‘Have your cake and eat it’ cheese cake.

May 20, 2013 //

I have to confess to you that I did not expect this to work today. When it did I felt I needed to share it with the world.. well maybe not the world just those who are constantly looking for delicious yet healthy foods. It is a cheese cake minus the butter, full fat cream cheese and eggs. After gobbling two mini ones down, as I needed to test one and photograph the other, they do feel light…. . I must warn though that because I did not use any butter in the digestive base, it does cumble quickly but who cares right? Also it must be served immediately after chilling and not left at room temperature. Do you ever just want to have your cake and eat it too?

Ingredients

150g of digestive biscuits
100 g low fat philadelphia cheese
50 g zero fat Total Greek Yoghurt Strained
Juice of half a lemon
2 tsp lemon zest
1 packet lemon crystals Jello (I used 85g Jelly vegetarian lemon falvored crystals)
3 tablespoons icing sugar
15 strawberries halved and quartered, macerated in juice of another half a lemon and 1.5 tablespoon castor sugar

Method

I used an 8-10 cm fluted loose bottomed individual mini tins. Basically the jelly will hold the cream cheese mixture together. It it important that you strain the yoghurt to make it less water on the base of the biscuits. Follow the instruction on the jelly packet, making surr you refrigerate once cooled down. Keep in the fridge over night or 3/4 hours.
Place the biscuits in a plastic bag and beat with a wooden spoon. I simple pressed the biscuits carefully into the mold, constantly pressing the sides and middle part. Place in the refrigerator over night or for 1 hour.
Add the lemon juice and sugar to the cut strawberries and leave to macerate in the fridge for an hour.
With an electric mixer mix the strained yoghurt, the cream cheese, the zest, juice, sugar and Jelly for 5 minutes until everything is
smooth. Place on top of the biscuit base and return to the fridge for 4 hours. Once set, very carefully lossen the fluted base out of the mold. Keep the metal base undearneath and serve with the strawberries and juice. Bon Appetite

Tags healthydesert, Low Fat cheese cake, vegetarian

Categories Stories & Pictures

My Grandmother

April 19, 2013 //

My grandmothers passed away this week. My sweet Lamiha who lived around 95 years of life, left us. She was fully aware of everything going on inside and outside herself, mentally alert and still completely beautiful to me. She was my friend and my laughing partner and she lives on inside my heart.

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep’

The Tempest, Shakespeare

Categories Stories & Pictures

What’s in my kitchen this April

April 9, 2013 //

I have been away from this blog for far too long. I have attempted to post on three separate occasions, once a Sahlab Ice cream that would not freeze, and two other times interrupted by a flu bug. Anyhow, here I am in Amman on a bright spring morning enjoying all that is crisp and cool. So just sharing a few new things in my Jordanian kitchen this month. These irresistible bowls bought from Le Pain Quotidien. I serve a delectable middle eastern version of porridge in them every morning. Sprinkled with Cinnamon, toasted coconut and blanched almonds, you forget you are eating porridge. For the recipe see below.

Honey, blanshed almonds , toasted coconut and cinnamon.

I decided to try my hand at baking bread. It was easy. Perhaps it is this simple no knead Recipe from The Clever Carrot blog that made it so easy. It was a simple exercise of mixing the flour with the water and Instant yeast, letting it rest over night for 12 hours inside a cool oven, waking up to fold it and resting it further. I guess all the work happens while the dough is resting. I placed the dough in 3 1/2 Quart Le Creuset Pot (a term called cooking in a dutch oven). I followed the recipe meticulously except for the yeast which I decided to dilute in warm water first. I get very mixed up between instant yeast, dried yeast and quick yeast… so I just wanted to be safe and diluted it first before adding to the flour. I also do not own a 6 1/2 quart Creuset so used half the size and it worked well.

Then there is this Marble Cake adpated from Celia in Fig jam and Lime Cordial. I added a heaped teaspoon of instant coffee to the cocoa mixture and did not add the white pepper suggested in the original recipe. I made it for my grandmother and wonderful uncle who is tirelessly looking after her at the moment.

These two Green & Balck's will be enjoyed at one point this Easter

These two Green&Black’s will be enjoyed at one point this Easter

These are sugar coated almonds. Quite popular here and known as Mlabas. My daughter insists on calling them Absa.

Pickled Baby Cucumber

Porridge Recipe for two persons

1/2 cup Quick cooking rolled Oates
1 cup semi skimmed milk
Table spoon Cinammon
Tablespoon Honey
Ten Blanched and peeled almonds
Tablespoon toasted desiccated coconut

Cook the oats in the milk on medium heat for 5 minutes. Keep stirring until the desired consistency. I like a bite to the porridge so I cook half the time and remove from heat as soon as the milk starts boiling. Add the honey and mix. Divide between two bowls. Sprinkle with the cinnamon, almonds and coconut. Enjoy!

Recipe for pickled cucumbers

500 baby cucumbers
600 Ml water
2 tablespoons Sea salt
1.5 tablespoon white vinegar

Simple using a knife cut through into each cucumber (I guess it is done to make sure the cucumbers get brined). In a bowl Mix the water with the salt and taste. Its meant to taste very salty, add the vinegar and pour into an airtight container and add something to weigh down the cucumbers. Let it rest under a window in the light for a week Bon Appetite

Tags Marble cake, No Knead honey bread, pickled cucumber, Porridge

Categories Stories & Pictures

To reteach a thing it’s loveliness.

