Harira (Moroccan soup)

Feel like bringing on the sun in your kitchen with warming southern tastes? For this Moroccan soup -that is traditionally eaten at iftar, when muslims break their fasting at sunset- there are many different recipes to be found but all are full of vegetables, beans, sometimes meat and vermicelli (thin pasta). Mine is irresistable thanks to adding warming spices, chilipepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, some olives and fresh coriander leaves - if you feel like it. Don't be put of by the length of the ingrediënts list, they are all pretty common (or can be swapped if not) and the recipe itself is pretty straightforward. 

Ingrediënts: 

- 2 tablespoons of ghee (clarified butter, to be found in Indian supermarkets or health food stores)

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil

- 1 cm of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

- 3 cloves of garlic, pressed

- 1 piece of fresh turmeric, peeled and grated (or 1 extra teaspoon of dried turmeric powder)

- 1 onion, cut

- 1 cinnamon stick

- 1 teaspoon of dried paprika powder

- 1 teaspoon of dried cumin powder

- 1 can of tomatosauce with basil (or just regular passata or a can of chopped tomatoes)

- 2 bay leaves

- 1 teaspoon of dried turmeric

- a pinch of chilipowder

- 1 can of mixed beans (chickpeas, white beans, borlotti beans,...)

- 5 carrots, cut in rather small pieces

- 1 1/2 l water with 2 cubes of chickenstock dissolved in it

- a portion of vermicelli (or broken spaghetti, for example 50g)

- a handful of fresh corianderleaves, roughly chopped up

- a handful of fresh persley leaves, roughly chopped up

- a few green olives (you can also serve them on the side, it's probably bonkers to put them in your soup but I do)

1. Melt the ghee and olive oil in a souppot. Sautee the onion and garlic for a minute, then add the ginger and fresh turmeric. Add the cinnamon stick and stir in the paprika powder and dried tumeric. When the flavours of the spices waft up to you, add the carrot pieces and the beans. Mix in the tomatosauce/passata/tomato pieces. Put the bay leaves in the pot and add the chicken stock. Give it a stir and place a lid on the pot. 
2. Let the soup cook for about 45 minutes while stirring from time to time. When 30 min of the total cooking time have passed, add in the vermicelli and the chilipowder. Add the lemon juice the last 2 minutes. Check if the carrots are soft, taste the soup and adjust to your taste. Stir in the coriander and persley leaves, add the olives and dish up with rustic chuncks of bread. 

Chocolate coffee cupcakes with salted caramel cream cheese frosting

These cupcakes are to die for. I found an intresting recipe on one of my absolutely favourite websites "The Global Table Adventure". It's an original and unique blogconcept of a housewife who cooked recipes from one particular country every week and so 'travelled' the world from A to Z, week by week. Go to the 'map room' and loose yourself a few hours in clicking on all the different countries and recipes, wonderful! Here's the original recipe. I took the liberty of making it into cupcakes and topping it with creamcheese and caramel. Typically South-American? The divine combination of -chocolate, coffee and rhum - YEP rhum!! Must try!

Ingrediënts:

400g self-raising flour or plain flour

300g butter

300g dark chocolate

400g sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda if you use regular flour

1 teaspoon salt

80 ml dark rhum

400 ml strong coffee

2 teaspoons vanilla-extract or packet vanilla-sugar

3 large eggs

for the creamcheese frosting

75g butter, at room temperature

200g creamcheese (if you can find St-Moret, I think that's the best one)

100g powdered sugar

pinch of salt

caramelsyrup or agavesyrup with caramel flavour (if you're lucky to find it in stores like I only once was)

1. Preheat oven to 150°C. Put papercupcakes in your muffintin. 
2. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in the microwave or au bain marie (which means in a glass bowl placed on a pot on the stove with boiling water). Add the butter. 
3. In a mixing bowl, blend together the flour, baking soda and salt.
4. Add the rhum, vanilla-extract/sugar, coffee and sugar to the chocolate-buttermixture. 
5. Fold the wet ingrediënts into the dry ingrediënts and add the eggs one by one. Stir into a smooth batter. 
6. Scoop several tablespoons of batter into each paper cupcake but don't fill them all the way up. Bake 20 to 25 min in the preheated oven. Now proceed with the creamcheese frosting:   
7. In order to be able to mix everything well, it's best for the ingrediënts to all be at room temperture. First beat the butter until creamy and using the back of a tablespoon mix in the cream cheese. Then sift the powdered sugar over the bowl and stir with a spoon until smooth.
8. Put the creamcheese frosting in the fridge while the cupcakes cool down to roomtemperature. Then top the cupcakes with the creamcheese frosting (you'll probably have some leftover, but I never consider that a problem ;-)). Finally dripp some caramel syrup on top for a decadently good cupcake.