American Pancakes

My I think it is time for a new post, don't you? Some thing yummy for the cold weather that has just hit us. Last Wednesday I was sitting on the balcony enjoying a cup of tea and a cookie and this Wednesday I pulled out all my winter gear to beat the 0 degree temperatures.

Pancakes... the American kind. Piles and piles of hot pancakes along side some yummy toppings. Nothing to beat our unhealthy favourite of Nutella, bananas and whipped cream!

Preparation time: 25 min. Serves 2 (aprox. 8 pancakes)

Ingredients:

1	Egg
1 cup	Milk
1 oz (30 g)	Butter, melted
1 cup (150 g)	Flour
1 tbsp.	Sugar
1 tbsp.	Baking powder
1/2 tsp.	Salt

Method:

Pancakes are easy to make and there are all kinds of variations. Every country seems to have their own. I never used to eat American pancakes until I made them myself. I should credit this recipe to someone but I don't know where I pulled it from. Most definitely off the internet! If this is yours let me know.

The first thing you need to do is melt the butter. I melt mine in the microwave a bit at a time. The main point is that the butter does not get too hot. If it does it will cook the egg and the batter will not be smooth. So I cut it up into pieces and put it in for 30 seconds. I then take it out and stir it (if it is possible) and then put it back in for another 20 seconds. I repeat this until I have some liquid butter.

Now you can do this the easy way and take all your ingredients and put them in a food processor or a liquidizer. You could also use an electric mixer. But this time I decided to do it the old fashioned way with a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon. So if you are glutton for punishment or you just enjoy yourself in the kitchen read on. Otherwise mix everything together and jump to *.

Add all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and make a well in the middle into which you can pour the melted butter. The quantities in the pictures might seem a bit more than in the recipe. This is because I have to make twice the recipe to feed my family of four.

Then add in the eggs.

Now you have to do the age old thing and work in the fluid stuff into the flour by starting in the middle and mixing the flour slowly in with your wooden spoon. It looks something like this:

As you see one can't mix everything in because the batter gets to thick. At this point you have to start to slowly add the milk. Add a bit at a time and slowly incorporate all the flour. Once you have a sticky mess give it a good mix with the wooden spoon to get rid of any lumps. 

Then work on incorporating the rest of the milk. If you end up getting some lumps give it a beat with a hand whisk.

* And now it is ready to fry. 

I have special pancake pans. They are really cheap non-stick pans that I bought from Ikea a long time ago. Totally worth it because I can make 3 pancakes simultaneously.

Although the pans are non-stick they still need a bit of oil. I apply this to the pan using a paper towel. I put a bit of oil in a saucer, take 1/2 a sheet of paper kitchen towel, fold the towel about 3 times into half, dip it in the oil and then rub it on the pan. My pans I heat on medium heat but have to adjust them up and down depending on the size of the burner and the strength. 

Take about one soup ladel of mixture and put it into the frying pan (once the frying pan is hot of course) and swish it around until the mixture covers the bottom of the pan. Make sure your pan is not on the heat while you swish it around else you won't get very thin pancakes. Of course if you want real thick pancakes you should probably put more batter than one soup ladel full. Then put your pancake on the heat and let it sit. I can't tell you how long to wait before you flip it because it is always different but you can tell from what the pancake looks like.

Look at the pancake in the picture below. You can see that it has bubbles on it that are popped. On the left hand side the pancake is "dried out" and on the right hand side, although it is shiny, the batter is set. This is a perfect time to flip your pancake. It should come off really easily. Use a spatula to flip it or do it the old fashioned way by throwing it in the air. Throwing it in the air and catching it gains a lot of respect from your kids. It's like in the pancake fairy tale!

Once you have flipped the pancake it does not take long to cook. Remember the top side was almost already cooked. Probably it takes about 30 seconds but you can peek underneath with the help of your spatula to see if it is the done. No need for it to brown on the bottom all you want is for it to be cooked through.

Pile them up high on a plate. This will also help keep the first ones warm while you are making the rest.

