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Ceviche; Daring Cooks March 2011

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:00:58 +0000

Ceviche

Ceviche…. for the name alone you should be liking this dish! I think it sounds exotic and fun and people look at you like you know what you’re talking about when you pronounce it correctly.. I had heard about this dish before, read about it but never actually tried it. I have to be honest here as the prospect of having raw fish only marinated in limejuice did not exactly make me go ‘wow!’ But it has been waaaay to long since I last done a Daring Cooks challenge, so I figured it was time to try this elegant little dish.

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.

I have to confess that I took the easy way out in this challenge. I could either make cevice and/or papas rellenas and while I think I probably like the papas even better it also involves more work and well, I wanted to make sure I did at least post the challenge on time this time. So I opted for the ceviche. I have to say that this is very straightforward and easy dish to make. Most important is that you use very fresh fish. The quality of the fish will determine your end result and if it’s tasty or not. Old fish will simply not do…

I bought cod for this at our fish monger and made sure they gave me very fresh fish (not that they normally sell old fish, but I have had a rather disputable piece of tuna once so I am a little careful here!)

Adding the other ingredients was also simple, so I cannot say that his was a real challenge in terms of difficulty. I do like that Kathlyn picked this dish as otherwise I would probably have never made it myself. So now over to the taste. As is to be expected the taste is sour, but I also found it surprisingly tasty. Definitely not a dish I would make as a main but perfect for a refreshing and little starter!

Cheviche de Pescado (Fish Ceviche):

Serves 6 as a “starter” or lunch portion. Serves 2 as a dinner.

Ingredients

2 lbs. (about 1 kg) firm white fish (scallops or other seafood may be substituted)*
2 garlic cloves, mashed
1 chili pepper, minced (I recommend Aji if you can find it, but Jalapeno or other peppers can sub)
1 cup (240 ml) freshly squeezed lime juice (between 8-12 limes)
Fresh juice only, no bottled. Can use lemons in lieu of limes.
1 tablespoon (15 ml) (4 grams) (1/8 oz) fresh coriander (cilantro), finely chopped
1 red onion, thinly sliced lengthwise
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Directions:

Boil sweet potato and corn (separately) if using for garnish. Allow to cool. (Can be done hours or even a day in advance)
Wash and trim your fish. Slice into pieces between ½ inch (15 mm) cubes to 2 inch (50mm) pieces, depending on taste.
Place fish in a non-reactive, shallow pan in a thin layer. Season with salt and pepper.
Combine lime juice, chili pepper, coriander and garlic. Pour mixture over fish. Stir lightly to expose all the fish to some of the lime juice mixture.
Put sliced onion on top of fish as it “cooks”
Let fish stand for 10 minutes.*** Lift fish out of the lime juice and plate individual portions , garnishing with lettuce, slices of sweet potato and slices or kernels of corn if using.

Daring Cooks; Broccoli souffle or Rise and Shine!

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 07:00:09 +0000

Broccoli ham souffle

A slight panick broke out when I saw the challenge of this month for the Daring Cooks. We had to make souffles…. Now the souffle itself was not the reason for my panick attack; I mean I have made souffle before, but only in a dessert version. But the first thing that sprang to mind when thinking about souffles is calories!! High and copious amounts of calories! So I needed to do a little research to see if I could find a souffle that would not undermine my weightloss. as it turned out; they are not so bad provided you do not make a giant version or eat more then one at any sitting. I even found a souffle recipe on the Weight Watchers website and decided to use that one. I don’t think it is much different from a normal version, but you can judge for yourself by checking the recipe below.

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Fluffy and delicious insides!

Making the souffle is really not so hard as some people make you believe. It’s merely a matter of having all the ingredients ready and at hand, but then that is true for nearly all recipes. So nothing new there. I’ve chosen a broccoli/ham souffle and it was delicious! I didn’t really run into any problems although they did plummet down after rising so beautifully. I wasn’t quick enough with taking the photos, so obviously they don’t look so pretty anymore.. O well, they did taste pretty and after all that is what it is all about right?

Here is the recipe that I used:

BROCCOLI-CHEESE-HAM SOUFFLE (adapted from Weight Watchers website)

2 tbsp olive oil

Before baking

30 gr butter

25 gr flour

225 ml milk

2 medium sized eggs

50 gr ham, small slices

75 gr broccoli, cooked and chopped finely

15 gr parmesan or other cheese

pepper and salt to taste

Split the eggs. Heat the oven to 180C. Grease four small ramekins with a little oil.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and once melted stir in the flour. Heat for about a minute and take the pan of the heat. Little by little pour in the milk while you keep stirring. once it is all in, return the pan to the fire and bring to the boil. Cook for about 1 minute or until the mixture thickens. Turn of the heat.

