Chocolate mocha soufflé

A really mouth-watering and easy to make dessert that satisfies the chocolate craving but is not too high in calories. If you use skimmed milk there should be approximately 140 cals and 6g fat per serving.

This soufflé has the consistency of a hot mousse – I love it and so do my children so I always have to double up on the quantities for this recipe!

You will need:

50g dark chocolate

2 tablespoons cornflour

1  tablespoon cocoa powder

1 teaspoon coffee granules (instant type)

4 tablespoons caster sugar

150ml milk

2 egg yolks

3 egg whites

& 6 small ramekins or tea cups (150ml capacity)

Directions:

Into a saucepan, place the chocolate, cornflour, cocoa powder, coffee granules, 1 tbsp sugar and the milk. Heat gently and stir continuously until the mixture begins to thicken. Allow to cool a little and then beat in the egg yolks.

Whisk the egg whites in a non plastic bowl until they form soft peaks and then add the sugar and whisk more until the eggs are stiff.

Gradually fold the whisked egg white into the cooled chocolate mixture using a metal spoon.

Spoon the mixture into 6 ramekins or teacups, place on a baking tray and bake at gas 5/190°C/370°F for 12 mins until puffed up.

Dust with icing sugar and serve immediately.

‘Adass ~ Algerian Lentils

‘Adass is a delicious, warming and very hearty Algerian lentil stew perfect for the winter months. It is tasty yet has surprisingly few ingredients and is simple to prepare. Typically eaten with French baguette.

Ingredients:

• 1 finely chopped onion
• 4 medium carrots, halved and chopped
• 1 stick of celery, chopped
• 1 turnip chopped into smallish chunks
• 1 potato cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 1/2 cups green lentils
• 1 tablespoon tomato concentrate past
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 2 litres water
• 2 tablespoons oil

Place all ingredients into a pressure cooker, bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to medium or a little less than medium, screw on the lid and pressurise. Cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours but check water level regularly. Take care when stirring not to break up the vegetables.

 

The lentils are ready when they are soft but not disintegrating. There should be some liquid remaining, giving the consistency of a very thick soup. Eat with bread and a little harissa if liked.

If you have leftovers, you’ll find that some of the liquid will be absorbed overnight so be careful not to make the stew too dry.

Cous cous ~ Algerian style

This is the typical cous cous with stew from my husband’s region of Algeria which is the capital and surrounding area. The sauce is ‘white’ (contains no tomato or harissa). I use courgettes, turnip and carrots although it is common to find this stew with meat/chicken and turnip (mouli/luft) only. I occasionally add one medium potato cut into 4-6 pieces also. The stew is easy to cook in a regular saucepan and the cous cous can be cooked in the traditional couscousiere or in the microwave.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 chicken cut into pieces
• 5 small courgettes (zucchini) topped and tailed
• 5 medium carrots halved vertically
• 2 small turnips, in 4 chunks
• 1/2 tin chickpeas, drained
• 1 medium potato if desired
• salt, pepper and a sprinkle of cinnamon
• 1.5 litres water

Saute the onions until soft then add the chicken pieces and spices and fry until sealed. Add the carrots, turnips, chickpeas and water and cook with pressure until almost done. Add the potato and courgette and cook further until all ingredients are cooked through.

To cook the cous cous, best results will be obtained by steaming not soaking.

Wash your cous cous, drain and leave to soak up whatever water remains. Rub grains together to separate them and then place in the top part of a steamer or couscousiere and cook until the steam breaks through the grains. Empty out into a large tray, break up the grains with a spoon and sprinkle on half a small glass of salted water and then return to the steamer. Steam a second time until the steam breaks through, turn out into a tray and with a spoon or fork rub through some butter, margarine or vegetable ghee (smen).

An alternative method of cooking the cous cous that also uses steam is to cook it in the microwave.  Wash the cous cous and leave to absorb excess fluid. Place in a large microwavable plastic bowl and cover with cling film. Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Remove from microwave and stir through a half a glass of salted water making sure to break up the cous cous grains. Cover with cling film and return to microwave for a further two minutes and then rub through some butter, margarine or vegetable ghee as above.

I find this method less messy as you use only one large bowl to cook the cous cous in and the cling film keeps the steam build up aroud the cous cous so the cooking principle remains the same. You end up with nice fluffy grains as with steaming.

Arrange the chicken and vegetables over the cous cous and serve.

Above: Cous cous after having been rinsed – leave it to absorb residual water

Above: Cous cous 10 mins later. Grains have been rubbed to separate them.

Above: Cous cous after 2 steamings in the microwave. Knob of margarine/butter melting into the hot grains.

Above: Cous cous with chicken and vegetables arranged over the top; sauce from the pot served in a separate jug.

M’barja

If you are at all familiar with Arabic cooking then you have probably heard of Ma’amoul and Maqrout. Both are types of cookie with a soft date centre. Ma’amoul is normally made with flour or flour with a small amount of semolina and of course butter. The dough is pushed into attractive moulds, the filling added and then more dough pressed in before finally dispatching the moulded dough onto the baking sheet and baking.

