Coca de recapte

Hi!

Today I would like to share another typical Catalan dish, coca de recapte; it is a sort of catalan version of pizza, meaning coca (cake), de recapte ( for provision or to gather supplies).

The coca de recapte is nothing else but a bread olive oil dought with whatever you can find to put in top, most typically with escalivada and salted hearring or sausage. As the same words says, this was an easy food, that could be eaten during next days (it is as good cold than recently baked hot) and you didn´t need to refrigerate it. As well it is said that in the old days, in the small villages of rural Catalonia, the coca de recapte it was done by gathering some spare ingredients from few houses/families and going to the village bakery to cook it. So there is where the name comes.

Either the name comes from, this is a super easy meal, ideal for having many guests at home, or for a day out or picnic. As well, you can make a big batch of dough and freeze it and will stay perfect for few months.

Ingredients

• 10dl bread flour (we use flour with 11% protein)
• 3dl water
• 10g fresh yest
• 2tsp salt
• 0,75dl virgin olive oil

Preparation

Mix everything but the olive oil in a big bowl, use better slight warm water, work it with hands till it is a big dough, and then in a clean surface work it till you achieve an homogeneous dough. Keep in mind that this recipe it has low water content, so in the beginning might seem it is too dry, nevertheless, because not all flours are the same, if you can´t achieve a nice homogeneous dough, add bits of water.

Let it rest for 3h in a warm place covered with a clean cloth.

After the 3h, add the olive oil and work the dough again, let it rest for 30min.

Now the dough is ready to be cooked. You can cut the dough in four parts and, if you like it really thin, with this you will have 4 oven tray size coques (plural of coca).

If you want to freeze it, extend the dough and when it is ready for the ingredients, place it on top of a baking paper and roll it, then put it to a freezing bag and it can go straigh to freezer!

In the pictures you will see below, we cooked two coques, and froze the other two, one with spinach and tomato, and other one with onion. As I said earlier, the most typical way is with escalivada which it tastes amazing, but for me, the most delicious one is the one with onion but adding a bit of smoked pancetta.

For making the onion it is really simple, cut onions really thing and spread them around the dough, if you want add smoked pancetta, but otherwise just add salt, pepper and olive oil and 15 min at 200°C in the oven and it is ready!!

For the spinach, really simple too, in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil, saute the fresh spinach, when they start to shrink add salt and pepper and sunflower seeds if you have them. After saute the spinach for 3-5 min they will be ready so spread them in the dough and cut some tomato to put in top and 15min into oven at 200°C and it is ready too!

About the timing in the oven, it depens on the thickness of each coca, when the dough changes to slight toasted brown colour it is ready! Of course I rolled the dought really thin, and with that I did 4, but it depens on how thick you like it you will get more or less coques.

Hope you like it

Mr South 

Improvised panna cotta with homemade blueberry jam

Here it comes another super fast, easy dessert recipe. It was a bit of experiment, as to try to achieve a easy recipe that can save you from an improvised dinner or unexpected visit!

Ingredients

Serving for 4 

• 3dl double cream
• 2 tbsp quark
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1tsp gelatine powder 

Preparation

In a small sauce pan add the double cream, the quark, the maple syrup and a vanilla pod (opened in half with the seeds added to the sauce pan).

Start heating gently, mixing once in a while. You don´t want to boil it but to be warm, when is hot at touch, add the gelatine powder and mix thoroughly.

Pour into serving glasses and cool down for 30min or until firm (the smaller the serving the faster it cools)

Serve with a bit of blueberry jam; in our case it is homemade from the long summer days, we will post the recipe soon! 

Mr South

Caramelised pumpkin cake with black cardamom mousse

In the last fall, have been airing masterchef australia season 3 in a Finnish tv channel, we became huge fans of the series and bought the book. Since we got it, we didn´t try any recipe, so yesterday we tried Kate Brack pumpkin cake. We have changed few ingredients, and the mouse flavor, so we can say that we used her recipe to create something, for our taste, better. 

