American strawberry cake

I found a nice recipe by a new Facebook friend, and because I'm a strawberry-addict person, I felt an urgent pressure to make it :)

I warn you: it's American, so it is not a wellness thing, really heavy stuff for the stomach.
I changed the frosting, because it was already too much calorie without the butter :D

Cake base (for a 18 cm diameter form):

• 2 cups cake flour
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 0.5 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 eggs
• 1 piece of vanilla
• 2/3 cup sour cream 

Mix the flour with the salt, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
Mix the sugar and the butter (I used margarine, and melted a bit). Add the eggs, one piece at a time and stir it well. Add the vanilla and the sour cream.
At the end mix the flour mix to the cream.
In a preheated over bake for 60 minutes on 170 ˙C (I have a crap oven, needed much longer time)

Meanwhile make the frosting (I made it up during processing, so taste it and add ingredients according to your taste):

• 2 pieces Camping cheese :)
• sweetened whipped cream (approx. 2 cups)
• strawberry jam (approx. 0.5 cup)
• strawberry liquor (according to your taste ;))
• strawberry pulp or fresh strawberries (approx. 0.75 cup)

Mix all well and put into the fridge.

The rest is super-easy, however, I can never make a nice frosting form creams :D
When the cake cooled down, cut it into 3 or 4 pieces horizontally and spread the frosting between the layers. Make a nice decoration, if you feel so (I watered it with strawberry puree not too nicely :))

Italian days

However it is rather fusion. I'm trying to develop my creative ego. Under reconstruction... lol

The first one is multicolor baked pasta with a Bolognese-like sauce, sprinkled with Parmesan.

The second one is baked rice, but... I made many layers! The rice is cooked with tomato sauce and basil, oregano. The first layer is wild garlic, the second is flatfish, the third one is previously grilled eggplant (covered with garlic oil and thyme, basil), my favourite is the roasted bacon :)  And covered with rice and Parmesan. It should have been an amazing food, but I would have needed more spices unfortunately. Or maybe tomorrow I'll taste the rest :)

 

Viva México!

Invited some friends for a Mexican night yesterday! I had a blast, it was so cool!
Enjoyed a bunch of tortilla chips with guacamole, enchilladas, almond cookies and tequila with Corona to wash down the tastes :)

The enchilladas was very easy to make, just needed beef mixture (Corona beer, garlic, salt, pepper, ketchup, tomato) and a chili bean sauce :) Optionally topped with Chorizo, Serrano ham and cheddar.
Here are the steps for wrapping - with pictures:

Birthday cake

When spring comes, I always feel a call to bake a marzipan birthday cake for someone.
This year it is a virtual gift ^-^

The pastry is a simple, not too sweet cocoa base.
For the cream I searched the whole internet (back and forth), finally mixed a Martha Stewart vanilla cream with pecan nut and golden syrup.
The coat is from marzipan, and because of the hopefully coming spring and the Someone, I baked it for, I chose a Japanese theme: cherry blossoms.

お誕生日おめでとうございます
そしていただきます！

 

The rabbit-hole

It's St Patrick's Day in Ireland. And I have a Guinness in my fridge!
Let's cook something delicious!

1. Catch a rabbit - supermarkets are the best for lazy people, like me
2. Grab a carton of Guinness, cool it down baby
3. Open a bottle: half into a bowl, half into a glass. Taste it, just in case ;)
4. Throw some spices into the bowl - great game for practicing basketball!
   My selection was whole green pepper, juniper and bay leaves. I also added mushrooms.
5. Put the rabbit into the beer mix (don't throw please, every drop is precious) and place into the fridge and...
6. Wait... sip from the glass... wait... open a new bottle... blow bubbles... don't get too crazy...
   
   
   
   
   
7. TIME IS OVER! Get the rabbit out from the beer mix
8. Spice the rabbit with salt and pepper and roast on both sides - I prefer butter
9. Wrap it with bacon and place some veggies next to it (carrots and the Guinness mushrooms)
10. Cover it and roast it in the oven (180 °C, 1 hour approx)
11. Wait... smoke a cigarette or three... taste a pálinka... open a Corona... make a Bloody Mary... use a kitchen towel when you wanna check what's going on in the oven!!! Or just don't drink and you won't forget it :)
12. Remove the lid
13. Roast some potatoes and green peas
14. Aaaaaand READY!!!!

Crunchy PecaNut

Yesterday Szamos' Poppyseed mousse, Starbuck's Strawberry and Cream Frappuccino and the Strawberry cheesecake wasn't enough sugar rush, I was starving for sweet food. I thought I am sweet enough, but maybe not on this weekend :)

So continuing the creative cooking/baking period I came up with the following idea:
cheesecake crust, poured with hot, fluid Nutella and covered with pecan nut and maple syrup cream (with butter, eggs blabla). Aaah, so hot! Now I feel like entering the heaven.

