Thank You Cake

A friend of my mother's gave me nine tomato plants for my garden. Every year, since I started gardening, he has given me plants. The first year there were two, last year five and this year nine! He never wants anything in return, and it's always hard to think of something to thank him. This year I decided to bake him a cake. Well, it's really a banana nut bread recipe, but I left out the nuts. And this recipe turns out more like a cake than a bread, so I renamed it Thank You Cake. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com but I changed it a little.

Nicolien's Thank You Cake
100 g white sugar
100 g brown sugar
100 g butter
1-1/2 eggs (I use one big egg and 1 one little egg)
170 g mashed bananas (about two little bananas)
100 g cake flour
100 g wheat flour
150 ml buttermilk
3 g baking soda
3 g baking powder
3 ml vanilla extract
30 g chopped walnuts (this time I used chocolate chips instead of nuts)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking powder, and soda. Stir in chocolate chips or nuts if desired. Pour batter into a greased 9x5 inch pan.
3. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

This makes a really moist, crumbly cake. I've baked it several times and everybody who has tried it, loved it. Of course, people over here don't know banana nut bread so they have nothing to compare it to..

Easy pasta sauce

Every year I have a vegetable garden with all kinds of veggies and fruits. This year, however, my vegetable garden is non-existent, because that's where all the old bricks and roof tiles have been thrown. It's literally a junk yard!
People know that I like to grow vegetables, however, and sometimes they give me plants. I can't throw away a plant so when I received two tomato plants and a zucchini plant, I went ahead and planted them behind the trailer.
When we came back from our two-week vacation, three zucchinis and a bunch of tomatoes were ripe. It's hard to keep them well in the trailer, because it gets pretty hot in here. On a sunny day 32 C (90F) is not uncommon. That's why I decided to freeze them to have easy pasta sauce in the freezer.

Inspired by the Pioneer Woman, here's the cast of characters:

Olive oil, three bell peppers, three onions, three cloves of garlic, three zucchinis and a bunch of tomatoes. There's also wheat macaroni in the picture but I didn't need that until later, when I actually converted the veggies into pasta sauce.

First, I cut the onions and garlic in little pieces, and started sautéeing them in the olive oil. Because I'm not the Pioneer Woman, I don't have a picture of that.

When the onions were almost transparent, I added the cut up bell peppers. I like to use three different colors, because it makes my dish look happy.

After they were softened a little, I added the zucchini pieces.

The tomatoes were next. After I had added them, I turned the fire down and let everything simmer for a while, stirring it occasionally. After about ten minutes, everything was nice and softened and there was a little layer of juice in the pot. I then grabbed my handmixer and blended everything. Not so smoothly that it looked like baby food, but smooth enough so it was a sauce with still something to chew.

Depending on the zucchini:tomato ratio this sauce usually turns out anywhere between a green -orange - red color. Two kgs of vegetables made four 2-person servings. We ate one and froze three.
I added some ground beef and italian spices, and voila! Easy pasta!

Fiery Chicken

This week is Easter break and I'm a week off. So today I decided to cook a really nice dinner, because I love doing that. I still had a rooster in the freezer so I took that out and fixed it. But the minute my husband got home from work and I started to put everything on the table, he was paged by the fire department. That's why I ate by myself... But the dinner was good enough to share it with you. I thought it was about time for another recipe!

Nic's roast rooster with vegetables

You will need:

- 1 whole chicken
- 1 stem of leek, chopped
- stalk of celery, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 onion, diced
- about 10 cherry tomatoes, halved (a few big tomatoes in chunks are ok too)

- 1 big carrot, diced
- 3 potatoes, peeled and diced
- rosemary
- paprika
- salt and pepper
- about a glass of red wine
- the same amount of bouillon (chicken or herb)
- margarine and olive oil

Dry the chicken and season generously with rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper. Melt the margarine and olive oil and heat in a large skillet. Brown the chicken on all sides (this may take a while). When the chicken looks crispy and brown, take it out of the skillet. In the hot grease, brown the onion, garlic, carrot and potatoes. Stir for a little bit, then add the celery and tomatoes. Pour in the wine and bouillon and stir gently. Put the chicken on top of the vegetables and cover the skillet. Let simmer for a good long while (I think it may have taken me two hours), turning the chicken every once in a while. When the meat is so tender it starts to fall off the bones, you can be sure that it is done.

