Category: cooking

I received as a gift this book for Christmas and I was told his torta de laranja was very famous in Portugal. I have never cooked this cake before so for NYE dessert I changed my mind and decided to try this cake. I have tasted it in Portugal before, and to be honest it was never my favourite. I prefer the “algarroba” (carob), almonds, etc cakes. But, I wanted to see if all the hype was worth it.

One of the things that strike the most is how simple is the recipe in the book, few ingredients and steps. Still I didn’t feel confident and tried to find a video. This one was longer but made me doubt as it was using a bit of butter. As well, I wasn’t clear about how to do bain marie in the oven. This video was shorter and could see some other details regarding the bain marie (I was overthinking it) and spreading some sugar after taking out the cake from the oven.

Ingredients:

• 500g sugar
• 50g plain flour
• 15g dry yeast
• 2 big good oranges (zest and juice)
• 12 eggs
• Knob of melted butter

Process:

• Pre-heat oven at 220C
• Use a bit of butter and spread in the baking tray. This helps the baking paper to keep flat. Then add oven-proof baking paper. Spread a bit of butter on top of the baking paper. This avoids the cake to get stuck to the paper and it easier to remove after baking.
• Mix dry ingredients in a bowl: sugar, flour and yeast.
• Add orange zest and juice, mix
• Add the 12 eggs. Mix well.
• Add the rest of melted butter. Mix well.
• Poor the mix into a baking tray.
• In another tray, add water and get the tray in the bottom of the oven. This will make the bain marie.
• Put the cake tray above the water tray in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Till the top is golden.
• Remove the cake from the oven. Spread some sugar on top while hot.
• Get another piece of baking-proof paper. Turn the cake into that piece of paper.
• Remove carefully the paper from the cake.
• The cake is very hot, and in theory you should try to roll it now using the baking paper you have. Like in the videos, bend one side, and roll.
• Cut a slice from each side to make look nice. Then let it cool down.
• Enjoy!

Mine was a bit too long in the oven and cracked in the middle. And as well, when rolling, it was superhot and a bit too thick and broke it even more during the process.

As well, I have always heard that orange and chocolate mix very well. So as I had a bit of home made chocolate spread, I decided to cover half of the torta with it. Maybe this is heresy 😛

And to be honest, my friends like it!

It is a very calorific cake: 500g of sugar! But was nice. Another thing, I had issues with the oranges. I couldn’t find proper oranges so I used “good” orange pressed juice with one orange I brought from Portugal. Still tasted good.

Once a month I buy two big containers of olives: blacks (small) and greens (big). Just with stone. I found them with much more flavor that anything you buy without stone. It is like sunflower seeds… the ones you have to peel feel tastier!

Yesterday I noticed the green olives were getting moulds…. They were not the typical ones I buy, they had some kind of cut sideways… that makes the meat to be in contact with the air… and get spoiled much faster…. The black olives were fine. So I decided to clean the olives, remove the stones, put them in a container with water and next day cook something with them.

So I remember some kind of paste you could do with olives and that is tapenade. So I found this super quick recipe and gave it a go.

Ingredients

• 300gr olives without stone
• 1/2 lemon juice (or less)
• 1/2 glass olive oil ( or less)
• 4-5 garlic cloves
• bunch of fresh basil leaves
• 4-5 slices of sundried tomatoes.

Process

• In a blender, add all ingredients and blitz for a couple of seconds and give it a test. more lemon? more olive oil?
• Transfer to a clean crystal jar and keep in the fridge.

In my case, I made a mistake of putting too much lemon (full lemon juice) and I had to add more olive oil and olives to compensate. Will learn for the next time. I hope It last for a bit in the fridge. It will be very nice with a toast…

I am allergic to fish. But I love tuna… if comes from a can. When I was in Madrid, I tried homemade marinade tuna a.k.a “atun en escabeche”. It was amazing. So I decided to try myself (and hope to not end in a hospital like when I was a kid)

So searching I decided to try this recipe. I was planning to make a big batch like in the video but when I managed to find a fishmonger with fresh tuna… I was amazed how expensive it was. I only could get the leftovers, a 600gr slice, already cleaned. That gave me at the end for one 600ml jar (plus a small one for the confited onions)

Ingredients:

• 600gr fresh tuna, cleaned.
• 2 onios sliced
• 2 glasses of mild olive oil
• 1 glass of vinegar
• 2 cloves
• 3 bay leaves
• 5gr salt
• pepper
• several cloves of garlic

Process:

