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Midweek Raspberry Dessert

I made this dessert less than for 15 minutes! Needless to say, it’s a perfect treat for busy days. Don’t know about you, but I need something sweet after the main course! 😀 I really miss pies or danishes, if I don’t eat them at least once a week. Exactly the same situation was yesterday – the pantry was full of my fav dark chocolate, but I wanted a pie or cake!

I’m a huge fan of Jamie Oliver and even consider him as my virtual mentor! 🙂 Might you’ve seen food-videos with him and another young guy – Donal Skehan; they both provide inspirational ideas and recipes. I love raspberries! So, I chose this recipe, but adapted it, and made chocolate crust. And wow! Tartlets tasted soooo good! Reach chocolate crust along with tender berry filling gave the brilliant result! Yum!

Ingredients for two 11cm/4inch baking tins

85g plain flour

30g cocoa powder

30g fine sugar

60g butter, cold and cubed

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 Tbsp ice cold water

120g raspberries

50-60g strawberries, cut

130-150ml creme fraiche

1 tsp icing sugar

Method

In a bowl or food processor combine the flour, cocoa and baking powder, sugar and butter until it forms a dough.
Press the dough with your fingertips into baking tins. Put in a fridge for 30 minutes.
Mix together berries, creme fraiche and icing sugar; then spread over the dough.
Bake in preheated 210C/410F oven for 15 minutes. Then lower the heat to 150C/300F and bake for 20 minutes more.

Enjoy!

Prune Cookies

It’s autumn somewhere.. and time to harvest or buy beautiful apples, plums and pumpkins, make tasty preserves, and bake! Perhaps you will be surprised but I wish tomorrow (or even a whole month) would be grey and cheerless here! We I mean myself and some of my friends got a bit tired from burning sun this summer, and few days back a little miracle happened here – it was raining! Yay! But only for an hour or so. 😀 To be honest, when I lived in my hometown I didn’t like the beginning of autumn; rains were too often, boots and trousers caked with mud was a normal thing!

Autumn here is a totally different season! October is the beginning of a large influx of tourists amazing weather in Dubai, temperature goes down and days become cooler, people become happier; it’s a season of barbecue in parks, outdoor cafes and long walks. Not to mention the fact that I’m going to bake more cakes and pies, and fill my home and blog with quintessential autumn flavours. 🙂
This cookies recipe is super easy, tasty and suits autumn mood! The main secret ingredient is prunes (dried plums) soaked in a cognac, and I can easily say that these cookies become my favourite!

Prune Cookies

You can use dark chocolate with hazelnuts or plain milk chocolate, or even omit it.

Ingredients

8-9 prunes

50ml cognac

50-60ml water

1 Tbsp brown or muscovado sugar

50g butter, room temperature

2 Tbsp brown or dark muscovado sugar

1 egg

100g flour

1/3 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

40g dark chocolate (70-80% cacao), roughly chopped

40g roasted walnuts, finely chopped, optional

Method

Into small pan add prunes, sugar and water. Bring to boil, add cognac and boil for 5-7 minutes more. Remove from the hob and let cool. Roughly chop prunes.
In a mixing bowl, beat butter with sugar, then mix in egg. Add 2 tsp syrup from prunes.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the mixture into batter and combine.
Carefully fold into batter dark chocolate, nuts and chopped prunes (without syrup).
Bake in preheated 180C oven for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

The recipe adapted from Russina tv-show “Edim doma”

Scallops. Impress your guests!

Hey guys! Excluding this awesome, simple and yet satisfying recipe, I have a question for you. Have you ever gone out from your comfort zone? Are you doing anything unusual or off-limits during the week or month, that people usually don’t expect from you?

Can you take a bicycle instead of car and go to work? Or can you stop eating desserts just for a week? Or may be say ‘yes’ to green tea, even if you never drink it, instead of your fav coffee? Can you stop drinking cola (I hope you don’t drink it at all)?

Or may be to call a person, who is really dear to you, and you’ve been shy to speak to, and invite him/her for a dinner? 😉

Start from simple things, try out new recipe! Prepare this amazing and delicious appetizer! Impress yourself and only then others! 🙂

Scallops with avocado puree and strawberries

Servings: 2
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You can serve tender scallops with strawberries or just with sauce. A glass of bubbly or chilled white wine would be perfect here!

