Vegetarian Chilli Beans

Sometimes,

 I don't want to waste a lot of time in the kitchen cooking dinners

but am also not in the mood for chips or frozen pizzas

and that's usually a day when we end up

having a stew, a curry or a soup. 

A "one pot wonder", as those dishes can also be called 

if you wish to give them a fancier name.

Yesterday, I was craving a hearty, healthy dinner 

and as we are going on holidays soon, 

my goal is to empty the fridge within the next few days

without dumping what's in it. 

So I had a good look through the content of the vegetable compartment of the fridge

and thought, that the carrots, sweet potatoes, a pepper, garlic and onions

would make a nice chili bean stew.

If I added one or two tins of beans, obviously. 

So I gathered the stuff I wanted to throw into a pot

and to turn into our family dinner. 

Within 10 mins the prep work was done

and another 20 mins later, dinner was ready.

If you want to make this stew,

feel free to swap ingredients around 

or add something else you think would go well with beans.

I used:

-carrots

-two sweet potatoes

-a huge green bell pepper

-one onion

-one garlic clove

-1/2 tube tomato puree

-one tin of chopped tomatoes

-one tin of cannellini beans

-one tin of kidney beans

-500ml vegetable stock

-frozen sweetcorn

-frozen quorn mince

-ground coriander

-dried leaf coriander

-ground cumin

-smoked paprika powder

-some fresh, finely chopped chili

-sugar

-salt & pepper

Method:

Preheat some oil in a large pot.

Chop the onion and add to the oil and fry over a medium heat until softened.

Finely chop or crush the garlic, add to the onion.

Peel and chop the carrots and sweet potatoes into cubes and toss into the pot.

Wash, trim and chop the bell pepper and add to the veg mixture.

Stir occasionally to avoid burning.

Add the tomato puree.

Add the chopped tomatoes.

Add the stock.

Drain and rinse the beans.

Put into the pot.

Bring to the boil, reduce the heat.

Add the spices and chilis.

Let the stew simmer for about 10 mins.

Add the sweetcorn and quorn mince and bring to the boil again.

Simmer for another 10 mins.

 And add salt, pepper and a LITTLE sugar to taste.

I topped it with a few green jalapenos and served it with some 

pizza dough rolls and fresh garlic and chive butter.

You can keep leftovers in the fridge 

and reheat them a day or two later for a quick lunch.

YUM!

Enjoy cooking and let me know what you think!

Living in a small space - The Kitchen

Over the next few days or weeks
I am going to take you on a tour 

around the house we are currently renting.

It's really small for a family of four, soon five,

and we had to find smart storage solutions

and furniture arrangements to fit everything in.

And even though we're living here nearly 1 1/2 years now,

we're still not finished decorating and personalizing 

to make this house suit our taste and needs.

I'd like to change the curtains 

and some of the lamps are still not the ones I'd have picked myself.

But apart from that, we all LOVE our new home.

It is cozy and warm,

bright and airy

and has beautiful views and a lovely, big garden.

I'll start with the kitchen.

It's the biggest room in the house,

the room where we spend most of the time together.

It has big windows facing the garden and a lovely rural landscape.

My cookbook collection

Hot press, toy kitchen and toy workbench.

Table and chairs are Domedeal findings
we have bought and painted a few years ago.

The laptop and Silhouette plotter aren't always there.
They usually live in my workshop.

This corner.

Originally planned to be a small office space.

Now the "let's put all the shit here that has no home but needs to be put somewhere until someone tidies it up or dumps it and where the dog sleeps" space.

The messiest corner in the house.

Needs further attention.

Urgently.

Coming soon:

The Sitting Room.

Stay tuned!

Homemade Pumpkin Butter

Normally, I get lots of inspiration for my cooking and baking

by reading food and cookery magazines.
It is one of my guilty pleasures. 

I know they're expensive and I know I also pay for the adverts in them

and I also know that I probably will NEVER look at some of them again

 after I have read them for the first time. 

But still.

I buy them. 

I LOVE THEM!

And I keep them.

All of them.

But I also love some Instagrammers and Bloggers who share their 

cake and lunch and dinner recipes and family feeding routines with their readers. 

Like Simply Homemade Nicola

or Hushabye Farm Elisabeth.

But the idea to make Pumpkin Butter

came from reading a German blog.

One of the benefits of living a bilingual life

is to be able to read more blogs in various languages.

Mary Kotter tells us how to make Pumpkin Butter

in a Thermomix. 

I don't own one, though, and I am quite certain that I never will.

