Junglefrog Cooking » sauce

Apple sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:19:37 +0000

Apple sauce

Sometimes I seriously wonder if there is something wrong me. If I was maybe born with that famous ‘hole in the head’… Or maybe I actually think that there are 48 hours in each day (wouldn’t that be awesome by the way??) but noooo, that is all not true. I’m mean; yes I am slightly mad and yes, I am sometimes very delusional and yes I’ve managed to create yet another blog. Tsssk, I can hear you think.. Why would that be of any use?

It’s gone live today and if you cannot contain your curiosity; it’s called Beetroot and Halloumi and the idea is to make this a foodblog but centered around healthy food and healthy living.. BOOORRRRINNNG I can hear you think.. Maybe… I need to get better at controlling my healthy I think and thought this would be a cool way to keep the focus while in the meantime still eat ~~unhealthy~~ different dishes here on Junglefrog Cooking. Obviously there is no way I’m gonna abandon this baby so rest assured that will still be there. And I might over time decide that it was a bad idea and that nothing good has come of it, but for now I’m happy with it. It’s not exactly the way I want it to be yet. I hate having to search for a new theme and then installing it, spending time on it; only to find out it’s not exactly what it claimed to be. O well… it’s up and it’s working more or less. It looks ok-ish too. Still a bit empty since you see a lot of posts on the front page. And even though I think I’m superwoman, I cannot turn out twenty posts in one day.

The recipes will eventually be different from the ones featured here but in order to fill it up a bit I will use some of the recipes I’ve made over the last couple of years. The healthy ones ofcourse only!

Now talking about this delicious and plain applesauce. You would almost wonder why you would even need a recipe for that. Well you don’t really but I’m gonna share it with you anyway. It’s delicious, fragrant and anything a good apple compote should be! For the last bit of winter and now please let’s get on with spring already!

Apple sauce

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	15 minutes
Cook time	30 minutes
Total time	45 minutes
Meal type	Condiment, Side Dish
Misc	Child Friendly, Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
By author	Simone van den Berg

Ingredients

500-1000g apples (I used a variety of different apples)
4 pieces star anise
3-4 tablespoons cinnamon sugar
1 cup fresh orange juice

Directions

Peel and core all the apples and cut them into chunks. Don't make them too big or it will take too long to cook. Put all the apple cubes in a large saucepan, add a little bit of water and the orange juice to the pan, add the cinnamon sugar and star anise and bring to the boil. As soon as it's boiling turn the heat down to a simmer and leave it simmering for about 20-30 minutes. Check regularly to see how you're apples are doing.
If you like the sauce to be smooth leave it fairly long, but if you like bits and chunks in the sauce then make sure you don't boil it too long.

Note

If you do not have cinnamon sugar (which is basically sugar with cinnamon added in it) you can ofcourse use regular sugar and add one or two cinnamon sticks in it.

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:44:01 +0000

Pavlova with cream, pomegranate and cranberry sauce

You did not think I would get rid of my cranberry sauce so easily now did you?

It’s actually quite funny how you sometimes start baking and then have leftovers that turn out to be made into something far superior then your first recipe. I had one of those days today; it was about time to decorate the Christmas tree so I figured I could combine that with some Christmas baking in between. We’re thinking of doing creme brulee as the dessert for Christmas as it is supposed to be fairly easy and at least you can prepare it up front.

Pavlova

I had thought to make three recipes; creme brulee, banana-cinnamon bread and to get rid of all the leftover egg whites also a pavlova. As it turns out my creme brulee was less then successful as I let the cream get too hot resulting in curdled cream and for some reason my banana bread broke when taking it out of the tin.. But the pavlova…. the pavlova was even better then I thought it would be. I was a little worried it would get half brownish as my oven is really not the best anymore but for once everything went according to plan and my pavlova came out looking as gorgeous as I had wanted it to look.

Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce

Print recipe

Serves	6
Prep time	15 minutes
Cook time	1 hour
Total time	1 hour, 15 minutes
Allergy	Egg
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Dessert
From book	Modern Classics

Ingredients

4 egg whites
225g sugar
6 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon white vinegar
250ml whipping cream
1 pomegranate seeds (seeds from one pomegranate)
cranberry sauce

Directions


Preheat the oven to 150 C. Whip the eggwhites in a grease free bowl until soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar until the meringue is glossy.

Put the cornstarch through a sieve and fold it into the eggwhites together with the vinegar

On a baking tray lined with baking paper make a circle of about 18 cm wide of the meringue and put it in the oven. Turn down the oven temperature to 120 C and leave it in for an hour. Turn the oven off and let the pavlova cool in the oven completely.

