Ravioli

Kelani has become the official pasta maker. I do not know how you would make this without the little hand cranking machine to make the pasta.

the dough:
1egg
3/4 cup flour

Put the flour in a mound on the table. Put a hole (well) in the middle of the flour and add the egg. Blend the egg into the flour (Kelani uses a knife and then her hands) until you have a ball.

The ball then goes through the press on the number 1 setting. After it goes through fold the dough into thirds and repeat. Sometimes the dough will get holes in it, but that usually disappears on the next time through the machine. You pass the dough through the machine 5 times on the no 1 setting then change the setting to 2 and repeat again 5 times. Do this all the way up to through the no 5 setting. We then put the dough through the numer 6 setting just once.

Using a wine glass, cut circles out of the dough. Put about 1/2 a tablespoon of filling in and fold it over, seal the edges with a fork. We like to fill the circles with the spinach pesto.

To cook the ravioli boil water with some salt and a little olive oil. When it is boiling, add the raviolis, they will cook very quickly (about 3 minutes) and will float to the top when they are finished. If there is meat in your ravioli you may want to cook it longer or fry them.

Enjoy!

We are back!

Now have access to the blog again, so I can start posting again.

I think some work K-dog has been doing would be appropriate, plus the recipe is easy to type up!

No/little access

Currenlty Turkey has banned the blogger sites as some one was posting football matches and the tv people were upset and seem to have a lot of influence.

I cannot easliy access the blog. I seem to be able to get to the posting part- a back door? but cannot view the blog.

so Kelani has been doing a lot of cooking...

will post soon and hopefully will be up and running normal again soon too.

Roasted Vegtable Lasagne

This is for Nicola who has spent days moving into her new apartment, starting anew. she asked for the recipe, so I am attempting to write it down.

When I first started making lasagne, about 4 years ago, this is what I started with. Some things may be missing as it is coming from my head and a lttle piece of paper I took notes on while searching the web years ago.

One key to this dish is to pick at least 5 vegetables to use. For this dish I used

• 2 Japanese Eggplants (or one large eggplant/aubergine)
• 3 medium/small zucchini
• One medium sized onion
• Celeriac (the root of celery, or you could use celery)
• Peppers- I used one red bell pepper, one green and one red Turkish
  pepper which are long and about 5 cm wide at the top.  
• Mushrooms- about 1 cup=250 ml, chopped
• A mixture of grated cheeses- salty feta’ish goat, plus a plain cheese all mixed, about 400 ml.
• Spinach pesto
• Béchamel sauce 

 Preheat oven to 180 C

Clean and take some of the skin off of the eggplant/aubergine and zucchini (squash works too). Slice them long ways about 1 cm thick. Place on a baking sheet which has been generously greased with olive oil. Sprinkle salt on top. Bake for about 20 minutes, turn over, salt and bake another 20. They should be lightly browned and soft.

Chop onion, celeriac and peppers. Put about 1 tablespoon olive oil in frying pan, medium heat and cook vegetables until soft, add mushrooms if using. Put in bowl.

Chop up roasted vegetables. Add to bowl of pan cooked vegetables.

Make béchamel sauce and add spinach pesto to the béchamel sauce.

Assemble lasagne- béchamel sauce, noodles, béchamel sauce, ½ of vegetable mixture, cheese, noodles, béchamel sauce, rest of vegetable mixture, cheese, noodles, béchamel sauce cheese. Cover with foil.

 When you are ready to bake it: oven 180 Celsius. Cover with foil, cook 20 minutes then take off foil and cook another 20 minutes. Should be bubbling when you remove it from the oven. Let set about 10 – 15 minutes before cutting. Enjoy!

Enchilad-Taco Burritos

It has been a not so nice day/week/(last couple of weeks). I do stress during report writing, the students stress as they realize- no more they can do, and parents start to stress (a little late) too. Today got a call to take Kelani’s friend home with us as there is rioting near their house- no problem. Had a parent conference scheduled for 11:30- but they did not show up- time much wasted waiting- I do have mock exams to write. Get home and the maid had not come to clean! And we have two middle-schoolers coming to stay with us tomorrow, arghhh; I do not have time to clean the bathrooms, dust and do the floors, I have dinner to make.

I took the chicken breasts (2) I had set out for our dinner tonight and cut them up into little pieces. Then I remembered my dad telling me the best marinade for tender chicken was white wine and cornstarch, or tequila and cornstarch. I had already opened a beer, so I marinated the chicken in beer with cornstarch.

I fried up the chicken in a little oil, added packet of taco mix (ground cumin, chili powder, and garlic salt) a can of corn, some homemade tomato sauce, and leftover vegetables sitting in the fridge.

Enchilada sauce:

2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons chili powder
½ teaspoon ground cumin
2 cups chicken broth (or whatever broth you have in the freezer)
1 tablespoon oil

Mix flour, cumin and chili powder together. Put the oil in the skillet, heat it up, add the garlic stirring for about 30 seconds. Add the flour mixture and stir waiting for it to turn dark. Slowly add the broth, whisking all the time and whisk until it thickens. Turn off the heat.

Assemble:

Put some chicken mixture in a tortilla, add a little grated cheese and roll it up into a burrito. Place these into a 9x13 pan. After all have been rolled, pour the enchilada sauce over the burritos. Add some cheese to the top and place in a 350 F or 180 C oven for 20 minutes, until bubbling.

Now, if I got everything right, the kids will go for seconds, making your day a little nicer and the house smell good even though the maid blew you off.

Peking Duck Part 2

I took the preped duck (see part one) out of the fridge several hours before cooking so it could come to room temperature. The instructions are to cook the duck at 400 F (200 C) for 1.5 hours with out basting or turning. If the skin starts to get too dark, cover it with foil to keep it from browning any further. My oven is convection (do not know how to turn it off) and doesn't pass 350-375 (180) easily so I cooked it at 350. The higher temperature may have sealed the fat better, but the skin was still good.

While the duck was roasting we thinly slice green onions (Chinese onions?) and cucumbers. We put hoisin sauce in a bowl and cut up the thiniest tortillas we could fine. I highly recommend finding the Chinese tortillas. I am sure I have a recipe somewhere, but it is report writing season...
Slice the duck and skin. Put some hoisin on a tortilla, plus some green onion and cucumber then the meat of course. Roll up and enjoy!

Peking Duck- Part 1

Tomorrow I (we- Caroline will join us) are cooking the duck. Today was the prep of the bird.
Ducks (dead and ready to be cooked) are not easy to find here. Tuesday we went to a steack house to order the bird, and Thursday Caroline picked it up. About 40-50 dollars a bird that must be about 2 kilos- and there is a good amount of fat.

I cleaned out the inside- no head, but a heart and liver I think. Cut off the tail and the part of neck that was there. I put those in a pot with water to start the broth. (I try to make broth whenever I have pieces- much nicer than the dry store stuff).

Rinse the duck in water. Then boil a big pot of water. When it is good and boiling, put the duck in there and submerge it for about 2 1/2  minutes. This seals the skin (what ever that means).

Mix 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of water. Dry the duck, after it has cooled, and spread the honey/water mixture all over the bird. Then keep it in a cool dry place for at least 6 hours. Mine is in the fridge.