The Munchies Blog

For those of you who do not speak Swedish, that would be “My Grandmothers Rhubarb Pie” (barbarians ,) ). It is not a pie in the traditional sense with a bottom, but it does have a nice crust. When I made it the rhubarb turned out to have a very nice texture, and a taste which was slightly sour, but not very. Perfect, in my humble opinion ;)

So, let’s get to the good stuff…

Take about 500 gr. of rhubarb,
1 dl sugar,
2 tsp potato flour.
Put the oven to 225 degrees C.

Peel and slice the rhubarb, mix with the sugar and the potato flour and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

While the rhubarb are in the oven to pre-cook, it’s time to prepare the crust.

Take 100g butter,
1 dl rolled oats,
0.5 dl sugar,
1.5 dl flour,
0.5 - 1 tsp cardamom (depending on how much you like it).

Mix it all together. When you think the rhubarb are done, crumble the mixture on top of the rhubarbs (using spoons didn’t work for me) and make sure to have an even layer.
Put it all into the oven again until the crust has a nice golden colour. It should take about 10-15 minutes.

Serve with custard or ice cream.

You can of course use different fruit or berries, but you might not have to pre-cook them in that case, and you might have to use a different amount of sugar. I will try it out with raspberries and blueberries soon.

It’s been a while that anything happened on this blog; both Andreas and I didn’t live at places that were too inviting for cooking and stuff over the last month. That situation has somewhat improved now, and something else has changed: we’re now blogging from Stockholm, Sweden (and no longer from the Ruhr area in Germany).

The weather here has been really nice lately (summer!) — and what would a real summer be without lemonade…? I’ve been thinking about making my own for quite some time, and who knows, it might even happen one day. At least I’ve already found promising-looking recipes at Anne’s Food and at Chocolate&Zucchini.

In the meanwhile, I’m very happy that Andreas pointed out the shelf with Brämhults juices, fruit drinks and lemonade at our local supermarket. The lemonade is quite sour (20% lemon juice!) and very nice. Beats those weird artificial soft drinks without any problems.

And as soon as I’m back in New Zealand, I’m going to buy a bottle of Phoenix lemonade. Just too bad that it won’t be summer down there when I arrive.

A while ago, I had sent off a food parcel. When I returned from two weeks in Sweden last Thursday, I was quite surprised to see that it had somehow found its way back — in a new wrapping and filled with lots of goodies from England :) Thanks a lot, Katrin!

I managed to forget my camera’s battery and the compact flash card in Sweden, so this blog entry has to survive without any pictures. Sorry, folks!

The parcel contained

• A small bag of Hearty’s salted soy nuts.
• A cranberry and macadamia bar made by Eat Natural.
  
• Three small bars of Green&Black’s organic chocolate: Milk, White and Maya Gold.
• A bag of Organic Bombay Mix.
• A package of Desert Cajun Rub “proudly hand-made in Australia” by Screaming Seeds Spice Co.
• 2 vanilla pods in a very nice silver tube.
• A book with chocolate recipes, apparently from a series called “cook specials” by Oil&Vinegar (which is a shop in Bath, if I remember correctly).
• An organic almond biscotti (or whatever the proper singular form is) “made for Caffè Nero”, a café in Bath that I’ve heard mentioned once or twice or maybe a few more times…
• And, last but not least, a pencil sharpener with a wind-up flower (the head can rotate) which has removable eraser leaves. Or something. I guess I’ll have to take a picture of this as soon as I’ve got a working camera…

So far, I’ve tried the soy nuts (nice but a bit weird) and the cranberry and macadamia bar (ok for a granola bar, but somehow not quite my taste). But the biscotti thingy is definitely in danger now ;)

Yay for food parcels, especially those that also come with toys!

The other day, I discovered a new chocolate brand in a shop in Bochum: shokomonk (German website, but they have an English leaflet in the download section).

Shokomonk makes chocolate bars (50g each) in quite a lot of nice varieties: white chocolate crisp, coconut, raspberry, poppyseeds, or blueberry; milk chocolate with caramel, peanuts, walnuts, or small waffle pieces; dark chocoloate with jalapeños, orange, ginger, latte macchiato or peppermint.

