Veronika's Vanilla Horns
Warning this receipt is highly addictive and will be appreciated by all. It will make you an instant success with guests, friends family and even strangers. My grandmother did these every christmas and the thing is they get better the longer they can be in the cookie jar, but of course they are too good to last very long in there
This is how you do:
200g butter
300g flour
1 dl caster sugar
110 g almonds
couple of tblsp of oil
Vanilla sugar to cover
In a mixer, blitz the unpeeled almonds to a fine powder. In a bowl mix the butter, almonds and flour and sugar to a consistency ressembling breadcrumbs. On a baking table, combine the mixture with the oil until it forms a dough. Roll out pieces of the dough to thin "sausages" and cut them into ca 5 cm long.Curve them to a horn shape and bake in a medium oven, on a baking parchment, until golden. Once cooled, dust them with vanilla sugar. Then start defending them from eager fingers !
Merry Christmas
Veronika's Lusse Buns
These gorgeous, of saffron smelling, soft yummy yeast buns are traditionally made in Sweden around the 13 of December, when the St Lucia day is celebrated. But they can also, quite happily be eaten all year round, they are that delicious.
Here is how you make them:
Starter:
50g butter
5dl Milk
50g live yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
Making the dough:
ca 1,5 liter flour
Saffron butter:
1g saffron
125g butter
1,5 dl sugar
1 egg
and
1 egg for brushing
Put the milk in a pot an warm it to ca 60 degrees. Take of the pan from the stove and add the butter, let it melt. Crumble the yeast in a bowl and add to it the salt and the sugar. Make sure that the butter and milk is not too hot nor too cold (slighly warmer than body temperature)and pour it iver the yeast mix. Stir to dissolve all yeast and leave to start bubbling.
When it is bubbling away being all alive and resurected, gradiually add the flour (not too much at one time because the yeast will become overwhelm and won't rise). Once the dough has begun to think about getting detached from the bowl sides, cover it, put in a warmish place and leave to rise.
Now start making the saffron butter.
Put all the ingredients, in a bowl and mix together to form a paste. Once the dough has risen to twice the size, put your hands in the bowl and start kneeding it. Little by little add the saffron mix. The dough will be a loose type of dough so do not put it on a baking board as it will then need too much flour. When you have needed in all the saffron, take out small pieces of the dough and form them into longish, thick sausages. Shape them into an S and put them on a greesed, greaseproof paper on a baking tray. Leave to rest and to rise. Before putting them in the oven, for ca 8 min, at 250 degrees C, brush them with a beaten up egg. Once baked, try and not to eat them all at once !
Veronika's Two-in-One Chicken Pie:
The principle is simple, make a stew (any stew) and have the stew for dinner one. To the now cool stew ad an beaten up egg and some cheese and hey presto you have a filling for a pie (dinner 2). You can make the pie dough well in advance and leave in the fridge. In fact you can make a lot of dough and use it as a piecrust to fill with any sort of leftover you have (dinner 3) Genius ! (ish)
This is my version of a Chicken pie (pie tin ca 25 cm wide) :
Stew: (make a double portion and serve it for dinner with some rice )
0,5 kg diced chicken ½ onion
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp oil
1 small slice of lemon peel (finely chopped)
1 good pinch of dried celeriac stalks (very fragrant!)
2 tbsp of powdered chicken stock
½ glass of wine
1tbs flour
2dl Single cream
1,5 dl water
Salt and pepper
Add when making the pie:
1 egg
1 dl grated mozzarella
Pie dough: (do a double portion to be used for any stew or leftovers (bolognese ?))
75 g butter
2 dl flour (plus extra for rolling out)
Salt
½ dl single cream
Salt
Pepper
Egg for brushing (if you are organised you can steal some of the egg from the stew . . .)
How to make it :
In a stew casserole, on the oil fry the chopped onion, garlic and then add the diced chicken (try to have the dices farely small (ca ½ cm cubes). When the chicken is starting to get some colour, add the lemon peel, dried celeriac stalk, powdered stock and the flour. Stir until it all gets some heat through. Pour over the wine and let the alcohol evaporate. Then add the single cream and water and let it cook for ca 15 min (stiring occasionally) or until the stew resembles a stew more than a soup. Season with salt and pepper.
To make the pie dough. Put all the ingredients except the single cream in a bowl and pinch the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then add the single cream and make into a small dough ball. Leave to rest.
Take 2/3 of the dough and roll it out thinly on a baking table. Put it in a pie form and prick it with a fork all around even the edges. Prick it a lot and it won’t fall. Bake it in a medium oven until the crust is a little colored.
