Cassie's blueberry tea cake

This is an absolutely delicious cake - one that we enjoyed for dessert yesterday lunchtime! Cassie is a bloggie friend and mother of nine from down under. She posted it on her blog a while ago. I have subsequently tweaked it a little to suit product availability and I've also renamed the cake in her honour.

O.K. so I could have made sure the cake was in the centre of the plate before taking the photo...

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup  sugar
1 lemon, juice and grated rind
125 g butter or margarine
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla essence
1/4 cup dessicated coconut
1 2/3 cups self raising flour, sifted
1 punnet fresh blueberries (or canned blueberries, well drained)

Method:
1. Mix sugar and lemon rind in a bowl.
2. Add butter, eggs, lemon juice, coconut and vanilla essence. Mix well.
3. Add flour and fold into mixture.
4. Pour batter into a greased oven dish, cake molde or similar.
5. Sprinkle blueberries over the top of the batter.
6. Bake at 170º C for 35 minutes or until wooden toothpick comes out clean.
7. Sprinkle sugar over the top of the cake and leave to cool. When cold, remove  from dish and serve with cream (optional!)

      
Notes

# I prefer to use plain or all-purpose flour and add a chemical raising agent or natural yeast.
# I use a sachet of vanilla flavoured sugar instead of the essence, which I
cannot find as a regular product as yet.

Ooh, yummo!

I was alone for lunch today so I made one of my favourite dishes! Prepared in less than 10 minutes, I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share a photo with my fellow bloggers!

If you ever come this way this is something you just have to try. Calamars a la Romana amb patates fregides - or battered squid rings with chips. Just some fruit for a dessert and Bob's yer uncle, as they say.

Have a good weekend everyone :)

Pi!

Hi, blog followers from all over the world! This day is unique, like all others, I suppose. But today is the day that the first numbers of Pi coincide -  if, of course, you write the date the American way...

E.g.     3 - 14 - 15

Then at 09:26 and 53 seconds this morning it was:

3 - 14 - 15 - 926 - 53

Here you have the first ten digits if the number PI.

This doesn't happen very often. In fact, just once a century. To celebrate, I am going to try and make a lemon meringue PI. My daughter informed me that she was already busy with a PI pizza for their lunch!

I hope you all have the freakiest day possible.

Said pie:

Munchy Monday #50: Col de la Iaia Sofia

O.K. folks. I'm sorry to say that this is my 50th and last Munchy Monday post. It's not that I have run out of recipes, it's just that it ties me down too much.

This Munchy is different in another way, too. I am directing you straight over to my eldest daughter's blog for a recipe that my grandson called "Granny Sofia's cabbage".

Why? Because it's purple!

Note: If you can't make head ner tail because it's in Catalan, then drop me an e-mail and I'll help you out :)

Munchy Monday #49: No-cook chocolate squares

Very simply delicious!

You will need:
275 dark chocolate
175 butter
4 tblsp. golden syrup
175 Maria biscuits
25 g Rice Krispies
50 g walnuts, chopped
100 g red glacé cherries, chopped

Method:
Place the chocolate with the butter and syrup in a bowl over hot water. Place on a low heat and stir frequently until all ingredients have melted.
Break up the biscuits and add them to the syrup mixture together with the cereal, nuts and cherries. Stir well.
Line an 18 cm squared mold with parchment paper and fill with the chocolate mixture.
Smooth the mixture evenly and leave in fridge for at least two hours.

Munchy Monday #48: Yogurt sponge cake

This is the first 'foreign' cake I learnt to make after I was married and moved to Catalonia. The ingredients are very basic, the recipe simple and the results are guaranteed. It is also done in a jiffy, so if you have nothing for breakfast tomorrow, pop one of these in the oven whilst making supper and you have yet another problem solved. I serve this for breakfast on a Sunday morning with a fresh fruit salad or an orange juice each and squares of chocolate. Everybody eats breakfast on a Sunday morning!

Instructions:
1 plain or lemon yogurt. Empty yogurt into a mixing bowl and wash container.

