Cook & Learn about the World: Albania: Leek Pie & Leek & Rice Bake

Things as usual have been very hectic and I haven´t got round to blogging these delicious Albanian dishes, depite making them months ago. The first is Leek Pie, which is a tasty and usual vegetarian leek pie. I say unusual because the filling is very different, kind of like a custard. I  have actually made this pie twice now because it´s so good. The first time I made it the filling leaked out of the pie.The second time the filling also leaked out a little....I don´t know if this is because I put an airhole in the pie even though the recipe doesn´t tell you to do this or just because the pie was overfull. Although all the grown ups enjoyed it, I couldn´t persuade my kids to even try it but I know it is a recipe that I will repeat. I followed the following recipe from Global Table Adventure and hardly altered it although I
think I halved the amounts or put 4 eggs instead of 6....I can´t remember very well now!!!                   

I also made Leek and Rice Bake following the recipe from the blog,My Albanian Food. The only changes I made to the recipe was to use cubed leg of lamb as it´s difficult to buy lamb mince here and instead of using lamb stock, I used chicken or beef stock. Unfortunately this dish wasn´t a hit with either my husband or my children although I thought it was tasty. My husband blames the type of lamb here in Spain and that it isn´t good for cooking in this way. We didn´t learn much more about Albania unfortunately as I couldn´t find much.

Cook & Learn about the world: Afghanistan:

 So welcome to a new regular post I´m going to be blogging about frequently: Cook and Learn about the World. Inspired by the Global Table Adventure blog, I decided that I wanted to also cook the world so my family could try new cuisines and dishes from different countries, eat more variety and hopefully encourage my daughter to be less of a fussy eater while at the same time learn about these countries and cultures and become more tolerant and open-minded. And after the recent attack in London, it couldn´t come at a better time.

The first country on the list is Afghanistan and I was excited to try this cuisine as I´ve never eaten Afghan food before. I turned to Global Table Adventure´s Afghan recipes and decided to make the following recipes:Burani Bonjon (or Spicy Braised Aubergine with Seer Moss(Garlic Mint Sauce);Kabeli Palau(Twice-cooked Basmati Rice with Chicken & Carrots)and Firnee (Cardamom & Rose Water Custard). I chose these particular dishes as they were the ones that I liked the sound of the most but also because I thought that my children might like/eat these better than the others.Although I used Global Table Adventure´s recipes for Afghanistan, for other countries I might use other recipes I find in addition to those of Global Table Adventure.

The first dish I made was the Kabeli Palau(Basmati Rice with Chicken & Carrots). I made the slightly quicker version using chicken breasts and chicken stock(yes, with an Oxo cube!) and even though I made the "quick" version, this recipe did take quite a lot of work but in the end it was so worth it.The rice with tender chunks of chicken lightly spiced is reminiscent of Indian cuisine(one of my favourites!) and the crunchy yet sweet carrot and nutty garnish just finishes off the dish perfectly. I´d definitely reccommend trying this dish.It was a real hit with everyone except my daughter who only ate the rice(and that was with loads of ketchup!!)


The second dish I made was Burani Bonjon(Spicy Braised Aubergine)& Seer Moss(Garlic Mint Sauce) I made this as a side dish. Unfortunately I didn´t make all these Afghan dishes on the same day as it would have made an ideal side dish for the Basmati Rice with Chicken & Carrots. I knew my daughter probably wouldn´t try this dish with it being a vegetable dish but you can live in hopes....I think my 18mth old had a little bit although I think he spat the aubergine out. This was tasty without being too spicy and the garlic mint yoghurt sauce was a great accompaniment to it...very garlicy. I had to use dried mint as didn´t have any fresh so I think the mint flavour was lost a little. Again, I´d definitely reccommend trying this dish.

 Finally, I made Firmee(Cardamom & Rose Water Custard). Both of these flavours were pretty new to me,especially the rose water...which I managed to find in a Morrocan food shop. The recipe itself is pretty easy to make(just make sure you add warm milk to the cornflour not cold otherwise it won´t thicken..I realised this later on but corrected the problem and managed to thicken it up!!)I couldn´t find peeled pistachios so peeling the pistachios was probably one of the things that took up most of the time in this recipe and then grinding it and the cardamom...luckily I had my trusty Thermomix! Unfortunately, we weren´t very keen on this dessert as it has a very strong, perfumed taste despite me only making half the recipe and using half the amount of the rose water.Neither of my children tried this dessert either.


