Apples & Bananas Cake

I've been eyeing up those apples for a while now. 4 apples sitting nicely in a matching green plate on the coffee table waiting for someone to eat them & for the past 3 days I pass by them & think...cake/jam/something? today I thought it was time!

A quick google search for Apple Cake Recipe lead me to see "Apples & Banana's cake", I look over to the kitchen to see if there were bananas in the fruit bowl...2? yes!!!

Now I can make this recipe (which I hear about for the first time but thought was delicious by name only)

Another Chocolate Mousse?

After the last chocolate mousse I made, I still had a pack of chocolate chips. So I thought I'd try to make it again (just to check if it was really easy or it the beginners luck was present that day)

Sawah

I heart Bahrain

It's been a long week in Bahrain.

Karak...

What is Karak?

Karar Tea or Chai Karak is a really heavy red tea with milk and lots of sugar usually made is quick serving food places, costs around 50 fils (around 15 cents) per small paper cup

Eggless Chocolate Mousse

I've always been scared to think about making chocolate mousse, or mousses in general. Their texture makes them seem so difficult to perfect at home. Everytime I looked up a recipe, it had "eggs" as a third ingredient  and that was exactly when I would stop reading & decide let me just order some when I'm out next..UNTIL I saw something on Hershey's website and couldn'tbelieve there was an alternative or better I say an Eggless way to make chocolate moussee..

Breakfast for dinner

Nothing healthier (I believe) than having a breakfast dish for dinner. Few days ago I bought Grape Tomatoes, which are slightly smaller than Cherry Tomatoes (shown below),

Turkish Coffee time..

Sunday is the first day of the working week. Being unwell on Sunday morning is not the best idea (if you had a choice I mean). What could open your sleeping eyes? and switch your brain on? and make sure the signal between eyes, brains and other parts is working and clear? Coffee? not this time...Black coffee? maybe...Red Bull? I'm not into energy drinks...looks like very Bitter Turkish Coffee is it!

Tortellini...

Still in winter food mood, making sure I ate pasta's, creams, sauces, etc... (I blame the weather). Is there a direct relationship between the outside temperature and appetite?
Midnight snack? yes it was the perfect time for a snack, it was very cold, reality TV was on, why not make something? Tortellini? why not? I just bought some few days ago..

Coming from a country that respects comfort and laziness, we buy our own fresh pasta's. Not that there is anything wrong with making them from scratch, it's just that the available ready made version is really good, so why go through the hassle?...

Winter Food

The cold month, or should I say the cold week, usually introduces a number of hearty dishes. Soups, hot sauces, pasta, potatoes, casseroles & lots of them, beans, pies, etc...

Winter-warming cooking seems like the best option to celebrate the 14hrs of non-stop rain. I wanted pasta...cream..something I could see the smoke coming out from when serving and that is the perfect time to put cheese over it and enjoy the melted texture over the soft pasta...yummm That was it! to the kitchen I go!!

No time to eat? snack!

Coming from a healthy wannabe family, snacking on food other than fruits and nuts is a big No-No. Now that we are old enough to make our own food (and decisions), things have changed slightly (when Mom is not around).

Hommus is a very popular dish in the Middle East. Not only it tastes good, but it is east to make, eat & store. All you need now is Chickpeas...

How to Make...

Brrrrr!

It's cold, dark, raining, did I say cold? It is the perfect weather for eating something warm in front of the TV. But before I do so, there is something that I have been craving since the first drop of rain. Hot Chocolate.

Stuffed Basboosa

Basboosa is a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made with semolina and yogurt, then soaked in a rose water syrup. One of my all times favourite desserts to have. I love basboosa in all it forms (except the coconut version), I really do.

When I went to Egypt last month, I made sure that everywhere I went I tried thier basboosa, It was kind of my way to grading the cafe's/restaurants. I even brought some back home.

This recipe combines Basboosa and Baklava (sweet pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup). I always looked at the picture in the book and thought to myself, this is good. And it really was...

I enjoy Turkish Coffee

I allow myself 1 cup of coffee a day (mostly during working hours), I can only properly function at work after my cup of caffeine.

Every Ramadan I promise myself that I won't get to attached to coffee and teach myself to live happily without it. However, between the parking lot & the office building, a Starbucks is strategically located with fresh coffee aroma tickling the brain as you try to focus on your destination but never works as you always go back for that latte.

Early last year, I tried to minimise fattening things in my diet. So my regular caramel macchiato became a latte, then a skinny latte, then espresso from the coffee machine at work (which was too light for me) and finally a Turkish Coffee.

