Crumpet pizzetta

It must be one of the simplest and fastest dinners. Not only that, it actually looks pretty good too. A toasted crumpet makes the perfect base for almost every topping: Nutella and toffee gooeyishly make their way through the many wee holes, butter and honey melt into utter creamyness, jam transforms the bready base into an almost cake-like delicacy.

As much as I prefer to eat my crumpets with sweet toppings: crumpets make a delicious savory snack and dinner... ready in a mere 10 minutes. Crumpet pizzette with tomatoes, onions, cheese and a little olive oil drizzle are my favourite. Toasted crumpets topped with bacon and maple syrup are a close second, and a herby scrambled egg topping comes third. But try whatever you fancy; and have them for breakfast, brunch or dinner.

Slim dinner: Soy steamed veggies with rice

I went to the gym today, as I do most days. Oh no, I don't enjoy it a bit, but that way I can eat more ;-)
I was doing my exercises on the Swiss ball when my personal trainer whom I occasionally have sessions with approached me. He sat down next to me: "I saw you working out on Tuesday and you looked amazing! You must have lost quite a lot of weight".
He surely was baffled that I wasn't even the slightest bit delighted about his comment. What he didn't know though is that I had the gastric flu just a few days before. No wonder then that I had the flattest of all stomachs. But since I was sitting on the ball he couldn't see that meawhile I was back to my old self.
Crap, so my personal trainer now expects me to be slim! Veggies for dinner then.I still had a pack of Chinese Choi Sum in my fridge. I fried it with some garlic, fresh lemongrass, freshly squeezed orange juice and soy sauce, added very little rice and some water and let it steam for a bit. It was a meagre dinner, but not bad at all.

Gooseberry crumble

When I was a child, there were no fruits I loved more than the gooseberries from my grandmother’s garden. While my sister would go and pick the sweet raspberries, I would eat myself sick on the not-so-sweet gooseberries. Don’t forget, I wasn’t mad keen in sweet stuff when I was younger. Apart from granny’s garden, there weren’t many places where you could get gooseberries. You would occasionally be lucky enough to find them on some farmer’s markets, but not in huge amounts.
So when I first visited the UK I was all excited about finding tinned gooseberries on the supermarket shelves. I am even more excited now to see that they've started selling fresh gooseberries.
I decided the give the classic gooseberry crumble a shot. My crumbles are usually just ok, but either the crumble gets to soggy or to hard… not much crumbliness going on. So no more sticking to a recipe but just following my intuition. I just mixed and crumbled the ingredients together until it looked ok. And it was. It was more than ok, it was the best crumble I have ever made. Actually, the best crumble I have ever had! Gooseberry crumble, for 2
: 350-400g fresh gooseberries
: 40g butter
: caster sugar
: Demerara sugar
: flour
: ground almonds

Simmer the gooseberries with 2-3 tbsp caster sugar until soft. In the meantime, mix together the butter, Demerara sugar and flour and almonds (ratio 2:1) until you get a crumbly texture.
Start off adding 2 tbsp Demerara sugar, 2 tbsp flour and 1 tbsp ground almonds. Taste the mixture and add more sugar until sweet enough. Finally add more flour and almonds until you get the right, crumbly texture. Make sure the crumble is rather fine and you don’t have lumps of dough in your mixture.
Spoon the gooseberry compote into a small, ovenproof dish. Top with the crumble and finally sprinkle with one tbsp Demerara sugar. Bake at 180 degrees for around 30 minutes.
Pour over some cold single or double cream and serve immediately.

Beloved Baked Beans

They are the greatest thing the British have ever invented: Baked Beans. I could have them anytime of the day - in fact, I do actually have them morning, lunchtime and evening. Well, not everyday of course, but occasionally. With bacon and a fried egg on a Sunday morning, on a jacket potato at work or as a quick dinner for when I am on my own in the evening.
You wouldn't think so, but baked beans are actually very versatile. They sell them in many different flavours: Tikka, Jalfrezi, Chili and Mexican. And one of the flavours that have been out there for ages now is Curry. Curried baked beans are the greatest among the inventions around the baked beans. And it doesn't take any time at all to make them sort of from scratch. Don't buy the ready-made curried beans!

Curried baked beans, for 2
: 1 tin of baked beans
: 1 small onion, chopped
: a good handfull of raisins
: 1 tsp ground cumin
: 2 tsp curry powder or curry paste

In a little oil, fry the onion until soft, then add the cumin and curry powder/paste. Let the curried onion mixture gently fry a minute or so, this will bring out the full flavour of all spices. Add the raisins and finally pour in the baked beans. Heat through gently (do not bring baked beans to the boil!) and serve with fried potatoes, chips or on its own.

