Apple and Chestnut Cake

Since I had a lot of studying to do, I thought I'd bake a cake instead. Following past baking disasters, I think I've almost reached a state of bakery enlightenment...as the great philosophers say, "You bake, you learn". This is a wonderful autumn recipe (I'm only saying this because it's autumn now....but I'm sure I'll bake it in the other seasons as well).

Ingredients

- 100g wholemeal spelt flour

- 100g Maizena (maize/corn starch)

- 50g Chestnut flour

- 100g brown sugar

- a teaspoon of Cremor Tartar (or yeast equilivalent)

- 100g raisins

- 50g chopped walnuts

- 1 apple, peeled and cut into small pieces

- cinnamon and nutmeg (to your heart's desire)

- 3 tablespoons of maize/corn oil (or olive oil)

- roughly 230 ml water

Procedure

Preheat oven to 180C. Mix together all the dry ingredients, and then add the oil and water. Mix....the mixture should be runny enough to just be poured into the baking tray. Remember to grease the baking tray before-hand.

Bake for 50min-1hour without opening the oven, then check with a knife if the inside is cooked. Cooking times always vary, depending on the oven, how big your baking tray is...follow your instinct, listen to the voice inside your head. It's the baking angel talking.

If it is cooked, turn the oven off, leave the cake to rest for 10 minutes, and then pull it out to cool on a baking tray (take it out of the tray or it will "sweat" all the steam out and remain soggy on the bottom!).

Once cooled, have a taste, and if it's friends-worthy have a tea party!

Green Soup

I've been asked to post some soup recipes, so let's start with an extremely simple and quick recipe. This soup is good if you want to have a very light meal, or if you want to accompany a more important meal with some soup. It's heating...and it's green!

Ingredients (for 2):

- olive oil
- fresh ginger
- 2 big courgettes/zucchini
- half a leak
- a bunch of turnip leaves
- salt to taste
- water

Equipment:
- a hand-held food blender

Heat some olive oil in a pot and add the leek to stir fry. Then add the chopped courgettes and the washed turnip leaves. You can leave it all in big chunks. Add the water, pinch of salt, and ginger (which you will have cut into smaller bits - the amount of ginger is up to you, I like to put quite a bit in because I love the taste and it is especially good in winter for building up the immune system. It also has very heating qualities). Bring to the boil, and when the courgettes are soft (after about 10-15 min), turn the flame off and blend it.

Told you it was easy! If you really want to show off you can toast some sunflower seeds and sprinkle them on top.

Simple Biscuits

These biscuits really are simple to make. I can give you rough guidelines as to quantities...as usual I just estimate the amounts, hoping it turns out.

Ingredients:

- 100 g of jaggery gour (this is the unrefined sugar that you will find in Indian shops or International Supermarkets). If you can't find it you could try replacing it with dark sugar or maybe Maple Syrup (remember that honey goes toxic when heated, and I've also heard some controversial stories about Agave....)

- 50 g of small oat flakes

- spelt flour: I didn't use much at all, and I guess it can pretty much be replaced with plain flour as well.

- olive oil

- a handful of raisins

- a teaspoon of ginger powder

- a teaspoon of cinnamon powder

- some tepid water

Preheat oven to 180 degress Celsius.

In a pot, place some olive oil and then add the oat flakes and jaggery gour. Keep stirring to get the gour to melt (it usually comes in hard balls). Add some water if necessary, and keep mixing so that it doesn't burn. Once it has all melted and mixed with the oats, place in a bowl and start adding a bit of flour.....sorry! I really don't know how much I used, but not much at all! Probably half a cup. Add some more olive oil and a little bit of water. Mix it all with a wooden spoon until it's a nice ball. You should be able to pick the "dough" up in your hand without it sticking to your fingers.

Make little balls and flatten them between your hands to get biscuit shaped shapes....and then place in the oven. They take roughtly half an hour to cook, just keep an eye on them, and when they look golden brown pull them out of the oven to cool.

I just tasted one and they're lovely because they're not too sweet at all.

I'm not a builder, but....

We've been doing work in the house....well, we've paid someone to do work in the house, i.e. paint walls, build cupboards, drill things into the walls.

There's one little project, however, which I started working on yesterday evening, and am slowly moving ahead with it -- and I would like to share it with you for this reason:

If you have a set of stairs (of similar structure to mine) that you would like to personalise, OR you need to cover the steps but are reluctant to paying out loads of money for materials and for someone to do the work for you, then here's the solution. And this is obviously just one of the many options, but it gives you the right idea of how it can be done. As I said in the title, I am not a builder....this should be an encouragement to all!

Ingredients:

- white cement

- glass pebbles, stones, mosaic pieces...whatever tickles your fancy!

As you can see in the photo I've done alternate steps for now, but the effect is very pretty, and much nicer than the ugly lynoleum. I'm waiting for these steps to dry to then do the rest of the steps.

Again, I am not at all experienced with cement or any such material, so it really is a fluke that they've turned out like this. If you're an expert, you won't need me to tell you (as I have learned) that the consistency needs to be smooth, but not too runny. If it's too watery then you'll get little bubbles in the cement, even when it dries, and this makes it less compact....mmm....I have one "bad step"....we'll see what happens.

I'll be back with some recipes shortly! Autumn is a great season, and some of my favorite vegetables are coming soon!

...I'm back!....