Once cooled you can top the pavlova with whipped cream and as I did with pomegranate and cranberry sauce.

Note

I wanted to keep the topping of this recipe in red but you can ofcourse add whatever you like on top of the pavlova. Raspberries, blueberries, passionfruit or mmm, warm cherries!

All in all I still don’t know what to do for Christmas dessert. I mean this looks pretty good right, but I’m just afraid it will be too heavy after a big Christmas meal. I want something fairly light and fruity I think… Sigh… back to the drawing board. O of course; the creme brulee is still an option. Just need to redo that one and make sure it doesn’t curdle this time. In terms of looks however, this is a real winner!

Pavlova goodness

Cranberry sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:01:44 +0000

The ultimate cranberry sauce

I did promise you I would give you the recipe for the ultimate cranberry sauce right? Well, here it is… I’ve made cranberry sauce, cranberry compote and cranberry relish before but never before did I find THE cranberry sauce to go with everything. If you look at the small list of ingredients it is really nothing to fancy and it’s also nothing really special but I can assure you that the end result will never have you ask for another cranberry recipe, ever again. It is rich, it is sweet (but not too sweet) and it goes so well with both savory dishes and sweet desserts.

I made this sauce for the simple reason that I had bought too many cranberries so I just figured I might try a couple of different variations to see which one I liked best. We had this the first time with some pork and we were immediately sold. Then I used it to spice up the mascarpone raspberry trifle you saw earlier and that just confirmed the fact that this does go with just about anything.

Cranberry sauce on top of delicious trifle

Cranberry sauce

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	5 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	15 minutes
Meal type	Condiment, Side Dish
Misc	Pre-preparable

Ingredients

250g cranberries
3 pieces star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup sugar
1,5 cup fresh orange juice

Directions


Put all ingredients into a saucepan and brings to the boil. Once the sugar is all dissolved turn down the heat

Leave to boil softly until all craberries have popped open. Take of the fire and remove the cinnamon and star anise. Put in a blender and puree until smooth. Be careful when turning on the blender as it is hot which means it will spatter too.

Once pureed put through a sieve to remove all the skins.

Note

This recipe is perfect for both sweet and savory dishes. Sofar we have had it with dessert and we had it with pork but this will be equally good with turkey!

I am actually thinking of making large batches of this sauce so I can freeze it in and enjoy it for the rest of the year too. I still have quite a few dried cranberries left so I am wondering if I can use those to make cranberry sauce too. Something tells me that is not an option as there would be no popping. Does anyone have any experience with using dried cranberries for making a sauce? Would it work to re-hydrate them first and then cook? Let me know your thoughts! In the meantime I have another bag of cranberries in the fridge that is just waiting for me to make another batch…

Slow cooking pears in red wine sauce

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:57:18 +0000

Slow cooked pears with rich red wine sauce

Poaching… doesn’t that also mean illegal taking of plants and animals? Why then is a technique very often used in the kitchen also called poaching? It’s weird isn’t it? I just realized that as soon as I started writing this post… I do seem to be on a poaching roll lately as this is the third time in under two weeks that I’ve made a recipe where I am poaching pears in one way or the other. The funny thing is that all three times the end result was entirely different. I’ve poached different kinds of pears to which obviously has a big impact on the final flavor. But today I will be sharing how I fared with my brand new slow cooker!

Slow cooked and gorgeous

I’ve always been intrigued by a slow cooker but up till now had never had the change to try one out in real life, so when it arrived yesterday I got all excited and started searching for recipes and on how to use this great tool in a proper way and wow, I’m impressed at the many ways you can use a slowcooker. Apparently you can even bake a bread in them or a cake! For now I figured I should start with something fairly simple. To get a feel for the machine, see what it does and how it works, before I move on to more complicated dishes. What I totally love about it, is that you can put all the ingredients in it, turn it on, leave it to do it’s thing for a couple of hours and when you come back home your meal is cooked. Now that my friends is what I call try magic!

I can’t wait to try it out with a large piece of meat and vegetables. I have just the thing in the freezer from my meat course so that’ll be interesting. But let me start by saying that these pears are totally gorgeous and the sauce that goes with it is great. Not only in combination with these pears but this is a perfect red wine sauce. Luscious and very rich. Se how it shines?

We’re not yet into the full Christmas test-cooking mode but for starters; this would definitely make a really good Christmas dessert! The recipe is originally from the Dutch blog of Levine. O and did I mentioned that this dish, together with the main still fell under the Living Leaner budget??

