French Fridays with Dorie - Lime Honey Beet Salad

Today's recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is "Lime Honey Beet Salad". A simple recipe with few, albeit somewhat exotic, ingredients - well, limes, honey, chives and dill are not that exotic but in connection with beets, they are.

With the summer holidays approaching (though we still have four weeks to go), the bi-annual school festival was held at the school of one of my sons. The students, parents and teachers had organized all kinds of activities including the usual bake sale, visit to the school's zoo, mystery dungeon, etc. The school is one of only a small number of boys' schools left in this country and the school owns a few beehives and sells the honey twice a year at the summer and winter school festivals.

I bought a few glasses of the honey produced from the spring - and  early summer yield and added two tablespoons of that wonderful honey to the Lime Honey Beet Salad. I love the idea that the school produces its own wonderful honey and I do try to use it as often as I can.

We enjoyed the beet salad, but I guess we are not the most impartial of taste testers because we eat a lot of beets in this country and we just love them in classical as well as more exotic dishes. The only minor adjustment I made to the recipe was adding walnut oil instead of olive oil because we like the taste of the walnuts together with the earthy taste of the red beets. I would have loved to use beets of different colors, but I have never ever seen yellow beets being grown around here.

To see how the other Doristas prepared the Lime Honey Beet Salad, please click here.

A Bookshop made in Heaven - "Boekhandel Polare Maastricht" formerly "Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen”

A one-day trip to the Netherlands is always a nice change of pace from the routine of our everyday life. For us, that often means a one and a half hours drive by car to the beautiful city of Maastricht (Mestreech).

Maastricht  is located in the Province of Limburg, of which it is the capital. It is situated close to the German and Belgian borders and is widely considered as the oldest city in the Netherlands. Its Latin name refers to the fact that the Romans built a bridge over the Maas river in the first century AD to the settlement they called “Mosae Trajectum”.

Today, the city of Maastricht is located on both sides of the Maas river and is widely known for its picturesque squares, romantic streets and historical buildings. It is a city of linguistic diversity and the official language of instruction at Maastricht University is mostly English, therefore attracting many international students from around the world. The city is very popular with tourists for shopping as well as for recreation and one should not forget that it is known, by way of the Maastricht Treaty, as the birthplace of the European Union, European citizenship, and the single European currency, the Euro.

One of the many places that is a “must see” when touring Maastricht is the “Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen” (now known as "Boekhandel Polare Maastricht") a Dominican church that dates back to the 13th century.

The building was a Dominican church until the city of Maastricht was invaded by Napoleon in 1794 and the Dominicans were forced to leave the country. Since that time, the building was being used for various purposes such as a warehouse, as an archive and, in the end, as a giant parking lot for bicycles.

But thanks to extensive renovations led by the Dutch architects Merkx & Girod (www.merkx-girod.nl), the former church has been turned into “what could possibly be the most beautiful bookshop of all times” (The Guardian, January 11, 2008).

The “Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen” opened its doors in December 2007. After the renovations, it retains its character and its charm as an old church, just take a look at the beautifully renovated 14th century ceiling fresco.

The renovations are highlighted by a huge, three-storey black steel construction. The highest shelves are reachable by lift or by a set of stairs within the steel construction. The view from the top of the steel construction along the nave of the church is simply breathtaking.

At the back of the church, customers can sit down for a cup of coffee at the “Coffeelovers” coffee bar (www.coffeelovers.nl). “Coffeelovers” is a small chain of coffee bars serving high quality coffees but also teas from the Maastricht-based coffee roasting company “Maison Blanche Dael” (www.blanchedael.nl). This coffee roasting and tea packaging company was founded in 1878 and, to this day, is a purveyor to the Royal Dutch Household. While enjoying your fabulous coffee or tea, you can also munch on a variety of savory or sweet snacks.

The coffee shop is located in the former sanctuary. And the bookstore also installed a cross-shaped reading table where customers can sit and flip through the magazines and newspapers kept in the slats of the table.

The "Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen" belonged to the popular Selexyz bookshop chain (now Polare) and carries a wide selection of newspapers, magazines and books (many of them in English) – as you can see from the cookbooks on display there, Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi are also very popular with all those talented Dutch cooks and bakers.

