Umami

I learned something new last week. There is a fifth taste in addition to salty, sweet, bitter and sour: umami! I first thought this was a joke, but I found quite a bit of evidence for it on the Weird World Web. There is even an Umami Information Center for the truly dedicated! Umami roughly seems to translate as ‘good flavour’. It was discovered just over 100 years ago by a Japanese scientist (there even seems to have been an anniversary party in Kyoto last year!) and led to the invention of MSG, the flavour enhancer that we now find in anything from crisps to stock cubes! Some chefs around the world have created an ‘umami cuisine’ that combines naturally umami-rich foods. If you want to have a look which foods are bursting with umami goodness, have a look at this list!

Broccoli Pasta Bake

This weekend’s bargain’s were half price broccoli (which was reduced on top of that!), mushrooms and more quorn. They were turned into a rather delicious pasta bake with some other leftovers from the party. This way, the ingredients ended up as follows:

Pasta
Quorn pieces
Mushrooms
Capers

For the sauce, combine:
Cooked, mashed broccoli
Crumbled feta cheese
Creme fraiche
Mustard
Salt, Pepper

After mixing the sauce with the ’solids’, I topped the tray with some

Grated cheese

A true piece of decadence, but rather addictive!

Birthday Cakes

Somewhat belatedly, here are the latest party food experiments – from my own ‘birthday week’!

First of all, my mum sent me a new cake tin – with a nut cake in it, ready to be decorated with chocolate icing and roses.

What I did instead, however, was eat the nutcake un-decorated (yum!) and use the decoration for a rosewater-flavoured cake & muffins…

Basically you make a standard marble cake, and instead of splitting the dough and adding cocoa to one half, you just add rosewater to the whole of the dough (and, if you wish, some food colouring!). I then decorated the cake with home-made icing, home-coloured sugar and the roses sent by my mum!

My main experiment was the Mardi Gras King Cake. It looked pretty much like one…

… but I wasn’t too happy with the taste of it – and the icing colours are unsurprisingly off-putting! I combined three different recipes for this, basically making a standard yeast dough with some eggs, sour cream and nutmeg and then making a filling out of pecans (thanks, Sandra, for the pecans!), brown sugar and cinnamon. I also added a dollop of marmalade which did not work so well. Next time, I will just make the normal cinnamon roll dough and tone down the icing a bit!

I also made tray of a related German cake called ‘Butterkuchen’ (butter cake). It also uses a standard yeast dough with egg/milk, but is then rolled out and sprinkled with bits of butter, lots of sugar, cinnamon and almonds – kind of like a sweet bread – yum! I did not remember to take a picture of it until I was about to eat the last piece during a night skate. This is why it’s a bit squished and in tin-foil (and in lit by a street light…).

Here is the recipe:

500g flour
1 packet of yeast
1 egg
60g sugar
75 g butter
125 ml milk

Mix ingredients well, if need be, add some more warm milk. Leave to rise. Bash floured dough vigorously onto a kitchen surface several times, then roll it out. Put onto a large kitchen tray or several small ones. Pierce with fork several times. Leave to rise again for a bit.
Preheat oven.

For the topping use:
approx 125 g butter flakes
100 sugar
125g almond flakes
1/2 tsp cinnamon

After putting the topping on, put into the oven until golden-brown. Eat when still a bit warm!

Carrot & Oat Burgers

Another burger recipe.

Dry bread (4 slices or 2 rolls)
Carrots (one huge one or two medium-sized ones)
Oats or other grain flakes (e.g. buckwheat or spelt flakes), a few spoonfuls
Seasoning: use whatever you like/have. I used salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, mustard powder, mixed herbs, vegetable stock.
1-2 Eggs
Garlic (2 cloves)
1 Onion or 2 shallots
Optional: instant mash (a few spoonfuls)

Soak some old bread in cold water or stock. Gently squeeze out water when bread is soft again. Make sure bread doesn’t go too mushy.
Roughly grate carrot and add to squeezed-out bread.
Add chopped onions & garlic.
Add flakes & spices.
If you have some instant mash that you urgently need to get rid of but don’t want to throw away, put a bit into the mixture to firm it up.
Add the egg and knead everything into a firm, wet dough!
Form the burgers & fry them in a pan with some oil.
Eat burgers with breadrolls & your favourite sauces (I love mustard & ketchup).

The first lot turned out a little squish on the inside despite long frying time. Added another egg and some more ‘flour’ from the flakes, which made the whole thing more solid!

