the red kitchen

Spiced quinces with red wine

The house is full of a delicious mulled wine smell - the first quinces of the season are slowly poaching in my oven. It's freezing cold outside and there is nothing I like better on a quiet afternoon than to have something bubbling away in the oven. I bought a few quinces when I was at the shops and thought that our house needed a homely smell today, to ease us into the coming weekend. So I peeled and chopped the quinces and slipped them into a red winey, cinnamony, vanilla-y concoction, popped the whole pot into the oven and left it there all afternoon. I'm not really sure what to do with them, but I'm sure I will think of something. Actually, I'd be happy just to cook them for the delicious house-warming smell.

Before:

 

After:

This cold weather makes me crave comfort food, so I'm thinking to eat the quinces with a creamy, lemon and vanilla-infused rice pudding. The mere thought of that makes me very happy!

Apple Pie of Death, Part II

 

 

 

A couple of days ago I tried to recreate The Apple Pie of Death that Manuela and I ate one ill-fated morning in Amsterdam. Unbeknownst to us, we had stumbled upon perhaps the best apple pie in Amsterdam. Ok, that morning it did us no favours, but I did insist even in my heightened state of discomfort that on any other day that piece of apple pie would totally rock - it had just the right combination of chunky, softened (but not dissolved) buttery cinnamony apple pieces, encased in really delicious short pastry (so short it was almost like a crumble base). And warm! And fresh! That warm apple pie smell was wafting out the door and into the market outside - no wonder we were drawn in.

So I did a little research and found a few recipes, one of which I followed loosely (thanks Lynn from The Amsterdam Files!). I had a little trouble with the self-raising flour issue - Switzerland doesn't have it, so I just added one tsp of baking powder and (bad move) 1/2 tsp of salt per cup of flour - that was too much salt.

Verdict: it all turned out perfectly, except the pastry was strangely salty - doh! However, it actually wasn't too bad, the combination of salty and sweet :) At least, that's what Bruno said...

I think next time I would reduce the cooking time as my pie was a bit drier than Cafe Winkel's, and I remember what I loved about Winkel's pie was that it was beautifully tender and short. Oh, and reduce the salt in the pastry. Otherwise - love it. Also looks quite impressive - there weren't any complaints from the neighbourhood crew when I served it for dessert on Wednesday (they probably all dashed off home for long tall drinks of water, though).

Update: today I baked the last of the gigantic amount of pastry (the recipe made a huge amount) for a strawberry tart. Reduced the cooking time and didn't let it cool completely uncovered (so it didn't dry out too much). Perfect! Made up for the awful sushi I made...:)

PS. On the topic of Amsterdam - if you are looking for a nice place to eat in Amsterdam, try Toscanini's. It was delicious (thanks, Andy!).

World's best carrot cake

More carrot cake, originally uploaded by kitschenette.

I've made this cake quite a lot recently. It's delicious, simple and the 3 cups of carrots it requires makes it easy to fool oneself that it is also really healthy. Actually, it is pretty healthy, except for the cream cheese frosting (and I use the word 'frosting' here even though I usually avoid American English, because 'icing' doesn't seem to fully capture the thick creaminess of it, so fantastically cream-cheesy!) trowelled on top.

Underneath the cake you can see a sheet of baking paper, cut into 4 and then placed underneath the cake while icing. Once you have finished icing, or indeed, frosting, the cake, you can then pull each individual piece away, and voila! a clean serving plate or whatever underneath. This particular cake was on it's way to my dear friend Monika's birthday party. I also made it for the lovely Gabriella's birthday recently, and she asked me for the recipe, so here it is, especially for her.

Carrot cake, taken from my trusty Edmonds cookbook

3 eggs

1/2 cup light vegetable oil

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

3 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

grating of fresh nutmeg

3 cups of grated carrots

Optional: 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (I don't put in walnuts cos I don't like 'em)

1 tsp orange zest

1 apple, finely diced

Icing (I'm a bit vague about this, sorry)

A tub of cream cheese - we have a nice yoghurt one here that I use. Sometimes if I don't have enough cream cheese I add some marscapone and/or yoghurt, but watch the consistency as it can't get too runny.

icing sugar

a little fresh orange juice

espresso spoonful of vanilla paste

How

- Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

- Grease and line a 23cm tin (sometimes I use a square one, other times a round one. It's all good!)

