American classic - carrot cake

Here comes a traditional American recipe, almost as classic as apple pie. Thanks to the spices it's similar to gingerbread, but carrots give it a nice moist texture. 

Carrot cake

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

The Recipe:

1. Mix first 9 ingredients thoroughly in a bowl.
2. Whisk oil with eggs and then, using rubber spatula, combine it with dry ingredients.
3. Stir in carrots and walnuts.
4. Scrape into pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25-30 minutes at about 350°F.

Time to bake good cake!

Well... I'm sure that lots of you guys have moments like: "I must eat something sweet now!" and then you just check all your cupboards in the kitchen to find something that has a little sugar. But what will you do when you find that there is no candies and the only sweet thing is just one or two bags of sugar? If you have oven in your kitchen there is no problem with it - bake a cake!
Cheesecake is one of my favourite cakes. It's really simple and quick to prepare. I learned to bake this cake with a small, old book, where you can find a simple and very reliable recipes for the tastiest cakes in the world. And I'm not talking about those for which you need expensive ingredients, special decorations or something like that. Of course I don't assume that everyone has one kg quark in his fridge, but as you know, it's not a problem to go to the nearest store with dairy products and just buy what you need (at least in Poland :)). So here we go!

Exquisite Cheesecake

Ingredients:

• 1 kg quark (cheese)
• 8 eggs
• 400 g (about 2 cups) confectioners' sugar
• 250 g butter
• 40 g (2 tablespoon) farina
• 15 g (1 tablespoon) potato flour
• 300 g (2 teaspoon) baking powder
• 1 g (1/3 teaspoon) lemon oil
• 100 g raisins - if you want, but if not just don't add them

The Recipe:
1. Beat egg whites till stiff.
2. Cream quark, part of sugar and butter.
3. Add remaning sugar to egg yolks and whisk until white.
4. Mix farina, baking powder and flour. Combine quark, whisked egg yolks, farina and flour and mix well.
5. Add previously soaked and drained raisins and lemon oil. Mix well again briefly.
6. Finally add egg whites and fold delicately (it's really important!)
7. Pour into prepared baking pan and bake at 170°C, 50 minutes.
8. After baking wait until it cool down and then put it to fridge for a few hours. Then you can be sure that the cake won't fall apart while cutting.

Thai-style chicken

Here is a nice recipe to use your freshly made curry paste :) I have never been to Thailand, so I cannot comment on authenticity, but it's as close as you can get to dishes from Thai restaurants. Mixture of curry paste and coconut milk gives it a distinct flavor. You can flavor chicken with additional spices (even something like berbere or pepperoncini ) for more kick :)

Thai-Style Chicken

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 teaspoons canola oil
• 1 medium onion, cut into  1/4-inch-wedges
• 3/4 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 teaspoon red curry paste
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 pound chicken breast tenders
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 (~250g) bottle roasted red bell peppers, drained and coarsely chopped

The Recipe:
1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Add onion, cook 4 minutes or until onion is golden, stirring frequently.
3. Stir in coconut milk, curry paste, and black pepper.
4. Add chicken, bring to a simmer. Cook 8 minutes or until chicken is done, stirring frequently.
5. Stir in cilantro and remaining ingredients, cook 1 minute.
Serves 4.

Red and green curry pastes

Well, here is recipe for something you can probably find in a supermarket. And if you don't have it then it may be even harder to get ingredients mentioned here... Anyway, it's just so much better than the store-bought thing that you should try making it. Flavors are so richer, try it with thai-style dishes, like coconut chicken :)

Red curry paste

Makes: about 3/4 cup
Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• 10 Thai or other medium to hot dried red chiles, seeded, or to taste
• 4 dried lime leaves, fresh lime leaves, finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon minced lime zest
• One 1/2-inch piece fresh galangal or 4 dried quarter-sized pieces or one 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 2 stalks lemongrass, peeled, trimmed and roughly chopped
• 2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 2 tablespoons cilantro roots, rinsed well, or 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro stems
• 3 tablespoons peanut oil

The Recipe:

1. Soak the chiles, along with the lime leaves and galangal, if using dried, in warm water for about 15 minutes.
2. Put the coriander and cumin seeds in a small skillet over medium heat. Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until lighly browned and fragrant, abotu 3 minutes. Cool, then grind to a powder in a spice or coffee grinder.
3. Drain the chiles and lime leaves and, along with all the remaining ingredients except the oil, transfer to a blender or food processor; grind to a paste, stopping the machine to scrape down the sides as necessary. Gradually add the oil while blending; you're looking for a fairly smooth, thick paste. Store in a tightly covered container and refregerate for up to 2 weeks.

Green curry paste: Subtitute fresh green chiles for the red chilles and add 1 tablespoon ground turmeric in Step 3.

We are still here :)

Sorry for a bit long break, we are in the process of moving to a new place and all that is involved with that. The worst thing is lack of Internet connection, it's taking ages to connect the line... I hope it will be over soon and we can show you plenty of new recipes. Especially considering new oven at our place - which we have tested already. So expect recipes for blue meringues, superb cheesecake, onion soup (well, not from oven, but we have a new stockpot too), coconut chicken and many more :) Meanwhile I will post some tested recipes, unfortunately without photos, yet...

The sweet beginning...

For the first recipe we picked something sweet and with lots of chocolate. We really love chocolate!

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

Streussel:

• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 90g cold butter
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips 

Cake:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cake flour
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 125g /4 oz butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups sour cream
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

 The Recipe:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F and prepare a baking pan.
2. Make streussel: combine all the ingredients except butter in a small bowl and mix well. Cut the butter into small pieces and then mix with other ingredients with your fingertips until you get coarse crumbs.
3. Mix all dry ingredients (but sugar) for the cake in a bowl.
4. Using electric mixer cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one by one, until well combined. Add the dry ingredients in 2 or 3 increaments, alternating with the sour cream and vanilla. Beat until smooth.
5. Spoon the batter into prepared pan, spread evenly and cover with streussel.
6. Bake until golden brown, about 40-45 minutes.

Enjoy!

3, 2, 1 ...

It looks like it's a first post. I guess we should introduce ourselves. They didn't provide any manual for that... Damn, it's more complicated than we expected. Well, let's do it the simple way - here is some info about us and why we decided to start that blog :)
Our names are Sylwia and Pawel. We come from Poland. We both study computer science and yes, we have created a blog about cooking. Real cooking. We simply had way too many moments like "hmm... I'd like to eat something... something good... hmm... there is nothing good around... pizza is boring..." which turned us to cooking and experimenting in the kitchen. Actually it was Pawel dwelling into that area first, after his trip to China. You won't believe how attrocious so called "chinese" food in Poland is! So there were experiments with hard-to-get ingredients and one cookbook bought back in Shanghai... Later it spread to other areas, including home-made pizza, pralines, corn dogs, some disasters, lasagnas, soups, etc... Sylwia was a bit surprised at first that a computer science student can spend so much time in kitchen :) But soon it became time spent there together.
We have managed now to accumulate quite a collection of cookbooks and there are so many recipes tested by us. We want to share with you the best ones (and sometimes warn you from really bad ones, if they deserve it!) so that's why we are starting that blog. It will include cookbook reviews, great recipes, ingredient informations and maybe a bit of science :)
We hope you enjoy it!