Australian Granny Smith apples in puff pastry

This week we discover Australian recipes which provide quick, fragrant, tasty and colourful food! Just think about the most Australian of all Australian apples - the Granny Smith kind, dated back to the 19th century. Go quickly to your local shop for a puff pastry packet and treat your family with this little and sweet beauties!

Granny Smith apples in puff pastry 

 makes 24 

300 g packet  of puff pastry

2 Granny Smith Apples 

2 egg whites

4 Tbsp sugar

1. Cut the puff pastry into 4x4 cm squares. Cut apples in two halves and every one of them into another 6 pieces of the quaters' shape.

2. Place the apple pieces on the squares diagonally and stick together the left corners.

3. Beat slightly the egg whites, mixing in 2 tablespoons of sugar. Brush the puff pastry and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

4. Bake in 200 degrees for 18 minutes. 

 Enjoy!!!
Enter the Australian conference here!

Australia in the Modern World - foretaste of the tasting.

Australia in modern world. Between Asia, America and Europe - the conference organised by Australia, New Zealand and Oceania Research Association is walking fast. It is this Friday, November 26th, in Cracow. Around midday you would try some marvellous Australian wines, as well as the food. I am planning some must-to-do Australian dishes, as Anzac biscuits and little Pavlovas with fruits, but also some really old-fashioned jellies and seafood mousses. Should I encourage you to come and try a crocodile or a roo*? I don't think so. 

Before this, I opened my Australian and New Zealand Complete Book of Cookery and inspired by that prepared this tropical mousse. While making it, the smell was really promising and the taste is equally rewarding. The method is truly Australian - according to the rule keep it simple.

Australian tropical mousse

(makes 2 portions)

125 ml water

110 sugar

a pinch of cream od tartar

10 g gelatine

40 ml fresh orange juice

1 tsp lemon juice and some extra for a banana

1/2 tsp of the lemon and orange rinds grated

60 ml condensed milk

1 banana

1 passionfruit

1. Place water, gelatine, sugar and cream of tartar in a pot and boil over a medium heat for 10 minutes. Allow to cool and thicken.

2. When the mixture gets the consistency of the egg white, add the lemon and orange juices and the rinds. Beat until foamy. 

3. Add milk and continue beating for few minutes.

4. Slice banana, coat with extra lemon juice and drain well. Mix in the mousse and divide into separate cups. 

5. Chill in the fridge until set. Decorate with passionfruit pulp and some extra bananas.

See you on Friday at the Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, before 12 am. You can enter here.

*kangaroo

Thai pumpkin soup

The natural sweetness of the pumpkin is heightened by the addition of a little sugar in this lovely looking soup, but this is balanced by the chillies and shrimp. This is my version of Thai shrimp and coconuts soup. Please you can try, it is so tasty.




For six portion

450 gram peeled pumpkin
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 shallots, finely chopped
½ tbsp. of shrimp paste
2 fresh green chillies, sliced
600 ml of chicken stock
½ tbsp. of sugar
500 ml coconuts milk
30 ml of Thai fish sauce
150 gram small cooked shrimps
1 tbsp. coconuts oil
Black pepper, salt.




Cut pumpkin into quarters. In pot heat coconuts oil and put garlic, shallots, shrimp paste, green chillies, sugar and salt and fired they 1 minute. Add chicken stock and stir soup. Add pumpkin and simmer about 15 minutes until pumpkin is tender. Add fish sauce and coconuts milk and boil 5 minutes. Add prawns and cooked next 3 minutes. Serve warm soup and garnish black pepper.
Enjoy!

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Pumpkin cookies
Pumpkin soup
Time of Hallowe'en

Pumpkin soup

Halloween means for me only one thing - pumpkins. Every year I cook a few dishes with this nice vegetable. This year Thai cuisine and new polish dishes are my inspirations.
The first dish is a soup. The recipe combines elements of Polish cuisine and Asian spices. The soup has a rich flavour and beautiful bouquet of smell. When I prepared the dish this nice smell was in whole my apartment. I felt like in oriental country though behind the window it was Irish grey day.

Try this soup. It is good for a cold day.

0,5kg sliced pumpkin in big pieces
5 tbsp of oil
3 tbsp of yellow curry powder
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground black pepper
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp fish sauce
4 tsp Soya sauce
500 ml of hot water
250 ml of coconut milk

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Oil, curry powder, salt, pepper and garlic mix together.
The mixture spread on every piece of pumpkin and put on baking tray. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees.

After baking, pieces of pumpkin and water put into blender and mix well.
Transfer pumpkin cream to pot and add coconut milk, Soya sauce and fish sauce and cook soup.



Serve with pumpkin seeds and fresh cream.

Enjoy!!!

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Similar Posts:

Pumpkin cookies
Thai pumpkin soup
Time of Hallowe'en

Mocca white chocolate muffins

That was my old dream to make muffins both with coffee and some chocolate. Of course not everything run smoothly this time. For example, take into account that if you melt sugar instead of mixing it with tlour it becomes a liquid ingredient and you have to add some extra flour. Let's say, twice more than originally presumed. Secondly, you can always ask a neighbour for... an egg. And finally, you can drop the bag of sugar while sprinkling it into the milk so anyway you have to double all the other ingredients...

