The ultimate overnight waffles

Adapted from Mark Bittman

These are the best waffles ever, crisp on the outside, light on the inside, with distinctive yeasty flavor which I love (usually, waffle recipes are based on a baking powder, which gives OK results too, but trust me - once you try those yeasted ones, you will never go back to the ”main stream” ones)!

It doesn't really matter whether it is Sunday lazy morning or busy Monday morning. There is very little preparation involved. A perfect almost no-work breakfast as the most difficult part of this recipe is remembering to get it started the night before!

Ingredients: (4-6 servings)

5 g fresh yeast (or ½ tsp instant yeast)
280 g all-purpose flour
2 tsp sugar

½ tsp salt
450 ml milk
100 g melted butter
½ vanilla bean

2 eggs
ghee butter, cocoa fat or any other neutral oil (for brushing the waffle iron)

Method:

1. The night before you want to serve the waffles, in a large bowl dissolve the yeast in milk, add sugar, salt, flour than the cooled melted butter and vanilla. The mixture will be very loose.

2. Cover and set aside overnight at room temperature.

3. In the morning, separate the two eggs. Stir the yolks into the batter. Beat the whites and gently fold them into the batter.

4. Brush the cold waffle iron with ghee or oil. Switch it on. Make sure it is very hot, and then pour enough batter onto the waffle iron to barely cover it; bake until the waffle is done, usually 3 to 5 minutes, depending on your iron. Serve immediately while making the next batch. 

Notes:

Waffles taste heavenly served with pure maple syrup; a few stripes of fried bacon on the side won’t do the harm and certainly will make umami lovers happy.

Waffles are meant to be eaten immediately! However, if you have to keep waffles warm until you’re ready to serve them - heat the oven to 100°C and place the cooked waffles directly on the oven rack without stacking. This keeps the waffles warm and crisp, whereas stacking makes them soggy.

Sometimes, to make waffles slightly healthier, I substitute 1/3 of all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour.

Naturally-dyed Easter Eggs

Adapted from Booklyn Farmhouse

I am waiting eagerly for spring which is refusing to come to Europe this year.

To get in a better mood I've decided to dye some eggs; it is Easter after all, even though it looks like Christmas outside the window...

Lemon bars

Adapted from David Lebovitz

Minimalistic desert, in terms of presentation, taste as well as the work which is required to make them.

Lemon bar is a wonderful sweet treat for lazy cooks who want to impress guests but don’t like to stand in the kitchen baking for half of the day. I love these lemon bars because they have such a condensated, strong taste that you need to eat just a tiny piece to fulfill your dessert craving. Extremely lemony-tasting, sweet and refreshing the same time – they make a perfect finish after a heavy dinner.

I like my lemon bars very flat, so I use rather big baking dish (25x20cm). When I made them once in a smaller baking dish, the crust was too heavy and the topping to thick for my taste. You need to find the balance which suits your taste best.

Jerusalem Artichoke Salad

What is it?

It is not an artichoke and certainly it doesn’t come from Jerusalem. It is a species of sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus) native to North America. It can be also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambur. It is cultivated for its tuber, which is used as a root vegetable. The knobby sunchoke tubers look similar to ginger roots, with light brown skin which may be tinged with yellow, red, or purple depending on the soil they are grown in. Prime season - from October to April, and they are best dug after a light frost. So go ahead and try them, the time is now!

Kale Cake

Adapted from Spinach cake recipe from the book A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis

Kale – probably the best thing you can consume in winter to boost your vitamin levels. A real super food in humble cabbage family. To be honest, I’m struggling a bit with this healthy veg: I would love to get all the vitamins and other goodies from kale leaves, yet I am not thrilled with its taste and tough texture. Some brave and very healthy looking people put raw kale in their smoothies... Well, I am not that brave yet, so I decided to put it into a savory cake. The effect was surprisingly tasty. Even my meat-loving boyfriend approved it (bacon did the trick I guess!)

Kale crisps

Inspired by My New Roots adapted from all over the net.

My 3 year old son doesn't like most vegetables. My boyfriend is not better – his favorite veg is bacon, as he says. It is a real drama for a mom who tries to feed her family healthy. I have no choice but to play food tricks and smuggle greens into my boys’ diet.

Kale is well worth smuggling! It is off the charts when it comes to nutrients. It’s the best green in terms of antioxidants. Not surprisingly, kale has been linked to preventing cancer. It is a real superfood we all should be eating regularly. And now the kale season is approaching!

