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.  

Make a fresh start with Matar Paneer (India)

If you've never cooked Indian before, you can take a great start with Matar Paneer (peas with baked Indian cheese). It's a very simple recipe that requires only a few key ingrediënts, so not much that can go wrong! On top of that, it's just extremely tasty (next to pea soup with bacon, my favourite way to eat my not-so-favourite-veggie). Those golden cubes of butter-creamy cheese are divine. It's also quick to make and heats up well the next day (actually, it even tastes better). So go find a reason not to go ahead and try...







Aside from peas (obviously), there are only 3 more key-ingrediënts: Paneer or Indian cheese which you can find in Indian/Pakistan shops but maybe also in your organic supermarket. Ghee (clarified butter) which gives it a distinct flavour and Garam Masala (an Indian spice mix) you may find in both as well. I always go for flavourfull organic frozen peas. 






200g paneer
400g (frozen) peas
2 el ghee
1 small onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 cm fresh ginger *
1 whole fresh or dried (green) chilipeper and/or a bit of chilipowder**
1/2 teaspoon garam masala

* the ginger is pretty essential here, it balances the garam masala out. So if you want the perfect taste (in my opinion) it's a matter of neither of those to take the upper hand when you savour the dish. If you taste one more than the other, add some more of the lesser one. 
** I prefer a combination of whole and powdered chilipeper, the powder seems to add sharpness whereas the the whole chilipeper seems to create a depth of warmth, but that could be entirely my imagination! 

1. Cut the paneer into bitsizes, I like to have a piece in every mouthfull. Bake them on medium high in the clarified butter (it will already smell amazing at this point) until golden. Do not make the same mistake as I always do and overbake them to get them extra crunchy, they will go dry inside, you don't want to loose the soft, smooth creaminess on the inside... Put the baked paneer aside and continu with your buttered pan. 
2. Bake the onion just a little, add 5 tablespoons of water and a touch of salt, bring to a boil. Lower the heat and add the peas and sugar. Let simmer with a lid on for about 5 minutes. 
3. Now reintroduce the paneer, add the chilipeper, ginger and garam masala and continue to bake for a few more minutes until all the flavours have blended. Taste and serve with rice. It's really really as simple as that.

Baked bananas with coconut

I can't say this is a typical Asian dessert. I just wanted to make baked bananas with a twist and hey why not dish them up in cute Chinese spoons. That's it. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The recipe is lovely and simple:                                                                                Peel the bananas and slice them up. Bake them carefully in some oil in a pan (be careful, because the pieces break up easily). While you're baking them, sprinkle some lime juice, cane sugar and shredded coconut on them. Bake only until golden (not until brown). Serve warm with some extra coconut sprinkled on top.   

a few tips:

1. The bananas should not be ripe yet, it's best if they're somewhere between green and yellow. They must be firm and not too sweet. 
2. I totally love this with rhum. It transforms the taste and brings the dessert to a higher level, from average to sulblime. However I did not dare add the alcohol on the stove, in case I would have to face flames. I never made anything singed and God help me, I'll probably never try.  
3. There are many variations on 'baked bananas' you can try Vietnamese (baked bananas + coconut milk), Jamaïcan (baked bananas + rum + brown sugar + butter + orange juice), Carïbbean (baked bananas + raisins welled in rum, brown sugar, butter) or African (baked bananas + coconut + sugar + orange juice + lemon juice). Africans even have it for breakfast. 
4. Are you trying to cut down on calories? Make this dish in the oven, without adding any oil. 10 minutes on 200°C/400F will do. 

Lili

Savoury lassi (India)

Lassi is the most popular yoghurt drink in India. Back here in Belgium, most people have hardly ever heard of lassi, except maybe mango-lassi (which is even to be found in some supermarkets). That lassi can be drunk sweet as well as savoury, is something even mango-lassi-drinkers don't know. The truth is: a savoury lassi is as refreshing and delicious as surprising.

Salty drinks are not common at all in the west. It takes a bit of getting used to. In eastern countries however it's more known. In Iran for example, a savoury yoghurt drink with mint is served along any dish. Once you've put your western ideas of  yoghurt drinks out of your mind, and give it a fair try, you can experience how delicious and refreshing it truely is.

This lassi recipe consists simply of diluted yoghurt, spiced up with some toasted cumin and a pinch of salt. Toast the cumin in a pan without any oil on low heat until they turn a darker colour (see picture below) and start to 'jump up' in the pan. It gives them a slightly stronger and intresting taste and smell.

now the recipe is as follows: (serves 4)

grind the toasted cumin in a mortar (or between 2 spoons) into powder. Mix with 600 ml full-fat yoghurt and 300 ml water (or roughly 2/3 of a glass milk and 1/3 water if you make a glass just for yourself). Add a tiny pinch of salt (to taste) and mix well. Serve chilled in tall glasses.

I think this savoury lassi goes well with any Indian dish. I was once served a spicy dish by an Indian lady and when she saw I had hard time swallowing it, she advised me to add lots of salt to counterbalance the heat. Sooo I guess this lassi is the perfect compagnion for fiery dishes. In addition it's really good for digestion, that's why in India it's often drunk for medicenal purposes. Rear here what yoghurt can do for you.

Lili 

(P.S. Next time I'll post a sweet version because there are many

heavenly combination like honey and rosewater, vanilla and cinnamon)

Vegetable Biryani from Dinesh

I'm excited to have my first guest-writing sharing an authentic Indian recipe with me!!

Dinesh Kumar is an ingeneer from Kanpur (North-India, state of Uttar Pradesh), who lives since 2 years in Brussels for his Phd-research. He has also lived a few years in Bangalore (South-India) and one year in South-Korea.

                                        

this is what he has to say about his Vegetable Biryani : 

"I always use this basic and simple recipe to make various kind of dishes. I just learnt cooking from my experiments: variation in spices and ingredients.

Here is what I follow and cook awesome dishes. Its very simple, after 2-3 experiments you can also cook nice and tasty food. "

Ingredients: Basmati rice, mixed vegetables, onion, tomato, garam masala*, coriander powder, turmeric powder. * (garam masala is a mixure of indian spices you can find easily at nearest Indian grocery store.)

1.      Cook rice nicely

2.      Chop 2 onions

3.      Heat the oil, add cumin seeds (1 tea spoon), or mustard seeds (half spoon).

4.      Fry nicely chopped onion until golden brown. Add salt according to taste.

5.      Add the finely chopped mixed vegetables and fry for 6-8 minutes.

6.      Add garam masala powder 1 tea spoon.

7.       Add chopped tomato and fry it for 2-3 minutes.

8.       Add the cooked rice and stir well to combine

9.       Heat it for 4-5 minutes. Add a tea spoon of lemon juice or ghee.

Enjoy your meal!!!!!

Variations: Keep doing different experiments to make something new:

- Instead of rice you can use boil noodles .  It will become a new dish! Try vegetable noodles. 

- You can use macaroni or pasta  instead of rice.

- You can add boiled eggs  also after step 5.

- You can make omelette and can add after step 6.

- You can add the ½ teaspoon ginger powder, garlic or  black peperwith garam masala at step 6 to vary the taste.

Dinesh Kumar