- Beat the eggs together until really thick - this will take 5 minutes or so, believe me!

- Stir in the oil, then sift flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg into the egg mixture and fold in to combine. 

- Fold in carrots, walnuts if using, orange zest and apple until nicely combined. If the mixture looks a little dry, you can add a little fresh orange juice (from the orange you zested).

- Bake the cake for at least 40 mins, more like 50 or 55 mins most likely. Check the cake at 40 mins and keep an eye on it thereafter. The cake should be a beautiful brown and have an almost nutty smell from the carrots.

- Leave in the tin for 10 mins or so before turning out on a wire rack to cool.

- ice the cake when cool. Beat the cream cheese together with a few tablespoons of sifted icing sugar. add a very few drops of orange juice and the vanilla paste. Make sure it doesn't get too runny! It should be wonderfully thick, so add liquid carefully. Don't forget to taste test - surely no hardship. It should be thick, creamy with the taste of cream cheese, nto too sweet and with a touch of orange from the orange juice. Remember that the icing sugar doesn't make it thicker, it dissolves so actually makes the icing runnier. Lather on the icing and swirl about nicely with a palette knife (stand the knife in hot water for a few minutes to make for really smooth smoothing - I love this bit!!!). Take a few curls of orange zest and throw them on top so that they sit in an attractively-mussed heap.   

- Tip: This cake tastes great the day after it is made, as the flavours develop beautifully and the textures comes together into a gorgeous springiness. Once it is cool, wrap it up in foil overnight and ice the next day.

- Just try eating only one piece....

Oaty apple cake

I've been baking a bit more lately, I don't know why, maybe the weather, maybe the fact that we are back from holidays and I am enjoying being back in my own (messy) kitchen. When I'm feeling at home, I bake.

The week before the holidays Lola and I were more or less home alone for a week while Max was skiing with Bruno's parents and Bruno was working. We had a very relaxing week, bonding, doing girly things and making pikelets with nutella for breakfast every morning (I blame Ms. Fabelhaft for Lola's nutella habit, entirely!). The pikelet recipe came from my trusty Edmonds cookbook (btw, check out this link for a look at an early version of the good ol' Edmonds, and just above it on the page was a recipe an Oaty Apple cake. Hmm, looks good, I thought to myself. I mentally bookmarked it for future reference, and went on holiday.

One week and many muscle aches later (what possessed me to try skiing again I don't know, why don't I just give up already), we were home and I was in a baking mood. The Oaty Apple cake! A bit of cakey indulgence, but still with enough healthy ingredients to pass muster as a pseudo health food - oats, grated apple, raisins etc. I bumped up the health quotient by using fresh orange juice instead of water, and fresh ginger instead of mixed spice.

I made it for Sunday afternoon tea with Bruno's parents, and it was delicious. A bit crumbly, esp. when warm from the oven (the flavour and texture improves after a day, if you can wait), but really good, moist and fruity, a bit like a muffin.

I made it again a few days later because we scoffed the first cake down so quickly that I needed to try it again to be really sure of its excellentness. I took some to my friend Gabriella and her visiting Italian parents, and she also loved it. Here, at her request, then, is the recipe:

Sugar fingers

Sugar fingers, originally uploaded by kitschenette.

I made shortbread from the River Cottage Family Cookbook for afternoon tea and Max couldn't resist helping himself to some sugary crumbs before the first slice was eaten (note green playdough on his fingers, remnants of the T-Rex necklaces he made earlier in the afternoon).

The shortbread was good, despite having to substitute cornflour for rice flour in the recipe, and very simple, a good one to make with kids as it doesn't require much mixing or other technique, merely rubbing the dry ingredients with the butter and pressing into a cake tin (don't even have to bother greasing or lining the tin).

