As fall approaches heavily in Brittany, here is a new recipe for a cake ideal to eat on chilly Sunday afternoons.

To make this Walnut Coffee Cake you need:

• 275 gr of flour
• 1 tbsp of backing powder or about half a package ~ 3 or 4 gr
• 150 ml milk
• 2 medium sized eggs
• 100 gr melted butter
• 2 tbsp espresso or any strong coffee
• 50 gr ~teacup walnuts
• 50 gr of sugar brown or white and some more for topping

The mix in the bowl

Lubricate your cake pan with grease. In a separate bowl add flour, sugar and backing powder. Mix gently.

Make a second mixture of the eggs, milk, espresso and melted butter and add it to your mix of flour, sugar, baking powder.

In a last step carefully add the walnuts (I slightly pan fried these before in order to obtain a more intense taste) and mingle all ingredients thoroughly.

Mixing in the nuts

The cake goes into the oven for about 50 min to 1h at 190°.
For the icing there are different options. You could simple put icing sugar on top, make a caramel from brown sugar or put “Streusel” on top.

To make Streusel, just have a look in the Plum Cake with cinnamon recipe.

Caramel is also easy to make. You simply put butter with some sugar in a pan and let it melt.

Be very careful with hands / arms when you pour the caramel on top of your cake as caramel gets EXTREMELY hot! The second tricky point is to not to let the caramel get too dark or even burnt.
It’ll leave a bad taste…

Yummy

Enjoy this recipe and tell me about your favorite cake recipes or experiences with baking!

As an interested reader of this blog you may already have found out that I prefer cooking delicious yet relatively quick and easy recipes. Therefore, I would like to share my recipe for plum cake today.

Some celery out of the garden.

Here for once is a meat dish: stewed lamb with vegetables.

Best is to take meat from the leg or joint. These are not the most expensive parts and by the relatively long stewing they become nice and tender yet stay juicy!

Also, this dish is budget friendly and if you have a kitchen garden with herbs and some vegetables it becomes even more affordable.

The ingredients.

Let’s get down to the preparation though. For the taste I wanted to focus on freshness and two main notes: garlic and rosemary (I used them both fresh but you can of course use them dried. In this case you want to reduce the amount of garlic as fresh garlic is less intense than dried one).

Both garlic and rosemary mingle nicely with lamb and potatoes. As other vegetable I used celery but you can take any other vegetable of the season or that you particularly like, always nice are carrots.
First I want to give the lamb pieces and the potato wedges a little bit of color, so I roast them for about 5 minutes in a frying pan with a little bit of vegetable and extra virgin olive oil (we have a higher temperature here and because of that you don’t only want olive oil as it does not stand high temperatures). At the end of this frying process you can add the garlic already but be careful that it does not get brown and therefore bitter. Season with salt and black pepper.

Fresh out of the oven.

Next step is to arrange the lamb, potatoes, celery, garlic and rosemary in a casserole. Add a good sip of extra virgin olive oil, a little water or broth so that nothing sticks to the casserole and everything into the oven at a relatively low temperature of 160°-180° for about 45 minutes or a little longer depending on how much meat you have and how thick your pieces are.
Optional: you could add a tomato (fresh or canned) to obtain another fruity note to the sauce.

When the lamb comes out of the oven it should be so tender that you almost did not have to cut it with a knife.

On the plate.

All in all, a budget friendly dish and easy dish. You can feed a lot of people with and it’s also good for the cook as you do not have to take care of it a lot as soon as it’s in the oven.

Enjoy cooking and bon appétit!

Me and the ingredients

Pasta with green pesto (Genovese) is both a speedy but healthy dish

To make the pesto you best you a food processor. You could also do it by hand but that takes longer  and the result is less even.

Put your basil into the food processor, you can use everything not only the leaves. Add your Parmesan cheese as well as the nuts. The amount can vary depending on how strong you want the cheese and nut taste. I’d say as it’s a basil pesto this should be the dominant taste and the cheese and nuts should only add a subtle note to the pesto.

Note: The nuts can be roasted but don’t necessarily have to. I usually roast pine nuts in a pan before giving them in the food processor but not hazelnuts or walnuts.

Some people also like to add a bit of lemon juice and garlic. Just experiment a bit and see what works best for your taste. Cooking is never just black or white but always about trying things out!

Next step is to add some good quality olive oil and if you want some nut oil, too as well as salt and pepper. Process all ingredients. You want to obtain an even paste. If it’s too thick add some more oil.

And presto! Green Pesto

You can keep the pesto for some days in your refrigerator, just make sure that you always add a layer of olive oil on top so that the green color stays and your pesto doesn’t turn brown.

Variation: You can of course make a delicious red pesto the same easy way! Instead of using basil you would use fresh and sun dried tomatoes.

As a site note: Always cook your pasta in enough boiling and salted water. Only then the pasta gets a taste itself. Seasoning after cooking has no effect.

If you want to keep the pasta warm pour a little bit of olive oil on it so it doesn’t stick together.

Happy cooking & Bon appétit!

