Braised French Onion Chicken with Gruyère

We recently signed up for a fruit and vegetable box that is delivered to our door every two weeks.
The last box contained a whole bunch of onions so I decided to make a dish that I made once before and really enjoyed: Braised French Onion Chicken with Gruyère!
It takes a bit of time to make, but it is very yummy.

This time, I also made mushrooms in a cream and brandy sauce to go with the chicken:

Ingredients

Butter
Mushrooms
Onions
1/2 cup cream
2 tbsp cognac or brandy
Corn starch
Salt
Pepper

Melt the butter in a pan, add onions and fry until translucent. Cut the mushrooms into halves or thick slices and add them to the onions. Fry for two minutes. Add the cream and brandy, and increase the heat. Simmer until the liquid is reduced. Add cornstarch to thicken the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I served the chicken and mushrooms with potatoes. Yum!

French Savory Pumpkin Tarte

I have made this pumpkin pie recipe a bunch of times over the years. It's my favorite pumpkin pie - why add sugar to a dish when you can add cheese instead, right!? :P

Ingredients

For the crust:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, cut into small pieces
4 tbsp (or more) cold water

For the filling:
400g of pumpkin, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 onion, diced
2 eggs
1 egg white
2 tbsp creme fraiche
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
50g parmesan,
50g gruyere,
25 g butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Melt the butter in a pan and add onions and pumpkin. Cook until pumpkin is reduced to a puree. Let the mixture cool and add the eggs, cheese, creme fraiche, parsley, salt and pepper.

In a large bowl, add flower and salt. Use your hands to "massage" in the butter until the mixture has a slightly coarse consistency and when you pinch it, it sticks together in clumps. Add cold water and work into a dough. Make a thick disk, wrap in cling foil and chill for about 30 minutes.

Roll out the dough. It's easiest when you roll out the dough between two sheets of cling foil. Line a round baking pan with the crust, use a fork to make some small holes in the dough. Bake for about 10 minutes.

After the crust is pre-baked, brush it with the egg white. Add the pumpkin puree.

Turn the oven down to 360 F (360 °C. Bake for 30-40 minutes until done).

Pancakes

One Saturday I woke up realizing that I have never made pancakes from scratch. I quickly went about changing that.

Using this recipe I whipped together 

1 egg, beaten fluffy

3/4 cup of milk

2 tbs of butter, melted

1 cup of flour

1 tbs of sugar

1/4 tsp of baking powder and

1/2 tsp of salt.

Using 1/4 cup at a time I poured the batter on a hot pan and in zero-point-nothing (Null Komma Nix) I had 6 and 1 half pancakes for breakfast.

They weren't quite as fluffy as pancakes usually come (I believe it has something to do with either too much or too little liquid in the batter). But with berries, maple syrup and whipped cream they were quite enjoyable.

Autumn Mac and Cheese

This recipe is basically the same as the Mac and Cheese recipe that I posted a while ago. Only I've added roasted butternut squash and zucchini :)

Ingredients:
elbow macaroni
butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes
zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch slices
olive oil
1/4 cup of butter
1/8 cup of flour
1.5-2 cups of milk
0.5-1 cup of stock
0.7 lb of cheese (I used medium cheddar)
turmeric
white pepper

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Place butternut squash and zucchini in a bowl, drizzle with olive oil and stir until they are coated with oil. Place vegetables on a roasting pan and place it in the oven. Stir after 5-8 minutes and return to the oven for another couple of minutes until vegetables are almost done.

Cook the elbow macaroni in salty water until they are not quite done. Submerge in ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain. Combine with vegetables
Melt butter in a skillet, stir in the flour on low heat until the color becomes a light brown. Add the milk and keep stirring. Then add spices, stock and cheese. The cheese does not have to melt all they way.
Measure an equal amount of macaroni and vegetables and cheese sauce (e.g. 2 cups) and mix them together in an oven proof dish. Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes.

Mac and Cheese

The other day I volunteered in a kitchen and made Mac and Cheese for the first time. I didn't get to try our creation as our volunteer shift ended before the meal was baked. So I tried it at home.

I thought it lacked a bit of salt, maybe I didn't put enough of it in the boiling water of the elbow macaroni, maybe I didn't use the right kind of cheese. I'll experiment some more with this recipe in the future!

Ingredients:
elbow macaroni
1/4 cup of butter
1/8 cup of flour
1.5-2 cups of milk
0.5-1 cup of stock
0.7 lb of cheese (I used medium cheddar)
turmeric
white pepper

Cook the elbow macaroni in salty water until they are not quite done. Submerge in ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain.
Melt butter in a skillet, stir in the flour on low heat until the color becomes a light brown. Add the milk and keep stirring. Then add spices, stock and cheese. The cheese does not have to melt all they way.
Measure an equal amount of macaroni and cheese sauce (e.g. 2 cups) and mix them together in an oven proof dish. Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes.