If you haven't tried Turkish Coffee yet, I think you are missing out. I always thought Turkish Coffee was bitter, but if you order a medium or sweet, you can live. And as a mean of entertainmet, we read the coffee cups for fun after we finish. Today, it wasn't the best looking cup (but I took pictures anyways).

What Turkish Coffee cup looks like


that's a google picture - I forgot to take one before I start drinking

The Packed Lunch

To take homemade lunch to work or t order anything from anywhere? that is the question...

if you work the normal 9 to 5 (or in my case the 8:30 to 4:30 & beyond) then your choices for lunch are: the sandwich/salad from the trolley or the sandwich/salad from the place downstairs or the tasteless whatever from wherever...by time, you'd get fed up and really bored from the same orders. Lunch then becomes the 15 minutes when you have something to chew.

Once a cookie, now a cupcake

After the success of my Brownies, I thought Why not cookies? I always thought cookies were easier to buy than to make, you can then eat them right away (while walking, shopping, driving, etc...). A day before, I went and got all the ingredients (the right sugar, the right flour,...), now I was technically and mentally prepared to start the mission of making cookies.

First, which recipe to use?
Why not the Hummingbird bakery cookbook.

I followed the recipe very carefully considering that I am making this for the first time (and deep inside I wanted it to be a success), actually I felt proud that I am making a cookie dough from scratch.

on New Year's Day

On Jan 1st, 2011, the day I was supposed to begin writing about food, cooking and eating, I was busy celebrating the new year and meeting friends evey hour of the day. Towards the end of the day, we met at Cafe Ceramique, a place where you choose an item and colours and the staff there bring over the chosen colours and brushes & you just paint away!

So why is this coming up here? I felt bad about ditching my promise on day 1 and decided to make something food/kitchen related. Not sure what the real name of this thing is, I've been refering to it as cutlery holder.

3 hours of flowers drawing (and a week later aftering being baked), I share with you my cutlery holder.

So excited that on the day I went to collect this I made a matching napkin holder, will post a picture once it's ready - and I might go back to make matching salt & pepper shakers ;-)

Chicken Parmigiana

When making something new, I normally read through a number of recipes to see what are the common ingredients, cooking times, additons people introduce and reviews. And by doing so, and when making the same dish over and over again, you can begin to put you own personal touches without disturbing the original taste. Today, I went by the book. The process of making Chicken Parmigiana was very long. The preperation time is longer than cooking and eating times together.

Eggs

So excited about the date, I'm writing 2 entries!

Eggs will be a popular ingredient in this blog for the boys here consider it a post dinner snack. For me, breakfast has to have eggs in order for it to be a complete breakfast. Some of the books that I have contain eggs recipes, it might sound funny, like how creative can you get making eggs? the answer: very...

Boys, this is for you...

11.01.'11

During my last trip to Dubai, I stopped by Kinokuniya (a book store if you're wondering). With no reason or intention to buy anything, I left with 3 books one of which is BAKING one step at a time by Marianne Magnier-Moreno. What made me buy this without even thinking was the pictures. Every step in baking the 70+ recipes had a picture showing how it was done. I felt this was excellent, as one major issue I have with baking is that sometimes I'm not sure if the batter is supposed to look like this? or how is it cut? coloured? covered? and all...

To test the book, I made Brownies (something I never made before because I thought it was too complicated).

Spaghettie Loaf

This is your basic spaghetti bolognese recipe, the only difference being the presentation.

In a saucepan brown 4 chopped onions & 8 chopped garlic cloves (season with salt, black peppers, anything else you like - I put a teaspoon of red chili powder), to it incorporate 500g of minced lamb until brown. Add 2 chopped tomatoes, tomato paste and 1cup of water, cover and leave o cook for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, boil the spaghetti, drain and put a spoon of butter. Then mix with one beaten egg.

How to assemble: in a greased loaf tin, put a layer of the pasta, a layer of the sauce, a bit of grated cheese, then repeat. Bake for 20/25 minutes and flip onto your serving dish.



it looks good enough for me!

 And there you have it, a Spaghetti Loaf.

Personally, I prefer the old school spaghetti, but I guess this is good when you have people over to minimise the mess (and looks presentable as well).

Hope you enjoyed.

Cheers!

Kunafa

It was a long week, followed by a short weekend. I woke up in time for lunch and I had a series of places to be in before bedtime (funeral, charity market, ceramic cafe, laundry) and all were 30 minutes drive away from each other.