Stir the eggyolks in and add the cooked broccoli, the slices of ham and the grated cheese. Keep some of the cheese separate to sprinkle on top of the souffles before putting in the oven. Season as needed.

Beat the eggwhites in a grease free bowl with a little bit of salt until stiff. Carefully mix in with the other mixture.

Divide the final mixture across the four ramekins, sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and put in the oven for about 25 minutes or until golden. The souffle will rise but will sink once taken out of the oven.

Daring Cooks; stuffed grape leaves

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:00:51 +0000

There are certain things in life that I simply cannot seem to like. One of those things is stuffed vine leaves or more specifically dolmades. I first came across this green “cigars” when we were on holiday in Greece and Tom ordered them. I took one bite and decided I did not like them at all. I have since tried many different variations but well, none of these appeal to me in any way. It’s just not something that makes me happy. It’s not that I hate it; I just couldn’t care enough about them to eat it or order them in a restaurant. So when I saw the challenge for this months Daring Cooks I had to laugh and was secretly wondering if it was a conspiracy… Did Tom send someone an email? Did he bribe someone to make sure we would at some point have to make stuffed vineleaves?? Of course he claims to be innocent and since I have an idea that he wouldn’t know where to send an email anyway, I tend to believe him. But… there still was this challenge that I wanted to complete. Let’s face it; it has been far too long since I last finished a Daring Cooks or Daring Bakers challenge and I was not prepared to miss yet another month. Even though the subject of this challenge would have me skip any other time!

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Version 1 of the stuffed grape leaves

So the first thing I had to do was to find vineleaves, which turned out to be quite easy in the Turkish section of our local supermarket, even though getting them out of the jar in one piece was a bit of a challenge, but nonetheless… I found them. I opted to go for the first recipe that Lori was mentioning with the ground beef but without the tamarind sauce. I sort of was under the wrong impression that I still had tamarind somewhere but that turned out to be something else entirely, so I had to leave the sauce out. I first had to rinse all the grapeleaves and untangle them from eachother. I think doing that was actually the biggest amount of work! But then came the filling part; I tasted the ground beef after having added all the spices and it tasted fine, but unfortunately once cooked; the taste was very bland. My thinking is that it must have washed away part of the flavor maybe? I am not sure but regardless of the blandness I also didn’t think that it was a very exciting filling. Tom – who is after all the dolmades expert – agreed that they were bland and while he did mention that he had dolmades on occassion tasting exactly like mine; I am not sure that that was supposed to be a compliment… lol..

I actually have to confess that the taste of the vine leaves was not as bad as I seemed to remember it. Once cooked it was very soft and easy to eat; it was just the filling that did not do it for me or anyone else (Tom had friends over so I let them all taste; they all agreed it needed to be spicier).

I did start the search for a better recipe and I think I have found one in one of the books by Tessa Kiros, but I have not had time to make them so that will have to wait for a later time. In terms of photos… well, I’ve done better to say the least but it will have to do!

Filling prior to using

If you’re interested in the recipe to try it out for yourself you can go over to the Daring Kitchen website and have a look here for the recipes used!

The final roll, cooked

Daring Cooks; nut butters

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:00:24 +0000

Almond nut butter

I am nuts about nuts… Love them all, although I have a slight allergy for them. Ever heard of the most common allergy which is apple, raisins and walnuts? Well, I have it.. Really nothing serious; but whenever I eat a raw apple or walnut (once used in something I’m fine) my throat, ears and chin start to itch and if I make the mistake of touching my eyes before I wash my hands…. the fluids in my eyes start to swell up making me look like something from outer space.. I’ve only had that once but it was not a pretty sight! Ever since I make double sure to wash my hands immediately after eating an apple. Yes, I still eat them. I like them too much and the itching is something that passes quickly.

Lately though I have noticed that the allergy seems to have spread to other nuts besides walnuts… Hmm…. I’ve always thought I wasn’t “made” properly.. too many weird allergies, but thankfully nothing all too serious. So… I was quite happy to read about the challenge for the Daring Cooks for this month.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Almonds

When I was reading through our various options for the recipes I really wanted to make the Asian salad as that just sounded perfectly for the current hot weather, but… Tom didn’t feel like eating any salad. For some weird reason he always feels that dinner should be positively warm. Even if the weather is +30°C, he still insists something should be served hot. He’s ok if it is only a sandwich, as long as it is one prepared in the oven and eaten hot… How weird is that??

