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Thursday, November 15, 2012

Grouper with Roasted Tomatoes and Garlic Lemon Crème Fraîche

Hello from Dubai!

You know that song that goes, walking on sunshine, whoa oh? That’s me. Despite working on a sleep deficit, yesterday went like a dream. We arrived in Dubai and fell into the hotel bed with time enough for just two hours of sleep before waking up to meet the real estate agent at the house for the Great Key Handover. Lordy, mercy, there are a lot of keys for our new house! Then the airfreight arrived and I was reunited with my Kenwood mixer. And then the rental furniture was delivered so as soon as we buy and get a stove and refrigerator installed, we can move in!

But the best part was my trip to what will be MY GROCERY STORE. It’s right near the house and I walked through like the bumpkin from the country just arriving in the big, bright city for the first time. It is part of the Géant chain, which has ties to the hypermarket Casino in France and is gorgeously laid out with most everything a person could hope to want. The first thing I spied were some baby tomatoes on the vine and my brain said, “Roast them and set them on top of something like fish or chicken.” So I went off in search of fresh fish and found some lovely grouper filets. At which point my brain said, “You need crème fraîche and lemons and garlic.” And low and behold, all those things could be mine. I rounded off the menu with some rocket or arugula tossed in a simple lemon vinaigrette. I am cooking in the small kitchen in my hotel apartment so the photos aren’t the best, but this was one delicious and easy meal.

Ingredients
Small piece of fresh lemon
1 clove garlic
Olive oil
2 heaping tablespoons crème fraîche or mild sour cream
1 branch on-the-vine tomatoes per every two fish filets
1 Grouper or other white fish filet per person
Flakey sea salt (I use Maldon’s.)
Crushed red pepper
Black pepper (I didn’t have any but you should definitely use some.)

Method
Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Finely mince your garlic and put it in a small bowl with the crème fraîche and a healthy pinch of salt.

Cut the end off of the lemon and squeeze the juice into the garlic/crème fraîche bowl.

Add just a little olive oil, perhaps a half a teaspoon, and give it a good stir. Refrigerate until needed.

Cut your leftover lemon peel into thin slices.

Put the tomatoes in a heatproof dish that will be big enough for your fish filets later. Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle with salt and crushed red pepper. Top with the slices of lemon peel.

Roast the tomatoes in the preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, season both sides of your fish filets with salt and black pepper (if you are fortunate enough to have remembered to buy some) and drizzle them with olive oil.

Remove the tomatoes from the oven and carefully transfer them to another dish.

Place the fish filets in the baking dish and top with the tomatoes.

Put it back in the oven and bake until the fish is opaque and cooked through, about 10-15 minutes depending on the thickness of your filets.

Serve each filet with half of the tomatoes and a generous dollop of the garlic lemon crème fraîche. If you’d like, a side green salad rounds out the meal.

Enjoy!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Gorgonzola Pepperoni Pizza Muffins #MuffinMonday

As I write this and schedule it to post on Monday morning, the moving company folks have just called it a day for day one of Pack Out Cairo. We have two more days of packing up and then on Tuesday, the 40-foot-high-top container will arrive and they will attempt to make all the boxes fit into that sucker. Always a nail-biter but I am feeling good this time. I have bought just a couple of things since we moved to Cairo and they aren’t big. And I have given some stuff away. And we came 11 months ago with the same size container. So: feeling pretty good. Also feeling pretty good about Muffin Monday this week! Finally, a savory muffin! Anuradha didn’t tie us down to one recipe, just an ingredient: Cheese. Well, you know I am all over that! So I had a rake through the freezer and the cheese drawer (You don’t have a cheese drawer in your refrigerator? Well, why the heck not? I am flexible on what can go in there and, so, there is actually a baloney from Bologna there too. And some beef salami.) and came up with some gorgonzola, pepperoni and a bag of frozen homemade pizza sauce. Oh, yeah! But you knew that from the title already, didn’t you? As they say in Malaysia, you so smart. Make this muffin. You even smarter.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1 egg
1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil
1 cup or 240ml pizza sauce, divide into 1/2 cup or 120ml for muffin and balance for topping
100g Gorgonzola (And other strong cheese can be used as well.)
50g pepperoni

Method
Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and generously grease your muffin tin or use paper liners.

