Hopfaldera

Blackberries

Last week when they took the boat out after dinner, Frederik and Emil found a blackberry bush. The bush can only be reached by boat so it was still full of berries!! Frederik and Emil ate a large dessert of them, but the next day they went back with containers and brought home more than a kilo of super sweet dark blackberries.

This is what we did with them:

eat them just like that

make dark purple ice cream

make two pots of jam (the only thing I photographed)

make syrup for lemonade (we googled for recipes, found only vague ones, then made something up ourselves)

bake blackberry muffins (using a blueberry muffin recipe by Nigella Lawson)

We had the greatest time!!

Take a break with focaccia

After a very full week (recovering from jet lag, recovering from back ache resulting from the long flight, celebrating Damaris' 10th birthday with 13 girls) it was time yesterday for some homemade focaccia. Whenever I need some relaxation I like to bake.
I used the recipe from good old Naked Chef Jamie Oliver (the first book), halved the amounts and added semi-dried tomatoes and garlic olives from the market (I cut them in pieces with scissors, so much fun!). For the kids I just added olive oil, Italian herbs and sea salt.
Emil asked if I would please make this more often!
Of course! Good idea!

Nuts, raisins and ceramics

The last couple of times at my Ceramics class, my class mates have started to bring cake and cookies to go with our coffee break. A good development! This Friday, I felt it was my turn to bring something sweet.
I turned to an old favorite recipe, Nut-raisin-tea bread.

It is a recipe I first used more than 15 years ago, when I organized a big afternoon tea birthday party together with my friend Monique. Back then we spent 2 days of constant baking and I enjoy every minute of it. I remember proclaiming that my life's ambition was to become a 'baking mother' (I think I succeeded in my ambition, although it took me a long time to realize that; just like realizing that all this art work is what I should be doing, but never mind...).
Back to the recipe (it is from Libelle magazine originally):
First brew
* 200 ml of strong Forest Fruit tea (I used Cranberry as you can see)
Then, in a large bowl, combine
* 150 grams of wholemeal flour (volkorenmeel)
* 150 grams of self raising flour (I used plain flour and used two tablespoons of the next ingredient)
* 1 tablespoon of baking powder
* 150 grams of light brown sugar (I used cane sugar, which apparently is more healthy)
* 250 grams of walnuts (broken in pieces with your fingers or roughly chopped)
* 100 grams of raisins
* a pinch of salt

Mix with the tea and
* 1 egg
using a wooden spoon. No dry bits should remain in the bowl.
Spoon the mixture in a greased and lightly floured loaf cake tin and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 70 minutes.

I believe my ceramics buddies enjoyed the bread, even though it somehow inspired us to have a conversation about worms in places you'd rather not think about.
This is what was left of the bread after we were done with our break (photographed at home with some of my ceramics, more in this Flickr set). Frederik was grateful!

Getting better?

Bleh, I have a bad cold and a fever.
Right now I'm trying this medicine (and some Ibuprofen):

It is hot water with ginger, a clove and cardamom pods. I hope it will soften my throat.
Damaris is also looking pretty bad, but that is because she is in a school play today. She is the Wolwa in a play about the Edda, the old Norse mythology.

Of course I will go to the play tonight. Never mind that cold.

Baking bread

Yesterday for me, was full of cycling and making bread. Full of cycling because my kids had to be taken to school, fetched from school, fetched from play dates, taken to street dance class. Luckily I got a new bike on my birthday! While I was cycling around, at home the bread I had started was quietly proving and waiting for me.
This is how I started:

I took the recipe from the rye flour (roggemeel) packet:
250 grams of whole wheat flour (volkorenmeel)
175 grams of rye flour
7 grams of dried yeast
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of molasses (stroop)
1 tablespoon of oil
250 ml of tepid water (probably less is better)

Mix together the two types of flour with the salt and the dry yeast. On the photo it's hard to see, but the whole wheat flour is light brown, while the rye flour looks gray. Interesting (I think).
Before the next step I cycled to and back from school.
Add the molasses, oil and water. Mix together and knead to a dough. (I added white flour at this point because the dough was super sticky; less water next time I think).
Let the dough rest in a warm place for 1 hour, in a bowl under a moist tea towel.
You can do some cycling at this point as well.
When you come back, punch down the dough. Knead some more. Make a nice bread shape and make little holes with a fork in the top.
Again the bread has to rest for 1 hour in a warm place. I have an oven that can be set at 35 degrees Celsius for this.
I had to do a lot of cycling here, so my bread rested for much more than an hour. It was no problem. I think it got even bigger because of this extra time.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Paint some water on the bread and then it is ready to go into the oven.

Leave it in there for 50 minutes (a little less is probably also fine).
Don't do any cycling while the oven is on at such a high temperature, is what I think. So have your husband (or someone else) pick up your daughter (or someone else) from street dance class (or something else). That way you also have time to make flavored butter to go with the bread and make the rest of dinner.
I flavored our butter with lemon zest, chives, garlic, salt and pepper.
At the table it looked like this (and it tasted great!):

Easter ideas

Okay, easter is coming... Time to decorate the house with flowers and color!