On top of that I was visited by the Fairy Hobmother yesterday! In this month believing in a little magic in our lives is certainly not wrong and I was happily surprised when the Fairy Hobmother gave me a fantastic Amazon giftcard to spend as I wanted! Now how’s that for good luck in these expensive months! Now if you believe in a little magic then leave a comment here on this post and you might be visited by the Fairy Hobmother too!

Slow cooking pears in red wine sauce

5.0 from 7 reviews

Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Adapted from Levinebaktbrood

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 10 mins

Serves: 4

By slow cooking all the flavors have the chance to develop fully resulting in a luscious and rich dessert

Ingredients

1 bottle of fruity red wine
150 gr sugar
3 tbsp honey
1 cinnamon stick
2 staranis
2 kardemom pods, crushed
1 vanilla bean, split open
one strip of lemon peel
2 cloves
2 black peppercorns
1 kilo small pears (I used Wilder Giesseman pears)
juice of 1 lemon

Instructions

Peel the pears, leave the stalk on. Cut a small slice of the bottom so they will remain standing. Put the pears through the lemon juice to prevents discoloration.
Pour the wine in the inside pan of your slowcooker, add sugar, honey, cinnamon, staranise, cardamom, vanillabean, lemonpeel, cloves and peppercorns. Put the lid on the slow cooker and turn on to high for about 30 minutes. Stir every now and then until the sugar is dissolved.
Put the pears into the pan and heat on high for about 2 to 4 hours depending on the size of your pears until they are done.
Take the pears out of the pan with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl. Pour the wine into a saucepan and leave to cook on high heat for about 5 to 10 minutes to reduce down. Make the sauce thicker with a little cornstarch, diluted with a bit of water. Put the pears into the liquid and leave to cool

Notes

ofcourse you can also prepare this in a regular pan but it might be going much quicker in that case. Leave the fire as low as possible.

Slow poached pears

Disclaimer ; the slow cooker was provided to me by Tesco but all opinions are my own!

Moo Shu – Daring Cooks October 2011

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:00:27 +0000

Mu shoo pancakes

Yes, you are reading that correctly! In – what seems like forever and is probably close to it anyway – I’ve finally managed to complete a Daring Cooks challenge again! Whoohoo!! I love doing those challenges but sometimes it is just too time consuming to keep up with everything and work at the same time. After a fairly busy summer and a rather unsettling spring before that, I simple didn’t get around to doing any after the last one in March of this year. But life seems to have settled down a bit so hopefully I should be able to join in some fun challenges in the coming months!

The October Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I also particularly liked this months challenge as the Asian kitchen is one of my favorites. It’s usually quick, light and healthy and with the winter months and heavy Christmas food ahead of us, that is just what we need to stay sane and healthy.

Moo shu pancakes

This challenge was all about making specific thin Chinese pancakes and then fill them with a stirfry. In addition to that we also had to make our own hoisin sauce as well. I use hoisin sauce quite a lot when cooking (as we do cook Asian flavors a lot) but had never even thought of making my own. To start with that, as I also started actually by making this sauce first. It’s simple; you whip the ingredients together and you’re done. I did think that the taste was too salty but that could have been because I used a dark soy sauce. I never know what to use if something is too salty… Anyone?

Little jar of hoisin sauce

The pancakes took the longest as it involved making the dough, having it rest for 30 minutes and then rolling it in three separate cigar shapes, cutting that into 6-8 pieces, rolling a ball of each and then transferring that into a paper thin pancake. Right… As you can probably see by looking at the photos, my pancakes could have definitely been a little thinner. I thought they were thin but the examples made y Shelley and Ruth looked much thinner, more like crepes almost. They gave us three different ways of making the pancakes but I just stuck to the first. What I did have – and I have no idea if that is supposed to happen – was that my pancakes puffed up while baking them. Did anyone else have that? Or was that because I cooked them too thick or too long?

Cutting into the pancakes

Whatever the case; it was really delicious so in that sense it was all success. I didn’t make any photos during the making of the pancakes as it was pitch dark at that time.. Not really ideal for photos.. I will definitely be making this recipe again, although I will not be making my own pancakes. Or maybe a different kind that would be easier to work with. Have to think about that!

Here are the recipes!

Thin pancakes (for mu shoo)

Print recipe

Serves	25
Prep time	45 minutes
Cook time	45 minutes
Total time	1 hours, 30 minutes
Meal type	Main Dish, Side Dish
Region	Chinese
From book	The Chinese Kitchen

Ingredients

560g all purpose flour
300ml hot (boiling) water
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Directions


Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Gently pour in the water, stirring as you pour, then stir in the oil. Knead the mixture into a soft but firm dough. If your dough is dry, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, to reach the right consistency. Cover with a damp towel and let stand for about 30 minutes.

