by Marcela M. | Dec 27, 2011 | Blog, Europe, Travel, Uncategorized
Good morning dear friends!
I hope you had a very happy holiday celebration! We had a quiet, relaxing long weekend at home, which was great.
I prepared a small dessert table for the occasion but I didn’t finish editing the pictures yet, so I thought that, in the meantime, I could show you a few pictures of how Nicosia (my city) was decorated for the holidays. Earlier this year, in November, I took a Christmas photography course with Montréal-based photographer Jackie Rueda and it inspired me to register some of the beauty of the holiday season with my camera- or, at least, to try!
Here are some of the pictures I took.
I will be back before the end of the year with a yummy chocolatey recipe. Have a wonderful week!
by Marcela M. | Dec 25, 2011 | Blog, cookies, Europe, Holidays, Recipe Box, Recipes, Sweets, Travel, Uncategorized
Hello my dear friends!
It is almost evening time here in Nicosia and we are getting ready to start cooking our Christmas dinner. Since we are expats, with no nearby family, this is generally a very quiet moment for us, far from the running, shopping and cooking craze that December generally brings. Family is always missed, but there is comfort and joy in knowing that we are together is our hearts.
One of the advantages that I see in this way of living, is that we get to choose the traditions we love and we want to incorporate into our own celebrations as a little family, and to change them and adopt new ones as it pleases us. So, when it came to choosing how to spend our Christmases, we opted for a quiet dinner at home on the eve, and a bigger, yet intimate, celebration on the actual day of the holiday. Our kids are still rather small, and they haven’t started school yet, so they don’t have many expectations about these dates…so they are doubly surprised and overjoyed when they discovered their presents and special treats on the 25th!
One of the treats that I make since we live in Cyprus are some special Greek cookies called Kourambiedes. They were the first sweet I had when I arrived in Nicosia and I loved them immediately. They are eaten on Christmas day, and at other celebrations, such as weddings. They have cinnamon, almonds and rose water, and they melt in your mouth!
So, if you feel like baking something different these days, do try them! They are very easy, and fun for baking with kids!
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
{for the filling}
30grs almonds
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon sugar
{for the dough}
1 egg
1 teaspoon brandy/cognac
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100grs butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 cups all purpose flour
{for dusting}
rose water (1/4 cup, approximately)
icing sugar (approximately 3 tablespoons)
1)Preheat the oven at 150C/300F
2) Process the almonds, sugar and cinnamon until the almonds are coarsely ground (do not over do it, you don’t want them to turn into powder)
3) Beat slightly the egg, vanilla and brandy. Cream butter and sugar with a wooden spoon and add it to the egg mixture. Once they are integrated, start adding flour 1 tablespoon at a time, until you have a workable dough (see picture 2)
4) Shape a piece of dough into an oval. Make a hole in the middle, put 1/4 teaspoon of the almond and cinnamon mixture in it and close it, as shown in picture 3
4)Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes or until barely golden (Keyword: barely! Do not let them brown!)
5) Put the rose water on a glass and get a brush ready. As soon as you remove the cookies from the oven, paint them with rose water. (The difference in temperature will allow the rose water to be absorbed by the cookies, so do not let them cool down).
6)Let the cookies rest for about 3 to 4 hours. After they are dry, dust icing sugar over them and they are ready!
They taste delicious with a cup of tea and they last for a couple of weeks if you keep them in an airtight container.
May you have a wonderful Christmas, full of love, peace and joy.
————————
Este post está dedicado a mi amiga invisible, y compañera de andanzas fotográficas, María. Feliz navidad!!!!!!
by Marcela M. | Dec 22, 2011 | Blog, cookies, Europe, Holidays, Recipe Box, Recipes, Sweets, Travel, Uncategorized
Good afternoon dear friends!
I apologize for my silence over the past few weeks. I had originally intended to write a few posts before but, as it turns out, coming back home after a 7 week trip with twin toddlers required to readjust them to the old routine, to Nicosia’s weather and time zone (there is a 5 hours difference between Argentina and Cyprus) and to our normal life, in general. So these days we have been juggling regular work and study schedules with middle-of-the-night wake-up episodes, piles and piles of clothes for washing, folding, ironing and putting away, and a sort of “pre-spring”clean (always due after such long trips).
In spite of all these adjustments, it is wonderful to be back home, and coming back in the middle of the Holiday Season makes it extra special. We arrived to a beautifully-decorated Nicosia, with the streets full of lights and Christmas markets, and people singing carols in the streets of downtown. And this, for a Christmas Elf such as myself, is enough reason to be happy.