Mocca white chocolate muffins

540 g flour (yeah...)

3 heaped tspns cream of tartar

1,5 heaped tspns baking soda

pinch of salt

375 ml milk

140 g brown sugar

70 g vegetable oil

100 g white chocolate chopped (or more...)

3 tspns of instant chicory coffee

1 slightly beaten egg

1. Lightly heat the milk, dissolving all the sugar and coffee and cool down.

2. Mix the sifted flour, cream of tartar, soda, salt and the chopped chocolate.

3. Add an egg and oil to the milk and combine with the dry ingredients.

4. Bake for 25 minutes at 185 degrees. Makes really large 12 muffins.

Another surprise can be that your yummy chocolate has melted completely (you just forgot that it used to happen before) which however does not affect the general reception.

And how to make a good shot if I am so impatient because of apetite?

Polish basic yeast dough. Old recipe, new exciting buns

I love the yeast dough as everyone in Poland does. It is not that difficult to make and is so versatile! Some are afraid of the rising time, unnecessarily. That is the pleasure to commune with a living organism. And to shape it into real doughnuts or to sink in some  sour rhubarb, sweet strawberries or succulent berries. Or to bake buns for an afternoon treat.

Marzipan apricot yeast buns

650 g flour

250 ml milk

40 g fresh yeasts*

100 g sugar

2 eggs

few drops of almond essence

100 ml vegetable oil

200 g marzipan, divided into 30 pieces

15 dried apricots, chopped into stripes

* Dry yeasts are also working but don't believe that all you have to do is to mix it with the flour!!! Handle them exactly as you would treat the fresh yeasts.

1. Warm the milk till tepid.  Dissolve yeast. In a bowl with sifted flour make a hole and pour in the milk. Mix with some of the flour until the mixture gets the thickness of a thick youghurt. Sprinkle with some flour, cover with a cloth and leave until frothy. 

2. Beat the eggs, sugar and almond essence well.

3. Using the electric beater (that is the cleanest way, traditionally you would use a hand or a wooden spoon) mix in the dough the egg mixture and oil. Take out onto a  pastry board and knead until smooth and flexible and then a few minutes more. Use some extra flour for kneading if necessary. Leave covered with a cloth in an oiled bowl for proofing. It needs to double the size.

4. Punch the dough and take out onto floured pastry board. Divide into four pieces, form logs of them, and divide each one into 7-8 pieces (about 40 g each). Place a piece of marzipan and a bit of apricot in the middle and close the dough over it. You can also roll it for a few seconds for a more regular shape. Place on an oiled parchment paper, facing the joint downwards. Cover with a cloth and leave until doubled the size.

5. Put to the hot oven, 180 degrees, for 20-25 minutes. Buns should be gorgeous brown, if you are not sure, check the bottom. If the bottom is fair, leave buns for some time more. It cannot be burnt, but can be really brown. 

This yeast recipe can be a base for many other cakes and buns, all you have to change is the shape. The dough itself is not too sweet so it balances well the marzipan, but for a fruit cakes you can use some extra sugar. For the doughnuts, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar when mixing the eggs with the leaven, later place a teaspoon of jam (preferably the rosehip jam) in every dough portion, stick well, leave to rise and deep-fry in a vegetable oil. We love the sweetened cottage cheese buns here. The even easier way is to roll out the dough for 1 cm, cut with a glass or a cutter circles of about 5 cm diameter, place a teaspoons of jam, fruits, or other filling on top and leaving these to rise. I also love to roll the dough thinly (about 0,5), spread it with jam, raisins, sugar and cinnamon, or whatever you have, form a Swiss roll, cut it into slices and spread the slices on a baking tray to rise.
 

I won't write anything else, you have to make it yourself, to play with the soft dough, to watch the proofing, to shape the small jewels, and to hold off yourself from the aroma appealing hot buns. I wait for your thoughts how you've made it.

Cenci rombs

Yummy, yummy, yummy! Another recipe from the series 'while we have no oven'. For the Fatty Thursday we have a special Polish version of cenci. We then treat ourselves with doughnuts also. This recipe is a modified version of the traditional cenci. The difference is that I use here less eggs so it is even cheaper but still very very good. This huge portion dissapeared in two days (there is much of them from this amount of ingredients). To good to deny it, hard to resist.

Cenci rombs

600 g flour

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking powder

6 Tbsps icing sugar

200-300 ml milk

1/2 l oil for frying

1.  Sieve the flour, baking powder and icing sugar onto the kneading surface.

2. Add slightly beaten egg and milk (this one gradually) and knead until smooth and  not sticking.

3. Divide into four pieces. Roll out very thinly one after another using some extra flour for dusting. Cut into small rombs.

4. Heat the oil in a heavy pan. Fry until golden on both sides. Drain on the paper towel.

5. Cool down and dust heavily with the icing sugar. The more sugar the better!!!

6. Hide well if you want to have some for later.

 I guess that this dough with less milk and no sugar would result in some quite nice home made chips.