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

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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.

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• Greek salad
• Lettuce, chicory and apple salad
• Lamb’s lettuce salad with feta and tomatoes
• Goatcheese salad with walnuts and pear
• Bull’s blood salad with halloumi

salad ingredients

The indecisiveness is driving me completely insane… While I thought I had made the final decision to get rid of my studio, every time I go there for work or something else, I get sad… really sad.. So now I am starting to question my own decision. Maybe there is another way to make it work and where on earth to I keep all the things I collected over the years that fit fine into a 120 square meter space, but not so fine into a 10 square meter space that will be all that I have left… *Big sigh and pulling my hair out*

What I did do today is go to my landlord and just tell him my problem. That I don’t WANT to leave but that is has become too expensive for the amount of time I am there and well, basically I asked him if he would rent it for a little less.

So healthy!

He didn’t say no right away so that is the good news. He will need to discuss it with his brother and business partner, so the story continues. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore it feels like. My mind jumps from decision to decision; one minute I think ‘Yeah it makes sense to give it up.” and the other minute I get all desperate and wonder where on earth would I be able to do my job?? Ofcourse there are pro’s and cons that I can think about all rationally but in the end it is my heart that is the biggest problem. I love that space; it is so me. I’ve been there for almost 4 years, we decorated it ourselves and build it up from scratch.

As if it had to be I was contacted today by someone who wants to rent the studio every now and then. That would help although the problem with things like that is that there is no certainty. But if the rent would go down a bit plus this man would rent the studio every now and then, I could maybe, just maybe, keep the studio… We’ll see… time will tell! I have till the end of March to make the final and definitive decision, so I have some more time to drive myself insane.. Yeah!

Still some poppyseed left!

Now on to this lovely salad; I’ve been really good these last few weeks. Tom and I have taken on the habit of going for a walk together every day after work, we’ve been eating very healthy, no snacking in between and no wine other then in the weekends… (a girl’s gotta have some fun!) For a lot of our grocery shopping we now walk to the store instead of taking the car (saves on gas too) so all in all, we’re doing good. The result is that I lost 8 pounds so far (as you can see from the little badge on the right) and while still a long way to go, the beginning is there!

I made this delicious and very quick salad while I was in the studio this morning and I had it for lunch. It’s a bit too light with only 138 kcal so I did have some bread later. No need to starve myself, but this is delicious and adding a bit of bacon maybe would make it a bit more filling too.

This salad is also very fitting for Mona’s Living Leaner as this is literally made from leftovers we had in the fridge and cupboard! So cost for extra was 0 and I prevented wastage!

Lettuce, chicory and apple salad

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Serves:	6
Prep time:	15 minutes
Cook time:	None
Total time:	15 minutes
Dietary:	Vegetarian
Meal type:	Salad, Side Dish
Misc:	Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide
Website:	BBC Good Food

Ingredients

• 100g mixed salad leaves
• 1 head white chicory (trimmed and separated into leaves)
• 1 piece apple (cored and sliced)
• 25 g toasted pistachio
• 25g sunflower seeds
• 75g cherry tomatoes (halved)

Dressing

• 2,5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2,5 tablespoons Honey
• 2,5 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 tablespoon whole grain mustard
• 1 teaspoon poppy seed

Directions

Arrange the salad ingredients on a large plate or big salad bowl. Put all the ingredients for the dressing together in a jar or bowl and shake or stir until well combined. When ready to serve sprinkle some of the dressing over the salad and toss together.

Note

Quantities and ingredients are adapted from the original recipe to what I had on hand. Obviously you can change nuts and other ingredients to your liking

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• Tarly salad with orange hazelnut dressing – living leaner
• Lamb’s lettuce salad with feta and tomatoes
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• Quinoa, herb and pomegranate salad and the digital age

Sometimes, just every so often, you try out a recipe and it is just plain wrong… I had never before have that happen with a Donna Hay recipe, so I guess kudos to their team for testing most of their recipes. And I say ‘most’ because the recipe I picked for this months Donna Hay Challenge is certainly NOT right. I was alerted to the problems initially by Laura from the blog Tiramisu who had tested it to see how it would look and it turned out the caramel sauce stayed far too watery to be considered a sauce. So I tested it too and indeed, it was nowhere near the right consistency of a sauce. Plus, due to the watery nature of the caramel the dumplings became very soggy in the oven.

So I thought about it, tweeted a bit here and there with Jenn, Astrid and Alessio and I decided in the end I would split up the components of the recipe and make them separate. I still had some dough leftover from the dumplings, so I used those to make 5 small dumplings and baked them in the oven for about 25 minutes. I poached the apples on the stove in a mixture of sugar, verjuice and water with cinnamon, cardamom, staranise and cloves and made an orange caramel sauce to go over the finished product.

Too sweet!

