Category: all year

Coronation Quiche

6 May 2023

The coronation of King Charles is a wonderful combination of tradition, religion and mystery, a ceremony loved by many, for its pageantry, the celebrations, the concerts and of course the coronation food. Just think about a lovely Victorian Sponge Cake with raspberry jam and buttercream or a Coronation Chicken (Poulet Reine Elizabeth) with carrots, green peas, rice and a creamy curry sauce.

King Charles’s coronation quiche is supposed to somehow reflect his vision regarding the monarchy and its role in modern society. The quiche is tasty, healthy, nutritious, not expensive and relatively easy to make. Plus, when you replace the lard in the original recipe with butter (as we do), then it’s a nice vegetarian dish. Great to share with friends.

The quiche combines spinach with broad beans, tarragon and cheddar cheese. We suggest baking it one day ahead and serving it at room temperature.

We read the recipe, watched a few videos (this one is good fun, it also shows how to make a Victorian Sponge cake) and decided to prepare a Coronation Quiche, topped with a Crown!

What You Need (for a 15 cm tin)

  • For the Pastry
    • 125 grams All Purpose Flour
    • Pinch of Salt
    • 50 grams Cold Butter
    • 2 tablespoons Water
  • For the Filling
    • 200 ml Double Cream
    • 2 Eggs
    • 1 tablespoon chopped Fresh Tarragon
    • 100 grams grated Cheddar Cheese
    • 400 grams fresh Spinach
    • 450 grams fresh Broad Beans (or Fava Beans)

What You Do

Start by making the shortcrust pastry. Dice the butter. Sieve the flour, add a pinch of salt and combine. Add the butter and mix using your fingertips until is has a crumble-like texture. Add the water and turn the mixture into a dough. Cover and allow to rest in the refrigerator for one hour.

Now it’s time to prepare the vegetables. Wash and cook the spinach. Let cool. Drain and squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Chop finely. Remove the beans from the shell. Cook for 2 minutes. Let cool and double pod.
Flour your work surface and roll out the pastry to a circle a little larger than the top of the form. The dough should be approximately 4 mm thick. Coat the form with butter. Line the form with the pastry. Use a knife to remove the excess dough. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 190 °C or 375 °F. Use a fork to make small holes in the pastry. Line the pastry with greaseproof paper, add baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and the baking beans. If you think the pastry is a bit wet, then transfer back to the oven for 2 or 3 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 160 °C or 320 °F.
Beat the eggs and keep some of the egg apart. You need it later to give some extra colour to the crown. Beat together cream, eggs, herbs and fresh black pepper. Scatter half of the grated cheese in the blind-baked base, top with the chopped spinach and then the beans, and finally pour over the mixture with cream, eggs, herbs and pepper. Finish by sprinkling the remaining cheese.

Use the remainder of the dough to make a crown. Coat with the egg mixture. You could apply an extra coating halfway the baking process.

Place the quiche and the crown into the oven and bake for 30 – 35 minutes until set and lightly golden. The crown is ready after some 10 – 15 minutes.

Coronation Quiche ©cadwu
Coronation Quiche slice ©cadwu

Pita Bread

1 May 2023

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of reviewing the Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, as part of the cookbook review initiated by Bernadette. Every month a group of chefs and cooks reviews a book by preparing recipes. Great initiative, one to follow.

The Moosewood Cookbook is an inspiring vegetarian cookbook with lots of recipes for tasty and flavourful snacks and dishes. We prepared three anti pasti from it and served these with sesame crackers and pita bread. When testing the recipes we used pita bread from the supermarket, only to find out how bland and tasteless it was. Obviously we needed to bake our own pita bread, which is a surprisingly simple thing to do.

What You Need

  • 150 grams All Purpose Flower
  • 50 grams Whole Grain Flower
  • 3 grams Salt
  • 3 grams Dry Yeast
  • 120 ml lukewarm Water 
  • 1 teaspoon Ras el Hanout

What You Do

Mix flower, salt, Ras el Hanout and yeast. Add the water and knead for 15 minutes. Cover the bowl and leave for one hour on a warm spot. Preheat your oven to 240 °C or 465 °F. The baking tray should already be in the oven. Divide the dough in 6 balls. Dust your kitchen surface with flower and flatten the balls until they are 0,3 cm thick. Put the flattened balls on the very hot baking tray and bake for 7 minutes. Transfer the pita breads from the oven and let cool on a wire rack. Don’t forget to see what happens in the oven, it’s so much fun to watch the pita’s being baked!

