Christmas wishes

Oven roasted portobello & brioche nr.2

Yes, I did it again! I just couldn't let these portobello's go, so I made another version with small roma tomatoes. It was very very yummie too, but I prefer the one with rosemary in it. Hmmmmm, rosemary!

Ingredients:
TOMATOES:

• 10 mini roma tomatoes
• 1 large garlic clove
• olive oil
• freshly grounded black pepper

PORTOBELLO'S:

• 2 portobello mushrooms
• 100 gr goat cheese
• thyme
• fresh basil
• small garlic clove
• lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Directions:
TOMATOES:

1. Preheat oven at 200 C.
2. Finely chop up the garlic. Cut tomatoes in half, lengthwise. 
3. Heat some olive oil in a pan and saute the garlic a little. 
4. Place the tomatoes in the pan, skin down. Generously ground some black pepper on top.Cook on high heat until the seeds start to push out. Then turn them over and cook a little longer. Don't worry about the garlic burning, you won't use it.
5. Repeat if necessary. You want to end up with oven-roasted-like tomatoes.

PORTOBELLO'S:

1. Wipe the portobello's clean with some paper towel and remove the stems.
2. Finely chop up the garlic and basil leaves and mix together with goat cheese and the other herbs.
   Add 1tbsp of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Mix well.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Remove some of the gills to create a slightly deeper opening. Stuff the portobello with your cheese mix. Scatter the tomatoes on top.
5. Drizzle some oil on your oven tray and place the portobello's on top. Drizzle with some more olive oil and bake in 15-20 minutes (depending on how big your portobello is).
6. Serve with these lovely brioches and ENJOY again!

Oven roasted Portobello & Brioche

So about those yummie oven roasted portobello's. Doesn't it look delish! They really made my day :)
Just thinking about it makes my mouth water again. Nice and meaty mushrooms with the saltines of the goat cheese and those brioches go so well with rosemary. Hmmmmm...
And so easy. Did I mention how easy this is? Well it is!

Ingredients:

• 2 portobello mushrooms
• 100 gr goat cheese
• rosemary 
• thyme
• fresh basil
• small garlic clove
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven at 200 C.
2. Wipe the mushrooms clean with some paper towel and remove the stems.
3. Finely chop up the garlic and basil leaves and mix together with goat cheese and the other herbs.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Stuff the portobello with your cheese mix.
6. Drizzle some oil on your oven tray and place the portobello's on top. Drizzle with some more olive oil and bake in 15-20 minutes (depending on how big your portobello is).
7. Garnish wit some fresh basil  and serve with these lovely brioches and ENJOY!

Buttery Soft Brioche

I had been craving oven roasted portobello for a while. I had a SUPER one last year at Gartine. Beautifully baked portobello stuffed with goat cheese and rosemary on a buttered brioche. Hmmmmm.
I know, I know it's crazy to crave something for so long! But hey, I'm crazy about food :)

Niws, my super had an awesome deal on portobello's (€1 for two big ones), so I decided to give in to my slumbering craving. While I was thinking things up and browsing recipes I just couldn't get over the idea of making brioche to accompany the portobello's. I just knew it would taste soooooooo much better with them! I had never mad brioche before, so it was a bit exciting. Actually kind of a lot exciting. Especially since it takes about 4 hours to make them.

Funny story. Turns out I've been in possession of brioche pans for years without knowing it! Way way back in the day's my mom had once bought these thinking they were cupcake pans. They are of course very unsuitable for cuppies, so they've just been rusting away in my cupboard. Sad, sad pans. But now that I've discovered there true purpose they will be getting plenty of use :)

Ok so I adapted the recipe from Macrina Bakery & Cafe's Cookbook a little to make these buttery soft brioches. It should make you about 12 pieces. It's super easy, but it just takes some time to go through all the steps. Now, the most important part to this recipe is letting your dough sit in a warm spot. I don't know if you noticed, but it's winter here in the Netherlands so there's not a warm spot anywhere. So I've made my oven into an "incubator". I heat it up just a little so it's nice and warm and then turn it of. You just slip in your covered dough and let it rest. This also keeps it out of harms way aka prying fingers and eyes :)

The brioches turned out great! They really surpassed all my expectations. They were crunchy and crumbly on the outside, but soft and airy on the inside with just a hint of sweetness. I love love love them!
And they were indeed a beautiful match with the portobello's I made.


Ingredients:

• 1/8 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cup flour (sieved)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/8 cup lukewarm milk
• 1 egg
• 5 tbsp unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 egg + 1 tbsp cold water (for egg wash)
• some vegetable oil

Directions:

STEP ONE:

1. Place warm water and 1 tsp sugar in your mixing bowl. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add the yeast and stir until dissolved. Leave it to sit for about 5 minutes.
2. Add all the other ingredients EXCEPT the butter. Aka the rest of the sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, milk and 1 egg. Using your dough hook, mix on low speed for about 3 minutes. 
3. Switch to medium speed and slowly drop in bits of butter. Scrape the sides to get all the batter in. Continue to mix for about 10-15 minutes. Your dough should be somewhat wet and sticky. 
4. Pull dough onto a floured surface and form into a ball. Place your dough ball in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it rest in a warm spot for 2,5 hours.

