snack

Chargrilled Sweet Pepper And Walnut Dip + The Jewelled Kitchen Cookbook

July 13, 2013 by Zizi

I remember the first time when I met Bethany (the girl behind Dirty Kitchen Secrets). I arrived to London on a greyish August day in 2011 and I was going to meet Sarka and Giulia for the first time at Sydenham station. The girls were waiting for me and after giving big hugs to each other for the first time, we walked back to Sarka’s place. There she was Beth with her sister, Joslin. Beth was smiling, talking a lot and I found her funny and crazy at the same time. Her liveliness and personality is what makes an impression in you. During the next couple of days at Food Blogger Connect I got to know her a bit better. She was friendly, caring and helpful (and she still is! :)) and we had so many memorable moments along with the other food bloggers that weekend.

She told me then that she was going to write a cookbook about Middle Eastern cuisine. She put so much work and effort in it and finally her book, The Jewelled Kitchen was out in bookstores in Europe and Australia on 4th July (Middle East 11 July, USA 1 October). I was so happy and honoured to be asked by Beth to take part in her virtual cookbook launch. The book is published by Duncan Baird Publishers, photographed by another dear friend, Sarka Babicka. Food styling was done by Emily Jonzen, prop styling by Lucy Harvey. All in all The Jewelled Kitchen is a wonderful, beautiful and great book. “It takes you on an unforgettable adventure of Middle Eastern and North African cuisines. We are all familiar with a few mezze favourites – hummus, falafel, tabbouleh and stuffed vine leaves – but Bethany offers up a whole host of other treasures.”

As a vegetarian I found the book very useful to get to know the vegetarian Middle Eastern cuisine more. There is a whole chapter for vegetarian meals and we shouldn’t forget the delicious mezzes and desserts. There are many recipes in the cookbook I would like to try in the next few months.

I picked this chargrilled sweet pepper and walnut dip recipe from Beth’s book. As Beth says: “…This recipe is traditionally made using sun-dried Aleppo peppers, finely chopped to a coarse paste. These peppers, which hail from Syria and neighbouring Turkey, have a high oil content and a hind of earthy smokiness in their flavour. … It’s lovely as a dip, spread on flatbreads, mixed into hearty stews, or tossed with pasta or potatoes.” I used red kapia peppers to make it.

Chargrilled Sweet Pepper And Walnut Dip

Ingredients (serves 4)

– 500 g roasted sweet pointed peppers
– 75 g walnut halves, roughly chopped
– 55 g fine breadcrumbs
– 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
– 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
– 1/2 teaspoon paprika
– 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
– 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes (optional)
– 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
– finely chopped mint leaves, to sprinkle
– sea salt
– warm Arabic bread, to serve

Method

Slice off the tops of the roasted peppers, discarding any seeds. Chope the flesh finely and put it in a mixing bowl.

Add the walnuts, breadcrumbs, pomegranate molasses, cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, Aleppo pepper flakes (if using) and oil. Season to taste with salt. Mix well, then set aside for about one hour to allow the flavours to develop.

Put ingredients in a serving dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with mint. Serve at room temperature with warm Arabic bread.

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More recipes from Bethany’s cookbook from fellow food bloggers:

Chickpea flour quiche from Giulia
Slow-braised stuffed squid from Emiko
Eggs poached in tomato and pepper stew from Sarka
Moroccan carrot salad from Karin
Stuffed caramelized onions with tamarind and allspice from Sarah
Lamb rice with cripsy potato base from Sally
Date fudge from Regula

Coconut Date Energy Balls

December 29, 2012 by Zizi

First I made these cute energy balls for a hiking trips in October. These little bites were a yum trail snack, everybody loved them. They are great energy boosters and easy to store (in a box). Energy foods are engineered to enhance each stage of a workout or outdoor excursion and these coconut date energy bites are great for it.

Because of its success I decided to make them for Christmas as an edible gift. These balls are the healthy option to snack on something. I made two very similar truffles a couple of years ago, don’t forget to check them out to get more inspiration.