My view:I really enjoyed the food from Afghanistan and would love to try more dishes now including the other recipes featured in Global Table Adventure. However, dessert was a little disappointing.I´ll definitely be making both the rice and the aubergine dishes again in the future.Delicious!!

My children´s view: Not such a success with the kids. The rice was the most successful especially with my 18 mth old and we mananged to encourage my daughter to eat it with copious amounts of ketchup and by saying that it was a special "paella".

Now for the learning part, you can find educational activities about Afghanistan on both Activity Village & Enchanted Learning,however you have to pay to become a member to obtain these activities.I found the following page with various educational activities about Afghanistan and printed out the Afghanistan flag for my daughter to colour.However, we haven´t done anything else so I was a little disappointed that she hasn´t learnt more about this country. I´d love to know of any books aimed at children about Afghanistan or any other activities....please feel free to share them with us. I´d also love to hear if you make any of the dishes too!

Just adding on this quick. I´ve found a book about Afghanistan at my local library(and even better it´s in English!) which looks like a great way to teach my daughter a bit about Afghanistan. It´s called The Sky of Afghanistan by Ana A.de Eulate and illustrated by Sonja Wimmer. I´ve only just borrowed it from the library so we haven´t read it yet but it appears to be a lovely story about an Afghan girl, a dream and a song for peace and it is also beautifully illustrated.

Eat More Variety Alphabet Challenge: D: D for Dates: Wild Rice with Dates & Walnuts

Hello strangers! Finally back again to bring you this month´s Eat More Variety Alphabet Challenge and we´ve reached letter D. I decided to choose dates for the letter D as it´s something that although I like we hardly eat but now after reading the nutritional and health benefits of eating dates....I think it´s something we´re definitely going to be consuming more often. Plus I have discovered lots of yummy recipes to try!!

First a quick look at some of the nutritional benefits of dates. Dates contain a wide range of essential nutrients and are a fantastic source of potassium.They are rich in dietary fibre, so therefore helps protect the colon mucous membrame from cancer-causing chemicals. They contain tannins which possess anti-infective,anti-inflammatory and anti-hemorrhagic properties.They are also an excellent source of iron. They also have many other health & nutritional benefits which you can read more about here .

The first recipe using dates I decided to try out was this Wild Rice, Dates & Walnuts despite the fact that it isn´t very toddler friendly because of the nuts and even though I suspected that my daughter would not so much as touch it!I thought at first that I´d overcooked the rice as it looked quite clumpy/ mushy but however the end result was delicious and I´m glad I tried it. It is quite reminiscent of couscous and the sweetness of the dates and the crunch of the walnuts gives it added texture and flavour.As predicted though my daughter wouldn´t try it.I adapted the recipe from my New Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book.

Ingredients:(for2-3people)
1/2 chopped onion
1 tbsp butter
1/2-3/4 cup of wild rice,rinsed and drained
1 cup of chopped celery
200ml chicken stock(I used Oxo chicken stock cube)
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup pitted dates,chopped
1/8 cup chopped walnuts(toasted if time)

Method:
1. Cook onion in hot butter for 10 minutes until tender.
2. Add wild rice and cook for 3 minutes while stirring.
3. Add celery ,chicken stock and water and bring to boiling, then reduce heat and simmer covered for about 20 minutes(the original recipe said 40 minutes but mine was ready between 15-20 minutes) until rice is tender and most of the liquid has absorbed(much like a risotto).
4.Stir in dates and walnuts and cook uncovered for 3-4 minutes.
5. Serve as a side dish with chicken or fish.

Char Siu Pork

I love Chinese and funnily enough one of the things I miss from good old Blighty is good Chinese food as Chinese food here in Spain is somewhat lacking in taste or in quality although it is cheap!One of my favourite dishes is Char Siu Pork, a dish which so far has proved impossible to find here (the Spanish don´t know what they are missing!!!)so when I came across the following recipe on fellow blogger Debs´s blog The Spanish Wok, I thought I´d give it a try.

