point how much money we will have left. I have an irregular income and Tom will only hear at the end of the month how much his benefit will be. So we’re preparing for the worst case scenario, just in case.. That means that we’re on a tight budget. I do realize there are loads of people out there that have a far worse situation then we do, so believe me, I’m not complaining. I’m merely stating the facts. So that means that we have to also become a bit more creative with what we eat. Once a week (on saturday) we get a crate of organically grown produce including meat, vegetables, cheese, eggs etc. If we use it wisely it would be enough to feed us for a week if we add some extra’s to it such as pasta, spices etc. It’s always seasonal and local too. Going to the supermarket would possibly be a tiny bit cheaper but then I wouldn’t know where it came from and I would like to still support the local farmers where we can. And for now, we still can, so no reason to get rid of that.

This particular meal does have a lot of ingredients but most of that we always have in house so there was no extra cost involved. The only thing I needed to buy was the chicken, the fennel, the salad and the oranges and the cost of those you see below. It was delicious, especially the marinade on the chicken gets high points. We had this with some plain rice as otherwise the meal would have been too light. And while I do want to lose weight, I want it to be sensible too!

And so you can all check how I’m doing I’ve added a little weight loss badge on the right in the sidebar… If it stays at the same number for too long, you can come and kick my butt!

Spicy skewered chicken with fennel-orange salad

Print recipe

Serves:	2
Prep time:	20 minutes
Cook time:	10 minutes
Total time:	30 minutes
Meal type:	Lunch, Main Dish, Salad
Region:	Chinese
From book:	Chinese food made easy

Ingredients

200g chicken breast
olive oil

Herb mix

1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon chili flakes
1/2 teaspoon paprika powder
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon seasalt
1 teaspoon arachid oil (nut oil)
1 teaspoon shaohsing ricewine or dry sherry

orange fennel salad

4 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 piece lime juice (juice from half a lime)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon roasted sesame oil (I used regular sesame oil)
200g mixed salad leaves (washed)
1 piece fennel bulb (sliced thinly, soaked in cold water for 30 seconds and drained)
2 pieces oranges (peeled, parts cut out from between the pith)
seasalt
pepper

Directions


Soak 8-10 bamboo skewers for 20 minutes in cold water

Mix all ingredients for the herb mix in a bowl. put the meat in and coat them with the mix before you put them on the skewers

Heat a griddle or grill pan on high and sprinkle the meat with a little olive oil. Put the skewers in and grill the meat until golden brown, turn and grill the other side too. take of the fire.

For the salad put olive oil, orange and limejuice, soysauce, sesame oil and salt and pepper in a bowl together and whisk. Put the salad leaves in another bowl and divide the fennel and orange parts; sprinkle the dressing over the salad.

Divide the salad over 2 plates and put the chicken skewers on top and serve immediately.

Note

The original recipe uses lambfillet but that is hard to find here so I went with chicken instead!

Cost:

Fennel € 1,30
Oranges € 0,50
Chickenbreast € 1,50
Mixed Salad leaves € 1,50
TOTAL 4,80

Obviously the salad leaves could have been cheaper had I used regular salad but these were bought for a photoshoot so I figured I might as well use them!

Creamy cauliflower soup – DHSPC #5

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:48:07 +0000

I’ve been having this one on my desk for a while now. I know Donna Hay is known for her light and airy photographs, but really, if you go through the magazines, you will notice that there are quite a few with beautiful dark and moody images. Maybe because it is winter, but I’m quite drawn to those.

Cauliflower soup

I think in general my style of photography is fairly light too, but lately I’ve been showing more of my dark side.. So this gorgeous soup is just the thing I need to get over all those greasy oliebollen and champagne from New Years and to move on to a better and healthier me! Above you see my attempt and the one below is the one you need to try and create!

Photo; Ben Dearnley

And of course, you guessed it, it is also the new challenge for the Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge…. While a deceptively simple image, I think it is going to be tricky to recreate the same look and feel of the photo here. The original is shot by Ben Dearnley and styling is done by Justine Poole. The recipe comes from DHM #51. I know I struggled in finding the right balance of light, especially since there was hardly any light today to begin with. In the original there is light coming from the right, but it is brighter then what I got today. I might try and give it another go as the soup itself is truly delicious (love those crunchy Parmesan bits on top too!)

