skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Cabbage, salt and water - super healthy and tasty
Taste: 5 (out of 5)
Difficulty: 2 (out of 5)
Source: Trial and error
Ingredients:
- 1 small-medium green cabbage (3-4 lbs)
- 2 tbsp salt
- 2 litres of boiled water cooled to room temperature
Directions:
1. Wash the cabbage, the hands, a 4l (1 gallon) glass jar and a large bowl.
2. Finely shred the cabbage (in a food processor or by hand)
3. In a large bawl, add salt to shredded cabbage and mix with your hands, gently squeezing the cabbage. It should soften, but not get too runny.
4. Transfer the cabbage into the glass jar, and add chilled boiled water, just enough to cover the cabbage. You will probably need much less than 2 litres.
5. Loosely cover the jar with the lid, but don't tighten it, you need air flow in the jar.
6. Leave the jar outside at room temperature.
7. Every day, open the jar, use a wooden spatula with a long handle to poke wholes in the cabbage to let the gasses from the bottom escape. Press the cabbage so that it stays submerged under the water and loosely cover with the lid again.
8. Taste your sauerkraut every day, until it reaches the level of doneness that you like. In my case it took 2 days, but it would depend on the temperature in your house.
9. Once the sauerkraut is ready, tighten the lid and keep it in the fridge.
Afterthoughts:
Many recipes use vinegar, oil, sugar or other spices. I think with salt alone it turns out the best, not only calorie and health-wise, but primarily taste-wise.
To Recipe...
Summary only...
If you don't like the taste of vinegar in your pickles
Taste: 4 (out of 5)
Difficulty: 1 (out of 5)
Source: trial and error
Ingredients:
- 1 kg / 2 lbs of cucumbers
- 1 liter / 4 cups of boiling water
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp dill flakes
- 1 tbsp whole mustard seeds or 1/2 tbsp mustard powder
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced or 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
- a dash of cayenne
- 4-5 bay leaves
Instructions:
1. Leave cucumbers in cold water for 1-2 hours (this is supposed to keep them crispy).
2. Boil 1 liter of water and mix in all spices except bay leaves. While cucumbers are soaked in cold water, let the boiled water with spices cool down.
3. Cut off the tips of the cucumbers. Place cucumbers in a 2 liter / half gallon glass jar and pour the chilled water with spices over them so that all cucumbers are covered. Place bay leaves on top.
4. Loosely cover the jar with the lid and Let ferment for 1 to 3 days at room temperature. Taste the cucumbers at the end of each day. The longer they stay out the saltier they become. For me one day is usually enough.
5. When the cucumbers reach desired degree of saltiness, close the lid and refrigerate. They will keep in the fridge for months.
To Recipe...
Summary only...
Ready, peeled, ground and portioned ginger whenever you need it
Source: improvised
Taste: Not applicable
Difficulty: 1 (out of 5)
Ingredients:
Ginger root, as much as you want
Directions:
1. Wash and peel the ginger root, and cut into 1/2 inch slices.
2. Place the ginger into your Vitamix (or another very strong) blender. Start on low setting, increase speed from 0 to 5, use the tamper if large chunks of ginger get stuck. When the mixture is more or less uniform, increase the speed to 10, then set it to High and let process for another 15 seconds.
3. Line a small shallow freezer-safe dish (I use a plastic cover of a Pyrex) with parchment paper, and scoop out the ground ginger onto the dish. Flatten the ginger puree with a spatula, and freeze for about 2 hours.
4. Remove the ginger from the freezer, flip the ginger onto a cutting board, peel off the paper, and cut the ginger into squares. Place the squares into a freezer bag and freezer until required.
Afterthoughts:
I love this method and use it with lots of herbs and spices: lemongrass, roasted garlic, parsley, basil, you name it. It is particularly great for highly perishable herbs. For ginger, it saves you a lot of time: you do all the peeling, the grinding and the washing once every couple of months, and have freshly ground ginger whenever you need it in a second.
To Recipe...
Summary only...
Freeze a batch of home made roasted garlic cubes, and they are ready to use whenever you need them.
Source: Improvised
Taste: 5 (out of 5) - for those who love roasted garlic
Difficulty: 3 (out of 5) - mainly time consuming
Ingredients:
1 lb whole garlic heads (or as many as you want)
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with a piece of aluminum foil, and place the garlic heads on the foil. The aluminum foil should be large enough to wrap around the garlic.
2. Cut the tops of the garlic heads (about 1/4 of the head), but keep the cut piece. Drizzle olive oil over the lower part of each head and cover with the upper part.
3. Wrap the aluminum foil so that it completely covers the garlic heads and seal the edges. Bake for 1 hour, then turn off the heat and keep in the over for one more hour.
4. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and discard the aluminum foil. When the garlic is at room temperature squeeze the flesh out of the cloves and mash it with a blender, a food processor, or a fork.
