February 2011
4 posts
Coconut and cardemom muffins
I read about these in the cooking section of the newspaper and thought this would be a great way to make my boyfriend understand my love for carrotcake and spicy cakes. This recipe makes lovely moist muffins. These would have been great for Valentine’s Day. All credit goes to Roos Ouwehand in NRC next.
Coconut cardamom valentine’s day muffins
Ingredients
12 cardemom pods
300 gr flour
225 gr brown sugar
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1,5 teaspoon cinnamon
nutmeg
1 orange
240 ml peanut oil
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
100 gr dried grated coconut (dessicated coconut)
300 gr carrots
cream cheese
icing sugar
Method
Cook the carrots for a tad too long and puree them in the blender. Crush the cardemom pods and put the seeds in a bowl. Sieve the flour, sugar and bakingpowder over the seeds and add some orange zest, the spices and a pinch of salt. Make a well and crack the eggs in and add the vanilla essence and the oil. Stir everything well (Lorraine Pascale taught me that a good muffin only needs 8 stirs, so use this wisdom as you please) and stir the carrot and coconut in. Gently fill your muffin tray or paper forms with this mixture (trial and error taught me you can fill them to the brim - no need to only fill them for 2/3 as you do with normal muffins, these won’t rise as much anyways). Bake the muffins for 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees.
For the icing: mix the icing sugar with the cream cheese and spread on the cooled muffins.
Where are we now...
We had a lovely day in Groningen with a lovely lunch.
mapo tofu
A trip to an asian food market always incurs the insatiable urge to make some Asian food. Reading a wonderful book about a Chinese girl reacquainting herself with Chinese food (Fortune Cookie by Ann Mah) left me with a desire for Mapo Tofu as she describes it as a dish I would LOVE. In the back of the book she adds a recipe, unfortunately she (willingly) omits the soy bean pastes in that recipe, so I went searching for a recipe that keeps the soybean pastes, I adore them. As this is a very traditional dish I really wanted to try it.
According to (Wikipedia) legend Mapo tofu is sometimes translated as “Pockmarked-Face Lady’s Tofu”. Legend says that the pock-marked old woman (má pó) was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, poor farmers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city. Another less widely accepted explanation stems from an alternate definition of 麻, meaning “numb”: the Szechuan peppercorns used in the dish numb the diner’s mouth. As Ching He Huang always says: the Szechuan peppercorns provide a citrusy numbing heat.
MA PO TOFU (麻婆豆腐)
Ingredients
1 block silken tofu
150 gr ground pork, or grouns beef or ground chicken
3 tablespoons chili bean paste
2 tablespoons cooking oil
3 tablespoons chili oil
1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns (roasted and ground to powder)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon fermented black bean paste
2 stalks of leeks or spring onions (chopped into 1 or 2-inch length)
2 gloves garlic (chopped)
1/2 cup water
Salt to taste
Method
1. Cut the tofu into small pieces. As silken tofu breaks easily, the best way to do it is to place the entire block on a chopping board and gently make 2 or 3 horizontal slices through it, like you do when starting to chop an onion. You end up with 3 slices lying on top of eachother, now you can make the vertical slices without breaking the tofu up. Drain the tofu and set aside.
2. Heat up a wok and pour in the cooking oil and chili oil. Add the chopped garlic, ground pork/ beef/ chicken (whatever you use) and the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until the pork is halfway done. Then add the soy sauce and the fermented black bean paste and stir-fry until you start to smell it. Add the tofu and water; stir gently to cover the tofu with the sauce - be careful not to break it!
3. Lower the heat and simmer for about 3-5 mins or until the sauce thickens (use some cornflour mixed in water if you want to thicken it more). Add in the roasted Sichuan peppercorn powder and chopped spring onions. Keep stirring gently so it all blends well.
To tone down the heat you can add less chilli oil and less chili bean paste. To make it spicier you can add a tablespoon or two of chilli powder.We served this with steamed white rice and some marinated aburaage, which works as a delicious sweet counterpart to this spicy dish.
