Waiter! There's something in my... savoury preserve!

When Johanna announced the theme of savoury preserve for this month's WTSIM I just knew I wanted to take part. I didn't really grow up with savoury preserves as it's not very much of a Dutch thing. So apart from shop bought gherkins and onions the only preserve we ate was green tomato chutney. This recipe had come from an English friend of my parents before we were born and somehow it stuck in my mums repertoire. Every year she would grow tomato plants to harvest the unripe green ones (as they're hard/impossible to buy) and make this chutney. Strangely, we only ate it with Nasi Goreng but I always loved it!

Moving to the UK opened a whole new preserving world for me and I still enjoy making and eating lots of different ones. However, this one will always stay my favourite and I've now reached the point of growing my own green tomatoes to be able to make it each year.


PS. the roundup has now been posted and I'm already planning some serious preserving as there's so much stuff I want to try!

Green Tomato Chutney makes 6 400g jars
2.5 kg green tomatoes, sliced
50g onions, chopped
150g yellow raisins
150g black raisins
500g sugar
1 liter wine vinegar
30g salt
15 g peppercorns

Put the tomatoes, onions, salt and peppercorns in a large bowl and leave overnight. The next day, bring the sugar and vinegar to the boil in a large non-reactive pan. Add the raisins and simmer for 5 min before adding the tomato mix. Simmer everything on low heat until the mixture starts to thicken (45 min) and divide the chutney over some well cleaned pots that have been sterilized in the oven for 10 min at 110°C. Cover, leave to cool and store in a dark and cool place.

Waiter, there's something in my....sauce!

Another round of WTSIM and this time Andrew chose the theme of sauce. I had just the recipe for it that I bookmarked a while ago in the April/May issue of Saveurs. They had a feature on alternative pasta sauces and one of them was bright green, made with frozen peas and rucola (rocket). I made a few alterations as I didn't see the point of using chicken stock in a vegetable sauce and I also didn't really fancy the half liter of cream they suggested (perhaps a typo??). So instead, I used vegetable stock and a much smaller amount of sour cream. It was really easy to throw together and apart from a few green spots on the wall from slightly fanatic bending left us with little to wash up. We ate it with fresh pasta and the taste was mild, creamy yet fresh from the rucola. It tasted great with fresh pasta and I'm sure would be nice with some grilled chicken or fish. In any case, I definitely got my vitamins today :-)

Green Pea and Rucola sauce (serves 4 royally)
1 onion
300g frozen peas
400ml vegetable stock
150g rucola
4 tbsp soured cream
pepper and salt

heat a bit of olive oil in a pan, fry the onion till soft. Add half of the peas and leave 2-3 min, then add the stock. Boil for 5 min, add the rucola and when this has wilted blend everything to a chunky consistency. Add the cream, rest of the peas and season with salt and pepper.

Note: depending on the consistency you want, you can always add less stock at the beginning, then increase the volume if you prefer it thinner

Waiter, there's something in my...Dumpling!

I was so excited when Johanna announced the theme for Waiter there's something in my....dumpling!! I've always loved them but never made them much. So I was contemplating which way to go and on our trip to Prague at the start of the month, I found my inspiration. Just off the Old town square we saw a string with some funny looking rolls around it and as we were in desperate need of a drink and snack after seeing all the beautiful architecture we sat down. They were called Staroceske Trdlo and are made of sweet yeasty dough, rolled around a metal ring and into a mix of ground almonds and sugar. This is then roasted over gas and eaten warm. They were so yummy, and we had quite a few over the weekend to keep the energy up with all the sight seeing.

So I decided to make a dumpling covered in this mixture, but to make it a little bit more special I filled it with half an apricot, a bit of sugar, almonds and ginger (inspired by these tarts that I've made lots). They were a breeze to put together although I was a bit surprised how big they became and we ended up eating way too much but tasted great. I liked the little hint of ginger, the freshness of the apricot and the caramely sugar on the outside. I think I'll be embarking on a dumpling filled summer after this!

Apricot, ginger and almond dumpling (makes 8 fairly big ones)

For the dough
400 g flour
50 gr fresh yeast or 1 sachet dried
1 tsp sugar
about 200 ml milk
pinch of salt

For the filling:
4 apricots
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp roughly ground almonds
1 tsp ground ginger

For the outside:
a mix of 2 part sugar, 1 part ground almonds

Put the flour into a bowl, mix the sugar and salt in and crumble the yeast into it. Add the fluid and work till you have a nice soft, springy dough. Cover and leave to rise for about 1 hour (if in a rush, fill the sink with lukewarm water and leave the dough in that for 30 min) then divide into 8 pieces and roll them out into a circle. Cut the apricots in half and mix the sugar, ground almonds and ginger together. Put half an apricot onto each piece of dough and fill the place of the stone with the ginger mixture. Roll into the dough and leave to rest for 5-10 min. In this time, bring a big pan of water to the bowl. Add the dumplings and boil for about 8-10 min, lift out and roll in the sugar-almond mix. Enjoy whilst still warm.

Waiter, there's something in my...aubergine!

Jeanne is hosting this month's edition of Waiter, there's something in my stuffed fruit/vegetable. I opted for the veggie option by using these thai aubergines and stuffing then with a mix for nem nuong. Nem nuong are vietnamese pork balls that you grill and then assemble into wraps with salad etither in big lettuce leafs or rice paper. The first time I ate them was in Vientiane (Laos) when I was traveling with my friend Lisa. The owner of the small sandwich shop we were eating at recommended us this dish and we were very happy we took her up on her offer. She explained to us how to make the rolls and the ingredients so I could recreate it at home. The only distraction during this lunch was a Canadian girl eating outside and sharing her adventures with some friends. She was fairly loud and we were nosey so we listened in on the coversation. Little did we know that we would meet this girl, Sharon, the following day as we flew to Vietnam and would get on so well that we'd travel together for the next three months!

