homemade ginger beer

Rock is on a blogging roll! Here he is again…

I really like a good ginger beer but they are hard to come by in this part of the world. We bought a bunch of old British cooking magazines awhile ago and we found this easy recipe.

2 limes / 120 grams of fresh ginger / 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar / cold carbonated or sparkling water

Bring 100 ml of water to boil in a small saucepan with the sugar and the zest and the juice of the two limes.

In the meantime, thinly slice the ginger. Add it to the boiling water and let simmer for 6 minutes.

Remove from the heat and pour the syrup through a strainer or sieve to strain out the ginger and the lime zest. Let the remaining syrup cool down fully.

To make the ginger beer, simply add some of the syrup to carbonated water to your taste.  I would suggest about 1 to 2 tablespoons for one glass of ginger beer but it is up to you how strong you want the flavour to be.  You can make a large batch if you’d like or if you want you can keep the ginger syrup in the fridge. Now we just need to find some rum…

sourdough rye bread

Rock has decided to blog for the first time in possibly a couple of years! He always wants me to edit his English but… I’m not going to. Here he is!

Bread is one of the principal forms of food for man from the dawn of time.  Archeologist found proof of stone-crushing barley and wheat use to make floor thought to be 7500 years old.  In the British Museums’ Egyptian galleries, you can see loaves which were made and baked over 5000 years old.  

My rye bread is actually quite easy to bake.  The difficult part is to get the sourdough starter strong enough to make a delicious loaf.  This part can take weeks or you can ask a friend to share some of them with you.  Linzi was kind enough to share hers with us.   The starter is actually natural yeast. The recipe is simple; 100 gr of floor, 100 ml of water and a tablespoon of yesterday mix all together.  You repeat this until the mixture double his size in 6 hours. Every day you need to feed it.   If you don’t bake, the major part of the mixture will be discarded.   This ratio is sufficient to bake a bread and have enough left for a feeding.

When the sourdough starter doubles his size in 6 hours and the smell is very sour, you can put together the ingredients to bake your bread.

2 cups of all-purpose flour / 1 cup of rye flour / ¾ cup sourdough starter / 1 ¼ cups of warm water / 1 tablespoon of honey (optional) / 1 and ½ teaspoon of salt

I mix the dry ingredients, flour and salt, first in the mixer bowl.  Then, I mix the water, the sourdough starter and the honey in a different bowl. The honey is optional but it will give you a nice brown color and a boost for the yeast.  Add the wet ingredient into the dry ingredients and mix until combined; cover with a dishtowel and let sit for 15 minutes.

Using the dough hook, knead the dough for 5 minutes at medium speed.  Most likely you will need to add flour.  The goal here is to have a dough that is still clinging to the bottom of the bowl but clearing the upper part of the bowl.  The dough will be wet and sticky so don’t use too much flour.

Transfer the dough into a medium size bowl coated with a little of oil; I use olive oil.  Cover with a plastic sheet and let rise for 3 hours.  I turn and fold the dough once or twice during the first rise.  The texture of the dough will change rapidly from a stick ball to a firm, none sticky, very elastic dough.  The smell will get stronger too.

After 3 hours, I turn and fold it again.  I form a nice ball and transfer it on a parchment paper.  I use an upside-down bowl to cover the dough for the second rise, about 2.5 hours.

20 minutes before the end of the second rise, I put a pizza stone in the oven and turn it to 450 F.  This will permit the stone to warm up nicely.  

When ready, I dust up the dough with some flour and make some cut in the middle, about 1 cm deep.  Set the dough in the middle of the pizza stone and bake for 30 min.

Then remove the bread from the pizza stone and transfer it on a cooling rack.

Et voila!

I really like this bread.  We tried different kind of flour.  If you use 3 cup of all-purpose flour you will get a better rise and the final product is less dense.  The next experiment will be with spelt flour. 

no-bake cheesecake

I don’t know why I haven’t been making more no-bake cheesecakes in my life! I have made more cheesecakes than I can count and I know basically every trick in the book for getting cheesecakes to bake up just right.  But this was just so damn easy!!!  And while not like a baked cheesecake, I think it’s just as delicious – just different.  The filling is much lighter and mousse-like and just lightly sweetened. Nothing wrong with that.

I decided to make this today because for the first time since we moved to Saudi, I found bricks of real cream cheese!  (All that’s ever been available is the spreadable form of cream cheese in tubs.)  This is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Cherry Cheesecake recipe and it is just so easy and soooo delicious.  Just note that while I’ve already made a more substantial crust, this recipe doesn’t yield the tallest cheesecake.  Which we’re totally happy with but if you want a tall/deep cheesecake like say New York-style, then I would suggest you double the ingredients for the filling.

Crust: 250 grams digestive biscuits or graham crackers / 150 grams (6 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted

Filling: 300 grams (10 oz) cream cheese, room temperature (the kind in brick form, not in a tub) / 60 grams (1/2 cup) icing sugar / 1 tsp vanilla extract / 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice (which I forgot – oops!) / 1 cup heavy or whipping cream

Optional topping: 3 cups of strawberries, hulled / 2 tbsp granulated sugar

Blitz the digestive crackers or graham crackers until they’re crumbs in either a blender or food processor.  Add in the melted butter and pulse to combine.

