Kanelbullar with marzipan or Karlsbaderbullar with cinnamon?

I made a big decision at the weekend. I will bake all different kind of Swedish bullar. I will go to Stockholm from 11th June for a week, go to my favorite book store on Tuesday and buy that book what I have ogled for a long time and contains traditional Swedish cakes, biscuits. 

I know I owe you guys, I haven't forget what I promised a few days ago in my post about Kanelbullar that I will bring the recipe soon. So here we are!! 

I started the baking with Cupcakesfluffan's Karlsbaderbullar (it is filled with butter and marzipan) , followed the recipe step by step but right before rolling the buns up, I thought of why not to sprinkle some cinnamon on the dough? You can decide what it became in the end....kanelbullar with marzipan or karlsbaderbullar with cinnamon.

Ingredients (10-15 pieces):

75 g butter (room temperature)

3 dl flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup of milk

25g yeast

For the filling:

25 g butter (room temperature)

75 g almond paste

3-4 tablespoon cinnamon

+ egg and pearl sugar (pärlsocker - I have seen this kind of sugar only in Sweden yet so in Hungary I prepare it with normal sugar)

Crumb the yeast into a lukewarm milk, add a teaspoon sugar to it and let stand about 5-10 minutes in a warm place until the yeast doubles its size.

Mix and crumb the butter with the flour in a big bowl. Add rest of the sugar, egg and yeast. Knead the dough for about 5-10 minutes to make a smooth, soft dough. Set aside and let rest for 10-15 minutes.

After the dough rises, roll out it on a floured counter (about 20x30 cm). Grease with the butter first, sprinkle with cinnamon and grate marzipan on it.

Two different methods exist how you can shape or roll up the bullar at this step.

You can fold the dough, cut into 1 cm width stripes, hold the two ends, start to roll them to opposit directions then form spiral buns from it.

The other way which is maybe a shade faster, roll up the dough from long side, divide it into 10-15 pieces and place them bullar baking paper on the oven pan.

Allow to rise about 40-60 minutes. (I need to make a confession, yesterday I didn't wait for rising, put the bullar immediately to the preheated oven and they were perfect.)

Preheat the oven to 225°C. Grease the dough with egg, sprinkle with pearl sugar and bake in the middle of the oven for 8-10 minutes.

Afiyet olsun!

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Asparagus soup

Yesterday I have found a half bunch of asparagus in the fridge so I decided I will cook creamy asparagus soup because this spring I haven't made it yet. And it's already summer. 

I wanted to make low fat soup therefore I replaced the cream with yoghurt and the butter with olive oil.

Ingredients (2 person):

500 g asparagus 

1 medium-sized onion

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoon olive oil

8 dl  vegetable stock

Salt, freshly ground pepper and nutmeg

1 cup of yoghurt

Wash, peel the asparagus, then cut them into 2-3 cm length pieces. Set aside some tips of them for later.

Get a large pan on the heat, add the olive oil. Gently fry the finely chooped onions, until soft without colouring. Add the asparagus, flour and simmer for a few minutes, then our the stock in the pan also. Cook for around 15-20 minutes or until the asparagus get soft.

Remove from the heat, mush the asparagus with a hand blender then pour it off through a strainer. Pour it back to the pan, spice the soup with the salt, pepper, nutmeg and put back on the heat. Add the yoghurt to the soup, bring back to the boil and simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve it warm or on hot summer days you can serve lukewarm. To serve, lay some tips of asparagus on the top of the soup.

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Sekerpare - Turkish dessert

Şekerpare is one of the several popular and traditional Turkish desserts besides baklava, künefe, sütlaç, tulumba, aşure, lokma etc.

It is prepared by baking soft balls of pastry, then dipped in thick lemon sugar syrup. Because of the butter, semolina and syrup it is so soft, almost melts in your mouth. In spite of the syrup it's not too luscious.

