Trying New Food in the States

One thing about getting to visit many different family members while we are in the States is getting to learn new recipes. 

I had never tried "Dutch hats" before. It was basically a pancake batter with more eggs, poured in a cast iron skillet and baked where it puffs up. We then slathered on Greek yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and a little Maple syrup... Yum!

Another thing I had never heard of was cornmeal pie. To me it tasted like a gooey yellow cake mix wit a hint of the gritty cornmeal texture.

I loved this recipe of quinoa salad! It had dried cherries, walnuts, green onions, celery, a pinch of cayenne, salt, pepper, coconut oil, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice.

Have you tried any new recipes this summer?

Kale Chips

This is my (wanna be) picky eater chomping on some kale chips:

One thing being back in the land of green things and an amazing variety of grocery options has provided is the chance to create some of the nice recipes we've been seeing but have been unable to reproduce. Like kale chips! With pink Himalayan sea salt! Whaaaaaaat???

You can tell how uncultured and unexposed to options I've been just by how excited I was to use pink Himalayan sea salt...

Anyway, my mom had kale growing in her handy greenhouse, and we had never tried it before, so we washed, dried and tossed it with olive oil and salt...

And baked it... It reminded me of the smell of broccoli while it was cooking and it definitely had that earthy flavor of greens, but it had CRUNCH, and who doesn't like broccoli-smelling-green-flavored CRUNCH? Actually, we didn't care for it, but the kids did! (Probably because they rarely get chips and these were crunchy and had "chips" in the name...) Yay for kids eating greens!

Samosa Pinwheels

One of our favorite culinary discoveries in the United Arab Emirates has been Indian food. There's not a lot of that in the southern United States... A particular favorite has been samosas. When I found a recipe that eliminated the need to make all of the little triangles, but instead rolled all of the ingredients together in a pinwheel fashion and then sliced and cooked, it looked like a good recipe to try.

Just make and divide, then roll out the dough:

And then make and divide the filling to put in them:  

Roll them up tightly and then cook... I have tried baking and frying them. Baking works, but not as well as frying.

We served them with a chicken garden salad.

Check out Manjula's recipe and YouTube demonstration here.

Non-birthday cake

I've been wanting to try to make this layered cake since I saw the recipe on laurainthekitchen.com, (not an advertisement) but this isn't the kind of thing I would make to have around the house. The way I see it, the more calories something has, the more people it's meant to be shared with; so I had to find a volunteer and an excuse to make it for them.

A friend had a birthday coming... And this was the perfect excuse, so I asked if I could bake her a birthday cake.

It was my first time to make a ganache...

And a cream cheese, peanut butter filling.

Like many layered-cake-learners, I had a problem with the top layer cracking...

So, I obviously still need practice. (My next victim/volunteer wants this for her birthday next January, so maybe I can figure out the cracking issue before then.)

The crazy part was, I misunderstood her birthday and it ended up being just an excuse to make it and be with friends after all. So there you go: Non-Birthday Cake.

Recipe here.

Butterfly Birthday

For her birthday party this year, Talia chose a butterfly theme. She looked through my recipe book and chose a yellow cake recipe and a chocolate whipped cream recipe for the frosting. She also chose a pineapple jam filling. We looked up how to make circle cakes cut and turned into a butterfly shape and she helped decorate it with fruit.

We used this cake recipe: http://divascancook.com/moist-yellow-cake-recipe-old-fashioned/

And something like this frosting recipe: 

http://duckysalwayshungry.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/chocolate-whipped-cream/

It was a lot of fun to make and then to share. The flavors combined nicely!

Making Atchara (Pickled Green Papaya)

When a Filipina friend gifted me with a green papaya I had never used one before. She mentioned using it to either make atchara (pickle) or it could also be used as a vegetable in chicken soup. As I had no idea what I was doing, I looked up lots of online versions of atchara and finally decided on this one.

The first step, is to peel off the outside.

 

Then scrape out the seeds...

While green papaya seems to usually be julienned in this manner, I couldn't seem to do it well and just ended up putting it in the blender... so maybe the texture wasn't as nice as an authentic version.

After dehydrating with salt overnight, it is very important to rinse it well and squeeze it to get all of the bitterness out. I did the rinsing/squeezing part twice to make sure.

Then mixed in all of the spices, (alas, no fresh ginger, so powdered, and I didn't have red bell pepper so I omitted it.) Then add the brine and let pickle in the fridge in a sealed container for at least 5 days... and then:

This version turned out nicely. It's a tangy sweet and sour pickle used with fried or foods that need more flavor in the Philippines. I liked how it turned out. Ben works with several Filipinos and I gave him a jar to take to them to be taste testers. One said, (since every region in the Philippines has their own version of atchara,) it was not bad, but where he was from used less vinegar. The other one said it was great and just like his mother made it and he couldn't stop eating it.

Cooking a food outside of its culture, especially when you haven't gotten much experience with that culture, is challenging and interesting at the same time. This was a fun project!

Ramadan, Date Harvest and Date Cake

It's Ramadan and summer at the same time. What that means in the produce section of stores is that you will see large crates of dates for sale everywhere.

During Ramadan, able-bodied Muslims fast throughout the day and break their fast at night with a few dates, typically. In addition to this, it's harvest time for dates all over the country. Date palms line the miles of road between Ruwais and Abu Dhabi, are planted throughout the city, in every park and green space. Typically the dates have a mesh bag around them to catch the dates and protect them from birds or other things.

 

Dates are really filling, have a lot of nutritional benefits, are supposed to help a woman have shorter labor, aid digestive issues and, depending on who you ask, are given as a remedy for just about everything here.

When Ben brought home 2 huge boxes of them I began looking for a way to use them beyond eating fresh since we have so many. This recipe for date cake was one Ben and a teacher he works with liked with had good things to say about. The kids loved it, too. Dates have a caramel-like flavor when ripe that comes through in this cake without the odd resemblance of, well, whatever you think an actual date looks like...

Most of the boxes of dates are fresh, still yellow and smooth, but quickly turn brown after a day or two, but not the brown, dried version you're probably most familiar with. If not used soon, within a week the dates start oozing and have interesting reactions with baking soda.

(Can this fall under home school experiment?)

Date Cake

Ingredients

• 3cups/500 g dates pitted
• 1 cup water
• 1/2cup / 100g brown sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/10 stick - 125 g Butter
• 1 1/2 Cups Self raising flour
• 2 tsp Vanila
• 1 tsp Bicarb.

Method

• Preheat the oven 180 or 160 fan forced.
• Add the dates, Butter, sugar & water.
• Cook it till it boils
• Add bicarb and leave it to cool down.
• Whisk the eggs.
• Add eggs, self raising flour,vanila and mix well.
• Add the mixture in to a baking tray and bake 40 min.