Ingredients

Serving for 6-8.

 Cake

• 300g butternut pumpkin (to caramelize 50g butter and 2tbsp sugar)
• 125g butter
• 1dl sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 dl plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 50g toasted hazelnuts
• For the caramelize  (1 tbsp maple syrup, 2dl water, 1dl sugar)

 Mousse

• 0,6dl milk
• 0,6dl double cream
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 tsp black cardamom 
• 2 1/2 tsp gelatine powder
• 200g cream fraîche 
• 1 dl sugar

Preparation

 Mousse

To make the mousse, we start with adding to a small pot or sauce pan the milk, double cream, cinnamon and the black cardamom, heating gently till it almost boils to infuse the flavours. Let it rest till it cools down.

Place 4 of the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pot with water (water has to boil gently, prevent to touch the bowl) and add 0,5 dl sugar. With a electric beater, whisk it for 5-8 min till thickens.

Add the gelatine powder to the infused milk and mix, move the mixture to the egg yolks and then add the cream fraîche.

With the remaining 4 egg whites, in a separate bowl, whisk them till soft peaks, adding gradually 0,5dl sugar.

Fold the egg whites to the mixture and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1h.

 Cake

Start with peeling and cutting the pumpkin to dices, once done place them in a oven tray with baking paper and paint the pumpkin with a mixture of 50g of melted butter and 2 tbsp of sugar. Place it into a 180°C oven for 30min. After that let it cool down a bit and smash it till smooth.

In a bowl, add 125g of butter and 1dl sugar and mix it if an electric beater. Once homogeneous, add 2 eggs, one at a time without stopping the electric beater. Then add the pumpkin puree and once again without stopping mixing add the flour, the baking powder and the hazelnuts (previously chopped).

In a cake tray, cover with baking paper, and add the dought and flatten. Place into oven for 30 min at 180°C.

When it is almost ready, add 2dl water and 1 dl sugar in a saucepan and bring it to boil as to prepare a syrup. When the liquid thickens, add 1tbps of maple syrup.

Once the cake is ready, paint the top with the syrup and let it cool down.

Next step is to cut, serve and enjoy!

Conclusions we have get from this recipe; it is surprisingly good and not so complicated. The black cardamom mousse is something else! but if you don´t like it just change the cardamom with cinnamon or orange zest.

In the original masterchef, Kate´s cake was too dense, with the recipe we used it is fluffy, so don´t know if for the book they already changed the recipe.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk69oc_masterchef-aus-3-episode-76-part-2_shortfilms&start=984

Hope you like it as much as we did!
Mr South & Ms North

Butternut pumpkin cream

Hei guys! sorry for the long silence! During this christmas we have been in Spain, eating a lot, so we came back with few extra kilos!

So thought we could make a post of a light vegetable cream for those days after heavy xmas meals.

Ingredients

• Half butternut pumpkin
• 1 large leek
• 1 tbsp philadelphia cream cheese
• 1 tbsp cashew nuts
• olive oil, salt, pepper

Preparation

Easy preparation, clean and chop a large leek and saute in a casserole with a bit of oil. Meanwhile clean half a butternut pumpkin and chop in dices, when the leek is changing color, add the pumpkin. Saute it for few minutes and cover with water.

After 15 min, when the pumpkin gets soft, add the philadelphia and the cashew nuts and blend together.

For serving you can add a bit of salt flakes and sunflower seeds.

Hope you like it!
Mr South

Rabo de toro (bull´s tail stew)

Let´s keep up with the traditional Spanish meals!

Today, rabo de toro, bull´s tail stew. I don´t know if the fame of the dish is because it is made of bull or because of the main ingredient is not so appealing or common. It takes quite many hours, you can speed it up using pressure cooker.

Traditionally, this dish is made with the Lidia bull´s tail. Of course this is a rare and desired product, so really expensive, otherwise bull or cow tail is used.

