Bi Bim Bap

Frequently the weather dictates what should  be cooked for dinner. And as it grows cold, grey and wet there is nothing better than a hot, hot bibimbap. This Korean dish is the great for warming the soul. Plus you can make it chili hot too.

It's pretty easy to put together but it's really tough to get all the ingredients hot onto the table. What I really like is when it is served in a stone bowl which has been pre-heated. Unfortunately I've never been able to get my hands on 4 such bowls :( So we just use regular serving bowls. It's also time sensitive so you've got to know when everyone is going to be there (if you want it hot, that is). This is usually hard for us to achieve on a week night but we still try. And if you really need your meat fix, you can make this with meat too.

I'm never quite sure how many people this recipe serves. I think my kids might eat a full adult serving but then again, maybe they don't. To be on the safe side I'd say it serves 4 but you might find it serves 6.

Ingredients:

	2 cups	Rice
Marinade
	2 cloves	Garlic, minced
	2	Green onions, chopped
	5 tbsp.	Soya sauce
	2 tbsp.	Sugar
	2 tbsp.	Vegetable oil
	1 tsp.	Sesame seeds, roasted
	1 tbsp.	Sesame oil
	1/8 tsp.	Black pepper, ground
Meat!
	500 g	Tofu
Vegetables:
	300 g	Carrots
	300 g	Frozen spinach
	1 tbsp.	Sesame oil
	1 tsp.	Sesame seeds, roasted
	2 cup	Mung bean sprouts
	4	Eggs
		Kimchee

Method:

The first thing to do is get the rice ready. I use sushi rice but you can use any type of Korean rice. You just need to be careful and make sure that you soak the rice ahead of time else it will not taste good. So wash your rice as usual and then add an equal amount of water as rice and let it sit for at least 30 minutes. Longer is better. And then cook it.

Put together the marinade for the tofu (you can substitute for any type of meat or fish) well in advance so that the tofu has time to absorb the flavour. You probably know that tofu is pretty bland, so you've really got to let the sauce get into it. The best way to do this is to squeeze the water out of the tofu by wrapping it in paper towels and putting a weight on top of it. Place it so that the water can drain out and leave it for around 30 minutes. Then when you put the tofu in the sauce it will have plenty of space to absorb marinade. Of course I don't always do this, because as you all know I'm ALWAYS short on time. Once you've drained the tofu cut it into bite sized cubes (1 - 2 cm dice).

The marinade is pretty easy to make. Just make sure you slice the spring onion finely and mash, crush the garlic well.

Mix all the marinade ingredients together until the sugar has dissolved.

And then put in the tofu and carefully mix it all up.

Leave this to sit for at least half an hour (or as long as it takes you to chop up the rest of the ingredients).

Next take the carrots and cut them in to matchsticks. This is about as tough as it gets with this recipe. It takes a while to cut them up. I'm sure you can buy some type of gadget to do the cutting for you. I cut mine to be about 2 inches (5 cm) long and then set them aside.

If you are using fresh spinach it will have to be cooked. Fresh spinach tastes much better than frozen but it takes a considerable amount of effort to prepare it. For fresh spinach, put it in a large pan, without water, put the lid on and heat until the spinach becomes limp (a couple of minutes). Then drain the water and chop. If you are using frozen spinach defrost it (I use the microwave) and drain the water. You don't need to get paranoid about draining the water. Just get out what you can. No need to squeeze it or anything fancy like that.

Next wash your bean sprouts and get a pot of water ready to boil them in. So as I said before everything has to be hot when it goes into the bowl so a cooking frenzy is about to start in the kitchen. Get everyone out of the way and boil yourself a kettle of water. Pour the boiling water into the bowls you are going to use to eat the bibimbap to heat them up.

What I do next is lay the table! There are three essentials (and one non-essential). You need to have Sirachara sauce (the one with the chicken on the bottle is the original and the best, it's made in california!), Hoisin sauce and Kimchee. You could make your own Kimchee but I haven't tried it myself. I buy fresh stuff from the local Asian store. You can also get packets that come from Korea. As you can see, Kimchee is hot but it is delicious. My daughter has been whacking it since she was 3 years old. Don't forget to lay the table with small side dishes to put the Kimchee in.