February 11, 2013 //

I post when I have something to say. When I don’t, I won’t post. I wonder if that makes any sense to you?. I am also not one to post for the sake of celebration. I don’t get excited about New Year’s events, wedding anniversaries or any prophet’s birthdays. That can’t be a nice thing if I am your mom though. I dread my daughter’s birthday ever year. Just like I dreaded my own wedding, one year. Not sure if it is shyness, laziness or just can’t push myself into that sort of thing.

I guess what brings all this to the foreground is Valentine is coming up this week, and I don’t really celebrate that either. A one year mark has arrived and passed to this blog’s existence, birthday if you like and I have not put a candle up like many dotting bloggers do. Gladly there is no one to point out “how could you not” to me. Here I am free to just BE. On the other hand, I remember coming across a beautiful post on Valentine written last year by my friend Oz in her Kitchen Butterfly, Even though it was written for that occasion, it celebrated the self and its livelihood more than anything else. Her post made me think and feel a lot of things. It made me realise why I blog, and how much I learn when I share life stories, struggles and loves. I also fell in love with Oz’s courage and energy to share her personal experiences with food. Her writing actually resonated deeply with my own struggles and relationship with food. I will write about that at a later stage on this blog. For now and on the subject of love, food and life.. I woke up last friday and all I wanted was to bake this new chocolate cake recipe. “An ode to a chocolate cake” comes to mind. I had this recipe on my shelf for years but never took real notice to it. I am not going to marvel about its greatness. Just to say make it if you ever feel like a light sponge chocolate cake with a deep red color sponge. It is adapted from William Sonoma’s ‘Cake’.

Method.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line two 9 inch round cake pans with parchment (baking) paper.

On a baking sheet, or foil sheet, sieve the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, set aside. Mix the Cocoa in the water. Leave aside for a few minutes then add the butter milk and Vanilla to the cocoa mixture. Beat the butter first in a cake mixer until soft, then add the sugar and beat untill pale and well mixed. Add the eggs one at a time and mixing very well after each addition. Add the dry mixture in 3 additions alternating with the cocoa wet mixture. Start and end with the flour mixture. Don’t over mix, just enough to scrape down any unmixed liquids from the bottom of the bowl. Pour the batter equally in the 2 cake tins and bake until firm to the touch for 30 minutes. I use level 2 and 4 in my oven and alternate the two cake tins hlaf way through the baking time so they both cook evenly.

Take out the cake tins, allow to cool down, flip them out securely and let them cool further on wire racks. Add 1/3 the icing in the middle and smother the rest on the top and sides of the cakes. Bon Appetite

Ingredients

3 large eggs at room temperature
170 g or 3/4 cup unsaulted butter at room temp
1/2 cup butter milk room temperature (I used low fat strained greek yogurt mixed with 2 tablespoons low fat milk.
2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 dutch processed Cocoa
1 teaspoon Bi carbonate Soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 firmly packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
225g or 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

For the Icing I simply used this old and easy recipe

Tags chocolate cake, dark sponge, vegetarian

Categories Stories & Pictures

Aroos, strained yogurt wrap

January 30, 2013 //

It has been a long time dream of mine to start a Music and Dance centre for children. It took a long time to pull together the right resources, means and courage to decide to launch into such a venture. The time has come to realize this dream. I am in that “studying” phase, where numbers feasibilities, and revenues are being introduced to me by more number oriented people like my little brother. How do you measure passion and one’s dream? I guess that’s where the challenges of reality come in and one has to put on a calculating hat more than anything else. While venturing into the unknown, I needed to use my hands and eyes to do what is familiar and comforting. Preparing food, taking a picture and writing about it. In Arabic a ‘Aroos’ means a bride and Even though I am not entirely sure why it is called that, I can only guess it is because of the satin like bread that wraps the white strained yogurt. This is a wrap that most children would have enjoyed at some point in their childhood in countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

There is not a particular recipe but rather a few ingredients to put together. To bring out the contrast in the salty flavour of this wrap, its best to accompany it with a sweet cup of black tea.

How to prepare.

1/3 cup strained yogurt ( I love Total Greek yogurt)
Sprinkle that with two generous pinches of sea salt
2 large tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
fresh mint leaves
Zatar
Green pitted olived
Green thai chillies (just because I am lethal like that) I love chillies in the morning

After sprinkling the salt and mixing with the yogurt I would spread the bread in the middle cut the extra sides of the bread. Spread the yogurt, add oil, zataar, chillies, mint and olives. Fold both ends of the bread and wrap just as you see in the photos, cut in half. Enjoy. Bon Appetite.

Tags Jordanian sandwich, middle eastern, strained yogurt, vegetarian

Categories Jordanian Cuisine

‘Have your cake and eat it’ cheese cake.

My Grandmother

What’s in my kitchen this April

To reteach a thing it’s loveliness.

Aroos, strained yogurt wrap

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