So far, Andreas and I have tried the white chocolate with blueberries (delicious, but too sweet for Andreas’s taste) and the milk chocolate with caramel (both of us didn’t really like it). But I like the concept and I’m quite sure I’m going to try some more of their chocolate bars :)

I think it was in one of my baking books that I first read about the concept of a pound cake: Use the weight of the eggs to measure out equal amounts of butter, sugar and flour. Back in the old days, when people had proper kitchen scales and so on, the eggs were simply used instead of the usual metal weights. In German, this batter is sometimes also called “Eischwerteig” — with “Ei” meaning egg, “schwer” heavy and “Teig” batter or dough.

The cookbook said that nowadays, use of rising agents like baking powder allowed for “better” proportions of ingredients, or something. I was still fairly curious, and seeing a recipe on Fool for Food (in German) convinced me to give it a try. Claudia (and I) used some amaretto for flavoring the cake. Well, I really like it (very moist and much nicer than my usual “I feel like baking” cakes), but I guess one shouldn’t be scared of greasy food…

Almond Pound Cake

• some eggs — 4 seems to be usual; I used 3, at room temperature
• butter, at room temperature
• sugar
• flour
• about 40ml of amaretto (could be more, I think)
• pinch of salt (which I forgot)

Weigh the eggs (still in their shells), measure out the same amount of butter, sugar and flour. Apparently it’s really important that all ingredients have the same temperature.

And now everything depends on the order the ingredients are added — and it’s very important to beat them properly.
Beat butter and sugar with a balloon whisk for 3-4 minutes. Yes, this is hard work in the beginning.

Beat in one egg at a time, always stir until it’s completely mixed in.

Add the amaretto and stir it in completely.

Fold in the flour. No more stirring afterwards.

Pour in greased(!) cake tin and let rest for 45 minutes. Bake in pre-heated oven at about 150°C/300°F for about 45 minutes (Claudia’s recipe says 180°C, but our convection oven seems to need lower temperatures).

In case you haven’t greased the cake tin: get someone to use brute force to get the cake out of the tin… (Not fun, this part.)

If you insist on decorating things: mix some icing sugar with a splash of amaretto. Cover cake with mixture. Sprinkle over some almond slivers.

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…

When I tried out the recipe for a chocolate and pear cake in Linda Collister’s “Backen mit Schokolade” (the English original is Chocolate Baking) last Christmas, I realised that a good recipe is more than just a recipe for good food. A good recipe is one that you can follow without constantly reading ahead — one that takes the planning/scheduling overhead away from you. Bad recipes tell you to do things in an order that doesn’t make sense. Or they cheat by calling for things like “4 large eggs, separated” — instead of telling you to separate the eggs at a time in the recipe “flow” where it makes sense.

The chocolate and pear cake is really nice, but the recipe… well, isn’t. I haven’t managed to optimise it yet, but I’ll post it here with the modifications I made today.

Recipe: Chocolate and Pear Cake

Base:

• 180 g all-purpose flour
• 110 g cold butter, diced
• 30 g brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 2-4 Tbsp ice water

Sieve flour into a bowl, add the butter. Work with your fingertips (much easier than fighting with the food processor) until crumbs form. Add sugar, egg yolk and water. Now the recipe says to use a knife with a rounded tip to make the mixture into a dough. It also says to start with 1 Tbsp ice water and add a bit more if the dough stays too dry. Well, this kind of dough always stays too dry when I do it. That doesn’t really matter though. Just mix things a bit more and try to get a bit larger crumbs.

Make a ball out of the dough (well, if you can get the crumbs to stick together, that is), wrap in foil and refrigerate for some 20 minutes.

Get rid of all the stuff hiding out in the oven. Put a baking tray on the oven floor. The oven needs to be preheated to 200°C — do it now or, if you want to save energy, wait a bit with that. Find a springform, about 23 cm in diameter.

Filling:

• 125 g bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
• 125 g butter
• 90 g brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 125 g ground almonds
• 2-3 drops almond essence (I guess a little splash of Amaretto would work just as well)
• pinch of salt
• 2 ripe, medium-sized pears (preferably Williams Christ)

Put an ovenproof bowl in a saucepan with water. Put chocolate into bowl. Heat (not boil) the water so that the chocolate melts.

Meanwhile, separate the eggs. Beat the egg whites together with the salt (hint from one of my aunts: much easier if you also add a Tbsp cold water) until soft peaks form. Set aside. (My reason for doing that now is that I only have one bowl that I can use together with the food processor. After setting aside the egg white stuff, I can clean and reuse that bowl.)