• In a high pan, put the sliced onions in the bottom, then garlic, bay leaves, cloves, pepper.
• Then add the tuna and salt on top of it. Then add the olive oil and vinegar
• Heat the pan until boil. Then lower to mid heat and leave it for 20 minutes.
• Let it cool down. Then take the tuna out and leave in another tray.
• Filter the liquid and keep the onions. We will add it into another jar.
• In a crystal jar (that has been previously cleaned with boiling water) put the tuna. Try to fill it as much as you can. Leaving as few air pockets as possible.
• Then add the liquid you filtered before. Fill the jar till the top.
• Add the onions to another jar and add the liquid to the top.
• Let the jars open, and leave it overnight.
• Next day, close the jar with their lids.
• Put the jars (vertical if you can) in a high pan. Fill with water, hopefully water will be one finger than the jars, if not, you will have to be sure the jars are properly closed and then put in horizontal.
• Boil the water, then let it simmer at mid heat for 1h 30m or so. This is the critical step to allow the tuna last for months.
• Let the jars to cold down in the water.
• Label the jars with a label with the date of preparation. You can eat the tuna in three months!!

So I will have to wait for a bit until I try it. So very likely I will make another batch next month.

I dont really like Christmas but the few things I enjoy it is the typical sweets like turrón. It is something I wanted to try for some time so watching a video I decided to try one of them, turrón blando, based on this video.

The thing I like from turron, it is a simple recipe and super tasty. It is very common for Christmas but I have seen posh version of turrón that I think kill the idea of it.

Ingredients:

• 300gr ground almonds
• 200gr honey
• 100gr sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 lemon zest

Process:

• In a frying pan, heat up the honey and sugar.
• whisk the egg white to stiff peaks
• Add the lemon zest the sugar/honey mix.
• Once the honey mix is boiling, remove from the heat and add the egg whites bit a bit. Mix until no lumps. Do this at low heat. The more time you spend mixing with heat, the harder will get the turron.
• Then add the cinnamon and the almonds bit a bit until all combined.
• Add the mix to a container and let it cool down at room temperature.

To be honest, the result from the first video looked more like the real thing. My result is still tasty but looks more like a fudge that the typical turrón blando. So I will try the first video recipe next time.

But the thing that most surprised from the video I followed is, it has been the easiest time I had done stiff peaks with egg whites. By hand. Normally, it is hard work, I got tired and sweaty but I was surprised how easy he did it in the video. I follow the same process. Egg at room temperature, use a crystal bowl (plus a bit of salt) and then use the whisker left to right. No circles. I was shocked how fast it was.

And as well, I have never done mazapán, but it is something I want to try at some point too. It looks even easier than turrón.

When I was a kid, around this time of the year (December), I used to go with my mother to the bakery (horno) of her hometown to make magdalenas and biscuits that we brought back to Madrid.

I have tried to make magdalenas at home several times but never got near the ones from my hometown. So this year, I added into my to-do list “go back to the bakery and see the process again”.

And finally, I decided to contact a fried who his mother used to manage the bakery and he told me that it was fine, I could go! So I was super happy!.

So it was very nice to go back, I had flash backs getting my hands dirty and doing something naughty as a kid… And the smell…. oh god, unique!

It was impressive, the process was the same, the same ingredients. And the same core people working there after 30y.

Women were the master bakers. At least two generations working there. And housewives. And it is a hard job. You have to wake up very early, bread making starts at 4am… But I think it is a joyful job. Or it is just me being romantic/naive.

The typical sweets from my hometown are magdalenas, galletas, rosquillos, tortas, calandrajos, mantecados, etc. All ingredients are simple, nothing fancy. The taste is amazing.

I made some notes about the different sweets and tried not to annoy the people working there. At the end I gave a hand packing the sweets and I liked it.

As well, I could taste the sweets… warm… after being baked…. no words…

So I left the bakery very happy. It was totally worth it, the trip, wake up early, etc. And decided to give it another go to the magdalenas and other sweets.

I dont have the recipes from the bakery, as I didnt feel comfortable asking. Sweets and girls, some thing 😛

I hope my friend’s cousin who runs the bakery gives me some guidelines.

So for the magdalenas.

Ingredients for 16 magdalenas aprox:

• 3 eggs
• 190g sugar
• 125ml whole milk (you could use orange juice too)
• 125 ml virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon zest
• 200gr (cake) flour
• 7gr bicarbonate of soda

Process:

• Pre-heat oven at 175C
• Mix eggs and sugar very well with a whisk. You want to introduce air bubbles! (I used a hand blender with a whisk attachment)
• Add milk, olive oil and lemon zest. Keep mixing.
• Add bicarbonate, shifted. Keep mixing.
• Add flour, shifted.
• Be sure everything is mixed. Leave it rest 10-15 minutes.
• In the main time, pre-heat the oven at 220C
• Fill the magdalenas cups in a baking tray.
• Bake for 35 minutes or until golden on top.
• Spray some water in the oven to create steam
• Let it cool down.

In summary the process is not difficult. But, again, I dont have similar results.

After baking:

And this is the real deal 🙂

So obviously, still far from the good ones.