Ingredients

6 scallops

1 avocado

60-80g cream cheese

2 tsp lemon juice

8 strawberries

2 Tbsp finely chopped coriander

1-2 Tbsp olive oil, for frying

sea salt, white pepper

Sauce:

60-80ml dry white wine

1 tsp garlic puree (roasted garlic is great here)

1 tsp finely chopped coriander

1 Tbsp butter

Chop and blend avocado, add cream cheese, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

Cut strawberries into small cubes, mix with fresh coriander.

Season scallops with salt and pepper, fry in the piping hot pan 2 minutes on each side.

In the middle of serving plate, arrange avocado puree, top with strawberries; then arrange scallops.

If you don’t like avocado, you can serve scallops simple as is with a sauce. In the same pan, where you fried scallops, add wine and deglaze the pan’s bottom. Add garlic, coriander, season to taste and bring to boil. Add butter, mix well and cook for few minutes more. Pour the sauce over the scallops.

Enjoy!

Morocco. Part I

August 19, 2014
milkandbun
12 comments
blog, Blogging, holidays, Moroccan, Morocco, My Life, photography, photos, Rabat, travel, travel photography, trip

Hello there! How is your week going on? I promised to show you some photos from my holiday trip to Morocco, here they are.

Morocco is an amazing and charming country, where time appears to have stood still.. May be the only exception are cosmopolitan cities, such as Casablanca.

Morocco has turned out to be the endless country; we have covered about 2,500 km by car for just only a week. All major cities are located quite distant from each other, but if you rent a car and take a highway, few sights can be seen from the car, but mostly vast fields, and red Atlas Mountains closer to the Southern part of the country and lonely houses of shepherds and farmers. Reasons for stop on the road are limited, only same-looking petrol stations spread unevenly along the road. On the radio were played Arabian songs, thus we were forced to recall all word-games from our childhood, and looked at passing scenes. Moroccan landscape is very diverse, we passed medleys, mountains, coastlines… I was surprised to see a lonely house in the middle of corn or sunflower field, but after several hours, it became normal to see a small hut far away from the road, even in the middle of dried and cracked area.. Once, I and husband felt ourselves in the middle of nowhere! We drove an amazingly awful and damaged road across the desert, pure darkness surrounded us and I have never fell myself in a such dark place, there was no even a single light around. While we drove, we decided to stop in the middle of the road, then we switched off the car lights, opened the windows and began to listen… Nothing! It was absolute silence and pitch darkness…

Street Food

Spices and Herbs

Selling Wool

Beautiful Handmade Carpets

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Spending time in the heart of the Moroccan cities is one of the great ways to enjoy this country. They call old part of a city – Medina. Very ambient place with narrow streets, and ancient buildings, souks (markets), craftsmen’s and regular workshops.. Medina is cars free, so you can walk and enjoy! But be careful – it’s easy to get lost in its chaotic, tiny alleyways. I was amazed by an exotic medley of smells that came from spice souks! And all those fruits and vegetables stalls.. Fruits are so cheap, that I wish I could buy a hundred kilos of cherries and figs! I imagined how many delicious pies and jams I could made! 😀

Rabat Life

Okra

Aromatic Herbs!

The first city we stopped by was Rabat. It’s a capital, which lies on the Atlantic coast. To describe the city in few words, I can say the following: amazing wooden stuff, beautiful carpets, honey-touched and the tastiest figs ever tried, cheap cherries (around 2.6US$ per kg), too fatty cheesy pastry (wasn’t good), yummy street-baked crepes (yes, crepes!), pestering henna-painting women, and gorgeous green doors!

Kulebyaka – Russian pie

Kulebyaka or Coulibiac is an authentic Russian hot pie, which has an oblong shape and features several fillings.

The word became from old Russian verb – ‘kulebyachit’, that means to make with hands, to shape, to bend and to knead.

