Cheese crisps

This must seem like the world's easiest recipe - needing only one ingreedient - any cheese to your taste.

Best cheeses for this purpose are those low in fat, but pretty much any yellow cheese will do.

Grate the cheese, put little piles on the pan and let dry in the oven.

The only trick here is to see that the oven would not be too hot (100'C is good enough) and do not forget them in there for too long - if too crisp, they might turn bitter!

lavash rolls

Easy favourite at any dinner party.

Picture credits: unknown web source (sorry, again!)

Take a leaf of lavash, butter it with cream cheese and add anything you might have at home at th emoment.

My favourite is lettuce and ham.

Profiteroles

You need:
3 dl water
100 g butter
2 dl flour
3 eggs

What to do with them?
Put water and butter to boil.
When they do, add flour, mixing well until it forms a smooth ball of dough.
Let cool to lukewarm, then add eggs and beat until smooth.

Take spoonfuls of dough and put in the oven (at 200'C) for about 20 minutes. It's important not to open the oven door while cooking!
The result should look more-or-less like this.

Picture stolen from the web (sorry!)

Now, for filling the little fellas, you can be creative. A winner from my earlier tests is:

Pate filling

Mix:

200 g liver pate

2 dl 35% cream

Add:

salt and pepper to taste

some radish and parsley

Chocolate cookies with hazelnuts

Greetings to my frend L for passing this recipe on! It's just as perfect as you described. The cookies just melt away in your mouth!Despite following the original recipe as closely as I could, mine still came a little more flat than I saw on the pic next to the recipe, but nevermind, they taste delicious. Also, it said this quantity will make 16 biscuits, I got more than double that - almost 40... I made them smaller than I thought be best deliberately as these are supposed to travel to a party and I wanted everyone to have a bite. So how many people can enjoy these is really up to you.

What you need:
1) 200 g butter
2) 1,5 dl sugar
3) 2 small spoons of vanilla sugar
4) 1 egg
5) 4 dl flour
6) 3 big spoons of cocoa powder
7) 1 small spoon of baking powder
8) 0,5 small spoons of salt
9) 100 g hazelnuts
10) 200 g white chocolate chips

In one pot mix butter with sugar and vanilla sugar. Add the egg.
In another pot mix flour with cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Mix second pot into first. Add nuts and chocolate chips.

Size your biscuits to wish and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes at 160 degrees C.
Let cool on a flat surface.


Isn't this just the loveliest present!

Oatflake and berry biscuits

If you're on a diet - don't make these biscuits. The look healthy enough - whole meal and berries, after all - but trust me, it's not not good for you. Simply because you won't be able to stop after two. Nor three.

Ingredients:

1) 250 g sugar
2) 200 g butter
3) 6 eggs
5) 500 g oat flakes
6) 200 g flour
7) 150 g dried berries (cranberries)
8) 100 g white chocolate chips

The hardest part is mixing sugar with butter, especially if you have to do it by hand. But after that is done, it couldn't be easier: add eggs, oat flakes, flour, berries and chocolate chips while mixing.
This amount will make a lot, so make sure to invite guests!
Preheat oven to 175 C and bake around 25 minutes.

Cheese and parsley bread

This fresh smelly sweetheart just came off the oven...

And to be honest with you, I wasn't ready for such a good surprise.
The recipe I used said "make yeast dough", "add parsley and blue cheese and shove in the oven". Not too helpful for a beginner. So I did what seemed to be right - mixed dry yeast with flour, added sugar and salt. Heated up watered down milk and mixed it in the flour and started kneading waiting for the dough to get off my hands. Needless to say, the sticky bastard didn't. It was absolutely everywhere, all over me and since I was alone, getting more flour or any other help was making matters worse. Eventually I added an egg. Don't know why and it didn't seem to help as well. But at least I felt I'm doing something.
So I left it alone for half an hour, beated it down and left it for another hour. I was sure I've fucked it up. And trying to "roll it open, put in parsley and blue cheese and roll it into a bread" was another nervbreaking experience that ended in me cursing all unknown gods and taking olive oil to rescue.
And somehow, 30 minutes later I took this beauty out of the oven. And it tastes delicious.

I used:
500 g white flour
1 big spoon of sugar
1 small spoon of salt
1 pack of dry yeast (pack says "for 500 g of flour")
about 300 ml milk and 200 ml water
100 g of blue cheese and unknown amount of parsley leaves
also, unplanned additions: 1 egg, a bit of olive oil

As soon as I forget how painful it was, I'll be making another one!

Scottish baps

For one who’s never been to Scotland, I make reasonably good baps (No, I don’t say it myself, I just repeat what others have). Having tried different tricks now, I’ve worked out my favourite method.

Here it is:

Mix a pack of yeast (for 500 g of flour) with sugar and some warm milk. Leave it in a warm room for 20 minutes.

