"Carbonara" with spinach

Recipe adapted from TheKitchn

Ingredients
3 portions of (3x75gm) Fettuccini - or pasta of your choice
1 x 400g frozen bag of Spinach , drained
ewe's cheese, to taste
2 eggs
chilli flakes, to taste
3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
bacon, optional ( I didn't use)
salt & pepper , to taste

Method
1) Cook pasta as per packet's instruction. Set aside a few tablespoons of pasta cooking liquid.
2) Meanwhile, beat eggs together with ewe's cheese, add in a little of hot pasta cooking liquid and set aside.
3) When pasta is almost done, heat oil in a sauce pan, sauté garlic for a bit followed by chilli flakes, stir in the spinach, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook for a few minutes.
4) Drain pasta and toss together with egg-cheese mixture and finally stir into sauce pan with spinach. Use pasta cooking liquid to loosen if needed. Mix well and serve.

Isler (Ischler) Jam-filled cookies glazed with choclate

I visit and browse No Salty on daily basis, to bookmark recipes that interest me. On 23rd , day before eve of christmas , I've done all my christmas baking but then I found this Isler cookies on the main page and couldn't resist this simple recipe.

I've no idea why the name "Isler" (correction : Ischler) . All I know is that its list of ingredients and that it is sandwiched with jam is very similar to the Linzer cookies. Also, whenever we buy Linzer cookies at the bakery we tend to add a few Isler (Ischler) to the mix.

Isler Cookies
source : No Salty

Ingredients

For cookies

280 g flour
280 g unsalted butter, soften
150 g ground nuts ( I used a mix of walnuts and almonds)
140 g powdered sugar
1 Tbsp rum
a pinch of salt
For the filling
Jam of your choice
Glaze
200 g chocolate
Method
1) Cream soften butter with powdered sugar. Do not over-mix. Incorporate flour, ground nuts, pinch of salt and rum into the butter-sugar mixture until the whole thing come together. Chill in fridge for 1 hour.
2) After an hour, roll out the pastry until the thickness of 3 mm. Use round cookie cutter to cut pastry. Cut until all pastry are used. Baked for 10-12 mins at 175°c
3) Let cookies cooled. Meanwhile, melt chocolate to get ready for assembly.
4) Sandwich cookies with jam and glazed with melted chocolate.
5) Store cookies in a tin can and place in a cool place at least overnight, to allow the flavour to develop.

Own Notes

1) I'll roll the pastry thicker next time. Mine was a bit too thin when baked, making it too fragile to handle.
2) For a more even finish of glazed chocolate , I shall coat the whole of top piece with chocolate next time by either pouring the melted chocolate over it or submerging into melted chocolate instead of spreading on top.

Tripple chocolate cupcake kit

Last minute (or not) gift idea via BBC Good Food

Hungarian Chicken Stew { Csirkepörkölt }

This stew is an easy meal to whip-up with simple ingredients but you'll be surprised that it deliver in taste,too.

Hungarian chicken stew { Csirkepörkölt }
Recipe from http://www.chew.hu/csirkeporkolt.html

Ingredients:
1 chicken or 5 chicken legs (I de-skinned mine)
1 pepper (Hungarian wax pepper)
1 tomato
1 large onion
1 tablespoon fat (substitute with fat rendered from Hungarian"chorizo")
Salt
Ground paprika

** also added 1 potato

Method:
Wash the chicken and cut into small pieces. Finely chop the onion. Heat the fat in a pot, add onion and fry until glassy. Add paprika and meat and stir. Add de-seeded and chopped pepper and tomato and salt to taste. Cover and steam for approximately one hour. If the juice evaporates too much, add a small amount of water.

Serve with home-made egg noodle or pasta.

Season for citrus - Orange Cake

Tasty recipe from here

In view that the link above doesn't work anymore, I have included the whole recipe from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/aug/01/recipes.foodanddrink3

What I did differently :-

Halved the recipe based on 2 eggs. 
Baked using 18cm spring form.

Used plain flour (instead of self-raising) added with baking powder.

Verdict

Love it - Light at fluffy! A keeper but I'll add more orange zest the next time.

Sicilian orange cake
Serves about 8
source : http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/aug/01/recipes.foodanddrink3

250g lightly salted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
250g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
1½ teaspoons finely grated orange zest
250g self-raising flour
85ml freshly squeezed orange juice

For the icing:
125g icing sugar
5 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice

Method :-
Preheat the oven to 170C/gas mark 3. Grease and line a 22cm clip-sided round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.
Using an electric whisk, cream the butter and sugar together for 4-5 minutes until very pale. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each one, if necessary adding a spoonful of flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Beat in the orange zest. Add the flour all at once and mix in well, then slowly mix in the orange juice. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer, inserted into the centre of the cake, comes out clean. If it starts to brown too quickly, cover loosely with a sheet of lightly buttered foil.
Leave the cake, in its tin, to cool on a wire rack, then carefully remove the sides and base of the tin and peel off the paper. Put it onto a serving plate.
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in the orange juice until you have a spreadable consistency. Spread it over the top of the cake, letting it drip down the sides, and leave to set. Serve cut into slices.

Decals for my kitchen

How beautiful to have your canisters organised with these labels :)

{source } Just something I made

No-roll pie crust

I love eating savoury pies and tarts but kneading is not my favourite task, plus leaves me a messy kitchen to clean after! So, when I found this recipe last week, I knew that I have to try it out immediately :)

The dough was indeed easy to prepare and ready in minutes. The taste though was a bit greasy ; perhaps I should have paired it with lighter fillings. Anyway, I'll still use this pie crust recipe again , noting to add oil gradually and blind bake for 10 minutes before adding the fillings.

No-Roll Pie Crust
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/no-roll-pie-crust-i/Detail.aspx

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup peanut oil (used canola oil instead)
1/4 cup ice water
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

Pre-heat oven at medium heat.

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Place dough in the pie pan, and press it out evenly with your fingers. Fill with favorite pie filling and bake.

Own Notes
Used 21cm dia. baking dish, and it was too small
To add oil gradually the next time.
To blind bake for 10 minutes before adding the fillings.