And then serve them with what ever tickles your fancy. Jam, honey, marmite (yes, thats my little ones favourite!), fruit or the more traditional maple syrup and whipped butter. Oh and I should not forget my mothers favourite pancake topping ... sugar with lemon juice.

Before I had a smart phone I hosted brunch for some friends and made these pancakes but much smaller. They looked really cool stacked up. Shame I don't have a picture.

Mac and Cheese

I just found this draft sitting around. No idea why it didn't get posted!!

So I've been working now for a couple of weeks. It is a lot of fun teaching the little ones. Quite a jump to go from adult education to 3rd grade!! But at least there is no stressing over the content or the questions that come from the audience :) Cooking has been a bit tough but I've managed to put a hot meal on the table almost every day even though I only get home at 5 pm. Of course I've gone through all my half hour meals and they certainly came in handy when my husband had to cook one evening (afternoon staff meeting :( ).

What with having to cook quickly I haven't had any time to take pictures of what I've been cooking and of course without pictures what is the use of a blog! But I do have some reserve so now that I have the time I can post them. And so here is one of my kids favorites "Mac and Cheese". When we lived in the USA I just opened up a box, boiled the macaroni, poured in the powder, milk and butter and voila I was ready to go. Here in Germany you cannot buy Mac and Cheese in a box. I'm guessing there is a good reason for this but I can't figure out what. I think it has something to do with the cheese powder because we can't get goldfish either. It makes me wonder what I was eating back in the USA. So now we make it from scratch.

Hmmm... I remember back when I was a kid I visited a friends house and we had mac and cheese for dinner. It was the most delicious thing ever. I wish I'd been wise enough to get the recipe but I was only 8 years old.

So here is my recipe. Hopefully it creates happy memories for you too.

Preparation time: 45 minutes; Serves: 6

Ingredients:

10 oz/250 g	Short-cut macaroni
1.5 oz/45 g	Butter
4 tbsp./35 g	Flour
1 pint/500 ml	Milk
1/8 tsp.	Freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp.	Salt
6 oz/175 g	Tofu
5 oz/140 g	Frozen peas
6 oz/175 g	Cheddar cheese, grated
2 tbsp.	Bread crumbs

Method:

First of all this is not your traditional mac and cheese. For additional nutrition it has tofu and peas in it. My kids love the peas but you can feel free to omit them. The tofu can be omitted too.

What makes mac and cheese mac and cheese is the creamy cheese sauce so this is where all my effort goes. Before I start with the sauce I put a large pot of water on the cooker on high heat. This is to boil the macaroni. Since this takes forever I make the sauce in the mean time. My fan oven also takes a while to get heated up so I pop it on at 180 C (200 C conventional, 400 F).

In a small saucepan over medium heat I melt the butter. Be careful not to burn it. If you do happen to burn it, toss it and start from the beginning again. Once it is melted I add the flour and stir it until it is cooked, about 2 minutes. 

Then I add the milk. There are various ways to do this and it doesn't really matter which one you use as long as you aren't left with any lumps. I do it the way my mum taught me to and that is to gradually add the milk stirring all the time. So I add my first little bit, and the milk sizzles as it hits the flour/butter mixture. I stir it vigorously until it is all incorporated. Then I add a little bit more and stir again. I keep doing this until I have a mixture which is liquidy enough that there is no way lumps are going to form. Then I dump in the rest of the milk, stir and bring the sauce to the boil stirring all the time. Your sauce should get thicker and look like this:

Remove it from the heat.

Don't lose hope if your sauce does get lumpy. You can save it by using a stick mixer or a food processor. You can also pass it through a sieve. (Oh my, I remember doing that when I was a child and we didn't have any fancy gadgets!)

Now the worst is over, not much can go wrong from here out. My water is boiling so I carefully dump in my macaroni and let it cook as per the packets instructions. I always let the water re-boil after adding the macaroni and then start the timer.

Back to my sauce. I grate the cheese and crumble the tofu.

And then put 2/3 of the cheese into the sauce and stir it well. Then I add everything except the breadcrumbs and mix it all together.