Savory grey mullet

Some months ago, when I still lived in Germany, some of my friends told me, that there is a new fish market opened near my hometown. I imagined something really biiig, like Tsukiji in Tokyo :)
In December I visited it with a friend, and the whole market turned out to be a small shop, tinier than my living room, and with unfriendly sellers! But if I was already there, bought some fishes seemed exciting. One of them was the grey mullet. And because it is Sunday, also Hinamatsuri in Japan (girl's day), it is a great time to cook something healthy after eating Poutine and "gesztenyepüré" (sweet chestnut puree with lots of whipped cream).. O.o

Here it is, a very easy recipe found on a forum, and transformed it a little bit according to my taste and fridge:

• 200 g grey mullet
• 2 tbs freshly pressed red orange juice
• pepper mix
• 6 leaves ramsons (bear garlic or bear leek)
• 2 big long slides of bacon - baked and cut into small pieces
• 1/4 cup breadcrumb

 This is also the order, how to place it into a pot and bake it for about 20 minutes on 175 °C.
One of the most deliscious fish I have ever eaten!
Note to self: breadcrumb could be roasted a bit before.

Putin try :)

Found an interesting food on Twitter (see, professional growing sometimes has additional advantages): a Canadian one, called "poutine".
The base recipe is very simple: fried potato, curd cheese and brown gravy. From the 3 main ingredients which one can be bought in my country? Potato :D Zzzzzzzz... nothing similar to curd cheese, so had to improvise and bought Bulgarian goat cheese. And cooked brown gravy, which turned out to be caramel brown, so I added artificial coloring.

Because of my own strict rules, be consequent, I cannot call it poutine (however I found a "Greek poutine" recipe with feta cheese). So how to name the baby? Goutine!? :)

Again something Japanesish to shovel into the belly :)

Might be a bit boring, but today's dinner was again something rather Japanese style.
A friend of mine just got bored and wanted to eat with someone, so I "used him out" a bit and sent for shopping :D Unfortunately the main ingredient, maple syrup was out of stock everywhere, but don't panic, I solved the problem - somehow.

The soup was very easy to cook from chicken neck, carrot and leek with miso paste:

The main dish was a kind of Japanese-Italian-Canadian for me, but what a wonderful taste!
Some days ago I saw a maple syrup marinated beef steak somewhere and tried to find the recipe. Used this one: easy: soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup and garlic for the marinate. Here came my trick: instead of maple syrup I used chopped walnut and Golden syrup. Not the same taste of course, but really delicious!
You only have to put the beef into this mixture for 15 minutes and then grill for 15 minutes as well. The surface should be a bit crunchy, but inside it is beautifully rose and raw <3 Oishiiiii!
Just need a sharper knife to slice it thinner.

The dessert needed the maple syrup again, the substitution was Golden syrup and a special sugar mixture what I received from a friend of mine for Xmas ^-^ Let's say it was an American pancake's happy marriage with a waffle :) Topped with sour cherry in the above mentioned sugar rush and whipped cream.

Itedakimasu ^-^

The Japanese blog dinner

I organize blogdinners every once in a while and today we had Japanese day :)
I tried to find different dishes from different areas of Japan.

This is how it looked like before we destroyed the whole table:

The soup was a really simple miso-soup with chicken and shiitake mushroom:

The next dish was nigiri sushi. Sendai (Miyagi prefecture) inspired me to create the weird red one. After the WWII a Japanese restaurant owner started to use some leftovers by military forces near this area. These were beef tongue and oxtail. The tongue gained a high popularity all over Japan, they create it as sushi, grilled or in curry. The oxtail is cooked as a soup and served as part of the beef tongue menu.

I found only smoked beef tongue in the market.

The white nigiri is octopus.

The main dishes are from Osaka: okonomiyaki and takoyaki (just a quick Japanese lesson: yaki means grilled). Okonomiyaki is my favorite and served the purpose of "life bouy", if something goes wrong tonight :) And the dish which had quite big chance to destroy the evening is... the takoyaki. It is very simple pancake based balls filled with octopus. The problem is in Japan they use a special baking form made from heavy iron. I tried to buy it last year, but I could not lift it with one hand, that's why decided to buy just a small baking form. Nah, I have to say takoyaki cannot (CANNOT) be baked in oven :( Even 220 degree was not enough. I tried a fried egg Tefal form to make some small flat pieces, and also to transform the little ugly shapeless somethings from the oven into an eatable but still ugly "takoyaki". 