From the above photos, I hope you can see why this 800-year-old former Dominican church is truly a “bookshop made in heaven”. It was also featured on the cover of a book (“Kaufhaus der Worte: 222 Buchläden, die man kennen sollte” – “222 Bookshops that you should get to know”,  by Richard Deiss) and as part of of the following book “Die schönsten Buchhandlungen Europas” – “The most beautiful Bookshops in Europe”, by Rainer Moritz, Reto Guntli and Agi Simoes. Both books are available at www.amazon.com).

Address:

Now "Boekhandel Polare Maastricht," formerly known as "Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen"
Dominikanerkerkstraat 1
6211 CZ Maastricht

website: www.polare.nl

Brownie Strawberry Skewers with Chocolate Sauce

This is one fun recipe for kids and adults alike, no olive oil in this cake batter but lots of good chocolate. And with the addition of sweet strawberries, this is one treat that everyone seems to enjoy. It is quite simple to prepare, you start off by baking your favorite brownie recipe, then you hull some strawberries - how many you will need, depends on the number of skewers you want to prepare and on the size of the fruit, of course. The rule of thumb would be three medium sized strawberries per skewer.

While I am quite aware that everybody has her/his favorite recipe for brownies,  following is the recipe that I use for these skewers. Just bake the brownie batter for an extra minute or two. The brownies will hold their shape better when you thread them onto the skewers.

Fat Witch Brownies
(Adapted from "Fat Witch Brownies: Brownies, Blondies, and Bars from New York's Legendary Fat Witch Bakery" by P. Helding & B. Levin,  pages 26-27)

Ingredients for the Brownies

1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp bittersweet chocolate chopped (I use 70 % Lindt Excellence)
1 1/4 cups superfine sugar
4 large eggs, room temp (use organic or free range whenever possible)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract or one package pure vanilla sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp AP flour
a pinch of fine sea salt

You will also need:
A 9` x 9` square baking pan
Fresh strawberries (you could also use different fruit)
Your favorite chocolate sauce

1. Grease and flour your baking pan. I always line my baking pans with unbleached parchment paper.
2. Melt the butter and the chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring frequently. Set aside to cool.
3. Cream the sugar, the eggs and the vanilla together.
4. Then add the cooled chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and mix until blended.
5. Sift together the flour and the salt and then stir into the chocolate mixture. With a spatula, mix the batter gently until it is well combined and no trace of the dry ingredients remains.
6. Spread batter evenly in the prepared baking pan and bake for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and the brownies are firm enough that they can hold their shape well after they have cooled.
7. Remove the brownies from the oven and cool on a rack for at least one hour.
8. Cut the brownies according to how big or small you want your pieces for the skewers.

Then all that is left to do is to wash and hull your strawberries and prepare your favorite chocolate sauce. Once that is done, you thread three strawberries and two pieces of brownie onto each skewer. You can serve as many or as few  skewers as you want. Plate them, drizzle the chocolate sauce over and serve with the remaining chocolate sauce on the side – and, for the adults, do not for forget to ask your favorite barista to prepare an espresso macchiato for you (favorite brand of espresso coffee for me is “Ionia”, hands down).

Enjoy!

French Fridays with Dorie - Olive Oil Ice Cream

Today's recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is Olive Oil Ice Cream. At first, that might sound a little bit strange but then again, it does not, because olive oil has become a rather prominent ingredient in a lot of different dessert recipes.

Once you have read through Dorie's recipe for the Olive Oil Ice Cream, you realize that it is a clear and easy recipe, much like preparing vanilla ice cream and since the ingredient list is rather short, the most important step is getting a good quality olive oil with a mild flavor, no peppery taste wanted in that ice cream. I went with my tried and true organic cold pressed olive oil, although I think I drove the clerk to the brink of exasperation because I would not stop bugging him about finding an olive oil that would be even better suited to ice cream making.

To make the ice cream, you simply prepare a basic custard with milk, cream, eggs, sugar and a pinch of fleur de sel and only than do you add the well chosen olive oil and the vanilla (instead of the vanilla extract, I used the seeds from a vanilla pod). Cool the custard, then transfer to the fridge, then to the ice cream maker, than finally in the freezer overnight.

Dorie suggests a whole number of things that you can serve with the ice cream. Apparently, trendy chefs in Paris serve the olive oil ice cream with a drizzle of olive oil and a few flakes of fleur de sel. When I read this, I decided to serve a bit of olive oil and fleur de sel on the side - for those adventurous enough to try this combo.

