FoodBlogEvent: Green!

Next to the FoodBlogSwap, there is also a FoodBlogEvent amongst bloggers from the Netherlands. Each month it is hosted by a different person who can pick a theme. This month Isle from Uit mijn Keukentje picked the theme Green! I looked in my backlog and I have several recipes that would fit this theme. But I choose to share a pasta recipe for spring.

Ricotta and Pea Pasta (serves 4)
- 450 gr penne pasta
- 2.5 cups frozen peas, defrosted
- 425 gr ricotta
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/3 cup fresh parsley
- about 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- pinch of pepper
- grated cheese

Boil the pasta. Meanwhile chop garlic with parsley in a food processor. Add 1.5 cups of peas, the ricotta, lemon zest and lemon juice, 4 tbsp olive oil and a dash of pepper. Pulse until you have a chunky puree.

Drain the pasta but keep 1 cup of the water. Return the pasta to the pan and add the pea and ricotta mixture and the remaining peas and stir. Add a bit of pasta water if needed to make a sauce.
Serve with some grated cheese on top.

Tweet

Foodblogevent: Crustless Yoghurt Spinach Quiche

The foodblogevent is a monthly event that is held on Dutch food blogs. I don't participate every month, because it depends on the theme and the time I have on my hands. This month the theme is cooking with yoghurt, hosted by Oesters en Uien. I happened to have a dish with yoghurt planned already, so this came nicely together. The recipe is from the I <3 groente book by Janneke Vreugdenhill.

It is a crustless quiche so no wheat or anything like that in this recipe. This makes it a lighter quiche indeed. Normally I make 1 quiche for 2 days. But with this quiche that is not satisfactory enough for an evening meal. Of course as lunch it would be. So make it when you like. But this is only a 2 person quiche for a main course.

I also recommend getting a good quality cheese for the quiche. Because the rest of the recipe is low budget, there is room to spend some on a better cheese. We went to the market for our cheese and came back with an older cheese. With young cheese this dish would lack depth in flavour.

Crustless Yoghurt Spinach Quiche (serves 2)
- 500 gr fresh spinach
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 spring onions, chopped
- 2 gloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 tsp cumin
- 300 gr good quality older cheese, grated
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 200 gr Turkish yoghurt
- nutmeg
- pepper

Pre heat the oven on 180 degrees. Add the spinach to the pan and warm it until it slunk. Drain from moist and cut it in the food processor. Drain the spinach again.
Heat olive oil in a pan and bake onions shortly. Add garlic and cumin and bake some more. Mix in the spinach and remove from the heat. Leave it to cool slightly. Mix in eggs, cheese and yoghurt. Taste and add pepper and nutmeg to taste. The original recipe also adds salt, but the cheese should already be salty enough, so I don't like to add extra.

Grease a quiche pan from about 22 cm. Pour the mixture in and bake for 25-30 minutes. Leave the quiche to rest for at least 10 minutes. Or else it will not hold together.

Tweet

Foodblogevent: Sweet Potato Croquets

It has been a while since I participated in the Foodblogevent. It is a monthly cooking event with a theme in the Netherlands. This time the theme was Dutch cuisine goes international. It sounded like a fun theme so I decided to participate. Croquets are a very Dutch thing. Normally it is a meaty ragout with a crispy coating that is often served in snack bars. Of course there are several vegetarian versions as well, luckily often als in a regular snack bar. But to make them international, I decided to make a sweet potato version. Sweet potatoes is a veg I love but is not from here.

So far, so good. So I made my choice and looked for a recipe. And I found one on a Dutch blog, and made them last weekend. They were one of the best snacks I have ever had! And healthy to boot, because it is almost pure veg and I prepared them in the oven. But now, I wanted to blog them today and I discovered that not only the recipe was submitted in a foodblogevent before, the recipe came from the same blog that hosts the foodblogevent this month! I feel like such a fool, because I did not pay attention at all to this detail, until I looked at both posts to link them up now. Anyway, I decided to share it because the recipe is too good not to share and I really do not have the energy to think of a new one. But this is a classic example of how my brain works ;) I feel a bit bad that I can't cook up something new for the event, but that would put too much strain on my fatigued body, so I choose not too.

The foodblogevent is hosted this month by In my Red Kitchen. And here is her original recipe in Dutch. (She has awesome pictures too! Much more appealing than mine, so if you are a picture junkie, please have a look :D ) Also you can still send in a recipe that fits the theme until the 30th of January. So join in if you want! :D

I did change some things from the original recipe, because I didn't have any coconut oil or panko. I also prepared the potatoes in the steam cooker, kocking off half the cooking time :D

Sweet Potato Croquets: (serves 4 as a side)
- about 3 sweet potatoes (1200 gr)
- 50 gr crumbled feta
- 1 tbsp fresh thyme
- 100 gr breadcrumbs
- 1 tbsp olive oil

For the sauce:
- 3 tbsp yoghurt
- 2 tbsp light mayonnaise
- 1 tbsp fresh thyme
- 1 tsp garlic powder

First make the sauce so the ingredients blend nicely while we prepare the potatoes :) Combine all ingredients, cover and place in the fridge.

