Still cooking + un nouveau défi

Bon, j'ai un peu négligé ce blog depuis quelques mois. beaucoup de choses à faire par ailleurs, peu d'inspiration, et la malédiction de la recette mangée sans photos (dont souffrira ce post, je préviens). J'adore la coriandre, l'idée me trottait dans la tête depuis longtemps, et comme j'a aimé le résultat, j'aimerais ne pas perdre les proportions.

Long time no post, heh ? I've suffered a big case of lots to do and recipes being eaten picture-less - yet I will still post this one, just because (hoping I'll regain some cooking blog mojo). I love cilantro, and have wanted to cook somethign like that for ages. The proportions worked on the first try, so I'd rather not forget them !

Boulettes de viande à la coriandre - Cilantro meat balls

600g de boeuf haché - 21 oz ground beef
1 poignée de feuilles de coriandre - 1 handful cilantro leaves
2 ciboules - 2 green onions

1 oeuf - 1 egg

2 gousses d'ail - 2 garlic cloves

huile d'olive - olive oil

panure - breadcrumbs (great use of stale bread)

Laver et hacher la coriandre et les ciboules, peler et hacher l'ail. Mélanger la viande, la coriandre, la ciboule, l'ail, l'oeuf et 3 cuillères à soupe d'huile d'olive.

Mettre un généreux fond d'huile à chauffer dans une poêle. Former de petites boules de viande, les rouler dans la panure puis les mettre dans la poêle, les tourner régulièrement jusqu'à ce qu'elles soient bien dorées de tout côté. Servir chaud.

Wash the cilantro and onions, peel the garlic, chop them finely and add them to the bround beef. Add the egg and 3 tablespoons oline oil.

In a large pan, heat a generous dash of oil. Form meatbaals, roll them in breadcrumbs, toss and turn until all sizes are crisp and golden. Serve warm.

Et maintenant, essayons de garder un peu d'énergie bloguesque et culinaire, en vous présentant un nouveau défi Histo qui me fait frétiller d'excitation : le Historical Food Fortnighly - groupe FaceBook et blog. Le principe est le même que pour le Historical Sew Fortnighly, un défi à thème tous les quinze jours. Sauf qu'ici, pas question de couture, mais bien de recettes historiques. J'ai comme en tête de parcourir mes magazines anciens pour des recettes - le "kurry indien" façon Paris 1896 me semble assez aventureux !

Pork tenderloin in tapenade crust

This is a combination recipe. First, there was a pork tenderloin cooked by a dear friend’s mother, using store-bought tapenade. I love tapenade, I love olives, and I adored the dish. On the other hand, I had my trusty almond tapenade recipe, ready-made tapenade tends to be expensive (and very salty), I rarely have it at hand, while olives and almond paste are staple ingredients in our pantry.
This is the recipe exactly how I made it this time, I don't always stick to these proportions - it is a VERY forgiving recipe, you can pretty much eyeball everything and never get it wrong.

Port tenderloin in tapenade crust

2 pork tenderloins

1 cup green olives

1/2 cup black olives
1 cup white almond butter
olive oil
Preheat your oven at 360°F.
First, make the tapenade. Rinse the olives, and, using your trusty immersion blender (don't know what I would do without this one !), mix them into a paste, adding olive oil until it is very creamy. The fat from the oil will prevent the crust from getting to dry in the oven.
When you're happy with your tapenade (taste it, but don't eat it all ;) ), spread some of it on one side of the tenderloins. Turn them over, and spread the rest over them. Bake for 30 minutes in the oven, serve.
If, like today here, it is very hot where you live and eat, you might be happy to know the dish is also very tasty served cold.

First taste of summer

It's technically a summer dish, but the first round zucchinis appeared at our local market last week, and I couldn't pass them up. No big round tomatoes yet, though, so we just bought some small ones and added them to the stuffing. Usually, we'd carve those out as well and the juice and flesh would go into the stuffing.

It takes a while to cook, two solid hours. But it's worth it. It gets better with reheating, so my advice is to cook it in advance and reheat it. It freezes well - just reheat it in the oven for dinner !