Now for a bit of down time while I'm waiting for the pasta to finish boiling. Hmmm the options are endless, either a nice cup of tea or clean up the mess. Unfortunately I have to go for cleaning up the mess :(

Once the pasta is done it is well drained, rinsed under cold water and drained again. Then it goes straight into the sauce and everything is mixed together.

I then take out my favourite baking dish, which is rather large, and pour everything into it. At the end I mix the remaining cheese with the bread crumbs and sprinkle them on top.

This baby gets popped in the oven and baked until it is golden brown about 20 minutes.
And will you look at that I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Probably because it was devoured before I could pull my phone out!!

BlauPause and Seahorse Cookies - Part 2 - The Recipe

I decided that today was the day I was going to bake the seahorse cookies. Anything that can get baked early for next weekend is going to get BAKED EARLY. In addition to BlauPause next Sunday is my daughters birthday and of course her birthday party. We are doing polka dots. I will make sure I post all the details later. The food is all going to be very dotty!

Here is my very cute seahorse cookie cutter. Bought on Amazon, of course!

Ingredients

	250 g	Butter (@ room temperature)
	200 g	Sugar
	1 pkt	Vanilla sugar
	2	Eggs
	2 tsp.	Baking powder
	500 g	Flour
	150 g	Ground almonds

Method

The instructions that came with the recipe (which, by the way, I have amended) go something like this: Mix into a dough. Cut out cookies. Bake. So here are some more detailed instructions!

First of all I doubled the recipe. I needed as many as I could get because who knows how many people are going to show up. Probably not as many as we would like because the publicity for the event is terrible. There is not a single flyer, poster or banner up any where where we live (which is practically next door to the university). Good thing that these cookies last for ever!

I decided to put this together in the order of a regular cake. So first I beat together the butter and sugars until they were light and fluffy. Then went in the eggs one at a time, beating each time to make sure that the eggs were well incorporated. Next came the dry stuff ... and oops ... my mixer was not made for such a huge amount of batter. I had to stop and take the whisks out otherwise it would have gone up into the mechanism! So I just mixed the rest of it the good old fashioned way... NO I did not use my hand... I used a spoon! Now usually I would use my hands to mix such a dough but this was going to go to people that I didn't know so I figured I better be a bit more hygienic!! 

There was too much dough to make one ball so I made 4 balls. Hang on a sec I had to use my hands to make the balls. So it would not have made much of a difference, I should have just mixed everything with my hands. A bit late to realize that now, isn't it?

The dough was then wrapped in cling wrap and put in the fridge to rest. I think for about an hour. I really like to let my cookie dough cool off. It makes it much easier to cut and the cookies seem to keep their shape much better. In an ideal world you would cool it, cut them and then cool the cutouts for at least half an hour before baking them. I never have enough room in my fridge for cookie trays so I never bother about this. Unless, of course, it is winter and then I put the baking trays out on the balcony to cool. 

I wanted the cookies to be a bit thicker because I didn't want them to break apart and I wanted each cookie to be substantial. But you can roll these cookies pretty thin and make them really crisp if you like. The plan is also to decorate them but if I get around to that it is a whole different blog!

I rolled the dough out on a floured surface to about 4 mm thickness and went about cutting my seahorses. I ended up with just over 150 pieces! Then I baked them in the oven at 160 C (fan oven) for 20 minutes. The result was the perfect cookie. 

I really wanted to decorate these and I even experimented. But given all the other things I had to do for this weekend I didn't get round to decorating all of them. In fact I only decorated 20 :( 

Come over during the BlauPause and enjoy one on the house.

BlauPause and Seahorse Cookies - Part 1

Next Sunday is BlauPause (which literally means "blueprint"). It is an event to celebrate the Ruhr University's 50th Anniversary. The plan is to block of the main road that passes by the university which by no mistake is called "Universität Straße". A similar stunt was done a few years ago when they blocked off one of the local highways, the A40. There will be tables along the road with a lot of them featuring the universities work. Kind of like a big PR, or an outreach, event.

