Clafoutis, or the Reason Why Cherries Were Created

For me, summer only really starts the day I can make the first clafoutis, or French cherry pie! This year, that happened on Wednesday. Since then, I’ve baked six clafoutis – that is an average of 1,2 per day. That might tell something about how irresistible this thing is!

The recipe is from my very old version of Larousse de la Cuisine, which I haven’t seen for ages – but that’s ok, because this is one of the few recipes I could recite by heart even if woken up in the middle of the night.

You’re supposed to use cherries without removing the pits, and I’d suggest you really don’t. If you remove the pits, the whole thing gets coloured by the cherry juice, and doesn’t look that great…

For about six servings you need:

• 500g cherries


• 4 eggs


• 80g flour (I use 40g whole-grain, 40g all-purpose wheat)


• 80g butter


• 125g sugar


• 1 tsp vanilla sugar


• 250ml milk

This is how to do it:

Set your oven to 190C. Place the cherries (with their pits still in!) in a round cake form with a diameter of 26cm or so. Melt the butter. Crack the eggs in a baking bowl, and beat them lightly together with sugar and vanilla sugar (I emphasize the word lightly! A bit like when you’re doing an omelette…). Then add flour, stir until it gets well mixes, then add milk and butter, and slightly stir again.

Pour the batter over the cherries and bake your clafoutis until it’s set and nicely brown on the top. Remove form the oven and let cool a bit. Then decorate with confectioner’s sugar and serve – either a bit warm, or completely cooled down. And enjoy the summer! :)

Zucchini Feta Fritters with Tzatziki

When the kids are craving for pasta pesto with broccoli and the somewhat bigger kid  announces he will only eat low-carb for dinner from now on, what does one do? Well, one makes the pasta (10 minutes, remember?), then takes a look at the fridge and comes up with a new, rather quick Greece-inspired recipe!

So I’m proud to present these delicious and fluffy fritters with zucchini, feta, and dill, served with a generous helping of tzatziki. This recipe is not as quick as some others: it took me 20 minutes to make this dish, mainly because I could only fit three fritters easily in my pan at the same time. So, if in a hurry, use two pans!

This recipe is for two people, especially if served with a slice or two of good bread. If you - like me - are not afraid of carbs, that is!

For the fritters:

• 140g zucchini, grated


• 75g feta


• 2 eggs


• 1 Tbsp pine nuts


• 2 Tbsp fresh dill, chopped


• salt and black pepper to taste

For the tzatziki:

• 10cm piece of cucumber


• 4 heaped Tbsp natural yoghurt


• 1 small garlic clove (or to taste)


• 1 Tbsp olive oil


• salt and black pepper to taste

First, make the tzatziki: grate the cucumber very fine and drain in a sieve to get the excess water out. Then combine in a bowl with yoghurt, crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir, cover, and place in the fridge for the time you make the fritters.

Now, it’s time to make the fritters. First, crush the feta with a fork. Then place all ingredients in a bowl, stir until well combined, and fry the fritters in a large pan with a little bit of oil over a medium heat. This amount of batter results in 6 smallish fritters. It was a bit challenging to fry them – in the beginning, the batter tends to spread a lot, which you need to stop by moving the runaway batter back with a spatula. But after that, it’s easy! Once they’re done from one side (about 4 minutes or so), turn them and fry until both sides are golden brown.

Serve the fritters with tzatziki, sliced fresh vegetables - and maybe some good bread!

 

Home-Made Tortillas with Kidney Beans and Fresh Vegetables

Have you ever taken a closer look at the ingredients of any given tortillas available at the supermarket? I recently did. The ones I found contained 14-15 ingredients, among other things emulsifiers, stabilizers, and preservatives…

Then I read the preparation instructions: one is supposed to warm the tortillas in the oven for 10 minutes. (In the microwave it would go faster.)

Ok, I thought, it can’t take much longer than those 10 minutes to make eight tortillas from scratch. And it didn’t. To be exact, it took 10 minutes and a half for me to have 8 home-made tortillas ready! When the first one was frying, I rolled the next one out, and so on. Note that you need a cast-iron pan to get soft tortillas – oddly enough, when I fried them in a Teflon pan, my tortillas turned too crispy to fold.

And if for the filling one chooses something that doesn’t need to be cooked – like canned beans and fresh veggies - it takes no longer than 15 minutes to have 8 delicious filled tortillas ready to be eaten. From scratch!