Peel and steam the potatoes in the steam cooker for about 25 minutes. Make a mash out of them with the olive oil. Make a nice sturdy mash. Add feta and thyme. You could use some salt and pepper to taste. We only used pepper because the feta already is salty. Place the mash in the fridge for a bit, to make it more firm. This will make the shaping of the croquettes more easy.

Make some breadcrumbs in a kitchen machine and place those in a deep plate. Now shape little croquettes of the mash. About a tbsp of mash for 1 piece. Cover them in breadcrumbs and shape them some more if needed.

Pre heat an oven too 200 degrees. Bake the croquettes for about 30 minutes. Turn them halfway. Do note that the breadcrumbs won't turn golden brown. This would happen when you deep fry them, but baking them in the oven is the healthiest option.

Tweet

Foodblogevent July: Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

The Foodblogevent is hosted every month by another food blogger and has a different theme each month. This month it is hosted by Uit Paulines Keuken and the theme is high tea. This is my second entry for this month. Because I am going vegan for two days during this months VeggieChallenge, and I wanted to try my hand at vegan baking, this is yet another vegan entry. Don't let that stop you from making them though even if you aren't vegan. The ingredients are easy to come by and they are a breeze to make. The recipe is adapted from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Vegan Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (makes 12)
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2/3 cup sugar (I used castor sugar)
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 5tsp poppy seeds
- 1/2 tsp salt

- 3/4 cup soy milk (or almond or rice milk)
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 cup sunflower oil
- 2 tbsp lemon zest
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add the wet ingredients. Mix with a spoon until the ingredients are well combined and form a batter. Fill the muffin tin with about a tbsp of the batter. Bake for about 25 minutes in a pre heated oven on 375F/190C (180 for microwave oven). The muffins should be lightly browned and a toothpick should come out clean.

They are really delicious! My BF also said they were good and he doesn't normally like soy milk, yet he really liked these muffins.

Tweet

Foodblogevent July: Peanut Butter Truffles

The Foodblogevent is hosted every month by another food blogger and has a different theme each month. This month it is hosted by Uit Paulines Keuken and the theme is high tea. When I think of high tea, I think of all kind of tasty sweets like scones, mini muffins and brownies but also cute little sandwiches. I combined sweet and savoury by making these little peanut butter balls that are one bite snacks. Because I am going vegan for two days during this months VeggieChallenge, I have chosen a vegan snack to bring to the party. The original recipe come from De Plantaardige Keuken, which I slightly altered.

Peanut Butter Truffles (makes 12)
- About 125gr peanut butter
- 25gr grated almond
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- 25gr dark chocolate drops
- 25gr dates, pitted
- toppings (I used cocoa powder and grated coconut)

Place peanut butter, almonds, maple syrup and dates in the food processor and give it a spin until everything is well combined. Scoop in the chocolate drops and mix slightly. Roll small balls from the mixture and roll them through a topping of your choice. I did my batch 50/50 but in the end I liked the ones with coconut better. Keep them refrigerated for a few hours to get them a bit firmer, they will taste better that way. You can also keep them overnight.  

Tweet

Weekend Cooking: Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I wanted to join the Foodblogevent when I discovered it recently. It is a Dutch initiative that collects recipes in a certain theme and it is hosted by a different foodblogger each month. This months theme is Guilty Pleasure. One of my guilty pleasures has to be chocolate. I don't bake sweet things too often, I mostly go for savoury things, but every once in a while I do enjoy some sweet baking. So here is my recipe for Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. The recipe is adapted from my favorite cupcakes book: 500 Cupcakes by Fergal Connolly

For the Cupcakes: (makes 18)
- 225 gr sugar
- 225 gr self-rising flour
- 225gr butter
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 4 eggs
- 100gr chocolate chips

Make sure the butter is on room temperature. Cut the butter into little pieces and add this in a mixing bowl. Add sugar, baking powder, flour, eggs and vanilla and mix this into a batter. Then scoop in the chocolate chips. Pre heat the oven to about 160 degrees for a microwave oven in about 180 for an electric oven. Line up muffincups into a muffin tin. Scoop about a heaping tbsp of batter into each hole. Bake them for about 20 minutes. With my oven I had to bake each batch for another 5 minutes on 140 degrees, but this is different for each oven. They are done if you can stick a toothpick in them and they come out clean. If you want to decorate them, let them cool down. If not, they are pretty yummy on their own.

For the decoration:
- 300 gr dark chocolate, chopped
- 115 gr butter
- 250gr powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp whipped cream
- Rainbow sprinkles

Melt the butter together with the chocolate in a small pan on low heat. Keep stirring, or else it will burn. Patience is key here, so don't set the heat higher, just keep stirring. Stir in the whipped cream. Remove the pan from the heat and then add in the sifted powdered sugar. If you happen to get a sticky mass like we did, just place the pan back on the heat and stir in some more cream. I do have to say that we had a lot of leftover chocolate goodness ;) Scoop the chocolate cream in a pastry bag and decorate the cupcakes. Just use a round tip because it is too fluid to make a nice shape with it. Add some sprinkles and it is all done! Leave the cupcakes until the cream has hardened.

We are not very good at this and the cream was all over the place, but it sure was tasty!

This post is part of Weekend Cooking and also of Foodblogevent. Check both of them out for more yummyness in the kitchen!

Tweet