Pita Bread ©cadwu
Pita Bread ©cadwu

Royal Orange and Almond Cake

27 April 2023

April 27th we celebrate the birthday of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands. Hip hip hooray!
The Dutch royal family is also known as ‘de Oranjes’, which is reflected in the use of the colour orange when referring to Dutch royalty. Actually, there is no link between the royal family and the colour. The ‘Oranje’ in the name refers to the French city of Orange, a Principality one of his ancestors inherited in 1544.

Nevertheless, over the years we prepared Orange Sabayon, Queen’s Soup, Bouchée à la Reine, Orange Flan and Canard à l’Orange on this day. What better way to celebrate a birthday than by baking a cake, a flavourful, moist Orange and Almond cake?

What You Need

  • One large Orange
  • 3 Eggs
  • 100 grams Fine Caster Sugar
  • 125 grams of Almond Flour
  • 3 grams of Baking Powder

What You Do

  1. Wash the orange and cook it (meaning the whole orange) for 2 hours in some water
  2. Let cool
  3. Preheat the oven to 170 °C or 340 °F.
  4. Coarsely cut the orange, remove the pits and blender the orange until you have a marmalade-like consistency
  5. Add the baking powder to the almond flour and mix
  6. Beat the eggs and the sugar until light and airy. This may take 5 minutes
  7. Add the blended orange and mix gently
  8. Add the almond flour and the baking powder and mix
  9. Coat a baking spring form (18 cm or 7 inch) with butter, add the mixture and transfer to the oven for 40-45 minutes.
  10. The cake will rise only a little during the baking process.
  11. When ready, leave the cake to cool in the tin.
Orange and Almond Cake ©cadwu
Orange and Almond Cake ©cadwu

John Dory or Saint-Pierre

20 April 2023

Not the prettiest of fish, but according to some the most delicious. Its meat is delicate, moist, dense, melt-in-your-mouth, a touch sweet and flavourful. It is one of the ingredients of a traditional Bouillabaisse.
The head of a John Dory (Saint-Pierre, San Martiño) is relatively large. Saint-Pierre is a fairly expensive fish and knowing that you will discard a significant part of it makes the Saint-Pierre even more expensive.

The shape of a Saint-Pierre could give you the impression that it’s a flat fish, but actually it’s a round fish. You will also notice that the spines on its fins look rather nasty. These two aspects make filleting a Saint-Pierre difficult. Our fish monger offered to do this for us, which we happily accepted.

Given the price (we paid €125,00 per kilo fillet) you don’t want to make mistakes when preparing it. Fortunately frying Saint-Pierre only requires a bit of patience and attention (it’s easily overcooked). 

We enjoyed our Saint-Pierre as a main course with a rich mushroom-based sauce and slow cooked fennel.

Wine Pairing

A delicious Saint-Pierre requires an equally delicious wine. We opened a bottle of Louis Jadot – Bourgogne Couvent des Jacobins – Chardonnay. The wine has fruitiness and freshness as well as structure. It has aged for some 8 months in oak barrels, giving the wine more roundness. A perfect combination with the fish, the rich sauce and the soft anise flavours of both the fennel and the chervil.
Maison Louis Jadot, producteur et négociant, based in Beaune, France, produces various quality wines from the Burgundy region and exports these to several countries including the UK and the USA.

What You Need
  • For the Fish
    • One Fillet (preferably without the skin)
    • Butter
    • Olive Oil
  • For the Sauce
    • Champignons de Paris
    • Butter
    • Cream
  • For the Slow Cooked Fennel
    • Fennel
    • Olive Oil
  • Chervil
  • Black Pepper
What You Do
  1. Remove the outer leave(s) of the Fennel, slice top down in 4 or 8, making sure the fennel doesn’t fall apart
  2. Warm a pan, add some olive oil and cook on very low heat for some 6 hours. 8 is also fine
  3. Turn halfway to make sure both sides are caramelised
  4. In parallel, do some shopping, read the papers, watch your favourite series on Netflix and be patient.
  5. A John Dory fillet is really special, without any trouble you can divide it into three parts. One small, the other two perfect
  6. Heat a small skillet, add some butter and fry the quartered mushrooms until golden
  7. Reduce the heat, add cream and heat through and through
  8. Heat a bigger skillet, add some olive oil and butter, gently fry the fillets until brown and nearly done
  9. Transfer to the oven at 50 °C or 120 °F
  10. Fill a glass with water, add the creamy mushroom mixture to the pan and immediately add some water
  11. The sauce will thicken quickly so you need your glass of water on standby
  12. Add some black pepper and lots of chervil leaves. Mix. Happy with the sauce?
  13. Now it’s time to plate up. Some sauce, the John Dory on top, the quartered fennel, some extra black pepper and more chervil.
John Dory or Saint-Pierre with Fennel ©cadwu