So, no reason anymore to buy those industrial “fresh” tortillas as they are ironically called!

This recipe is for 8 tortillas, which is just enough for 4 people as a main course or 8 as a snack.

This is what you need for the dough:

• 300g flour (I used half whole-grain, half all-purpose wheat flour)


• 150ml water


• 50ml sunflower oil


• two pinches of salt


• ½ tsp baking powder

And for the filling:

• 150g sour cream or soft cheese (for a vegan option, use a non-dairy option)


• 2 large ripe avocados


• 2 Tbsp olive oil


• juice of half of a lemon


• a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce


• two tomatoes, chopped


• half of a red pepper, chopped


• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced


• 120g canned kidney beans


• a few lettuce leaves


• fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley


• salt and black pepper to taste

To make the dough, just combine flour and salt in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle and add water and oil. (Note that if you’re using only all-purpose flour, you’re likely to need a bit less water. Start with 100ml and add gradually more if needed.) With your hands, work the dough until it’s easy to form it into a ball. Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each of them into a very thin tortilla. Don't worry if they're not perfectly round: when you fill and roll them, no-one will notice! Fry your tortillas on a hot pan (without oil) on both sides about 30 seconds, or until dark spots appear. Remember to use cast-iron pan only! Pile the tortillas on a plate and cover them while frying the rest – that way, they’ll keep soft and warm.

For the filling, peel the avocado and crush it with a fork. Add lemon juice, olive oil, Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste. Spread a generous tablespoon cream cheese or sour cream and avocado paste on each tortilla, then divide tomatoes, onions, red peppers, kidney beans, lettuce, and cilantro/parsley. Add a bit more salt and pepper if you want, then roll the tortillas and serve immediately!

Miraculous Two-Ingredient Chocolate Mousse

About two years ago, I was desperately looking for vegan chocolate mousse recipes. I thought I’d tried them all: with avocado, with banana, with silk tofu, with whipped coconut cream – you name it. And yet, all of them were a more or less big disappointment compared to the one and only – you know, 3 eggs, 30 grams butter, 100g dark chocolate, a bit of sugar – the one recipe I haven’t had to look up in the past twenty years or so!

Oddly enough, I never came across this recipe when doing my research last time. I only found this amazingly easy recipe when I was looking for quick chocolate desserts. But on top of being really easy to do, this chocolate mousse also happens to be vegan (provided the dark chocolate you use is vegan). No milk, no eggs, nothing except for dark chocolate, and one secret ingredient.

Curious to know what it is? It isn’t tofu, cream, avocado, or banana. Nothing of the like.

It is… water!

Yes, you read right. All you need to do this perfectly tasty and creamy chocolate mousse is chocolate and H2O.

I like my mousse very bitter, very chocolaty, so I used 75% dark chocolate. If you like it sweeter, use 50% or 60% chocolate and/or add some sugar.

This is what you need for 3 smallish portions:

• 125g dark chocolate


• 100ml water

And this is what to do:

1. Measure the water and chocolate in a saucepan and let melt over a medium heat.

2. Remove from the heat, transfer the melted chocolate into a baking bowl over an ice bath (even very cold water is enough).

3. Now, beat the mixture with a mixer or with a twirl whisk for 2-3 minutes (I used a twirl whisk and it took about 5 minutes), or until the mixture starts to thicken.

4. Transfer it into three espresso cups or other small serving cups and let your mousse set either in the fridge or at the room temperature for a couple of hours before serving!

If you like, you can add something to flavour your mousse – how about coffee mousse, with some instant coffee powder? Or a small amount of Cointreau to give a citric twist?

Frozen Yoghurt with Lemon and Honey

This morning I walked past our local frozen yoghurt bar, and it struck me how perfectly frozen yoghurt would fit in my current dessert series! You know, the desserts that make themselves while you’re eating your main dish.

The convenience of frozen yoghurt over other types of ice cream is not just that it contains less fat and mostly sugar as well. It also helps you avoid one crucial and very time-consuming step: yoghurt is already cold enough for your ice-cream maker (as long as you keep your yoghurt in the fridge, that is ;) ), so no need to cool it before feeding it to your ice cream maker…

I decided to flavour my frozen yoghurt with lemon and honey – but feel free to try other flavours as well!