Similarly maqrout is made from semolina (sometimes with a small amount of flour added) and has a date or nut filling, a wooden device is used to make a pattern on the top and the maqrout are baked before being drenched in honey.

The recipe below is for an Algerian variation called M’barja or M’thaqaba. Maqrout are common in Algeria but this variation seems to be quite unique to Algeria. It is cooked on a hotplate and is eaten dry, not drenched in honey or syrup.

M’barja contains a date filling and M’thaqaba is the semolina cookie without filling.

You need:

4 cups coarse semolina

pinch salt

1 cup melted butter or margarine

1 cup orange flower water/water combination (3 tablespoons orange flower topped up with water)

soft pitted date mixture – you can buy this ready mashed

To make:

Pour the melted butter into the semolina and salt and rub in well.

Pour the water in and mix well with hands to obtain a crumbly texture. The dough will still be a little dry but if you squeeze hard you make the dough stick together.

Turn out onto the worktop and press down with your hands. Roll out with a rolling pin or your hands to about 1/2 centimetre thickness.

Cut the dough in half.

Take a handful of the soft mashed date and squeeze it with your hands to make it fairly thin. Mine was very soft so I was able to do this and then place on one half of the semolina dough and using a wet knife I spread the date completely across one half.

Using a palette knife lift up pieces of the other half of the semolina dough and piece together on top of the date layer. You should end up with something quite messy as below:

With wet hands carefully push together the edges to seal so there is one complete layer over the date with no holes.

Cut into diamonds and place on hotplate which is set over a medium heat.

Cook on each side until golden.

Traditionally eaten with morning or mid-afternoon coffee.

Eid baking underway!

Just sitting back for a moment to relax after an afternoon of baking.

Progress so far is that for Eid I have made a batch of Ghribiya. They are a light shortbread with a single almond pressed into the centre before baking:

 

Also a batch of peanut cookies. A shortbread type of recipe as the dough is very crumbly when you try to roll it out. Ground unroasted peanuts and orange flower water are also included in the dough and immediately after baking the cookies are rolled in icing sugar

M’shawek just went in the oven… this is an Algerian recipe and consists of ground almond, egg white, lemon zest and orange flower water, the sticky balls are rolled in chopped almonds and topped with a piece of glace cherry before baking.

 

Also on the menu insha’Allah: chocolate cake with chocolate butter icing inside and melted Galaxy chocolate on top (gotta keep the children happy ) and M’thaqaba also known as M’barja (semolina lozenges filled with date and cooked on the hotplate).

Algerian Chicken Chtit’ha

I don’t cook Algerian food very often, the meals we eat are quite eclectic so it seems that hubby is missing all the Algerian delights he would be enjoying if he were spending the month of Ramadan back in Algeria with his mum, sisters, brothers and extended family. Today he made a special request for Chicken Chtit’ha which is a very simple Algerian dish which is essentially chicken cooked in a tomato and garlic sauce.

You need:

1 small onion

3 cloves garlic 

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon chicken spices/baharat/ra’s al-hanout

1/8 teaspoon paprika

2 whole Allspice (the round ones that look like large peppercorns)

2 teaspoons tomato paste concentrate

1/2 can chickpeas

pieces of skinless chicken – this amount of sauce should be good for 2 or 3 whole legs

water

To make:

• Use a cheesegrater (with the largest holes) and shred the onion into a pan containing 1 tablespoon oil then using a finer grater, grate in the garlic.
• Saute on a medium heat taking care not to over colour the onions.
• When soft, add the chicken pieces and fry to seal.
• Add the spices and tomato paste, stir well and add 1/4 cup of water and the chickpeas.
• After a short while add another cup of water and bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to low-medium.
• Stir regularly and add small amounts of water if and when necessary.
• If you like it hot, add 1 teaspoon of harissa with the tomato paste.

The end result should be tender pieces of chicken in a thickish sauce that you can eat with bread; you don’t want it to dry out but also you don’t want it tobe too runny and soupy.

Oh yum!

Yummy…! I have to thank UmmAbdurRahman for this link; had she not mentioned it on her blog recently I would never have known about the Pioneer Woman . Yesterday I tried two delicious but simple recipes from the website Cheese muffins (pictured below) and Shrimp pasta.

The Cheese muffins were absolutely fantastic! I halved the recipe because they contain a lot of cheese and it would have been too much to waste if the muffins had been a disaster! I wish I had made the full amount now. I have never bought Colby-Jack cheese so I just used what I found in the fridge which, once grated, was a half-half combination of Hungarian Kashkaval (a mild flavoured semi-hard cheese) and mature English Cheddar. It’s the sort of recipe you can really use your imagination on and try different cheeses – flavoured cheeses, perhaps a little Camembert or Brie, add a sprinkle of cayenne or chilli and some garlic powder… limitless options and I will certainly be making these muffins again!

