Courgette and feta fritters, a crazy trailer and a versatile young actor

Unfortunately I don’t have time to read all the websites and blogs I like (and I’m sure you don’t either so thank you for stopping by, I really appreciate it), but not a day goes by that I don’t visit IMDb for news on the world of cinema.

Yesterday, in one of those visits, I watched the trailer for Horns and it immediately became one of the most interesting/craziest trailers I have even seen. Daniel Radcliffe’s choices in movies and theater have been very diverse and I find it honorable that he’s interested in doing such different things, stretching himself as an actor: he does controversial, he does dark comedy, and romantic comedy as well – who can forget him staring in Equus years ago? So young, yet so versatile – I really admire that.

Daniel is versatile, all right, and so are fritters: they can be pretty much made with any vegetable in your fridge and it’s a nice vessel for them if there’s any picky eater around. These courgette fritters turned out delicious and tender – they were fast to prepare and vanished even faster. :D

Courgette and feta fritters
slightly adapted from two great sources: A Girl Called Jack: 100 Delicious Budget Recipes and Nigella Fresh

1 large courgette
1 spring onion, finely chopped
handful parsley leaves, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork
50g feta cheese, grated
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
canola oil, for frying

Coarsely grate the courgette and spread it onto a clean kitchen towel. Set aside for 20 minutes to get rid of any excess moisture.
Transfer the courgette to a large mixing bowl, add the spring onion, parsley, egg, feta and flour, season with salt and pepper and stir to combine. If batter is too thin, add a bit more flour.

Heat a drizzle of oil in a large nonstick frying pan. Dollop two tablespoons of batter per fritter, flatten with the back of a spoon and shape the edges quickly to form a rough circle. Don’t overfill the frying pan. Cook for about 2 minutes, then flip and cook until golden. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels. Repeat the process with remaining batter.

Serve at once with lime wedges.

Makes 6

Vanilla and cinnamon bread

Many people I know have been complaining a lot about the weather for many days now, but not me – I’m actually celebrating the cold days, especially after the dreadful summer we had months ago. \0/

Nothing worse than to start sweating seconds after taking a shower – I’m glad that is part of the past (at least for now).

Because of the low temperatures, keeping the oven on is always a great idea: you stay warm and there is delicious food as a result – win/win situation. :)

Last weekend was perfect for baking, and making bread is something I enjoy deeply. Without thinking too hard about what to prepare, I chose Signe Johansen’s vanilla loaf to be my afternoon project, and added cinnamon, whole wheat flour, oats and a bit more sugar to make it more my taste. The bread turned out delicious and it was also great toasted and slathered with butter.

Besides being tasty, the bread was the perfect project for another reason: I could watch a couple of Law and Order: SVU episodes while the dough proved twice.

Vanilla and cinnamon bread
slightly adapted from the über beautiful and delicious Scandilicious Baking

½ vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds removed with the back of the knife
1 cup (240ml) whole milk
50g unsalted butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
400g all purpose flour
100g whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
75g granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon table salt
3 teaspoons dried yeast
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon whole milk, extra, for brushing the loaves
handful rolled oats, for sprinkling

Place the vanilla seeds, milk, butter and vanilla extract in a small saucepan and heat until almost boiling and then allow to cool till lukewarm.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the dough hook, mix the flours, cinnamon, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and sprinkle in the dried yeast. Pour over the egg and the warm milk mixture and mix on low speed until the ingredients are incorporated. Continue mixing on low-medium speed until dough is elastic and smooth, about 8 minutes.
Place the dough in a lightly buttered large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave to rise in a warm place for 45-60 minutes or so until it has doubled in size. Butter two 4 cup capacity loaf pans.
Knock back the dough and divide it in half. Roll each half into a large rectangle, roughly 20x30cm (8x12in), then roll each forming a tight cylinder. Place each cylinder into the prepared pans. Cover and leave to prove in a warm place for about 40 minutes – in the meantime, preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.
Brush the loaves with the extra milk and sprinkle with the oats. Splash a little water in the bottom of the oven to create steam to help the loaf rise, then bake on the upper middle shelf for about 30 minutes or until the loaves are deep golden and sound hollow when tapped on the base.
Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then carefully unmold and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 2 loaves

Avocado and lemon zest linguine - becoming good friends with whole wheat pasta

I guess that once we get old and start feeling more comfortable in our own skin what others think doesn’t matter much – what you feel or like or want should come first. I like to believe that.

Back in high school it was all about being trendy and cool or, in other words, doing and saying what others did. I remember going to a concert with my friends a couple of times, it was a cover band that played Elvis Presley’s songs, but I never liked Elvis – I just pretended I liked it so I could fit in, since all the girls kept saying how great Elvis was (lucky for me the concerts were free). I was so bored one of the nights I started doing my Physics homework right there (the concerts were held on Friday evenings, and we would go right after school).

That did not do any good for my “cool reputation”, I’ll tell you that. :)

Up until months ago I would tell everyone how awful whole wheat pasta was, and make faces when people brought the subject up. Then, while reading a recipe that called for that kind of pasta, it suddenly hit me: I was just replicating other people’s opinions. I had, indeed, had my share of bad whole wheat pasta dishes, but as someone who’s been cooking for as long as I have I should know better – I should know that maybe, and just maybe, there was something wrong with what I’d tasted. It could have been a case of bad pasta or bad recipe (or both).

I continue to avoid Elvis like the plague, but I have become good friends with whole wheat pasta. :)

Things we do and say now and then, sometimes without putting much thought to them. I have been there, you probably have, too. We’re humans, we say stupid things sometimes, we follow wrong people. We make mistakes.

