Pumpkins and apples

A very brief and quick entry as I'm off to Paris for my fellowship interview tomorrow!! There is still so much to prepare but I just need a break as I feel my head will explode with science! I'm also very excited about Halloween and Stephanies Blogpary this month. Although it's not one of the traditions of the Netherlands, I think it's a fab holiday. Dressing up, trick-or -treating, lots of candy, scrummy food and a spooky atmosphere make for a perfect party I think. On top of that I can't get enough of pumpkins at the moment - Barry jokingly says I will turn into one soon, but who cares! They're tasty and healthy and lovely I think, and my friend Simone agrees which is why we have a whole Halloween pumpkin dinner planned for next week complete with pumpkin soup, bread and ice cream! However, first I have to get tomorrow out of the way and then I can focus on the kitchen again.

Anyway, back to the treats for this week: I made these little biscuits I discovered here (the beauty of online translaters) on Sunday as was very taken by them. First, they are easy to make. Second, they look beautiful and third, they have a lovely texture, crunchy without being hard or dry. I added some cinnamon and ginger for a more autumn taste which was nice and complemented the subtle pumpkin flavor. A perfect treat served along some hot mulled apple juice (put apple juice in a pan with some cinnamon, cloves and star anis, heat for about 5-10 min to let the flavors infuse) and to keep the brain going till tomorrow.

Little Sweet Pumpkins (makes 12)
30g cooked/roasted pumpkin
30g butter
25g sugar
pinch Salt
60g soft flour
2g cornstarch
pumpkin seeds

Cream butter and sugar together, when this is light and fluffy, add the salt and pumpkin. Mix well again and finally incorporate the flour and cornstarch. You should have a dough that is relatively firm but does not crack and leaves the bowl clean. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge. Divide the dough into 12 parts, roll each of them into a small ball, flatten slightly to give a pumpkin shape. apply marks to the side with a toothpick and insert a pumpkin seed as the stem. Bake 17-20 min at 170°C.

Minty Goodness

Another blog party, another great theme! For this edition Stephanie chose minty goodness which was very timely as the mint on my balcony is growing madly. I'm going through a bit of an Middle Eastern food phase at the moment and mint seemed to fit into that seamlessly. For the snack, I threw together these little chickpea, aubergine and pomegranate fritters topped with minty quark. Easy to make, easy to bake and very tasty with the warm nutty flavors of the chick pea flour, aubergine and zatar contrasted by the fresh and zingy mint and garlic. I also like the grainy texture of the quark which is very sturdy so stays well on top of the fritters. To accompany these, I mixed some little Arabic G&Ts by adding mint syrup (made with some leftover sugar from this recipe) and pomegranate molasses (my new favorite cooking ingredient).

For the fritters (makes 25-30)
Mix 200g chickpea flower, 1 1/2 tbsp oil, 1 grated medium aubergine, 1 tbsp zatar and seeds from 1 pomegranate (keep a few aside for garnish and the drink). The dough should be a little bit sticky but not too thin. Heat some oil in a pan and dollop little balls in there. Fry for a few minutes either side. In the mean time combine 4 tbsp quark, 1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh mint and 1-2 chopped garlic cloves. Put a little bit on each fritter

For the drink
Melt 50 g of sugar with 25 ml water. Use either mint sugar or add some twigs whilst simmering the syrup. Leave to cool, then mix with equal quantities Hendricks Gin, tonic and pomegranate molasses. Pour into small glasses and add some pomegranate seeds and small mint leaves as garnish.

Summer snacks

A quick and short post for this months blog party which is not very social, I know. Specially not as it's the 2 year anniversary!! But life is terribly busy at the moment with grant writing for work and some other stuff in the pipeline too. So my entry is short but sweet: this watermelon refresher based on this recipe but spiced up a bit with some sparkling white wine and mint. To go with it there are little squigly squids (with legs for me, without for Barry) coated in flour with a bit of chili and stuffed with stirfried onion, chili, fish sauce, sugar and thai sweet basil (this is added at the end). Very very tasty and for me they capture the spritit of summer perfectly! And with the drop in temperature predicted (again!) I'm desperately holding on to that.

Finding Nemo, cocktail in hand...

So Blog party 23 hosted by Stephanie has the theme of Sci-Fi mixology. The inspiration I chose for this is perhaps not directly what you think about but somehow I couldn't get this image out of my head that I saw on a poster the other week. So my entry is based ona classic "science fiction" novel: twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Of course the famous captain Nemo was then reimmortalized by Disney a few years ago in the Finding Nemo movie.

So I use a pate brisee as a base, some egg whites flavored with lavender sugar (1 egg white-30g sugar put in a water bath at 100C in the oven for about 30 min) to make the ball and cut little fishes out of slices off peach. They were very easy to assemble and very pretty, if I do say so myself, although I think sweet finger food is perhaps not the best, they were more like petit fours.

The cocktail was based on this recipe made with homemade limoncello, sparkling white wine in stead of rose and I again used lavender sugar in stead of normal. This was really nice and I think, if the weather picks up we will be making this one a lot this summer.