 

 

The pasta was deliciously simple and tasty and in all, I think iftar yesterday was a success (apart from the obvious lack of samosas. Oh and chocolate cake. ).

Lemon meringue mini tarts

Today was the third Wednesday of the month of Ramadan and therefore our third potluck iftar. I say potluck but actually there is no luck as we phone eachother and plan the menu ahead and decide who will make soup, who will make salad etc. I made some tandoori marinaded chicken and Algerian style borek but for the pudding I wanted to make something more typically English for a change since most of what we eat is Arabic or Asian.

I have some new mini tart tins and eventually decided on mini lemon meringue tarts (or pies). It is something my whizz-in-the-kitchen dad would make quite often when I was child and it would normally be the dessert on a Sunday afternoon after a traditional early Sunday lunch of roast meat with all the trimmings (roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy). So lemon meringue pie as my father called it, is something that reminds me of English summers  – the ones when I was child when it really was summer, not the summers the UK has been prone to of late!

Lemon meringue pie consists of three parts: a shortcrust or sable pastry crust, a tart lemony soft centre and soft meringue topping. It is cooked quickly so the meringue does not become dry or crispy as with pavlova; under the golden peaks the meringue should remain soft.

For the crust:

150g cold butter or margarine

350g plain flour (I recommend the Italian ‘00′ flour)

zest of one small lemon

75g icing sugar

1 egg + 2 tablespoons ice cold water beaten together.

Preparation:

In a food processor pulse the butter and flour together so it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the zest and icing sugar and quickly pulse again. While the processor is running drizzle in enough of the egg/water mixture to bring the dough together into a lump. Roll into a ball, wrap in a food bag and refrigerate for half an hour.

Roll out the pastry to about 1/3 cm thick and cut into rounds and then press into greased tins.

 

Prick with a fork and bake blind at gas 4/180C/350F for 10-15 mins.

To make the lemon filling you need:

1/2 cup cornflour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 1/4 cups water

3 egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue)

60g butter or margarine

Place sugar and cornflour into saaucepan, blend in the lemon juice and water and then heat over medium flame until thick and gelatinous looking.

Remove from heat and quickly beat in the egg yolks and butter and then set aside.

For the meringue you need:

3 eggs whites

1/2 cup sugar

pinch of cream of tartar if you have some

Beat the eggs whites and sugar (and cream of tartar) until stiff and forming peaks.

Assembly:

Fill the pastry shells about two thirds full and then dollop some meringue mix over the top and make peaks by touching with a teaspoon.

Bake at gas4/180C/350F for about 15 mins – until golden. Do’t overdo it or the meringue will become too crispy and will crack.

Eat hot or cold.

Chocolate fudge

I have such a sweet tooth that I crave chocolate at the best of times so you can only imagine how this is compounded during Ramadan when I am fasting. Fudge is one of those delicious melt-in-the-mouth treats I miss about England that I have not been able to find here in Saudi Arabia. Yesterday when the cravings got the better of me, I pulled out the cookbooks and was drawn to a very simple recipe for chocolate fudge ~ only three ingredients required and preparation time was less than 5 minutes!

You need:

500g dark chocolate

1 x 397g tin of sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup butter

(optional 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence)

Preparation:

In a heavy bottomed saucepan melt together the chocolate and butter and mix to a smooth consistency. Pour in the condensed milk and beat well until you achieve a homogenous mixture. Pour into a small greased tin, allow to cool a little before refrigerating. Once firm, cut the fudge into cubes. In the still warm climate of Riyadh I am finding it best to keep the fudge in the fridge as it softens to much when kept at room temperature.

Saudi Shorba with oats

There are many Algerians who insist on having Algerian Shorba Frik to break the fast every evening during the month of Ramadan. (I posted the recipe for Shorba Frik recently and it can be found here) Fortunately my Algerian husband is not one of them! He likes to eat a variety of soups throughout the month. Soups are gentle on the digestive system and are a good dish to prepare for the breaking of the fast and I enjoy making a range soups from simple cream of vegetable (leek and potato, celery, tomato, mushroom etc) to more substantial soups such as Saudi shorba with oats.

Saudi Shorba really has to be the simplest and easiest soup in the world to make! It uses minimal ingredients and no blending is required. The secret is in cooking the soup long enough for the meat to become very tender and the oats to disintegrate somewhat and become very soft so they melt in your mouth.

You need:

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic

2 or 3 pieces of lamb on the bone

1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

1 teaspoon ground cummin

salt and pepper

1 dried black lemon

1/2 cup fast cooking oats OR barley (remember that barley will take longer to cook)

Method:

Gently saute the onions and garlic in a pressure cooker, when softened add the meat and fry until sealed. Add all the other ingredients and 3/4 litre water. Stir well and bring to the boil and then cover the pan and reduce heat to a simmer. Keep checking the water level and stir regularly to stop the oats from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add more water if you want the soup thinner.

Soup is ready when the meat is tender and oats are mushy. Remove the black lemon before serving.