It is important to choose good pieces, you have to find pieces with lots of meat and big bone marrow, which will good flavor to the stew. Unfortunately the ones I used were a bit average.    

Ingredients

• 1 large leek
• 1 carrot
• half red pepper
• 1 tomato
• couple garlic nails
• 600g bull tail
• laurel
• 25 cl red wine
• 10cl Porto wine
• 35 cl broth vegetable or meat
• Optional: 2 potatoes and parsley

Preparation 

Serving for 2.

Add salt and pepper to the tail and then cover it with flour. In a hot pan, cover the bottom with olive oil and place the tail as to fry it. You have to fry all the sides so all the outer meat is browned.

After the tail is ready, in a casserole add a bit of the frying oil, trying that the burned flour doesn´t go there. Chop all the vegetables and fry them for 5-10 minutes, then add the bull´s tail and add the wines, the broth and the laurel, mix it till all the alcohol has evaporated. Then close the lid and let cook for 2,5 or 3h.

Every once in a while, open to stir a bit. The cooking time is approximate, the meat is ready when feels that the meat is falling from the bone.

Once is ready take away the bulls tail and the laurel leaf. Blend the sauce and put it through the strainer, if the sauce is too liquid boil it a bit more, but I recommend what I did.

When you take the bull´s tail out of the casserole, peel and cut couple of potatoes and place them to boil with the sauce before blending it. The potatoes will release the starch, helping making the sauce thicker, plus you have an amazing flavored potatoes to go with the stew.

Hope you like it

Mr South

Korvapuusti (cinnamon roll)

Just few days ago it was the Finnish independence day, it was cold and snowing outside so there was nothing better to cook some korvapuusti, a traditional Finnish cinnamon roll.

Ingredients

• 7dl flour
• 2,5 dl milk
• 1/2 egg
• 1 dl sugar
• 1/2 tbsp black cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 bag dried yest (11g)
• 100g butter 
• For filling: sugar, butter and cinnamon

Preparation

The flour used for this recipe is a bit difficult to explain, it has 12g protein per 100g and it says is a all purpose baking. One of the main hints of this recipe is to use as less flour as possible, otherwise it looses the fluffiness.

The black cardamom, you can use powder or you can grind your own to be a bit thicker, as you wish. 

In a big bowl pour half the flour and add the dried yest, heat the milk in the microwave so it is a bit over hand temperature. 

Batter an egg and place half in another big bowl and save the other half for decoration later on. In that bowl add the warm milk the blag cardamom, salt and sugar. Add slowly the flour/yest mixture to the milk/egg stirring all the time.

Once a homogeneous dough is achieved, add the other half of the flour slowly and when you have about 1dl flour/yest left to add, add the butter (room temp so it is easy to mix) and mix thoroughly then add the rest flour if it is necessary.

The dough should like elastic, silky soft and non sticky. Let it rest for 40 min in a warm place as to activate the yest. And easy trick is to place the bowl in the sink and create a warm water bath (warm it is around 40ºC).

Take the dough and work it a bit in a floured surface and split in in 2 so it is easy to handle. Add some flour on working surface and flatten the dough with a roller into rectangular shape, make it as thin as possible, half centimeter is good, but make it as thin before it breaks.

With your own taste, add butter cinnamon and sugar, it is not important the order; you can put all the ingredients in a food processor and then add all together, add sugar cinnamon and then the butter, but maybe the easiest is to add the butter then cinnamon and on top sugar. Keep in mind the amounts given above are for the dough, not the filling!

You can put a lot if you prefer, you can add there raisins, almonds, etc but traditional korvapuusti doesn't have.

Once you are happy with the filling, roll the dough trying not to press too much so it keeps fluffy. Once the roll is formed, with a knife cut the dough in a zig zag pattern (see the picture below). 

With the pieces cut, place them in a oven tray with baking paper and with the short side facing upwards. Then with your two thumbs press a bit the little pieces by the part which doesn't have the filling.

Let it rest for 30 min on warm place.