Rub 50 g of butter into 450 g of flour.

Add salt.

Make a well into the centre of the flour mixture and add the yeast mixture.

Stir and add more milk, up to 150 ml (minus the part that you already used for the yeast) and about 150 ml water.

Knead until no longer sticky.

Place in an oiled bowl and cover with oiled film.

Cover with a towel and leave for an hour (until double, as all the recipes say, but I have never been able to tell when exactly that has happened).

Anyway, around when the hour is up, preheat the oven to 230 C and oil the cooking paper.

Then shape the dough into as many rolls as you want and place them close to each other on the oily paper. That way you avoid crust forming at the edges. Now take some more milk and tap it gently to the tops of the baps and then sprinkle some flour on top as well.

15-20 minutes in the oven should be sufficient. You’ll know when they’re ready.

They’re so adorably neutral in taste that they can be eaten with anything – sweet stuff, salty stuff, doesn’t matter. My friend preferred to cut them in half and put my cutlet between – simple tiny hamburger. Perfect!

PS You need:

1) yeast (a pack that says "for 500 g of flour")

2) sugar (caster is even better)

3) 150 ml warm milk (about body temperature, and careful - too warm is as bad as too cold)

4) 150 ml warm water (room temperature)

5) 50 g butter

6) 450 g flour

7) 5 ml (or one small spoon) of salt

Ham and kidney bean salad

This simple salad reminds me of summers at home and mum's birthday. I don't know why, 'cause I don't think she actually did this particular salad so often. And if she did, I'm sure she added corn. Yet, since I don't like these little yellow buttons, my version contains:

1) Red kidney beans off a can (so around 400 g),

2) Ham (around 300 g),
3) Cheese (around 200 g),
4) Apple (one big one),
5) A little bit of parsley, just because I'm in love with that green thing.

Chop and mix, no trick to it. Just don't start with the apple, it might change colour, add it last just before adding the sauce:

6) Sourcream,
7) Mayonaise.

Ready to eat!

Beetroot and mozzarella

Best food is the one that has less then ten components. But those recipes that have lest then five, I simply love! Here's one of my favourite easy-salads:

1) canned, chopped beetroot
2) ruccola
3) mozzarella

Chop, mix, eat.

Suitable to accompany many different dishes. I like it as a starter on a bit of bread and cream cheese (Philadelphia). But good also to go as a side to potatoes or rice with meat.

Cutlets

Minced meat cutlets have always been on my family's table. But this particular recipe makes them irresistible for me.

For four-five people, take:

1) 500 g minced meat (which ever you prefer)

2) 250 g cottage cheese (the more, the better)

3) 1 onion

4) 2 pieces of garlic

5) 1-2 eggs (if one isn't enough to tie the whole thing together, add another)

6) dill

7) black pepper

8) salt

9) bread crumbs

10) oil

1) chop onions and garlic

2) mix onion, garlic, mince, cottage cheese (as dry as possible), egg(s) and herbs

3) take a large spoon full in your hand, pat round, roll in bread crumbs and fry

4) fry till crust crispy and brown

Serve hot or cold, with pasta or boiled or smashed potato or vegetable, or both.

Very good also for making a hamburger!

My take on Nigella's brownie

Everybody loves Nigella Lawson's brownie. Google "nigella triple choc brownie", or youtube it, and you've got it.

Here's how I do it.

1) 320 g of butter
2) 360 g of chocolate
3) 6 eggs
4) 4 dl sugar
5) 1 spoon vanilla sugar
6) 4 dl flour
7) 1 small spoon salt
8) chocolate chips (about 2 dl)

0) Preparation: oven to 180 C and tin lined with baking paper.
1) I prefer to melt chocolate on a water bath. Just to be sure not to burn it. For that I take a big pot, fill it half with water and put it to boil and put a smaller pot in the water. Then add butter cubes in the small pot, and chocolate pieces on it (it's better in this order to avoid burning the good stuff). Let it melt, stirring every now and again to speed up the process and mix the ingredients. When water steaming, turn cooker off.
2) Whisk eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large pot.
3) Add butter-chocolate (good if a little cooled, otherwise your eggs might turn into something interesting) to whisked eggs and beat to combine.
4) Measure flour and mix salt into it.
5) Sprinkle flour through a sieve into the mixture and beat gently.
6) Add chocolate chips.
7) Scrape to the pan.
8) Bake for about 30 minutes. It's best when still gooey inside. Remember, that it keeps cooking as it cools, so it's ok to take it out when the top is crusty, but inside still dough-like. Unless you need to transport it immediately, in that case I recommend you let it be in the oven a little while longer.

Welcome

I keep running round other people's food blogs and find myself enjoying these a lot.
So many yummy ideas. So, here's mine. I'll only be posting recpies that I've tried and tested and, most imporantly, liked.

Hope you enjoy!