Junglefrog Cooking » summer

Rumpsteak or potatoes; Donna Hay challenge nr. 8

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:00:24 +0000

UPDATE!
Due to the slightly more complicated challenge this month the deadline is extended for one whole month. Get your entries in before end of May now! And remember; it’s not all about having the same props. Mood and atmosphere is more important. I don’t think anyone would have such a lovely rack to place the potatoes in but that is all good! Just be creative!

A meaty challenge! Photo by Ben Dearnley

I realized that after having done 7 Donna Hay challenges; we’ve done vegetarian, we’ve done sweets and we’ve done sandwiches but what we have not done before is anything really meaty. So when the latest issue of Donna Hay’s magazine arrived and I started drooling over the Argentinian pages I figured it would be perfect for this time of year! Ok, depending on where you live it might still be a little too cold for doing a full barbecue but maybe the weather is kind and we can eat outside. Fire up the grill and make this gorgeous salted rump steak. In the magazine these steaks are served with delicious roasted potatoes with chimichurri sauce and since it’s always good to have a vegetarian alternative you actually get to pick this month from two different recipes!

Roasted potatoes. Photo by Ben Dearnley

Now is that a luxury or what? Both photos are quite stylish and will probably give you some challenge in terms of props, lighting and placement but that is what this is all about. Last month was fairly straight forward, so I thought to mix it up with something a little more challenging for the more seasoned photographers out there but if you’re just starting out, don’t be afraid to tackle this too. Whatever happens, it will definitely teach you something.

The photography on both these shots is done by one of my favorites; Ben Dearnley, styling is done by Steve Pearce. I love the styling in both these shots as it give me a sense of summer but in a rustic kind of way. The colors are dark but still vibrant and the food jumps out at you. I can’t wait to make both of these (you don’t have to choose, you can make them both if you want!) but since I am currently without kitchen I could not taste test either of these recipes but I have the feeling they will be all right!

Enter your link below!

Since there had been some complaints about the quality of my scans (rightfuly so!) I have found the originals on Ben Dearnley’s site so that looks a whole lot better! I’ll try to make sure the quality of the photos is good enough for you to be able to see what you need to do.

You can find all the rules for the Donna Hay Challenge on the special DHSPC page on top of the menu.

As usual the rules are very straightforward;

recreate the original images to the best of your ability
write a blog post about your experience and showcase the photos that you took
Include some notes on how you took the photos and how you tackled the styling
link back to this post
Deadline for entry if April 30th.
Read the rest of the rules on the DHSPC page
Judging will be done by Jenn from jenncuisine, Meeta from What’s for Lunch Honey, Kay from KayoticKitchen and myself

Entries are open for everyone. No need to let me know if you want to join. Once you’ve made your post include the link in the linkytool below. It will need to be approved by me first so you will not see it before that.

Salted rump steak

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	1 hour, 10 minutes
Cook time	7 minutes
Total time	1 hour, 17 minutes
Meal type	Main Dish
From magazine	Donna Hay magazine

Ingredients

1kg rump steak (cut into large pieces)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup rocksalt (300 gr)
cracked black pepper

Directions

Thread the steak onto metal skewers and rub with olive oil. Place on a baking tray and cover completely with the rock salt. Place in the fridge for 1 hour. Wipe with absorbent paper to remove the rock salt and sprinkle with pepper. Heat a char-grill pan or BBQ over high heat. Add the skewers and cook for 7 minutes each side for medium rare or until cooked to your liking. Serve with the chimichurri saue (see below)

Roasted potatoes with chimichurri sauce

Print recipe

Serves	4-6
Prep time	20 minutes
Cook time	45 minutes
Total time	1 hours, 5 minutes
Meal type	Side Dish
From magazine	Donna Hay magazine

Ingredients

1,5kg large sebago (starchy) potatoes (peeled and chopped)
2 tablespoons olive oil
sea salt
cracked black pepper
100g wild rocket (arugula) leaves (to serve)

Chimichurri sauce

1/3 cup flat leaf parsley (chopped)
1 tablespoon oregano (chopped)
2 teaspoons rosemary (chopped)
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
1 clove garlic (crushed)
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
sea salt
cracked black pepper

Directions


To make the chimichurri sauce, place the parsley, oregano, rosemary, paprika, chilli flakes, garlic, bay leaf, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix to combine. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 220 C (425 F). Place the potato in a large saucepan of salted cold water over high heat and bring to the boil. Cook for 10 minutes or until the potato is just tender. Drain, return the potato to the pan and cook for 1 minte to remove excess moisture. Shake the pan to fluff the potato. Place on a baking tray, drizzle with the olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast for 40-45 minutes or until crisp and golden. Serve the potatoes with the chimichurri sauce and rocket leaves.

Roasted butternut squash salad

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:00:22 +0000

delicious roasted pumpkin salad

Outside leaves are turning red, yellow and golden; a sure sign that the end of summer is now official and autumn is making it’s way in. The fact that it feels like it has been autumn for a couple of months now doesn’t make it any less noticeable. It’s the wind that’s telling us and the smell of that typical autumn air.

