Taste & Create

I’ve discovered this delicious salad recipe thanks to Nicole from For the Love of Food blog. Nicole has been hosting a food blog event Taste and Create, in which participants are paired together to try out a recipe from each other's blogs. Nicole has paired me with Johnny from Le Petit Kitchen blog. The blog was created only a month ago, so there weren't many recipes to choose. What’s made the choice even harder is that in most of the recipes there are no exact quantities of ingredients given. I’ve opted for salad as this is the kind of recipe in which you don’t really need exact quantities. Besides, making more salads was one of my New Year’s resolutions this year. Since I haven’t posted even one salad recipe on my blog yet, I thought this food blog event is just a perfect opportunity to start making some. The salad came out really delicious, light and very refreshing. I was actually surprised how well all the different flavors blended together. I’ll definitely make it again :)

Notes to the recipe: The original recipe (which can be found here) asked for blood oranges, but I used mandarin oranges instead; I also omitted the dill and used less lemon juice for the vinaigrette.

Californian Salad with Fruit and Goat Cheese

lettuce
pear
mandarin orange
goat cheese
pistachios, roughly chopped

balsamic vinegar

FOR THE VINAIGRETTE*
lemon juice
olive oil
dill (optional)

1. Heat the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan over low heat until thick . Remove from the heat and let cool.
2. Tear the lettuce into small pieces. Cut the pears and oranges, crumble the goat cheese.
3. To make the vinaigrette mix olive oil with lemon juice and dill.
4. Place the pears, oranges, crumbled goat cheese, and lettuce in a big bowl and toss gently.
5. Transfer the salad to plates, drizzle with some of the vinaigrette and balsamic vinegar.
6. Garnish with pistachios. Serve.

* I made vinaigreette using 1 part of oil to 4 parts of lemon.

Przepis po polsku:
Sałatka kalifornijska z owocami i kozim serem

Banana and Orange Muffins

I woke up at 6:00 a.m. today morning when my husband was still asleep. I wanted to surprise him with nice breakfast in bed, so I baked him these delicious muffins. Personally, I never eat muffins that early in the morning, but my Canadian husband is much more used to having sweet breakfasts than me, so banana muffins made perfect breakfast for him.

The recipe I used was actually a recipe for banana bread, but I got a wonderful muffin pan for Christmas and really couldn't wait to try it. So I decided to turn the bread recipe into muffins. The bread was originally made with lots of nuts and cranberries, but I wanted my muffins plain, so I omitted them completely. I also reduced the amounts of oil and sugar. The result was wonderful!!! My husband said they were the best muffins he had ever had in his life! I tried some later in the afternoon and I have to admit they’re really really delicious, extremely moist and very aromatic!!! Their wonderful warm banana and orange smell fills the entire house.

Banana and Orange Muffins
(adapted from What's Cooking Baking cookbook)

DRY INGREDIENTS:
175 g all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
125 g brown sugar
2 ripe bananas, mashed
zest of one orange, grated

WET INGREDIENTS:
5-6 tbsp orange juice, freshly squeezed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125 ml sunflower oil

1. Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F). Line a muffin pan with paper baking cups, you'll need ten of them.
2. Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Add brown sugar and orange peel. Mix well. Fold in mashed bananas.
3. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients. Mix well.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just mixed and moistened. Do not over mix.
5. Fill each muffin cup to 3/4 full.
6. Bake 30 minutes or until golden brown.
7. Cool 5 min. and then remove from pans.

Przepis po polsku:
Mufinki bananowo-pomarańczowe

Citrus Weekend

I’ve found out about a very nice Polish food blog event recently. The event was called Cytrusowy Weekend (Citrus Weekend) and was hosted by Tatter from Palce lizać blog. It’s the first challenge I've been taking part in, so I’ve been quite excited about it. I spent hours searching for recipes with citrus fruit and I was actually surprised how many delicious things you can make with it. I’ll be certainly using more citrus fruit in my cooking from now on.

Now when the days are cold and cloudy I really miss summer days. That’s probably why the recipe for Sunshine Tart was the one that most appealed to me. The recipe was adapted from a special edition of Polish Naj magazine, the issue from March 2000. The original recipe called for orange liquor, but since I didn’t have any at home, I used brandy instead and it worked fine too. I also increased the amount of mandarin oranges as the amount used in the recipe wasn’t enough to fill the whole tart. The recipe called for different amounts of sugar twice which was probably a mistake, I added only the first 5 spoons and didn’t use the remaining 7 spoons for which the recipe asked. The tart would have been a way too sweet with 7 spoons of sugar more. I also placed the glaze on the mandarins, not under as the recipe said.

The result was wonderful. The tart came out delicious- very very sweet, but somehow light and refreshing at the same time. The use of orange zest in the pastry added a lovely depth of flavor to the tart. I also must say that making this tart has almost therapeutic properties. First, because of its bright and energetic color, second because it fills your kitchen with a wonderful orange scent. Here's the recipe:

Sunshine Tart

1 ½ cup flour
125 g margarine
5 tbsp caster sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 tbsp orange zest
4 cans (300 g each) mandarin oranges
1 tbsp orange liquor or brandy
2/3 cup apricot jam
fresh mint to decorate

Sift the flour into a large bowl. Using your fingertips, rub the margarine into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add salt, egg, sugar, and orange zest and knead the dough with your hands to form a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400F)

Lightly grease 25 cm (10 inch) tart pan, then line with the pastry. Prick all over with a fork. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Arrange the mandarin oranges over the crust. Heat the apricot jam and the orange liquor (or brandy) in a small saucepan until melted. Remove from the heat and strain the jam through a strainer to remove any fruit lumps. Let cool until slightly warm. Brush the tart with the glaze. Decorate with mint leaves.


Przepis po polsku:
Tarta pełna słońca

Carrot Soup

I’ve wanted to try a carrot soup for a quite long time, but I just didn’t have any nice recipe. Luckily, a few days ago I came across Stevi’s Bread and Butter blog and found a lovely carrot soup recipe there. I cooked the soup for supper yesterday. I changed a little the proportions to make the recipe smaller and I spiced it up a little with white pepper and ginger. The result was really tasty - very creamy and warming, thus perfect for cold autumn days. The orange juice adds a nice fruity flavor to it, but be careful not to add too much as it tastes stronger than you might expect.

Carrot Soup
(based on a recipe from Stevi’s Bread and Butter blog)

1 tbsp butter
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
½ kg carrots, peeled and chopped
750 ml vegetable stock
rind and juice of half an orange
salt
white pepper
ginger

Heat the butter in a large pan, add the onions, leave them for 2 - 3 minutes.

Add carrots and the stock to the pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the carrots are tender. Remove the carrots and onions, but do not throw the stock away.

Liquidise all the ingredients using blender or food processor and add the puree in the stock.

Reheat gently for a couple of minutes. Season to taste.

Before you serve, add the orange juice. Grate the orange rind and garnish the individual bowls.

Przepis po polsku:
Zupa krem z marchwi