Junglefrog Cooking » Recipes

Sweet honey and pistachio cake

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:26:22 +0000

Don’t you just sometimes feel you’re at the mercy of some stranger when it comes to hosting of your blog? Not too long ago I moved from my Dutch hosting guys to Hostgator and while I have to say everything went smoothly up until this morning, I now felt why it makes sense to have a host a little closer to home. This morning I had a spike in CPU usage on my blog. It could be a hack attempt or whatever else can happen these days being online, but I was immediately locked out of all my accounts to prevent the server crashing. And I get that. Believe me, I understand why they decide to close down your site at that particular point.

What I do NOT understand is why it then has to take the entire day to get me back online. I was working on location so I could not get behind the computer to use the live chat (one of the disadvantages of hostgator for me I think) so it was 4 pm before I could do anything. And even then it took me about 2 hours in the chat to get it fixed. I had to reply to emails so I could ‘fix’ the issue (hard to fix something if you don’t know what’s causing it) plus had to almost beg to get it done. So… I am very annoyed at all this. I’m totally fine moving to another service and pay more if that is what it takes, but I just need to be able to rely on my host to not lock me out at the first sign of something going wrong. Or just lock down the offending site and not the entire account, as they did in this case. Locking down all my 6 websites…! It turns out that a plugin by the name of W3 total cache was causing the issue apparently, so that has been replaced… but still….

I know there are many of you out there who have huge amounts of traffic and high volume blogs, mine is peanuts in comparison, but how does your host handle traffic spikes and who is your host? Any hints, tips or whatever to help this being prevented? At this moment I am very tempted to move back to my previous host. I left because there was a huge price difference, but now I can see why there is one…

Sorry to be venting a little bit here but I just had to get this of my chest… And to sweeten the mood a little bit I have prepared this gorgeous and succulent cake for you. The recipe comes from the book Jamie Does. . . where he lists this recipe in the Greece section. It’s delicious and pouring the honey syrup over the cake makes it moist and delicious. I’m sure you’re gonna love it too!

Honey and pistachio cake

Print recipe

Serves	10-12
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	35 minutes
Total time	45 minutes
Meal type	Dessert
From book	Jamie Does....

Ingredients

5 large eggs
225ml greek yogurt
225g caster sugar
75g ground almonds
1 piece lemon (zested)
1 orange (zested)
150g flour (plus extra for dusting)
200g semolina
2 teaspoons baking powder
200ml olive oil (mild and creamy)

serving

2 punnets strawberries (hulled and roughly chopped)
greek yogurt

Topping

150g pistachio (shelled)
150ml honey (good quality and runny)

Directions


Preheat the oven to 180 C. Mix all sponge ingredients together in a large bowl. Grease a cake tin of about 22 x 29 cm with a little olive, then dust with a sprinkling of flour and shake the tin about. Spoon in the sponge mixture from the bowl, scraping it all out and use a spatula to spread it evenly.

Put the cake into the hot oven to bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, until golden and cooked through. To check, remove from the oven and stick a skewer into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean it's done, so put it to one side to cool for about half an hour.

When you're just about ready to serve your cake, toast the, roughly chopped, pistachios in a dry pan over low to medium heat till they start to become golden brown and smell delicious. Add the honey to the pan and stir everything through. Squeeze the juice from both the orange and the lemon in the pan and then boil for 1 or 2 minutes until it becomes syrupy and thick.

Stab the cake all over with a small knife to create little holes for the syrup to sink in to. then pour the pistachios and syrup all over the top and use the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly. It will look a bit runny but if you leave it for about 15 minutes the syrup will be soaked up. While still slightly warm, slice your cake and serve it with some chopped strawberries and greek yogurton the side

Salmon terrine – a real Masterchef pressure test!

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:16 +0000

Salmon terrine with anchovies butter

We have funny friends, did you know that? Friends who come up with these crazy ideas…. And it seems that our new kitchen is sort of bringing it out in all of them. It could have something to do with the fact that everyone all of a sudden wants us to cook dinner, and hey, it’s even more fun if there is a challenge attached to it. So P. and M., friends we have known for a little over 20 years had decided that Tom and I should do a pressure test.

Checking the recipe again!

