The Munchies Blog

Not much text required, really: I made bagels (following Anne’s recipe, with 350g high grade flour and 150g organic wholemeal flour) twice in the last week. They’re great. With and without sesame.

I first tried out this recipe two years ago and it was quite a failure. Back then I mistreated the yeast (I think) and didn’t pre-heat the oven. So the failure was entirely my own fault…

About a year ago, a recipe for No-Knead Bread published in the New York Times made its rounds through the foodblogs. I’m usually quite skeptical about these fads, but I did go and have a look at the recipe after reading so much praise about it. The bread is baked in an ovenproof saucepan, which I didn’t have at that time. So I put it aside but never quite forgot about it. Especially here in New Zealand, where it’s so difficult to get hold of nice bread, the promise of doing almost no work and getting something that nice as a result is just too good! One thing that did bother me though was that the bread is yeast-based. I generally prefer sourdough breads. So even when my flatmate bought a nice set of stainless-steel ovenproof saucepans about half a year ago, I didn’t try out the bread recipe.

Yesterday we had pizza for dinner. I used our two-years-past-its-use-by-date dried yeast (Edmond’s activated yeast, to be precise) that my flatmate kept telling me was still perfectly ok to use. I once did use it for a recipe (I don’t remember what it was), which ended in disaster. Since I suspected that some difference between German and NZ yeast might have been to blame, I stuck to my Edmond’s cookbook for the pizza base. And it turned out fairly nice.

Thus encouraged, I decided to finally try my luck with the no-knead bread. I used a variation of the original recipe and changed it further by using oat bran instead of flour to coat the tea towel.

And the result? Oh yum. Just like promised, a nice brown crunchy crust with soft, chewy interior and really great taste. It even almost satisfies my craving for German Brötchen (bread rolls, to give a completely inadequate translation).

Have a look:

Fresh out of the oven.

A bit later when it had cooled down: cut open.

And I even found a recipe for a sourdough version. So I’m going to order some 150-year-old sourdough starter and hope it’ll make it past the biosecurity watchdogs.

One of my flatmates bought a big bag of courgettes (called zucchini in other parts of the world) the other day. I remembered that we’d once made really nice stuffed courgettes but I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere. It think the recipe below is close enough though.

This recipe takes a bit of time to prepare, but I think it’s well worth the effort. The amounts given were enough for 3 people for 1.5 meals.

Mince and Feta Stuffed Courgettes

• 8-9 smallish courgettes
• ca 300g beef mince
• 1 big onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• ca 3 handful rice (we used red rice, but brown or even plain long-grain rice should be fine)
• 200g feta
• 3 eggs
• ca 100-150ml milk
• ca 200g cheese (e.g. gouda or mild cheddar)

Boil the rice.

Pre-heat the oven to 180° C. Wash the courgettes, cut off the ends and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out most of the flesh, leaving a boat-shaped shell. Keep the flesh.

Chop the onion and garlic. Fry the onion, meat and garlic in a little bit of olive oil.

Cut the courgette flesh into small pieces and add to the meat. Fry for a few more minutes.

Cut the feta into very small pieces (or crumble with a fork). Grate the other cheese.

In a bowl, mix the meat mixture, drained rice, feta, an egg and some spices — we used salt, white pepper, smoked paprika and some rosemary. In a small bowl, whisk together the other two eggs, the milk and some more spices — in our case I think it was salt, white pepper, paprika and oregano.

Put the courgette halves into a shallow ovenproof dish, “open” side facing upwards. Spoon the meat/rice/feta-mixture into the courgette halves. Pour over the egg/milk-mixture so that some of it ends up in the dish itself and sprinkle the cheese over everything.

Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20-30 minutes. The temperature and times are for a conventional oven, you will have to adjust them for convection ovens. It’s done when the courgettes are soft enough to eat and the cheese has browned nicely.

I think next time we might use more rice and maybe also slightly more mince.

For those days when the local veggie coop box brought you yet another cauliflower, or when you’re recovering from having a wisdom tooth pulled out…

I think the basics for this recipe are out of Cuisine (the NZ version), but it’s heavily modified.

Cauliflower Soup

• 1 big onion
• 50g butter
• 1 cauliflower
• ca 6 medium-sized potatoes
• vegetable stock powder
• salt, white pepper, smoked paprika

Cut the onion into small pieces. Cut off the cauliflower florets and wash them. Wash and (optionally) peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters or so.

Put the butter into a big pot and melt in medium heat. Fry the onion until soft. Stir in some smoked paprika powder. Add cauliflower and potatoes, stir for a minute or so. Add water so that it just doesn’t cover the contents of the pot. Add vegetable stock powder. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the potatoes are soft.

