Rita's stroganoff to celebrate good things

I was thinking about 2015 these days and about everything that has happened so far, of how my feelings and emotions fluctuated from one side to another, back and forth all the time. I was sad in the beginning of the year because I’d lost a job I liked and could not find another – the whole country is going through a bad phase and many people are out of jobs.

Then my nephew was born and brought so much love and joy to my life, and exactly because I was unemployed I was able to be around him and help my sister in law look after him ever since his first days of life. We have such a strong bond that he smiles and throws himself at me every time he sees me.

I kept thinking that sometimes what at first might seem like a bad thing might actually turn into something good. And I think about my family, how great it is to have my brother, my sister in law and my nephew so close – it fills me with joy to look at table and see everyone together, sharing a meal, laughing, being a family. I made this stroganoff weeks ago for lunch on a Sunday and it was a hit – when I was cooking I saw this big pot of food on the top of the stove and even thought it was too much for 4 people and that there would be some left for a packed lunch on Monday, but everyone liked it so much it was all gone - we ate it all while talking, laughing and being a family. <3

Rita's stroganoff
from the lovely Rita Lobo

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
700g sirloin, cut into 5x2.5cm strips, room temperature
250g button mushrooms, cut into 3-4 slices each lengthwise
1 onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 ½ cups (360ml) heavy cream
1 ½ tablespoons tomato purée
1 ½ tablespoons ketchup
1 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ tablespoons cognac – I used sherry
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and add half or 1/3 of the beef – do not fill the pan or the beef will cook in their own juices instead of brown. Brown all the beef in batches, adding more oil after each batch is browned. Set aside.

Add ½ tablespoon of the oil, then the onion and cook until translucent, stirring occasionally to avoid burning – scrape the bottom of the saucepan to remove all the browned bits. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the tomato purée and ketchup and stir to combine. Return the beef to the saucepan, add the Worcestershire sauce and the cognac and stir to combine. Gently stir in the mushrooms.

Drizzle with the heavy cream and season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat for 15-20 minutes or until sauce is slightly thickened, stirring occasionally. Serve immediately with rice or pasta.

Serves 4

Almond, coconut and lime cake

Hello, is there anyone here? :)

It has been a while since I last published a recipe on this blog, and it has been a while since cooked anything new or interesting – I no longer know what baking is, but I’ve told you that already.

Nothing has changed in nearly a month: I’m still working like crazy (and on top of that I have resumed my Spanish classes), I rarely feel like cooking or baking and I don’t think I ever longed for weekends so much in my life before. I hope things get calmer with time and I also hope to be able to go back to cooking, baking and posting here more regularly, for it is something that makes me really happy.

While that doesn’t happen, I hope that after all this time there is still someone reading me for this cake deserves to be shared: it is absolutely delicious, tender and perfumed, and I am sure that I would feel a lot better now if there was still a slice of it around. :)

Almond, coconut and lime cake
slightly adapted from the über beautiful Summer Berries & Autumn Fruits: 120 Sensational Sweet & Savoury Recipes

Cake:
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
finely grated zest of 2 limes
1/3 cup (75g) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup (80ml) olive oil
1 ¾ cups (175g) almond meal
½ cup (50g) unsweetened desiccated coconut
¾ cup + 2 tablespoons (125g) all purpose fl our
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
4 medium eggs – I used 3 very large eggs, 70g each
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 rounded tablespoons sour cream*

Syrup:
freshly squeezed juice of 2 limes
100ml water
2 ½ tablespoons honey
1 ½ tablespoons granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Butter a tall 20cm round cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of baking paper and butter it as well.

Place the sugar and lime zest in the bowl of an electric mixer and rub with your fingertips until sugar is fragrant. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat. Remove from the heat, stir in the olive oil and leave to cool slightly.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the almond meal, coconut, flour, baking powder and salt.
Using an electric mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed until they are very thick and pale, tripled in volume and leave a ribbon trail when the whisk is lifted from the bowl. Beat in the vanilla. Gently fold the almond mixture, then fold in the butter mixture and sour cream. Pour into the pan, smooth the top and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 40-50 minutes or until risen and golden and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Syrup: in a small saucepan, bring the lime juice, water, honey and sugar to the boil. Continue to bubble steadily until reduced by half and syrupy.
Leave the cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for five minutes. Using a wooden skewer, make holes all over the top of the cake, then slowly pour over the syrup, gradually, waiting for each portion to be absorbed by the cake before pouring more. Let cool completely in the pan.

*homemade sour cream: to make 1 cup of sour cream, mix 1 cup (240ml) heavy cream with 2-3 teaspoons lemon juice in a bowl. Whisk until it starts to thicken. Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 1 hour or until thicker (I usually leave mine on the counter overnight – except on very warm nights – and it turns out thick and silky in the following morning; refrigerate for a creamier texture)

Serve 8-10

Cinnamon Cointreau brownies

My days have been very busy – a lot busier than I would like them to be, honestly – and I haven’t baked anything in weeks – I don’t even remember when I last turned on the oven for something sweet. Many weekends have gone by without cakes cooling down on racks around here. :(

I’m glad that I made a few baked goods before going back to work and I can share them with you here, like these absolutely wonderful brownies – the original recipe called for ancho chile powder, but I guess I am a bit conservative when it comes to chocolate desserts and don’t like the idea of adding chili to my brownies (sorry, Matt and Renato).