The non-essential item is some type of Korean tea. Green or Jasmine would do although in Korean places you usually get a barley tea. Make sure you have plenty of water at the table for all those who underestimate the strength of the Sirachara sauce!!

Now time to go back and cook. Ideally you would have 5 burners going at the same time. C'est un petit probleme ... most cookers only have 4. I acutally only use 3 burners because I don't have enough woks to cook everything in. I start by putting a pan full of water on the stove for the bean sprouts. I'm not too picky if they are a bit cold! Then I stir fry the carrots in a small wok. I sprinkle them with salt while they are frying. I've found that I have to keep turning them otherwise they will burn, so it's a bit labour intensive. They get fried until they turn limp i.e. are no longer crunchy.

By the time the carrots are done the water for the bean sprouts is boiling so I throw them in. Then I put on the frying pan to fry the eggs. While that oil is heating up I fry the spinach. For this I use a tablespoon or so of sesame oil and add salt, pepper and sesame seeds. Then I fry it all up until it's nice and dry because, remember, the spinach is already cooked. By now the bean sprouts are done (boiling for 2-3 minutes) so I turn them out into a colander.

Then start frying the eggs. Make sure your egg yolk is soggy, it adds to the taste of the dish. While frying the eggs I finally fry the tofu until it's just cooked. None of this stuff is an exact science. The tofu doesn't need to cook very long but on the other hand you can cook it for longer and it will be fine. Just make sure you don't burn it.

Now once you are done juggling the eggs and the tofu everything is ready. I put the eggs into the bowls in the kitchen and serve the rest in individual bowls. Traditionally the egg should go on top but that would mean I'd have to serve everything in the kitchen and I'm bound to give one too much and the other too little.

At last it is ready to eat! But you have to remember a very, very important step. So first of all serve yourself everything in the required quantity.

Then add the Sirachara and Hoisin sauce to taste and then MIX EVERYTHING TOGETHER!!

And although this might look like a big mess to you, it tastes awesome. There is no other way to eat it so if this grosses you out don't even try making it.
Enjoy your Bibimbap with Kimchee on the side.

Apfelkuchen, Apple Pie or Apple Tart!

Oh it is really too early to be baking, although it IS already 8 a.m.! Having been woken by the alarm at 6:15 (which is usual), I was followed by that feeling that I just don't want to get up. So I lay in bed and hoped that my husband would awake. Okay, I do this most mornings and usually nothing stirs from the other side of the bed, but today I was lucky and up he got. He's like an energizer bunny in the morning! Ah few more moments to lie in bed.

All good things must come to an end and at 6:30 a.m. I rolled out of bed and started getting the kids lunches ready. Thank goodness for the rice and curry left overs from last night!

It was my turn to walk my eldest to the bus stop. Absolutely necessary since it is pitch dark when she leaves the house. But the problem with going out in the cold and the dark is that when I come back in again I'm ready to curl up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. So now at 8 a.m. I'm still tiered.

I've promised a German style apple cake and fried noodles for my husbands office party this evening and since we also have to go to a musical performance of the kids it's got to be done early. Oh and I almost forgot the chocolate chip cookies that I promised for the after school care teachers, all 12 of them!

But this post is primarily about the Apfelkuchen.

This is probably  not a real Apfelkuchen because I merged 3 recipes. The only one that's on the internet is the pie crust. But they use American units and a food processor. 

Serves 8; Preparation time: 3 hours (including "sitting" and baking)

Ingredients

Pie Crust:
	170 g	Flour
	40 g	Sugar
	125 g	Butter, chilled
	1	Egg yolk
	<1 tbsp.	Whipping cream
Caramelized Apples:
	850 g	Peeled and cored apples
	40 g	Butter
	100 g	Brown sugar
	2 pk.	Vanilla sugar
	1/4 tsp.	Cinnamon, ground
Cake:
	125 g	Butter
	125 g	Sugar
	2	Eggs, seperated
	125 g	Flour
	1 1/2 tsp.	Baking powder
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
	75 g	Ground almonds
	60 ml	Milk

Method: 

The dough I made yesterday and put it in the fridge to rest. The technique used to make it is the same as the basic pastry. Unfortunately I forgot and put the sugar in with the flour and the butter and my fingers got exfoliated. Something that I've tried to avoid in the past.