On Christmas’ eve it will actually be 4 years since I arrived to Cyprus (my husband had been here for 6 months already), so this time of the year is always one of memories of years past, a time to reflect on how much our life has changed since that day. Back in 2007 there was just the two of us, and an almost-empty apartment with a bed, a sofa, an outdoor table with 4 chairs for the balcony, and a Christmas Tree that my husband had arranged for me, to make me feel at home. In the year that followed we furnished our house, we had twins, we met new people, we adapted, and Cyprus started becoming our home.
Making a place one’s home involves incorporating new habits and letting go of some others. We change, sometimes imperceptibly, with every new country we live in and those mutations are only perceived when contrasted with people and places that we have met before. As Nelson Mandela said in “A long walk to Freedom”: There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered”.
One of the ways in which we have changed is in the food we eat, particularly during holidays and other celebrations. We approach new places also through their food and, in the process of adapting, we incorporate new flavours, we make them our own, and they travel with us wherever we go. This is the case with the cookies I will share with you today, which have come to mean Christmas to me, as much as Panettone or Turrones (which are some of Argentina’s traditional holiday sweets ).
Melomakarona are, in fact, the cookies of advent. Greek Cypriots fast during this period (they adopt a vegan diet, eliminating all animal products) and, during that fast, they snack on these cookies, which are highly caloric. Everything in their flavour speaks of this season: they take cinnamon, clove, orange, honey and walnuts, and they are dipped in syrup for extra sweetness. If you are looking for a different cookie to bake these days, I highly recommend these ones. They will fill your home with true holiday cheer!
Here is the recipe I use, as was given to me by my neighbour (and adapted by her from the book “Cyprus cooking for friends“, by Sandra Lysandrou)
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 cup orange juice
3 cups vegetable oil (canola)
1/2 cup brandy
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt
8 1/2 cups self raising flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
{For the syrup}
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cup water
{For topping}
1 cup finely ground walnuts mixed with 1 tablespoon of cinnamon (I like to mix walnuts and almonds)
Preparation:
a-Preheat the oven at 140 C/ 284F
b- In a large bowl, mix sugar, oil, juice, brandy, spices, 7 cups of flour, baking powder and salt. Work the dough, adding the extra flour as needed, until it becomes fluffy. The dough must be oily, not dry, so stop adding flour when it becomes just workable.
b- Form the melomakaronas by taking small pieces of dough and shaping them into ovals with your hands. Note that this is a dough made with self-raising flour and a fair amount of baking powder as well, so the cookies will expand in the oven. It is consequently better to make them rather small, and to place them in an ungreased baking tray separated from each other, to give them place for growth. Bake them until the bottom is golden brown (approximately 30 minutes).
c- Allow the cookies to cool down completely and prepare the syrup by mixing sugar, water and honey and bringing them to the boil. Once the syrup boils, remove it from the heat and dip the cookies in it, soaking them for a few seconds. Note that it is very important that the cookies are completely cool when you do this, otherwise they will not absorb the syrup! For the same reason, you will need to reheat the syrup if it cools down before you are finished dipping the cookies.
d- Place the cookies on a wire rack to drain the excess syrup and sprinkle the crushed nuts mixture over them.
I hope you will like them !
by Marcela M. | Nov 8, 2011 | Blog, Europe, Travel, Uncategorized
Good morning dear friends!
I’m sorry for the delay in posting this week: we arrived in Argentina last Tuesday after a grueling travel experience, and we have been enjoying some wonderful family time, greeting friends, walking around, re-discovering (for me) and discovering (for my husband and my children) my home of city, Cordoba. This week, I have been fully immersed in the preparation of my children’s belated birthday party, which will take place next Saturday. So it has been hard to keep the blog updated!
Today, however, I won’t talk to you about Cordoba, but about Belgrade, Serbia, which is the city where my husband’s family is, and where we spent one week before flying to Argentina. I had been to Belgrade many times in the past, but this was my first time in Autumn (my favourite season) and I must say that I found it particularly stunning. The trees of Belgrade’s many parks were gloriously red, orange and yellow, and the streets were covered in dead leaves, which crunched under our steps. The weather was fresh, but not yet completely cold, which allowed us to walk along its streets with ease, with our children comfortably sitting in their double stroller.