Coconut Date Energy Balls
(Recipe inspiration: Daily Garnish)

Ingredients (makes about 36 pieces)

– 1 cup rolled oats
– 1 cup desiccated coconut + extra for coating
– 1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
– 1/4 cup water
– 12 dates, pitted, chopped
– 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
– 1 vanilla bean, split and seeded
– 1 orange’s zest
– pinch of salt

Method

Add rolled oats, desiccated coconut and toasted pumpkin seeds to a food processor and let it spin. Add dates, vanilla, cinnamon, orange zest and salt, then let it process for 2-3 minutes. Slowly start adding the water until the mixture becomes a bit sticky and wet.

Form little balls with your hands and roll them in desiccated coconut. Eat them straight or keep them in a box in cool place.

Túrós Pogácsa – Cottage Cheese Scones

November 21, 2012 by Zizi

Pogácsa is a type of savory scone in Hungarian cuisine. Pogácsa is made from either short dough or yeast dough. As with scones and biscuits, eggs and butter are common ingredients, as is milk, cream or sour cream. Many traditional versions exists, with size, shape – the most common is round – and flavor variations in each region.

A dozen different ingredients can be found either in the dough, sprinkled on top before baking, or both: medium-firm fresh cheeses, aged dry hard cheeses, potato, pork crackling (tepertő), cabbage, black pepper, hot or sweet paprika, garlic, red onion, caraway seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds or poppy seeds. Pogácsa is a very popular savoury snack, it also can be eaten for breakfast. It is best to eat warm, fresh from the oven.

I learnt this recipe from my mom. When we baked it together we used Hungarian túró (cottage cheese/quark) but as an alternative you can use dry curd cottage cheese. By the way, they are dangerous! Why? My friend, Giulia put it the right way: “Is it impossibile to stop eating them when you start, right?” Yes, Giulia, you are right! :)To get my recipe visit The Hungarian Girl’s website here.

Lángos, The Hungarian Street Food

August 23, 2012 by Zizi

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 Makó…

Strawberry Leather Or The Healthy Version Of Gummy Candy

May 31, 2012 by Zizi

This is going to be a very red post, full of strawberries. Strawberry leather… have you heard about it before? This is actually fruit leather and you can make it from juicy apricot or peach (I will definitely try from these stone fruits too!). This leather thing is exciting not only for children, for adults too. It’s very easy to make but it takes a few hours. Anyway, you will be amazed with the result so don’t miss it!

Last year I found a couple of fruit leather recipes online but somehow I’ve never made them. This year when the Hungarian strawberry season started I was the first one at the market to buy a batch and try to make these yum gummy candies.

Why should we make our gummy candies? The traditional gummy candy (bear) is made from a mixture of sugar (a lot!!!), glucose syrup, starch, flavouring, food colouring, preservative, citric acid, and gelatin (derived from the collagen mainly inside pig skin (hide) and cattle bones!!!). I think that’s enough reason to convince myself to make my homemade version as healthy as possible. We can say that gummy candy is only a plastic chemical product. Remember this next time when you stand at the cash desk and all the colourful candies will tempt you to buy them.

Raw food diet followers make fruit leather in food dehydratator. I don’t own one so I baked my version in the oven at the lowest temperature. Ingredients are only strawberry, honey and vanilla. Do you also think it’s a healthy gummy candy?

Strawberry Leather

Ingredients

– 5 cups strawberry (about 600-700 g)
– 3 tablespoons honey (you can use maple syrup or rice syrup too)
– 1 vanilla bean, split and seeded

Method

Hull and half the washed strawberries. Place them in a pan and cook on low heat for about 12-15 minutes. Turn off the heat, add honey and vanilla. Pureé it with a hand blender. Pour the strawberry mixture on to a baking sheet (38*35 cm / 14,96*13,77 inch) covered with parchment paper.

Put in the oven and bake (dry) at 50C (122F) – this is my lowest temperature in my oven – for about 6-8 hours. Leave the oven door a bit open to let the moist out.

First time when I took the sheet out of the oven the leather was very firm so I put it back in the oven and I let it cool there. The next morning the leather was softer and it was easy to peel off from the parchment paper. Use a scissor to cut stripes and roll them up.

Strawberry leather on baking sheet…