Remove from heat and puree with a stick blender. Add salt, pepper and more smoked paprika to taste. I noticed that it takes quite a lot of salt to make it taste nice.

Add more water, milk or cream to get the consistency you want. I like this soup very thick, almost like a puree.

Serve with nice bread, something like ciabatta should work fine.

You can use parsnips instead of cauliflower, the taste is almost the same.

This is what I made for dinner tonight (I’m sorry there’s no picture; my flatmates came home just when dinner was done and we immediately started eating).

Red Rice and Tuna Baskets

• 3 sheets flaky pastry, frozen (they’re about 30×30cm here)
• 3 handful red thai rice (normal rice probably works just as well)
• 1 can tuna in spring water (185g)
• 1 onion
• 1 handful chives, cut into small pieces with a pair of scissors
• 2 handful grated cheese (I used colby, but cheddar or gouda would work as well)
• 2 large eggs

Take the pastry sheets out of the freezer and spread out on the kitchen bench to defrost. Cover with clean tea towels if you have a non-trustworthy cat. Pre-heat the oven to 200 C.

Grease a standard muffin tray with some butter.

Boil the rice in salted water until soft.

Chop the onion into small pieces and fry in a little bit of olive oil together with the tuna until the onions are soft.

Cut the pastry sheets into quarters and put each piece into one hole in the muffin tray so that it lines the walls. Some parts of the pastry, especially the corners, will stick out.
When the rice is done, drain it well and put it into a medium-sized bowl. Add the onion and tuna, the chives, the grated cheese and the eggs. Season with salt, black and white pepper and smoked paprika (I used La Chinata spicy).

Spoon the filling into the pastry baskets and bake for about 20 minutes or until the pastry starts to get brown and the filling looks set. Leave to cool for a few minutes before eating.

I’m quite happy with this food and I’m pretty sure this is what I’ll bring to the next potluck dinner.

A while ago, I’d seen a recipe for cannelloni with tomato sauce and spinach (beware, it’s in German) on Chili und Ciabatta. It looked so good that I immediately decided to try it out some day. Well, “some day” turned into today. This dish is very nice, even though it’s maybe a bit too much in the current weather (it’s some 25°C here at the moment). I basically didn’t change anything compared to the original recipe, but I’ll still post a translation.

Cannelloni with Tomato Sauce and Spinach

For the sauce:

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion (we used three smallish ones), chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic (that’s a guess; Petra doesn’t say how much garlic she used, and we didn’t have any)
• about 1.2 kg canned tomatoes
• 1 tsp dried rosemary (original recipe: 2 fresh rosemary twigs)
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 Tbsp tomato concentrate
• salt and pepper

For the filling:

• 500g frozen spinach leaves
• 150g feta cheese, in small pieces
• 150g ricotta or quark
• about 50g grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 Tbsp fresh mint leaves, chopped (I cheated and used 1 tsp good quality peppermint tea)
• 2 eggs
• 2 Tbsp lightly roasted pine nuts
• salt and pepper

And:

• 16-20 cannellonis (don’t pre-boil them)
• ca 200g Mozzarella cheese (we only had 125g)

Put the spinach somewhere where it won’t take too long to defrost. Roast the pine nuts. Get someone else to grate the Parmesan cheese.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Fry the onion and garlic on medium heat until soft. Stir in tomatoes, herbs and tomato concentrate. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let simmer for some 25-30 minutes; the sauce is supposed to thicken (which it didn’t do much in our case — but it was fairly thick to start with). Add salt and pepper to taste. Don’t forget to remove the rosemary (if using fresh twigs) and the bay leaves.

Pre-heat oven to 200°C (that’s 390°F — but for our convection oven, 180°C/355°F was hot enough). Mix hopefully more or less defrosted, roughly chopped spinach with the feta cheese, Parmesan cheese, ricotta, eggs, salt and pepper. Use a tiny teaspoon or a knife to fill the cannellonis with the mixture. Don’t expect your hands to stay clean.

Pour some of the tomato sauce into a shallow baking dish. Spread out the cannelloni (squeezing a bit to make all of them fit doesn’t hurt them either) in the dish. Cover with remaining tomato sauce and the sliced Mozzarella cheese. Maybe sprinkle some grated Parmesan on top.

Bake for about 30-40 minutes. The pasta should be soft enough to be edible, the cheese should be a nice light brown (see the picture). I found that with the oven pre-heated to 200°C and turned down to 180°C when putting the dish into the oven, the cheese was brown after some ten minutes, so I covered the dish with tin foil for the rest of the time.

