Living the Life

People who know me or follow my blog know that I have a big interest in the food from the Southern part of the US. I love to travel around there and I love the food! I've spend there quite a lot of time but never ran into Red Velvet cake which is a Southern classic. The first time I heard of it was from our friend in Chicago, she made it and told me about it, I was intrigued, cake colored red with food die... and it has cocoa, very weird. I wanted to bake it but as it is with some recipes it just didn't happen. Over the last few months I ran into various blog postings were people made Red Velvet cake or cupcakes. I bookmarked some recipes, Joy the Baker has a nice one , Paula Deen also has one but I used a recipe I found on Elise's blog Simply Recipes . I choose this one because it looks very authentic, it has vinegar which makes the red even redder and it has butter which I like better than the vegetable oil Paula Deen's recipe calls for. So yesterday I made and taste...

Today, for the first time in a week or two, the weather was nice enough to light my weber kettle grill. There was a little wind, but that has never stopped me from grilling something. Every once in a while we eat fish, not as often as we should, but we do our best. During summer my supermarket sells cedar planks to use on the barbecue and I always stock up on them. Barbecue is not as hot here in Europe as it is in the US so when ever I see something like that, I get a lot of them because you never know when it's sold out and if they will restock them. The cedar plank gives a nice flavor to the fish, protects it from the heat and you'll have no fish sticking to the grate. My recipe for cedar plank salmon is Mediterranean inspired but a cajun style would work fine too. Ingredients: salmon fillet (enough for 4 people) 1/2 cup olive oil 1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice 1 teaspoon oregano 1 teaspoon thyme 1 food grade cedar plank Preparation: Soak the cedar plank for at least 2 hour...

Yesterday when I was making tiramisu , my brother walked in with a bunch of banana's that were a little too ripe for regular consumption. He brings them so I can make the roasted banana ice cream that he loves and with that I can make a mean banana milkshake that he loves even better! But since I was already working on a dessert I decided to make Banana Muffins, so I jumped on the net and ran into this recipe , later I realized that I made 2 recipes on the same day from Michelle's Sugar & Spice blog! I'm not a shareholder, it's all a coincidence :-) I ended up with 20 muffins, I have only one muffin tin (hey, muffins aren't that big on this side of the pond) so I had to gamble on how much to put in each liner. The smell while they are in the oven is fantastic, and they turned out nice and moist, great banana flavor! Next time I'll add some walnut or pecans to a few for a nice banana-nut muffin. Banana Muffins Adapted from: Giada De Laurentiis Ingredients: 3 ...

I made chocolate mousse last week and flan for Tuesdays with Dorie, so why not go on with making famous desserts? I had this one in my "recipes I want to make" folder for a few weeks, tiramisu is a dessert we all love here, but I've never made before myself. I found this recipe on Michelle's Sugar and Spice blog and was intrigued right away, did it mention Kahlua??? Yes, it did! We love Kahlua a lot here! On our last trip to Mexico we brought back Kahlua Especial, which is a little less sweet and has a little higher alcohol percentage. Beautiful to use in a great dessert like this. It was very simple to put this recipe together, it's not so simple to stop eating from the mascarpone mixture while constructing it :-) Not that it would matter since it can feed an army!! Next time I really have to scale it down to maybe one third, that would still be very ok for 5 or 6 people. Everybody raved about it! The smallest of the trusty tasters wanted seconds, no idea how...

I was very pleased with Steph's (of A Whisk and a Spoon ) choice for this weeks Tuesdays With Dorie . I love flan and made it before . This one went pretty smooth too. I only used the wrong knife to cut the flan loose from the mold which resulted in "debris" on top of my flan. The looks didn't interfere with the taste! Which was fabulous, just like the ones I ate in Spain and Mexico. I got mixed reviews from my trusty tasters, but that wasn't the flan's fault. One thought it was eggy, but it was the first time he ate it and trust me, it tasted like it should. Others didn't care to much for it, but they had the same reaction with my other flans :-) Ingredients: For the Caramel 1/3 cup sugar 3 tbsp water squirt of fresh lemon juice For the Flan 1-1/2 cups heavy cream 1-1/4 cups whole milk 3 large eggs 2 large egg yolks 1/2 cup sugar 1 tsp pure vanilla extract Preparation: Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line ...