And I decided to bake some Chocolate Olive Oil Cookies using the same olive oil as I used in the ice cream. I have baked my share of cakes and cookies with olive oil in lieu  of butter. Using olive oil is a familiar feature of Mediterranean baking. Using olive oil in baking has actually been done for centuries. Olive oil gives cakes and cookies a light texture and using a mild extra-virgin olive oil when baking gives the baked goods a subtle flavor.

Recipe for Chocolate Olive Oil Cookies
(adapted from "The Olive Harvest Cookbook: Olive Oil Lore and Recipes from McEvoy Ranch" by G. Gass and Jacqueline Mallorca, p. 153)

Ingredients for the Cookies

3.5 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used Lindt 70% Excellence)
1 2/3 cups AP flour
1 cup superfine sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
one pinch of fine sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon (from Ceylon, if possible)
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp cognac

Sanding sugar, for rolling


Preparation
1. Melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals.  Set aside and let cool until lukewarm.
2. Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
3. In a small bowl mix together the olive oil, vanilla and the Cognac.
4.  Add this to the dry mixture.  Add the melted chocolate and stir until the mixture comes together into a uniform mass.
5. Using your hands, roll the dough into ball about 3/4 to 1 inch in diameter. Roll and cover completely in sugar, and place them 2 inches apart on the parchment lined baking sheets.
6. Use your palm to very gently flatten the cookies a bit. Bake the cookies about 12 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and let cool completely.

The Olive Oil Ice Cream was a huge success at our house. The kids were curious to get a taste of the ice cream and they loved the way it tasted but no additional olive oil or fleur de sel as a topping for them, just the ice cream and the cookies. The ice cream had a very pretty color (influenced, no doubt, by the kind of egg yolks and olive oil that you use) and it tasted wonderfully rich and creamy, with a hint of vanilla (may be a bit more so because I used vanilla seeds)  a bit of fruity taste from the olive oil, a little bit of saltiness.

I believe that I have found a new favorite ice cream. The only thing that I liked even more than the taste, is the fact of being able to replace some of the cream with olive oil – I just love that idea. With only a few ingredients, the ice cream will taste its best when it is made with a really good oil, one that you really like. And the cookies harmonized very well with the ice cream, they are not overly sweet with a crumbly texture, a bit like shortbread with the added crunch from the sanding sugar. A nice addition to the ice cream and I love the fact that I get to use the same wonderful olive oil for both these treats.

To see how the other adventurous Doristas prepared the Olive Oil Ice Cream, please click here.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Oasis Naan

Today's recipe for the Baking with Dorie group is Oasis Naan.

The recipe for this round-shaped, leavened, oven-baked flatbread of Persian origin was contributed by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Naan can either complement a main dish or it can also be eaten plain, with ghee ( clarified butter that originated in South Asia) or regular butter. Naan can also be prepared with different flavors such as garlic, spices or herbs. It can also be stuffed with different vegetables or with meat.

The basic dough for the Oasis Naan in Dorie´s book is the same basic dough as for the Persian Naan (the recipes for both these flatbreads are from the same contributing bakers). The only ingredients required for the dough are tepid water, yeast, flour and salt. After about a two hour rest, the dough for the Oasis Naan gets formed into rounds, the centers have to be flattened, docked well and vigorously, and then sprinkled with coarse salt, chopped scallions, and a pinch of cumin or caraway seeds. This is where I strayed from the recipe in Dorie's book, instead of scallions I used chopped fresh chives from the garden and I skipped the spices - my taste testers do not like these spices all that much.

This is an easy and interesting bread to prepare. The texture of the Naan was flaky and crispy on the outside but the bread itself was soft and fluffy inside and although I prepared it without the spices and subbed the chives for the scallions, it still was delicious.

Our hosts for today's recipe are Maggie of Always Add More Butter and Phyl of Of Cabbages and King Cakes - a big Thank You to both our gravious hosts!

To see how the other Doristas prepared the Oasis Naan, please click here.