It is easy, quick to prepare şekerpare so do not hesitate to try it, bring some Turkish atmosphere with it to your home. 

My first base was Binnur's recipe.

Ingredients:

125 g butter (room temperature)

1/2 cup castor sugar

1 egg yolk

1/2-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/6 cup semolina

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tablespoon baking powder

+ almonds, hazelnuts on the top

For the syrup:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 tablespoon lemon juice

In a large bowl combine the butter and the castor sugar with a spoon or a wooden spoon, add the egg yolk and mix well with the butter. Strew the semolina to this mixture, then slowly the flour also and mix all with your hands. Knead until you get a medium-hard dough, if it's needed add some more flour to it.

Preheat the oven to 190°C and grease a pan or a heat-resistant glass dish with butter or oil. Divide the dough into 8 same-sized part, first make balls with your hands, lay in the dish, keep their ball forms or shape them into oval form (as I did), gently press their tops and place some nuts on the center of each. 

Bake them in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

While the şekerpare bakes in the oven, prepare the syrup. Mix the syrup ingredients in a pan and start to bring to full boil for about 5-10 minutes. Let it cool for a while.

When the şekerpare is ready, take it out from the oven and when it is still warm, pour the lukewarm syrup on it with a spoon. Repeat this a few times and let them soak in the syrup for about 10-15 minutes before remove them from the syrup and lay them on a service plate. Let them cool in the fridge.

Şekerpare is best served cold.

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Indian Naan Bread

I love naan since our 4-weeks holiday in India in 2010.

During our trip we travelled a lot within the country. We just bought a return ticket to Delhi and back, had a Lonely Planet guide and that's all. Okay, we knew of course some place what we definitely wanted to visit but nothing more. We didn't decide how many days we spend here or there. Just enjoy the country, know and talk to the people and try to understand this culture what is totally different from what we have seen before.

Before we left for India, everyone worried about me and asked "What will you eat there?" I didn't know the Indian cuisine too much at that time but I said "I love Indian foods, so don't worry, I won't die by hunger!" Now I know since I REALLY knew Indian cuisine during this trip, it's one of the most colourful, varied and interesting kitchen in the world.

As I mentioned we travelled a lot (Delhi - Agra - Varanasi - Kathamndu,Nepal - Mumbai - Varkala beach in Kerala - Kochi - Delhi), everywhere 2-3 days (on the beach about 10 days :)), depending on how much we liked the place. Everywhere we stopped we tasted the local speciality therefore I can say we never ate two times the same dish.

Indian food is different from the rest of the world in the whole cuisine, in taste, cooking methods. It's a perfect mix of several cultures and ages. Food in India, just like the Indian culture, has been influenced  by various groups, civilizations during the centuries, leading to the diversity of flavours and regional cuisines what we know in modern India in our days.

One of the most important part of the Indian kitchen is the Indian bread. There is a wide variety of breads which reflects the diversity of the whole country, culture. Different varieties include: chapati, roti, paratha, naan, papdum etc.

Naan is cooked in tandoor from which tandoori cooking takes its name. I have already mentioned tandoor before in the post of Turkish Ramadan pide.

First I bring the recipe of naan what I prepare many times especially for a light dinner, house parties next to dips.

I don't know yet where I had found this recipe on internet but I remember that I tried it with my best friend, E. for New Year's Eve.

Ingredients (5 pieces):
25 dkg plain flour
110-130 ml milk
2 tablespoon oil
2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder

+ 1 tablespoon melted butter for brushing
+ cheese (normally I make naan without it)

In a big bowl mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Make a pit in the center of the dry ingredients in the bowl then pour in it the milk and oil mixture.

Mix together the dough first by wooden spoon then knead it by hand for 8-10 minutes to make a smooth, soft dough. If it's too thicky, add a little flour to it. Divide it into 5 small balls.