Oh Boy,am I glad I tried it!Deb´s recipe is simple and easy to follow and the result is tasty, succulent pork oozing with  flavours such as five spice and hoisin sauce, really reminiscent of your local Chinese takeaway back in the UK!! I teamed the Char Sui pork with Annabel Karmel´s Vegetarian Nasi Goreng and this is a winning dish that everyone can enjoy,even my daughter loved it!!This will be a regular dish in our house from now on!

Vegetarian Paella -style rice

Now that I´m no longer pregnant and need to eat as much protein as possible, I´ve started cooking some vegetarian dishes again as I was eating far too much meat!! This dish is tasty, quick to cook and low in fat and is quite similar to a paella!The recipe has been slightly adapted from Cocina Vegetariana rápida by Anne Wilson.

Ingredients (for 2)
1 cup long grain rice (I used Basmati)
pinch of saffron
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion or 1/2 large onion, chopped
3 mushrooms, sliced
handful of frozen green beans
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tbsp sweet paprika
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 litre vegetable stock (you might need to add a little more)-I used veggie Oxo cube
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Method
1.Place vegetable stock in a pan and add saffron strands.When it reaches boiling point, remove from heat.
2. Heat oil in a large frying pan and fry the onion, garlic, tumeric, paprika, cinnamon and rice until rice is infused with spices.
3. Add vegetable stock, red pepper,mushrooms, green beans and salt.
4. Once boiling point has been reached, lower the heat and cook slowly for 20 minutes until rice is tender.

In search of a good paella en Ciudad Real-La Arrocería de Picón

I am trying to bake and blog as much as possible while I can as when the baby is born, I´m not sure how much time I´ll have to spare on the blog. Seeing as I´m not keen on fish or seafood, paella has never been one of my favourite dishes, however I do enjoy it if it is a meat paella. The best paella is said to originate from Valencia but you can find paella throughout Spain. One of the best restaurants for paella in the Ciudad Real area is La Arrocería de Picón (unfortunately the website is only in Spanish at the moment-probably as you don´t find many foreigners or tourists around these parts!) The restaurant is located in the small rural village of Picón and is decorated in a very modern, elegant and chic manner. It is a very spacious restaurant with two eating areas, both of which have water features and with views of the countryside, which makes dining a pleasure. My husband and I went with my in-laws and we shared a paella between the four of us. I think we ordered a Valenciano paella, which contains chicken, rabbit and snails (however we ordered it without the snails for my benefit as I don´t like them) and also has red and green pepper and large white beans (fabes). Although the paella was huge we ate every last morsel and in my opinion it was the best paella I have eaten as of yet! The restaurant also serves other dishes if paella is not your cup of tea as the first time I went to this restaurant I chose lamb chops, which were also delicious.

We had room for dessert too and although the majority of the dessert menu is frozen ice cream-style products, which is a little disappointing, they have a small selection of homemade desserts. I opted for the mango cake (pictured below), which was definitely a good choice. It´s a mango mousse-like cake on a sponge cake base topped with slices of caramelized fresh mango slices. Delicious!

I thoroughly recommend visiting this restaurant if you are in the area although it tends to get very crowded at weekends so it´s better to book a table. One of the down sides about this restaurant is due to it being popular and busy, it can be very noisy and it is difficult to have a conversation.

Aubergines in Chinese Style-Sauce

I always find it difficult to find new vegetarian recipes and usually end up cooking the same recipes over and over but when I tried this, I discovered that it was a keeper. It´s based on a recipe in my Cocinar con Wok book by Anne Wilson, which I´ve adapted, mainly as I can´t get some of the ingredients and although it would probably taste more authentic with those ingredients, I think you can still end up with a tasty Chinese style dish without them!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1 large(ish) aubergine, chopped into small squares of 2cm
1 tbsp of peanut/groundnut oil (if you haven´t buy this, you could just use vegetable or olive oil)
3 spring(green) onions, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
about 1 inch of ginger, peeled and diced
60 ml of vegetable stock (I used 1 vegetable Bisto cube made up with water)
30ml white wine (use rice wine if available)
20 ml white wine vinegar (use rice vinegar if available)
1/2 tbsp tomato puree
5g sugar (white or brown)
20ml soy sauce
1/4 tsp chilli flakes/powder
1/2 tsp cornflour