In terms of submitting your entries into the challenge, I am now using Linky Tool. You can click the “submit yours” below and enter the details of your post once it’s up. I have to approve it before it appears (to avoid spammers going in and having a ball) so it will not show up immediately. Once it is up, people can also like your image and that gives an indication of which photo is preferred. An indication, nothing more then that.. Ultimately it is about the learning experience more then anything else.

The recipe is below:

Creamy Cauliflower soup

Print recipe

Serves:	4
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	40 minutes
Total time:	55 minutes
Allergy:	Milk
Meal type:	Soup
Misc:	Pre-preparable, Serve Hot
Region:	Worldwide
From magazine:	Donna Hay Magazine

Ingredients

25g butter
1 brown onion (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
1 bay leaf
1,5 head cauliflower (or 1,5 kg, chopped)
500g potatoes (starchy potatoes, peeled and chopped)
750ml chicken stock
500ml milk
125 ml single cream
sea salt
cracked white pepper
4-6 sprigs fresh thyme

Parmesan cauliflower crumbs

100g cauliflower (chopped)
2 tablespoons olive oil
20g parmesan (finely grated)

Directions


Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the onion, garlic, thyme and bay leaf and cook for 5-8 minutes or until onion has softened. Add the cauliflower, potato, stock and milk, increase heat to medium and cook for 25-30 minutes or until cauliflower and potato is tender. Remove from the heat and, using a hand-held blender, blend until smooth. Stir through the cream, salt and pepper.

While the soup is cooking, make the parmesan cauliflower crumbs. Place the cauliflower, oil and parmesan in a bowl and toss to combine. Heat a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Cook the cauliflower, oil and parmesan in a bowl and toss to combine. Heat a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Cook the cauliflower, stirring for 2 minutes or until golden and crisp. Top soup with cauliflower crumbs to serve.

Rules of the challenge are:

If you would like to participate in the challenge the rules are pretty simple and please follow them as per below:

Once a month (on the 3rd of the month) I will give you a recipe plus the accompanying photo out of the Donna Hay magazine. I will try to make it seasonal but can’t promise anything.
You have that same month to produce your post. You can post it any day you like just as long as you finish it before the end of that month at the latest.
You have to produce that recipe, alterations to the recipe are allowed to make sure any dietary restrictions are met. But only minor changes!
You have to cook and STYLE the recipe trying to replicate the photo as best as you can. If you think you can do a better job then the original photo, by all means feel free to make your own changes to the styling.
Shoot the dish and then write a blog post about it. It would be great to add notes on how you took the photo and how you styled the dish, so that other people can learn too.
Link back to this months blog post about the challenge and link back to the Donna Hay Challenge page here
Leave a message on the post that is up here for that month, saying that you completed the challenge and link to the post on your site so others can find it too.
If you want to use the original photo in your blog post as well as the recipe be sure to link back to the Donna Hay website plus the photographers website. They will both always be mentioned in the monthly challenge posts.

Each month a winner will be picked who will be featured in the (soon to come) Hall of Fame page. If you like you can add a badge to your site saying that you are taking part in this competition. The badge is featured above and should link back to this page.

Above all this challenge is about having fun styling and photographing a dish by taking Donna Hay as our great example. You can join all months or whenever you feel like joining in. Using an example of the great photographers that Donna works with, I always find that it is a good learning experience to see how did they light the scene, where does the light come from and how did they manage to make it look so beautiful. Try and analyze all of that and then come up with your own version.

While taking food photos is all about finding your own style and certainly not copying anyone else, it does help to analyze how your hero’s do their job. It’s about learning to light and style a scene properly. In no way am I trying to suggest you copy another person style. Find your own unique style! This challenge is just a tool to help you along the way..

Junglefrog Cooking » Challenges

DHSPC #5 results!

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Quinoa, feta and walnut salad

Quinoa, apple and feta salad

Ingredients

Optional

Dressing

Directions

Note

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Potato cakes and cooking club #6

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Ingredients

Optional

Directions

Note

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Marinated chicken on a stick and living leaner

Spicy skewered chicken with fennel-orange salad

Ingredients

Herb mix

orange fennel salad

Directions

Note

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Creamy cauliflower soup – DHSPC #5

Creamy Cauliflower soup

Ingredients

Parmesan cauliflower crumbs

Directions

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