Second Easter day, yes, here in Holland we celebrate this holiday for two days, so I decided to do an American style breakfast for the family. I love the breakfasts they serve in the South so I made sausage patties, bacon, scrambled eggs and biscuits. I also tried to make gravy, to go with the biscuits, but failed completely on that one :-). Since most of the things I made from Dorie Greenspan's, Baking, from my house to yours turned out very well I used her Basic Biscuit recipe, in the book she gives little pointers on variations, for this one it's Buttermilk Biscuits which you get by replacing the milk by buttermilk and the addition of 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. I used my food processor for this recipe, since I didn't want to overwork the dough and a food processor does a great job here. The biscuits turned out fabulous, high and flaky, just like the ones we got in those little mom 'n' pop places in the South! Basic Biscuits Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour...

Parfaits are a kind of mousse ice cream that don't need churning, so you can make it without an ice cream maker. This one is made with advocaat , a liqueur made with eggs, sugar and brandy. Advocaat here in Holland is very thick compared to the version sold in a lot of other countries, some brands you can get hardly out of the bottle. Advocaat has a kind of old fashioned image here, as it's drank, or rather eaten with a spoon, by old ladies, served in a wine glass, topped with whipped cream. My taste team liked the parfait a lot, it's light, not to heavy on the alcohol and very smooth, great dessert for the first day of Easter! Ingredients: 250 ml whipping cream 50 grams caster sugar 1 sachet vanilla sugar 1 egg yolk 100 ml advocaat Preparation: Beat the whipping cream with the vanilla sugar to stiff peaks In an other bowl beat the egg yolk, caster sugar and advocaat until frothy. Fold the whipping cream through the advocaat mixture, don't overwork it, you want to leav...

Jerry from Cooking, by the Seat of my Pants is giving away an Ipod Touch! You don't have to do much to enter in the draw! Just mention this action on your blog and let him know you did it! You can read all about this action on his blog ofcourse, or better don't, so I have a better chance of winning the most beautiful MP3/video player on earth :-)

The newspaper said that it will be the coldest Easter in 40 years and when I looked out of my window this afternoon, I saw snow! So no spring dish this time, but hot chocolate and not your regular one! Oh no, one made from scratch! Last year on our trip through Mexico I picked up a bag of cocoa beans in Oaxaca, so I could show my niece what chocolate is made of. But what do you with it after that? So they ended up in the back of the pantry. Then last week I ran across a post on the Last Crumb blog where Rose made a chocolate bar from cocoa beans. I knew right away what to do with my cocoa beans! Make hot chocolate with them just like I had at the 20 de Noviembre market in Oaxaca. At that market you can buy bars of chocolate that are used to make the famous Mexican hot chocolate, but there are also places where you can have them grind up your own favorite blend of cocoa, canela (real cinnamon), sugar etc. A lot of the vendors inside the market sell their own blend, and it doesn't ...

I've been making this chili for a few years now, it started out as Jamie Oliver's chili con carne recipe from the Naked Chef series but I've changed some ingredients so it's more to our liking. I also added Dutch processed cocoa powder, which might seem odd but it adds a nice deep flavor to the dish! I prepare this dish in a large Le Creuset Dutch oven. Ingredients: 2 medium onions 2 cloves of garlic olive oil 2 heaped teaspoons chili powder 1 heaped teaspoon ground cumin sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 pound (455 grams) lean minced beef 7 ounces (200 grams) sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil 2 chipotles in adobo sauce 2 (14 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes (400 grams) 1 stick cinnamon 2 teaspoons Dutch processed cocoa powder 2 (14 ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained (400 grams) Serve with: corn chips grated cheese sour cream Preparation: Chop up the onions and garlic in the food processor and fry in some olive oil until softened. Add the chili powder and cumin an...

This weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie , the group has grown to over 80 bakers, was picked by Peabody of Culinairy Concoctions by Peabody , thanks!! Brioche is something I always wanted to try and this recipe had some nice additions, like flambeing and making pastry cream. The first day I made the dough and I can tell you without a stand mixer that is quite a task! I have a lot of respect for all my fellow bakers who did this one without a Kitchen Aid! So with a lot of elbow grease and some work done by my hand mixer the dough came together nicely. After that I tackled the raisins, well the flambeing wasn't the hard part, no that was which dark rum to use from our liquor cabinet, Captain Morgan Spiced Dark Rum, Bacardi Spice or Bacardi 8 after a long thought I decided on the Captain Morgan. The flambeing went smooth and the alcohol in the rum burned of in beautiful red flames. The pastry cream came together very easy too and I had to restrain myself from eating too much of it! ...

I love desserts and I have a couple of favourites, creme brulee, flan and chocolate mousse. When I'm in a restaurant it's always hard to make a choice if two or more are on the menu. I've made both creme brulee and flan before, but never chocolate mousse which is probably the easiest of the three. Recently I bought a 2.5 kilo bag (over 5 lbs.) of good quality dark chocolate chips at the wholesale so I have plenty of chocolate to experiment with. That's why I decided to try a chocolate mousse recipe by Gretchen Siegchrist that I found on about.com a while ago. This recipe produced a very nice mousse, not too light and fluffy. Might be nice with some grated orange peel and a dash of cointreau also, but that will be another time! Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/8 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons sugar Preparation: Pour 1/3 cup of cream into a small saucepan. Heat the cream over high heat until it j...

If you read blogs, you must have run into posts about people being tagged and telling something about themself. Until now nobody tagged me! That changed yesterday I got tagged by Mari from Mevrouw Cupcake , thanks!!! So here is my Me, Me: What were you cooking five years ago? I was trying my mom's recipes, she was was very sick and I wanted to learn her recipes so they can live on. What were you cooking 10 years ago? I didn't cook that much 10 years ago, what I made was most of the time Asian, I bought a rice cooker when I was 17, still have the same one :-) When I was in high school I wanted to become a chef, unfortunately my French (which I needed to get into that school) wasn't good enough so I became something totally different but the love for food has always been there. Five snacks you enjoy: 1. Chocolate 2. A nice piece of Dutch cheese 3. Stroopwafels 4. Peanutbutter, a nice big spoonful from the jar :-) 5. Licorice Five recipes you know by heart: 1. My mom's mac...

My sister in law asked when I was making my chocolate chip cookies again. She really likes them and she's not the only one. I love the texture of these cookies, a little crunchy on the outside and nice and chewy in the middle. They are great with a nice glass of milk or a cup of coffee. Ingredients: 1 2/3 cups of flour 3/4 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup butter, roomtemperature 3/4 cup packed brown sugar 1/3 cup white sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups milk chocolate chips Preparation: Preheat your oven to 350 F. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cream the butter with the brown and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Gradually mix in the sifted ingredients. Sir in the chocolate chips. Drop heaped tablespoons of batter on a sheet pan lined with parchment or a silicon baking mat, leave space around the heaps, they will flatten and get way bigger! Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, Let the cookies cool for 5 minu...

This is a Dutch classic, poffertjes are mini pancakes baked in a special "poffertjespan". The first recipe on how to make these little fellows was published in 1746. For us this is not breakfast food, we eat them for lunch or dinner, that's what we also do with pancakes by the way! Poffertjespan Ingredients: 125 grams flour 125 grams buckwheat flour* 300 ml lukewarm milk 1 egg 10 grams yeast pinch of salt 75 grams melted butter confectioners sugar butter Preparation: Mix and sift the flour and buckwheat flour into a mixing bowl. Dissolve the yeast in a some milk. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour the milk with the yeast in it. Put the salt at the outside of the flour. Slowly stir the flour into the milk and slowly add the rest of the milk. When well combined add the lightly beaten egg. Cover the bowl with cling film and let the batter rest at a warm place for 45 minutes. Heat up the poffertjespan and brush a little of the melted butter in each hole, ...