I omitted the chile powder, amped up the cinnamon and switched the fresh ginger for a healthy dose of Cointreau and the brownies turned out delicious – not only in flavor, but also in texture, very moist and fudgy (that is how I like brownies). You can use your imagination and use different spices or go for whisky or Marsala instead of Cointreau, for example, or if you have kids around use just the vanilla – I guarantee the brownies will be equally great.

Cinnamon Cointreau brownies
slightly adapted from the delicious Baked: New Frontiers in Baking and Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients

¾ cup (105g) all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon Dutch cocoa powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
140g (5oz) dark chocolate, chopped – I used one with 53% cocoa solids
½ cup (113g/1 stick) unsalted butter
¾ cup (150g) granulated sugar
¼ cup (44g) packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 teaspoons Cointreau

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Lightly butter a 20cm (8in) square pan, line it with foil leaving an overhang on two opposite sides, then butter the foil as well.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, cocoa powder and cinnamon. Set aside.
Place chocolate and butter in a large bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water (do not let the bowl touch the water) and stir until melted. Turn off heat, but keep bowl over water and add both sugars. Whisk until completely combined and remove bowl from pan. Let stand until room temperature, about 20 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, to chocolate-butter mixture and whisk until just combined. Add vanilla and Cointreau and whisk to combine. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage or the brownies will be cakey.
Sprinkle flour-cocoa mixture over chocolate mixture. Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet until there is just a trace amount of the flour-cocoa mix visible.
Pour batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake brownies for 20-25 minutes; brownies are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool brownies completely before cutting and serving.

Makes 16

Pasta with crispy sardine and oregano breadcrumbs

When I was a kid, my mom was always making something with canned sardines: they were cheap and a good staple for a family with a limited budget. One of the things she made the most was a sardine salad to be eaten in a sandwich – the same thing as a tuna salad, but made with sardines instead, it was delicious! I loved it.

Because of that, it is impossible not to think of mom whenever I see canned sardines, and when I saw this gorgeous can while food shopping in my last trip I knew I would not come home without it. A couple of weeks ago a new issue of the beautiful Donna Hay magazine arrived and there I found a recipe of pasta served with crispy breadcrumbs dotted with pieces of canned sardines – it was the perfect way of using my treasure.

This pasta dish is very simple and straightforward, I made it for a lazy Sunday lunch and it was ready in no time at all – my husband wasn’t too crazy about the sardine breadcrumbs, but I was more than happy to eat his share by the spoonful. :)

Pasta with crispy sardine and oregano breadcrumbs
slightly adapted from the always fantastic Donna Hay Magazine

400g spaghetti
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
¼ cup fresh oregano leaves, packed
50g canned sardines, drained and chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 ripe roma tomatoes, deseeded and cut into wedges
pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of salted boiling water until al dente. Before draining, reserve ½ cup (120ml) of the water to use in the sauce.

In the meantime, make the sauce: heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan. Add the breadcrumbs, oregano and sardines and cook, stirring, for 4-5 minutes or until breadcrumbs are golden and crispy. Season with salt and pepper, remove from the heat and keep warm.

Wipe the frying pan clean with a piece of paper towel and add the remaining olive oil. Heat over medium, add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes. Add the sugar, then season with salt and pepper. Add the reserved cooking liquid and the balsamic vinegar, stir to combine and cook for 2-3 minutes or until thickened. Add the pasta to the sauce and toss to coat. Serve topped with the sardine breadcrumbs.

Serves 4

Orange Marsala pound cake

Many, many years ago, without much thought, I started baking a cake every weekend, and it has become a tradition here in my house: if I don’t see a cake cooling over a wire rack on a Saturday it just doesn’t feel like the weekend.

Sometimes I struggle with choosing which cake to make, either because I have too many ideas at once or because I don’t have any. :) Weeks ago I was cooking lunch and as I poured some Marsala over the broccolini I immediately thought of adding it to a cake. After we finished eating I found an orange in my fridge and the flavor of the cake was then decided – just like that. Inspiration coming from all sorts of places – I like that a lot.

This is a moist, delicious and fragrant cake, one that I once made with whisky and nutmeg and that it turned out even more fantastic with a touch of citrus and Marsala.

Do you like making cakes on the weekend? What is your favorite cake flavor?

Orange Marsala pound cake
slightly adapted from the delicious Pure Dessert: True Flavors, Inspiring Ingredients, and Simple Recipes

2 tablespoons whole milk, room temperature
2 tablespoons Marsala wine
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
150g granulated sugar
finely grated zest of 1 large orange
105g cake flour (homemade: 15g corn starch + 90g all purpose flour)
55g whole wheat flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon table salt
180g unsalted butter, softened and in chunks

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Lightly butter a 4 to 5 cups loaf pan, line it with baking paper and butter the paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk the milk, Marsala, eggs, and vanilla to combine.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine sugar and orange zest and rub with your fingertips until sugar is fragrant. Whisk in the flours, baking powder and salt. Add the butter then pour in half of the egg mixture. Beat on low speed just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 1 minute. Scrape the sides of the bowl. Add half of the rest of the egg mixture and beat for 20 seconds. Add the rest of the egg mixture and beat for 20 seconds. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake until golden and risen and a toothpick comes out clean, 55-60 minutes. Cool the cake in the pan for 20 minutes, unmold carefully and transfer to a wire rack. Cool completely, then peel off the paper.

Serves 8-10