If I don't make something now, most probably I won't make anything till the coming weekend (which I realised I will be out of country then). Being a challenge seeker, I wanted to make something that I have never made before & never though about making. So Kunafa was it.

We have a friend that specialised in Kunafa making, being Lebanese of course, and she doesn't ind making for us whenever we felt like it. Kunafa for those not familiar with it, is an Arabic dessert (Levant and Egypt to be specific), it has different variations and different fillings. I chose to make the easiest, made of bread and mozzarella cheese. Everyone was napping after heaving weekend lunch, perfect opportunity to experiment (so if I fail, no one would know).

The recipe required 8 slices of bread, we had only7 & since they were slightly bigger than the regular bread it wasn't an issue. So bread and butter crumbled in the bottom of the greased cake pan, topped by a layer of cheese, then I heated 1cup of milk together with 3 tablespoons of semolina until thicken and poured over the cheese layer (this is to protect the cheese from burning) and into the oven for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, I made the very easy syrup. 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water & 1 tablespoon of rosewater heated until the sugar is dissolved and then left to cool. The 25 minutes are now over, flip the Kunafa onto the serving dish & pour the syrup over it or serve on the side.

you could decorate the individual slices

And there you have it, a successful Kunafa & a proof that I'm still doing what I promised to do :-)

Cheers

Love Food Hate Waste

Love Food Hate Waste is a campaign from the UK that raises awareness of the need to reduce food waste. The website suggests simple ways/things (meal planners, recipes, storage tips, etc...) to reduce waste. However my favourite part was portioning.

This tool asks you what food you'll be cooking and for how many people (and children) and then the portion calcultor it recommends the portion size. For example: if you are cookin rice for one all you need is 1/4 mug. this is the healthy amount for an adult to have. Also, you can add what will you have with it, for example Chicken, and it'll suggest 140g

As an Arab, we tend to triple the portion per person. If we are inviting 10 people the food will consist of 27 dishes each enough enough for 50 which traditionally makes one the perfect host who then gets extra points forcoming up with ways to dispatch the extra food. The new generation is woking towards amending this rule and working out something that is balanced between traditions, generousity, health, the environment and common sense.

Love Food Hate Waste is definately providing good guidelines to achieve our goal in reducing food waste. By having the two weeks meal planner you would have an idea of how much shopping you need to do beforehands. "Planning meals, keeping the cupboard and fridge stocked with basics and keeping an eye on the 'best before' and 'use by' dates can take some of the hassle out of shopping. It saves us time and money and helps cut down on food waste".

I can go on about the recipes page, but I'll jut quote them: "cookery advisor Caroline Marson and Love Food Hate Waste supporters make economic use of all the odds and ends that invariably get leftover from previous meals or forgotten in the fruit bowl or the back of the fridge". Another great thing is that the meals are categorised into Vegiterians meals, Kids meals, Lunch, Parties, for Freezing, etc.. or choose meals by the main ingredients (meat, fish, cheese, etc..).

By reading the facts & figures you'll realise by managing the food before, during and after cooking not only you'll be saving money, but also reducing the environmental impact in the long run.

I really liked this campaign and hope to see a local or regional version of it soon :)

Enjoy reading http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

Eggplants? no problem

After a long day at work (which came after a long holiday), coming back home was the happiest thing to do.
It's almost 6 pm now and I'm not ready to cook anything....let me go to the gym then, I had plans to use gym as an excuse and come back and write about it but unforunately I was way too tired (in other words took a nap/or fainted).

By the time I managed to get myself together the time was nearing 8 o'clock, everyone had eaten already but I was hungry. With no time to defrost or to do anything complicated, the internal voice said: go vegetarian. I look over to inspect the farm my mom bought and all I could see was the shiny eggplants. So eggplants dinner it was.

First Attempt

Promising to commit isn't easy. Especially straight after new year's weekend.

I was tired, bored, home with everyone here feeling the same....then I thought, let me start today, it's only the 2nd (I kind of gave up when I didn't do anything on the 1st Jan). Close to 7 pm I searched through the books I have for something I can make using the very little stuff we had at home, no one was willing to volunteer to go to the supermarket and I definitely wasn't willing to drive either, I found a very simple chicken recipe that didn't require a lot of ingredients, Chicken Arayes Wraps. By reading the method it sounded easy, actually it was, apart from the time-consuming chicken boiling part during which I managed to make my usual Banana Cake (which I got from a Kids Cookbook I was given when I was 11).

decoration as per the picture in the book