Add the egg and cheese to the now cool stew and stir it together. Fill the baked pie crust with the stew and roll out the remaining dough thinly and put it on top. In the middle of the top dough make a cross incision the let any steam out (otherwise the pie can explode!). Brush the pie with a beaten egg and put in the medium oven. Bake until the pie is golden and the filling is set but not dry.
To eaten with a green salad .
Enjoy !
Veronika's Lentil Soup
Winter is upon us and what more satisfying is there than a nice hot bowl of soup when you come home from work, from walking the dog or from a ramble in the countryside.
This is a very quick recipe what only gets better if it is reheated. And it is very moreish !
For 2-3 people:
2 dl red lentils
½ Onion, chopped
1small clove of Garlic, chopped
1tbsp Olivoil
1,5 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp ground cumin
1/5 tbsp Sambal Oelek (careful though it is very strong)
1 litr Chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste.
Fry of the onions and garlic in the olivoil in a soup pot. Add the spices and sambal oelek and stir around letting the spices get some of the heat and start to release its flavours. Add the lentils and stir around letting the lentils melt slightly with the spices. Pour over the chicken stock and let cook for ca 30 minutes or until the lentils are soft and cooked. Please beware that the lentils to tend to stick to the pot if left, so stir quite frequently.
Enjoy !+
Bramborak-hearty röstis for an autumn day
Try it and feed your husband with it, he will love it proper mans food !
This is how you do it:
1kg white potatoes
1 egg
sprinkling of flour
4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp marjoram
salt, pepper
oil to fry
Peel and grate the potatoes on the small grater (mind your fingers!), add the egg, pressed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, marjoram and season with salt and pepper (more salt than you think, potatoes eat salt !). Press the water out of the potatoes and in a preferably, cast iron frying pan add ca 5 mm of oil. Heat up properly and spoon in the potatoe mixture. Fry to brown on both sides and put in a warmish oven while you fry the rest.
Eaten preferably with a stew like a gulash or a creamy mushroom stew. Bramboraks can also be made big and then folded over, filled with fried liver with caraway seeds.
Dobrou Chut (bon appetit in Czech)
Light Petit-Choux, luxury in a second
The rain is pouring outside and you forgot to go to the shops and still you want something special, something to nibble while reading your book infront of the fireplace? So try this, no effort and great result!
You need:
(enough for ca 12 small wreaths)
3dl Water
100g margarine or butter
2 dl flour
3 eggs
Plastic bag, grease proof paper and some filling - custard, cream, berries, chocolate pudding but also savory things like salmon (with horseradish cream(yum)) or smoked meats etc.
In a pan on the stove, in the water melt the margarine, make it cook. Add the flour, whisking all the time (the trick is to get as much air into the pastry). Stir until the paste doesn't stick to the pan but not as long so the grease from the margarine sips out. Take the pan of the stove and leave the paste to cool slightly.
One by one ad the eggs, trying to incorporate as much air as possible.
Once the eggs are incorporated, spoon the pastry into the plastic bag. Cut one corner of the bag, and make small wreaths on the grease proof baking paper.
Bake for ca 25 min in a 200 degree oven. Do not open the oven before as the pastries will fall together. Leave to cool and then cut open horizontaly and fill with yummy stuff.
Light, roasted potatoes from Poland
Had some lovely roasted potatoes yesterday, crunchy and yet soft, powdery in the middle. And NO GREASE involved (well just a tea spoon).
This is a Polish receipt and it is really yummy.
So what do you need?
1 kg salad potatoes, skin on
1 egg white, beaten to stiff snow
Ca 2 tbs flour
Caraway seeds (or any other spices you would like)
Salt
Pepper
Cook the potatoes until the just have a little bit of a hard centre
Heat the oven to ca 180
Drain and sprinkle them with flour, so they are coated.
Spread some oil on a baking tray.
Beat the egg white to stiff and fold the flour coated potatoes in the egg white. Add spices (in my case caraway seeds), salt and pepper
Put them on the baking tray and bake until golden.
Eat with great delight!
Lemonade, quick and easy
Simple quick receipt that is excellent to drink diluted with bubbly mineral water
1 dl sugar
2 dl water
3 Lemons.
1
In a pot cook together the sugar and water untill the sugar resolves
2
Squeeze the juices from 3 lemons and add to the sirupy water
3Pour in clean, warm bottles and refrigerate for up to one week (will never last that long though!)