Last weekend I went to London for the long weekend and Lisa, Sharon and I met up (post to follow). We had a lovely time with lots of chatting and eating. It's amazing how you can not see each other for a year and then get right into the swing of things again. One of the highlights was a great Vietnamese meal which brought back lots of memories and stories. I'd however forgotton about the Nem nuong and when I got home and was flicking through this book, I ran into them again and WTSIM was the perfect event to recreate them in a different format. I like the thai eggplant as they have a slightly more bitter taste and love their small and dinky appearance. The combination worked well, the pork was moist and sweet and the slight bitter eggplant balanced this nicely. We ate it with rice cakes (from the chinese supermarket), stirfried veg and a Vietnamese dipping sauce. On the down side the aubergines were a bit fidley to hollow out and I had way too much filling. I filled 6 and could have probably done 24 at least! We decided to just grill the left over pork mince as little balls and have them with rice and salad tomorrow.

Aubergines filled with Vietnamese pork mince
24 thai
225 g lean pork
1/4 cup minced shallots
1/4 cup minced garlic
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
freshly ground black pepper
30g minced pork fat
1 tbsp roasted rice powder*

Slice the pork and place it into a bowl with the shallots, garlic, fish sauce, sugar and pepper. leave to marinade between 1-24 hr. Before proceeding, transfer this mix to the freezer for roughly 30 min. In the mean time slice the top off the aubergines and hollow them out, cut the flesh into small chuncks. In a food processor, wizz the fat to a paste, then add the chilled slices of pork and process till it forms a ball of rubbery paste. Add the rice powder and the scooped out flesh of the aubergines and process this in very briefly. Scoop a ball of this into the aubergines, place the top back on and bake 30 min at 180°C.

* roast 1/4 cup of thai sticky or jasmine rice until golden brown. Grind down in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle till a fine powder. This will keep well in a jar. Alternatively, I've cheated and just roasted some rice flower instead.

Vietnamese dipping sauce
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup water
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 minced garlic clove
1 minced small chili
shredded carrot

Waiter, there's something in my ... Easter basket!

When we were younger, we always knew Easter was coming when a big beautiful chocolate egg like this one appeared at home. These would come from my dad's latest trip to Geneva. Luckily for us, he had to go there a few times a year for work resulting in a steady supply of great chocolate! The bottom half of the egg would be made out of solid chocolate and the top was covered in parlines and truffels. The total was topped off with a huge bow, which my brother and I claimed/argued owership over . Now I've grown up and I know it's a pretty commercial event (especially here, with aisles of decorations) but still I can't help but get excited about the huge display of chocolate that the shops have put on.

And as Johanna is hosting this months rendition of Waiter, there's something in my ... Easter basket it only seems fitting that the first item will be chocolate. But as this isn't very exciting - to prepare that is - I also include two more Swiss traditional Easter customs/dishes. The first one is Osterfladli, a creamy custardy tart containing golden sultanas encased in a crunchy puff pastry that is eaten specially around this time. We'd had it a few times over the last few weeks in the bakeries and I was interested to make one myself. I used a recipe from my Swiss cookbook and was surprised to find that it's made using old bread. I also didn't realize it was a slightly more complex then a normal custard. But it's well worth the little bit of extra effort both for the taste and the texture. My only problem with the recipe was that I couldn't figure out how long to bake the tart for. My recipe called for a "sic" or 5 quarters of an hour?? I figured this would be 75 min? But after 1 hour the top of my tarts were very brown instead of a golden easter yellow I've seen in the shops so I took them out. They still tasted fine and weren't burnt but still. I'm not sure if this is a problem with my oven but just keep an eye on them. I was also sceptical about not baking the puff pastry blind but the long baking time made this really nice and crunchy. I just dusted the top with a little bit of sugar to hide the brown. The end result was scrummy anyway, with the occasional raisin popping up for a texture/taste change. They were even better the next day and I prefer these to the shop ones.

The second is dyed eggs. The Swiss love their eggs, on their Rosti or just as is. The whole year round you can buy boiled, dyed eggs but the last few weeks, the piles of trays have been getting bigger and more prominent in the shops, there are lots of kits for sale to paint or dye them. In addition, in the local pubs (the traditional Swiss ones) you can find little trays of them on the table that you can help yourself from and pay when you leave. This is where I first saw eggs dyed the old fashioned way. beautiful brown coloured eggs with patterns of grasses and flowers on them. So I decided to dye mine this way too. I saved some onion skins and picked some flowers. I wasn't quiet sure what to tie mine up with so I used an orange net, which gave a nice added effect in the pattern (but I guess for a clean finish some linen would be better. Then boiled them like they were normal eggs. I was quite pleased with how they turned out, although they were a bit more blurry than expected but I guess this will come with practice....and they tasted great on our walking/foraging trip today (but more about that some other time)!

Osterfladen
Easter tart, makes 6 small ones
25g White bread (without crust)
milk
1 egg, separated
65g coarsly chopped almonds
65g sugar
25g golden sultanas
175 ml cream
125g puff pastry

Heat the over to 180°C. Crumble up the bread and soak this in milk. Pour off the excess liquid and mix in a large bowl with sugar, almonds and egg yolk. Add the dried fruit to the mix. Whip the cream into soft peaks and in a seperate bowl, beat the egg whites till stiff. Fold the cream into the mixture and finally the egg whites. Roll the pastry out thinly and line 6 buttered mini quiche pans. Pour the mixture and bake for 1 hour (keep an eye on this, might need longer/shorter).