Then measure and add to the yogurt, 1 container of white sugar, 1/2 container of sunflower oil and 2 eggs. Mix with a hand blender. Add 3 containers of plain flour and 1 sachet of baking powder (approx. 15 g).

Blend until smooth and pour batter into a 30 cm x 15 cm cake mold (or equivalent). Bake in a medium oven for 20 - 25 minutes. When golden in colour and cooked right through, remove from oven and lightly sprinkle with white sugar. Hide cake and leave to cool.

A variation of the original recipe - apple yogurt cake

Because this recipe is so basic it allows for many variations. Here are a few suggestions which have been tried and tested over the years:

# Just add slices of apple to the top of the cake
# Use a coconut yogurt and add a container of desiccated coconut to the recipe, before adding the flour
# Sprinkle pine nuts over the top
# Pour most of batter into cake mold, add a level tablespoon full of sifted cocoa powder to remaining batter, stir well then pour over original batter to give a marbling effect

Enjoy!

Our holiday

Here is the promised post about what we did over the holiday season. Those of you who have been following my blog will know that our second daughter was married last June and went to live in Romania. Well, the long and short of this is that we went to see them!

We set out from Tarragona at just gone midnight on the 23rd of December, on a coach that would take us to Bucharest, where my daughter lives. We passed through the whole coast of Catalonia, on into France, then Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and finally across through Romania to the capital, where we were met by our son-in-law at 8.00 pm on the 24th. (44 hours)

A. and D. have such a lovely apartment in the capital, a little back from the main road. It has lots of light and not much need for heating as the apartment is extremely well insulated and the heat from the apartments which are joined to theirs is enough, although the temperatures were very low outside. At the back there is a kiddy park, black squirrels running up and down the trees and A. has a pet dove that she feeds crumbs to every day.

The very next day we went to visit D's parents, an hour out of the city, in a town called Ploiesti. We had a wonderful day with some of his family. D's mother is a fantastic cook and she made us some good traditional food:

Ciorba

Sarmale - meat and rice wrapped up in a pickled cabbage leaf

Mamaliga - a stiff dough made from corn semolina

Strudel cu mere for desert, I think, in total, I ate at least seven of these things. They were soooo good

The second day we were there, in the evening, it started to snow... and snow...snow... and more snow. Here is a photo of that aforementioned kiddy park taken the next day:

On the Saturday we took the underground train and visited downtown Buchuresti in the late afternoon/evening. Awesome city. Here are some photos that I have actually taken from internet because it was already too dark for my camera to do a decent job.

Arcul de Triumf

The Dambovita river

Casa Poporului or, literally, 'House of the people'

Casa de economii si Consemnatiun

Sunday was Sunday. We spent the day once again with D's parents and plenty more of his family and friends. We felt welcomed by almost everyone and by now we were picking up a good quantity of Romanian words. That evening we had supper with D's brother and his wife who live in the converted attic above his parent's house.

On Monday, 29th of Dec. we travelled to the Transylvanian area of Romania and visited Bran Castle. This is where Frankenstein used to live. An absolute must if you visit Romania. I took very few photos. Why? Because that day it was 18º C below zero and I really did NOT want to take my hands out of my pockets or take my gloves off too often! I'm sure my daughter has some better ones.

One of the castle towers

Centre patio with well included. It was here that we stood still just long enough to hear D. tell that joke about Dracula and the tower.

View out over the snowy countryside from one of the castle windows.

On the Tuesday we had an early-ish lunch and then headed off once more for Ploiesti where we were going to spend the rest of the year! There was lots of yummy food - in fact we had a barbecue! These were the star of the show for me:

Romanian sausages or mititei

Apparently, we had the coldest end of year that Romania has had for fifty years, with the lowest temperatures registering 23.5º C below zero. At 11.30 pm a bunch of us wrapped up warm and went to see a spectacular firework display in the centre of Ploiesti. We all hugged, cheered and wished each other a happy New Year. Then we headed back to the house for chocolate cream cake and more blackberry tuika (pronounced tsueekuh). My, if that stuff doesn't warm you up then you have a problem!