STEP TWO:

1. Butter up your brioche pans.
2. If all went well, your dough should have doubled in size by now. Place dough on a floured surface and fold it over a few times to release any excess bubbles. 
3. Steal a small piece of dough and make it into 12 small balls. Divide dough in half. Continue dividing each half in 6 balls. Place the balls in the brioche pans. 
4. Now, with a buttered finger, punch a whole in the dough ball and drop the smaller balls in. The butter helps them stick.
5. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest in a warm spot for another 1-1,5 hours.

STEP THREE:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 C and make your egg wash by beating 1 egg with 1 tbsp cold water.
2. Take of the plastic wrap and lightly brush brioches with egg wash.
3. Place in the center of oven and bake golden brown in about 20 min.
4. Leave to cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan.

PS: I had also tried making a sort of brioche bun. Aka I just made a little dough ball and threw it on a baking sheet. This didn't really work out well. The bottom was burned and the texture was dry and had large air bubbles in them. It also tasted very yeasty. Not something I would recommend.

Omas backgeheimnis

On my trip to Düsseldorf I bought some cookies for my mom. They're called "Omas backgeheimnis" aka granny's secrets. I expected them to be a bit hard and dry but instead they had a really nice texture. They crumble away once you bite into them, but it's still a bit chewy like bitter cookies. I was really surprised to taste chocolate and marzipan as well. And then the middle part is filled with a refreshing cranberry marmalade. Hmmmm, me likey!

I found this recipe online for similar cookies with poppy seeds. I think I'm gonna try it out and switch the poppy seeds for chocolate chips. I'll let you know how it goes :)

Christmas market in Düsseldorf

Last weekend I made a quick trip to Düsseldorf with some friends to visit their Christmas market.
There were different mini markets scattered across town with stands selling Christmas ornaments, wool socks, crystal thingies, toys and many other trinkets. They also sell all kinds of typical winter/ German/ Christmas treats... We're all major food addicts so it didn't take long before it turned into a food fest :)

I'm sure you know sausage is big in Germany, so I let my vegetarian resolve go for the day (no judgement please). We started out with some gluhwein and waffles with cherries. That got us nice and toasty. This was quickly followed by a yummie curry wurst. Yes, I know it doesn't look to great but it tasted a lot better than it looked. We then stumbled upon peru kartoffeln, which is a stuffed baked potato with meat, shrimps or this odd combo of corn and cheese. We'd just finished the curry wurst so I didn't buy one, but I still regret not having tried the rundfleisch one :(

Nevertheless, a few meters down the road, our greediness didn't stop us from buying another type of sausage, krauter wurst... My curious eye then saw another stall selling 1/2 meter long sausages. They seemed ok, but a little on the tin side. So instead we tried some mushroom with krauter soße (mixed herbs sauce). I wasn't expecting it, but those were really yummmmm!

Somewhere along the way we had also bought some super cute lebkuchen and warm roasted chestnuts.
I love roasted chestnuts! They're nice and warm and although it's sort of sweet, they seem savory too.
In one of the quieter markets we came across this sweet gentleman who was smoking salmon on the spot. We were completely mesmerized. Before I knew it we had ordered a portion and were digging in. I'd never had smoked salmon that was smoked and cooked at the same time. It was really really tasty!

There were many stands selling brezeln aka pretzels. I always expect pretzels to be hard, but the good ones are nice and bread-ish on the inside with a salt sprinkled crust. They sell the good ones there! Besides the original pretzel they also sold pretzels with pumpkin or sesame seeds, cheese and even pretzels with sausage. Can't imagine what that would taste like. Although I once tried bagels with salted meat and that was really nice. It's not completely the same, but a little similar... right?

We finally took a break from all the Christmas fun and stopped at this super sweet cupcake shop Sugarbird Cupcakes. I had a chai tea latte and a tiramisu cupcake. The tea was a little on the weak side, more milk than anything else. But the cupcake was delish! Nice and soft and just sweet enough. They had some other cute looking cuppies as well. Hmmm... maybe I'll steal some ideas from them for my own Christmas sweets.

We had a great day that really flew by. There were many other cute and sweet looking things we came across. But oh well, you can only do and eat so much. Maybe I'll get another chance to try them next year.

Madeleines

The last few days I was busy playing nurse at my sis'. They were all floored by the flu so an extra hand was just what they needed.

On one of the better days my sis felt like making some sweets. She had bought a madeleine pan some time earlier so we gave it a try. I must say they turned out alright. You could really taste the rich flavor of the almonds and the egg whites gave it a nice chewiness. They were just a bit to sweet for my liking, but otherwise yumm :)

We made half a recipe cause it was a try out, but the whole recipe should make about 12 madeleines.

Ingredients:

• 70 gr sugar
• 60 gr almond powder/flour
• 10 gr vanilla sugar
• 20 gr flour
• 2 egg whites
• 50 gr butter (melted)
• pinch of salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven at 200 Celsius and butter up your madeleine pan.
2. Mix almond powder, vanilla sugar, flour and 40 grams of the sugar in a bowl.
   
3. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and 30 gr of sugar to a nice and stiff consistency.
4. Bit by bit fold in the dry mix until well blended.
5. Add the melted butter (the butter is suppose to be liquid but NOT hot!) and fold in until you have a thick mix.
6. Fill a piping bag with your mix and pipe into your madeleine molds. If you don't have a bag just spoon it in.
7. Bake for about 10 min or until golden brown.
8. Leave to cool for a few minutes before unmolding.

Enjoy!