Pumpkins and squash always remind me of autumn and all that is good about it. You see, I love autumn. Snuggling up indoors, while the wind is blowing around the house and torrential rains that are sweeping any dirt of the streets. Days are getting shorter with the light starting to fade rather quickly now. Evening are becoming colder too and everything is just screaming autumn! I’m actually looking forward to making warm and comforting dishes again. But let’s not forget that officially it’s still summer! Yes, ladies and gentleman; summer has not departed us! At least not officially and hey we can always pretend right?

So when I saw this salad on the Good Food website I just knew that was what I wanted to make. A combination of a salad (summer) with squash (autumn) So here it is! I did love the flavors and adding the puy lentils gives it an interesting twist. But what I will do for the next time is to either add some fried bacon bits or some halloumi cubes in there, as I did miss a salty crunchy note.

A marriage of summer and autumn

Roasted butternut squash salad

Print recipe

Serves	4
Prep time	25 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Website	BBC Good Food

Ingredients

2kg butternut squash (peeled and cut into 2 cm cubes)
olive oil
100g puy lentils
100g rocket
1 teaspoon sesame seeds (toasted)
6 pieces spring onions (sliced)

Soy Dressing

5 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 piece red chili (seeded and chopped)
1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon clear honey

Directions


Heat the oven to 200C. Put the squash on a baking sheet, drizzle with 1 tbsp of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes or until tender, shaking the tray a couple of times to keep it from sticking. Simmer the lentils for about 15 minutes or until al dente, then drain.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Put the rocket in a shallow serving bowl and arrange the lentils and squash on top. Pour the dressing over and top with sesame seeds and spring onion.

Note

I liked the flavor of this salad although I would like it even more if it had some salty cheesy element in it. I'm gonna try this next with little bits of bacon (making it a bit less vegetarian..) or little crispy bits of halloumi.

Raspberry yogurt popsicles

Simone (junglefrog) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:49:10 +0000

Summer is – or should be – the season of sunshine and warm sticky weather. Long evenings spend with friends on a terrace sipping on a cold glass of wine. BBQ’s and the smell of woodfire coming from neighboring gardens. It should be the season where you wear as little clothes as possible and/or decent. The season where you’ve got to worry if your love-handles haven’t taken over your waist or if it is still worth salvaging…The season where the entire country wants to be on the tiny strip of land we call beach, resulting in massive (and I mean massive) traffic jams all the way from everywhere to the coast… The season you lie in bed and every single thread of fibre on your body is too much to handle. The season where you wake up because the light entering the bedroom is too bright to be ignored. That’s what summer should be more or less, right?

But while I am typing this down it is raining cats and dogs outside (always loved that expression!) and the wind is howling around the house. It looks more like autumn then summer although the temperatures in the house are still of summery proportions. We did have quite a few nice and sunny days really, so I am not complaining… Just stating the obvious. You’ve got to know too that I actually love rain… I think there is nothing more soothing then a downpour of some kind. But.. having said that; all in their own time ofcourse. Rain is for autumn and winter and ok, a little in spring. But summer is supposed to be hot and sunny so we can indulge on lovely treats like this raspberry yogurt popsicle. Which is actually very healthy too as it has almost no sugar, lots of healthy yogurt and fruit! The perfect guilt free summer snack.

The recipe comes from Allerhande which is a food magazine here made by one of the supermarkets… They had loads of other popsicle flavors but basically you can add almost anything to it, freeze it and it will come out tasting delicious. I’m planning on making loads more! That is… if the weather gets any better…

Raspberry yogurt popsicles

4.7 from 3 reviews

Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Allerhande

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 5 mins

Serves: 8

Quick, easy and guiltfree icecream

Ingredients

500 gr vanilla yogurt
125 gr raspberries
1 tbsp of icing sugar

Instructions

Mix the sugar with the vanilla yogurt and stir.
Pour the yogurt into your popsicle maker almost until the rim. Leave some space to add the raspberry.
Crush or puree the raspberries and add into the yogurtmix. Take a wooden stick or something small and stir the raspberries into the yogurt so you get a nice pattern.
Freeze for at least 4 hours.
To take them out leave to stand for a little while so you can pull them out or quickly dip them in warm water.

Coconut icecream with roasted coconut

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:02:21 +0000

It’s no secret; I love ice cream. And ever since I discovered the hidden treasures of homemade icecream I am sold. I even started making my own popsicles this week too! (more on that in a later post)

My ice-cream maker has been doing overtime lately… The only disadvantage being that I need to freeze the container every time in between ice-creams. Making two in a row is not an option. Probably a good thing too or I would be the size of an elephant… Last night we were having my father in law over for dinner and the theme was Asian food. I had on the menu rice paper spring rolls (recipe soon to follow!) with peanut-sauce, coconut shrimps, Thai chicken curry and for dessert the coconut ice-cream. I love my ice-cream to be yoghurt based. Not because of the lower calorie content but simply because I like the taste better. To me it goes perfect with summer. Fresh and slightly acidic. So when I saw the recipe for ice cream yogurt in my Steamy Kitchen cookbook I just knew that would be perfect as dessert for the asian dinner.