The original recipe said we should set aside, cover with a clean kitchen towel and leave for at least 1 hour in a warm place to double in size. I experienced there is no difference between we don't wait at all or we leave the dough for 1 hour so do not worry, as soon as you finished kneading the dough you can start to bake them.

For the lack of tandoor at home preheat a simple frying pan. Start to roll out the dough balls into oval, teardrop shapes (as you like) and place the naan in the hot frying pan and grill for 1-2 minutes or until there are brown spots on its surface then turn to grill the other side of naan. If you want at the step you can put some grated cheese on the top.

Brush them with melted butter and serve hot.
 

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Menemen

Menemen is one of the most popular breakfast dish in the Turkish cuisine, it's the mix of tomatos, peppers, eggs and onion, similar to the Hungarian lecsó (thick vegetable stew which also features peppers, tomato, onion, paprika), the French ratatouille Traditionally it is eaten for breakfast, served with bread but you can eat any time of the day for instance for lunch or a light dinner. 

Menemen has also many variation, sucuk (spicy Turkish sausage) or pastırma (dried cured beef) can be added.

I learned this menemen recipe from our Turkish friend, during our stay in Istanbul. One day we cooked dinner at home, called over M.'s brother also. It's one of my favorite Turkish food, easy, simple, perfect!

Ingredients (for 2 persons):

4 green pepper

4 bigger tomato

2 eggs

1 big onion

3 cloves of garlic

salt, pepper, sweet (or hot) paprika, thyme

olive oil

parsley

Wash, chop the pepper and tomato, peel and chop the onion and garlic. 

Place the olive oil and onion in a large pan. Cook for about 2-3 minutes until the onion is glassy then add the pepper. Simmer it with the onion on medium-low heat then add the garlic, tomato, about 1 dl water and the spices.

Cook for another 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Whisk the eggs in another bowl and pour into the pan. Stir it constantly until the eggs are done.

Serve with fresh bread.

Our Turkish friend's menemen

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Néró

I regularly read and follow Csak a Puffin's blog. When I saw the recipe of this pastry which reminds everyone of our childhood (in Hungary), I knew that I need to try sooner or later. To my mind only a few people makes néró at home up to this day, I think most of them dare not go about it because they consider this pastry a typical confectionery cake what they can't prepare at home.

However this won't beat me, I thought. I sent the recipe to mum to know when I go home for the weekend, we will bake nero. On Friday evening as soon as I arrived we got down to bake.   First we made the below amount what we regret because this amount proved too less.

Since then we tried other recipes as well, with different rates of flour-butter-sugar, but this was far the best, soft and short. I am sure there will be repeat.

Ingredients (small portion - to my mind :)):

25 dkg all purpose flour (+ 2-2 tablespoon cocoa powder for the cocoa biscuits, flour for the white biscuits)

20 dkg butter
1 tablespoon fat

2 eggs + 1 egg yolk

10 dkg castor sugar

30 g vanilla sugar (3 small package)

1 lemon's zest (This is one of my favorite ingredients. If it is not vary from the cake too much, I am capable to put lemon zest in everything.)

+ mum's home- made apricot jam

+ dark chocolate for decorating

In a big bowl crumb the soft butter with the flour then add the caster sugar, vanilla sugar, eggs and egg yolk, lemon zest and knead together the ingredients. When it's ready, divide it into two parts. To one half add the cocoa powder (I always use only Dutch cocoa powder), to the other half add the two additional tablespoon flour. When we mixed both doughs, put them in the fridge for half - one hour.

Because the dough was too soft to shape small balls by hand but too hard to fill it in pastry bag therefore we used cookie press what we could shape same sized biscuits on the baking paper with.

In the meantime preheated (170°C) oven bake them within 8-10 minutes. Be careful, not to burn them. 

After the biscuits cool, glue together two biscuits with apricot jam. You can put together same coloured or mixed biscuits. Finally sprinkle their tops with melted chocolate. 

Afiyet olsun!

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