But would that stop me from making the pumpkin butter from scratch?

In a conventional pot on a conventional hob?

Exactly.

No.

It still quite easy to make that way.

And it is DELICIOUS!

And the smell we had in the house while the pumpkin and spices

 bubbled in the pot was really really nice.

Autumn-y and sweet and cinnamon-y yummy.

Here we go! Get the pumpkin that you had originally bought

to turn into Halloween decorations and make 

Pumpkin Butter instead.

Well, that's what I did.

I will have to get a new pumpkin for carving now, the girl said.

Anyway.

Get your pumpkin, wash it, saw off the stem end the non-edible bits

and chop it into rather thick cubes. 

Take 400grams of the prepared pumpkin chunks and put them into a pot.

Add 150ml apple juice and 150ml water,

1tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 3 dried cloves or a pinch of ground ones,

 a pinch of ground nutmeg and a pinch of ground allspice

and bring to the boil. 

Reduce the heat and simmer the pumpkins with the juices and the spices

until they're soft. 

Remove the cloves.

Add 150grams of sugar.

Blitz everything with a hand-held blender until it is really really smooth and lump-less. 

Now, leave it to boil at a moderate heat

until it had thickened to a spreadable consistency.

This process may take a good while. 

You need to keep stirring regularly that it does not burn 

or stick to the bottom of the pot.

When the pumpkin mousse starts to thicken, 

the bubbling will turn into a splattering.

I had covered the pot with a sieve to keep the mess around the pot at bay.

Once your Pumpkin Butter is nice and thick and sweet and "ready",

you need to fill it into a clean jar and keep it in the fridge after it has cooled down. 

It won't last as long as jam would because of the relatively low

sugar content (Haha, I know!) , but it should stay okay for a week.

If you don't eat it at the first day.

It is hard to resist. 

Oh, you can freeze the Pumpkin Butter, too.

I will use the it to make Pumpkin Butter rolls tomorrow.

And I might share that recipe here, too.

If they turn out nice. 

 We'll see.

Lena

Ingredients:

400gms prepared pumpkin meat

150ml apple juice

150ml water

150gms sugar

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

some ground nutmet

some ground allspice

Dampfnudeln

If I would translate this blog title directly from German to English,

the English name of this dish would be "Steam Noodle". 

But that doesn't make sense at all.

I prefer to call them 

Sweet Yeast Dumplings here.

They're not baked like bread rolls.

They're not boiled like pasta or other dumplings.

They are cooked in a steamer insert 

over a pot of boiling water. 

These dumplings are a traditional dish from

Bavaria or Austria or Tirol.

They are sweet and fluffy and really filling. 

I would not eat these as a dessert,

we eat them as dinner on their own. 

Well... with vanilla sauce and poppy seed sugar. 

Not necessarily healthy. But GOOD.

And for us, they taste a bit like childhood!

Try them!

It takes a bit of time to make them,

but you won't be disappointed.

Ingredients:

50g unsalted butter (plus some more for greasing)

2tsp easy bake dry yeast

200ml lukewarm milk

4tbsp sugar

500g plain white flour

1 egg

1 pinch of salt

Melt the butter.

Mix yeast, milk and  sugar and leave in a rather warm place for a few minutes.

Add the flour.

 Mix.

Add egg and salt.

Mix.

Add butter.

Mix.

Knead the dough thoroughly until there are no lumps left. 

We want a smooth but rather firm yeast dough.

Form a ball, but it into a bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave in a 

rather warm place and give the yeast plenty of time to work

and leave the dough to rise.

Give it at least 2 hours.

Even more, if possible.

Knead again, form 10 little balls and put them on a baking tray.

Cover with the tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for another 30 mins.

Grease a steamer insert with a bit of butter and put 5 of your dough balls into it.

Take a pot that fits the size of your steamer,

fill with a bit of water and bring it to the boil.

Put the steamer insert on the pot and cover with a lid.

Cook the dumplings in the steam for about 15 minutes. 

DO NOT LIFT THE LID!!!!

If you do so, the dumplings will collapse!

STAY AWAY FROM THE POT SO!!!

Tidy up your kitchen instead.

Fill the dishwasher.

Read my blog. 

Whatever.

Just, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES lift that lid!

Thank you.

After 15 minutes of steaming, your dumplings will be ready.

Serve with vanilla custard or vanilla sauce

and poppy seed sugar.

Listen to German march music while eating

and pretend you are at the Oktoberfest in Munich. 

Have a bit of fun eating these!!!