Method
1. Heat oil in frying pan or wok and when hot, fry spring onions, ginger and garlic.
2.Add aubergine and fry till tender or golden.
3. Add wine, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, vegetable stock, soy sauce and chilli flakes and cook for a minute.
4. Mix cornflour with 1 teaspoon of water to make a paste and add to pan.
5. Heat till it starts to boil then lower the heat and cook for a further 2 to 3 minutes till sauce has thickened. Add more water if necessary.
6. Serve with boiled rice.

Mixed Mushrooms in a Thai Red Curry Sauce

I´ve made this dish a couple of times and always mean to blog it but have never got round to it or taken a picture of it. I really wish I had though!! It´s a simplified version of a recipe from a recipe book called Cocina Asiática Vegetariana by Anne Wilson, as there are many ingredients which I simply can´t get hold of where I live. However, I think this adaped, simplified version is probably just as good as the original version. It´s also a very easy and quick dish to prepare.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

A packet of mixed Asian mushrooms (around 200g) (shiitake, enoki and beech mushrooms for example)
an inch of ginger, finely chopped
1-2 tsp red curry paste (depending on your spice threshold level!)
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
80ml (1/3 cup) vegetable stock (I used Oxo veggie stock cube)
1/2 cup of coconut milk/cream (this time I used coconut powder, about 65g powder mixed with around 125ml hot water to make a thicker milk)
1/2 tbsp lime or lemon juice (whatever you have in the fridge!)

Method:

1. Fry curry paste and ginger together for 3-4 mins till it becomes aromatic.
2. Add vegetable stock, sugar, soy sauce, coconut cream or milk and lime/lemon juice and lower heat (to around 4 on an induction electric hob) and simmer for 3-4 mins until the sugar dissolves.
3.Add the mushrooms and cook 3-5 mins until mushrooms are cooked.
4. Boil some Basmati rice in the meantime to serve with the mushrooms.

Squash curry ( Dec 10, 2008)

I really fancied pumpkin curry the other day...even though I've never tried it. I didn't know, however, that pumpkins were no longer in season so ended up buying acorn squash, which I was told, is very similar. This recipe is a mish-mash of a recipe from VegWeb and my own invention. It's not a bad curry but maybe it's a bit bland and is very mild, due to the fact that I had a little accident when adding the coconut milk and the whole can plopped into the pan and over the hob- what a mess!! I kept adding more chilli powder and some of the other spices to make it tastier but it was very mild and as I said before a bit plain. It tastes a bit like squash Korma only a bit blander. I'm going to work on this recipe and when I have an improved version, I'll give you the new improved version. I also discovered that acorn squash is very difficult to peel so if I find a better way to prepare it or anyone has any advice, let me know. Scoop out the pumpkin/squash seeds, maybe you could toast them and add them to the curry. Sorry for not having the metric measurements.

Squash curry (serves 2-3 people)

Ingredients:
1/2 acorn squash/pumpkin, chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2cm fresh ginger root, grated
1/2 cup of mangetout/peas
1 small to medium sized potato
1/2 can of coconut milk
1/4 of 15oz can chickpeas
1/2 small courgette
pinch salt
1 cup of basmati rice
1/4 - 1/2 tsp chilli powder( If you like a really spicy curry, add more. 1/4 tsp wasn't enough I found and I prefer a mild curry!)
1/4 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1-2 tbsp olive oil
Method:
Boil the potato in salted water till just slightly underdone.
Heat olive oil in frying pan and add garlic, ginger and all the spices and cook for a few minutes.
Add onions and fry till soft and transparent.
Meanwhile, boil basmati rice in water with salt.
Add courgette and mangetout and cook for a few minutes. Add squash, potato and chickpeas and cook until everything is covered in curry spices. Add a pinch of salt.
Add coconut milk and cook at a low temperature until squash and potato are tender, taking care that the curry doesn't become too dry. Serve with basmati rice and Naan bread.