And, it looked super lovely, sweetly pale and sprinkled with vanilla sugar from my big glass bottle of lumpy, vanilla-soaked sugar.

Bulging bellies

My kids are such gobbly guts. Tonight they stuffed themselves so full at dinner time that later, when they had their bath together, they exclaimed and squealed over their bulging bellies. Even I was surprised.

I do love seeing my kids eat well. I feel a kind of motherly pride in nourishing my progeny. Tonight I roasted some chicken pieces in olive oil and lemon juice until crispy and crackling outside, tender and moist inside, then made a gravy* with the pan juicies. A creamy garlic mash and some plain steamed broccoli and raw carrots (my kids' favourite veges, on the table practically every night, boring but good) and we were ready, set, go! Very good. If only I had a glass of red wine to go with it. However, after Tuesday night, when I imbibed an unprecendented 2 glasses of red wine and suffered a subsequent hangover (pathetic! I'm such a cheap drunk) the entire next day, I am going easy on the booze.

Max and Lolly love a little lake of gravy in their mound of mash. The back of a spoon is used to make a deep hollow in the mash, and a spoonful of gravy is carefully deposited. Woe betide the careless gravy-giver who accidentally releases the flood!

Berry good

For dessert I had promised Max I would make some of his favourite berry sauce to eat with fresh fruit, but we were so stuffed full that I didn't bother. Max loves this sauce with a passion. When he spies a box of frozen berries (berries aren't readily available at the moment, it's the middle of winter, remember? frozen is good) his face lights up like a Christmas tree. Today at lunchtime he spotted the box of frozen raspberries in the fridge. He was so excited he took the box out of the fridge and put it next to him on the table while he ate, gazing lovingly at it the whole while.

I have no problems letting him eat berry sauce til it comes out of his ears, because really, it's hardly even a sauce. Really it's just sieved berries. I don't add sugar or anything else except maybe some fresh orange juice and zest when I making blackberry sauce. In fact, he prefers it sour. The one time I added some icing sugar he turned his nose up at it and said it tasted 'funny'. It's an excellent way to get kids to eat a whole lot of extremely nutritious berries. Last Sunday we had a friend over for dinner and I made raspberry sauce as well as custard to pour over fresh fruit. The sauce boats were licked clean. 1 kg of raspberries eaten in about 10 minutes.

Once you have a jar of berry sauce in your fridge it's amazing how useful it can be. The dessert possibilities are obvious - with icecream, with chocolate cake and ice-cream, with custard or panna cotta or creme brulee, maybe even a swirl in a meringue, trifle, fool etc etc. The fresh acidic sourness and slight sweetness of berries are the perfect foil for creams and custards.

Also consider a swirl in breakfast yoghurt and muesli, in smoothies or muffins, or simply with a ripe juicy mango and a sliced banana. Endless possibilities.

Tomorrow I will make Max a happy boy. We'll make raspberry sauce together and  make some yummy little thing for dessert.  More bulging bellies!

* isn't 'gravy' the most awful word? Conjures up an image of a congealed, thick, lumpy brown mess to me. Luckily our gravy tonight was none of the above. Except brown.

The fruit of Love

Stephanie Alexander tells me that in ancient times quinces were revered as sacred symbols of love, happiness and fertility. There is something kind of miraculous about quinces, in the way that their perfume subtly fragrances the kitchen, and the way their hard, pale rawness transforms into crimson softness after a few hours of judicious cooking.

They've long been a favourite of mine, ever since I discovered them back in Sydney. Then, it was difficult to find a reliable source, but here in Switzerland they are reasonably easy to find.

Bruno's parents recently gave me 10!!! kilos of quinces, all from a local farm. Luckily they have a long shelf-life, because I've been so busy that I haven't had time to make jam and jelly from them - they are still sitting out in our open freezer (the balcony, now it's so cold). I did poach a huge batch,  from which I made a fab quince and almond cake (in the manner of Anneka Manning's apple and almond cake), much better than the quince and nut cake (from Stephanie Alexander) I made for Max's birthday, which was a dry and pretty dismal affair.

