Bittman's Vichyssoise

We got this Vichyssoise recipe from the Times. It's super simple, and really tasty.

Ingredients

• 2 tbs butter
• 3 potatoes
• 3 leeks
• 4 cups of stock
• 1/2 cup of cream
• chives

Method

1. Peel and cube potatoes. Trim and chop leeks.
2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large pot.
3. Add potatoes and leeks. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring, until softened.
4. Add 4 cups stock. Boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
5. Purée, then let cool.
6. Stir in 1/2 cup or more cream before serving.
7. Garnish: Chopped chives.

Quick and simple buns

Ingredients

• 50 g yeast
• 5 dl warm water
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 9-12 dl flour - wheat/full wheat and a bit of rye (or some other kind, but not more than 3dl of the other flour)

Method

1. Mix all ingredients.
2. Let rise for an hour at room temp.
3. Fashion into buns and let rise for another 30 minutes.
4. Brush with egg yolk if you want nice color.
5. Bake for 10 minutes at 250 ºC.

Braised Aubergine with pork, 鱼香茄子

This recipe fits with the current zeitgeist, since burned cars kinda reminds us of braised aubergines. 

The view from our window last night. mmm burned rubber? Smells like eggplant grilling!

This recipe is from Yan-Kit So's "Chinese" book(let). 

Ingredients

675g or 1.5lb; we usually use 2 medium sized eggplants

2-3 garlic cloves, chopped roughly

4 spring onions cut into 2" sections, white and green parts separated

250g minced pork

1 tbsp Shaoxing wine or medium-dry sherry

1/2 tsp cornflour

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 cup chicken stock

Steps

1. Cut the aubergines into 2" long and 1" wide sections and put into a colander. Sprinkle salt liberally over the pieces and let them rest for an hour. Then wash the pieces and dry.
2. In a saucepan, heat a couple of table spoons of oil and, on medium heat, fry the eggplant pieces in batches, adding more oil as needed.
3. Add some more oil to the pan and add the chopped garlic and the white scallion portion. Fry for about 10 seconds.
4. Add the pork. Working quickly with your cooking spoon, separate the mince evenly so that it doesn't cook in large chunks. Stir around quickly. When the pork is cooked it will be opaque (around 4-5 minutes)
5. Splash in the rice wine and add the cornflour and stir to coat the meat.
6. Reduce the heat slightly and then add in the soy sauce, sugar and the stock. We usually add more stock, almost double. 
7. Add the eggplant back into the pan. Lower the heat and cover the pan and cook for 10-15 minutes or until, as Yan Kit-So puts it, the eggplant is "meltingly tender".
8. Garnish with the scallion green portions.

Anda ki sabzi

Ingredients

• 10 eggs
• cumin seeds
• cream
• 1 bell pepper
• 3 onions
• 2-3 tomatoes
• turmeric
• coriander powder
• corn starch
• garam masala powder

Method

1. Boil and peel the eggs.
2. Slice the onions and the capsica in slices of about equal length.
3. Add oil and cumin seeds to the pan and heat until the cumin smells good.
4. Add onions and fry on medium heat until they start looking soft (but not brown). Then add the capsicum. Continue frying until the capsicum starts looking a bit soft.
5. Add tomatoes, a little turmeric and coriander powder. Fry for a bit.
6. Add the eggs, cut in wedges.
7. Just before serving, add cream and corn starch. Bring it to bubbling so the sauce thickens.
8. Sprinkle with garam masala. Serve with rice.

Mapo doufu

I long ago lost track of how many times we've cooked this. It's one of our absolute favourites, for sure. A classic Chinese dish, that's just so so good.

Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs soft of firm doufu, drained
• 1/2 lb ground pork or beef
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 1.5 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
• 1/2 ts roasted sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons Sichuan pepper corns
• 1 tbs oil
• 2 scallions
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 ts ginger, finely chopped
• 1 tbs chile bean paste (we actually use sambal oelek instead)
• 1 cup stock
• 1.5 ts corn starch
• 1 scallion, shredded on top

Method

Cut bean curd in cubes. Marinade the meat in 2 ts soy sauce, 2 ts rice wine and the sesame oil.

Toast the Sichuan peppers lightly in a dry pan.

Heat oil in pan until very hot. Stir-fry the meat until browned. Remove with wire strainer, and let the water sputter off. Add scallions, garlic, ginger, stir-fry a little. Then add chile paste, stir-fry for 5 seconds.

Add the stock and the remaining soy and rice wine to the pot, and bring it to a boil. Then add back the meat and the bean curd. Reduce the heat to medium and cook it for 5 minutes. Then add in the corn starch, and let the sauce thicken.

Sprinkle Sichuan peppers and the shredded scallions on top.

Mangal Kolgrill, Kista Galleria

We seem to have finally identified our favourite place to eat at Kista Galleria. It is called Mangal Kolgrill and the first dish we ate there inspired us to make a tabbouleh at home. We have gone back a couple of times and their pide (turkish pizza) is fantastic. We can speak knowledgeably having had eaten genuine pide in istanbul (one whole time, at the airport while on a layover, so we're real connoisseurs, see).

This time we tried their Mangal sampler with the bulgur salad.

They had a piece of chicken breast (very moist), two pieces of chop (probably lamb), two koftas and two other pieces that we think were beef, but honestly, everything was so delicious and well cooked that happy oblivion is fine with us. The bulgur salad was amazing, light and fresh as before. The side of bernaise sauce went unexpectedly well with all the meat. The dips in the bowl at the top were tzatziki, baba ganoush, hummus and some kind of red pepper yummy-ness. The grilled green pepper on the plate was absolutely delicious and frankly neither of us paid much attention to the bread because everything else was so good. And, of course, we finished with Ayran, which is refreshing and delicious.
Sorry, we actually forgot to take a picture before we dug in, so the plate looks a little chewed on already.

The food takes a little longer to come out than it does at other places in the food court, but from our vantage point it looked like each dish was being cooked to order and I guess this explains why their food is head and shoulders above the rest!

Banana Bread

We had four horribly over ripe bananas that we were loathe to throw away. So we made banana bread.

We mostly followed the recipe outlined here, but we initially started on another recipe and so the order of addition of ingredients is slightly different from the recipe in the link.

Ingredients

1/2 cup (110 g) butter

1 cup (210 g) white sugar

2 eggs

4 ripe bananas (original recipe called for 3)

2 cups (220 g) All-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda (We didn't have any, so skipped)

1 teaspoon baking powder (used double to accomodate missing soda)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Dribble (maybe 1/2 teaspoon) vanilla essence

We didn't have any walnuts so we skipped that too.

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 175 C.
2. (What we did) Melt the butter in the microwave and mash in the bananas. Add the eggs, one at a time and stir. Then mix in the sugar. The original recipe: In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, stir in the mashed bananas.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. 
4. Mix together the banana mixture and the flour mixture till just combined. 
5. Butter the inside of the baking dish and add the batter to the dish. The batter seemed much too runny but given the end result I'm going to assume this is a good thing.
6. Bake for 60 minutes. Test with knife before taking out of oven. You might want to bake it slightly shorter if you use coarser flour, like whole wheat or something. Check at 50 minutes.

Runny cake batter