Parsnip puree

Adapted from Skye Gyngell book A Year in My Kitchen

My man came back from the hunt the other day, proudly bringing a huge (4,5 kg) hare. Perfect timing, as just in a few days was our son’s third birthday! For that occasion I made the tastiest Skye Gyngell’s inspired "Hare pancetta and verjuice" dish accompanied by the humble yet heavenly parsnip puree.

Unfortunately, I was way too busy that day to document all this fancy hare-cooking. Next time he brings a bunny-rabbit or a hare I will photograph and describe the whole process through (from skinning and cleaning to the final presentation on the plate). Yes!

Nonetheless, puree was so delicious and so simple to make, that I started to prepare it as a side dish in my everyday cooking. With its sweet and nutty flavor this puree does go beautifully with rabbit or hare. But it also works with slow-cooked chicken dishes or simple grilled meats. It is very convenient side dish as it can be prepared ahead of time and reheated before serving.

Summer fruits cobbler

Adapted from Mark Bittman

This cobbler taste great and its effortless (it is literally 10 minutes of work, excluding the baking time). It is essentially perfect recipe from my favorite cooking bible, humbly named ”How to Cook Everything”.

I love to make cobblers in the summer – when fruits are cheap and at their best. I had discovered this recipe 2 years ago, and since then I baked this cobbler more than 20 times, always thrilled with the fantastic result.  So far my favorite filling was a combination of strawberries and nectarines (2:1 ratio), but you can use any fruit of your choice. Try blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, apricots, even rhubarb. Experiment making it as a single fruit variety, or mix different fruits together (like on the picture below).

Cooked Salsa

Adapted from Mark Bittman

If you feel like having not so healthy tacos, try at least to deep them in a yummy and healthy salsa!

My man likes junk food*. Not that he eats a lot of it, but still. I have to deal with unwanted things occupying our fridge. Certain things I have to accept – like ketchup for example. But some things have to go – cheap supermarket salsa is one of them.

We do like to munch on tacos from time to time, so it is a good idea to have some salsa for a dip. But the kind I had found in our cooler is simply not acceptable. Color is the only thing which it has in common with tomatoes. To me, it tastes like vinegar with some salt and E-124. Shitty food.

Shrimp stuffed mushrooms

adapted from Tvedemose

I made these mushrooms as a fast dinner for two, when trying to clean the fridge from remaining bits of food. It turned out really delicious, however a bit too heavy for my delicate stomach. Yes, it is not a main dish recipe, but a perfect appetizer to trigger your guest’s taste buds and charm them visually! Two or three pieces per person is more than enough.  

Beet Root Chips

Adapted from Tofu for Two

As a mom of 2,5 years old I really care about proper nutrition of my child. My toddler, however, constantly refuses to eat vegetables. No luck in smuggling greens into his diet so far. Oh, well, he is untroubled to eat my carrot cake or chocolate-beetroot cake (he is even begging for second portions of these), but let’s face it: this is not exactly the nutrition I am willing to give him on daily basis. After many unsuccessful approaches of veg-smuggling, finally a big success came unexpected - in the form of a beet root chip!

Yes, these chips make a lovely, alternative snack, easy to make and surprisingly tasty. Baking the beets in the oven instead of deep-frying makes them much healthier; they tend to shrink a lot, that’s why it’s a good idea to choose the biggest beets you have. To save energy and preserve nutrients I bake them long in low temperature, but you can try to do it faster in higher temperatures.

Eco friendly mussels

Adapted from StoneSoup

Mussels are my true love. They taste great, they are very easy to cook, they are cheap, they look great and they are eco friendly! Too good to be true? No.

   

Many kinds of seafood are farmed unsustainably, over-fished, or caught in ways that kill other sea life as well. That is not very nice, huh? Luckily, my beloved farm-raised mussels are the kind of seafood you can feel good about eating.

Mussel farming is a simple concept for sustainable production of valuable seafood while improving coastal water quality.  It can be regarded as open landscape feeding, but in the sea. It’s like an ecological, bio-dynamic, free-range top quality chicken, just even better. (Detailed information for nerds here)

Do not hesitate, just go buy them and let the magic begin in your kitchen :)

Black-eyed beans with mushrooms

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey

Homemade Indian food, with its bursting colors and rich aroma is a natural way to keep my family warm and comfy during the winter months. It is also a great tool to fight winter depression, which is so common, here in Scandinavia.  

It is a lovely, hearty, comforting food. It taste great eaten with simple basmati rice, naan bread or just alone. This time I’ve served it together with moong dal with browned onion, which is by far my most favorite quick Indian meal (I will post the recipe later). 