Cut your pepperoni into pieces and grate or cut your cheese into chunks. My Gorgonzola had been in the freezer so, as you can see, it crumbled when I tried to cut it. If you would like, reserve 12 small pieces of the pepperoni to put on top of the batter before baking.

In a large bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, crushed red pepper and dried oregano.

Add the cut pepperoni to the flour mixture and use your hands to separate the little pieces from each other.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, milk, and oil together.

Add your wet ingredients to your dry and mix just until it is just combined.

Gently fold in half of the pizza sauce and all of the Gorgonzola cheese. It's NOT pretty but don't let that put you off. It will be delicious.

Spoon the batter into your prepared muffin tin.

Divide the remaining pizza sauce between the muffin cups. Top with a little piece of pepperoni, if saved.

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the muffins to cool for a few minutes then remove from the muffin pan and cool on a rack.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Gram's Fig Spice Bundt Cake with Buttermilk Glaze for #BundtaMonth

This summer I went to a farmers’ market in New Iberia, Louisiana with my grandmother. We bought a bunch of figs and I made her fig preserves. I mean I made fig preserves for her, from HER own recipe. Simplest recipe ever and you can find it here. On that same visit, she let me clear out the drawer of recipes and cookbooks that she had accumulated over the years and take them home with me. Amongst them, I found her handwritten recipe for fig cake with buttermilk glaze.

Unfortunately, I had sent her all the fig preserves I made so, how to make the cake? Until I found this on the shelf at my local Carrefour in Cairo.

Back in business! Are the Carrefour preserves as a good as Gram’s homemade ones? Probably not. But this cake is awesome and delicious and it is also my contribution for November’s edition of BundtaMonth where we are making spice cake. Scroll on down to the bottom of this post to see links to all the lovely spice Bundt cakes that have been made this month. Gram has a serious sweet tooth and I think she would like them all! Many thanks to our hosts for this challenge: Anuradha at Baker Street and Lora at Cake Duchess.

My grandmother will turn 99 years old next month – on 22 December - and we are hoping and praying that she continues in good health so we can celebrate 100 years next year. And many birthdays thereafter. We think she has a shot at a world record. She still asks to go to the casino on her birthday because they give her free money to gamble! We should all live so long and so well.

Here she is hopping up on the red swing in her yard last summer. Red has always been her favorite color and the swing is her favorite place to hang out.

Her one true love lately is this cat she calls Minou. Which means Kitty in French. All of her cats over the years have been called Minou. Because she has a great sense of humor and it keeps life simple.

And one last photo where she is smiling. That's a hard one to catch. With her two youngest children, my Aunt Nonnie and Uncle Kippy. :) My father is her eldest and he just turned 77 this month. Imagine if your child is 77! Love you, Gram!

Ingredients
For the Bundt:
2 cups or 250g flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups or 340g sugar
1 cup or 225g butter, melted and cooled
1 cup or 240ml buttermilk
3 eggs
1 cup fig preserves (if using homemade, chop the figs and use the juice as well)
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans because I am pretty sure that’s what Gram would have used.)
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the glaze:
1 cup or 220g sugar
1/2 cup or 120ml buttermilk
1 tablespoon corn syrup or Lyle’s Golden Syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons or 60g butter

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease and flour your Bundt pan liberally.

Mix dry ingredients, add butter and beat well.

Add eggs one at a time, alternating with buttermilk.

Scrape down the bowl.

Then add figs, nuts and vanilla. Beat for another couple of minutes on medium.

Pour into the prepared Bundt pan and bake for one hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool for at least 10 minutes then run a knife or wooden skewer around the pan edges to loosen. I clearly overfilled my pan so I had to cut around the middle to make sure it would release.

Put your cake plate on top of the Bundt pan and invert. If you have greased and floured it well, the cake should drop out easily. Allow to cool completely.

While the cake is cooling, let’s make the glaze. Mix all ingredients and boil for six minutes, stirring constantly. The original recipe says three minutes but the glaze was very runny and I figured, even on a cooled cake, most of it would end up on the cake plate below.

Allow to cool until it thickens slightly. Drizzle over cake.

This glaze hardens somewhat and turns almost clear on the cake, making a shiny sticky, chewy outside which is the perfect match for the tender crumb inside. I cannot tell you how freaking good this is. Hats off to you, Gram! It’s a winner.