Dr. Filomena

Made this for friends who do not eat meat or fish. With thanks to Binula for her tips!

Served 4:

Cooked eight large sliced potatoes and drained them well. Covered the ceramic pan (no grease necessary as the olive oil from the stir-fried zucchinis suffices along with the sour cream that drizzles through the potatoes and veggies) with half of the potatoe slices, salted.
Topped with three sliced stir-fried zucchinis.
The next layer were four large sliced quickly-cooked carrots. Topped that with a large aubergine, sliced, salted, grilled on the big toaster and cut into cubes. Sprinkled with some grated cheese to hold together.

Topped with another layer of the cooked potatoes and salted.

Mixed sour cream with two eggs, three large spoons of flour, salt and pepper and poured over the top.

Baked in the oven for 15 minutes at 220°C

Sprinkled with grated cheese and baked for another 5 minutes.

Voila.

As a side: shredded a large cucumber, added yoghurt, garlic, salt, pepper, some hot pepper seeds and dill.

Bon appétit, my vegetarian friends
And Bon voyage!

Took some time to cook at home. On a Monday, mind you. Sheer decadence!

Here’s how to duplicate the above.

Preheat oven to 170°C.

Take chicken breasts.

Mix minced garlic cloves, olive oil, salt, chicken seasoning and I added some hot chilli seeds. Spread over the chicken breasts and sprinkle with some wine vinegar. Works well to put the breasts in a plastic bag, add the above, seal and turn all around with gusto.

Put in a cake pan with some olive oil on the bottom in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Slice up fresh mushrooms. I used champignons. Also slice up green onions. I didn’t have any green onions and used the extra fresh white (flatish?) ones. Came out more than ok.

Take the chicken out of the oven, place sliced up mushrooms and onions on top, spoon the oil from the bottom of the cake pan on top, add a bit more more oil if needed and again sprinkle with red wine vinegar.

Bake for another 20 minutes.

In the meantime, slice some good cheese or use the toast cheese.

Remove the chicken from the oven, place strips of sheets of cheese on top and return to the oven for a minute or two until it’s melted.

You can use a number of side dishes. Veggies, rice, potatoes, pasta. I opted for chestnuts and a couple of Brussels sprouts. Hey, why not.

Serve with a (smile and a) glass of good wine. We went for red

Dober tek!

Another Sunday… or holiday at least gives another excuse and opportunity to bake. Here comes my friend Nina’s longtime favorite and a staple in my series of American desserts. Check out Nina’s Fresh Illustrations, they might be inspired with the newly supplied top quality energy…. chocolate… yummm! This is best with pecans, but walnuts do a mighty fine job as well.

I found the recipe on the Internet a few years ago, but can’t find the source to give due credit. All I remember is that the chef made this to get through a Superbowl with the family, stuck in front of their TV sets. Considering the recent events concerning Olimpija hockey team (somebody please post on this so I can link to it here) and tomorrow’s undoubtedly exciting match, this may be a good time to recreate the recipe.

EDIT 03/25/2008 (hockey links):
Pengovsky posted: Dej ga na gobec
Binula posted: Optimistični Brendan Yarema
Go get’em tonight, Green Dragons!

You will need:

• 2 x 100g / 3 1/2 oz. dark and I do mean dark chocolate bars (70% and higher for an intense experience)
• 3 large eggs
• 125g / 4 oz (1 stick) of unsalted butter
• 65g / 1/4 cup plain flour
• 20g/ 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 150g / about 4 oz walnut or pecan halves (about 1 cup)
• 1 tsp salt
• 100g / 1/2 cup white sugar
• 100g / 1/2 cup light brown sugar

Bake in: a 9 x 9 inch / 25 x 25cm cake/brownie pan

Preheat the oven to 160 ° C / about 350 ° F. Line your brownie pan with a silicon baking sheet or butter and flour it.
Bash the chocolate bars, still in their wrappers, hard against a counter top or table until they are in small pieces. If the wrapper breaks, put the chocolate in a plastic bag and bang away. Bash the walnuts/pecans in the same way. You want the nuts to be fairly chunky still, not pulverized. Alternatively, cut up the chocolate bars and walnuts/pecans with a sharp knife (recommend banging and smashing on Superbowl or “Olimpija in the Austrian ice hockey league” night… better walnuts than humans press…).

Melt the butter and one of the chocolate bars over a low heat, stirring, until completely melted. In the meantime, combine the flour, cocoa and salt. Add this to the melted butter and chocolate.

Add the sugars and blend well. Take off the heat and allow to cool a bit.

Add the eggs and mix well until combined.

Stir in the walnuts/pecans and the rest of the chocolate.

Pour the batter into the brownie pan, and bake for about 40 minutes.

Let cool and cut into 16 squares. Actually, I prefer to cut them up into smaller pieces given the taste intensity and how calorie-packed they are. My favorite (sorry about the spelling, Adriaan, but this is an American dessert) way of serving this is with a scoop of ice cream and a couple of strawberries.