Lena

Pear and Chocolate Cake

Today, we baked a cake.

 Because it was Sunday. Because it rained. Because I really like baking and cooking. 

We found the "regular" cake ingredients as well as pears and dark chocolate.

So we decided to make a "Birne Helene Kuchen". 

A Pear and Chocolate Cake.

Apparently, the fancy name for the combination of pear and chocolate and stuff is

Poire Belle Helene.

I googled that.

Poire belle Hélène ([pwaʁ bɛl elɛn]; German: Birne Helene) is a dessert made from pears poached in sugar syrup and served with vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, and crystallized violets. (source: wikipedia)

So there we went and baked. And it was really, really nice.

A not too sweet, very moist, brownie-like base with juicy pear pieces.

Fruity, caramelised pear slices on top.

Really fluffy. Really comforting. 

And really easy and quick to make. 

Ingredients:

100g dark chokolate

4 pears

3 ggs

125g unsalted butter

60g sugar

vanilla essence

salt

200g white spelt flour 

(plain white flour will do, too)

1 level tsp baking powder

75ml milk

icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 175 degrees

(fan assisted to 160 degrees)

Carefully melt the chocolate.

Peel all pears and remove the cores.

Slice 3 pears, cut one into little cubes.

Generously whisk butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and a pinch of salt.

Add flour and baking powder.

Mix.

Add the milk.

Mix.

Add the chocolate and pear cubes.

Mix.

Pour the mixture into a 20cm cake/sponge pan.

Put the pear slices on top and push them slightly into the dough.

Bake the cake for 50-60 mins. 

Leave to cool and dust with a bit of icing sugar.

Enjoy! 

Lena

Banana Courgette Curry

 

This is one of our favourite curry dishes.

I read about it in a book a few years ago

(I think, 2 girls who lived in Munich were getting it as a take away),

and even though I found the combination of banana and courgette a bit quirky

but am a rather nosy person,

I started to play around with ingredients

and after a few trials, this is the way I am cooking the curry now.

It's fruity and creamy,

sweet and sour,

spicy and flavoursome.

JUST GOOD!

And prepared in a very short time.

 

You need:

3 bananas

2 medium sized courgettes

1 onion

150g sour cream

50 - 100ml water

juice of 1/2 lemon

coconut oil (or any other frying oil)

curry powder

brown sugar

salt

 

 

Chop the bananas into disks, about 5mm thick.

Cube the courgettes.

Cut the onion into small cubes.

 

Heat frying oil in a pan until very hot.

Place the banana slices into the pan, reduce the heat to medium and

carefully fry the banana slices from both sides until slightly browned.

 

 

Take them out of the pan and set aside.

 

 

Put the courgette cubes and onions into the pan,

add a generous amount of curry powder

(mild, medium or hot... that's up to youself)

and fry from all sides by stirring regularly

 for about 10 minutes.

 

 

In the meanwhile,

mix the sour cream, 2 tbsp brown sugar,

lemon juice and salt.

If you like, you can add some dried or fresh

coriander leaves, too.

 

When the courgettes and onions are cooked,

add the bananas to reheat them.

 

Reduce the heat and stir in the sour cream mixture.

Be careful NOT to bring the curry to the boil

as it might curdle.

 

If the sauce is getting too thick,

carefully add water until you like the consistency.

Taste and season with salt, sugar or more curry powder if necessary.

 

Serve with rice.

Or Naan.

Eat.

 

 

Trust me,

it's GOOD!

 

Lena

Wholemeal Breakfast Pancakes

Who doesn't like pancakes for breakfast?

 I think everybody does.

And so do we.

But because Klara shouldn't have 

a lot of plain wheat in her diet

and because I try to feed my beloved ones

with rather healthy food than junk

I made pancakes from wholemeal spelt flour 

this morning. 

And everyone loved them.

Here's the recipe:

- 150g wholemeal spelt flour

(I used Odlums, bought at Tesco)

- 1 tsp baking powder

- ½ tsp salt

- 1 tbsp brown sugar

- 200ml milk

- 1 large egg.

- 2 tbsps melted butter or coconut oil, slightly cooled

-butter or coconut oil for frying

To serve:

- Maple syrup

- Nut Butter

-Fresh Fruit and Cream Cheese

-Jam, Chocolate Spread, Golden Syrup, Lemon Curd...

Sieve the flour and the baking powder,

add sugar and salt.

In a seperate bowl, beat the egg

and mix with the milk.

Add eggmilk and butter/oil to the flour and whisk.

Let stand for a few minutes.