Légumes farcis - stuffed vegetables

2 bell peppers

2 eggplants

5 round zucchinis (you can make do with long zucchinis, but they aren't as easy to stuff)

8 tomatoes

10oz ground beef

10oz ground pork

2 cups hacked stale bread

herbes de Provence (savory, thyme, sage, basil, rosemary)

oat milk

ground black pepper

Place the stale bread in a bowl and pour some oat milk over it. Stir from time to time until all the bread is soft.

Wash the vegetables. Cut off the top off the zucchinis and carve out their insides with a teaspoon (keep the flesh, don't discard it). Cut the peppers and eggplants in half, cut off and discard the stem. Carve out the insides of the eggplants as well. Place the hollowed out vegetables in a large pan with relatively high edges, with a dash of olive oil at the bottom of the pan.

Now take the flesh of the zucchinis and eggplants, dice it and add it to the bread mixture. Add the diced tomatoes, herbs, a good dose of black pepper. Add the meat little by little, kneading small bits of meat into the stuffing - the meat tends to stick to itself and not mix well with the remaining ingredients, so take your time to separate it into smaller bits and mix well. I haven't found a better instrument to do that than my two bare hands :)

Stuff the vegetables, replacing the "lid" on the zucchinis (and tomatoes, if you've found tomatoes big enough to use that way) after wards. If you have too much stuffing, either make little domes over the vegetables, or, if you really have too much, stuff the spaces between the vegetables.

Add a little water to the pan, just enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Bake in the oven, 390°F, for two solid hours, or even a little more. Serve hot with rice.

I don't have a set quantity of vegetables I put into the dish, I wash and prepare just enough so that the pan is full. You can pretty much adapt the recipe to other vegetables - onions, potatoes, small pumpkins in winter.

A not completely picture-less stew

Have you ever tried taking pictures of a really thoroughly cooked stew ? Well, mine didn't look that pretty. I tried, it looked horrible, so I'm just going to show you the pretty big pot we used to cook it. So the stew is in the picture, it's just not... visible.

We started cooking this with pork, but we changed this time after looking at what was in the fridge - one used-to-be-a-laying-hen chicken, fat and tasty but in need of a good boil so as not to be too chewy.

Kiwi stew

1 chicken, cut into pieces, or pork...

10 kiwis

3 leaks

4 carrots

Oil, salt, pepper, ground red chili pepper

Cut the meat into bits no bigger then a child's fist.

Wash and thinly slice the leaks. Peal the carrots and kiwis and cut them into small dices or slices.

Heat a dash of oil in a big cooking pot with a heavy bottom. Add the leaks first, stir regularly until they get a little softer. Add the meat, stir some more. Lastly add the kiwis and carrots, pour water in the pot until about an inch below the level of the ingredients, add salt, pepper, and a small pinch of ground chili. Let it cook for one to two hours - you can cook it a day or two in advance, and reheat it for half an hour or more before serving. Just check that there's still enough water and add some so that it doesn't get dry.

Hachis parmentier

A simple winter basic, cheap, easy to cook in large quantities. You can freeze some of it and reheat it in the oven later.

Hachis parmentier
6 large potatoes
2 tbsp butter or vegetal sustitute
1 cup oat milk
11 oz ground beef
11 oz ground pork
 2 large onions
thyme, laurel, rosemary
salt, pepper to taste
optional : 1 cup grated cheese

Peel and dice the potatoes, cook them in a pressure cooker until you can squash them with a fork.
Peel and thinly slice the onions. In a pan, heat one dash of oil over strong heat, put the onion and stir them regularly until they get a little transparent. Add the meat, separated in little clumps, salt, pepper, and herbs. Stir and sauté  the onion and meat mix until the meat is nicely golden.
Squash the potatoes, adding the butter and milk as you go (you can also use one small cup of almond or rice cream instead of the butter + milk).
In a large oven-proof pan, spread the meat mix first, and the mashed potatoes on top of it. Add some cheese on top if you wish/can. Cook in the oven at 250°F until the top is lightly golden.

It's one of those dishes that reheats well, so don't hesitate to cook it in advance and just reheat it for dinner.