The egg yolk and the cream get mixed together with a fork until they are well mixed. They don't have to be fluffy. And I used just under 1 tbsp. of cream and it was enough. If you have a larger egg yolk you should probably use a bit less.

I then mixed this in first with a fork,

which is probably a good idea if you have warmer hands. Then plop it was tightly wrapped in cling wrap and put in the fridge.

Today I'm starting with the apples. I peeled and cored them before realizing that I should weigh them so that's why the weight of the apples is after peeling and coring, which is a bit weird. Then I sliced them. My apples were largish so after cutting them in quarters I quartered each quarter.

I put my butter in a large skillet and melted it quickly. Then threw in the apples, sprinkled over the sugars, tossed and then allowed to cook on medium-high heat.

I think I have the wrong apples because they let a lot of water but in the end it all evaporated and things are looking good. The apples need constant turning especially after the water has dissolved and the sugar starts to caramelize. At this stage the apples will start glistening and maybe even brown (which mine didn't). The important thing to keep in mind is that the apples are now cooked and thus very fragile. So if you don't want to put apple puree on your cake be very, very gentle with the apples. Remove them from the heat and then set them aside.

If you want you can sprinkle some ground cinnamon on your apples. This will make them more Christmassy. I used 3 pinches on mine. My cinnamon is very strong because I have the real stuff, fresh from Sri Lanka.

Usually I would have gotten the pastry ready while the apples were cooking but today my judgement is a bit wonky due to me almost falling asleep. So when I started with the apples I thought, "what shall I do while they are caramelizing?" and came up with the answer "I can just write about it" So now I have apples and no pastry shell to put them in :( Ah but my post is getting along well.

I rolled out my pastry to fit in my 10", non-stick, springform pan and tried to pick it up and it all fell to pieces. I've never had this happen to this dough before. I contemplated just putting it in piece by piece but then I couldn't have taken a nice photo to share with you. So I opted to knead it all together again and re-roll it. I gave it a good knead because it seemed like it needed it! The second rolling came out perfect, so my guess is that a good kneading was exactly what it needed. Anyways when you do knead your pastry just remember you are NOT making bread and if you over knead it or are too hard on it your pastry will not be light and fluffy. So just push it around enough that it holds together.

I trimmed the edges with a plastic knife, which you can see in the picture. The only reason it is there is because my camera refused to focus on the pie dough so I had to put something inside to get it to focus!

Anyways, now the pie crust is in the oven at 190 C in a fan oven and is baking blind. That is, I pricked the dough, covered it in aluminium foil, poured in my baking beans and put it in the oven for 20 minutes. Voila!

Now I just have to make the filling which is pretty simple. I used a hand mixer to beat the butter and sugar together because I felt like there was not quite enough batter for my big mixer. Once they were fluffy I added in the egg yolk and mixed it until just combined, i.e. I couldn't see any egg yolk anymore! Then I added in the milk and beat that just a tiny bit. Next came the flour, salt, baking powder and ground almonds.

These dry items I mixed in with a spatula.

Then I beat the egg whites. I like to do this in a tall, thin "bowl" because they beat quicker. Turn the bowl upside down for a quick check to see if the egg whites are beaten enough ...

...and then add them to the mix. Now extremely gently fold in the egg whites. You want to keep as much air in there as possible.

Finally, I put the cake together. First the cake mix went in and then I arranged my apples on top (which I gave a quick stir before hand). Last time when I tried a similar cake the fruit all moved to the middle of the cake so I made sure that the apples went all the way to the edges. I'm hoping that I didn't over load the cake because that would mean I can't post this :( Now the cake went in the oven at 160 C (fan oven) for 40 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes and remove the sides of the springform. Then put it on a wire mesh to cool further. Once it's cooled (it doesn't need to be completely cold) carefully remove the base of your springform. If you use a non-stick spring form do not cut the cake on the non-stick surface. The coating will come off and that stuff is carcinogenic (since I first wrote this this fact has been proven wrong!). You don't want to be eating it.

I can't wait to try it this evening with some whipped cream.

Advent

And so the year is slowly coming to an end and the days here are getting shorter and shorter. Not to mention that it is getting COLD. As I always say, "I come from the tropics, I don't like this weather", but there are some advantages to the cold, grey weather in Germany and one of those is the ability to celebrate advent.

