Holiday in Scotland and a basic vegetarian chili

It's been some time since I've written something here but for good reason: I was on holiday to Scotland for 11 days with one of my best friends Emily. 

Emily and I made the most out of the beautiful weather (sunny, warm: 20-25°C!) and the landscapes we cannot enjoy in our own little Flanders. 

There we rented a small cottage called Squirrel Lodge and we cooked almost every day after coming home from a good, long walk around the countryside. 

One of the easy meals we made with the basic ingredients we had on hand was a basic vegetarian chili. It was soo good to have this! We made it before leaving the house in the morning and we were glad to not have to start hurrying to make our dinner after coming back late in the afternoon. 

Ingredients:
- 1 can white beans in tomato sauce (we used Heinz)
- 1 can kidney beans
- 1 can peeled tomatoes
- 1 small can sweet corn
- 1 courgette/zuchini
- 1 red/yellow/orange bell pepper/capsicum
- 1 red onion
- pinch of salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 tablespoon of honey
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
To top:
- a few dollops of Greek yogurt to substitute sour cream
- grated cheddar cheese

How to:
Chop the onion, the pepper and the zuchini in small cubes.
Heat some oil in a small pot and let the onion cook a little. Once the onion looks a little translucent, add in the chopped pepper. Let these simmer for about 5 minutes before adding the tomatoes, the salt, pepper, the honey and the cumin.
When the peppers are slightly softened, add the chopped zuchini. Leave to simmer for another 5-10 minutes or until the zuchini is no longer raw. You don't want the vegetables to be too soft, a little texture is wanted!
At last, add the corn and the beans and stir gently. Let simmer another minute or two and ready to serve!

Serve with some sour cream (or Greek yogurt like we did) and some grated cheddar cheese.

Enjoy!

Grape and yogurt cake

Weekend equals baking. Actually, any day I have time on my hands is a baking day. To my parents and sister and about every person who knows me a bit, it's not a surprise I baked a cake again. It's a good thing they've got good appetites!

I got some inspiration through the blog Laws of the kitchen. There I found a post about a grape harvest cake that looked really good. That cake was based on this recipe of grape harvest cake. I hadn't ever thought of using grapes in a cake or any other baked goods. I thought of grapes as fresh fruit and maybe a nice addition to hearty dishes like stews. This was a totally new thing for me. 

I took the recipe and by making some changes to the recipe I turned it into this cake. 

Below you'll find how I made it. 

Ingredients: 
- 200 grams vanilla scented sugar
- 100 grams light brown sugar
- 50 grams instant vanilla custard powder (I use Oetker)
- 260 grams plain flour
- 1 packet of baking powder (about 20 grams)
- 7 tablespoons of butter
- 236 ml milk
- zest from 1 orange
- 1 teaspoon salt
- grapes (I used about 20 pieces)
- 150 grams Greek yogurt
- 4 eggs
How to:
Preheat the oven to 160°C.
Mix the flour, the baking powder, the salt and the vanilla custard powder together.
Warm the milk and the butter with the orange zest until the butter is melted.
Crack the eggs in the bowl with the sugar and whisk with an electric mixer until the egg mixture is very frothy and light coloured. 

Mix the yogurt in the egg mixture. Whisk.
Mix half of the flour mixture in. Whisk.
Mix half the milk mixture in. Whisk.
Mix the rest of the flour mixture in. Whisk.
Mix the rest of the milk mixture in. Whisk.
Put the grapes in the batter and pour everything in a buttered and floured cake tin (I used a spring form tin of about 26 cm diameter)

Put in the oven and bake for about 50 minutes or until the cake feels firm when touched.
Take the cake out and let cool slightly. 
Take the cake out of the form, carefully because the grapes might stick to the sides and the bottom.

For serving: dust the cake with some icing sugar for a prettier look. 

My mum is my usual taste-tester and she liked it. She said that the grapes resemble raisins or currants but different. The orange zest wasn't that present but it was good, she said.
She happy, me happy!
I took a piece as well and liked it as well. It's a dense cake and I would make it again as it has a hint of citrus, a good vanilla flavour and the grapes make the cake juicy. 

Smakelijk!

Salmon wrap bites

My sister's boyfriend is celebrating his 26th birthday tomorrow and my sister wants to surprise him with a small get-together with all of his friends in the local park. They're going to play some outdoor games like kubb and petanque. She also wanted to have them some snacks to eat in the meanwhile. She made some things for him like mini fritattas. I offered to help her with something and I made for them small snacks:

packed up to go ...

These are basically wheat tortillas filled with a yogurt-cucumber sauce (look for the recipe to the post of Wednesday) and smoked salmon.
It's a very easy way to serve something festive on a party because the colours are so beautiful together and the taste is just perfect.