Press the crust mixture into the bottom of an 8 inch springform pan.

Pop into the fridge just to chill and let it set up a bit while you move onto the filling.  Beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla and lemon juice until smooth.  I used the paddle attachment on my stand mixer because I’m lazy but you could always just do it by hand.

In a separate bowl, whip the cream until you get medium peaks. (Nigella’s recipe said to just “lightly whip” but I figured medium peaks was a good middle ground.)  Again I used my stand mixer with the whisk attachment but you could just whisk it by hand.

Using a spatula, gently fold the whipping cream by hand into the cream cheese mixture until everything is combined and smooth.

Gently spoon the filling onto the crust and spread evenly.

Cover with clingfilm and chill and set in the fridge for minimum 3 hours or overnight. (I obviously went with the bare minimum.)

If you want you can have the cheesecake on it’s own. Or you can top it with some macerated strawberries.  The shop was completely out of fresh strawberries so I used some defrosted frozen ones – not ideal but still did the trick. Simply mix the strawberries with the sugar and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.  I piled up most of the strawberries on top of the cheesecake with some extra on the side but you can do whatever you’d like obviously.  Slice up and enjoy!

 

 

Thai roast chicken

We picked up this cookbook Ready or Not!: 150+ Make-Ahead, Make-Over, and Make-Now recipes by Nom Nom Paleo by Michelle Tam and Henry Fong years ago at Costco.  Despite the fact that we are definitely not paleo nor do we strive to be!  We’ve flipped through it loads but definitely have not actually tried as many recipes from it as I’d like.  Since it’s one of the few cookbooks from our large collection that Rock decided to bring over to Saudi, I figure we should finally put it to use.

This recipe is super easy and uses just a handful of ingredients.  I always have Thai curry paste on hand but I only ever use it for curry (shocker!) so I thought I’d give this a shot.  The chicken turned out great and even the kids loved it!

Makes 4 servings.

1 cup full-fat coconut milk / 2 tbsp Thai curry paste (I used red but I think green would be  really good too!) / 2 tsp fish sauce / 1 tsp sea salt (adjust to taste) / 2 limes / 1 kg to 1.5 kg bone-in and skin-on chicken thighs

Measure out the coconut milk in a measuring cup and then to that same cup just add the curry paste, fish sauce, salt, and the zest and juice of 1 lime.  Mix well to combine and you can give it a little taste to see if you want to add anymore salt.

In a large ziplock bag or a large bowl, mix the chicken thighs with the marinade making sure to thoroughly coat the chicken.  Refrigerate for up to one day or if you don’t have time you can just keep going.  I think ideally though of course you give it some time to marinate – I started marinating mine in the morning for dinner that day.

Heat the oven to 425 F (or 400 F on convection mode) and place the chicken on a wire rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet.  I have a roasting pan that comes with a wire rack that fits in it so I used that.  Arrange the chicken in a single layer with the skin side down.

Roast in the oven for 20 minutes and then flip the chicken to be skin side up and rotate the pan 180 degrees.

Roast for another 20 minutes or so.  The skin should be a bit browned and if you check with a meat thermometer, internal temperature should be 165 F.

Plate the chicken and then sprinkle over the zest of your remaining lime.  We didn’t have any leftovers (…!) but the book says leftovers can be reheated, eaten cold or shredded for salads or soups which all sound like good ideas.

easy mongolian beef

I had never heard of Mongolian Beef before until we had it at PF Chang’s here in Riyadh but it is delicious!  Obviously not an authentic Chinese dish and most definitely not Mongolian, but delicious nonetheless.  Basically it is thinly sliced flank steak and green onions in a sweet soy glaze. Yum!  This is the third time I’ve tried making it and this time not only was it the easiest with the least amount of steps and ingredients but also the best flavour.

At PF Chang’s the beef is most definitely shallow or deep fried to make it really crispy but I decided to keep it a bit on the healthier side by just stir-frying.  (If you’d like to get the beef super crisp though, you can fry in, I would say, about 1 cup of canola oil and then drain the excess oil before adding the sauce.).

Marinated beef: 500 grams flank steak / 2 tbsp cornstarch / 1 tbsp soy sauce / 1 tbsp cold water

4 cloves of garlic, minced / 1 bunch of green onions – just the green leaves, cut into thirds lengthwise / 2 tbsp canola oil / 1/4 cup soy sauce / 1/4 cup light brown sugar

Cut the steak thinly against the grain of the beef.  In a medium bowl, combine the sliced beef, and the cornstarch, cold water and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce so that the beef is throughly coated.  Cover with clingfilm and set in the fridge for 30 minutes to 1 hour to marinate.

In the meantime, simply mix together the 1/4 cup soy sauce and brown sugar in a small bowl for the sauce and set aside.

In a large wok or frying pan, heat up the oil on medium-high heat.  Add the beef and half of the green onion.  Stir-fry, letting the beef develop some crispier brown bits by not stirring constantly.  When the beef is almost cooked through, add in the minced garlic and stir-fry.

Pour in the soy and brown sugar sauce and stir until it’s thickened up and glossy.  The cornstarch from the beef marinade will cause it to thicken.

Toss in the remaining green onion, remove from the heat and plate up!  I like to serve this with some jasmine rice and just some simple steamed broccoli.