Colors of June

Young dorista artista at work

Elderflower Fritters - A Tribute to my Grandmother

I have been wanting to write about my grandmother for quite some time now. She and my grandfather used to live about three hundred kilometers from where I lived back then and where I live now with my family. My grandparents used to live in a rural community, we live in the city but would love to live in the country. They owned a red brick house with a great big vegetable garden and in addition to all the vegetables and fruits that my grandmother had planted and always faithfully tended to, there was a huge elderberry shrub  growing in one of the corners of her wonderful garden. Although we have neither really found the time nor   had the patience to plant a vegetable garden, thankfully, there is a large elderberry shrub growing in our garden.

My two sisters and I usually spent three weeks during the summer at my grandparents` house. Sometimes we would even stay for a week or two in fall or around Easter time. I have nothing but fond memories of all the times that we stayed at that house. My grandmother grew up with twelve sisters and brothers. She, on the other hand, had two children, my father and my aunt. My grandmother was incredibly hard working, even as a very young girl.

When my great-grandparents considered her "to be old enough", they sent her off to the Netherlands, to another family with lots of children, so that, according to my great-grandmother, her daughter would “learn how to cook and how to ran a proper household” - I believe she could have learned a lot at home as well, but sending her away for a few years probably meant much more than just that...

By the time my grandmother was allowed to return home, she had become a wonderful cook, having dutifully studied the recipes in those vintage cookbooks that were the only resources available back then.

She baked her own breads and rolls and lots of waffles – I do not remember her baking cakes, though. She  made juice and then filled her homemade juice (such as elderberry juice) into glass bottles. She canned huge amounts of green beans, red beets and other vegetables from her garden.

She picked the sweet cheeries from her cherry tree and canned them too. Then she would line all those bottles and jars up on these old but sturdy looking wooden shelves in the cool basement – canning time was a huge event at her house, steam everywhere and at the end of a long day or two spent doing nothing but juicing and canning, my hard working grandmother always emerged from the steam, relieved and proud. To this day, I cannot walk past those canning jars in a store (or in my basement) without thinking of her.

When I think of her, I cannot believe that I do not have one, not even a single one of her original recipes. No one seems to have taken any notes. I guess, no one was interested back then.

A few years ago we decided to take our children to the very house that my grandparents used to own. I had not seen it in a long long time – the garden was still there, the trees and the elderberry shrug too, although it is not a shrug anymore but rather a tree. The present owner runs a music store from the house, the house looked different but it also still looked the same.

During our trip we talked a lot about how absolutely happy and safe I always felt when I was around my grandparents. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was convinced that it was going to be a girl, a girl that would be named after my grandmother, her great-grandmother. It turned out that I had to be a bit more patient than I had thought and that I had to wait a few years more before I was able to pass on that very name, Klara. Our daughter Klara turned eleven in May.

So in honor of my grandmother Klara, I am posting a recipe for Elderflower Fritters – while I do not own the original recipe she used, I found an old recipe. I am sure she would have liked it, my food memories tell me that my Elderflower Fritters taste like or very similar to the ones grandma Klara used to prepare once a year. I made this recipe yesterday and everyone liked the fritters quite a bit. Writing about my grandma and trying to find a recipe that would do her cooking skills justice gave me the chance to take a trip down memory lane, again. I am endlessly grateful for all those memories...

Sources:
Some of the photos were taken by my at the Open-Air Museum in Lindlar, Germany
( http://www.freilichtmuseum-lindlar.lvr.de)
Cookbook: Henriette Davidis, "Praktisches Kochbuch" - "Practical Guide to Cooking" (1906 and 1924 editions - part of my vintage cookbook collection)
Canning glass: "Weck" (http://www.weck-glas.de)



Elderflower Fritters
(Recipe in Memory of Oma Klara)

Ingredients 
(serves about four persons)
                 
125g AP (plain) flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 pinch fine sea salt
1 egg (L),  preferably free range or organic
250 ml sparkling mineral water, room temperature
4-8 heads elderflowers (or as many or as few as you want)
Oil for frying (I used sunflower oil)
Confectioners´s sugar for dusting (you could also use cinnamon sugar)




Preparation

Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, egg and mineral water together until smooth and set aside for 30 minutes (at room temperature).
Heat the oil in a deep fat fryer to 180° C (
Using a pair of kitchen scissors, snip the elderflowers into individual florets, or leave the florets whole, leaving on as much stem as possible. Clean off any dirt or tiny critters.
Dip the florets into the batter and drop into the hot oil. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until golden brown. Remove and drain on kitchen paper.
Dust with confectioners´ sugar and enjoy while still warm.