Fry from both sides in a frying pan with a little butter or coconut oil until golden brown.

Now.
This is my favourite topping.
It's quite far away from being healthy.
So maybe you don't want to tell your kids
and eat this when they're in bed.
Or at school.
Or you tell them it's something only adults can have.
Like whisky or Guinness.
I don't know if that would work, though.
Anyway:
It's crunchy peanut butter,
chocolate spread
and Golden Syrup.
We call them "Snickers Pancakes".
Try this!!!

Lena

Fresh Cheese Strawberry Tart

Make a sweet short crust pastry dough.

I used THIS RECIPE and it turned out very well.

Roll it out and put it into a greased, round baking tin.

Bake in the oven until its edges slightly browned.

For me, it took about 20mins at 160 degrees Celsius

in the Fan assisted oven.

Let it cool on a rack.

In a small bowl,

mix 3tbsp cream cheese with

3tbsp fromage frais.

Add a tiny bit of Vanilla Powder

or any other vanilla flavouring you like.

And if you have a sweet tooth

add some sugar.

Wash a punnet of strawberries,

cut off the green bits

and slice or cube or chop them.

Whatever you like best.

Spread the cream cheese mix onto the baked, cooled tart base.

Toss the strawberries on top.

Slice.

Eat immediately.

Enjoy!

Lena



Baking Sourdough Bread

One thing I am really proud of are my bread baking skills.

German bread is different to Irish bread.
Its texture is firmer, its crust is thicker and really crunchy, its taste a lot more aromatic
and if you opt for a really dark, wholemeal, healthy Pumpernickel Style one,
it actually fills you for quite a long while and helps your digestive system to work more efficient..

When we came over to Ireland in 2007, the first thing I missed a lot was the German bread.
And nearly all of my German friends I met here over the last few years, are the same.

We nearly popped a bottle of bubbly stuff when "our" Lidl supermarket nearby extended its shop and announced, they were bringing German bakery products into the country. Boy was I thrilled!

And the bread was GOOD! Our favourite ones were a rustic rye bread and a triangle shaped wholemeal multi seed loaf. And OF COURSE these 2 where the first breads taking off the shelves again.

I am not a great fan of the Irish brown bread as I find its texture a bit to crumbly-cakey to be a bread I would like. The shop-bought ones. Homemade brown bread is different. I like that a lot. If someone bakes one for me.

I don't like white bread. Well... the odd slice here and there, warm, just jumped out of the toaster, a bit of butter... great. Sometimes. But every time we buy a whole white bread, two thirds of it don't get eaten, start to mould and end up in the bin. True story. (I KNOW!)
And as it turned out last year, Klara is intolerant to wheat and gluten and more than one slice of toast makes her very sick with bad tummy pains and diarrhoea.

So I made the decision to bake bread. I wanted to learn how to make my oh-so-much-missed sourdough loafs. And I interviewed my mom who gave me some recipes and I went to the health shop in town to buy different wholemeal flours.

My first trials did not go so well. I have to admit that I'm not the most patient person in the world and that reducing the time the starter needs to ripen from 3 days to 1 day might not have helped.

Waiting for the final dough then to "double its size" as it often sais in the recipes, wasn't one of my best talents, either.
And some of the recipes I have tried so far have maybe just not been for me. Dunno!
But I've learned. I know a lot more things now about making, "breeding" and storing the sourdough starter. I understood, how important it is to give the dough the time it needs to turn into the desired consistency, sometimes fluffy and airy, sometimes tough and chewy, depending on the type of the bread I am making.


And I love the breads now. I always batch-bake. To make sure there is an appropriate amount of bread, sliced and ready to be defrosted and eaten. For breakfast. Or for lunch or tea.
With butter and jam, with yummy mature cheddar or creamy brie. Accompanied bye a nice cup of coffee or tea or a glass of juice. 2 slices filled with salads and tuna or ham. As a very healthy sandwich variety.

The kids love it. For Alfie, I cut off the crust and he gobbles down little cubes of very dark bread even. Buttered. With a bit of jam. Or a bit of cream cheese.

And the SMELL of warm, freshly baked bread in the house!!!

Now! Look at these beauties! And DON'T tell me you're NOT jealous.

 

 

Very dark sourdough loafs.

Made from wholemeal rye and wheat flour.

With sesame, linseed, sunflower seeds and molasse.

 



 

Rustic, traditional sourdough bread.

Made from wholemeal rye flour..

A bit flat but still oh-so-good!!!!

 

 

 

Hungry now??!
You're welcome!

Lena