It's been a long summer of silence....a summer that has extended into a very warm and sunny September.
There have been some sad goodbyes this summer: the Stevia plants, which were growing at an amazing speed, didn't survive the summer heat (or was it maybe my absence?), and have returned to Stevia heaven. My gorgeous chilli plant, which had given its first fruit at the beginning of the summer, is now no more than a long-lost memory.
My two basil plants, amorously sharing a single vase, are alive and well...but no longer with me! They are three floors up, at a lady's house - she kindly agreed to look after some of the herbs while I was away, and has now indirectly made us understand that we won't be getting them back.
On a more positive note, we do have some new additions: loads of origano, a gorgeously chirpy mint plant, another positively sturdy rosemary, and Jasmine (without "the" in front, as it's her name) being quite the show-off and stretching her bright green branches to distant corners of the terrace. Definitely the princess of the castle.

Other summer news is that I've become very good at badly playing the guitar, and that I'm joining belly dancing classes, which I would suggest to all (women), young and not-so-young. If you need to strengthen your back and increase mobility in your hips, then I'd say belly dancing is perfect....with Yoga of course ;)

I'll be back on soon with some new recipes! In the mean time, keep smiling!

Vegetable "Lasagna"

This very simple dish manifested on the evening of my mother's birthday: I made another more elaborate "lasagna" for the rest of us, but since my mother is intollerant to almost everything I had to think of something "mummy-friendly".

Ingredients:

- aubergine (eggplant)

- potatoes

- rocket

- salt (I used herb salt)

- paprika

- origano

- olive oil

Quantities obviously depend on how many people you are preparing it for. I have made this dish twice, the first time was very thin, the second I added an extra layer of potatoes, and I must say it's better in the thinner version (more delicate). If you do want to add extra layers, I would suggest using the aubergine....or cutting the potato very very finely!

Preparation:

Prepare the aubergine and potatoes into thin slices, and chop up the rocket leaves (if you don't have rocket, red lettuce will do the trick wonderfully! I can't think of the name now...in italian it's "radicchio"). Turn the oven on: 180C.

Before starting the layering, grease the oven dish with some olive oil. Place the layer of potatoes, then sprinkle some herbal salt, paprika, and origano leaves (dried or fresh), and another drizzle of olive oil. Place the rocket leaves (put loads on! Don't worry, even if they look a lot, they will lose all their water and shrivel down to almost nothing!), and then the layer of aubergine (you can overlap the aubergines as they cook quickly...I put a couple of layers as the last layer), and sprinkle some olive oil, paprika and salt.

Place in the oven until cooked....mmm....30 minutes? 40 minutes? You can tell.....check that the potatoes are cooked.

The photo I put is of the second time I prepared it, when it was a bit thicker. The first time round I actually turned the whole dish over, so that the potatoes were on top....looked good.

It's a really simple dish to prepare and the good thing is that you don't need to cook the vegetables before-hand. An extra note: I used the light colored aubergine in this dish, the round type. They're much better as they seem to remain more intact and more delicate than the darker longer type. You could also try adding zucchini (courgettes) to the dish....they would go really well! They'd be extra delicious if you grilled them first, which would make the whole preparation a bit longer....but if you have the time and heart to do it, then why not!

I will put the recipe for the other more elaborate version shortly....it's delicious!!!

Teeth and No Tears

I was sitting in a park yesterday elegantly enjoying my ice-cream, when I bit upon an especially crunchy piece of....piece of what? Was it a cone? Was it a hazelnut? NO! It was my tooth! Shiver quiver....I get chills down my spine at the mere thought of it! It wasn't my real tooth, but that famous piece of resin that acted as a replacement tooth after my fall in Ecuador (see the Teeth and Tears post for the full story).
This time I didn't shed a tear, nor did I experience any sort of emotion. I was actually on my way to the cinema and just thought I'd go to the movies and think about my half-tooth later on. I even took a photo of myself, mainly for the thrill I will get in seing my sister's look of horror when I show it to her.
My aunt had the good sense to tell me to call the dentist, who only had a free appointment next week OR within 15 minutes....so we jump into a taxi and rush off to the dentist! (missed out on the movie). One hour later I walked out with a "new" tooth, much better than the last job he'd done at sticking on my Ecuadorian piece of tooth (because I threw that one in the bin...I hope! I have a slight doubt I may have swallowed it). Point is I didn't bother looking for it...it's time was most definitely up.

Anyway, various things happened at the dentist, mainly regarding realisations about today's society: the main conclusion is that we have to become "everything-ologists". Let me explain: it's as though people do the bear minimum, minimum effort for (let's be truthful) extremely mediocre results. If, for example, you happen to break a tooth (and this is just an example), and your dentists works away at it for an hour and then asks you to look at it, do not think you're wrong in seing that he has done a very mediocre job, and DO direct him in his craft.
If, for example, you happen to break a tooth (and this is just an example), and you notice a little porosity where he (or she) has just been working, don't hesitate to ask him what (on earth!) it is....he may just fix it!...and in the end feel really happy about the job he's done. Well, good for him.

I hope you've managed to read between the lines.

As my philosophy teacher in India used to say, modern-day society produces INSTRUMENTS: a million knives, a million forks, a million torches, a million lawyers, etcetera, etcetera....A lawyer is no grander in scope than a knife is at doing its job. So if and when we choose to put ourselves in the hands of instruments, I wouldn't do it with the blind faith and surrender that our grandparents may have had. An instrument must be put to good use. We must somehow become "everything-ologists", and develop at least a questioning power - not to become doubtful and overquestioning cynical meanies, but to have the awareness that instruments will, if allowed, do the bear minimum.