Walking is actually one of the things I enjoy doing in Belgrade the most, because it is a very walkable and walked city. I love its parks and its cafes (they say the coffee house tradition was born in Belgrade, before Paris and Rome) and, of course, its poslasticarnica, or traditional pastry shops. Actually, one of the city’s oldest Poslasticarnica, dating from 1936, belongs to one of my husband’s brother in law, Max (whom you can see in the picture below, making the decorations for a traditional Serbian bread, traditionally served during the Family’s Saint’s day).
Traditional pastry shops are generally small, with just a few tables, where you can sit and enjoy a cup of strong Serbian/Turkish Coffee with delicious pastries which denote Serbia’s mixed past: traditional European cakes and oriental delicacies such as baklava. Regarding baklava, for example, you can have it in three different ways: Turkish Baklava (with home-made phyllo pastry), Greek Baklava, and Baklava with Plazma (a Serbian variation, characterized by the inclusion in the filling of a the crumbs of Plazma cookies)
Another favourite spot in the city is Kalemegdan, the old fortress with its beautiful surrounding parks, that overlook the confluence of the rivers Savva and Danube.
Kalemegdan is a great place to walk and, if you have children, you may want to know that the local zoo is located there too. It is also a very common spot for retired people, who play chess in the chess tables located there, a tradition that seems to exist since the times of Tito.
At the entrance to the Park (coming from downtown’s main shopping street, Knez Mihaijlova), one can find small shops selling handicraft goods such as copper pots for making coffee, lace works, knits in traditional patterns, militar memorabilia, etcetera.
The picture below is of a type of street shop that is very common in the city and that I haven’t seen elsewhere: a place where one can find shoe laces of all types and colors. These shops were one of the first things I noticed when I visited Belgrade for the first time-and the variety they offer is deeply missed by my husband when we are abroad!
I hope you enjoyed this small tour of Belgrade! I will be back next week with pictures from Cordoba- and from Luka and Zoe’s birthday party!
Have a great week and weekend!
by Marcela M. | Sep 19, 2011 | Africa, Blog, Recipes, Travel, Uncategorized
Good morning dear friends! I hope you are having a lovely Monday. I apologize for not posting regularly, I am currently studying for an exam and I can’t seem to find the time to post as regularly as I would like to.
Last week, during our weekly grocery shopping, I spotted a few tropical fruits at our local supermarket. Even though they were imported from Brazil (a country that I have been fortunate to visit in a few occasions), they reminded me of Ivory Coast, where I lived from 2005 to the end of 2007, and where I met my husband.
Tropical fruits were abundant and, since they were locally grown, they were very cheap too. There were different kinds of papayas (small, ball sized ones, and also big ones, the size of a watermelon) , different kinds of bananas (tiny ones, big ones called “banane plantain” – with which alloko was made, and regular- sized ones), pineapples (the ones from Assinie Maffia, were tiny and especially sweet) and mangoes, among many others.
Mangoes, especially the ones from the northern state of Korhogo, were so delicious, so incredibly sweet that if you ever find them wherever you live, I encourage you to buy one for tasting purposes at least. Other fruits, such as apples and pears were also available in big cities, such as Abidjan, especially in big supermarkets, but were much more expensive. Local fruits could be bought at the local markets, where the grocer would also advice us on how to distinguish the good fruits, how to cut them, how it was best to cook them. It was there that I learnt how to dice a mango, how to chose the best avocado, and how to select a ripe pineapple.
During the two and a half years that I spent in Ivory Coast, I lived in two different cities (Daoukro and Abidjan), and travelled to many others. When I was deciding what to do with the fruits I had bought the other day, it was Abidjan that I remembered.
When we lived there, we used to go to a bar/restaurant called Jardiland, a beautiful place with tables in the garden, amid the luscious vegetation, Moroccan lamps hanging from the ceiling, soft music, candle-lit tables and with two cute bambies walking around the greenery and greeting guests while they ate. It was a lovely place to spend a quiet evening.
Jardiland had a tradition I liked (if I can call it that way): whenever the food was taking too long, they would serve the customer a papaya, sliced in half, accompanied by half a lime, to sprinkle its juice over it. The bitterness of the lime complemented wonderfully the sweetness of the papaya. It was a simple, yet delicious way of waiting for the tasty food to come.
So, in honour of the end of summer, of Ivory Coast and the time we spent there, I decided to eat one of the papayas just like that, with a little bit of lime juice sprinkled over it. There is great beauty in simplicity too, great dishes do not need to be complicated.
Have you ever had tropical fruits? Do you like them? What is your favourite simple dish?