Bucatini All’Amatriciana

10 April 2023

Let’s prepare a delicious and simple Italian dish, packed with flavours. The challenge when making Bucatini All’Amatriciana is with getting the right ingredients. You must have Guanciale, Bucatini, San Marzano tomatoes, dried Spanish pepper and Pecorino Romano. Five challenges actually…

Bucatini is an interesting pasta. It looks like thick spaghetti but has a hole running though the centre. Indeed, a dried tube. When cooked it’s different from spaghetti, thicker of course and you need to chew longer, making the dish more filling and the taste longer lasting, without the paste itself being chewy. Could you replace bucatini with spaghetti? Probably yes, although the dish will become simpler.

How about Guanciale (cured pork cheek)? It is the key ingredient of Spaghetti Carbonara. Could you replace it with Pancetta? Probably yes, even Antonio Carluccio uses pancetta when preparing Bucatini All’Amatriciana with Gennaro Contaldo in this video.

Parmesan Cheese? That’s a no-go. We tried the dish with both Parmesan and Pecorino. The version with Parmesan cheese (made from cow milk) was okay, the one made with Pecorino (made from sheep milk) was delicious. The cheese combined very well with the spiciness and sweetness of the sauce.

San Marzano tomatoes have lots of flesh, just a few seeds and the taste is sweet and not very acidic. They are often used for canned tomatoes. If you can’t find San Marzano, then ask your greengrocer for similar tomatoes.

Shopping for the ingredients of Bucatini All’Amatriciana may be a challenge, preparing it is simple. Just keep an eye on the pan and the pasta. Within 30 minutes you can enjoy a classic Italian dish.

Wine Pairing

A red Italian wine is the obvious choice. We opened a bottle of Villa Castello Terre di Chieti Sangiovese 2022. The wine is made with 100% Sangiovese grapes. A touch of oak, not too much alcohol, full bodied, smooth, and with aromas of dark fruit. We loved it with our Bucatini All’Amatriciana. In general, an (Italian) wine made with Sangiovese grapes will be a great choice.

What You Need

  • 150 grams of Guanciale
  • 300 grams San Marzano tomatoes
  • 1 small Yellow Onion
  • 1 dried Spanish Pepper
  • White Wine
  • Bucatini
  • Pecorino Romano

What You Do

  1. Remove the outer layer of the guanciale and dice
  2. Coarsely chop the onion
  3. Wash and dry the tomatoes
  4. Chop the tomatoes, also coarsely
  5. Finely chop the Spanish pepper. Depending on your taste you could use the seeds
  6. Heat a large pan, add the guanciale and fry gently, making sure you get some nice fat without frying the meat crispy
  7. Add the onion and some of the Spanish pepper *depending on your taste and its spiciness)
  8. Glaze the onion
  9. Add some white wine and reduce the heat
  10. Add the chopped tomatoes and leave to simmer
  11. Taste and perhaps add some more pepper
  12. In parallel cook the bucatini al dente, this will probably take some 10 minutes
  13. When ready transfer the bucatini straight from the water to the sauce, combine and leave for a minute or two
  14. Taste and if necessary, adjust by adding pepper
  15. Serve the Bucatini All’Amatriciana with some freshly grated Pecorino Romano.
Bucatini All’Amatriciana ©cadwu
Bucatini ©cadwu

Saithe with a Mild Curry

30 March 2023

Saithe is a member of the haddock family, which in turn belongs to the cod family. Most of us think this fish is only processed into fish sticks, ready meals and cat food, but it is a real treat. However, it’s very likely that our cat enjoys it more often than we do!