For a vegan version, use non-dairy yoghurt and sweeten it with sugar or agave syrup, for example.

This is what you need for three smallish portions:

• 500ml plain yoghurt


• 2 Tbsp liquid honey


• 1 tsp grated lemon zest

To make this is ridiculously easy. Just combine yoghurt, honey, and lemon zest, and make the frozen yoghurt according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. With mine, this amount of frozen yoghurt took 15 minutes to make – exactly the time it took us to eat our pizzas! Decorate and serve.

Smoked Salmon Spaghetti

This is a dish I used to make a lot when I wanted to get a delicious meal in no time at all. Now I still make it once in a while, mostly for the kids, and mostly on those days when I just can’t hear any complaining about food – this is the ultimate favourite of everyone!

For five hungry people you need:

• 500g spaghetti


• 300g smoked salmon


• 300ml heavy cream or sour cream


• salt and pepper to taste


• freshly grated parmesan and fresh dill or parsley to serve

This is how to do it:

1. Bring water to the boil. Add a bit of salt and then the spaghetti. Cook for about 8 minutes, or until al dente.

2. In the meantime, prepare the sauce: Cut the salmon in smallish pieces and fry them shortly in a large pan. Add cream, salt, and pepper, and cook over a low heat until the spaghetti is done.

3. Drain the spaghetti, place it in a serving bowl, and pour the sauce on top of it. Stir, then sprinkle with grated cheese and chopped parsley or dill. Serve immediately!

Sticky Toffee Sauce

Sticky toffee sauce is one of my favourite accompaniments for ice cream and/or strawberries. I used to make it myself quite often a long, long time ago, but not being a fan of cooking that hot syrup (sooo afraid of burning it, me, or the kids :) ), I haven’t made it in many years now.

But going through my old magazines I came across one toffee sauce recipe where you don’t actually need to melt any sugar – you can use molasses instead. So I’m back to my sticky toffee sauce routine!

This is a dessert you can make while preparing the main course - all you really need to do is to stir the sauce once a while during the ten minutes it needs to cook.

For 6 people you need:

• 100ml dark molasses (or dark treacle; Zuckerrübensirup here in Germany)


• 200ml heavy cream (non-dairy for a vegan version)


• 30g butter (or vegan margarine)

Combine molasses and cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, and let boil over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring once in a while. The sauce is ready when it starts to thicken. Now, add the butter, let it melt, and stir until the butter is well combined with the rest. Remove from the heat.

Serve hot, warm, or cold with ice cream and/or berries or fruit – if you resist the temptation to spoon it all up just like that…!

P.S. Nothing compares with the taste of a homemade sticky toffee sauce - with three ingredients. And I find the colour perfect as well. Makes me wonder how come the ones available at the supermarket have so many ingredients: one that I saw had 15 altogether – among them two different artificial flavours, colouring agents, and so on. Totally unnecessary, if you ask me ;)

Chocolate Fondue, the No Effort Way

I’m going to make a confession: Before coming up with this idea I had never eaten chocolate fondue. It’s always been a tempting idea, yet I wasn’t ready to invest money and especially cupboard space in those cute little chocolate fondue pots.

But then I realised you don’t need any fondue pots! You can use espresso cups, and make a hot water bath do the job for you – while you’re eating your main dish, of course!

Use any fresh seasonal fruit or berries to dip in the fondue. I bet at least mango, pineapple, peaches, cherries, and bananas would taste awesome! But now it’s the second last week of (at least organic) strawberry season here in southern Germany, so I didn't have a choice, did I?

For one portion you need:

• 2 Tbsp (non-dairy) heavy cream


• 20g dark (vegan) chocolate


• about 15 fruit pieces or berries to dip in the fondue

First, combine cream and chocolate in espresso cups. Then place the cups in an earthenware oven dish. Fill the dish with boiling water just enough for the cups to be covered until the cream-chocolate-level. (If you happen to have pasta for the main dish, think of using the cooking water to do this! Hugely ecological :) )

Once you’re ready to have your dessert, just stir the chocolate-cream-mixture gently with a spoon and remove from the water bath. Serve with fruit – dip them in the “fondue” with a small dessert fork! And don’t forget a spoon – you’ll need it to scrape the rest of that yummy chocolate…!

