Not only Wikipedia, but many other sites (such as WordPress!) are planning on contributing to an ‘internet blackout’ in protest against the SOPA and PIPA acts. These acts sport a variety of undemocratic elements such as the threat to freedom of speech and expression.

I have not managed to work out the WordPress blackout tool (can’t find my plugins folder!), but consider this site as joining the protest!

Working in Britain as a cook means doing a lot of roasts – especially roast potatoes. Prior to baking them, I always rub the potatoes with a mixture of oil, salt and spices. My current favourite spice is smoked paprika. The other day, I made some baked potatoes with a mixture of small, colourful breeds, mixed with carrots, a parsnip, a couple of beetroot and small quartered red onions. In the oil, I put paprika, a bit of crushed coriander, rosemary, a dash of cinnamon, chopped garlic and salt. With the potatoes, we had baked trout, which I also marinated, but in a mixture of oil, lemon, garlic, paprika and mixed herbs.

The good thing about the roast was that we could use the leftovers the next day in an omelette – which we had with some salad and leftover pasta sauce.

Apologies – still a huge backlog of recipes and photos from the last few months to catch up with. To start off into the new year, I made a few vegetable bakes. My current favourite one is based on a recipe that my mum found in a German magazine.

For 2 people

2 fennel bulbs with feathery greens
4 medium-sized (bell) peppers (I usually take 2 red ones, 1 yellow one and 1 orange pepper)
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
ground allspice
coriander
salt, pepper
optional: reduced fat camembert

Clean fennel bulbs and peppers. Cut peppers into strips and fennel into bite-size pieces. Save the feathery greens. Gently fry the peppers, using a bit of olive oil, in a large pan until they start getting a bit soft. Add the fennel. After a while, add a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, chopped coriander, a few dashes of ground allspice berries and a bit of salt and pepper.

Put everything into an oven-proof dish and bake for 20-30 mins at 180-200 degrees celsius (about 390 F). Chop the feathery fennel greens and sprinkle them on top of the bake. Serve with bread/baguette.

My mum also puts strips of reduced-fat camembert on top of the vegetables, which she brushes with a bit of olive oil. The cheese does not run in the oven, but stays in pieces, which are really nice with bread.

Some more recipe posts coming up – as soon as I’ve got the time to format images! In the meantime, a recipe for which I only have a placeholder so far. Basically, I went into the local pound shop a few weeks ago and got two silicone trays of little Christmas tree moulds. They can be used for baking, setting (e.g. jelly) and freezing. Here is what I did:

- Either brush melted chocolate into the mould, grate some chocolate or put some chocolate sprinkles into the bottom of each mould.
- Mix some chocolate and vanilla ice cream with a bit of ground rosemary and cinnamon – or other wintery spices such as nutmeg or cloves – and paste the mixture into the moulds. Re-freeze for a bit and serve. Also works with hot cherry or berry sauce – or just more chocolate sauce for you chocoholics!
- You could probably also add some marzipan or Brandy cream somewhere for total Christmas overkill!

The other day, I found a dumpling & pasta squeezing device in the local charity shop, so I could not help but buy it. Basically, its a set of three cutters/squeezy things, which you can use to make anything from ravioli to empanadas.

I decided to make German stuffed pasta (Maultaschen). The critters are very much like ravioli, just bigger, and you either eat them in broth, fried with (usually scrambled) eggs or with onion rings, occasionally accompanied by potato salad. Most households and restaurants have their very own recipe, so you can basically fill them with whatever you like. Fillings I’ve come across: leek-cheese-mince meat, spinach-garlic-parmesan, mince and parsley, celeriac and mince, forest mushroom & herb, leek & potato, leek & crabs (Northern adaption), mushroom-carrot-courgette-veggiemince-tomato-egg. The above pasta is filled with fresh spinach, garlic, shallots and egg yolk, seasoned with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

To recreate this, you simply need to make a basic pasta dough (any will do) and fill it with vegetables (or meat) that have been simmered to the desired tenderness. The pockets are glued shut with lightly whisked egg white (the yolk usually goes into the filling) and a little pressure. Use the ‘pressure’ to imprint a nice pattern into the rim of the pasta.