Nobody’s perfect.

But this pasta dish is (and I would never have thought of pairing avocado and pasta). :)

Avocado and lemon zest linguine
slightly adapted from the wonderful A Modern Way to Eat: Over 200 Satisfying, Everyday Vegetarian Recipes (That Will Make You Feel Amazing)

400g whole wheat linguine
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons capers in brine, coarsely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
finely grated zest of 2 lemons + juice of ½ a lemon
a handful basil leaves, coarsely chopped
a handful parsley leaves, coarsely chopped
2 ripe avocados
1-2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
freshly grated pecorino, for serving

Cook the linguine in a saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente (follow the instructions on the package).
In the meantime make the sauce: heat the olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan on a medium heat, then add the capers and garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the lemon zest and the herbs, mix to combine and remove from the heat.
Halve and destone the avocados, then use a knife to make criss-cross cuts through the flesh, chopping it inside the skin. Use a spoon to scoop out each half into the pan, and stir to mix all the flavors together. Before you drain the pasta, scoop out half a mugful of the pasta water. Drain the pasta, add it to the frying pan and return it to medium heat, tossing to combine. Drizzle with the lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and add a splash of the cooking water if necessary.
Serve at once, sprinkled with the cheese.

Serves 4

Almond, lemon and buckwheat tea cake and weekend plans

I think you guys should know that I managed to keep the plans I’d made for the weekend: I watched more than just one movie (one of them probably for the tenth time) and I also baked and cooked a bit – the cold days are a great excuse to keep the oven on. :)

I find it almost impossible to switch channels when some of my favorite movies are on, and yesterday one of the channels had a Godfather marathon: all the three movies were being aired in a row. I don’t care for the third movie, but I love The Godfather and The Godfather II and ended up watching the first movie once again (a couple of glasses of wine kept me from watching the second one). :)

Another thing I find almost impossible to do is to resist the urge to bake lemon cakes: as much as I try to vary – and sometimes I succeed, you know that – I always bookmark the lemon cakes in the cookbooks I buy, and this beauty was no exception: there are tons of wonderful recipes there and the first recipe I tried from it was a recipe for cookies, but after those I could not wait to take the lemony route, and here it is.

I used buckwheat flour instead of all purpose flour and loved the result – it’s not a very tall cake (mine turned out just as the one on the photo of the book) but it’s packed with flavor (and gluten free).

Almond, lemon and buckwheat tea cake
slightly adapted from the oh, so beautiful The Baking Collection (The Australian Women's Weekly)

½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
finely grated zest of 1 large lemon
125g unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (35g) buckwheat flour
pinch of salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
120g ground almonds
2 tablespoons whole milk, room temperature
2 tablespoons flaked almonds
2 tablespoons pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 180°/350°F. Lightly butter a 5-cup loaf pan, line it with baking paper and butter the paper as well.
In a large bowl, rub sugar and zest together until fragrant. Add butter and using an electric mixer beat the ingredients together light and creamy. Add the three eggs and the vanilla, then beat until incorporated – scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally. Sift the buckwheat flour, salt and baking powder over the mixture, add the almond meal and milk and stir to combine. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, smooth the top and sprinkle with the almonds and pine nuts.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until risen and golden and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan over a wire rack for 15 minutes, then carefully unmold onto the rack. Cool completely, then peel off the paper.

Serves 6-8

Amaranth choc chip cookies, and one month without movies

I had a confession to make: I haven’t watched a movie in weeks. Several weeks – it might be a record or something.

The last movie I watched was The Fault in Our Stars, then the World Cup began and I breathed soccer for a month – I believe I wasn’t the only one. :) After the German team took home the Cup I got obsessed with season 6 of SoA, so there was no room for movies – I had to know how things would end up (for the record, I did not like it at all).

My plans for the weekend: to watch as least one movie. And to bake, of course. :)

Movies weren’t the only forgotten thing around here: I hadn’t baked chocolate chip cookies in quite some time I did not even remember when I’d done that last. Being in possession of a 70% chocolate bar made me think of choc chips cookies, they would be the perfect way to use up such great chocolate. I’d seen these and they looked so good, and then I saw that they were an adaptation of a recipe I’d made, too, from a cookbook I adore (and the cookies were delicious).

I was out of buckwheat flour so I changed the recipe ever so slightly and used amaranth flour instead – the cookies turned out fantastic, beautifully golden, with a slightly different flavor. I had a couple while they were still warm from the oven and it was hard not to eat several in a row, I must tell you. There was a very, very subtle grainy texture to them while still warm – to me, not a problem at all – and that became less evident once they were completely cool.

If you’re out of amaranth flour, don’t fret: try the whole wheat version, it is equally delish.

Amaranth choc chip cookies
adapted from this wonderful cookbook, one of my favorites

2/3 cup (93g) whole wheat flour
2/3 cup (93g) all purpose flour
¼ cup (35g) amaranth flour
¾ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick/113g) cold unsalted butter, chopped
½ cup (88g) light brown sugar, packed
½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate (70%), coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Line two large baking sheets with baking paper.
In a large bowl, whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars on low speed just until the ingredients are blended, 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing on medium until each is combined. Mix in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients at once and blend on low just until the flour is barely combined, about 30 seconds. Add the chocolate chunks at once and mix on low speed just until the chocolate is evenly combined – to avoid overmixing the dough, finish incorporating the ingredients with your a spatula.
Place 2 leveled tablespoons of dough per cookie onto the prepared sheets, 5cm (2in) apart. Bake until golden brown around the edges, 12-16 minutes.
Cool in the pan for 2 minutes, then slide the paper with the cookies onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Makes about 20