New Years Day was spent at my daughter's place. She prepared a traditional Catalonian dinner and then we did our invisible family present giving thing in the afternoon. Fun, fun, fun. After, we 'skyped' with family back at home and in England and also wished Iaia a very happy 86th birthday. Then, all but Hubby decided it was time to go out and have fun in the dark, in a park, in the snow. So, that is exactly what we did. Unfortunately, it ended with the youngest member of the gang slipping on snow-covered ice and breaking his arm.

On the Friday D. and A. treated us to a meal in a beautiful restaurant in the centre of Buchuresti. The food was well priced and most awesomely delicious! (Photos from Google images)

The street sign

Inside

The wooden staircase

The menu

Ciorba served in a hollowed out loaf of bread

We spent the Saturday home and then on Sunday we said goodbye to S. very early in the morning as he had to return home a day earlier than the rest of us. Sunday was Sunday and we went to Ploiesti in the morning, had lunch with D.'s  parents, said goodbye to everyone there and headed back to base. We packed and had an early supper as we had to leave on our coach at 4.00 am the next morning.

The journey home took 48 hours. We were stopped a long time on the Hungarian border, half the time in a snow blizzard. Then again we were stopped by Italian police who were checking passports on the Slovenian/Italian border and once more when we crossed over into Catalonia. We arrived at our own home at 7.30 am on the 7th of January. We spent most of the morning picking up on sleep as we only slept about 4 or 5 hours during the whole voyage. Even then, we never got to sleep more than hour at a time because the coach stopped too frequently for much more!

Here are some more snow photos:

Icicles

Roadside stores. The thermometer in the car registered 8º C below zero here!

The Carpathian Mountains

Well, I really hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed reliving all these beautiful moments. One thing is for sure, I'm going back as soon as I possibly can. Now to learn a few more words...

Munchy Monday #47: Individual pork roasts

Well, we call them this way, anyway! They are really roasted pork cheeks, but we have found over the years that if we said what they really were our visitors were less eager to eat them! It's a good meal to prepare if there are many mouths to feed. Small children can share one because there is a lot of meat on these things.

You will need:
One pork cheek per adult, one between two for those with a smaller appetite.
Small roasting onions
Frozen garlic
Bay leaves
Salt and pepper
Oil to coat each cheek

Method:
Coat each cheek with oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay the cheeks out on a roasting tray and shake frozen garlic chips over them. Place the bay leaves and onions between the cheeks and place tray in a slightly pre - heated oven on high to roast the usual way. (These cheeks took about 1 hour 20 minutes to cook till tender, in a hot fan oven, top and bottom oven on)

We had a light soup as a starter and I served the roasts with green beans and a few oven chips each (plus the onions for those who wanted them). Yum!

Munchy Monday 46: Coconut snowballs

These are delicious and ideal if you have a sweet tooth. It's also an interesting way to get non-carrot lovers to eat carrots, as they don't taste like carrot at all!

You will need:
Equal quantities of:
     Cold, boiled (no salt) mushed carrot
     Granulated or caster sugar
     Coconut
Extra coconut to roll balls in

Method:
Squeeze as much liquid from your carrot as you possibly can (very important.) Discard juice. Add carrot to sugar and coconut and mix well. Make small balls, about the size of an unshelled hazelnut and then roll them in the extra coconut. Keep snowballs in fridge and serve chilled.

 

NOTE: I used an American cup as a measure and made about 40 snowballs.

(Maybe I should have taken the photo using a banana for scale! It seems it's the fashion these days.)

Munchy Monday #45: Garlic and parsley fried rice

This is a yummy accompaniment to many meals. I serve it with red meat, chicken and fish but also on its own. It's just so simple to prepare...

You will need:
Any type of white rice, boiled in salted water and allowed to cool.
Fresh or dried parsley, chopped.*
Fresh or frozen garlic, chopped or crushed*
Salt
Oil to fry

Method:
Pour oil into a frying pan (enough to almost cover the bottom of the pan) and place on a medium heat. Add garlic and parsley and fry very carefully for a few seconds. Add rice and gently stir fry for 5 to 7 minutes, adding a sprinkling of salt a couple of times during this process. Leave rice in pan until needed and re-heat if necessary.