Supposedly serves four, but in this weather they’d have to be quite hungry, I guess…

This is my mum’s meatball recipe.

400g of minced meat (I only use beef).
0.75 dl rolled oats.
1-2 tablespoons potato flour.
1.5 dl water (I tend to use 50/50 milk and cream instead :) ).
1 egg.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 small onion.
Black pepper, all spice and a bit of stock powder.

Chop the onion into small pieces and fry them slightly while allowing the liquid and the rolled oats to stand in a bowl.
Mix it all together until it’s a good mixture, and fairly sticky. It’s important to make sure that there’s no lumps of rolled oats, but it tends to get bad if you overwork the mixture as well.
Once the mixture is finished, put cold water on a cutting board and roll small balls. The water keeps the mixture from sticking to the cutting board (and your hands).
Once you think you’ve got enough meatballs, start frying the first pan on medium heat while rolling more balls.

Just a quick picture upload, really: Yesterday I tried out the recipe for quiche with red capsicum (aka bell pepper) and feta cheese from basic baking — I’m not posting the recipe itself because I didn’t change anything compared to the original.

I actually didn’t really like it yesterday, but I’d made enough for two days and today it was quite nice. It wasn’t the best of ideas to use the cheap feta cheese though.

Today, I decided to try a variation of my normal chili recipe. This chili is supposed to be soup-like in consistency. It turned out quite nice, just a wee bit too hot. I added hot paprika powder in addition to the spices mentioned, and I think that was a mistake.

Several pages on the Internet mention the use of bittersweet chocolate or unsweetened cocoa powder in chili con carne, so I decided to try that as well. I don’t think the taste is really noticeable in this quantity (might use more next time), but at least I didn’t have any problems getting the chili to taste really nice this time.

About 4-6 servings

• 250g minced beef (soy protein probably works as well)
• 1 capsicum (a.k.a. bell pepper or paprika) — I used a yellow one, but that shouldn’t make a difference
• 1-2 chili peppers — I used a green one
• 1 large red onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 tsp vegetable stock powder
• 500 ml puréed tomatos
• ca. 750 ml (hot) water
• 1 can of kidney beans
• 1 small can of corn (optional — drain and add together with the spices)
• spices to taste (I used salt, pepper, cumin, sweet paprika, cayenne pepper, 2 small dried chopped chilis, allspice, cinnamon, thyme and 1/2 tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder)
• 1 tsp semolina

Wash, cut and seed the capsicum and the chili pepper(s). Peel the onion and cut in half rings. Peel the garlic.

Heat a tablespoon of butter in a medium-sized saucepan on medium heat. Throw in the minced meat. Stir the meat so that it doesn’t clump together. When the meat is done, add the onion and the pressed garlic. Stir and fry this for a few more minutes until the onions start to become transparent. Throw in the capsicum and chili pepper(s), and again stir and fry for a few more minutes.

Add the water, stock powder and puréed tomatos and stir well. When the chili is boiling, turn down the heat a bit and add the spices, then let the chili simmer for some 5-10 minutes. In the meantime, drain and wash the beans. Don’t hurt yourself with the can opener. When the chili has simmered for some 5-10 minutes, add the beans.

Wait some 5 more minutes and add the semolina. This is not strictly necessary, but it does give the chili a nicer consistency. This is also a good time to sample the chili and add any missing spices. Let simmer for some 5 more minutes.

Serve with sour cream, crème fraîche or yoghurt for those who don’t like their chili too hot and with slices of white bread (for example ciabatta, baguette or pide).

I am shamelessly copying this from my own blog where it is posted already. I think it is tasting good enough to have several mentions ;)

Supposedly serves 6 people. If they aren’t starving.

500 gr. minced meat.
2 cloves of garlic.
2 Onions.
500 gr. potatoes.
500 gr. carrots.
500 gr. leeks.
~200-250 ml cream. More works as well ;)
~200 gr. “Schmelzkäse” (Soft meltable cheese, “mjukost” in Swedish).
~ 750ml Vegetable Stock.

Fry (a big pot is a good place) the minced meat, garlic and onions together while cutting the vegetables in smallish pieces.
Once the meat is done, put it all into a big pot and add the vegetable stock. The stock should not cover the vegetables entirely all the way up.
Put to a simmer for 20 minutes, add the cream and the cheese. Simmer for 5 more minutes, and add spices.
Salt, pepper and various herb spices are recommended.

Serve with a bit of sourdough bread if you feel adventurous.