Another Sunday and another recipe I promised a while ago.

Here is what you’ll need:

120 g butter (one stick)
4 eggs (split yolks and eggwhites)
180g sugar (just under one cup)
0.2 l milk (one glass)
2 spoons of rum
300 g (just under 3 cups)
baking powder
1 spoon of cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to 200°C (470 K)

Beat the butter well, then start adding egg yolks and sugar and again beat untill well-blended. Set a bit of sugar aside and add to separately beaten egg whites.

Stop the blender and pour in milk, rum and half of the flour, then blend again.

Mix the other half of the flour with the baking powder and add spoon by spoon, together with the beaten egg whites, mixing gently.

This is the dough, yeah!

Grease the cake pan (and lightly sprinkle with flour, this should stop the cake from sticking and will allow for easier removal from the pan once baked).

Put most of the dough in the pan and set aside about a third, mixing in the one or two spoons of cocoa powder. This is the brown part of the marbled cake.

Now for the magic. Spoon the brown dough on top of the yellow one, take a fork and mix it deeply into the yellow one. Place in the preheated oven and bake for about 45 minutes.

You can sprinkle the cake with some powdered sugar. Or not.

Enjoy the cake in good company. Preferably with a cup of tea

I know some of my friends expected me to post on Kosovo right now. But hey as things are cooking over there, I’ve decided to use hot air for something useful.

Here we go, Maida. Better late than never and when we do it, we do it right. As promised, here comes the apple skuta cheese cake recipe. You can make it in a pie model (or a round cake model) but I prefer the rectangular as it maks it easier to cut into smaller pieces.

Mix 300 g flour, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder.

Add 0.15 l of oil (if you happen to be out of butter, hmm..)

Add 150 g brown sugar…

..and an egg.

Mix until a sort of bumpy dough is formed. Spread two thirds of the dough on the bottom of an oiled cake model and push down with your fingers. Put the remaining third of the dough away.

Let’s get the apples ready. Peel and cut up 500 g of apples, I like to use Idared. Put them in a pot.

In a bowl, mix 5 tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of water and a tea spoon of cinnamon. Pour over the apples, put the lid on and let simmer for 6 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the skuta cheese filling.

Mix three eggs, 8 tablespoons of sugar and a bag of vanilla sugar with a mixer.

I added some seeds this time around. A mix of sesame, sunflower etc… Add 500 g of skuta cheese and mix gently.

After the apples have been ‘cooking’ for 6 minutes, drain the liquid and place them in the cake model. Spread the skuta cheese filling over them.

Sprinkle the third of the dough you’d set away on top of the skuta cheese filling. Put in the preheated oven and bake for about 1 hour at 180°C.

When the cake is done, let it sit for at least 10 minutes before cutting it into pieces. Serve with a kiss.

Dober tek!

I’ll break away from what is bound to be the No. 1 topic around here today (Slovenia’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty) and post a link to a lovely article on Wild Wild Wines from Slovenia published by the LA Times along with a list of wines to watch for.

On a personal note, pinela is one of my favourite white wines and I did enjoy a glass of the 2004 Simčič Sauvignon Blanc Reserve from the list with this Sunday’s lunch.

Incidentally, just a few weeks ago one of my professors (politcal science) argued that no debate on politics at a high theoretical level is possible in the absence of good wine. It would seem Slovenians have the basics covered, eh? Or, as Luka would say, ne est-ce pas?

Japanese Mystery Food

Culc, please shed some light on this green stuff?

Phenomenal venison in a creamy carrot-base sauce with spaetzle noodles, a piece of ’sirov strukelj’ (skuta cheese roll) and pear (cooked in white wine and topped with cranberry jam.
Prepared by Poldka at the renowned Jelen restaurant in Kocevje.

I hadn’t made these in a long time, so I forgot a detail. Next time, these sexy cupcakes will look even better

Ingredients (makes 24 cupcakes)

250 g (Philadelphia) cream cheese
1 egg
60 g sugar
pinch of salt

200 g dark chocolate chips
200 g all-purpose flour
200 g sugar
20 g unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
230 ml water
80 ml vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Chop up the chocolate bars if you weren’t able to find miniature chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 175°C. Line muffin tins with paper cups or lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, egg, 60 g of sugar and a pinch of salt. (Note: don’t overdo the beating as you want this mixture to have consistency! don’t let it become too fluid) Stir in the chocolate chips and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 cup sugar, cocoa, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center and add the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Stir together until well blended.

Fill muffin tins 1/3 full with the batter and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture. See my problem was that I allowed my cream cheese mixture to become too liquid and had to almost pour it on top rather than top the batter with ‘dollops’. Had I done it that way, the batter would rise around the filling, engulfing most of it, for a prettier end result.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

Even if they didn’t look perfect, they still tasted good, though

Just a quick marble cake for an easy Sunday.
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Baked in: 45 minutes

Piece-a-cake

marble cake