This is a tasty way to serve leftover white rice from a previous meal.

*For every 500 g of rice I use 1 clove of garlic (or equivalent if using frozen garlic) and a heaped teaspoon of parsley. Bear in mind that fresh parsley has a stronger taste and therefore you might need a little less. I always use dried parsley.

Munchy Monday #44: Haricot beans with xistorra (pressure cooker method)

As you might have already realized we are fans of pulses. I love beans. In fact, a friend of my family in England who knew me very well, once said that when he came to our house he almost expected to see three taps in the kitchen: one for the hot water, one for the cold and one for the baked beans!

This is a very economic dish made a little more special (and tasty) by the addition of the xistorra sausage. Mmmm, my mouth is watering already...

You will need:
100 g dried haricot beans per person
1 piece of xistorra sausage of about 10 cm, per person
1 medium sized potato between two people, peeled and chopped big (see photo)
Oil for frying
Salt
Pressure cooker

Method:
Rinse dried beans under the tap and leave them to soak in a bowl of water over night (at least 12 hours)
Gently fry xistorra sausage in your pressure cooker till slightly browned on all sides. Add potato and fry a little more. Drain beans and rinse. Add beans to potato and xistorra, cover with fresh water, stir and seal your cooker. Bring up to pressure and cook gently for 5 - 6 minutes. Turn off heat and leave beans in pan till pressure is completely reduced. Open cooker and salt. Leave until needed. Warm gently, if necessary.

Yummo!

Some people prefer not to eat the pulses because of the rather uncomfortable side effects which can occur. I was reading about this in internet not so long ago and I found a couple of very interesting facts. The first, that you should never cook pulses in salted water because it hardens the skins, therefore making them more indigestable.  Add the salt after cooking. Secondly, pulses cooked in a pressure cooker are far less likely to give problems as the skin fibre has been broken up by the high pressure as they cook.

What is a xistorra sausage? What does it look like? See here for more details.

Munchy Monday #43: Clear green veggie soup

This is a very delicious starter for any meal. I haven't indicated any quantities so that you can adapt it to your own needs, whether you are four to eat, or fourteen.

You will need:

Clear chicken stock, ideally, with the grease removed
Frozen green beans, cut into small pieces once slightly thawed
Fresh leek, finely sliced
Pieces of frozen broccoli, cut small
Potato, cut into small cubes
Rice or very fine noodles, a handful for every 3 or 4 people
Salt to taste

Method:

Bring stock to boil in a pan, add all other ingredients and simmer for 8 - 10 minutes.

Munchy Monday #42: Choc chip cookies

This is a recipe which was passed on to me by my half Canadian niece. It has been tried and tested many, many times and is very quick and simple to mix up. Done in a jiffy, you might say.

You will need:
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup soft brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened (I use margarine)
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg, beaten
Few drops vanilla essence
1 tblsp creamy peanut butter
Chocolate chips

Method:
Mix all ingredients together to form a stiff dough. Make ping-pong ball sized balls and flatten them down on a greased oven tray. Bake in a medium oven (175º C) for 10 - 12 minutes. If you like them slightly crispier, leave them a couple minutes more. Leave for 2 minutes on the baking tray then remove to a clean tea towel or cooling rack.

Munchy Monday #41: Meat or fish croquettes

This is a very efficient and tasty way to finish up any leftover meat. You can use ham, turkey, codfish, tuna, salmon... I remember once making rabbit and lentil croquettes. They were delicious. I normally serve them as an accompaniment to a salad for a first course, as a second course after vegetables or lentils or at suppertime with say, a mushroom omelette, salad and tomato bread. This is a basic recipe which you can adapt according to your menu.

You will need:
All purpose flour
Sunflower oil 
Crumbled fish or finely minced meat
Water
Salt
Breadcrumbs
Oil to deep fry

Method:
In a frying pan, gently heat enough oil to cover the base of the pan. Add enough flour to make a stiff paste and toast for half a minute or so. Add your meat or fish, stir and season with a good shake of salt. Fry gently for a minute, stirring all the time. Add just enough water, little by little, to make a thick dough. Turn out onto a plate to cool. When manageable, take tablespoon sized quantities and mould into a mini frankfurter shape. Roll each croquette in breadcrumbs and deep fry small quantities in hot oil.

