Chocolate caliente azteca--Aztec hot chocolate

Merry Christmas world! 

Here is a fun recipe for special hot chocolate nights. Very easy and very fun. So I was looking for a special hot chocolate recipe for this Christmas, and I got a lot of milk and even whipped cream to make yummy hot chocolate for the holidays.

But I didnt want the boring recipe for caramel and just cinnamon, and then I found this one.  I like it because this recipe has a good spicy kick!  How amazing the way chocolate blends well with spiciness....it blows my mind what cayenne peppers can do! 

Ingredients: 

-250 ml of milk (for one drinking cup)

-3 cayenne peppers.

-2 or teaspoons of hot chocolate in powder, Cola-Cao.

-whipped cream.

-a pinch of cinnamon 

-a stick of cinnamon.

So here it is:

1. Heat up the milk, hot chocolate powder and the 3 cayenne peppers. 3 cayenne peppers was enough to give it a good kick and it wasn't unbearable, just a nice spiciness and a little sting on the tip of your tongue.

2. Heat it up in low heat for about 10 minutes. Add a tiny bit of mixed spices or cinnamon to the mix.

3. Remove the cayenne peppers and pour on mug. Then put the cream on top, the cinnamon stick and sprinkle some more cinnamon on cream. 

Awesome! Different and so good! 

Roasted cabbage with bacon

Back a while ago I made this recipe that rocked my world, but never posted. So here it is. This is one you gotta try it.



Question: what is one to do with a cabbage??  Boil it?? That's really all I can think of....


But looking into my friend Lisa's cooking blog, I saw this idea about roasting cabbage with a little of bacon. Like my friend Tep says: "Anything tastes better with bacon". 

So this is what you need to knock off the socks of your guests:

• 1 cabbage (medium to small)
• 5 slices of bacon.
• olive oil.
• grounded pepper.
• an oven that works.

So on I went and bought a whole cabbage and sliced it into wedges. Then I sprinkled olive oil and pepper and then I chopped up the bacon and just distributed on top of the cabbage. I roasted in on 180 degrees for about 30-40 minutes. Just make sure it doesnt burn.


Done! amazing, honestly the combination of flavours of this dish is SUPERB. I had no idea cabbage could taste so good...

This recipe is  so rustic, it makes me think of farms, like this one of my friend Angela in Michigan. I think this dish is ideal for Christmas or for a special dinner night.  

Anyway, enjoy!

Dry measures-a measuring cup

Someone got me a gift card this Christmas at work. I was looking for american cups, but when I went to the store I found this Dry Measure recipient. It sounds like a good tool to have because measurements are so crazy and different all over world. 

Can I confess here that the most annoying measurements are the British ones???? I mean, what on earth does "ozs." and "LB" mean?? What does the word "pound" have to do with "LB"??? 

I can sort of handle american measurements but not brits'. I wish the whole world got on board with metric system, it always ends in zeros and it just makes sense :) 

Tom Yam Soup

Phnom-Phenh, Cambodia

So my siblings were home for Christmas and we thought it was the perfect occasion to learn how to make one of our winter favorites Tom Yam Soup. This recipe is based on Steamy Kitchen's recipe that you can view here.

This soup is a really quite an art to do and it's easy to give up at first. But we are confident you can make it work with a bit of a touch here and there. I think the nice and hard thing about Tom Yam Soup is the balance of flavors. See, in my opinion Tom Yam Soup has four basic and amazing flavors: spicy, acidic, fishy, and touch of sweetness.

So the trick is to find the balance of those four flavors and not let any of those flavors overpower and hide the others. So that's the hard part but also the magic of this soup.

So here it is: 

-2 litres of water.
-3 chicken stock cubes.
-4 stalks of lfresh lemongrass.
-10 slices of fresh ginger.
-4 cayenne peppers for mild spiciness (I would put 6 or 7 if you like spicy, or more if you like it burning hot)..
-Fish sauce (10 tablespoons)
-1 lime. 
-Some mushrooms in slices.
-Some chicken or shrimp. (it is amazing with shrimp)
-Some cherry tomatoes.
-Parsley.