What I should have done is make the ice cream in the afternoon and freeze it. Because freshly turned it melts by looking at it. (any ice cream melts when you look at it, duh.. but this one just sooo much faster!) The original recipe called for coconut extract but I could not find that anywhere so I used regular coconutcream but not enough. There was a slight coconut taste but not enough.

Coconut icecream with roasted coconut

5.0 from 3 reviews

Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Adapted from : Jaden Hair (Steamy Kitchen)

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 6

Fresh and relatively light for icecream, this is the perfect ending for an asian meal!

Ingredients

875 gr Greek yogurt
150 gr sugar
100 ml coconut cream
20 gr Roasted shredded coconut

Instructions

Mix the yogurt and the sugar and add the coconut cream to taste. Cool the mixture well in the fridge before you put it into the icecream maker. At least an hour.
As soon as it’s cool turn it in the ice machine.
Roast the coconut by putting it in a dry frying pan and roast until golden. Make sure not to burn it! Turn out onto a plate immediately to prevent it roasting any further.
Once the icecream is made freeze for at least one or two hours in the freezer before eating.
Serve with the roasted coconut on top and fresh fruit of your choice

Watermelon salad – madness part 2

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:38:53 +0000

Watermelon madness or color madness??

Do you need sunglasses yet? Sorry, I just love this photo and it’s probably wrong for whatever gazillion color reason but I couldn’t resist posting it to make sure you were all wide awake… See the thing with these Plate to Page people is that they are never satisfied… Seriously… I post my watermelon icecream perfectly on time looking slick and shiny and guess what my dear friend Astrid cannot resist mentioning… “Where is the photo of the raw watermelon??” See what I mean? I had forgotten to take a photo of the raw thing… Simply because I was too busy using it in salads and icecream. And technically, if you think about it, in none of these cases was the melon ever cooked, baked, grilled or otherwise prepared, so technically you are looking at a photo of a raw watermelon right now… See it? The one in shocking pink, blue and red? Pretty isn’t it? Ofcourse – as much as I hate to admit it – Astrid was ofcourse right, so just for everyone’s peace of mind; here is the damn raw thing…

A raw watermelon...

It doesn’t look so very different from the one above, but I sort of took the idea of Ilva to make the watermelon into balls. Which incidently I left my melonball-cutter in the studio so I did this with a teaspoon measure. Works fairly ok.

Because Astrid made me take the photo on your left I felt I needed a new bowl to complete the task, so this afternoon after having lunch with my sister in Hilversum I made a little visit to the cookery shop (we don’t have one of that size in Almere, which is probably a good thing) and I ventured upstairs to have a look at the selection, only to be blinded by stunning, stunning plates, bowl, cups etc. They’re made in Portugal and the brandname is Mateus and I sort of fell in love with all of it. The problem is that one small bowl costs the shocking amount of 22 euro. And I bought two; the blue one above and the pink one on the left… That’ll be 50 euro’s please.. I know it’s ridiculous but I have only or mostly white bowls and that gets boring after a while. I have also decided I want to have the entire series for my regular plates. I’ll just buy a few each month… *deep sigh*… On the bright side; I really don’t spend that much money on shoes… So I can do the occasional splurge on plates, right?

Watermelon salad with feta, tomatoes and mint-vinaigrette

Now back to the salad at hand; delicious, fresh, summery with a slight salty taste due to the crumbled feta bits. I’ve had it twice already this week so it must be good. It’s so good in fact that Gizmo almost dove into the bowl before I could pull her out. (see the last photo below) It’s the bits of feta she was after, not the watermelon nor the tomato mind you.

Watermelon salad

5.0 from 2 reviews

Recipe type: sidedish or lunch salad

Author: Simone van den Berg, adapted from Good Food

Prep time: 10 mins

Total time: 10 mins

Serves: 4

Sweet with a slightly salty touch due to the feta. Fresh, delicious and perfect for a hot summer lunch or (very) light dinner

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp chopped mint
cherry tomatoes in different sizes and colors about 200 gr
500 gr watermelon, cut into chunks
150 gr feta, crumbled

Instructions

Make the dressing by mixing the vinegar, olive oil and mint and season to taste if needed.
Put the tomatoes (keep smaller ones whole and cut larger ones in two) and watermelons in a bowl. Pour over the dressing and leave to stand for at least 10 minutes so the fruit can get really juicy.
Crumble the feta over the top and serve.

Gizmo dipping her nose in my salad

Junglefrog Cooking » summer

Rumpsteak or potatoes; Donna Hay challenge nr. 8

Salted rump steak

Ingredients

Directions

Roasted potatoes with chimichurri sauce

Ingredients

Chimichurri sauce

Directions

Related Posts:

Roasted butternut squash salad

Roasted butternut squash salad

Ingredients

Soy Dressing

Directions

Note

Related Posts:

Raspberry yogurt popsicles

Related Posts:

Coconut icecream with roasted coconut

Related Posts:

Watermelon salad – madness part 2

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