I have to admit I don't do much more with quinces other than poach them (and then use them in various cakes and tarts) and make jam or jelly from them. They do amount to a fair bit of work, just for those simple recipes. I haven't tried my hand at quince paste, nor am I tempted, for some reason (I think it was Stephanie Alexander's comment about how she badly sprained her arm while making a batch that put me off). I'm happy as a clam with my poached quinces, so I haven't made much of an effort to seek out new quince recipes (lazy, I am). I might try to put some in my christmas cake this year, though (if I ever get around to making it).

Here are my two favourite quince recipes. If quinces are in season in your part of the woods, take advantage now, because the season is so sadly short:

On birthdays, a surfeit of cakes, and tight pants

This week finds me becoming increasingly well-acquainted with my oven, and my trusty Edmonds cupcake recipe.

In the last two days I've two double batches of cupcakes - one lot for Max's birthday celebration at kindy (yes, he continues to celebrate his birthday, a full two weeks after the event), and the other for Lola's birthday (which is today, happy birthday sweet little Lolly!)at the Chinderhuus. Max requested chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing and red flowers, and Lola got vanilla cupcakes with pink vanilla icing and white flowers (no photos, as I was too busy trying to fend the kiddies off the cupcakes, but trust me, they were delicious, even though I forgot to put the proper quantity of baking powder in one lot).

Cupcakes are a Good Thing when it comes to these kindergarten-type birthday thingies, because they a) look cute; b) do away with the need for plates; and c) do away with the hassle and mess of cutting and distributing. But, when it comes time for the big birthday bash, I think a proper whole cake is still nice.

Last night I also made a quince and almond cake, cos few people have asked me for the recipe and I didn't want to post the recipe without some pics. This weekend we are having a joint birthday party for Max and Lolly, so guess what I'll be up all night making! Another cake!!! Still haven't decided if I will attempt a shape (last year at Mum and Dad's in Oz we had a dinosaur park and a pink pigcat - it was meant to be a pink pussycat but was decidedly pig-like) or just do a big, round confection with sprinkles, candles, lurid piped icing, ringing bells and whistles, and maybe some fireworks for good measure.

Now, I love a good butter cake but taking this weeks' cake bonanza and last weeks' chocolate chipper fest (I made up a quadruple batch) into consideration, I think I have overdone it, and have the tightening pants to prove it. Oh well, there's my winter layer of blubber.

Peachy

Yesterday Bruno's parents arrived back from 2 weeks in Tuscany, loaded down with goodies for us - 6 litres of hand-picked organic extra virgin olive oil (*swoon* you should see its grassy green-ness), waldhonig (forest honey), coffee, biscotti, and a tray of beautiful peaches. Lovely lovely.

Tonight we're having some friends over for fondue (the cold weather made us do it...). I wanted a light dessert that wasn't going to sit heavily in our stomachs after all that cheese, so I poached the peaches in a vanilla sugar syrup, with a couple of peels of lemon rind for zing. The end result is gorgeous.

However, I would STRONGLY advise anyone considering doing the same to make sure their peaches are absolutely ripe, as it makes it much easier to peel away their skins. Even slightly unripe sections of peach are a pain in the arse to peel away, and make for unsightly dents and gouges in those blushing smooth cheeks.

I plan to eat them at room temperature, with maybe some rich thick double cream from Lac de gruyere  for good measure.

Mmmmm!

A scorcher

I made two of these cakes on the weekend - one for Donat's birthday (happy birthday, Donat!), and the other for Bruno's parents to sell at the local jazz festival (every year they have a fundraiser stall selling home-made cakes).

The cake is an easy-peasy flourless choccy cake (hazelnuts rather than almonds), slathered in ganache (chocolate and cream melted and then beaten together) and adorned with scorched hazelnuts.

I tried to make this cake a few weeks ago but buggered up the ganache. This time all went fine thanks to the old 'bowl-over-a-pot-of-simmering-water' trick.

It was pretty delicious! Very rich, though, so only small slices needed for full chocolate overload.