This is a Japanese-style seaweed salad. It tastes amazing! And it reminds me of the fact that I still have not posted my recipe for (sweet) seaweed cookies! This is partly, because I’m still experimenting. While the outcome so far has been very tasty, I know I want to try out a few more variations first! A good example of seaweed cookies can be found here (to be adapted to budget and needs).

This is a chickpea and eggplant curry. Very nice! I was also fed some delicious falafel, but I forgot to take a photo of them.

Whoops, these patties went so quick, I did not even get a chance to take a photo of the finished ones! Here it is, my most photogenic veggie burgers to date (apart from those scary beetroot ones, of course).

Again, I did not use a scale, so will use approximations:

1 1/2 – 2 cups of millet
2 eggs
half a dried baguette, soaked in water and squeezed dry
finely chopped shallots and garlic
mustard powder
hot paprika powder
ground nutmeg, coriander and caraway
finely chopped herb salad and/or fresh parsley, coriander, chives, rocket (whatever you can get your hands on – I ended up with lots of herb salad thanks to the ‘reduced to clear’ section at the 24hrs supermarket)
some finely chopped red peppers (or paprika flakes)
salt, pepper
(I may have put some nuts, mustard and ketchup, too!)

Roast the millet in a non-oiled pan for a bit. Add vegetable stock. Cook millet until just soft or still a little bit hard. Leave to cool. Add all other ingredients. From this mixture, form some patties and fry them crispy on both sides. They taste best inside pitta bread, with things like houmous, mustard, ketchup, tzatziki, sour cream, relish and/or salad.

I have lately become rather obsessed with crêpes: both the kind of sweet breakfast crêpes with lemon and golden syrup, and the savoury variety, made either with wheat or buckwheat flour. While I don’t have a crêpe-pan (yet), my beautiful co-chef does. At her place, we made these tasty beauties with parsley-garlic mushroom-egg filling and pepper-tomato-egg filling. Mmmmmh!

First, make a buckwheat crêpe liquid. There are so many different ‘sarrasin’ (buckwheat) crêpe recipes, it’s difficult to choose. So I basially just try a different one each time I make them until I’m happy. The ones below I made with:

1 egg
about 330 g buckwheat flour
750 ml water
1 tsp salt

Leave to stand for about 2 hours.

I fried the crêpes in some leftover oil from a tasty tomato dish, so they would take on the flavour. First, you fry them on one side, then the other. While the second side is becoming crispy, you make the filling.

I like egg in my crêpes, so I crack open an egg on top, let it set for a bit, and then add other stuff (e.g. leftovers from the day before). No worries if the topping (or the crêpe) is a bit messy.

When the egg white is starting to become solid, you flip over the sides, turn the crepe round and fry it for a little bit longer. You then transfer it to a plate as above. To show you what the underside looks like, I’ve flipped it over the wrong way (accompanied by a tasty baked tomato with bread crumble, garlic, oil and parsley topping!).

It’s a great way of recycling leftovers & you can also make lots of crêpes (unfilled) in one sitting, keep them in the fridge and refry them for days on end, each time with different fillings/leftovers).

These are my Bakewell tart themed mini gugelhupf cakes. I made them after our fridge broke down, suddenly, all these zombie preserves from the forgotten beyond saw the light of day. One of them was half a jar of cocktail cherries. I once bought them to make a giant trifle for a party (I have a weakness for fruit trifle with cocktail cherries…). Despite the mind-boggling size of the trifle, I did not manage to finish the jar. Not in a position to make, let alone store, another trifleviathan, I had to think of something else. Along came the diary reminder of two birthdays and the idea was born: Bakewell cakes! Why did I now make Bakewell tarts? Because they are too damn sweet! The only time I’ve been able to get one of those down was after a charity ice swim. (Sugar works wonders against hypothermia.)

As far as I can remember, the recipe went as follows:

175 g butter
175 g sugar
3 eggs
about 100 g self-raising flour
about 100g ground almonds
chopped cocktail cherries
bitter almond essence
dash of rose water
dash of lemon or orange juice

I also added some chocolate sprinkle, as my mum has sent me about 8 packets of them by now. (Help!!)

I then put the dough into the moulds and baked them at about Gas Mark 4 (the oven is not very precise) for about 30 mins.