Ref: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/rub50/_content-docs/faq-anreise/RUB50_BlauPause_Streckenplan.pdf

Hubby dear has had to organize a table too. It is somewhere by the Uni Brücke which is at the subway station "Universität". You're getting the picture here, right?

We've spent a long time brain storming what should be done and how to reach out to regular people and educate them about memory and the brain. My husband specifically studies the hippocampus and "hippocampus", coming from the Greek word "seahorse", led us to the decision to make Seahorse cookies for the kids who pass by. And to make it really cute they get to play a specially made game of memory with our kids. Of course only those who play get a cookie. Needless to say we are hoping for clear, sunny skies and temperatures which are more representative of summer than those we had this weekend.

I haven't made the cookies yet but I wanted to do a bit of a PR stunt so that more people come out to visit us!!

What I do have for you is an amazing cookie recipe that I got this one from the Bochumer Kinderchor after my kids participated in their Christmas concert with the Bochum symphony. It is finally the sugar cookie recipe that I have always been looking for. It keeps it's shape, it tastes great and it keeps fresh and crisp literally for ever. My husband was still eating the ones we made over Christmas in February!!

Here are our Christmas cookies:

Never been quite happy with the icing though. This time I will try royal icing, the one I've been using kind of makes the cookies soggy (but they still taste good). 

But now it is time to go to bed so I think I'll post the cookie recipe some other time :)

Sri Lankan Dahl. Red Lentils. A Staple.

My husband has been finding this blog very useful. A quick call from me to tell him that I'm stuck in the worst back up ever and am not going to make it in time to make dinner, sets the ball rolling. He checks the app we share to see whats on the menu, opens up this blog and cooks us dinner. Sometimes adding his own ingredients in to the mix.

Because of this I really had to get my act together so that he can cook one of our main staples - red lentils, dahl, parippu. What ever you may call it we can't have Sri Lankan food without it. It's marvellously healthy and terribly popular with the kids. It seems to be one of those universal foods kind of like fries and chips. We've never had a kid who does not like it, neither in the USA nor in Germany!

Serves 4; Preparation time 30 min.

Ingredients

1 cup	Red lentils, Mysore dahl
2 cups	Water (approx.)
1/2	Large red onion
1 sprig	Curry leaves
1/2 tsp.	Dill seeds
1 inch	Rampe (pandan)
1/4 tsp.	Turmeric
1/2 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Chili powder
2 tsp.	Sri Lankan curry powder (unroasted)
3 tbsp.	Coconut milk powder
1 tsp.	Sri Lankan roasted curry powder
1 tbsp.	Lemon or lime juice

Method:

First of all I wash the lentils twice or thrice just like one washes rice. From there on there are several different options: temper first, temper in the middle etc. But I've been using a much simpler way for many years, cutting out the tempering and thus the oil!

I add water to cover the lentils (around 2 cups) and then put in all the ingredients except the coconut milk, the roasted curry powder and the lime juice. Then I simply put the lid on, put the cooker on high and let it boil. Putting the lid on is very, very important. It also helps to use a heavy bottomed saucepan.

Once the curry boils, I whip of the lid, give it a stir and put the lid back on again. The heat now is turned down to an amazing very low (2 on my cooker) and I allow the lentils to cook. I also check every now and then to see if there is always enough water in the pot. If there is not enough water the lentils will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. Very yucky! Once most of the water is absorbed I add in the coconut milk, either from a can or powdered coconut milk powder. If I'm using the powdered sort (3 tablespoons) then I stir it in to the lentils and then add some water. This helps prevent any lumps forming. However, if this is the first time you are making this I suggest dissolving the coconut milk powder in 2 tablespoons of lukewarm water and then adding it. If using canned coconut milk the amount will depend totally on how thick the coconut milk is. The stuff I've been getting here in Germany is so thick that I add 2 heaped tablespoons in and some water (a few tablespoons). You can adjust the amount of water depending on how liquid you want your resulting curry to be. If you don't have coconut milk you can use regular full fat milk.

