Adventures in the Kitchen, Passion for Food, and Searching for Magic!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

English Dish..Orientalised!

This dish is some famous English meal called Bubble and Squeak with Sausages, the recipe goes to the beloved Jamie Oliver <3 However, here goes the recipe with some changes and minor twists.

Ingredients:
-Potato
-Sweet Peas
-Carrots
-Green beans
-Scallions
-Sliced Onions
-Sausages سجق شرقي
-Salt & Pepper
- مكعب ماجي
-Nutmeg for grating (جوز الطيب مبشور)
-Dried Rosemary
-Thyme
-1 Tbsp of flour
-1 cup of broth (chicken or meat or even vegetables whatever available)
-1/4 balsamic vinegar.
-Olive oil
-Butter.
-Bay leaves.
-حبهان

The recipe is done in 3 major steps:

First: The Vegetables:

1-Chop the carrots and potatoes into good big chunks. I added to it sweet peas, green beans, and scallions.
2- You will boil the vegetables for round 20 minutes or till cooked. Yet since we'll make somewhat of a pancake out of them, you gotta have more potatoes than the other vegetables. i.e. the potatoes gotta be more than 50% of your vegetables' components. This assures the consistency and that they would bind together when mashed.
3- Now just worry about boiling these, with adding some salt and pepper, and the maggie for additional flavor and capers.
4-When done, just let them rest out of their broth.
5-Get a big pan, sizzle with some oil, and heat up. Then add your boiled vegetables.
6- Start mashing the vegetables forming somehow of a thick pancake, add thyme to it, and more salt and pepper.

7-Mix the mashed vegetables well, and flatten them with a spoon, and leave them till they get crisp and brownish.
8- After a while, check your vegetables' pancake, and start dividing them to smaller parts and start turning them to the other side, using a spatula, to make sure it's all golden crisp from both sides.



Second: The Sausages
-Get the sausages, un-mingle them, and start to flatten it to fill in the small gaps and make out of it one big sausage.

-Season the huge sausage sprinkling rosemary and nutmeg, and a bit of oil.
-Now the fun part, make a wheel out of it :D Just make the sausage start go into a snail shape, and get three big skewers that were previously soaked in water, and make the skewers hold the wheel well.

-In a big oven pan, add some olive oil, then add the chopped onions, sprinkle some salt on them., then add your tablespoon of butter on them.

-Now carefully place the sausage wheel on top of the bed of onions, and pinch some bay leaves in the wheel.
-Cover the oven pan with aluminium foil, and push it in the preheated oven for round 30-40 minutes.
-After round 30 min, uncover the oven pan, so that some of the sausages' juice would evapourate and finish cooking.
-When crisp (after almost 40 min.) get the sausages out of the oven pan, remove the bay leaves, leaving the bed of golden onions behind for making gravy now.

(Yeah I know..it looks so Yumm already!!)

Third Step: GRAVY.
-Take the onions in the very same pan onto the stove, add to it the flour, and the chicken broth (you can cheat and use the vegetables' broth) and balsamic vinegar and stir well.
-In few minutes, the gravy will thicken and giving good consistency. Now everything is ready.

Finally: Serving:
-Get a layer of the vegetables pancake.
-Remove the skewers from the sausage's wheel, and Cut the sausages into wedges, and place them on top of the vegetables layer.
-Then take a spoonful of gravy and onions, and splash it on top of the sausages and vegetables.


Et Bon Appetit.

*Side Notes:
-The original recipe has 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar, however I found that quite strong, so I reduced it for my own desire. Feel free to add up to 1/2 cup if you wish to.
-Add the vegetables you like in the the boiling pot, as long as you remember that potatoes have to be more than half of the whole components. Go nuts and add zucchini, cabbage, broccoli, baby onions.
-Why we soak skewers in water? So that they won't burn :)
-Why we add butter? For more flavour, especially to the onions that will cook in the sausage's juice as well. It makes it more delicious. (If you are on very strict diet, then dispense with the step of butter).

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Sweet, Sweet Crepe.


Sweet Crepe stuffed with bananas and strawberries..Delicious!! Here we go.

Ingredients for Crepe:

1 cup of flour.
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of water.
2 eggs.
2 teaspoon of sugar.
2 tbsp of melted butter.
1/2 teaspoon of grounded cinnamon.
1/4 teaspoon of salt.
Oil

(serves 7-8 crepes)

Filling:
-Whipped Cream.
-Finely sliced strawberries.
-Finely sliced bananas.
-Chocolate sauce.

How to make the crepe:

1- In a big bowl, add the flour and the two eggs, then mix.
2-Mix the water and milk and start gradually pour them to the bowl of flour and eggs, while mixing well.
3-Then add the melted butter, salt, sugar, and cinnamon, then beat all well till the mixture is smooth. (The mixture is liquid-like, but has a bit of thickness.)
4-In a frying pan, add a drop of oil; heat it up.
5- Using a ladle, take a full scoop of the mixture (round 1/4 of a measuring cup) and pour it into the frying pan, and move the pan in circular motion to evenly spread the batter.
6-Fry till a bit goldish-brownish, and then turn to the other side using a spatula.


7-Leave till it cool down, then start stuffing it with the fruits and pipe whipped cream and roll it over, then add chocolate sauce on top, and sprinkle some powder sugar.


OR
Make a crepe sandwich: in one half fully spread the whipped cream and the fruits, and fold the other half on top. And garnish it with chocolate and sugar as desired.



This is how they should look like:


Extra Tip:
* Do a trick, and add some cocoa to the crepe batter, and fry it. Et Voila, a chocolate crepe, stuffed with strawberries and some whipped cream
Et Bon Appetit.



Side Notes:

-The cinnamon just adds a very nice taste to the crepe (and smell too), however if you're not a fan of cinnamon, you can add a small pinch or just dispense with that step.

-Crepe should be thin, but not dry.