If you’ve watched masterchef Australia (2nd season) this recipe might be familiair to you. it’s the salmon terrine that was used in one of the pressure tests. For those not in the know, a pressure test, is where the cooks that were the least successful in that round need to recreate an existing dish within a certain timeframe. usually the dishes are not simple, but require some sort of skill one way or the other. Obviously, we are no masterchef’s, so we bend the rules a little bit to suit our needs. The rule was that the recipes as well as the ingredients would be given to us by friday. So we had the saturday to get extra stuff if needed. I had to work on saturday, so the cooking was on sunday.

Turning the terrine out; le moment supreme

We had three recipes to make; one the salmon terrine with hazelnut salad, two; the drunken chicken recipe from Alvin, three; the roasted pear cake from Neil Perry. The terrine was really not difficult to be honest, it just requires a certain amount of time to cool and set. But once that is done, it is really very straightforward. We were disappointed in the drunken chicken recipe as that was just not to our taste. The dessert however was totally delicious so two out of tree ain’t bad!

Plating up

In the recipe I list the avocado mousse which you do not see on the plate. I did make it, but then I forgot to plate it up… Duh.. The terrine was a big success. Lovely taste of the anchovies butter combined with the salmon. As you can see by looking at the photos I forgot to make the butter layers really thin in the beginning so those are a bit too thick. Paired with some crusty bread this is a real winner and one that will go on our list of party recipes!

I don’t have a good photo of the roasted pear cake but I will def be making that one again so that will come up later!

Smoked salmon terrine

Print recipe

Prep time	1 hour, 20 minutes
Meal type	Appetizer
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Website	Masterchef Australia

Ingredients

700g sliced (smoked salmon)
400g unsalted butter (at roomtemperature)
1 lemon (rind finely grated)
200g white anchovies (drained and pat dried with paper towel)
2 slices (pane di casa bread)

Hazelnut salad

60 ml olive oil
1/4 cup hazelnuts
30ml hazelnut oil
1 teaspoon chestnut honey
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
15ml sherry vinegar
1/4 cup baby endive hearts (We used little gem)
2 tablespoons chervil leaves (picked)
2 tablespoons baby basil (snipped)
2 tablespoons baby parsley (snipped)
1 tablespoon red kale (snipped)

Avocado cream

1 avocado
15ml lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Trim brown fat from each slice of smoked salmon. Square off long edge of each piece.

2. Process butter in food processor until pale and thick, add rind, anchovies, season to taste and process to combine.

3. Grease the inside of a 1 litre capacity terrine mould with oil, line with plastic wrap, with at least 6cm overhang on all sides. Cut a piece of foam to fit inside the terrine mould. Cover it with aluminum foil and set aside.

4. Cover the base of the terrine with one layer of smoked salmon. Using a crank spatula and a straight edged wooden spoon spread a thin even layer of butter. Continue the layers, alternating salmon and butter mixture until you have reached just over half way of the mould. Cover the terrine with plastic wrap and gently press down, place the foil-covered foam into the terrine and weight down with a few food cans. Freeze for 30 minutes, transfer to the fridge for a further 30 minutes.

5. To make the avocado cream, blend together avocado, lemon juice and oil using a stick blender, until smooth.

6. To make the hazelnut salad, Place hazelnuts on an oven tray and roast until browned. Transfer to a clean towel and rub to remove skins. Heat 15ml olive oil in a frying pan over high heat. Add hazelnuts, cook until golden. Place remaining olive oil, hazelnut oil, honey, mustard and vinegar in a bowl, whisk to combine. Add the hazelnuts to the vinaigrette mixture. Toss salad leaves through the dressing to lightly coat.

7. Heat grill pan over high heat, drizzle bread with olive oil and cook on each side until golden.

8. To serve, invert terrine mould onto a chopping board and slice. Serve with a spoon of avocado mousse, hazelnut salad and grilled bread.