Then let the whole thing come to the boil and it should be done. If some of the lentils are not yet done, just give it a stir and let it cook for longer on very low (with the lid closed). You may need to add water to the curry to prevent it from burning.

Once everything is cooked remove from the heat add the roasted curry powder and the lime juice (you can use lemon juice instead) and cover until needed. Stir and then serve.

Garnished with coriander leaves and chilli flakes

This curry is totally forgiving. I've made it without onions, without curry leaves or rampe and it's still great. You can add tomatoes to it and/or garlic. If your a fish eater some Maldive fish tastes great too. Another favourite Sri Lankan variation is to add spinach to it (careful though, the spinach adds a lot of water to the curry). I've added coriander leaves to it and my cousin makes it with mustard seeds instead of dill. Everyone has their own variation. The one really important ingredient is the turmeric, without this it looks a bit weird. Having said that, my mother always makes it without turmeric and it tastes fine to me!

And finally, my little one loves it when I sprinkle fried onions on top. Try it out and add your own little twist to it. Tastes great with any kind of rice or with thick chunky bread. Kids love it in a sandwich too.

(Well not quite finally... you can also use any other lentil to make this curry, but from my experience it doesn't taste as good).

Fried Eggplant Quiche

Today is Ascension Day, which means it is a public holiday. And as always, this means that all the shops are closed in Germany. Of course I didn't have time to check the cupboards and go out and stock up! I always have the basics like flour, sugar, eggs and rice so I can always put something together.
Today I had an eggplant. A single, lonely eggplant sitting in my fridge. Not enough to make a curry from or enough to make any thing really special. After all today is fathers day in Germany so we needed something special. The tradition being to get a cart, fill it up with bottles of beer and to head out to the nearest wood to get drunk with all the other fathers. However, something a bit more subtle was necessary since not many people follow the tradition any more. Especially not the fathers! So I decided to put the eggplant in a quiche along with some garlic and fresh, organic peppermint from my planter. I used the caramelized leek quiche recipe to help me along.

Preparation time: 1.5 - 2 hours. Serves 4

Ingredients:

Pastry:
	6 oz	Four
	3 oz	Butter, cold
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
Filling:
	5 tbsp.	Oil
	325 g	Eggplant
	1 tbsp.	Fresh peppermint leaves
	2 cloves	Garlic
		Salt and pepper to taste
	2 tbsp.	Parmesan, grated
	3	Eggs
	125 ml	Whipping cream

Method:

First of all I made the pastry for the crust. You can find instructions here. I discovered that I had some whole wheat flour when I was going through the cupboards this morning so I decided to use this for the pastry. I used half white and half whole wheat flour. Once the pastry was done I stuck it in the fridge to rest for a bit. While it was resting I put the frying pan on the cooker on high and tipped in 3 table spoons of oil. While it was heating I chopped up the eggplant just like one would do for an eggplant curry. They looked like this:

Once the oil was hot I fried them until they were golden brown. Eggplant is the most funny vegetable ever (at least to me it is). Initially it absorbs all the oil in the pan and then when it is fried enough it lets a lot of the oil out again. This is why I always fry my eggplant nice and brown otherwise it is just too oily to eat. I actually had to divide my eggplant into 4 batches to fry it. After two batches I added in another 2 tablespoons of oil and that was enough for the rest.

After finishing 2 batches I put on the oven (180 C fan, 200 C/400 F conventional), took out the pastry and rolled it to fit my all time favourite, almost 9 inch, flan pan. Once the oven was hot I baked it blind for 15 minutes (if you missed this you can find it in this blog). While it was baking I finished frying the eggplant. On the side I cleaned the peppermint and chopped it and peeled the garlic and grated it. I also mixed together the eggs and cream in a large bowl and added the salt, pepper, garlic and peppermint.

After 15 minutes of baking blind I took out my beans and put the crust back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. Then I took out the crust and arranged the eggplant in the bottom of the pie shell.