They should look something like this!

Note: If you are making codfish croquettes, add a little garlic and some finely chopped parsley to the mixture. If the croquettes are made with plain chicken or turkey breast, coat them with a mixture of plain bread crumbs and garlic and parsley breadcrumbs.

Munchy Monday #40: Macaroni with tuna and bacon

This is so simple to prepare and so delicious to eat... The quantities given are enough for 4 - 6 adult servings. I vary the pasta and often use lumaconi, penne, rotini, macaroni, etc.

You will need:
400 g pasta
100 g smokey bacon rashers, cut into fine strips
A small amount of onion, grated
Juice and flesh of beefsteak tomato or similar
A fair squirt of your usual tomato puree or sauce
150 g tuna in vegetable oil, drained
Oil for frying
Salt
Water for cooking pasta

Method:
Bring water to boil, add salt and throw in pasta, following cooking instructions on the packet. Meanwhile, in another saucepan, pour a little oil and add bacon pieces. Fry gently until slightly crispy then add onion. Stir and fry for a couple more minutes, add tuna, both of the tomato sauces and a little salt. Stir and cook for some minutes. Drain up and rinse the pasta, add to the tuna and bacon sauce. Stir and gently simmer for a few minutes. Serve hot with grated cheese sprinkled over the top.*

 

*To make this dish extra special and professional, transfer the pasta to an oven dish, sprinkle pasta cheese over the top and grill until crisp and toasted.

Munchy Monday #39: Haricot beans with herbs

This is an easy dish to prepare, ideal alone as a first course or, as we ate it today, an accompaniment to red meat, chicken or fish. I opened a pot of ready cooked beans but you can also prepare your own from scratch - just leave the dry beans to soak for about 8 hours and then cook them the way you always do. (I use a pressure cooker and they're done in 10 minutes or so.) The quantities in this recipe are initially for four adult servings.

You will need:
A pot of cooked white haricot beans (drained weight 400g)
The juice and flesh of one ripe tomato*
2 tblsp. olive oil
A pinch of salt
A shake of each of the following herbs: thyme, rosemary, basil and oregano

Method:
Gently heat the tomato in a saucepan and add salt, olive oil, and herbs. Add the beans and stir. Heat through for a few minutes.

* To prepare the flesh and juice of a tomato, just take the tomato and cut it in half, horizontally. Grater each half, flesh side down, into a bowl. This way you leave only the skin behind. It's heaps easier than the boiling/cooling/skinning method : )

Busy, busy, busy

We've been:

reaping what we have sown, our first radishes,

studying (and eating) our lettuce which shows the typical Fibonacci spirals,

making chickpea bread...

...and apple crumble muffins,

making bridesmaid dresses for three ladies...

organizing, classifying,

and boxing up,

and rescuing weird little men from Cucumber Palm Island!

Munchy Monday #38: French bread pizza

This is what we had for supper last night. It is very easy and quick to prepare  and the ingredients are basic items which we always have in store.

You will need:
French stick loaves (half per person)
Fried tomato sauce
Tin thickly pureed tomato
Pkt. grated pizza cheese
Dried oregano

Toppings can include ham, pineapple, cooked bacon pieces, mushrooms, prawns, olives, artichoke, peppers, left over fried mince, chicken, corn... whatever you have available.

Method:
Cut the stick loaf into four equal pieces. Cut each quarter in half lengthways and spread a small amount of fried tomato sauce over each one. Then do the same with the other, thicker sauce. Shake a little oregano over the tomato and then sprinkle on some cheese. Add your chosen topping. Lay the mini pizzas on an oven tray. Grill for just a few minutes until the cheese has softened and browned slightly.

Cheese and bacon

Ham and mushroom

Eat hot, or take out for a picnic lunch with a difference. Delicious either way!

This is a fun recipe for small ones to lend a hand in preparing. Just be careful when grilling!