With the spare half egg from beginning, pain the rolls and add a bit on sugar on top of each one, it can be bits of sugar, ice sugar ow whatever you have.

Place in oven at 225ºC 10-12min. It is better that the rolls are a bit under cook that too much, when they are right in the spot they seem a bit under cook but if you stick a knife through a roll it will come out clean.

Hyvää ruokahalua!

Ms North 

By the way, Mr South says these are the best korvapuusti he has ever tasted! So try the recipe and tell us! 

Sopa castellana (garlic soup)

Winter, is time for heavy warm meals, and soups are in the top of the list. Today I decided to post about one really traditional Spanish dish, if a top 5 typical Spanish food was to be made, sopa castellana would be there (and no, paella wouldn´t not even be in top 10.

So what is sopa castellana? a humble, cheap ingredients, surviving meal for many, many generations throughout the last centuries (yes so old). The main ingredients were; old, hardened bread, garlic and couple of eggs, and if the family was lucky, a bit of pork in the form of chorizo or jamon. This soup, was the main caloric intake for the day.

Today, such hard times are over, but Spanish people keep on eating this humble dish, not because of some sort of past heritage but for the amazing flavors. 

Ingredients

• Garlic
• half tbsp Pimentón dulce (Spanish paprika powder)
• 2 eggs
• olive oil
• half baguette
• 0,6L vegetable or meat broth
• Optional: some chorizo or jamon and parsley

Preparation 

I used a baguette because it is easy to find, ideally you would use a thick, dense bread.

Serving for 2
In a casserole, cover the bottom with olive oil and add fine chopped garlic and laurel leaf. The amount of garlic for this dish has to be substantial, for me (garlic addict speaking) this starts around a large head, but up to you.
I just found this video, it is always nice to see new tricks to make cooking easier and faster, it works, I tried!!

When the garlic starts to get golden, pull the casserole out of the heat and add the half tbsp of pimentón dulce. 

Stir quickly, you don´t want to burn the pimentón and add the bread sliced. Mix thoroughly, trying that the bread soaks all the flavors.
Add the broth and mix for couple of minutes in medium fire. Let it cook for 5 minutes.

Add two full eggs and the chopped parsley. Leave it for couple of minutes so the eggs cook a bit.

Hope you like it!
Mr South


By the way, in the pics I added 1L of broth, but I like it a bit thicker, that´s why in the recipe I suggested 0,6L would be enough.

Filled squid

Hei! I had cooked this dish long time ago, but forgot to write about it.

This dish, brings me a lot of memories. When I remember my grandma (who passed away many years ago) the memory that comes first to my mind is helping her cooking this dish. It was the first time I cooked it, but I hope you like it.

I want to say as well, this dish represents a very typical catalan concept, mar i muntanya (sea and mountain). There are many dishes in the typical catalan recipe book which combine fish and meat, it might seem odd, but some combinations are delicious! Hopefully in the next posts we can post more mar i muntanya recipes!

Ingredients

• 3 onions
• 3 tomatoes 
• laurel
• 6 medium squid
• 50g shrimps
• 1 egg
• couple dried tomatoes
• small zucchini 
• garlic
• bit of Porto wine
• olive oil
• salt 
• black pepper

Preparation

Serving for 2.

We have prepared a vegetarian version, in my grandma´s recipe, she used the meat from a llonganisa (this is made with minced meat from pork, a quite fatty part) so you have to change the zucchini and dried tomatoes for minced meat.

In a casserole add a bit of oil and slow cook two and half onions chopped in stripes and couple of sliced garlic till it gets golden. 

Grate the tomatoes and add it to the casserole with onions, add a bit of Porto wine and a laurel leaf.

Chop small the remaining onion and a small zucchini and saute it in a different pan. When ready add the shrimps and the head/arms of the squid and small chopped dried tomatoes.

Boil and egg.

Place in a bowl the content of the pan and the boiled egg. You have to chop really small all the ingredients, go with scissors, is easier and less messy.