Next step was to pour over the egg and cream mixture and sprinkle the top with some finely grated Parmesan cheese. It was all very simple. It then went in the oven for .... sorry about that I forgot to look at the clock! So I'm going to have to say "until it was golden brown". Probably was about 20 minutes or so.

The result was consumed with a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and was "a keeper" according to my husband. And that is basically why I am sharing it with you all. My oldest was not too keen on it, she didn't like the peppermint :(

Sri Lankan Bean Curry

Oh I have been away for too long again! The last week of work at ISR was busy and thus I just cooked a lot of curry so that it would last for a few meals. Each day topping it up with a new curry or two.

Green beans are one of our all time favourites. Everyone in our home loves bean curry. I've been trying for years to replicate my aunts curries and have never been successful, but I think I've found the trick. Read on to find out the secret to an awesome curry!

Ingredients:

500 g	Green beans
2 tbsp.	Oil
2 medium	Onions
1/2 tsp.	Dill seeds
1 sprig	Curry leaves
1/4 tsp.	Turmeric
1/2 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Chili powder
2 tsp.	Curry powder (unroasted)
3 heaped tbsp.	Coconut milk powder
1 tsp.	Roasted curry powder

Method:

One of the biggest secrets is how you actually cut the beans. I always thought the beans were cut on a diagonal, so I spent years trying to cut them thinner and more slanted but never achieving the right effect. It sounds kind of silly, why did I just not ask? Well usually when I go to any of my aunt's places I'm so busy stuffing my face with delicious food that I forget about asking how everything was made. But my mother finally discovered the trick, quite by accident, and conveyed it to me (quite by accident!)

Not so long ago my mum visited my aunt and they were preparing a bean curry for a lot of people. So they asked all the womenfolk around for their help to prepare the beans. My mother found an almost blunt knife (her story, not mine!) thrust into her hands with the instructions to split the beans down the middle. My mother was so horrified by the task (complete exaggeration!) that she told me all about it during our next skype call. And BINGO, I got the secret to the perfect curry, split the beans down the middle. Here is a picture of what I mean:

Needless to say, since receiving this wonderful news I've only made one perfect bean curry. The way mine eat beans I just don't have the time to split them. Here are few done especially for you:

Once you've split them you just cut them diagonally.

For the most part I cut mine diagonally. It's just the only way to go when you have 500 g of beans and at most an hour to cook a meal with at least 3 curries (this is the standard in our house, 3 or more).

But once you've got them cut the procedure is pretty simple. 

Take two smallish onions and thinly slice them. Then heat some oil in a saucepan and once it is hot add the onions, dill seeds and curry leaves. Fry these until the onions start to colour and then put in the cut beans.

Here is trick number two for the perfect bean curry. DO NOT close the lid of the saucepan. I learnt this trick from a friend of my parents who has since left us. She always told me "never close the lid on the beans, they will lose their lovely green colour.", and I have followed her instructions to this day.

Stir fry the beans and add the tumeric, curry powder, salt and chili powder. Continue to fry and stir. Don't let anything burn. I fry like this for as long as I can get away with. But it is not very long. The worst thing is a burnt bean curry. I have bad memories of burnt bean curry cooked by my sister when she was very young. Not her fault of course and I was probably exaggerating. Oh! so I fry this for about 1-2 minutes on high heat. 

Next step is to add in a cup of water. I don't add too much water because I really want the curry to be dry. I could cook off the water at the end but then I would end up with over cooked beans. Which we are not very fond of. Later you can add water as necessary. Let the beans simmer until they are just cooked and there is almost no water left. The time this takes depends on how tough your beans are. I know for sure they take forever to cook in Sri Lanka and here in Germany I can cook them within about 20 minutes. It also depends on how you cut them so you just have to keep adding water as necessary and checking them every now and then. 

Then add in the coconut milk. I add very thick coconut milk, so either the cream on the top of the can or some coconut milk powder directly into the pan (be careful though, if the water is too hot the powder will form lumps). Then cook off the moisture, sprinkle with roasted coconut powder and you are done. 

Enjoy with some other fabulous Sri Lankan curries and of course some steamed rice.