Many people who make these kind of wraps fill the tortillas with a herbed cream cheese spread instead of the yoghurt sauce. I, however, prefer a yogurt sauce for two reasons. The first reason is that it is much lighter. The salmon on itself is quite heavy and in combination with cream cheese, the snacks fill you up immediately and that's not the purpose of a snack. The snack should be tasty without taking up all the room in your tummy as there is more to follow ;)
The second reason is because the tortillas are quite dry when filled with cream cheese. The yoghurt is more fluid and makes the wraps more juicy. And juicy is the way to go!

It's so easy that it isn't really a recipe at all but I'll show you the making of the wrap bites:

the cast of the characters:
sugar (1 ts), salt (pinch), black pepper (pinch),
cucumber (about 6 cm), smoked salmon (250 grams),
3 wheat tortillas, Greek yoghurt (150 grams)

the mixing of the sauce ingredients

heating the tortillas to make them more pliable

spreading the sauce on top of the tortillas and
putting the smoked salmon on top

rolling the tortillas

(view from another angle)
ready for an hour in the fridge

just after cutting in slices: ready to eat!

We all love these wrap bites and it's great for any party, fancy or informal.

I hope my sister and her company will love these this afternoon :)

Smakelijk!

Tofu-corn shoarma wrap

I made a tofu-corn shoarma recipe on Wednesday and I had some of the tofu left over. With it I made a very tasty wrap:

me eating the wrap

The wrap was filled with the following ingredients:
- grated beetroot

- grated carrot
- grated cabbage
- roasted red bell pepper
- tofu-corn shoarma  (recipe in previous post)
- my home made cucumber-yogurt sauce (recipe in previous post)

It was delicious and very easy and very Summery.

Smakelijk!

Home made fast food: veggie pita-shoarma

Summer is here! We had to wait for it a little longer than last year but finally we reached 25°C and could have our dinner in the garden. This is the start of the best time of year and what's better to do this than have an informal dinner with friends?

Here at home, we are no lovers of take-away. Apart from fried foods which I do not like myself in particular, I love all of the fast food kind of things. We regularly eat pizza, shoarma stuffed pita bread, chips, noodles, hamburgers... but we always make them ourselves.
(Apart from the occasional time we get home late and are too tired to cook and only feel like walking around the block to go get pita-shoarma)

Today we made pita-shoarma. Most of the time, we buy the breads, the meat and the vegetables we like and put everthing on the table for everyone to stuff his or her own pita. Today, however, I decided it was time to make an alternative to the meat version of pita shoarma. Of course we had falafel lots of times and it's delicious but extending the horizon is always good!

Making a veggie alternative of shoarma might be tricky because my dad is a very dedicated meat-lover. He doesn't even try veggie dishes and only eats vegetables when they're covered in white sauce, cheese or lots of butter. Vegetables to him are just for dressing up the plates.
The plan was to still have meat for dad and offer the others - we were the 8 of us, my family and friends - two other options: falafel and tofu-corn shoarma. We could try what would taste good and there was still some meat in case it was a fail. 

I took some inspiration from the Pioneer Woman who posted a recipe for vegetarian lettuce wraps (www.thepioneerwoman.com). She used tofu. I was interested in the idea of using tofu as well. It's very neutral of taste on it's own so it would be good to spice it up for the pitas. I made the recipe my own and posted it below. 

I must say I liked it a lot and I didn't miss the meat at all. I served it with a tzatziki-like sauce I made just before serving as I realised it would need some sauce. Even one of the friends who was at first not at all interested in veggie things and only wanted to stuff his bread with meat, tried it in the end and took some more!
Even though I prepared the tofu before and heated the skillet just before eating, the result wasn't at all dry. It was juicy, spicy, delicious!

I didn't take a picture of a stuffed pita so this is just some 

tofu-corn shoarma with grilled bell pepper

To make it just as I did, just follow the directions below:

Ingredients for the tofu-corn shoarma:
- neutral oil for the skillet
- 200 grams of tofu in small cubes
- 1 small can (140 grams) of sweet corn (drained)
- 1 table spoon of shoarma seasoning of your choice
- a small dash of balsamic vinegar
- a bit of chilli powder to spice it up
Ingredients for the tzatziki sauce:
- 150 grams Greek yoghurt
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
- 6 cm of cucumber in very small cubes (I cut the piece of cucumber in 6 slices, cut strips from the slices and cut them in small cubes)

How to:
Heat the oil in the skillet and once it's heated, add the cubes of tofu. With a fork, break the cubes into even smaller pieces until it looks like minced meat. After a minute or two, add the drained sweet corn and let it simmer along with the tofu. Once the tofu and the corn are a little browned, add all the seasonings and the balsamic vinegar. 
For the sauce, just mix all the ingredients together and set aside, easy peasy.
Serve with the tzatiziki sauce, cubes of roasted sweet bell pepper, lettuce, grated beetroots and carrots, tomatoes and basically anything you might like on a pita bread. 

This is enough to fill about 4 to 5 small-sized pita breads. 

Smakelijk is all I can say!