Damaris and Emil have already worked on colorful decorations.

Some easter ideas for myself (and you, lovely reader):

Egg cozies from a pattern on Yvestown
Stuffed fabric eggs on Olive Juice and co
Easter bread (I usually make a bread with raisins and cardamom, but this WHO bread on Soulemama might also be a good idea)

Last year I embroidered napkins with easter drawing by the kids More on Flickr

Looking at that photo of last year's Easter Breakfast Table (with capitals) makes me happy. It gives me the feeling that we will be able to cheer up in time before easter if we surround ourselves with color and flowers.
We have felt very sad this week because the little daughter of friends died after only 17 weeks of life. This weekend we'll say goodbye to her.

Cinnamon carrot cake

On Tuesday evenings our doorbell rings. One of the kids rushes to the door, we hear a little shout of 'Thank you' and a yellow paper bag of vegetables and fruit is brought into the kitchen. Kievit brings us that bag and it is a bag of biological fruit and vegetables, our little contribution to a greener Earth.

Before unpacking the bag I read the newsletter that comes with it. It is unexpectedly eloquent and entertaining, that farmer should write a blog! On the back are recipes (written by the farmer's mother?) and that is very useful sometimes. We have encountered some vegetables we hadn't seen before.

This week we got a recipe for carrot cake. I added an egg to the original Kievit recipe, because a cake without an egg seemed wrong to me. Here it is: Almost Biological Cinnamon Carrot Cake

Heat the oven to 165 degrees Celsius.

Mix together

225 grams of flour

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1teaspoon of nutmeg

1/2 tablespoon of baking powder

110 grams of melted butter

110 grams of honey

110 grams of sugar (I used cane sugar)

1 beaten egg

and of course 225 grams of grated carrots (I chopped them in the food processor because I didn't want to hurt my hands)

grease and flour a loaf pan, pour in the mixture and bake for 60 minutes (when a skewer should come out clean).

Market day

On Saturdays and Wednesdays we have a market here in Leiden. On Wednesday there is also a section with biological products. Look what I got today!

The cheese is Ribeaupierre made of Goats' milk and it's biological. The soup in the jar is Tomato Cream Soup and is also biological and from The smallest soup factory (De kleinste soepfabriek) that I read about in delicious. magazine today.
I got two types of Japanese rice crackers. I love those!
Three Lyra pencils for Damaris and Emil. Just to add to the ever shrinking collection a bit. I bought them at Dille en Kamille. Also from there I got the red and white thread and eight mini loaf pans to bake mini bread or cakes in. Just something fun for the kitchen!
And some Italian and Provençal herbs and cinnamon sticks.

Spring!

Today spring came...

A peacock in De Leidse Hout was ruffling his feathers trying to impress a female. She appeared not that impressed; all the humans out and about in the wood were all the more...

Mister Peacock gave up for now. On the calendar it is not even spring yet; plenty of time left to impress that bird.

We enjoyed lunch in the tea pavilion at De Leidse Hout.

A previous visitor left a newspaper at the table.

Brave Damaris and Emil even took off their jackets. Actually it was still a bit cold (it's February after all), but the sun gave everybody a smile on their face and a little spring in their step.

Tosti's (Grilled cheese sandwiches), Vitello Tonato and Tomato soup. All with added sunshine, the best!!
Springtime is slowly coming to the wood. So great we could enjoy it with the four of us today!

Sweet potatoes

Last week I made Roasted sweet potatoes! (I tried out two different spellings (patatoes, patatos) before I got it right; oh well...)
Here is my exclusive recipe:

Start with some sweet potatoes and a peeler.

Start heating up the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Now, peel the potatoes. Look, what a lovely color!

Cut the potatoes in cubes. Put them in an oven dish.
Sprinkle the following ingredients over them:
Olive oil
Freshly ground pepper
Sea salt
Herbes Provençales
Some peeled and cut up (not finely) garlic cloves
You can also add a sliced onion but I didn't this time

Mix all of it together in the oven dish and spread the potato cubes out, so they all have their own little surface to roast on.

Put the dish in the oven. It should take about half an hour to roast the potatoes. Stir them after half the roasting time.
Prepare the rest of your dinner in the meantime. I added hamburgers, broccoli and some regular fried potatoes. Damaris and Emil like those better.
When all the other food is almost done, check if your sweet potatoes are soft and have brown edges. If not (and if you want to eat your potatoes with your meal, and not afterwards) increase the heat of the oven to 225 degrees for about 5 minutes (be careful you don't burn all of it!!!).

They should come out like below.
By the way, this is a single portion (Frederik was having a business dinner in Brussels round the corner of the Beenhouwersstraat, poor thing...). No need to feel bad if you finish everything by yourself: low in carbs and olive oil is healthy, right?!
If you double the portions, you should also double the size of your oven dish, so you have more roasting surface. If the potato cubes don't touch the bottom of the dish, they steam and won't be half as good!