Some background information: Saithe (or Coley, Coalfish, Lieu Noir, Köhler, Zwarte Koolvis, Pollachius Virens) and Pollock (or Pollack, Pollachius Pollachius) are very similar. The Alaska Pollock (Gadus Chalcogrammus) is also a widely available, very edible fish, and also one that you will probably see mentioned as an ingredient of a ready meal. Of the three Saithe is supposed to be the tastiest. If it’s your lucky day and the fish monger has fresh Saithe or Pollock, then don’t hesitate and buy it!

We combined Saithe with a mild Indian curry and green vegetables. The gentle flavours of the fish worked very well with the coriander and cumin in the curry. The mixed vegetables support the combination and bring freshness and bitterness.

Wine Pairing

A white wine with a touch of sweetness (Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris) will be perfect with the Saithe. A rosé will also be a good accompaniment for the dish.

What You Need

  • Saithe
  • Mild Indian Curry Paste
  • Cream
  • Olive Oil
  • Green Peas
  • Fava Beans
  • Haricots Verts
  • Fresh Ginger (optional)

What You Do

Heat a small skillet, add some olive oil and fry the fish. Reduce the heat, add the curry and cream. Mix. Carefully coat the fish and cook until nearly done. In parallel cook the vegetables: the haricots verts and the fava beans perhaps five minutes, the green peas one minute. Combine the vegetables, add some olive oil and black pepper. You could also add some finely grated ginger. Serve the nicely coated saithe on top of the mixed vegetables.

Pollachius_virens_01 © Tino Strauss, 2009
Saithe with a Mild Curry ©cadwu

Carrot Salad with Fennel Seeds

27 March 2023

Inspired by the Portuguese and Moroccan cuisine we make a very tasty, quick and easy carrot salad. Ideal to accompany fish or a rich stew. The salad is full of flavours: fennel and carrot obviously, but you could also taste chervil and perhaps tarragon. Light, refreshing and the texture of the carrot is inviting.

We prefer preparing the salad with winter carrots because they seem to have more flavour and structure than the regular ones.
We use fennel seeds in this recipe. Alternatively, you could use cumin (always great with carrots) or coriander (cilantro) seeds.

What You Need

  • One Winter Carrot
  • Olive Oil
  • White Wine Vinegar
  • One Garlic Clove
  • Fennell Seeds
  • Parsley
  • Black Pepper

What You Do

Prepare 24 hours before serving.
Clean and thinly peel the carrot. Cook for 5-10 minutes until al dente. Let cool. Quarter lengthwise and slice. Make a dressing by combing olive oil and vinegar (ratio 2:1 or 3:1). Peel the garlic clove and finely chop. Take ¼ teaspoon of fennel seeds and use a mortar to crush the seeds until you have powder. Add the fennel seed powder and the garlic to the dressing and combine. Taste and adjust. Chop a nice amount of parsley. Add the carrots and the parsley to the dressing and combine. Use cling film to seal the bowl and transfer to the refrigerator. Gently mix the salad every 2-4 hours.
Just before serving add some fresh black pepper.

Carrot Salad with Fennel Seeds ©cadwu
Carrot Salad with Fennel Seeds ©cadwu

Red Bell Pepper Paste

23 March 2023

Sweet, smokey, mild, umami: red bell pepper paste is a great condiment when you’re making a pasta sauce with tomatoes, marinating pork or chicken for a stew or looking for a basis for a spread or dip. Very popular in the Portuguese kitchen (Pasta de Pimiento Rojo).

You could make the paste with red bell peppers only; you could add a pinch of salt or perhaps some garlic. Our alternative has a deeper colour and more intense flavours, thanks to the shallot, garlic and red wine. 

Red Bell Pepper Paste keeps very well in the refrigerator, especially when you store it in a jar under olive oil.

What You Need

  • Red Bell Peppers
  • Optional: Salt, Garlic

What You Do

Clean the bell peppers, remove the seeds and the veins; cut in 4. Transfer to the oven and grill or roast for 10 minutes or until well charred. When still hot, put the bell peppers in a plastic container and close it. After one hour it’s easy to remove the skin of the bell pepper. Chop and blender until smooth and thick. You could add a pinch of salt or some grated garlic.

What You Need (Alternative)

  • Red Bell Peppers
  • Shallot
  • Garlic
  • Red wine
  • Olive Oil

What You Do

Clean the bell peppers, remove the seeds and the veins; cut in 4. Transfer to the oven and grill or roast for 10 minutes or until well charred. When still hot, put the bell peppers in a plastic container and close it. After one hour it’s easy to remove the skin of the bell pepper. Chop the shallot, the bell pepper and the garlic. Add olive oil to a pan, glaze the shallot. Add the garlic. After a few minutes add the chopped red bell pepper and any remaining liquid. Add some red wine and reduce. Repeat this step two or three times. Transfer the content to the food processor and blend until smooth and thick.