Things I think I need to change:

• Cake flour?
• Tartaric acid and soda like this.
• The good ones look like a bit more “oily” than mine. Add a bit more oil?
• No idea how to make them raise as the good ones

They taste good though.

I will try again!

BTW, these are tortas! I must try them too!

When I visit Madrid, I try to buy fried almonds as it reminds me of a common “tapa” you had many years ago in most bars in Spain. Nowadays, it is kind of a luxury.

So checking a book of Spanish tapas at home, I found a recipe for salty almonds. I noticed they are not fried… but still went ahead.

Ingredients:

• 300g of whole almonds (with or without skin)
• 100ml water
• 1 tsp of sea salt

Process

• Grill for 5-10 minutes the almonds in the oven. Just be sure they got toasted a bit.
• Heat up a frying pan, add the almonds. Toast just a bit.
• Add the salt to the water and mix.
• Add the salty water to the hot frying pan. Keep stirring. The water should evaporate quickly and leave a salty coating in the almonds.
• Once the pan is dried. Remove from the heat. Leave the almonds to cool down and store in a jar. Enjoy!

For next batch, I need to find the recipe of fried almonds (that are salty too)

Sometimes I buy from the supermarket oatcakes for having snacks at home. I like them because they are not sweet and I think they are “healthy”. But then you check the ingredients list and realized that there are things you wouldnt think…

Anyway, I decided to give it a go and searched for some recipes. I decided for this recipe as it showed some pictures although I used just oats and plenty more water than a couple of tablespoons 🙂

Ingredients:

• 200gr oats
• 25g butter melted
• 1tsp salt
• 100-200ml boiling water

Process:

• Preheat oven at 175C
• In a bowl, mix the oats and butter.
• Then add a couple of tsp of hot water at each time until you can form a ball. Knead inside the ball. It doesnt have to be sticky! so dont put too much water.
• In a work surface, sprinkle a bit of flour and in a rolling pin. Carefully flat the dough with the pin. I tried to reach 0.5 thickness. The sides will crack but dont worry.
• Use a cookie cutter. I used 8.5cm diameter cutter. Quite big cookie but I liked that way. Likely you will be able to cut one or two cookies at each time. Make a ball again with the leftovers, add water if needed, and repeat the process. Flat with the pin, cut a cookie, recover the leftovers.
• I put a big of sunflower oil in the try, then move the cookies.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes. Turn them at least once if you can.

And this is the result!

To be honest, the taste was stronger than the supermarket ones. It tastes (obviously) a lot to oats!

I thought 200g of oats would make a lot of oatcakes but just managed 5 big ones and 2 small pieces.

Happy with the result, and glad to learn something new!

I have tried this pie… twice.. and failed miserably… twice.

This is the typical random video I watch and then I add it to my to-cook list.

Somehow I went for this version as I didnt want to use condensed milk as I thought it was going to be too sweet. I didnt do any meringue or used macha tea.

My first attempt was bad for a couple of reasons. The coconut milk I used was “light” (low in fat) and at the end, the cake tasted like acid (due to the lime) water. And second, I didnt put enough biscuits for the base. And the biscuits were ginger nuts so I added extra spiciness to the taste 🙂

I decided to give it a new go, using full fat coconut milk and plenty of (ginger) nuts. To be honest, it still tastes a bit bland. Shall I add more limes (but will add more acidity?), shall I add more sugar (too sweet then)? Not sure.

I think, I will try the “classic” version next time, with homemade condensed milk.

I tried some time ago Baba Ghanoush while having lunch with friends and I liked, it was a nobility for me as I could try something else apart from Humus. So sometimes I have mixed grilled aubergines with chickpeas and it produces a bit smoky (and darker) humus. But two weeks ago, I tried again from a different place and I was really shocked, it was so different, so tangy. I decided to find a good recipe and try at home. So I found this video:

Ingredients:

• 2 Aubergines (roasted)
• 1 tsp chopped or grated garlic
• 4-5 tbsp of Tahini
• 1/2 Lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp Yogurt
• Olive oil
• Pomegranate (optional)

Process:

• Two ways for roasting the aubergines. One, stab the aubergines with a knife and wrap in foil. Bake in oven for 40m at 175C. Second, halve the aubergines, spread a bit of oil and bake in oven for 40m at 175C, but check they dont burn! I did the second method but I will try the first one too.
• Take the aubergines from the oven, scoop the meat and with a knife, chop it as much as you can. I think this is very important. I didnt you the food processor at all.
• Then put the chopped/grilled aubergines in a bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix well.
• You can server as it is or add a bit of pomegranate seeds and olive oil. I only added olive oil

When I tried, I was impressed, it was like the one I tried! I guess the yogurt and lemon are key! Congrats to the chef in the video!

Very easy recipe and super tasty!!!