Pain perdu with glazed cherries

I am one of those people who cannot throw away food. So everything that doesn’t get used before its “Best before” date ends up in my freezer. Like last Christmas’ panettone. It was about time – after all, we are now in July – to finally use it.
I sliced it before freezing which turned out to be a great idea. It defrosts in literally minutes that way.
Pain perdu with glazed cherries, for 1
For the pain perdu
: 2 slices of panettone
: 150 ml milk
: 1 egg
: 1 tsp vanilla extract
: butter for frying
: caster sugar for sprinkling

For the glazed cherries
: 1-2 handful od stoned and halved fresh cherries
: 2 tbsp caster sugar
: 2-3 tbsp water

Heat the butter in a pan. Mix the milk, the egg and vanilla essence. Lightly soak the panettone in the milk/egg mixture and fry in the butter until golden brown. In the meantime, pit cherries in a pan and sprinkle with sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved, add the water and simmer for a few minutes.
Place the pain perdu on a plate and sprinkle with sugar. Pour over the hot cherries and finish off with a few drops if cream.

Glorious (and almost homemade) bread

When I was a child I wouldn't really eat any bread but go for the nowadays more fashionable "no-bread-sandwich" a la Pret a Manger. Not that I would have cared about my wheat intake. What child would?
I simply wasn't a big fan of anything made out of dough. When, for example, my aunt invited us over to her place, she would baked a cake for my sister and my mum and I present me with my absolute favourite: smoked sausage with chantilly cream. Yum!
In my defence though, when we got older my sister discovered brie topped with nutella as her special treat... weird family ;-)
At home I would have the occasional thin slice of pumpernickel or crisp bread laden with virtually the whole content of our fridge: pate, mayo meat salad, cheese, sausage... you name it, I had it!

Times have changed and so has my taste. I now love bread. The darker, the better. Rye is my absolute favourite followed by brown bread with nuts and raisins. But whoever has ever been to the UK knows how hard it is to find edible bread in this country. So I started to bake it myself, even imported sourdough and bread spices from good old Austria.
But there is not always time to bake bread from scratch. Luckily, in amost every country on this planet there is now Lidl, the German discount supermarket. Try to get the ciabatte bread mix (or get some white bread mix from any another supermarket I guess) and make it our very own creation by mixing in some interesting flavours.
Try to mix in the following:
: walnut and maple syrup, sage, olive oil and honey
: chili and good quality dark chocolate
: sundried tomatoes in oil and smoked cheddar or feta cheese
: pumpkin seeds and honey
: lardons and fried onion
: lemon zest and thyme
... even better: leave the thyme out and just put lemon zest and a little bit of brown sugar in the dough. While the bread is still hot, slab on some salted butter and drizzle with maple syrup.

Lazy Sunday food

Q: How can a plate start off as seen in Picture 1 and end up looking like in picture 2?
A: Get yourself an English boyfriend.
As long as it isn't drenched in (preferrably tasteless tomato) sauce it ain't good. Or as Scott would say: it's bland.


My recipe for Prosciutto filled tortellini with artichoke, spinach and smoked cheddar, for 2
: 250g prosciutto filled tortellini
: 3-4 artichoke hearts in oil, thinly sliced
: 150g spinach, cut or torn in smaller pieces
: zest and juice of 1 lemon
: 75g mature smoked cheddar

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the pack, drain, but leave some of the cooking water in the pot. Put pasta back into the pot, put on a gentle heat, add spinach and artichoke hearts. Add zest and juice of half a lemon and grate over some mature smoked cheddar.

Scott's recipe
as above plus
: 150ml sieved tomatoes
Warm up the tomatoes in a pot, do not add any olive oil, garlic, spices, pepper or salt. Pour over Romana's Prosciutto filled tortellini with artichoke, spinach and smoked cheddar.

Silky chocolate pots with crushed pink peppercorns

One of those days: it would be nice to prepare something impressive for dessert. After all, you have guests round and don't want to present them with something out of the sumermarket's deepfreezer. But then, you cannot really be bothered with making a Michelin-star worthy dessert either.
So how to creating something easy and quick which still looks like hours and hours of hard work?

Well, the inital idea was to recreate
the Pink Peppercorn Encrusted Flourless Chocolate Cake. But slowly the cannot-be-bothered mood built up... Followed by a strike of genius: why not just have the cake topping with pink peppercorns! Or in nicer words: Silky Chocolate Pots with Crushed Pink Peppercorns. It worked out beautifully and looked beautiful.
The ganache will sit on my hips forever, but so what?! These pots are worth the extra hour in the gym!