Zizi's Adventures - Real Food, Real Stories

Homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Spread aka The Legend of Homemade Nutella

by

Homemade edible Christmas gifts are so popular and fashionable nowadays. Cookies, biscuits, jams, chutneys, granolas, savory treats make special presents for any occasion, especially at Christmas. A homemade edible gift has so much love in it. Download cute food labels, wrap the presents nicely and the success will be guaranteed.

This homemade Nutella is not only mouthwatering on the photo but it is very addictive. Make sure to do a double batch because you will want your own Christmas gift too. 🙂 Look for good quality milk- and bittersweet chocolate for this recipe to avoid unnecesarry additives and sugar. For more sophisticated friends  and relatives make this Nutella from 350 g milk and 150 g bittersweet (70% cocoa content) chocolate. Vegans should use chocolate made with rice milk.

There is a similar recipe on my friend, Emiko’s blog (she also shot a video too).

Homemade Nutella

Ingredients (makes 500 ml, about 2 cups)

– 250 g hazelnut
– 400 g milk chocolate
– 100 g bittersweet chocolate
– 3 tablespoons hazelnut or coconut oil
– 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
– 1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C (338F). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, place the hazelnuts on it and toast them for about 8-10 minutes until the nuts have darkened and the skins have blistered. Wrap the nuts in a kitchen towel and rub to remove as much of the skin as possible. Let cool completely.

In a food processor grind the hazelnuts until they form a paste (about 10-12 minutes). Add hazelnut oil, cocoa powder and salt. Continue to process the mixture until it is very smooth.

Add a little boiling water to a saucepan and heat until simmering. Break the chocolates into small pieces and add to a heatproof bowl. Suspend the bowl over the simmering water, but do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the water. Heat the chocolate, stirring regularly, until melted, then remove from the heat.

Add the melted chocolate to the hazelnut mixture and continue to blend until smooth. Transfer to a jar and let it cool (the texture will be a bit runny, but it will thicken as it cools).

Enjoy!

Mushroom Bruschetta

by

Isn’t this mushroom beautiful? Its name is cloud funnel, a type of wild mushroom. It appears both in conifer-dominated forests and broad-leaved woodland in Europe and North America. When it’s cooked it has a strong, spicy aroma. Mixing with button mushrooms, fresh herbs and lemon juice it gives a tartish ragout. You can use any kind of wild or farmed mushrooms or a combination of both.

This bruschetta is a quick weekday dinner. Use good quality of sourdough bread and it’ll be perfect!

Mushroom Bruschetta
(Recipe: Jamie Oliver – Jamie At Home)

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 300 g mixed mushrooms (I used cloud funnel and button mushroom), wiped clean, sliced
– 2 cloves garlic, chopped
– 2 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
– 6 sprigs of fresh parsley, chopped
– 20 g butter
– 1 teaspoon chilli flakes
– juice of 1 medium lemon
– salt, pepper
– olive oil
– 4 slices of sourdough bread + 1 clove garlic

Method

In a large pan heat 2-3 tablespoons olive oil. Add mushrooms to the pan, give it a shake. Add the chopped garlic, thyme and parsley. Season with salt, pepper, chilli and leave to fry for 5-6 minutes.

Once the mushrooms have got some colour going on, add butter and lemon juice. Toss again and add 2-3 tablespoons of water into the pan to make a creamy sauce. Simmer for 1-2 minutes more until you have a simple sauce.

Toast the bread slices, rub them with garlic. Pile the mushrooms with the sauce on top of the bread.

Serve immediately!

Beetroot Tart Tatin With Parsley Vinaigrette

by

Tarte Tatin is an upside-down tart in which the fruit (usually apples) are caramelized in butter and sugar before the tart is baked. Did you know that first it was created by an accident? The Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, France, was run by two sisters, Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin. Stéphanie did most of the cooking. One day she started to make a traditional apple pie but left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long. Smelling the burning, she tried to rescue the dish by putting the pastry base on top of the pan of apples, quickly finishing the cooking by putting the whole pan in the oven. After turning out the upside down tart, she was surprised to find how much the hotel guests appreciated the dessert. This is how the classic tart tatin was born.

Of course you can make tart tatin from other fruits and vegetables too. Beetroot is a rich source of potent antioxidants and nutrients, including magnesium, sodium, potassium and vitamin C. It has an earthy flavor that goes well with the tangy parsley vinaigrette.

Recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, Veg Every Day.

Beetroot Tart Tatin With Parsley Vinaigrette

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the tart tatin
– 250 g rough puff pastry
– 350 g beetroot, cut into 1 cm thick slices
– 20-30 g butter (vegans should use olive oil)
– 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
– 2 teaspoons apple vinegar
– 2 teaspoons cane sugar
– salt, black pepper

For the parsley vinaigrette
– 1 small bunch parsley, chopped
– 1 small onion, chopped
– 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
– 1 tablespoon apple vinegar
– 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
– pinch of cane sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C (356F). Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface (5 mm thick). Take and ovenproof frying pan (or tarte tatin dish) about 20-24 cm in diameter, place it upside dow on the pastry and cut around it. Set aside.

In a small bowl mix together the vinaigrette’s ingredients and stir to combine.