Shaved fennel salad – Bookreview Supernatural Every Day

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:21:06 +0000

Shaved fennel salad

Even though the weather is certainly not salad-weather at the moment, I figured that maybe, if I eat enough salads, the sun will magically appear? Will that work you think? Sort of reversed psychology for the weather.. As I am typing this it is actually pouring down with rain again so sofar it hasn’t helped, but I can always try, right? As I know is the case with a lot of people that do not live in Weimar (where the sun apparently always shines..:)

I’ve also noticed that – while I am certainly not a vegetarian – I actually do eat a lot of vegetarian dishes. Most of the time that is when Tom is not home and it’s just Gizmo and me in the house. I love to eat salads (Tom doesn’t) and I love to eat cheese (Tom hates cheese) and I like vegetarian dishes (Tom wants meat) so those moments are ideal to try out new salads.

This particular salad comes from the book Super Natural Every Day from Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks. The book is gorgeous and filled with great vegetarian recipes. My friend Hermin was coming over for dinner and as always she was on another diet. I always ask her what the diet of the day is when she is visiting. Just so I know what to cook! This time it was a no-carb diet so fairly simple to cook. I prepared my favorite salmon burger and thought this salad would make a great addition to that as it included fennel and dill which I think work great with salmon anyway.

The biggest hurdle is to shave the vegetables thin enough. I don’t have a mandolin, as that would work perfect I think, so I used a potato peeler instead, which is a little trickier on the fennel but worked great on the courgette. I also added a little honey as suggested by Heidi as my lemons were pretty tart.

Paired with the salmon this was a great meal!

Shaved fennel salad

Print recipe

Serves	4-6
Prep time	30 minutes
Cook time	5 minutes
Total time	35 minutes
Meal type	Salad
Misc	Serve Cold
From book	Super Natural Every Day

Ingredients

1 medium courgette (sliced into paperthin coins)
2 small fennel bulbs (trimmed and shaved paper thin)
15g dill (fresh and chopped)
80ml lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
80ml extra virgin olive oil
fine sea salt
4 or 5 handfuls rocket
honey (if needed)
60g pinenuts (toasted)
60g feta cheese (crumbled)

Directions

Combine the courgette, fennel and dill in a bowl and toss with the lemon juice, olive oil and 1/4 tsp salt. Se aside and allow to marinate for at least 20 minutes or up to an hour.
When you are ready to serve the salad, put the rocket in a large salad bowl. Scoop all of the zucchini and fennel onto the rocket, and pour most of the lemon juice dressing on top of that. Toss gently but thoroughly. taste and adjust with more of the dressing, olive oil, lemon juice or salt, if needed. If your lemons are particularly tart you may need to counter that by adding a little honey into the salad at this point. Serve topped with the pinenuts and feta cheese.

Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen
is published by Hardie Grant Books.

Hardie Grant on Twitter

Hardie Grant on Facebook

Steamed quinoa dessert with rhubarb and an accident

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:41:05 +0000

Steamed quinoa

I drive a lot. Part of my job is going from one location to the next either in Europe or in Holland. Well mostly in Holland really, but once or twice every so many years I also have to drive to Germany, France or similar places. I love driving, I’m comfortable on the road and don’t mind having to get in the car. Never had an accident either until yesterday. I was on my way to a client to discuss the photoshoot we’re having end of May. Moodboard, ideas, that would all be discussed this particular morning in Amsterdam. It was raining hard, so not the best conditions to drive in and I had already called them that I would be a little later due to traffic jams.

I was almost there, about 800 meters left to go when I turned right on a busy street. Bicycle path was on my right and I had to cross that to get to the next street. I never saw the motorcycle speeding towards me and before we both new it, he had hit my car, or I had hit him, however you look at it and I saw someone tumbling down the street.

The next things that happened are almost a blur; I parked my car on the side of the road and ran to the man lying on the street. I half expected him to stand up and I would have loved it if he had then started shouting at me but no, he remained lying down softly moaning. Obviously in pain. I tried to say something, then realized I had to call 911 (or 112 in Holland) immediately so ran back to the car, grabbed my phone, went back to the man and started dialing.

By then, two people who had seen it happen, had stopped and that was a good thing as I started to get very shaky and the bystander got my phone from me and explained what had happened to the ambulance people. Thank God, the ambulance and police where there within 5 minutes, sirens blazing.