 

Clean the body of the squid with water and then use the chopped ingredients to fill the squid. Use fingers, it is easier, and you have to compress it as to feel quite hard. Close the squid body with toothpick.

After adding the grated tomatoes and the Porto wine in the casserole, cook it slow for 20 min and keeping the heat low, add the filled and closed squid. Cook 15 min, turning the filled squid and it is ready to serve!

Sorry for the quality of the pictures, I took them with the phone.
Salut!
Mr South

Beetroot hummus, tzatziki and dried tomato pesto with arabic/asian salad

Today, I wanted to make hummus. I love beans, I love hummus and sometimes I buy it in supermarket, but today I decided to try myself, and I'm not kidding, is super fast!!

Beetroot season is almost over so wanted to use the last bits of fresh beetroot, and seemed a good idea to mix it with hummus, and it was!

So the idea was to make this three delicious side dish sauces and with a bit of leftovers I did an amazing salad! I have to confess that coriander and I weren't good friends, but I'm starting to appreciate the little spicy aromatic kick of this plant.

Ingredients

Beetroot hummus 

• 150g chickpeas
• 1 lime
• 1 small finely grated beetroot
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• salt
• pepper 
• 1 nail garlic

Dried tomato pesto

• 10 dried tomatoes
• 8-10 roasted hazelnut
• 100g grated parmesan cheese
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 1 nail garlic

Tzatziki

• half lime
• 2tbsp thick yogurt
• 200g finely and medium grated cucumber
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 nail garlic
• olive oil

Salad

• 50g green pepper
• 50 g chickpeas
• 180g kidney beans
• 20g couscous
• 20g sunflower seeds
• half small onion
• half thick grated carrot
• half thick grated cucumber
• coriander
• half lime
• olive oil

Preparation

Beetroot hummus

From a can of chickpeas, use 3/4, aprox 150g (dried weight) and rinse it with water, then pour them into the food processor or blender.

Grate finely a peeled beetroot and put it together with the chickpeas. Add 1 lime juice and olive oil.

I use lime because I like it much better than lemon, which I find too strong taste and somehow masks all other flavors.

Give it couple minutes in the blender and try it. Put black pepper and salt as desired as well as water if you prefer a less thick hummus.

Dried tomato pesto

Again, with a blender or food processor, add 10 dried tomatoes, 8-10 roasted hazelnuts (I didn't have pine nuts but roasted hazelnuts taste amazing) 100g finely grated parmesan cheese and a bit of garlic and olive oil.

Couple of minutes in the blender and it is ready. 

IF you want to freeze this for another occasion, like that is perfect, otherwise add more olive oil before serving.

Tzatziki

In a bowl, add 2 big table spoons of thick yogurt, juice of half a lime, grated cucumber (most of it finely and a bit quite thick) a crushed garlic, 1/2 tea spoon of sugar, 1 tea spoon of salt and stir it till it becomes homogeneous. Taste it and add more lime juice, salt or whatever you like best and in the end add the olive oil.

Asian/Arabic salad

Ok first of all, there is no name for the salad, I just started adding things I had and thought would go together.

In a serving bowl, add the leftovers of chickpeas, open a can and rinse it of kidney beans and pour it too. Grate in the thickest size, half a carrot and half cucumber. Chop really small half a small onion and green pepper and add it to the serving bowl.

For the couscous, a bit more boiling water than amount of couscous, 1:1,5 I use. In a bowl, add the couscous, a bit of salt, black pepper, olive oil and a bit roasted curry powder (careful it is strong stuff). Then add the boiling water, give it couple of stirs and place a dish on top of the bowl so the steam can't escape. Live it rest for 5 min. When ready pour it to the serving bowl.

For finishing, add the sunflower seeds, chopped coriander, olive oil and half lime juice. Mix it together and it is ready!

For serving we had pita bread; take it from the bag, splash some water in top, 30seconds microwave and good to go!

 

Hope you like it!

Mr South