Junglefrog Cooking » stock

Quinoa, herb and pomegranate salad and the digital age

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:00:36 +0000

Delicious and quick quinoa salad

I sit behind the computer and every once in a while (like every two seconds) I glance to my left where my trusted Iphone is hooked to the Mac… I’m installing the new software update version 5.0 on my Iphone 4 (no no not the Iphone 4s!) and it is taking a loooong time. Ok, I do have to admit that Itunes mentioned that it can take up to an hour or even more to do this update, but I’m used to updates being quick and taking a couple of minutes. However, whenever there is a new phone release there is also always a major software update for the existing phones… I do consider myself to be fairly technical but when it comes to changing my phone or computer I do get VERY nervous… Imagine that everything stops working?? :O(

If you were born in the sixties as I am, you can still remember the times before digital, before the mobile phone, before computers, before, well even before color tv or video! Sometimes when I think about it, it dawns on me how many technological changes there have been since I was born. It’s mindblowing really when you think about it. I can’t imagine my life without mobile phones, computers and facebook to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on in my life/work. Can you remember how things worked before computers/email/twitter/facebook? Or are you too young? Imagine having your car break down in the middle of the night and you don’t have your phone with you? How terrible would that be…?

Delicious and healthy quinoa salad

We’ve become so used to the digital age that it’s impossible to picture our lifes the way it used to be. Writing long letters on a piece of paper, going to the post office to get a stamp and then sending it of to your pen pal, friend or whoever else you wrote letters to in that time and age. My aunt lives in the US and that was the other end of the world to me. Impossible to have a connection to. These days I have friends all over the world, that I keep in contact with on a daily basis either through email, chat, facebook, google hangout and yes, we even meet in real life once in a while. I would not have known all those people if we didn’t all have digital tools to keep us connected. I do think there is a fine line between over using your digital resources, you have to be able to go without all that for a couple of days (try it; it’s liberating!!) and I hate it when I’m having dinner in a restaurant and the only thing you see around you is people bend over their mobile devices. (and tweeting to eachother!! Crazy!) Now that – to me – is taking it a bit too far.

In the meantime, while I was ranting about digital stuff, my phone has finished it’s update and seems to be working fine again… Pheww… I can relax now and go back to what you came to see here. That delicious recipe that I found on the internet using my Iphone..lol.. I then send it over to my computer to print. (Yes, I still like to read my recipes on paper so I don’t have to worry about getting grease stains on my Iphone!)

Quinoa, herb and pomegranate salad

Print recipe

Serves	2
Prep time	8 minutes
Cook time	12 minutes
Total time	20 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
Website	BBC Good Food

Ingredients

150g quinoa
1/2 vegetable stock cube
75g pine nuts
1g pomegranate (seeds removed)
1 small handful mint (chopped)
1 small handful coriander (chopped)
1 lime (juiced)
extra virgin olive oil

Directions


Cook the quinoa according to pack instructions adding the vegetable stock cube to the cooking water. Leave to cool, then break up with a fork. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan until lightly golden. Mix the pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, herbs, lime juice and 4 tbsp oil through the quinoa.

Duck breast; Black Box #2

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 01 May 2011 10:25:00 +0000

Grilled duck breast with madeira sauce, glazed turnips and potatoes

Due to all sorts of different circumstances it was so much longer then we planned before our second black box experiment took place. Number one was Tom’s turn to make something, but now it was my turn! I got to open the Black Box on thursday, one day earlier because of the Queensday celebrations and the fact that not all stores would be open on saturday. So it made more sense to check the contents a day earlier. For those that do not know; the black box is all about cooking with surprise ingredients. Tom and I take turns; I either pick ingredients for him or he picks them for me. We don’t know upfront what will be in the box and we get to hear about the contents a day before we’re expected to make a menu out of it. We’re allowed to buy additional ingredients at this point but we might chance the rules in the future!

So what was in the box?

Me opening the box

First of all there was a duck breast fillet, turnips, roseval potatoes, a bottle of Madeira and to top it of there was this white cloth… Hmm, what’s with the cloth? Well apparently that is for passing liquids and clarifying them where needed. The contents did not shock me (thankfully) but there were two ingredients I had never used before; one being the duck breast and the other being the turnips. O well and the Madeira but that was pretty straight forward. For some reason I had never really thought about duck breast other then the Peking duck you can get at the Chinese restaurants here and which tend to be… less then perfect. I didn’t really think I would like duck… Don’t know why exactly but it’s just one of those ingredients where you have a certain idea without really knowing if it is true. And boy, did I turn out to be wrong when it comes to duck breast!! I absolutely and totally loved it! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It didn’t take me too long to figure out what to make. I wanted to roast the duck breast and marinate it in some spices and herbs. (I used a mix of thyme, mandarin zest and ginger) Having never tasted turnips I had to do quite some searching on the internet and then decided I wanted to glaze those after having cooked them for a bit. The roseval potatoes would be grilled in the oven and with the madeira I was gonna make a sauce to serve with the duck.