Serve with just the dusting of sugar or serve alongside fruit or compote (like the strawberry/rhubarb compote I prepared and filled into a large Weck jar without having to use a rubber ring since we ate it right away).

Enjoy!

French Fridays with Dorie - Lentil, Lemon and Smoked Trout Salad

Today we have the „Lemon, Lentil and Tuna Salad“ on the recipe schedule for the French Fridays with Dorie group. This lentil salad is light and fresh and a perfect dish for spring and summer.

The main stars of this salad are the “lentils du Puy”, French green lentils, known in France as poor man's caviar. The particularity of these lentils is that they are all grown in Auvergne, a rugged mountainous region in the south of France. Because they are designated by an AOC (“appellation d'origine controlee”), only lentils grown near Puy-en-Velay can be labeled as Puy lentils. The word “puy” refers to an isolated volcanic hill. When looking at the Auvergne landscape, you will will notice quite a few of these “puys”.

The first task in preparing this salad is to cook the green lentils. You can do so either by preparing them according to the package instructions or by following Dorie`s basic lentil recipe in her book. I chose to take the latter route. To prepare the lentils according to Dorie´s recipe, first you briefly cook the lentils in water, then you rise them and cook again in chicken broth to which you add an onion, garlic, carrot, celery and a bay leaf. This step is necessary in order to infuse the lentils with even more flavor.

While the lentils were cooking, I prepared the “black olive tapenade” with olives, lemon zest, rosemary, thyme, piment d`esplette, parmesan and some good olive oil (just following Dorie´s recipe for tapenade). Then it was on to the salad dressing. I used some of the tapenade that I had just prepared, grainy French mustard, red wine vinegar, walnut oil and only a bit of olive oil, lemon juice (instead of the preserved lemon) and chives (instead of the scallions)., plus salt and pepper, of course. After carefully mixing the dressing with the lentils, I refrigerated the salad for a couple of hours before serving. This step gives the different flavors a chance to develop even further.

I also baked a few rosemary flatbreads, I love this recipe from the July 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine – it is so easy to prepare. The crisp flatbread was wonderful with the lentil salad and  with some of the leftover tapenade that I served alongside the lentil salad.

Recipe for Crisp Rosemary Flatbread
(adapted from Gourmet Magazine July 2008)

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups unbleached AP flour
1 tbsp chopped rosemary plus 2 (6-inch) sprigs
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup fruity olive oil plus more for brushing
Flaky sea salt such as Maldon or other salt such as fleur de sel de Guérande


Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F with a heavy baking sheet on a rack in the middle of the oven.

2. Stir together the flour, chopped rosemary, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Make a well in the center, then add the water and the oil and gradually stir into the flour with a wooden spoon until a dough forms. Knead the dough gently on a work surface four or five times.

3. Divide the dough into three pieces and roll out one piece (keep the remaining two pieces covered with some plastic wrap) on a sheet of parchment paper into a ten-inch round (please note that the shape of the dough can be rustic and that the dough should be rather thin).

4. Lightly brush the top of the rolled-out dough with some additional oil and scatter a few small clusters of rosemary leaves on top, pressing in slightly. Sprinkle with some sea salt. Slide the dough round (still on parchment) onto the preheated baking sheet and bake until pale golden and browned in spots, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the baked flatbread (discard the parchment) to a rack to cool, then make two more rounds (one at a time) on fresh parchment.

5. Break into pieces or leave it whole and serve.

To serve the salad, I chose to replace the tuna with smoked trout – personal preference. And I put some fresh watercress on the plates, which went amazingly well with the lentil salad.

Everyone loved this dish. The salad has a wonderful mediterranean taste to it (might be different if you add the preserved lemons) it is so easy to put together and it could be used either as an entrée or as a main course. It is nice to serve flatbread, the remaining tapenade, a few drops of walnut oil and watercress alongside this dish. But, of course, it could be served in numerous different wonderful ways too. Whichever way you chose to serve it, I am sure I will be delicious. Thanks Dorie for another wonderful recipe!

To see how the other Doristas prepared the Lemon, Lentil and Tuna Salad, please click here.