Lightly dust the surface of a worktop with dry flour. Knead the dough for 6-8 minutes or until smooth, then divide into 3 equal portions. Roll out each portion into a long sausage and cut each sausage into 8-10 pieces. Keep the dough that you are not actively working with covered with a lightly damp dish cloth to keep it from drying out.

Roll each piece into a ball, then, using the palm of your hand, press each piece into a flat pancake. Dust the worktop with more dry flour. Flatten each pancake into a 6 to 8 inch (15 cm to 20 cm) circle with a rolling pin, rolling gently on both sides.

Place an un-greased frying pan over high heat. Once the pan is hot, lower the heat to low and place the pancakes, one at a time, in the pan. Remove when little light-brown spots appear on the underside. Cover with a damp cloth until ready to serve.

Alternate method for preparing the pancakes: Once the dough has rested and been kneaded again, divide it into an even number of small pieces, rolling each into a ball. Working with two balls of dough at a time, dip the bottom of one ball lightly into sesame oil and press it onto the top of the second ball. Press the double layer flat, then roll the doubled pancake layers into 6 to 8 inch circles. In a dry pan, cook on each side until dry and lightly blistered (but without browning). Separate pancakes after cooking. Alternately (I know, an alternate to the alternate...), if you would prefer not to dip the dough in the sesame oil, you can achieve a similar result with a slight modification. Again working two pieces at a time, roll each piece into a three inch pancake. Using a pastry brush, brush sesame oil onto the top of one of the pancakes, and top it with the other pancake. Further roll the doubled pancake into a 6 to 8 inch circle and cook as the above alternate method. This method was actually our favorite of the three, and yielded the best results – very thin pancakes that held up a little better and had the most authentic texture. We had the best luck brushing a bit of sesame oil on both circles of dough, then sandwiching them together. Just be careful separating the pancakes after cooking them on both sides – heat (steam) does get caught between them, so don't burn your fingers!

Note

Be sure to use very hot-to-boiling water, as it helps relax the gluten, which will aid in rolling the pancakes super thin.
Adjust the heat of your pan as needed to cook the pancakes without burning them. I had to keep my burner on medium (rather than low) heat in order for my pancakes to cook properly (low was drying them out too much without cooking them fully), so watch your pancakes carefully.
If the pancakes are not to be used as soon as they are cooked, they can be warmed up, either in a steamer for 5-6 minutes, or in a microwave oven for 20-30 seconds, depending on the power.
And, in case you are curious, we both asked our local Chinese food restaurants about their Moo Shu pancakes, and they informed us that they purchase them prepared, and simply steam them for their customers as they order the dish.

Mu shoo pork

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	30 minutes
Cook time	8 minutes
Total time	38 minutes
Meal type	Main Dish
Region	Chinese
From book	The Chinese Kitchen

Ingredients

150-200g various mushrooms (I used shii-take, oyster mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms)
450g pork loin or butt
100g bamboo shoots
170g Chinese cabbage (thinly sliced)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 scalions (or spring onions)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
2 teaspoons rice wine
a few dropssesame oil
12 pieces thin pancakes (to serve)

Directions


Clean the mushrooms of your choice and finely cut them. Thinly cut the pork, bamboo shoots and Chinese cabbage into matchstick-sized shreds. Lightly beat the eggs with a pinch of salt.

Heat about 1 tablespoon (15 ml) oil in a preheated wok and scramble the eggs until set, but not too hard. Remove and keep to one side. Heat the remaining oil. Stir-fry the shredded pork for about 1 minute or until the color changes. Add the fungus, bamboo shoots, Chinese cabbage and scallions. Stir-fry for about 2-3 minutes, then add the remaining salt, soy sauce and wine. Blend well and continue stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the scrambled eggs, stirring to break them into small bits. Add the sesame oil and blend well. To serve: place about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of hot Moo Shu in the center of a warm pancake, rolling it into a parcel with the bottom end turned up to prevent the contents from falling out. Eat with your fingers.

Hoisin sauce

Print recipe

Serves	1
Prep time	10 minutes
Meal type	Condiment
Region	Chinese
Website	Epicurian

Ingredients

4 tablespoons soy sauce (I used dark soy but thought it was a bit too salty. Will use light soy next time!)
2 tablespoons peanut butter (or black bean paste)
1 tablespoon honey (or molasses)
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons sesame oil
20 drops Chinese style hot sauce
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Directions


Simply mix all of the ingredients together by hand using a sturdy spoon. At first it does not appear like it will mix, but keep at it just a bit longer and your sauce will come together.

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