Check that nothing bad is happening with the chocolate. And if you haven’t started to preheat the oven yet, better do it now. Take the dough out of the fridge and put it into the springform. Flatten it out and stretch it a bit so that it covers the bottom and goes up at the sides, about 2-3 cm high. Now it’s probably time to take the chocolate off the stove.

Whisk the butter (which should be fairly soft — either put it in the microwave for a very (!) short time, or reuse the chocolate saucepan), add the sugar. The recipe says that this should become thick and creamy. Well, doesn’t happen when I do it. Just ignore the recipe and gradually whisk in the egg yolks. Stir in the chocolate, then add the almonds and the almond essence or amaretto. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Pour the filling onto the base and make the surface look pretty.

Peel the pears, cut them in half and get rid of all the stuff you wouldn’t want to eat (if the pears are ripe enough, a teaspoon can be very helpful for this task). Slice thinly, but don’t cut all the way through — the slices should stay connected at the top (look at the picture, that makes things much clearer). Spread out onto the filling in a decorative way.

Set the springform onto the hot baking tray and bake for 15 minutes (still at 200°C). After that time, turn down the heat to 180°C and bake for some 10 more minutes — until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Carefully get rid of the side part of the springform. Serve the cake warm or cold. The recipe suggests to serve it with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream. Whipped cream also works well (and I’m a bit sceptical about the crème fraîche).

According to the recipe, the cake tastes even better the next day (even though it won’t look as pretty).

Note: It’s important to use ripe pears. Or to equip people with knives.

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.

Somehow it feels like Katrin is trying to get the title “the great munchies hunter” ;) A while ago, she sent in a picture of “Les Munchies”, a sandwich place in Bath, UK. When she was in Bochum the last time, she brought me a package of Munchies made by Nestlé, which she apparently found lurking around in a shop at Bristol airport (well, the Munchies were lurking, I wouldn’t know about Katrin as I wasn’t there).

They taste like, hm, well, I guess like it’s to be expected. Cheapish chocolate with caramel and a tiny biscuit. Something that probably wants to be a Twix when it grows up. Not too horrible altogether, but I don’t think I’d buy it. But thanks anyway :)
A fun thing I read somewhere on the Internet is that apparently, the message on the package side changes (in case it’s not obvious from the picture, the message on mine read “devour me” before I opened the package).

Last week, I signed up for DFssgF 1, the German version of Euro Blogging by Post. I’d already given up hope that my parcel would arrive today — and then the doorbell rang and a neighbor delivered a parcel for me :) I was at home all day, so I guess the parcel delivery guy got scared away by all the scaffolding around the house and didn’t even try to deliver it directly.

Anyways, back to the parcel. Unfortunately, all I know about the sender is that he’s someone called Jens, and that he’s from Bonn. I had kindof expected to find the link to the sender’s blog inside the parcel… There’s one thing I can guess about Jens though: he seems to like Korean food.

At least, that’s what I got: a weird mixture of probably even weirder Korean food. Me, who’s definitely sceptical about Asian food! Oh well, that’s a chance to try out something new, I guess ;) And Andreas is quite happy.

The contents are (on the picture, clockwise starting from top left):

• Roasted Seasoned Laver.
• A can of Sweet Cinnamon Punch (on the side of the can, it says “Expired Date Prints On The Bottom”)
• Two tinfoil-wrapped, erm, rice rolls wrapped in seaweed? Or something? Seriously, I don’t have a clue about this stuff.
• A bowl of instant noodles. Without a single word I understand on the packaging (well, except for “bowl noodles”). And a picture that promises something like chilli peppers and something red as the flavor. Hmmm. I guess I’ll give this one to Andreas and watch from a safe distance…
• A very pink package with miniature chocolate-filled cookies. They’re nice. And all gone already :)
• A package with, hm, chocolate-covered cookie sticks, or something. The ingredient list says “wheat flour, sugar”. No mention of chocolate. They look good too, though.

Well, thanks a lot Jens! I think you would have made me even happier by sending me at least some instructions on what to do with the food though… Additional thanks go to Rosa for organising the whole thing and to Svenja for mentioning DFssgF in her blog.

For a round-up of DFssgF 1, go here.

Oh, and one more thing: I’ve been told that this blog entry doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. I’m sorry — I managed to catch a bad cold and find it fairly difficult to write cheerful things while my head feels like it’s wrapped in several layers of wool… I’m definitely happy about the parcel!

And another update: the sender is this Jens.