Oven Pancake with Strawberries and Crème Chantilly

Pancakes are a great dessert after a light meal - like pea soup! But who has the time to make them? No problem, pancake batter can also be baked in the oven. Once again, you can enjoy your main course while your oven is taking care of the dessert.

This time of the year I normally serve oven pancake with fresh berries and whipped cream - when no fresh berries are available, use raspberry or strawberry jam instead!

This is what you need for 6 portions:

• 150g flour (I use whole-grain, but you can use all-purpose as well)


• 400ml milk


• 3 eggs


• a pinch of salt


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 30g butter

This is how you proceed:

1. Set your oven to 225 C when you start cooking the main dish.

2. Make the batter: in a bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and milk, and beat gently. Then add the eggs and beat until well combined.

3. Take a round cake form (mine has a diameter of 26cm). Slice the butter and place the slices in the form. Put the form in the oven for just the time it takes for the butter to melt. Then take the form out again, pour the batter in, and put it back in the oven.

4. Go and enjoy your main dish! Set the alarm for 15 minutes - it takes around 15-20 minutes for the pancake to be ready.

5. Serve warm with berries and crème Chantilly!

Mushroom Bruschette with Lemon and Parsley

Making a bruschetta is a perfect way to use up bread that otherwise would not be eaten – and as I’ve told, we quite often have to deal with that problem due to our “broken” oven ;)

Everyone loves tomato basil bruschetta, but this mushroom version is at least as tasty! Besides, it’s very quick to make. For this portion for two, I only needed 8 minutes.

 

 

For 2 as a light meal or 4 as a starter:

• 4 large slices of bread


• 1 garlic clove


• 200g mushrooms


• 2 Tbps lemon juice


• olive oil


• a handful of flat leaf parsley


• salt and black pepper to taste

This is how to do it:

1. Heat olive oil in a pan. Quarter the mushrooms (or cut them even smaller if the mushrooms are big) and fry over a high heat about 5 minutes, stirring once in a while.

2. In the meantime, toast the breads and rub them with garlic clove.

3. Now,  add lemon juice, salt, pepper, chopped parsley in the pan, stir, and then remove from heat.

4. Place the bread slices on a plate, divide mushrooms on top of them, and decorate with some more parsley. Serve immediately!

Creamy Pea Soup with Mint

Finns eat pea soup every Thursday. Well, at least they used to. But still today it’s a very traditional Thursday lunch, followed by oven-baked pancake as dessert. The bad news is – it takes a lot of time to make pea soup out of those dry peas. First you need to soak them overnight, then cook for 90 minutes or so – and on a regular Thursday, who has time for that?

This pea soup obviously has very little to do with the traditional one. But it’s a soup, it’s made out of peas – and it’s absolutely delicious. And it only takes ten minutes to make it!

This is what you need for 2 big or 4 small portions:

• 65 onion


• 300g frozen peas


• 500ml broth


• 50ml heavy cream (for a vegan version, use non-dairy)


• 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour


• 150g sour cream (for a vegan version, use non-dairy)


• a handful of mint leaves


• 1 Tbsp olive oil


• salt and black pepper to taste

And this is how to make it:

1. Heat the broth in a saucepan. Add chopped onion and let cook for 2 minutes.

2. Then add peas, bring to the boil again and let cook 6 minutes, or until the peas are thoroughly cooked.

3. Purée the soup with a hand mixer.

4. Now combine flour and heavy cream in a jar with a lid, close the lid and shake. Add the cream-flour-mixture to the soup and whisk gently while doing this. Bring to the boil once more and let cook about one minute.

5. Take away from heat and divide on the soup plates.

6. Combine sour cream, chopped mint leaves, olive oil, and salt and pepper in a bowl. Place a generous dollop of cream mixture in the middle of each soup plate.

7. Serve with a slice or two of good dark bread! As a dessert, oven-baked pancake is a must.

Soft Lemon Almond Cakes with Cointreau Sour Cream

I’ve always wondered why most cake recipes involve so many different steps. Beating eggs and sugar, egg whites, yolk and sugar, butter or sugar, sometimes even in bain-marie! What if one just omitted all of those steps and combined all the ingredients together?

That’s exactly what I did with these small and soft lemon almond cakes. In addition, I used oil instead of butter, so one more step avoided – no melting needed! And, to my surprise, the result was more than just ok. These lemon cakes are perfect: soft, tasty, and served with a dollop of Cointreau-flavoured sour cream they are second to no other dessert I’ve had the pleasure of having so far.