5. Line a flat tray (I used a plastic lid of a Pyrex pan) with parchment and spread the mashed garlic. Freeze until firm.
6. Cut into 1/2 inch cubes, separate the cubes and freeze in plastic bags. Use as needed :-)
Afterthoughts:
This is a really convenient way to store roasted garlic. Whenever you need some, you have just the right amount ready in the freezer. And it's very cheap, too: you can usually buy a 1 lb bag of garlic for $2-$3, and the cubes will last for a very long time.
To Recipe...
Summary only...
a story of lust and murder... the culprit: SRC
This week was supposed to be my detox week. I was all prepared to eat only fruit and veggies and then to celebrate my good behavior with the amazing cheesecake that I saw on my assigned SRC blog, Cooking with Chopin. I've been eying this cake ever since our last month's reveal, planning to make it anyway. And then imagine my joy when I saw that Cooking with Chopin was my assignment this month!
And all of a sudden, I get a reminder email that our SRC reveal was supposed to be this Monday, right in the middle of my detox. What a blow.... The cheesecake would most certainly kill any chance of a diet. So I looked for other recipes, and found this super cute poached egg, one more obsession of mine. I know that egg is not a vegetable, not even a fruit, but how many temptations can one resist in one day? It would be a small sin compared to a cheesecake. And I love poached eggs over green salads, which are healthy, right?
So I made the poached egg, but it was sooo good over that salad, that I had to have another one. This time I had my egg on a bun... My diet was painfully and steadily dying, and I could not see it suffer so much, so I ate a chocolate truffle, and officially finished off the detox.
That's the sad story of my poor diet. And I hold SRC responsible, because how can one be on a diet, staring at all this delicious food? ... and because it's easier to blame someone else than to take the responsibility yourself ;-P
Source: Cooking with Chopin
Taste: 5 (out of 5)
Difficulty: 1 (out of 5)
Ingredients:
- 1 egg
Directions:
1. Fill a large saucepan with 4 inches of water and bring to a simmer (when bubbles are breaking the surface every few seconds.
2. When water is barely simmering, break 1 egg into a small bowl. (You can break it directly into the water, but putting it in a small bowl first eliminates the possibility of getting shells in the water.)
3. Gently tip the bowl, sliding the egg into water.
4. Cook until whites are set but yolks are soft, 3 to 4 minutes. (Cook 5-6 minutes for a firmer yolk.)
5. Using a slotted spoon, transfer eggs to paper towels, and drain briefly.
For green salad I used:
Romaine lettuce, dill, green onions, cucumbers and walnuts, drizzled with lemon juice and walnut oil (can use olive oil too) and sprinkled with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then top it all with your egg. I poached the egg for 4 minutes for softer yolk.
Afterthoughts:
- I also fry sunny side up eggs, but poaching is a healthier alternative, and fishing out the egg is very cute.
- Just in case you don't know yet, SRC, or the Secret Recipe Club is a group of over a hundred food bloggers, who are assigned a "secret" blog each months. Then they choose a recipe from that blog, make it and post it on their own blog on a given reveal day. Then there is a big party, where you hop from one blog to another and check what everyone's been cooking. Lots of fun! And terrible for your diet ;-) I want to thank Amanda, Jane and April for making it all possible!
To Recipe...
Summary only...
"Torting" = cutting the cake horizontally to create layered cakes.
Making layered cakes has always been an insurmountable challenge for me: I could never tort a cake. The knife would always go at an angle and I would end up with clumsy scraps of cake. I tried many things: putting toothpicks in the cake to mark where it should be cut, using dental floss or a Wilton cake leveler – they just would not cut it for me ;-).
And then one sleepless night I came up with a method that so far had produced 3 perfectly torted cakes. And the best thing was: I did not need to buy any specialized equipment.
What you need:
- A baked cake
- One container with straight level walls that the cake can fit into (can be a cake pan, in which the cake was made)
- Several flat plates / coasters that fit into the container to support and elevate the cake
- A sharp knife with a blade longer than the width of your container
In my case I used a 6 inch cake, a 7 inch plastic food storage container, three 7 inch round cork coasters and an 8 inch chef’s knife.
What you do:
1. Gently mark with the knife place on the side of the cake where it should be cut.
2. Put the needed amount of support (coasters / plates / cardboard) into the container, so that when the cake is placed on the support the cutting mark will be exactly at the level of the container walls. The cake should be stable and parallel to the container floor.
3. Hold the top of the cake with one hand, to hold the cake in place. With the other hand cut the cake so that the knife is supported by the container walls both near the handle and near the tip. Make slow steady sawing motions with the knife, making sure it at all times lies flat on the container walls.
4. Voilà!
And this is the link to the recipe of the Hzelnut Raspberry Mousse cake in the photos.
To Recipe...
Summary only...
Posts