Candied orange peel (orangettes)

Adapted from use real butter

If juicy and sweet, orange is one of my favorite fruits. When I eat an orange I tend to play a little with its peel - I squeeze it and watch the pure orange oil mist bursting into the air. I love this refreshing aroma. I also am very much in love with a dark chocolate. I like it pure or slightly salted, but if I feel for flavored chocolate it has to be the orange flavored one.

Divine carrot & cardamom soup

Adapted from La Tartine Gourmande

I make this soup on regular basis in the winter season, when it gets cold and dark. It’s the perfect comfort food. Lively colors of chopped vegetables (purple and orange) elevate my spirits instantly. Even my 2 year old son, who is normally very fussy with soups, eats this one with a great satisfaction. It is so easy to prepare and also inexpensive that it is almost too nice to be true. No need for a stock is another big advantage of this recipe. When I cook soups which require stock and I don’t have any, I feel pretty bad using some instant thing (even though I use a good one).

But let’s start from the beginning: I was literally digging out some carrots with my bare hands, just a few weeks ago, when I was visiting some friends in Dyssekilde - en ecovillage in North Sjaelland. It is a lovely little oases inhabited by around 200 people who share their passion for healthy lifestyle, ecology and close to nature living in general. Place itself is really hip with its colorful folks and cool eco-architecture.

Anyway, so there I was, in the open field, in the end of November, pulling carrots from the cold soil, in a freezing and windy afternoon. This down to earth gardening experience inspired me to include carrots little bit more in my cooking this season.

Yes! The carrot season is also now! Not only in the spring, when supermarkets starts to sell appealing long and skinny new carrots with their green tops on. The truth is that locally grown carrots are in season from spring to late fall, when they are the freshest and most flavorful.

We don’t think about it a lot, as they are available throughout the year in every supermarket. It is just a carrot after all, not a sophisticated and pricey early asparagus, not even a modest pumpkin which everybody is so devoted to every autumn. Unpretentious carrot is a veg left alone with no special enthusiasm or celebration. 

Here, in the recipe below, is my gratitude: the quintessence of the carrot brought to you in a form of an old good carrot soup, with a modern spicy twist. Honestly, this soup, you are about to cook, tastes heavenly. It gives you much more oral pleasure than you expect from this vegetable ;)

Moong dal pancakes

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey

Indian cuisine rocks. I love it. Such a wonderful flavors and colors! Loads of spices! Healthy, natural ingredients! Fantastic resource of inspiration for vegetarians, but not only. 

One of the staples of Indian cuisine is a broad variety of pulses, for example dried beens, peas or lentils. When I think "dal" usually it is connected with rather long cooking process. The recipe below is quite unusual, as these pancakes are made from the uncooked dal.   

Ginger orange pumpkin seeds

Inspired by Lukashof

 

Two years ago I had a couple of guests from Austria. I’ve received a yummy gift – a little package of heavenly tasting roasted pumpkin seeds. It was so delish that I decided to keep the empty paper bag, in hope that one day I will try to re-make it from the ingredients list. Eventually, I decided to give it a go. After some experiments I came with a quite satisfying result, which you can see below.

This is so delicious, surprisingly easy and cheap to make. By adding just a few spices I was able to create some extraordinary taste out of rather predictable, yet tasty pumpkin seed. 

This roasted seeds work great as a sophisticated party snack or a healthy sweet treat for kids. (My two year old loves them!). Simply wrapped in a baking paper and decorated with a plain ribbon they make an alternative gift idea with a rustic twist. 

It takes only 15 minutes to make them but the bonus of your work is the gourmet taste in your mouth; really, there is no excuse not to make it, so go ahead and do it - you won’t regret! 

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Adapted from David Lebovitz

Carrot cake gives you a wonderful way to smuggle veggies into your diet. However it took me a while to find a perfect recipe for a real carrots-rich cake. I wanted to make an ultra delicious, yet healthy cake with loads of carrots in it. I also wanted my cake to be visually appealing – we do eat with our eyes after all! During my searches I’d bumped into some pathetic recipes calling for 3 medium carrots for the whole cake! That sounds like a carrot cake joke to me, doesn’t it? Other recipes were to rich with overwhelming amounts of butter and sugar. I didn’t want a cake which makes me think I sin when I eat it. Feeling guilt when eating is not what I particularly like. It takes away a joy of consumption. 

Finally, my carrot cake hunt is over. I have an honor to present a wonderfully delicious cake, so good you never would have guessed it’s also quite healthy and definitely not packed with empty calories!