So I do tend to eat my salads for lunch rather then dinner, although I do occasionally just ignore him and prepare a salad for dinner. I mean seriously; what is wrong with a salad??

But for this particular challenge I really liked all four of the options so I decided to please my guy and made the chicken with curried tomato almond sauce.

Making the butter is really a breeze. Just pop everything in the magimix and keep on grinding until it becomes smooth and buttery. I did add a bit more oil as almonds are by their nature rather dry. I did not roast them beforehand but I can imagine that it would be an enhancement to the flavor. The nuts were unsalted to begin with, so I just added salt to the final dish prior to eating it. Which worked fine for me as I felt it would be easier to adjust the levels of saltiness when doing it this way. The finished dish was also very flavorful.

I do tend to forgot to read recipes very thoroughly, so what happens is that I scan through it, check my ingredients and then just start cooking. I sure do check the recipe occasionally but as it turns out; I also forgot to do certain things that are spelled out. Simply because I do not read it thoroughly enough.

In this case I sort of forgot to make it a smooth sauce, as I just chopped the onion into fine bits and left them in the sauce. There was no way I would have been able to remove them anyway and I liked the final result. Not a smooth sauce by any means, but very tasty nonetheless. The almonds you could taste very well in the dish but not in an overpowering way. Really loved the dish!

Chicken tomato almond curry

Chicken with Curried Tomato Almond Sauce
Yield: 4 servings

Recipe notes: Substitute the protein of your choice for the chicken. This is a smooth sauce, so the onion is removed before serving. If you prefer, dice the onion and leave it in the sauce or substitute a bit of onion powder.

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil
4 (6 oz / 170 g) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
Salt to taste

Spice Blend:
1.5 tablespoons (20 ml) garam masala seasoning
1 teaspoon (5 ml) ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon (2 ml) ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon (1 ml) black pepper

Sauce:
4 tablespoons (60 ml) butter
1 large onion, cut in half pole to pole
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (15-ounce/425 g) can tomato sauce
⅓ cup (80 ml) almond butter
⅓ cup (80 ml) milk
½ to ¾ cup (120 to 180 ml) chicken broth or water, more as needed
1 cup (240 ml) frozen peas (optional)

Hot basmati rice for serving
Chopped parsley (optional garnish)
Sliced almonds (optional garnish)

Directions:

Cook the chicken. If desired, pound chicken to ¼ inch (6 mm) thickness to promote even cooking. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper to taste. Heat 1 teaspoon (5 ml) olive oil a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken; sauté 3 to 5 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Cook the chicken in 2 batches, adding more oil if needed for second batch. Dice chicken into bite-sized pieces; set aside on clean plate and keep warm.
Prepare spice blend. Stir garam masala, ginger, cinnamon, and pepper together in a small bowl. Set aside.
Melt the butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook gently for several minutes to infuse the butter with onion flavor. Keep the heat low to avoid burning the butter; a little color is fine. Add the spice blend and garlic and cook for 1 minute or till fragrant, stirring constantly. Add the tomato sauce, stir well, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Whisk in almond butter and milk until thoroughly combined with tomato sauce. The almond butter is thick so it takes a while to make a smooth sauce. Return to simmer. Add broth (or water) to sauce to reach desired consistency; return to simmer. Add more broth (or water) as needed to thin sauce as desired.
Remove onion from sauce and discard. Stir frozen peas (if using) into sauce. Transfer sliced chicken to sauce. Simmer gently for a few minutes until peas and chicken are heated through.
Serve chicken and sauce over rice. Garnish with chopped parsley and/or sliced almonds if desired.