I also tried adding mushrooms and served the Mac and Cheese with broccoli.

Pelmeni

This Russian national dish is easy to make, albeit I suspect no one would call it quick, but everyone likes it.

For the dough I used this recipe from a German website. Then I made a beef filling and a vegetarian filling.

Dough
400 g flour
2 eggs
150 ml warm water
1/2 tsp salt
Add the salt to the flour then add warm water to the flour and begin mixing. Then add the eggs and knead until all ingredients are well combined. Cover with a wet cloth and let the dough sit for 20-30 min.

Beef filling
1 lb ground beef
1.5-2 onions, blended
2 tbsp soft butter
salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, parsley
Combine all ingredients. Done.

Potato filling
boiled potatoes
milk
butter
1/2 onion
salt, pepper
Cut the onion in little pieces and fry until golden/translucent. Mash potatoes with a bit of the water they were boiled in, add milk, butter, onion, salt and pepper.

To form the Pelmeni separate the dough in half and make about 1.5-2 inch thick rolls. Then cut 1.5-2 inch pieces off, roll them into balls, use flour to dust the table and roll the dough balls out into very flat circles.
Then place filling onto a circle, fold it in half making sure to pinch the outer line of the half circle together. Then fold the edges together. (See picture)
Cook for about 10 minutes. Serve with butter and or sour cream.

Cookie Butter Mug Cake

10 seconds after I saw this video I was already mixing together butter, cookie butter, sugar and so on. Every since I heard of microwave cakes I was intrigued! My first attempts to make brownies in the microwave were all quite disappointing as they were all quite spongy, even when the recipes claimed they wouldn't be.
This cake was a pleasant surprise and I call it a success! It still can't compete with a real cake, but for 3 minutes of work it is a worthy little snack.
I added chocolate chips :)

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp cookie butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
pinch of salt
In a 2 cup Pyrex dish, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the remaining ingredients and combine well.
"Bake" in the microwave for 90 seconds.
Serve hot with whipped cream on top.

Pound Cake

After the muffins from BakeWise turned out so incredibly well, I wanted to try more recipes. One of the first recipes in the book is the Great American Pound Cake. This cake gets so much attention that there are 4 different recipes. The one that caught my attention was the recipe that called for whipped cream to be mixed gently into the dough just before baking. Clearly any cake that gets whipped cream is going to be a good one! One of the important things for this recipe is the bundt cake as the cake will not rise properly in a normal cake pan (or fall back in after baking and look sad). So I got a beautiful bundt cake pan and tried the recipe to bring to game night.

2 cups butter
2 3/4 cups coconut sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
6 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup whipping cream
butter for the bundt pan
Combine butter and coconut sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time. Add flour bit by bit.
In a separate bowl, whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the dough. Pour the batter into a buttered bundt cake pan and bake for 40 min at 350F / 180C.

I was shocked to find that 2 cups of butter are 1 pound of butter and 2 3/4 cups of coconut sugar are 1 pound of coconut sugar! A scary suspicion about the name of the cake crept up on me..
When I took the cake out of the oven and out of the bundt pan, it seemed quite dark and I was afraid it was burned (it turned out not to be the case), so I quickly made a batch of the delicious and quick Apple-Cinnamon-Muffins to bring to game night as well. To my utter surprise the muffins paled next to the pound cake! Everyone loved moist and sweet pound cake and we got the take most of the muffins back home.

It surely wasn't the last time I made this cake but it won't become a regular one for me, the pound of butter and pound of sugar scare me a little bit.

Savory Corn Bread

What I didn't know before I made this: Corn bread in the US is usually sweet.
This recipe from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher is the second corn bread recipe I tried and, as the first one, it is not sweet. So I was quite surprised to find out that this is not the "normal" corn bread.

1 cup cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cups milk, hot
4 tbsp butter
3 eggs
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 tsp baking soda or 2 tsp baking powder
1 cup grated Parmesan
Mix cornmeal, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Add hot milk while stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Add the remaining ingredients.
Bake at 350F / 180C for

This particular recipe has way too much nutmeg for my taste and if I make it again I will probably leave it out all together. Apart from that I liked it with stew and soup!

Apple Cinnamon Muffin

Until I found this recipe I have mostly used my muffin pan to bake mini quiches, mini corn bread and other mini things that were not muffins.
Then I stumbled upon the following recipe in the book "BakeWise" by Shirley O. Corriher. It promised that the muffins would be deliciously moist and flavorful and I decided to finally make muffins with my muffin pan!
I mostly stuck to the recipe, although I used baking soda instead of baking powder and dried coconut instead of frozen coconut. And as always, I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar.