This version of Kung Pao Chicken is pretty close to the ones I ate in China with one difference, it's a lot spicier!! But don't let that put you off, you can cut on the chiles, take a less hot variety or leave out the sambal. The chiles I used this time are ones I grew and dried myself, the seeds I took from a bag of dried chiles that I bought in Long Sheng, China. They are scipy but not too much. Another kind I use a lot are dried bird eye chiles, these tiny peppers pack a huge punch, be very careful with them!! When I use them I use only 5 or 6 of them. Sambal is a condiment from Indonesia and a nice selection is available in every supermarket here in the Netherlands, that's because Indonesia was one of our colonies. I use sambal brandal, a spicy variety, but any other will do, I add it for extra heat and to give the dish a more complex flavor. I always buy my ginger at a Chinese supermarket we have here, I buy a lot and freeze it. When I need it, I just take a piece fr...

My second Tuesdays With Dorie bake, this week's recipe was choosen by Natalie of Burned Bits and can be found on page 310-311 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My House To Yours . When I read the recipe I thought that it would be pretty simple to make this one, well it wasn't! I had a lot of trouble with the dough, it was really sticky! When I finally rolled it to the right dimensions it wouldn't let go of the parchment, resulting in a very messy top layer. The bottom layer I could patch with bits and pieces but that didn't work for the top layer because of all the apple bits underneath. When it came out of the oven after 65 minutes it didn't look ok, it was very dark around the sides, almost burned. In the middle it was ok. My trusty tasters and I didn't care for it. One reason could be that I used goudreinetten as the apple, a very old Dutch apple breed that we use here for apple pie, applesauce etc. This a a very tart apple and I think the filling could...

Looks like this is "Death by Chocolate" week here :-) Last Friday I made the snickery squares, this time it's Sacherbrownies, both heavy on the chocolate and very rich, but oh, so delicious! I found this recipe while surfing the net on Jessica's Brownie or Die weblog. The moment I saw it I knew it could be a winner. I love Sacher-Torte, I've been to Sacher a couple of times for their speciality and I knew this would be the first thing to make when I got my 8x8 inch square brownie pan, which by the way isn't so easy on this side of the pond. This was the first time ever I made brownies and they came together like a breeze! My team of trusty tasters all liked it a lot! But all agreed, a little goes a long way! I added half a jar of apricot preserves, maybe if I add more it will cut a bit more through the richness of the chocolate. Ingredients: Brownies: 2 oz. (56 grams) unsweetened chocolate, chopped 4 tbs. (57 grams) unsalted butter 1 c. sugar 1 tsp. vanilla...

This is my first Tuesday with Dorie bake. This weeks recipe, Snickery Squares, was choosen by Erin of Dinner & Dessert and can be found on page 120-122 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My House To Yours. Ingredients For the Crust 1 cup all-purpose flour ¼ cup sugar 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar ¼ teaspoon salt 1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten For the filling 1/3 cup sugar 3 tablespoons water 1 ½ cups salted peanuts about 1 ½ cups store-bought dulce de leche (*) For the topping 7 ounces (200 grams) bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped ½ stick (57 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temperature Preparation Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet. To make the crust: Toss the flour, sugar, confectioners’ sugar and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Toss in the piece...

I had some chicken that was left over from the barbecue and decided to make quesadillas with it. A quesadilla is a toasted tortilla with melted cheese inside, but you can put a lot more inside, like chicken, jalapeno peppers, zucchini flowers, chorizo, mushrooms etc. I went through the fridge and found besides the cheese and chicken, pickled jalapeno's and taco salsa. Ingredients flour tortillas grated cheese vegetable oil Additional chicken (cooked and shredded) jalapeno slices (fresh or pickled) mushrooms zucchini flowers etc. Preperation On medium high heat, heat up a cast iron skillet and put a tablepoon of vegetable oil in it. When the oil is hot put your flour tortilla in the pan, flip it over every 10 seconds until it starts to puff up. Add your grated cheese, I used a medium sharp Dutch cheese, and the rest of your ingredients. Cover the skillet with a lid and turn the heat to low. There should be plenty of residual heat to melt your cheese and to brown your tortilla. Give ...