1. Throw in the 2 liters of water the 3 chicken stock cubes, the 4 stalks of lemongrass cut up into thirds and a little smashed so that the juices flow easily, the 10 slices of ginger, the cayenne peppers and the peel of half a lime. 


2. Bring it to a boil and then lower the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes so that the flavors of the herbs are released into the water.

3. Now remove all of the herbs from the water so that you leave only the soup, and throw in the rest of the veggies. I did leave the lemongrass because I love the lemongrass flavor and touch.


4. Add the 10 spoonful of fish sauce now.

5. Add the veggies and chicken or shrimp for about 5 minutes, so that the vegetables are not too soft.

6.  Add the parsley or cilantro at the last minute together with the juice of the lime.



Ok, how does it taste?? 






See this is the moment where you "correct" any excesses and lack of flavors. Is it too acidic?? Add fish sauce, Is it to fishy?? add some acidic like lemongrass or the ginger back into the pot, and do not forget the cayenne peppers to make it extraordinarily amazing and to give you extra heat!

Now this soup is some serious work as you can see but the trick is to freeze the stock, that is the soup without veggies and then you can always have it ready when you are craving some good old soup when it's 0 degrees outside.




Enjoy! and give it a go.
A
I had this amazing Tom Yam Soup in Cambodia...amazing.

Arroz con leche y cardamon

Tel Aviv, Israel 

Ingredientes: 

-1 litro de agua

-1 vaso de arroz.

-Una  rodaja de limón

-1 stick de canela.

-10 semillas de cardammon!!!! Sooo good

- 6 cucharadas de azúcar  (3 cucharadas grandes al principio y otras 3 al final).

1. Poner un litro de agua a hervir con una rodaja de limón y un stick de canela y echarle dos o tres cucharadas de azucar para que el agua este dulce.

2. Cuando el agua empiece a hervir hay que echar un vaso de arroz y remover mientras hierve. (Esto hay que hacerlo por 15 minutos). Y hay que probar que el arroz está blando.

3. Luego hay que sacarlo y escurrir el arroz y luego lo vuelves a echar en la olla donde lo has hervido y ahí  le echas un litro de leche.



4.Y ahora lo hierves de nuevo otra vez para que coja todo el sabor la leche y se mezcle bien y en cuanto hierva lo quitas del fuego y le echas luego el azúcar que quieras (2 o 3 cucharadas).

  

5. Y ya está,lo guardas en un tupperware y ya está. C'est fini.

Me lo tomé de cena y la verdad es que me gustó mucho caliente. 

Veggie tray

Yay to Americans and all of the great ideas they bring to our world. Especially when it comes to food and aesthetics, Americans can surely nail it and we can all learn from them. Yes and amen. 

So here is my recipe. 

Actually I wouldn't call it a recipe, more an idea of what to bring to a party when you are clueless and in a rush. Perhaps only clueless but you do need time to run to the supermarket, cut the veggies and line them up nicely. Ah! you also need some kind of cheese as a dip. 

My veggie collection for this Halloween party of my german friend consisted on: carrots, yellow peppers, celery, broccoli and red peppers. 

And I decorated the whole thing with castañas, or chestnuts around it, raw ones, because I love to eat them raw.

TADAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Magic. At least easy. And it looked very colourful and pretty for my party. Anyway, an idea for you all out there. I know this one is a no-brainer-one, but hey at least I have come back to the blog! I want to thank my sister Rut for encouraging me.  (Gracias poli)

And this is pic of the bag I took to transport the veggie tray  thats my elevator. I brought a tupperware and did the artistic part when I got to the party. 

I also brought some little pumpkins to friend's party to give her table some colour....I think she liked it.  :)  I have them at home too...

Banana Bread

We are having some real cold days in Madrid and all I want to do is curl up with my computer, books, and cook the winter classics.

So here is a pretty good recipe, perfect for winter days, that I got down at a Thanksgiving party in Madrid this fall. The girl who gave it to me said it was jewish!
I don't think there is anything really jewish about it, but it is quite good and super easy....for a long time I have looked for a banana bread recipe for dummies, that you just can't spoil, and really, it's very difficult to mess this one up.