Both police and ambulance people where extremely nice to me. I guess it was pretty obvious that I was badly shaken, could hardly explain what had happened. They also couldn’t understand a word the poor motorman was saying, as it turns out he wasn’t Dutch and I’m not even sure he spoke English. One of the policeman led me to their car and planted me inside to calm down a bit and obviously to hear from me what had happened.

I guess it was a pretty straight forward accident; obviously my fault but definitely not on purpose. I had to have my alcohol levels checked (also obviously zero) and they wrote down all my details and I could move on. The motorman had been taken away in the meantime.

And then you have to get back in your car and drive away. My car – btw – had hardly a scratch. A little dent in the front bumper and a scratch along the front of the bumper but that was it. In a way it’s probably good to have to drive straight away after something like that. I had called Tom to tell him what happened but it would have been silly to let him come and pick me up. After all, I had to get back in the saddle, so to speak.

And then comes the waiting. Waiting to hear if the man you hit is gonna be ok. I had nothing to go on; no name only his license plate from his motorbike. The police had promised to call me in the afternoon but didn’t, so I started calling them myself this morning and they did call me back fairly quickly to tell me that the man had been released from the hospital and was gonna be ok eventually. Wearing a brace around his back for possibly a few months as he bruised something there but it could have been worse!

For someone who has never even hit a pole or whatever, this was an experience I hope not to repeat. And with that said, I will be leaving you with something a lot sweeter then the story I just shared; a delicious quinoa dessert. The quinoa is slowly steamed with lime and coconut and is then eaten lukewarm with rhubarb and raspberries.. Mmmm, what’s not to love?

Quinoa with coconut, lime and rhubarb

Print recipe

Serves	2-3
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	45 minutes
Total time	55 minutes
Meal type	Breakfast, Dessert
From magazine	http://www.deliciousmagazine.nl

Ingredients

100g quinoa
150ml coconut milk
1/2 lime (juice and zest)
1 tablespoon honey
100g raspberries
100g rhubarb puree (or you can add more to taste)
12 pieces coconut with peel on
mint (for decoration)

Directions


Get a shallow wide bowl that fit into your steamer and add the quinoa, coconut milk and 50 ml of warm water, the lime juice and zest and a pinch of salt. Place the bowl in your steamer and steam the quinoa for about 30-40 minutes. Stir once or twice during steaming and check if the quinoa is done to your liking at the end. Be careful as the steam is very hot.

Take 2-3 glasses or bowls and put some raspberries at the bottom, stir the honey through the cooked quinoa and divide over your glasses. Add the rhubarb on top and garnish with the coconut and mint.

Matcha yogurt with rhubarb-blackberry puree

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:00:13 +0000

Breakfast

Remember I told you I had another funny story with Paris as, well let’s say as part of the story? Well here is comes, the story of a love gone sour… (nothing serious here, it’s a typical case of how a lot of holiday loves end I guess)

The love story starts in England, in a tiny tiny town called South Nutfield where I worked as a volunteer for a foundation that organizes holidays for disabled people (previously called Winged fellowship). I signed up on a spur of the moment thing, as my sister did it a year before me and loved it.

It was a very international mix of people, although the fact that I’m the only Dutch causes some issues in the first few days as it turned out that my school English was in no way sufficient. I didn’t understand ANY of the accents spoken, with the English ones being the worst. I forgot where they all came from but they sure had some heavy accents. That is not what you learn in school, so they might as well have spoken Russian as far as I was concerned. Within a few days I sort of got the hang of it and all that English started to make sense again.

My patient was a lovely lady who suffered from multiple sclerosis and while we had a pretty full day as volunteers I did still manage to fall in love with one of the French guys who also volunteered. He was blond, sexy and very sweet and we had a great time at the mansion, trying to sneak away to steal a kiss here and there. Privacy was hard to find though in a house filled to the rim with people, so before I knew it, we had agreed to meet in Paris where he studied. We said our goodbyes after a fun two weeks and I was already excited and looking forward to meet Y. again in Paris!

Ah Paris, that glorious, glorious city of romance! How could my visit not be romantic? The bus ride was long to Paris and I was tired when I arrived but excited too. I wasn’t too alarmed when Y. was not at the bus station when I arrived. The bus was delayed for several hours so he probably went home. I called him to say I was there and he sounded…well, not like the guy I used to know I guess, but I was still not alarmed.