In Germany advent goes on for at least 4 weeks and starts 4 Sunday's before Christmas. The first thing that you have to do is get yourself an "adventskranz" (advents wreath). This year I made one using some of the evergreen that our landlord chopped down a few days before the first advent.

Then once December the first comes around you have to have an "Adventskalendar" (advents calender). Easier said than done. When I first got to Germany I thought that this was a great idea and so I made one for my daughters. Now every year I have to come up with 24 (times 2) gifts to put in the calendar. Which reminds me that after tomorrow their calendar is empty so I'd better get on with it! If only they would agree to a shop bought Adventskalendar, so much cheaper and less work!

An angel washing peg to hold up the presents

On the 6th of December St Nikolaus arrives leaving the children chocolates, sweets and presents. Hmmm more presents? Yes! I've gotten mine used to getting just sweets. Every year they get a large chocolate Santa put in their stocking. Okay, it's supposed to be put in a boot, but then what am I going to do with the stockings that I embroidered when we were in the USA!

Chocolate Santa's

Well Nikolaus has come and gone and we still have to buy the kids presents for Christmas. It's a stressful time for the present buyer i.e. me! But I get my kick out of it because Advent means that I can bake to my hearts content and distribute it to all and sundry.

The first advent we were supposed to celebrate at a friends but they fell sick :( That meant I was left with a huge cheesecake and only 4 people to eat it. So I decided, what the heck, lets just have it for dinner together with some lime cookies, macaroons and pancakes. Here is our spread:

Table with advent calendar in the background

Vanilla Chocolate Cheesecake

Lime Meltaways

Macaroons

Snowflake Pancakes

The second advent came around and my girls decided they wanted to make biscuits. My youngest received some cookie cutters and a recipe for performing with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra. So these just had to be used. I decided to try the recipe out and it turned out to be perfect. I've been looking for the perfect recipe to use with cookie cutters for years and now I've found it. I'll share it with you some time soon.

But then I had some pastry left so I tried out a new cake. It's a very German type of cake and I topped it with frozen blueberries, the only berries I had at hand. It turned out delicious and I'm going to try making it with caramelized apples next. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post them.

So that's all I wanted to do today, share some of our yummy advent Sunday tea's. I hope you all have a very warm and bright Adventzeit and that those of you celebrating Christmas have a wonderful time.

Lemon Slices

I don't know why I bought a heap of lemons, but I did and so I had to find some way to use them up. I wanted to make a lemon meringue pie but it was just a bit too damp for it and there wasn't really anyone around to eat it. So I settled for some lemon slices from my Martha Stewart holiday cookie book. I've never tried them before and they turned out super delicious. The recipe says they last 2 days in the fridge but mine are still good a week on.

Ingredients:

Crust
	6 oz	Cold butter
	1 3/4 cups	Flour
	3/4 cups	Sugar (fine)
	3/4 tsp.	Salt
Filling
	4 lrg.	Eggs, lightly beaten
	1 1/3 cups	Sugar
	3 tbsp.	Flour
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
	3/4 cup	Fresh lemon juice
	1/4 cup	Milk
	Icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

I made the crust just like all my other crusts, by hand! First I cut up the butter into little pieces and then added it to the flour and the salt. 

I left the sugar until the end because I wasn't looking forward to rubbing sugar between my fingers. I guess in retrospect my fingers would have been well exfoliated!

Once I had my breadcrumbs I added the sugar and mixed it well. 

For this recipe it is important that you have the correct sized dish because the filling is liquidy before it is baked and you will have a big mess if you pour it into a shallow dish. I used a 9 by 13 inch cake tray which I lined with parchment paper. 

Then, with my hands, I pressed the mixture into my baking tray and then ... popped the crust into the FREEZER for 15 minutes. It might be prudent to check if you have space in the freezer before you start. If you're experiencing winter, then just throw it out on the balcony or the windowsill. 

Time for the oven to go on and the filling to be made. I set my oven to 160 C because I use a fan oven, with a regular oven I believe it is 180 C or 350 F. 