Besides, they fit to my list of “desserts that make themselves”. When you start cooking the main dish, just set the oven to 190 C. To make the dough, you need about 2 minutes – do it either when waiting for something else (pasta to cook, for example) or just before serving the main dish. Then put the cakes into the oven, put an alarm on to 12 minutes, and enjoy your main dish while your dessert is taking care of itself.

For 5 portions you need:

• 2 eggs


• 4 Tbsp sugar


• 4 Tbsp ground almonds


• 2 Tbsp whole-grain flour


• 2 Tbsp yoghurt


• 4 Tbsp sunflower oil


• a pinch of salt


• the grated zest of 1 organic lemon

And for the cream:

• 150g sour cream


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 1 Tbsp Cointreau

... plus a couple of strawberries and lemon slices to decorate

1. Combine sugar, almonds, flour, and salt in a bowl.

2. Add eggs, oil, yoghurt, and lemon zest. Stir with a fork until well combined.

3. Divide into 5 muffin forms (silicone or other non-stick material) and bake in a preheated oven for about 12 minutes, or until well set.

4. Remove from the form, place on 5 plates, and decorate with a lemon slice, strawberries, and a dollop of sour cream flavoured with Cointreau and vanilla sugar. Enjoy with a good espresso, for example!

Poached Apricots with Orange and Rosemary

About two weeks ago the first apricots appeared in our local organic supermarket. And last week, I came up with yet another great use for them! It’s one of those desserts that can take care of themselves while you’re calmly enjoying your main course. Well, almost: if you’re short-term memory is nearly as good as mine, you might need an alarm, or your poached apricots might turn into mashed apricots…

Combining orange and rosemary with apricots results in a fresh and pleasant taste that goes perfectly with the decadent sweetness of the honey-sweetened sour cream. I prefer to use sour cream instead of heavy cream, and not only because I prefer the taste. It also spares you one extra step: no need to whip the cream! Just add honey to the sour cream and stir – that’s it.

This recipe gives four smallish portions! For a vegan version, use non-dairy sour cream flavoured with vanilla and agave syrup, for example.

For the apricots:

• 600g apricots


• 3 Tbsp sugar


• 100ml water


• 50ml Cointreau


• 1 rosemary sprig


• 3 long stripes of orange peel (1/3 of one orange or so)

For the cream:

• 150g sour cream


• 2 Tbsp honey

This is how to do it:

1. Halve the apricots and place them in a heavy pan in one layer.

2. Add the rosemary twig and orange peel stripes. Sprinkle the sugar on top.

3. Pour the water and Cointreau on the apricots. They should be completely cover – if not, add more water.

4. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and let simmer, cover, about 10 minutes, or until the apricots are softened but not turned into a mash yet. Then remove from heat, divide on 4 serving plates (the juice, too!), and serve with a generous dollop of sour cream sweetened with honey.

 

P.S. This dessert is also safe for kids. Thanks to the cooking, there’s no alcohol left in the final product :)

Warm Zucchini and Tomato Salad, Greek Style

This dish is perfect for a summer lunch or dinner. Serve with a slice of good bread and a glass of white wine, followed by a bowl of strawberries... What else could one ask for? Oh yes, for it to cook fast. And it does: I counted exactly twelve minutes from the time I entered my kitchen to the moment I started eating!

For two people you need:

• 400g zucchini


• 300g cherry tomatoes


• 120g onion


• 2 garlic cloves


• ½ tsp dried oregano


• a handful of fresh parsley (or other herbs available)


• 150g feta cheese


• olive oil, salt, and black pepper to taste

This is how to make it:

1. Chop onion and garlic, and cut zucchini into cubes. Halve the tomatoes.

2. Heat a generous splash of olive oil in a large pan. Add onion and sauté 2 minutes, then add garlic and the zucchini cubes, and sauté over a medium heat until zucchini starts to gain some colour.

3. Now, add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper, and keep heating over a medium heat until the juices of the tomatoes start to flow. Let simmer a couple of minutes.

4. Take away from heat, add feta cubes and parsley. Sprinkle with some extra olive oil, salt, and pepper and serve right away! A slice of bread is obligatory to wipe that great sauce off the plate.

For a vegan version, replace the feta cheese with tofu – I would use Tofu Olive from Taifun.