Pears are my beloved fruits. I could eat them endlessly. But I am reluctant to buy fresh goods from oversea just to eat fruits outside their season. So I found my solution in preserving all kind of fruits I get my hands on. Mixing them. Spicing them up.
Preserves are so easy to make. Clean & cut 1kg of fruits. Add 500g 1+2 preserving sugar, cook like described on the sugar package. Add spices if you like. With pears I like vanillia or cardamom :-)
In these last days of august we start thinking of fall... And befor everything will change colours to yellow, orange and red I wanted to use as much as possible of the wonderful green herbs from my tiny garden. So today not a really "oriental" recipe, it became more a "symphony in green"!
Basically it modified the famous "saltimbocca" using only green stuff! And now everything step-by-step.
Ingredients: sage, rosemary, thyme 2 chicken breasts 1 zucchini pitted green olives (you can also cut the pits out as I did) toothpicks 1-2 garlic cloves olive oil flour crème fraiche
Slice zucchini with a potato peeler and chicken breasts into slim stripes. Put the meat on a zucchini slice, add above one olive and the herbs.
Curls everythin to a small roll, fix it with a tootpick. Heat oil in a pan, fry with chopped garlic and a little bit of flour to thicken the sauce. Add crème fraiche on the end. Voilà!
Sometimes I'm still quite childish and just the idea to eat something just because it's said to be "sooo good for your health" makes me shiver. So when my beloved husband brought me a couple of beetroots from the market I immediately thought of something insipid and muddy - what should I do with this!?!
But I tried my best and chose a recipe from Georgia - thinking of walnuts and coriander made me forget the rest... and, it turned out delicious! Unbelievable.
So I learned my lesson not to judge beets without trying ;-)
Interested?
Take 3 medium beetroots, 1/2 onion, 3 garlic cloves, 200g of walnuts, 1 cup of fresh coriander leaves, 1/2 cup of flat-leaved parsley, 2 tablespoons of fresh dill, 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, salt and pepper.
Boil the beetroots for 40 min. In the mean time cut all the other ingredients in a mixer, eventually adding some water. Rasp the boiled beets and mix it with the sauce.
Today I have prepared something special for you ;-) It is a rainy german fall day and I was re-reading the wonderful novel "Loxandra" from Maria Iordanidou, a greek writer with roots in Istanbul, or "Poli", as the greek community there used to call its hometown until the early 1920's. The central figure, Loxandra, is a warm-hearted, gay person, loves her family, the beauty of Istanbul and cooking... I wanted to recommend this book, but again an English translation doesn't seem to exist :-( For everybody who is not reading greek at least some impressions from Old Konstantinople with a beautiful melody from Eleni Karaindrou, one of my favourite contemporary greek composers. She combines eastern and western musical heritage in the Greek tradition. But now I want you to taste a greek-turkish cake called "Revani". Ingredients for the cake: 140g of semolina (coarsly ground, if possible; what you use for Italian pasta or gnocchi) 130g of wheat flour 1 pckg of baking powder 200g of butter 6 eggs 125g of sugar some vanillin sugar
for the sirup: 500ml water 200g sugar 100g honey rosewater cinnamon pistachios
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter and flour a big, flat baking tin. Mix wheat, semolina and bakingpowder, separate eggs (yolk from the white), stir the yolks with the butter and half of the sugar and vanillin and beat the whites with the secong half until stiff. Add the whites carefully, not beating them, and distribute the dough on the baking tin. Bake 40 min, until the cake is goldbrown. Prepare now the sirup boiling water with the other ingredients for a minute. When the cake is ready, cut it into rhombs or quads and spill the sirup all over the cake. Decorate with pistachios. Serve cold with vanillia ice cream or whipped cream. Yummy!
Preserves are so easy to make. Clean & cut 1kg of fruits. Add 500g 1+2 preserving sugar, cook like described on the sugar package. Add spices if you like. With pears I like vanillia or cardamom :-)