Textured Protein

Normally I find quorn too expensive, so I prefer to get a big chunk of tofu from the Chinese or Korean supermarket a couple of miles away whenever I crave a different protein texture! But a local supermarket had the tasty detoxified mould on special offer, so I got a couple of packets to diversify my current food intake with some futuristic fungal fun! I got a packet of ‘chicken style pieces’ and some sausages. I first wanted to make a sausage casserole with peppers and tomato, but then opted for making ‘veggie chicken’ with pepper sauce. Pepper sauce is nice if you want a break from tomatoes. Even if you use a tin of tomatoes to beef up (a bad veggie joke) the sauce, you will still mostly taste the peppers. This recipe is good for using the cheap, hard, nasty peppers, as you boil them soft over quite a long time (I actually fell asleep during cooking, so mine were super soft. Note to self: don’t cook when too exhausted!). For the sauce you need:

Peppers from the red-yellow spectrum
Onions
Garlic
Optional: a tin of tomatoes, chillies
Salt & pepper

Gently simmer everything until soft. Then blend part of it – or all – until smooth.
I had it with brown rice, fried mushrooms and the quorn pieces. The rest of the quorn I used on a pizza and cold as a snack. Quorn pieces are also nice in pasta bakes e.g. with feta cheese!

As you can see, the next dish I made was super-quick sausage and mash with onion gravy. I was so hungry after a long day of benevolent brain and body abuse that I could not be bothered to boil potatoes. Instead, I used instant mash from a box that a friend had given me when she moved to Australia. I originally wanted to use the stuff to make burgers (watch this space – I’ve got some more of the stuff!), but then it found its way into this dish. I literally made the dish in five minutes:

1st minute: Boil kettle with enough water for mash & gravy, put pan on hob with oil. Slice onion/shallot.
2nd minute: Mix hot water with milk and stir in instant mash powder until thick. Put sausages into hot pan.
3rd minute: Add butter to mash. Put on a plate. Put onions into same pan as sausages.
4th minute: Take out sausages (it’s quorn, no need to wait until meat is done, so just toast the outside) and put them onto plate. Dissolve stock cube in remaining hot water. Add mixed herbs. Search cupboard frantically for cornflour.
5th minute: Pour herbed stock into pan. Mix a teaspoon of cornflour with cold water and stir the resulting white liquid bit by bit into the gravy-to-be. Stop when desired texture is reached and pour gravy around the sausages and mash!

Despite the strange texture and taste of the instant mash, the whole meal was actually quite pleasant and was also much enhanced by my housemate’s impromptu reenactment of the 1970’s Smash Mash commercial.

Beware of people bearing clotted cream!

This week, a friend from Norway visited me. To my delight, he brought me two pounds of salty liquorice. In return, I gave him some cream eggs, scones and a small tub of clotted cream before he went to the airport. I thought that they would let him take the cream in as it was about 100g, in original packaging and in a clear tub. But no! He texted me from the plane that he was allowed to take his razorblades through, but not the clotted cream. Can anyone tell me the reasoning behind this strange clotted cream vs razorblades business?! I can already see the headline: Norwegian business man threatens to suffocate airline captain with clotted cream – the drama!

Anyway, if you’re in Norway and have been deprived of your clotted cream, here is how you are supposed to eat it:

Image Source: Wikipedia

Let’s hope they have some British deli’s up there soon – or more sensible regulations…

Broccoli & Goat Cheese Soup

I saw this recipe on PrincessDiana161’s youtube channel and instantly decided that I had to try it out! Luckily, the day I eventually made it also came with the ideal soup weather (see below)!

Her recipe goes as follows:

2 tablespoon Olive Oil
1 Large Onion, chopped
1 Russet Potato, peeled and chopped into bite-size pieces
1 Quart Vegetable Stock
2 Heads of Broccoli, chopped
2 ounces Soft Goat Cheese, broken into pieces
Salt & Pepper

I used:
A drop of vegetable oil
2 small shallots
a couple of random small potatoes that the market guy wanted to get rid of before putting his stall away, cut into cubes
500ml vegetable stock (I wanted the soup a bit runnier today)
1 large head of broccoli
half a roll of soft goat cheese (supermarket’s own brand)
a dangerously crappy hand blender (name says all…)
And I think I forgot to add peppper!

Basically, you fry the onions a little with the potato cubes, add the vegetable stock. You add the broccoli when the potatoes are almost done. When both potatoes and broccoli are done, you puree most of the soup (it’s nice with bits in it!). It’s absolutely delicious, so thanks ever so much for the recipe, PrincessDiana161!