Daring cooks May 2010; Enchiladas

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 14 May 2010 06:00:37 +0000

Grilled chicken enchiladas with mole sauce

When I read what the challenge for this month was going to be I got all excited. I totally love Mexican food!! The original challenge called for making Stacked Green Chili and grilled chicken enchiladas. Sounded like fun and while reading through the ingredients I figured I should be able to get them, if not in my hometown, then certainly in Amsterdam. So one day while half the nation was celebrating Queens day we ventured out to one of the wholesale stores in Amsterdam that cater for restaurants. Finding the green chilis was easy, but then came finding tomatillos… Nothing that looked even remotely like it and when we asked if they would have them, the guy at the store said that ‘sure he could order them, if you were willing to buy a planeload!’ You can indeed order them, but they only ship them when they have a certain amount and certainly nothing like the tiny amount that I needed for this recipe. And since I was not willing to buy 500 kilo of tomatillos (he never said 500 kg, I just made that up.. ) I figured I try the other store… Also no luck and this time the guy we asked didn’t even know what we were talking about. Green tomatoes then maybe? Certainly not; I got the reply as green tomatoes are poisonous…. Sure… I figured I leave it at that and accept the fact that I would not be able to find tomatillos in the Netherlands. If anyone knows of a source either a store or through the internet let me know, as I would still like to make the original recipe at some point.

Just out of the oven

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

So what now to make; I searched for ‘mole’ sauces on the internet, but didn’t find anything that appealed to me or would fit into the challenge until I followed the link that Barbara and Anna had given in the post about this challenge recipe and bingo; that “Quick chicken mole” recipe sounded intriguing with the chocolate and the peanutbutter and all ingredients I could get so that would be the recipe. I still had the green chilis plus I bought an outrageously expensive piece of cheese named “Sparkenhoe Leicester” and it is very bright orange, so that is why the dish looks so colorful. It’s the cheese!

I asked for Monterey Jack cheese but they did not have that and the storeman said that I could try this cheese. What he forgot to mention was that the piece I grabbed was 14 euro! O well, it was a very tasty cheese. Mild but perfect for this dish and great melting capabilities…

I used half of the challenge recipe and half of the recipe for the chicken mole and combined those to make a stack of enchiladas. And the result? I think I can honestly say that this is by far the best Daring Cooks challenge that I have ever had and by far the best enchiladas I have eaten ever in the Netherlands. Absolutely and completely delicious!! You can tell by the fact that below is the only bit that was left on my plate and you can see how large it is, can you not? Seriously… you should try this; it is soooo good!

I grilled the chicken after first rubbing them with olive oil and then generously seasoning it with salt and pepper. I removed it from the grill and then let it cool and cut into strips.

You also need a generous amount of grated cheese. I used Sparkenhoe Leicester but a good cheddar will be good too or Monterey Jack or another mexican cheese.

Preheat oven to about 200 C.

Here is the recipe I used for the sauce…

QUICK CHICKEN MOLE (adapted from the recipe by Paula Deen for Foodnetwork.com) 2-3 portions

Ready to be popped in the oven

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1,5 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 tbsp of chili powder

1 tsp of ground cumin

1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon

1 can diced tomatoes

1 bell pepper, chopped

2 green chili peppers, roughly chopped (seeds removed)

250 gr of chicken stock

2 tbsp of peanut butter

50 gr of bittersweet chocolate

Heat oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add garlic and spices and continue to saute to toast and develop flavor. Add diced tomatoes, peppers, chili pepers, stock, peanut butter and chocolate. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Take a ovenproof dish that is large enough to put two tortillas in. I used a storebought variety which is fairly large so I could fit only two tortillas in the dish pictured but since we’re with two that was perfect. The qty’s given above are for two (very) generous portions or three smaller ones. Put some of the sauce in the bottom of the dish and put the first two tortillas on top. Spread with some more sauce, half of the chopped up chicken and 1/3 of the grated cheese. Put two more tortillas on top, top with the rest of the chicken, more sauce and another third of the grated cheese.

Put the final two tortillas on top and top that with the remaining sauce and cheese.

Bake until the cheese has melted and everything heated through, about 20 minutes. Take from the oven and let rest for about 5-10 minutes. To serve, transfer each stack to a plate. Spoon any leftover sauce over the stacks and sprinkle with cilantro if you wish. You can also make this in individual gratin dishes.

The sauce is incredibly rich and the chocolate and peanutbutter give it an amazing taste and it smells just sooo good, there are no words for it. I changed some of the qty’s of the original recipe and left out some too.

Leftovers.... not a lot!

All in all, I would make this again definitely and this is in fact going in our “favorites” files. It was THAT good. Tom loved it too and we both ate too much of this delicious dish. So thanks Barbara and Anna for picking this challenge! Now… if only I can find tomatillos somewhere…

Junglefrog Cooking » Daring Cooks

Ceviche; Daring Cooks March 2011

Cheviche de Pescado (Fish Ceviche):

Ingredients

Directions:

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Daring Cooks; nut butters

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Daring cooks May 2010; Enchiladas

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