But what to do with that strainer? I was gonna use vegetable stock for the sauce but that didn’t require straining. So in the end I decided I was gonna be using it for straining rhubarb.

Rhubarb?? I hear you think… Well yes… maybe not the most logical choice and on hindsight also not the best but hey, it kind of worked! My idea was to make a pannacotta (my all time favorite dessert) and make a little layer on top of clarified rhubarb. I had already made the pannacotta in the morning so it could stiffen a bit before adding the second layer.

Not so appetizing looking rhubarb mush

I made fresh rhubarb compote, took half of that and put it in the blender to make it as fine as possible. I then put that odd colored mixture and put it in the strainer. Ofcourse thinking back it might actually have worked better if I hadn’t put it through the blender and overall the mixture was still a bit too thick to pass through a strainer so it took forever to form some sort of reasonable amount of liquid but I ended up having enough for my pannacottas.

And yes I will share the pannacotta recipe including the recipe for the rhubarb compote with you later.

The madeira sauce was delicious with the duck and the duck itself.. Wow… I couldn’t believe it was so tasty. It had the perfect pink color and the skin was nice and crispy. If you want to give duck a go… I would urge you to do that. It is so much better then what they serve at the downtown Chinese restaurant!!

Roasted Duck breast with Madeira Sauce

5.0 from 2 reviews

Recipe type: Main

Author: Simone van den Berg

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 35 mins

Serves: 2

Roasting the duck breast on it’s fatty skin gives it a lovely crispness and the madeira sauce is perfect for the duck!

Ingredients

450 gr duck breast
zest of two clementines (mandarines)
1 tsp of ground ginger
3 sprigs of thyme
Madeira sauce
1 onion
butter
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp of tomato puree
700 ml vegetable stock
2 tbsp of all purpose flour
3 tbsp of madeira

Instructions

Put all the spices for the duck together.
Slice the fat on the breast of the duck in deep but not into the meat.
Rub the spices into the duckfillet and let it marinate in the fridge for at least two hours or up till 24 hrs before roasting.
For final preparation heat some oil and butter in a frying pan until hot. Put the breast in at the fat side and let it bake for 10 minutes on that side. Once the fat is crips, turn the duck around and bake for another 5 minutes on the meatside.
Take out of the pan and let it rest (covered) for 10 minutes before slicing.

MADEIRA SAUCE

Finely chop the onion.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan and slowly cook the onion together with the bay leaf for about 5 minutes. The onion should be soft and golden but not too brown or burned.
Add two tbsp of flour and continue baking until the flour starts to brown. Be careful not to burn the flour!
Add the vegetable stock a little bit at the time and make sure it is smooth before adding another bit of stock. Continue until all stock is used up and leave to boil until it thickens. Add the tomato puree and continue boiling until it has the consistency you prefer. Add the madeira into the mix.
You can make this sauce in advance and heat up when you want to use it.
Season with salt and pepper if you want.

Notes

The recipe for the sauce makes much more then what you need for 2 people. I haven’t figured out what to do with the leftovers but if you have a suggestion let me know!

Rhubarb pannacotta

Applesoup

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:27:23 +0000

Applesoup with celeriac and poppyseed

I can almost hear you thinking; what has gotten into this girl lately?? First strawberry and tomato salad and now soup made from apples?? Well, ok… I admit I sometimes have a thing for the unknown, the weird and the unconventional… Or maybe it is just really not that weird when you think about it. Here in the Netherlands we have a dish called “Hete Bliksem” (Hot lightning) which is mashed potatoes and apples mixed together and usually eaten (at least by me) with a slice of fried cheese… Yumm… I also just realize that it has been years since I have last eaten that!! Gotta do that again soon, although it is really more a winterdish. Anyway, back to the topic at hand; what I am merely trying to say is that the combination of apples in warm food is not that uncommon. And I don’t mean desserts.

As you can see from the photo the soup was really a bit too thick and I should have used more chickenstock but I didn’t make enough stock, so I ate it as it was. You could almost use it instead of mashed potatoes as it is right now! lol… Well maybe not…. Making this soup is really simple and I liked the taste although next time I will spice it up a little bit more with maybe little bits of bacon (are there any dishes that do NOT like bacon??)