PS

We used our red bell pepper paste for a pasta dish with tomato confit.

Pasta with Redd Bell Pepper Paste ©caddy
Red Bell Peppers ©cadwu

Bouchée à la Reine

20 March 2023

Crispy, fluffy, flaky puff pastry and a rich, warm filling with mushrooms and parsley, what better way to turn leftovers into a tasty starter. Bouchée a la Reine: a classic in Belgium and France. Not modern at all, but such fun to serve (and eat). You could fill the pastry with poultry, with mushrooms, shrimps, sweetbread, just about anything will go, as long as you use a rich roux as basis.
Making our own puff pastry is a bit too much for us, making your own bouchée is not too difficult, but buying them at the bakery is also fine. 

Wine Pairing

It all depends on the filling of your Bouchée a la Reine. It could be a light red wine if you have some left over veal, if it’s sweetbread then a lightly oaked chardonnay is fine et cetera. In all cases keep in mind that the filling comes with a generous amount of butter.

What You Need

  • 2 Bouchées
  • Some left over Veal or Chicken or Shrimps
  • Mushrooms
  • For the Roux
    • Butter
    • All Purpose Flour
    • Stock
  • Parsley
  • Lemon
  • Black Pepper
  • Butter

What You Do

Chop the (already cooked) meat and the mushrooms. Gently heat some butter in a pan, add the mushrooms and leave them for 10 minutes or so. Add the meat. Taste and add black pepper, perhaps some lemon juice, spices and herbs, definitely lots of parsley. In parallel make the roux. Warm the stock. Add butter to a pan, add the equal amount of flour plus a bit more (remember you also have some butter in the other pan). Softly fry the flour until you begin smelling that typical cookie aroma, then start adding the warm stock, slowly at first, constantly whisking. Add the meat, the mushrooms, some black pepper and the chopped parsley. Don’t turn the roux into a sauce, it must be ragout like. At this stage you could cool the filling for use later on.
Heat the bouchée in an oven at 180 °C or 355 °F for 10 minutes. Transfer from the oven onto a plate, add the filling and serve immediately.

Bouchée a la Reine ©cadeau
Bouchée a la Reine ©cadeau

Small-Spotted Catshark with Dashi and Bok Choy

16 March 2023

Earlier we wrote about small-spotted catshark, also known as lesser-spotted dogfish or rock salmon. It’s a very common fish, not endangered, it doesn’t have bones (sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton), it’s tasty and the texture of the meat is moist and pleasant. When we tasted the fish with a tomato and red bell pepper stew, we started talking about other ways of preparing it. Perhaps a Portuguese version with piri piri, tomatoes and potatoes? Or a fish stew with shark, mullet, monkfish and clams? Or with dashi, soy sauce, mirin, ginger and lemon?

Wine Pairing

A Pinot Gris or a Sylvaner from the Alsace region will be perfect, dry, floral and a touch of sweetness. In general a light bodied, aromatic, unoaked white wine will be a good choice.

What You Need

  • For the Fish
    • 200 grams of Small-Spotted Catshark
    • Dashi
    • Mirin
    • Light Soy Sauce
    • Sake (optional)
    • Lemon Juice
    • Olive Oil
  • For the Vegetables
    • Bok Choy
    • Oyster Sauce
    • Soy Sauce
    • Fresh Ginger

What You Do

Add some olive oil to a pan and fry the fish. Combine dashi, a teaspoon of mirin, soy sauce and sake. Taste and adjust. You’re looking for a firm, not too sweet mixture. After a few minutes add the mixture to the pan. The idea is to stew the fish in this mixture and when the fish is done (this will take some 20 minutes), reduce the liquid, add a splash of lemon juice and coat the fish with the reduction. In parallel chop the bok choy and simmer the white of the vegetable in a mixture of water, soy sauce and oyster sauce. Just before serving add some grated ginger and the chopped green of the bok choy to the pan. Serve the fish on top of the vegetables.

Small-Spotted Catshark with Dashi and Bok Choy ©cadwu
Small-Spotted Catshark with Dashi and Bok Choy ©cadwu