Pies are always have been loved in Russia. Even famous Russian writers as N.Gogol and A.Turgenev glorified pies in their works. Various pies were always made for every holiday and festival, though it was posh royal celebration or small peasant occasion. Large pies stuffed with several ingredients were really popular, they were baked on Butterweek and Easter and served in taverns and small tea-houses, where each owner had a special recipe and baked very individual pies, different from anyone else’s, i.e. opened and closed pies, feature simple (potatoes or cabbage) or complicated (sturgeon with buckwheat) filling.

Festive&Delicious Kulebyaka by milkandbun

Only in the 17th century, the grand oblong pie, that features several fillings, was named ‘kulebyaka’. The pastry shell was usually made from the yeast dough (the recipe is below). The main distinction of the kulebyaka-pie from any other Russian pie is that the quantity of the filling should be two or three times exceeds the quantity of the pastry; the filling of grand (festive) kulebyaka is usually complicated and separated with thin pancakes.

The most popular fillings are salmon with buckwheat, ground meat with boiled eggs and rice, cabbage with mushrooms and onions, or visiga – a spinal marrow of the sturgeon, the last one is the unusual ingredient for nowadays, but in the 17-18th centuries it was very common.

In the 19th century, French chefs, who had worked in Russia, brought the recipe to France and adapted it to the modern cookery, thus the kulebyaka became popular pie not only in Russia. 🙂

Here is my version of the festival kulebyaka.

Kulebyaka - Russian pie

Servings: 6-7
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The yeast dough:

3tsp/5g instant dry yeast

100ml warm milk (or warm water)

2tsp white sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp salt

200ml milk (or water), at room temperature

100g butter, melted

~600g all-purpose/plain/white flour

In a cup, stir warm milk, sugar and yeast together. Let stand until foamy about 10 minutes.
In a big bowl, crack eggs, add sugar, salt, milk, melted butter and stir together. Add sifted flour, yeast mixture and knead the dough until it’s smooth.
Cover the bowl with wet cloth, put in a warm place and leave to rise for 1 hour. After the time, knead the dough again. Repeat this step one more time.

The quantity of dough is enough for kulebyaka and one big pizza.

The filling:

600g fresh salmon, cut into small cubes

100g basmati or jasmine rice, cooked

200g mushrooms, sliced and fried

1 big onion, sliced and fried

4 eggs, cooked and chopped

2+2 Tbsp finely chopped dill and parsley

salt and freshly ground black pepper

The pancakes’ recipe you can find here. You can reduce the pancakes’ batter by half, because you need approximately 9 pancakes.

The glaze:

1 egg yolk beaten with 2Tbsp milk, 1/2tsp salt and 1/2tsp sugar

Assembling:

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to approximately 26cm*35cm rectangular and 6mm thick. You can roll the dough on a piece of baking parchement, thus it’ll be much easier to transfer the pie on a baking tray; moreover, you need to turn the pie upside down-the sealing should be on the bottom.
Coat the rolled dough with the pancakes.
Place the egg and herbs mixture lengthways down the centre of the dough.
Then arrange the mushrooms and onion mixture on top.
Next, arrange rice. And the last layer-salmon.
Cover the filling with pancakes, shape it to make a rectangular.
Then, fold the dough and seal the edges.
Transfer the pie upside down to a baking tray.
Decorate with pastry trimmings, and cut two slits in the top with a sharp knife.
Keep for a proofing for 20 minutes. Brush the pie with egg wash.
Bake in preheated 200C/400F oven for 30-35 minutes or until golden.
Leave to cool slightly for 15 minutes before slicing.
Serve with a glass of milk or a cup of freshly brewed tea.

Enjoy kulebyaka! 😀

Also I’m really excited to take part in the challenge “yeast and herbs”, that Angie organized with Catherine. I almost thought to give up, because I’m using yeast very-very rare in baking, finally after many days of brain storm it dawned on me that I already baked one awesome pie, so I came up with this recipe. It only seems complicated to make, just try it once and you will see that ‘kulebyaka’ is drool worthy dish! 😀

Moreover, are you parting at Fiesta Friday? Don’t ask me, because I do and now gonna check some great recipes, which have brought participants. Yay!