Applesoup

Apple soup

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	30 minutes
Total time	40 minutes
Meal type	Soup
Misc	Child Friendly

Ingredients

4 pieces sour apples
600g celeriac (You need about half a celeriac)
400 g potatoes (fluffy)
1 piece chicken stock cube
100ml Cream
4 dessert spoons walnut oil
400 dessert spoons poppy seed
salt
pepper

Directions


Peel the apples, remove the pits and inside and cut into pieces. Peel the celeriac and potatoes and cut into pieces. Make the chickenstock with 750 ml of water.

Put the apples and the vegetables together in a pot. Add salt and pepper and pour 200 ml of chickenstock over it. Put on medium high heat with the lid on for about 20-30 minutes or until everything is soft. Puree the mixture while adding cream and if necessary add more stock in too so it is not too thick (see which part I skipped??)

Add salt and pepper to taste and serve in four bowls. Add the nutoil and poppyseeds before serving.

Note: I put in the 200 ml of chickenstock but that is really not enough so I ended up using the entire 500 ml that I made (I made it for 2 people, so technically I should have only added 100 ml of stock and that would have been just wrong!) and then still being short as the soup is still too thick. So just experiment with the measurements for the liquid until the consistency is to your liking.

Note

It might not be your average kind of soup and I did make a couple of mistakes making this but I liked the taste and texture!

Origin of the recipe is from Valerie LHomme from the book 'Vurrukuluk vers'

Applesoup

Risotto! Daring Cooks march 2010

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:00:49 +0000

Risotto with chicken, peas and mushrooms

Aha! That was sort of my reaction when I read about the Daring Cooks challenge for this month. The challenge consisted of two parts; first making your own chicken stock from scratch and two, making your own risotto with that stock. Now to be honest; making risotto is not really a challenge as I have done that a zillion times. Just love the stuff…

Making my own stock however was still on the todo list so a perfect challenge at the perfect time! But let’s first start with the necessary lines

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

Naked chicken...

The instructions on the recipe called for using one whole chicken and some chicken bones… Since we normally only eat chicken filets, I didn’t have any leftover bones or carcass of any chicken lying around and neither do we have a butcher nearby so I just used one whole chicken and a couple of chicken legs instead. It worked fine, but I will use leftover bones next time when I make myself a whole chicken (soon to come!)

The chicken first had to be brought to a boil so you could get rid of some of the scum that comes out of the poor animal… I was actually glad I have such a huge souppan. I think I got it from my parents ages ago when I first started living on my own (what where they thinking? It’s large enough to feed an entire crowd..lol) It easily fit the chicken and the legs and after it was brought to a boil and cleaned of a bit, the veggies and spices where added. I was convinced I had cinnamon sticks lying around but I couldn’t find them anywhere so I left those out. Too bad really as I love cinnamon, but not enough apparently to run back to the store. I did brown the onions so that the stock would have a little bit of color.

The whole pot happily bubbled away for about 1,5 hour at which point I had to remove the chicken who was already falling apart. We let it cool of and then plucked all the meat from the bones. Loads of chicken!

The stock we ended up with after about three hours in total of cooking time, was quite substantial too. I didn’t really measure but let’s just say I have a couple of liter of chickenstock in the freezer right now!

So making the stock was pretty straightforward and I love the fact that you can really throw in any kind of leftovers you want. I did find the taste a little bit bland but that is probably due to my lack of adding a few things. Didn’t have the cinnamon and then forgot the allspice… Tsss… I pretty much stuck to the recipe for the stock but I will season it differently for next time. Where I bought a couple of ingredients this time I will not do that next time, but will purely work with leftover stuff. That is the whole point afterall of making stock I think. It’s just perfect for leftovers and bones. But I now know that it is essentially incredibly easy to do, so that is good to know.

So then came the fun part of making the risotto which was the next day. I figured I should use some of the chicken at least in the risotto, so I did that. I don’t particularly like cooked chicken, so I baked them until the were a bit brown and crispy and had a lovely taste.

I had peas in the freezer so I used those, added some mushrooms, put some crumpled baconbits on top as well as parmesan and voila… Beautiful meal! I have to say that the risotto in the photos might look a bit dry but that is because we ate most of it and then I shot the leftovers the day after! So I did reheat it but with risotto that tends to mean that it becomes a bit dryer than it should be. Still very tasty though. Plus I didn’t have any leftover bacon so they photos did without. But adding the bacon is really lovely as it gives a nice crunch to the total.