The filling is also relatively easy. The worst part is squeezing the lemon! I needed 3 1/2 large lemons to get 3/4 cup. I'm assuming that you could use lime juice too, (I always substituted lime juice for lemon when I'm cooking in Sri Lanka) although I think you'd need quite a few limes. Since limes tend to be more citric than lemons you might also want to consider using less than 3/4 cups. And I just had a brain wave, why not use any citrus fruit. I'm sure it would work with orange, grapefruit, etc.

Then I hand whisked the eggs, sugar, flour and salt together.

Stirred in the lemon juice and milk and voila! The filling was done. Really simple. In fact a great recipe for those little chef's in your house. Up until now there were no sharp utensils and no heat involved. I think I'm going to add this to my daughters recipe book.

The pastry was now ready and so was the oven so I popped it in and baked it for around 18 - 20 minutes. As you can see it was getting a bit brown in places when I took it out. Once you get this thing out of the oven you need to reduce the heat by about 10 C (25 F) so that the oven is ready to cook the lemon filling.

Onto this hot pastry, I poured my lemon filling and then carefully put it back in the oven for around 18 minutes. At around 18 minutes the filling was set and so I took the thing out and let it cool for a bit. Then, very carefully I tried to take the whole slab out of the pan. I was really freaking out at this point because I was sure it was going to break. But it didn't! I think that if I hadn't pressed in the dough so well at the beginning that it may well have cracked.

I left it on a wire rack to cool and then once it was cool cut it into rectangles. I don't remember how many I got out of it. You can cut them smaller if you are serving them together with a lot of other things and larger if they are being served by themselves. Use a really sharp knife to cut them because the bottom is crispy. Finally I dusted the squares with icing sugar. I did this by putting the icing sugar in a sieve and then shaking it over the squares. It didn't last long though. The squares are rather damp and absorb the sugar almost immediately so it wasn't pretty for long. If you are serving them for a special occasion (or photographing them!) I would recommend sprinkling them just before you serve them.

Find your Chef friendly version here!

Scotch Crispies

My goodness the last time I made these sweet treats must have been around 20 years ago! I discovered them in an old Sri Lankan exercise book of mine. And just to prove how old this book is, it has 120 pages and cost just 15 rupees! Now what can you buy for 15 rupees nowadays? A Dot toffee maybe???

I picked to make these because I needed to put together something simple and quick to take to a friends place for tea and I was not in a cake mood. Turned out to be a good idea because my kids really like these things (and they are not too unhealthy).

Makes 16 to 20 pieces; Preparation time 1 hour (15 mixing, 45 baking)

Ingredients:

2 oz	Self-raising flour
or
2 oz Plain flour + 1/2 tsp baking powder
8 oz	Rolled oats
1/4 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Baking soda
4 oz	Butter (or margarine)
4 tbsp.	Black treacle
2 oz	Sugar

Method:

Set your oven to 150 C (300 F).

This is an easy peasy recipe. It's great if you have a little cook in the house. My little cooks were all occupied making loom bands for their aunts, uncles and cousins for Christmas. Not a bad thing, they have a list of over 20 people, it's going to take a while!

So my first step was to put a pan on the cooker and drop in the butter, "black treacle" and sugar. So the "black treacle" makes this sweet a very Scottish thing but I'm not going for Scottish, I'm going for "unique"! That means instead of 4 tbsp. of Scottish stuff I put in 2 tbsp. of Goldsaft (some kind of fruit molasses) and 2 tbsp. of Kittul Pani (Sri Lankan honey from the Kittul tree). I know I've made it with 100% Sri Lankan honey and I'm guessing bees honey would work too. You just have to figure out how you want it to taste. The Goldsaft is nice and dark but it is way too strong for my taste that's why I only used half the amount and made up the rest with the Sri Lankan treacle.

Impatiently I put my cooker on high heat until the butter was melted (I stirred it all the time) and then reduced the heat to medium to dissolve the sugar. I kept stirring the thing so that the sugar dissolved quicker and because I was worried that the butter might burn. This step doesn't take too long and it's not an exact science so if the sugar does not dissolve 100% don't worry too much.

I took it off the heat and set it aside. My recipe says to let it cool but I don't have too much patience for that. At least I let it stand while I mixed the other ingredients. Actually that would be all of the other ingredients: I measured them all out into one big bowl and then stirred them up.