Another very easy to cook dish. This creamy prawn curry and tomato coriander salad is a perfect dish for the summer time as it is light, fresh and very tasty.

To prepare this delicious prawn curry you need to buy:

1/2 of a big onion
1 glove of garlic (or a bit more when you use fresh garlic)
1 tsp of red paprika
1/2 of curcuma
a good amount of green or red chili depending on how hot you like it
2 tbsp of ghee (cleared butter) or oil
200ml of cream (light or full fat)
prawns, around 200-250g per person
1 tbsp of palm or brown sugar

For the tomato-onion-coriander salad you need:

the other half of your onion
1 big tomato (coeur de boeuf in the video)
salt and chili depending on your taste
fresh coriander

You can prepare this part of the dish in advance already, so that you can completely concentrate on the prawn curry later on.
Make it look really nice by finely slicing the tomato and onion. It’ll make a much more elegant impression than big tomato chunks.
Then simply season with salt, chili and the fresh coriander.

When thinking of the curry itself now, you want to prepare the yellow curry paste first. Therefore, you put onion, garlic, parika, chili and curcuma into a food processor and let it process until you obtain a fine paste.
In a next step you heat the oil or ghee in a pan, add the paste and let it fry for about 5 minutes (no roasting), just let the aroma develop itself. Then you add your cream or coconut milk if you prefer and let everything cook for another 3 minutes before adding sugar and your prawns. Let everything cook for a quick moment (2 min) at low heat.

Serve immediately with rice and enjoy! It’s a fantastic dish with a lot of character and light enough to serve it on hot summer evenings

max time to prepare: 30min (mostly less!)
level of difficulty: simple (good beginner dish)

Tandoori chicken is really one of THE classics when people think of Indian cuisine and it’s also one of my favourite chicken dishes.

The beauty of this recipe is of course the marinade  but it’s relatively easy to prepare not so so time consuming either.

Here is what you need:
a chicken or chicken thighs like me for this video
1 tsp of lemon juice or vinegar (I used apple vinegar)
1 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp of paprika powder
1 1/2 tsp of ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp of ground cumin
1 tsp of garam masala
1 tbsp of chopped ginger
1 tbsp of chopped garlic
1 tsp of salt
about 60ml of youghurt
ghee or oil

mortar and pastel or a food processor

For the tandoori mix just put all the ingredients together, so that you get a paste. Little pieces of the individual ingredients can be visisble, that’s just fine.
Before putting the tandoori paste on your chicken you have to decie if you want to eat it with or without skin. Next step is to make some cuts in the meat so that you’ll later the tandoori taste everywhere and not only on the surface. Don’t cut up to the bone! Your knife will thank you for
Then gently put the tandoori marinade on your chicken and put it in the fridge for 3-4 hours, it’ll enhance the taste significantly!
Option: put the chicken under the grill with all the marinade or in two steps, both is equally good!
Next, we can pass the chicken under the grill.
Make sure that it’s not too hot. That’s neither good for the chicken itself nor you want that you marinade starts burning.
I suggest medium heat for about 20 to 25 minutes depending on the size of your chicken.
Tandoori chicken tastes excellent warm and cold, so you could make more in advance or keep the leftovers in the fridge for at least 2 or 3 days.
I often serve my tandoori chicken with flat bread and a choice of cold sauces or dips.

To prepare a mint raita:
2/3 youghurt (full fat in my case) and 1/3 water
1 big clove of garlic
1/2 an onion
fresh mint, finely chopped

My parsley sauce:
lots of fresh parsly, finely chopped
a pich of salt, I sometimes use chili salt or lemon salt
1-2 cloves of garlic
oil, preferably good quality olive oil

Give it a try, you’ll see that’s delicious and also beginners in the kitchen will get a good result.

Bon appétit!

Another one on my all time classic list: Pasta Bolognese or in this case a meat sauce as it is not 100% after the original recipe.

Great dish for busy people as it is quick to prepare and can slowly cook for hours on a low flame. This way you can still work in the evenings and will have a great dish ready when you finish your work.

You can either take 100% beef or a 50/50 mix of beef and pork meat. It also works with chicken or turkey, of course.

Sardines Mediterranean Style

Simple recipe I cook from time to time when I don’t have much time. It is really easy to cook and tastes just great, a classic Italian / Mediterranean Style dish, perfect for a summer evening. You can serve it as main dish but also as part of a bigger menu. Goes great with rice, couscous or a salad.

This recipe is all about the quality and freshness of the ingredients. It needs low skills and also beginner should not worry about cooking this dish.

It’s very rewarding if you compare effort and preparation with the final result.

Note: with 160° I mean Celsius for small to middle sized fish.

If you are into cooking, like I am, you know that you need a darn good knife. Today I bought me a new one. A big one

Yes!

If you take a closer look at the blade, you see a nice pattern. This is Damascene Steel. Love it!

Lovely.

The knob is made of wood. Feels really nice and heavy in hand.

Looking good.

Really looking forward to use it this evening. Have a bison and a kangaroo steak in the fridge

A new slideshow of dishes I cooked lately. Enjoy