I served this with homemade biscuits. It tasted really good!

Biscuits

Yes, it's a recipe again.
No, I didn't come up with it myself.

After finding my own perfect (well, close enough) chicken pot pie recipe, I found the best biscuit recipe to match it. I've tried sooo many biscuits and they never turn out the way I remember them from the United States. But these were pretty close....
For all you non-Americans: biscuits are little bread rolls that are very fluffy and flaky (if you bake them right). They make a great side dish to any oven casserole dish you can think of, and soups as well.

On Allrecipes you can find basically any recipe you want. And, the coolest thing of all: you can have it in Metric or US measurements. No more converting, yeah!!!
OK, big time copy/paste action following (of course in Metric measurements, I am still European):

INGREDIENTS
250 g all-purpose flour
15 g baking powder
6 g salt
10 g white sugar
70 g shortening
235 ml milk

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in milk until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl.

Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead 15 to 20 times. Pat or roll dough out to 1 inch thick. Cut biscuits with a large cutter or juice glass dipped in flour. Repeat until all dough is used. Brush off the excess flour, and place biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake for 13 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges begin to brown.

Egg salad

After my last -pretty heavy- post (thanks for your comments!) it's time for something a little lighter. I thought a recipe would be in place, since M had his birthday on Wednesday and we're having a party for him tonight. I celebrated my birthday with a recipe too.
This is one of the snacks I'll be serving.

M's birthday egg salad
You will need:
- 5 hard boiled eggs
- a minced onion
- pepper, salt, curry powder
- a little ketchup (about a teaspoon)
- mayonaise
- a tablespoon of yogurt
- a tablespoon of sweet soy sauce (ketjap manis)

Boy, this recipe is easy this time. Cut eggs up and throw together with the onion. Add everything else to taste. Easy and great!

Foo Yong Hai again

One of the results of having four chickens, is that I have three eggs a day. I assume the ladies take turns in taking a day off and that's fine by me. They're small eggs, but, nevetheless, very edable. We eat lots of quiches, fried eggs and omelettes now (which reminds me that I should start giving eggs away, if I don't want our cholestorol levels to run through the roof). In my quest for the ultimate foo yong hai recipe, I had already decided that Conimex Foo Yong Hai from the box isn't anywhere close to what I have in mind. That's why I did a little searching on the internet.

I checked out my favorite supermarket's web site. It's in Dutch, sorry. Part of their site is a recipe search. You can search all the recipes that they have posted in their monthly magazine over the past ten years or so, but you can also make your own personal recipe book, and browse through other people's recipe books. In Suzanne Heijligers' personal recipe book I found this recipe for Foo Yong Hai. I tried it and it was very close to my friend Sheila's recipe. I'll keep searching though, because I'm not satisfied yet. I know I used the wrong ingredients (I didn't have the vegetables Sheila usually uses so I substituted them) so I'll have to try again. This is getting exciting! I've never really tried to exactly copy a dish I've eaten somewhere else before. Usually I just ask for recipes or make something that kind of seems like it but isn't exactly.

Anyway, here's what I fixed today. We had strawberry cobbler for desert, and that tasted good too!
Suzanne Heijliger's Foo Yong Hai
- 4 eggs
- about 100 gr. of chopped leek, carrot, onion
- 250 ml (a little over a cup) tomato ketchup
- little bit of vinegar
- tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp sweet soy sauce (ketjap manis)
- 1 clove of garlic, pressed

Whip eggs, mix with chopped vegetables. Add pepper and salt to taste. Melt a little butter (I used vegetable oil) in a frying pan, and spoon in 1/4th of the egg/veggie mix. Keep warm in oven dish (I put a little tea light under it) and bake the other omelettes.Meanwhile, heat ketchup in pan. Add vinegar, sugar, soy sauce and garlic. Stir well, but make sure it doesn't boil. Pour the sauce over the omelettes. Serve with rice.