1 cup pecans
1 tbsp butter
salt
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda or 2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup coconut sugar
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cored and peeled apple, cut into chunks
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup coconut shreds
Roast pecans in the oven, add some butter and salt.
Mix flour and baking soda (make sure that the baking soda is well distributed), add cinnamon and coconut sugar.
In a second bowl mis eggs, canola oil and vanilla extract. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and combine well.
Add apples, carrots, raisins and coconut shreds.
Bake for 18 min at 400F / 200C, then cool an a cooling rack.

The muffins were indeed deliciously moist and very yummy! I made them a couple of times since the first try. Once, I ran out of coconut and made the muffins without it. Surprisingly that had a huge influence on the taste, they are much better with the coconut shreds!

Cakes in Jars - or in a Muffin Pan

After seeing this video of how to bake cakes in jars I thought, I could do the same in my beloved muffin pan. I am also a big fan of recipes with few ingredients and this recipe has only five: berries, flour, sugar, butter and a pinch of salt.

So I distributed 2 1/2 cups frozen (instead of fresh) berries among the 12 muffin molds, mixed 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of coconut sugar and some salt and poured it on the fruit. At the end I added about 1/8 stick of butter (1/2 oz or 15 g) to each mold.

It tasted chewy and very good especially topped with ice cream!

But the mini cakes did not hold their form and it was only possible to eat it out of the muffin pan or spooned into another dish (hence the jars would be much more convenient) and for my taste it was too much butter. I thought that the butter would not seep through all the flour sugar mixture resulting in pockets of dry flour. But that was not the case at all.

I next time I want to try using half the amount of butter.

Chicken Pie

I tried baking mini Chicken Pot Pies in my muffin pan. I didn't actually look up a recipe and the only Chicken Pot Pie that I ever had was the microwave Chicken Pot Pie the day before which led to me thinking "Hm, I bet I can make this myself!"
Apparently I couldn't and the result didn't taste like Chicken Pot Pie usually tastes. So I am calling it a Chicken Pie

For the Crust:
1 cup of flour
1/2 stick of butter
2 eggs
salt, pepper
Mix together, roll out between two sheets of cling foil. Lift the upper foil and use a big cup to cut out circles to press in the muffin pan molds. Safe some dough for sealing the pies. Blind bake at 300 F for about 10 min.

For the filling:
onion, chopped
broccoli, cut into small pieces
peas
carrots, pealed and cut into small pieces
chicken breast
Fry the onion in some oil and add the vegetables. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and fry until chicken and veggies are done. Cut chicken into small pieces.

For the sauce:
Turkey stock
corn starch or flour
butter
cream
paprika, salt, pepper
lemon juice
Melt butter in a hot pan, add corn starch or flour and spices. While stirring fast add the turkey stock and cream until the sauce has the desired consistency. Add more salt, spices and lemon juice if needed.

Mix the sauce with the veggies and chicken and fill the muffin pan. Add dough lids and bake until lids are golden for about 20-30 minutes.


I need to learn how to use my seasoning and spices. The pies had too much pepper and not enough salt. But otherwise they were quite tasty.

Puff Pastry Roll Filled With Salmon and Spinach

Puff pastry is great! For dishes with spinach, with cheese, with tomatoes, with cinnamon, with nuts and sugar..
..and for salmon! I tried out this German recipe of a Salmon and Spinach Puff Pastry Roll and adapted it a little bit. It's now one of my favorite recipes even though I've only made it twice so far. It's easy and quick to make and tastes really good!

Puff Pastry Roll Filled With Salmon and Spinach
1 sheet frozen puff pastry
1/2 - 1lb salmon
1/2 onion, chopped
1 bunch spinach or frozen spinach
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cream cheese
salt, pepper
1 egg, whisked
Thaw the puff pastry and roll it out with a rolling pin.
Fry onion in a pan, add spinach and fry for a couple of minutes. (optional: add some flower). Add salt and pepper.
Fry salmon for a couple of minutes and cut into 1-2 inch cubes.
Mix sour cream and cream cheese and season with salt and pepper.
Spread the sour cream mix on the pastry, leaving 1-2 inches. Distribute spinach and salmon on top of the sour cream mix. Roll the pastry with the filling from one side to another, ending without the sour cream mix.
Transfer roll unto a baking dish and brush with the egg.
Bake at 375F for 25-30 minutes until golden.

This yummy roll can be served by itself, or with a simple white sauce.

For the White Sauce:
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup cream
salt, pepper, white wine, lemon juice
Melt the butter, slowly add the flour. Then add vegetable stock and cream until the sauce has the consistency you like. Season with salt, pepper, white wine, lemon juice. Serve with the puff pastry roll.

Another one of my favorite recipes that goes well with this one is Potato and Corn Casserole from Argentina.

And of course veggies :)