Due to the fact that the stock was a bit bland I used part of a chicken stock cube to season it a bit as well as some other things I threw in (and can’t remember) but overall delicious meal!

Here are the recipes!

Chicken Stock

Ingredients:
1 large chicken 2-3 pounds about 1 kg
chicken bones 2-3 pounds 1 kg
2 onions, roughly diced

See that huge bowl of stock on the kitchen counter? And don't look at the mess!!

1 medium leek – white part only, roughly diced
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, halved
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. white peppercorns ( Any type of whole peppercorn will do)
2 bay leaves (fresh or dried, it doesn’t matter.)
peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp. allspice

Directions:

Wash the chicken and bones and places in a 5 Litre pot, cover completely with water and bring to a boil
Skim away any scum as it comes to the surface
Add the vegetables and bring back to a boil
Add the rest remaining ingredients and simmer very gently, uncovered for 1.5 hours
Carefully lift out the chicken, set aside. The chicken meat can be removed from the chicken, shredded off and used for other things like soup!
Simmer the stock gently for another hour. At , at the end you should have around 2 Liters
Carefully ladle the liquid into a fine sieve, the less the bones and vegetables are disturbed in this process the clearer the stock will be.  The stock is now ready for use. Freeze what you don’t need for later use.

Risotto Base

Ingredients:
olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
Any type of risotto rice will do. I use Arborio but the recipe itself says Vialone Nano. Another to look for is Carnaroli.
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L

Directions:

Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard. (We diced ours and left it in as we like onion).
Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.
Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.
Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two). Don’t actually stick your finger in, it will be hot. Just eye it off.
Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.
Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step. .
Repeat, save 100ml for the final stage.
Once you are at this point, the base is made. You now get to add your own variation.

Soup, noodles or noodlesoup??

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:36:37 +0000

Noodlesoup?

Ah…eh…ok, I admit I was not really focused this afternoon when making this ‘noodlesoup’. As you can probably tell from the image above there is really not a lot of moisture left as I believe I didn’t use enough chicken stock… or at least I think I didn’t use enough as there wasn’t anything left after the chicken had cooked and the noodles had cooked in the same liquid afterwards. It was still quite tasty, although on the salty side, but still a good lunch…. Where did it go wrong..?
I’ve managed to buy a few more Donna Hay books which I totally love! They’re not easy to find here in Holland as there are only a few stores that have the magazine and only a few stores that carry any of her books. Either that or they are sold out before they hit the shelf. In any case; I managed to find two new ones last week. One being her chicken book and the other is called ‘flavors’.

This recipe comes from the chicken book and tonight I will be making another chicken recipe but this time with pasta and I better pay attention!!
You see, the problem was that I was cooking in the studio, which is not something I do very often, but I was setting the table to be able to make the shot before eating the food, so I was busy deciding what tablecloth to use, which spoon (don’t you just love my old spoon!!!??) to use and should I use the bamboo or just the plain blue tablecloth? And in the meantime my ‘soup’ was cooking. I actually think – while I am writing this – that I probably left it too long as I haven’t exactly paid attention to time. Shame on me…!

For those of you that want to do better then me (and that is certainly not hard in this case) here is the recipe!
Keep in mind that it is a recipe for 4!

Chicken coconut soup

1 cup (250ml) chicken stock
2 x 400 ml cans coconut milk
1 small piece of ginger, sliced
1 stalk lemongrass, trimmed and halved
1 tablespoon store bought red curry paste
4 x 200 gr chicken breast filleds, trimmed
250 g vermicelli noodles
1 long red chili, chopped
1/2 cup coriander leaves

Place the stock, coconut milk, ginger, lemongrass and curry paste in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken and cook for 6-8 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and shred. Set aside. Add the noodles to the soup and cook for 5 minutes. Place the noodles in bowls and spoon over the soup. Top with the shredded chicken, chili and coriander. Serves 4.

PS. I only used 100 gr of chicken fillet for one person, as I found 200 gr per person slightly much for a soup…. Otherwise it’s a lovely soup!

Origin: Donna Hay; Simple Essentials, chicken

Junglefrog Cooking » stock

Quinoa, herb and pomegranate salad and the digital age

Quinoa, herb and pomegranate salad

Ingredients

Directions

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Duck breast; Black Box #2

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Applesoup

Apple soup

Ingredients

Directions

Note

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Risotto! Daring Cooks march 2010

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Soup, noodles or noodlesoup??

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