Both dishes are decorated with okonomiyaki sauce and mayo. 

Ohm, I just discovered the shape of the takoyaki plate... really sorry, do not show it for children.. or say, it is an ugly Christmas tree :)))

And the dessert is mochi.

Green tea mochi, green tea covered with kinako (roasted soybean flour) and "ume-mochi": artificially colored and in the middle you can see umeboshi.

My usazukin's choice was the ume-mochi tonight :)

Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, shichi... shichimi?

On my last Japanese lesson we learned the numbers and by the number 7 I was thinking, that I have a spice called Shichimi, bought in Kyoto, and whether it has anything to do with the number. Yes, it does, Shichimi means Seven tastes, because it is a mixture of 7 spices.

I had chicken thighs (without skin ;)), and the recipe I found is the following:

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbs Shichimi
• 1 piece of garlic
• salt, pepper

I dipped the chicken into the flourmix, then into egg, and again into the mix. And would have fried into lots of oil, if I have had enough, thus something was hissed in the bottom of the pan - diabetic version. :) Five drops of sesame oil were added.

And to increase my creativity I painted today (it is not allowed to spit on it, I have a sensitive mood today). The original picture was found on facebook.

The Indian taste

Recently a very dear friend of mine visited me and she cooked marvelous Indian food. I had a desire  today for something similar.
I tried to use double extent from spices as I would put in, just remembering her operance in my kitchen, but still it was half so spicy :) However even the curry bottle committed suicide and jumped into the pan (hallelujah for Paris and my laziness: I should have not prepare the spice, but could finally open the one I bought 2 years ago).
After I unfroze the big whitish something, it turned out not to be chicken thighs, but chicken skin. Why on Earth did I freeze something, I would never eat? Remains a riddle forever. So liver was the choice.

And the recipe:
I braised an onion on lot of oil (maybe 4 tbs), dropped half piece of hot paprika and 4 small cocktail (pronounced as "cock tail") tomato, poured some water on it. At this phase the curry bottle dove :D (Curry Madras), and I added more red paprika, pepper, chili and salt. Oh and a garlic (German one, it is much bigger than the Hungarian ... I can say this only about garlic, have no other data :))
At the end came the liver and at the very end the peas.

Pure, not stirred

After

About Indian food - similar to Hungarian - always the book "Shogun" came into my mind, where the Japanese explained to Anjin-san why it is important to have a separate house for the kitchen :D

Woman, when you move about in your household service your limbs sing like a hill stream among its pebbles. 
-- Rabindranath Tagore

Birthday lunch a la Japonais

My mom had a birthday in the middle of October, I promised her to invite her for a lunch in a good place. The good place turned out to be finally my flat :D Her only request was not to include any raw fish or meat (somebody knows me very well :)) Of course she could not run away from the Japanese style.

In details: it was a 4 course menu with appetizer, soup, main course and dessert. And of course with Japanese beer.

With more details:
Salmon misosoup, I used a modified version of kasu-jiro from runnyrunny999: instead of the fried tofu I used original one and had not got the salmon cream. Open-eyed readers have already observed on the previous picture, that the 2 soups look differently: my mum received leek, and I got wakame - dried algae.

Daigakuimo
Even though I put it on the table as an appetizer, might be that this is a dessert :) Sweet potato caramelized on sugar.

Yakisoba
Classical :) Chicken breast roasted with carrots, mushrooms and leek, mixed with pasta and poured with yakitori sauce. The sauce is a heaven, however its ingredients cannot really found in an average kitchen. Cheating again: I used mirin instead of honey.

Melonpan
Its name refers to its "exterior", has nothing to do with melon taste. It is not easy to make it: you need two kinds of dough: a short pastry and a batter. The batter has to be knead and flapped, really good exercise to get rid of stress, I could hardly stop myself :)
I mixed the base batter with macha powder (green tea), that's why the lower layer is a bit greenish. Two pieces of them is sprinkled with poppyseed. The melonpan is sometimes filled with different delicious creams. Unfortunately this was the first and last occasion that I baked it: we are not compatible with the little pat :(

Itadakimasu!

Mushipan

I'll go to Japan in spring! And I had to celebrate it. Recently found a new video by cookingwithdog and a new idea for the next celebration too (do I need a reason for it? No, I don't!)

Mushipan
You can translate it to steamed bun, and can be flavored according to your taste. The base dough consists of flour, sugar, water and baking powder. It is sprinkled with sweet potato and raisin.
Because I had cinnamon-sugar for long, I used that one.