Ingredients:

1. One cup and 1/4 of flour, or 125grs.
2. Two eggs.
3. 1 loaded teaspoon of baking powder (levadura)
4. 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
5. 1/4 cup of sugar, or 4 spoonful.
6. 4 spoonful of margarine
or 1/4 cup.
6. 3 small bananas or 2 big ones.
7. A cup of walnuts o un buen puñado.

STEPS:

1. Mix the flour, eggs, baking soda, salt, and sugar. It becomes a really thick paste.
2. Add the bananas to the mix. The softer the bananas are the better.
3. Add the walnuts.
4. Grease the "baking tray", with butter and then sprinkle with flour.
5. On to the oven for 30 mins or 35, at 180 degrees, only button rack!!! not grill!

That's it!  Enjoy. I used this "molde de corona", because it distributes the heat very evenly but maybe you could try another type of baking container and let me know how it went.

 What do you think? I think this recipe is a keeper. I brought it the other day to my friend's dinner and they loved it :)

Delicious baked cinammon apples

I have about 10 recipes I want to post but cannot find the time for these days.

Still, I didn't want this fall to leave me and not post an apple recipe...I did these last night..so simple, and yet so good!  Dont let November go without trying a recipe like this one. HIGHLY RECOMMEND it for the dessert.

• 4 Apples ((you need acidic-like cooking apples, reinetas or granny smith)
• Brown sugar. (4 spoonfuls, 1 for every apple)
• Ground cinammon. (1/2 teaspoon)
• Nutmeg. (1/5 teaspoon)
• Butter (Like 2 spoonfuls)
• A tiny bit of hot water.

1. Core the apples with a knife. Only half way, you dont want to empty them out completey or the sugar will "come out" while its baking.

2. Mix sugar, with cinammon and nutmet or fall spices.

3. Fill up the cored apples with the mix. Then dab, a teaspoon of butter in each apple to top it off and close it.

4. Put a little water in the baking container so that the apples dont try out when you bake them.

5. Stick them in the oven for about 1 hour. 200 grades for the first half hour and then turn up the grill full blast for about 20 min, but make sure you dont burn them.

DONE! so fast, easy and good...honestly...they were so good...my flatmates agreed wholeheartedly, so hey, it is not a "biased" recipe. :)

A piano cake for "big sis"

Inspired by Betty Crocker, I made this cake a while to my musical older sister María, who plays the piano.  You can see her beautiful piano that inspired me here.

Mine, as you can see above, didnt quite turn out that way, but hey! I tried..

1. I did not make the cake either, because I was so busy around that time of year....so I cheated and used a mix, a Betty Crocker one as well, Devil's Food cake...yes please. 

2. So good, so easy..okay and now off to cutting the pattern of the piano. 

3. I had to do some thinking here...and look at many "patterns". Then I picked up a piece of paper, drew and cut off the shape of my favorite piano. 

4. Pick your bread knife, and carefully follow the pattern...

5. Now time to spread the icing. 

Again, I used Betty Crocker Devil's Food chocolate icing...it's so good...so as I was spreading the icing, the whole cake was falling apart, because the cake was sticking up to the icing, lifting it up and just coming undone! 

FRUSTRATION!

My american roommate Angela came to my rescue. She explained to me that the right way to spread icing is to just drop a big amount of icing onto the cake and then with a butter knife move it around and spread it around.

 So kinda like in the photo, be generous and follow this trick that will prevent you from ruining your cake.



 6. Okay, so once I spread the icing, easier said that done for sure, I did the "seat" which was the left over  part of the cake that I cut off.

Not very even this piano of mine...but it was hard...

The next step....and how do I carry this guy now to the birthday place?? 

I thought it would be fun to have a "partitura", music sheets, to make my piano more fun and musical. So I what I did was to pick up my oven tray for cookies and wrapped it with "Happy Birthday" music sheets that I printed at work....

 Then I picked up this big box to carry the box and leave the pretty tray intact till the serving moment.

So this is the way I decorated the cake, at the house where I served the cake, I used 2 Kit-Kats, and one white chocolate bar. With my edible markers I drew some notes to make a little music sheet. I held it with toothpicks. Also, I bought velas magicas, sparklers that keep sparkling.



It was a fun cake to make it....I recommend it for anyone you love that is musical.

try it!