He arrived soon enough and we went to his place, or so I thought. I was a little taken aback when I saw the ‘apartment’ we were supposed to stay in that weekend. It was a dark hole of a place, with a bed for 1 person, a dirty tiny kitchen and a not so pleasant smell. Y. explained that this was not his place but the place of a friend that he had ‘borrowed’ for the weekend so we could stay together. Aha… Y. immediately started kissing me, making it pretty clear that he wanted to ‘make love’ with me right there and then. I felt dirty and tired after having been on the road for more then 10 hours so I gently pushed him away, saying I wanted to have a shower first, have a bite to eat and do some fun things maybe before attempting anything psychical in that tiny tiny bed.

He grudgingly agreed; we went to a horrible restaurant where I started to feel this might not be the weekend I had thought it would be. He behaved like a totally different person from the Y. I had met in England, but I was stuck, I knew no one else in Paris and I wasn’t the world traveler I am today (or I like to think I am today) so I had no clue what to do and figured the best thing was to endure it for the weekend. We went to an Ingmar Bergman film I believe it was. A weird film about horrible tests on human’s that ended in a lot of blood and murder. I can’t really remember the name. Y. fell asleep during the movie. (Yes, he really did… and snoring loudly too!) We went home after and had horrible sex. I mean, seriously… French man are perfect lovers?? Well not all of them I can tell you! Lol.

The next couple of days only became bearable because he did have a few nice friends and we hung out with them, but any moment spend alone with Y. was terrible and I’ve never been happier that my stay in Paris ended! It was probably a good thing that I had been to Paris before or I might have forever associated that gorgeous city with that horrible experience. Thinking back on the whole thing; my guess is he actually had a girlfriend at the time, so couldn’t take me to his own place, so he thought to have some cheap sex in his friends flat with that weird Dutch girl. I guess I will never know, but it was a big big disappointment!

Now on to better things in life, I will share this delicious breakfast with you that is made of some of the leftovers from that gorgeous French souffle. I added some matcha into the yogurt and sweetened it with Manuka honey which I got from Julia before. I used the rhubarb-blackberry puree and the crumble I had leftover. It’s the French delight I made for the Monthly Mingle that made me remember this “lovestory”. More to follow there but now over to the recipe!

Matcha yogurt with rhubarb-blackberry puree and hazelnut crumble

Print recipe

Ingredients

1 teaspoon matcha powder
250ml yogurt
1 tablespoon manuka honey (or regular honey)
4 tablespoons rhubarb blackberry puree
2 tablespoons hazelnut crumble

rhubarb blackberry puree

500g rhubarb (sliced into 2 cm pieces)
140g sugar
lemon zest (of one lemon)
cornflour
150g black berries (I used frozen but you can use fresh too ofcourse)

hazelnut crumble

75g flour
50g butter
50g brown sugar
pinch salt
50g rolled oats
50g hazelnuts

Directions

Rhubarb puree

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Put the rhubarb with the 140 gr of sugar in a pan, add a splash of water, cover the pan and let it simmer on low heat for a while. Once the rhubarb is cooked but still has some chunky bits in it, add the blackberries. You can use frozen blackberries if you cannot find fresh. Add a bit of lemon zest in the pan as well. Put some cornflour in a small bowl, add water and whisk until smooth. Add this bit by bit to your fruit mixture until it is thick enough. It should become a thick puree. Leave to boil for another 1,5 minute to cook the cornflour. Then put your fruit puree into another bowl and stir to cool it down for at least five minutes.
hazelnut crumble

Make a crumble by adding the ingredients together in a bowl and mix it with your fingers till it resembles a rough crumble. Put the crumble on a baking tray, spread it out and bake for about 5 minutes until light golden brown.

Add 1 tsp of matcha powder to your yogurt and still well to combine. You can add more or less matcha if you prefer. Sweeten the yogurt a little bit with the manuka honey to your taste. Make layers in the glass with the puree, the yogurt, ending with some hazelnut crumbles on top!

Junglefrog Cooking » Recipes

Sweet honey and pistachio cake

Honey and pistachio cake

Ingredients

serving

Topping

Directions

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