And while all the separate components worked really well this time, the end product was too sweet. Initially I thought that I should have poached the apples in a sugarless solution but I don’t think that the apples were the problem. The caramel, while delicious, would probably be better for an creamy dessert. The dumplings soaked it up quite well so they too, became too sweet. Pfft, what to do now? I’m thinking the solution might be to change the water qty in the original caramel recipe (which was great in taste, just too soggy) and add the butter into the caramel at a later stage. Anyone any thought on how to resolve this? It’s quite a tasty recipe otherwise, it’s just too soggy, that’s all…

I will share my take on the recipe with you below but first let me get into the photo process here. Based on the original photo I used a table with backlighting as you can see in my setup. Apart from the obvious differences in props for me the biggest difference is the texture. The recipe does not state to add sugar to the dumplings but that is clearly what they did in the photo. Also I did not have small apples, so I used bigger ones and cut them. As soon as you poach apples, either in the oven or in a pan the color starts leeking out of them. So while they were quite red at the start; it soon turned rather yellow. I wish I had small apples and if I do manage to find them I might make this again.

Donna vs mine

See how the texture of the sugar on the dumplings and the more wrinkled appearance of the small apples adds a really pleasing contrast to the tin they serve the apples in? In my photo it is all too smooth. Also because I did not want to overcook the apples and have no color at all left.

To reflect some of the light back onto the apples I used my foamboard wrapped with aluminium foil plus the lid of a pan. I could not – for the live of me – find my reflector, so that is probably still in the studio..

See my messy table and the reflecting lid of the pan

I will now share how I prepared this, but for the original recipe best look at the Donna Hay post. I would love to hear your thoughts on the recipe and the problems you encountered while cooking it!

I used the recipe for the dumplings as per the original, but baked them separately in the oven at 180C for 25 minutes.

I poached the apples in a liquid containing verjuice and water, about 1/2 cup of sugar, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 staranise, 5 cardamom pods (crushed) and 3 cloves. I brought the liquid to the boil, added the apples and simmered for about 15 minutes.

Orange caramelsauce

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Serves:	4
Prep time:	5 minutes
Cook time:	10 minutes
Total time:	15 minutes
Meal type:	Condiment
Region:	Worldwide
Website:	Epicurious

Ingredients

• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest

Directions

Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in heavy small saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil without stirring until deep amber color, occasionally brushing down pan sides with wet pastry brush and swirling pan, about 8 minutes. Carefully add orange juice and orange peel (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir over low heat until smooth and any caramel bits dissolve. Cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.) Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Orange-Caramel-Sauce-106133#ixzz1dJGke6fw

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apple bundt cake

It’s been quite a rollercoaster week this week. Due to the passing of my mother in law we’ve not been home much, going between my father in laws house and our house. We stayed there for dinner most of the days. To begin with there are so many things to arrange for a funeral that you never really think about until you have to, but it’s been hectic and incredibly tiring. I never realized that emotions are so draining… But we all feel the same way… The funeral was today and it was a beautiful service with loads of people that turned up. Not only people that knew my mother in law well, but also friends of Tom and his brother, who were there to support us all. It was emotional but also wonderful.

And after the ceremony was over we all felt completely exhausted… It’s been something we have been working towards for the most part of the week and now that it is over we can begin to work towards getting some resemblance of a normal life back again.

Thanks to everyone for their warm wishes and condolances. It means a lot to both Tom and myself!

On to more mundane subjects; I didn’t bake this cake today (obviously) but yesterday Tom’s brother and his dad were over for dinner at our place so I figured I should bake something. Food has been really really bad the entire week; ranging from pizza to take away chinese food. It just wasn’t on our minds that we had to cook! But thankfully yesterday I did actually cook a normal meal. A lovely risotto and for dessert we had coffee and this fabulous Bundt cake.

The original is from Dorie Greenspan’s book ‘Baking’ that I finally got after seeing so many bake wonderful things from the book… Well, beware as I have it now too!

Apple and nuts bundt cake

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Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Original from Dorie Greenspan, adapted by me

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hour 5 mins

Total time: 1 hour 25 mins

Serves: 12

Lovely and moist this cake is and keeps well for 5 days!

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of ground pecannuts and hazelnuts
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (8 ounces) or 226 gr gr of butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups (packed) light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs, at roomtemperature
• Seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• 1/4 tsp of almond extract
• 1 cup of buttermilk, at room temperature
• 2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and place the rack in the middle of the oven. Butter a 9 to 10 inch Bundt pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess.
2. Put the flour, ground nuts, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl and mix well to combine.
3. Using a standmixer, beat the sugar and the butter together at medium speed until it is fluffy and light, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs to the buttermixture, one at the time. Beat in the vanillaseeds and almond extract. Reduce the mixerspeed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately – add the flour in 3 additions and the buttermilk in2 (begin and end with the dry ingredients). Mix only until the ingredients are incorporated and scrape down the bowl as needed. With a rubber spatula, stir in the apple chunks. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a spatula.
4. Bake the cake on a rack. Do not place the bundt pan on a baking sheet as the air needs to circulate. Bake for 60-65 minuted or until a wooden stick comes out clean. if the tops browns to quickly cover it loosely with tin foil to prevent burning.
5. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minuted before unmolding, then cool to room temperature on the rack.
6. When ready to serve dust with icing sugar.