Have a wonderful week!
by Marcela M. | Jul 12, 2011 | Blog, Cooking basics and tutorials, Marmalades and jams, Recipe Box, Recipes, South America, Sweets, Travel, Uncategorized
Happy Tuesday dear Friends! I hope you had a wonderful start of the week.
In this past post I talked to you about dulce de leche, and I mentioned that this milk jam is the traditional filling for cornstarch cookies or alfajores de maizena. After the post, a few friends asked me how they could make dulce de leche, because they don’t live in countries where one can simply go and buy one jar at the supermarket.
So here I am, showing you three easy ways of making your own, the Argentinian way. Why the Argentinian way? Because you can find different versions of the same product pretty much all around Latin America, but if you read the components you will notice slight differences in the ingredients. For example, while in Argentina dulce de leche is made 100% with cow’s milk, traditional mexican dulce de cajeta is made with goat’s milk; and in Uruguay it generally includes cornstarch (which makes it thicker). It is also possible to find it outside of Latin America, for example in France (where it is called confiture de lait), in Israel (ribat jalav) and, I am told, even in India.
So how can one make dulce de leche, when it is not readily available for purchase?
There are three ways I know of, but only two of which I have tried:
I- By submerging a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pan full of water, and letting it boil for about 3 hours (in a normal pan) or 45 minutes (in a pressure cooker). If you use this method, you should remember that:
a) The can has to be completely covered in water at all times, otherwise any part that remains uncovered will not mutate into dulce de leche (as in the picture below)
b) Once the 3 hours have passed, make sure that the can is COMPLETELY cooled before opening it. If you open it when it’s still hot, the content will burst and there is a serious risk that you may burn yourself. So wait. Put in the fridge for faster cooling if necessary. But do not open it immediately!
This is what will be waiting for you when you open the can:
II- If the possibility of burning yourself scares you a lot, you can try Chef David Lebovitz’s method, which consists of baking sweetened condensed milk au bain marie, covered in aluminum foil. I haven’t tried it, but it does look like a safer option, and it takes less time than the original can version.
III- Make dulce de leche from scratch. It is not difficult to do so, and, though it is a bit time consuming because you need to watch it carefully, it is worth it. I must admit that, when I lived in Argentina, I didn’t do it very often, because there are so many good brands available that I didn’t see the point. But one day, when I was 21 years old, my father (who loved to cook) suggested that we tried, so we asked around for a recipe and we made our first batch of dulce de leche. This is the recipe I will share with you today.
To make 1 kilo of dulce de leche, you will need
– 5 litres of milk
– 1 kilo of sugar
– 1 vanilla pod (if you don’t have vanilla pods, you can use 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract)
– 1 tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda
– 1 big pan
– 1 wooden spoon
The preparation is very simple.
1- Put the milk in the pan. Make sure the size of the pan is twice as big as the amount of milk, because the preparation will rise once you add the bicarbonate of soda and, if it is too small, you run the risk of it overflowing the pan and making a big mess. In order to prevent this, I am told that one should put in the pan a few small glass balls (like the ones children play with), because this will prevent the preparation from rising too much.
2- Add sugar, all at once.
3- Stir the preparation and bring to the boil. Let it boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly
4- Bring heat to the minimum, and add the vanilla pod and the bicarbonate of soda (I added 1 teaspoon because I was making half the preparation only)
5- Let the preparation boil at minimum heat, stirring every 10-15 minutes. It should look as in the picture below:
6- After about 1 hour, the milk will start to brown, and will look like this:
7-After another hour, it will become even darker, like this:
8- After around 1/2 hour, it will be thicker and darker and it will have considerably reduced. When it reaches this point, start stirring constantly for about 15 minutes.
This is the consistency it had at that point. It doesn’t look like it’s ready but, trust me, it almost is.
9- After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and continue stirring for another 5-10 minutes. What I like to do then is to transfer it to another pan (it cools faster). This is how it looked right after I transferred it:
As you can see, it still looks quite liquid, like a caramel sauce.
But all it needs is to cool down completely to reach the appropriate consistency.
10-Once it has cooled down, transfer it to a glass container and keep it in the fridge. This is how it will look after 3 hours in it:
Ready to eat and to add to preparations such as cookies, cakes, brownies, ice-creams, puddings, and so many more!
I hope that you will like it if you decide to make it.
Have a wonderful week!
If you want to know how to make dulce de leche repostero (baking dulce de leche), check this post