I used deep fried Asian stir fry vegetable mix, and I had chicken out of the freezer so I put that in as well. Next time I'm going to leave the vinegar out because we thought the sauce was a little too sour.

Chicken pot pie

Yes! I've done it!!! I've created my very own recipe for chicken pot pie!!
When I lived with my first American host family Schwan's chicken casserole soon became one of my dishes. And when I moved to Those Crazy Jarboes, TheeGeneral's chicken pot pie soon took its place.
Since I've been back in the Netherlands, I've had these occasional cravings for this wonderful dish. But unsweetened pie crusts are not available here, unfortunately. So about 6 months ago I started to browse the internet for chicken pot pie recipes. And, using some of my own Dutch common sense, I came up with a good alternative for a pie crust: ready made deep frozen puff pastry dough (bladerdeeg). It tastes really good.
Want the recipe for the casserole? Here it is!

Dutchnic's chicken pot pie (serves 4)

You will need (these amounts are all relative and depend of what I have in my pantry and freezer):
- 500 gr. chicken breast
- about 2 cups of frozen peas
- 2 big carrots, sliced
- an onion, cut up
- 4 potatoes, peeled and diced
- 2 herb bouillon tablets (but you can also use l. chicken bouillon)
- some dried sage (about 2 tablespoons)
- 50 gr. flour
- 50 gr. margarine
- dried garlic, salt and pepper and of course
- 4 slices of frozen pastry dough, taken out of the freezer

Start by dicing the chicken breast and seasoning it with some dried garlic, salt and pepper. Using a few table spoons of olive oil, fry it in a skillet until brown. Keep stirring and make sure it browns evenly. Add the onions and stir until those are nice and soft. Add the bouillon tablets, a liter of water, the frozen peas, carrots, potatoes and sage. Let simmer for a while (about half an hour or so) until all the flavors mix up nicely.

In the mean time, grease an oven dish. I always grease the outside edges too because that's where the dough will go.
When the 30 minutes are over, strain the chicken soup but make sure you keep the bouillon. So don't pour it down the sink!

Put the vegetable/meat mix in the oven dish. Melt the margarine in a small pan, adding the flour as soon as the margarine is melted. Stir until brown, then add 1/2 l. of the chicken bouillon and keep stirring until you have a nice thick sauce/gravy. Pour the gravy over the vegetable/meat mix and cover the oven dish with the pastry slices. I usually seal the slices together, rubbing over them with a wet finger and cutting it until it has the shape of the oven dish. Using a fork, make a few holes in the crust so the hot steam has a way out.
Bake in a 200 C (about 400 F) oven for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. Enjoy!

PS: No, don't worry, I haven't eaten my chickens. But since this is a chicken recipe, I thought they'd make a good illustration..

Praise and cobbler

Today has been a good day. We slept in, I got breakfast in bed and then we cosily watched two Friends episodes. This afternoon we went for a walk (it was a beautiful day!) and tonight we fixed berry cobbler for dessert. I love berry cobbler, it's my absolute favorite American dessert. Tonight we have a dance class (we haven't been in three weeks but I feel up to it so we'll give it a try). In honor of this good day, here's my recipe.

Dutchnic's berry cobbler
Needed:
- 500 gr. fruit. Berries, apple, peach, or any mix of fruit. Can be frozen or thawed. Everything is good!
- 100 gr. flour
- 50 gr. butter, right out of the fridge so it's still hard
- 50 gr. sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Heat oven to 180° C. Put fruit in large oven dish, add half of the sugar and all of the cinnamon. Mix well. In a separate bowl, mix flour and sugar and cut in the butter, using a fork or a pastry blender (see picture). When it looks like bread crumbs, cover the fruit. Put it in the oven.
After ±45 minutes you have a wonderful dessert. Careful, it's hot! Great with vla, whipped cream and/or ice cream. Enjoy!