Notes

Due to the use of the brown sugar this cake looks like it is made with wholewheat flour..

Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

1.2.4

 

The cake went in really well with everyone and is truly fantastic. We had another slice today and I actually liked it better today as the flavors had more time to develop I guess.

O and guess who liked it too??

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Apple compote in puff pastry

Yesterday we had our second lesson in Amsterdam at Douglas Delights and because of the fact that the highway is being worked on around Amsterdam we were up at a ridiculously early time. We had to check wether we had to go by train or if we could still go by car. We went for the car in the end and we were early! Our class was supposed to start at 9 am and we were there at 8.30.. But I am sure that is not really of interest to any of you..

So what did we do this day? If you remember from lesson 1 we had made puff pastry, so today we were going to turn this puff pastry into little applebags (I have no idea how to call these in English… If you know, please let me know!). Apart from that we made the filling for the Joconde we made last week. We decided to go with Passionfruit mousse, so we made that. For the shortcrust pastry that we also made last week, we decided to go with Creme citron and in addition to that we also made Creme Mousseline. Now for today I will not be telling you anything about all of that, as none of it is entirely finished. Well, let me refrase; it’s finished but we couldn’t bring it home as it was just barely out of the oven and too fragile to transport. So that will have to wait for next week. (don’t you just love the suspense…lol)

Making the applecompote

For now I will stick to the one thing that we did bring home; those lovely apple thingies. First of all, we had to make an applecompote to use as filling. Making an applecompote is not really very difficult but you can obviously vary enormously in flavors. We started out by pickle the apples that we were gonna use; Jonagold 50% and 50% golden rennet. The difference between the two is that the rennet is a very dry apple, not aromatic and it gives the right amount of sour to a compote. The Jonagold has a lot of moisture inside, plus is a fragrant apple and sweeter then the other one. Together they form a good combination to make a nice compote. Jonagold and Elstar are quite similar in taste, so you could easily swap those two. The apple season is just starting here, so Carle was lucky to find the first Golden Rennet’s of the year.

Look who we have here... curious as ever!

Ingredients for Apple Compote:

3 Jonagold apples, peeled, cut and chopped into medium sized pieces

3 Golden Rennet apples, peeled, cut and chopped into medium sized pieces

Sugar

butter

Take a fairly large pan and cover the bottom of the pan with a layer of sugar. Not too little but also not too much. Maybe half a centimeter thick. Cover that with as little water as you can. The sugar has to barely be covered by the water. Bring the sugarwater to a boil, but make sure NOT TO STIR until it caramelizes. If you stir the sugar it will crystallize and become hard. You can slowly swirl the fluid a bit inside the pan by moving the pan around. Just so the sugar dissolves.

As soon as the sugar becomes brown and starts to smell like caramel add the apples to it and stir well, making sure the caramel gets evenly distributed amongst the apples and does not stick to the pan. Cook until it starts to resemble the apple compote structure (mousse with some chunks here and there)

Let it cool off and then taste if it is sweet enough. You can add a little more sugar at this point if you want to or add a little cinnamon. (we added some cinnamon..)

We had ofcourse already made the puff pastry the week before, but if you need a recipe; here you can find the recipe from the Daring Bakers challenge we did about a year ago.

The puff pastry was rolled out to a thickness of about 3 mm. Make sure you roll it out as evenly as possible as that will help to bake it evenly too. We cut out circles using a circular cutter. I think it was roughly 15 cm in diameter. Those circles were then slightly rolled out a litte bit more rolling from the center only, to make them a little larger and to make the folding process a little easier.

Then use a pastry brush to wet the outsides with eggwash and fold the other half of the circle over the ball of compote and seal it shut using your fingers first and pressing it closely together to make sure it will not start to leak once in the oven.

Once you’ve filled them all and put them on a bakingtray with sufficient space in between use the eggwash to go over all of the apple thingies. Let it dry for a bit and repeat this process. After you’ve let the eggwash dry for a second time you can carve little figures into the dough which will show if you start baking them.

Preheat the oven to 220C, put them in the oven and bring the temperature down to 190/200C. Bake until golden. Once golden remove from the oven and sprinkle a layer of icing sugar on top of the applebags. If you then transfer them back into the oven and put it on 250C the sugar will melt and form a shiny layer of melted sugar on top which makes it look really nice. But make sure to pay close attention as it does burn easily (as we found out!)

Closing the apple enveloppes

After the first baking

Covering with icing sugar

Just out of the oven and shiny!

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