Melt the butter with the sunflower oil in the frying pan, add apple vinegar, cane sugar, salt and pepper. Add the sliced beetroot and toss i the juices. Cover the pan with foil, transfer to the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes at 170-180C (338-356F) until the beetroot are tender.

Take the pan out from the oven and lay the cut pastry over the beetroot, patting it down and tucking in the edges down the side of the pan. Return to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes until the pastry top is golden brown and puffed up. Leave it to cool, then turn it out by putting the plate over the top and inverting it. Trickle the vinaigrette over the tarte tatin and serve.

Lángos, The Hungarian Street Food

by

Thanks for Monthly Mingles hosting I get to know more and more beautiful food blogs around the world. Thank you for those who already sent delicious food recipes with intersting, new-to-me stories I didn’t know about. I’m learning a lot. If you would like to participate, I’m still waiting for your recipes and photos until the end of August.

I chose Street Food as this month’s mingle theme because I love traveling. My Pinterest “Places I’d like to travel to” photo album proves that there are many dream destinations on my wish list (the question is who doesn’t?)… and with all your amazing recipes (the roundup will come in the beginning of September) we can all travel around the world… at least virtually.

Meet a very popular street food speciality of Hungary, the lángos. It is a deep fried flat bread made of a dough with flour, yeast, salt and water (kind of bread dough). Lángos can be made with yoghurt, sour cream or milk instead of water, a dash of sugar along with salt and sometimes with flour and boiled mashed potatoes, which is called potato lángos. It is eaten fresh and warm, topped with sour cream and grated cheese, rubbed with garlic or garlic butter, or doused with garlic water. Lángos may be cooked at home or bought from street vendors around the country. The name comes from láng, the Hungarian word for flame.

Traditionally lángos was baked in the front of the brick oven, close to the flames. It was made from bread dough and was served as breakfast on the days when new bread was baked. Nowadays lángos is always fried in oil.

Lángos is also very popular and known as a fast food at fairs and in amusement parks in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, in Serbia and in Romania.

To be honest I haven’t made lángos on my own before. This time I asked my wonderful mom to help me make the dough, fry the lángos and do the food styling with me. We had so much fun together, we laughed until we cried during the photo shoot.

Lángos

Ingredients (makes  about 10 lángos, it depends on the size)

– 300 g all-purpose flour
– 7 g dried (instant) yeast
– 250 ml water
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– sunflower oil for frying
– toppings: sour cream, grated cheese, garlic

Method

In a mug dissolve the salt in the water. In a bowl combine the sifted flour with the yeast. Add salty water to it and stir through (if it’s very sticky, add a little bit more flour). Work the dough with a wooden spoon or with your hands until the dough comes off the bowl  and gets smooth. Leave the dough in the bowl, cover with a clean cloth and let it rise for 30-40 minutes or until it has doubled in bulk.

Once it is rested, carefully tip out the dough onto a floured surface, stretch out into a square and cut out about 10 cm (3,93 inch) round shapes with a big glass (big cookie cutter also good). Stretch out each piece with your fingers into a rund shape with the centre being thinner than the edges. Let the pieces rest for another 30 minutes on the floured surface.

In a saucepan heat sunflower oil. Place lángos into the hot oil, fry it on one side until golden brown then turn. Repeat with the remaining lángos dough.

Serve while it’s hot. You can eat it simple or sprinkle with chopped garlic or douse with garlic water and top with grated cheese and sour cream.

Enjoy!

The famous Hungarian garlic from MakĂł…

Zucchini Cherry Tomato Ricotta Toast

by

This zucchini ricotta toast is really an easy to make summer dinner we ate one night at Lake Balaton. Lighting candles in the terrace, “listening the silence”, breathing in the fresh air and drinking a glass of white wine made the evening perfect.

We spent a relaxing-reading a lot of books-life without Internet-laying in the sun-swimming a lot in th lake week at the “Hungarian sea”. Lake Balaton is a freshwater lake in the Transdanubian region of Hungary. It is the largest lake in Central Europe. The mountainous region of the northern shore is known both for its historic character and as a major wine region, while the flat southern shore is known for its resort towns. If you’re in Hungary, don’t miss the Balaton experience!

I adapted the recipe from Sprouted Kitchen but I also added cherry tomatoes to the toast. Sara’s wonderful new book The Sprouted Kitchen – a tastier take on whole foods has been published. Watching her cookbook trailer makes me want to hold her book in my hands.

Hope my boyfriend, I. is reading this and getting the idea which cookbook(s) he should surprise me with for my birthday in October. 🙂

Zucchini Cherry Tomato Ricotta Toast

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 1 medium size zucchini, cubed
– 20 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
– 250 g ricotta
– 1 small red onion, chopped
– 2 teaspoon Dijon mustart
– 1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped
– 10 leaves fresh basil, chopped
– couple of slices whole wheat bread
– salt, pepper
– extra virgin olive oil

Method

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 180C (356F).

In a bowl mix together zucchini and cherry tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with two tablespoons of olive oil. Spread this mixture onto the parchment paper and roast until golden brown for about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile in another bowl mix together ricotta with chopped red onion, Dijon mustard and a bit of salt and pepper. Toast the bread slices, spread two tablespoons of ricotta mixture, pile roasted zucchini and cherry tomatoes on top and sprinkle with the fresh herbs (parsley and basil).

Enjoy!