Tuesday 24 November 2009

Gnome Journal is out :)

A new number of GNOME Journal is out.. do you see anyone familiar there? http://www.gnomejournal.org/article/87/where-are-they-now-the-participants-of-the-2006-womens-summer-outreach-program

Well, that's an article about a project I participated three years ago..

I hope they keep trying to encourage more women to join this fantastic community! (I'll keep spreading the word too..)

Sunday 1 November 2009

Halloween

I'm not a big fan of Halloween... I think I would never get a costume on and go bananas celebrating this american tradition.
But any change to do some cooking and to spend some cosy time with friends is welcomed.

We planned to have a cosy evening with friends, meeting for cooking and having some nice food yesterday night, and just a couple of days before we realized it was actually halloween. So we decided to have something haloweenish for dinner.

It ended up being pumpkin soup for a starter (with coco milk and ginger... yummy!), roast-beef with sweet mashed potatoes (a bit orangy) and a fabulous bat-cake!

The cake came already prepared, in a nice box, but the rest we made it together, with a glass of wine in hand and good company!


The bat-cake is a secret... but here you have the other two recipes... Pumpkin soup with coco milk and Roast-beef with sweet potato mash ... get ready to enjoy some good food :)

Roast-beef with sweet potato mash

Ingredients
(serves 4 people)

800g-1kg prepared roast-beef
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, or 1 teaspoon smashed black peppercorns
Salt
3-4 sweet potato, peeled and cubed into small pieces
3-4 baking potato, peeled and cubed into small pieces
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons cream fraîche
100ml  (or more if necessary) cooking cream (about 12-15% fat)




Instructions

Cover the roast-beef piece with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees and then brown the meat for 15 min. Put the temperature down to 165 degrees and let the meat cook until it is done (it has to be about 60 degrees inside). It should take about 40 min.

While the meat is cooking, place the sweet potato and baking potato chunks into a pot of cold water. Bring to a boil, and cook until fork-tender, about 20 minutes from the boil.
Drain off the potatoes, and then return them to the same hot, but now dry, pot. Put the pot on a low heat for just about 1 minute, to allow any excess liquid to burn off. Add in the butter and crème fraîche and season with salt and a bit of pepper. Mash the potatoes with a potato masher. Then add the cream until you have the consistency you desire. Mash a bit more, and you're done.

Pumpkin soup with coco milk


Ingredients
(serves 6 people)

1 piece of pumpkin (about 1200g)
1 bunch spring onions
2 carrots
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 liter of vegetable broth
Sal
Freshly ground pepper
A bit of ground nutmeg
1 / 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
150 g of cream
400 ml. coconut milk (canned)
2 tablespoons grated coconut

Instructions

Remove the seeds from the pumpkin, peel and cut into small pieces. Wash and peel the onions and carrots. Cut the carrot into small cubes and onions into big pieces. Separe part of the green stalk and cut in slices for garnish.

Melt butter in a pan and sauté onions until transparent. Then, incorporate pumpkin, diced carrots and ginger and cook everything for 1 minute.

Add the vegetable broth and spices, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon. Cover the pan and let simmer about 20 minutes.

Reduce to a purée using a blender, and stir in the cream and coconut milk, stirring constantly. Give one boil, season with salt and pepper and garnish the soup with green onion slices and reserved coconut.