Since I was supposed to let the butter/sugar mixture cool I took the time to line my baking sheet with parchment paper. You could also butter the tin. As per my recipe I used a 9" by 11" tin. Turns out that I really should have used an 8" by 8" but it wasn't too tragic as you will see in a bit.

Next I dumped the flour/oat mixture into the butter/sugar pan and stirred it until it was well combined. Then this went into the baking tray.

Now you could use the back of a spoon to press the mixture into the pan but a clean hand works much better. The result is a nicely compressed crispy!

The thing went in the oven for 45 minutes. As soon as it comes out cut it into pieces. Later it will be too hard. Then let it cool.

Okay it can be, and was, eaten hot but then it is not crunchy. Let it cool before storing it else it will get soggy. And then enjoy with a hot cup of tea!

Find your Chef friendly version here!

Half an Hour Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognese

After I was totally taken over by my blog I went and totally neglected it! I don't think I've been here for a week now. I haven't really cooked anything special either :( I tried making pol (coconut) toffee but that didn't work out. Everything else has been same old, same old.

Yesterday I got to pig out! I took my Asian noodle salad to the chivara pujava and got to eat an awesome Sri Lankan lunch. The salad didn't turn out too well, not something that I would try again, but the rest of the food was delicious! I don't know when I last had gotukola sambol, it tasted so good. Needless to say I am still stuffed a day later.

But this post is not about Sri Lankan food, it's about Italian food and to be specific our all time favourite spaghetti bolognese. My kids absolutely love spaghetti bolognese just like all the other kids. Mine has a bit of twist and contains some vegetables as well. This recipe is one of those keepers. We've been eating it for at least 8 years now. Unknowingly my oldest helped come up with the recipe when she was about 2 years old!

Serves 4; Preparation time: 30 mins.

Ingredients:

250 g	Spaghetti
2 tbsp.	Olive oil
100 g	Vegetarian mincemeat
1/2 cup	Corn
1/2 cup	Peas
500 ml	Pasta sauce (tomato)
1/4 cup	Whipping cream
1/2 cup	Cheese

Method:

Oh this is the simplest of recipes and it gets consumed so fast that I had to wait to post this until I could get a photo of the finished product!

The first thing you need to do is to boil the water for the spaghetti. If you want to speed up the process then boil the water in the kettle and then transfer it to the pot. Another way I speed up this recipe is to use super fine spaghetti (called capellini) that cooks in 3 minutes. With both of these tricks I can actually get the dinner on the table in 20 minutes.

Once the water boils put in the spaghetti, give it a stir to make sure all the past is covered with water, bring water back to the boil and set a timer according to the instructions on the packet.

Now comes the tedious job of making the sauce. Put a heavy bottomed saucepan on the stove and put it on medium high. Once the pot is hot add the olive oil and then the vegetarian mincemeat.

Just a note about the vegetarian mincemeat: There are many types of such "fake" meats out there. Some are fine and some are not. I prefer the fine fake meat because you don't notice the texture so much. In Germany I've found two types. The first is produced by Eyckeler Malt and I'm not a fan of their "granules".

Basically they rot too quickly and frequently grow mold before their expiry date. But once upon a time that was all I could get. Now I buy this type:

The granules are much finer and it's much better packed. The only deal with this one is that it is so tightly vacuum packed that I have to first break up the "meat" with my fingers. And no it doesn't make it any easier when the stuff is warm. I thought that it might fall apart once it was in the pan and heating up, but it doesn't.


Now back to the pot! The vegetarian mince does not have to cook for long. 2 - 3 minutes should do the trick. Next add in the corn, peas and pasta sauce and stir everything up. Bring the sauce to the boil and add in the cream.

The cheese can either be added to the pasta sauce or saved to sprinkle on top. I usually sprinkle Parmesan and any other cheese I put in the pot. If you have any herbs you could add them now. I usually have basil growing near by so I throw a bit of that in, or maybe some dried oregano.  But herbs are not a necessity.


By now the spaghetti is done so drain it, wash it under cold water and then put it into the pot with the sauce and mix it all up. Heat it through and it's ready to be served.

Now I'm really sorry about the lack of pictures but it got consumed to fast and I haven't made it again since.