Saturday Flowers

Excluded

I think I do not watch enough (Swiss) telly. Yesterday at our after swim pizza, this add was the part of the table talk but I could not add any wit or repartee to the discussion since I haven't seen nor heard of the commercial, although it seems to have been around for 4 months.

Vital Necessity: Meat Mincer

No, I'm not actually making my own meatloaf or burgers, my thoughtful sister gave me a handy meat mincer...



... to make the filling for pear bread.

Winterly Chicken

Yesterday evening, Toño went to the gym and I jumped in to make dinner. Epic failure. I have never done that dish (Fasolakia Ladera) before and the recipe was totally flawed. Let's forget it and concentrate on something that actually worked. There is a recipe Toño has not only mastered but also improved significantly: chicken cooked in coconut butter with Ceylon cinnamon and oranges. Last Saturday, I asked Toño to cook it and it blew my taste buds into another sphere.

Everything starts with a slaughtered and plucked chicken of a reasonable size. Dab it dry with kitchen paper. Season the chicken with sufficient freshly ground salt and pepper inside and outside.



Stuff the chicken with a big knob of butter, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 twigs of mint, half an orange cut in slices (with peel) and the juice of the other half. Sew up the hole and put the chicken into an oven-proof baking pan. Preheat the oven to 200°C/392°F.



Heat up 60 g coconut butter together with a cinnamon stick. Pour it over the chicken and cook it for 60 minutes in the oven. While in the oven, pour from time to time some coconut butter over the chicken.

Reduce 4 dl orange juice with 1 tbsp orange flower honey* and a knife point of cinnamon in a pan. Cut the chicken in 8 parts. Pour the syrup over the chicken and glaze for 2-3 minutes in the oven.



For the coconut rice side dish add coconut milk to the water when cooking the rice (1 part coconut milk, 6 parts water). Before serving, sprinkle desiccated coconut over the rice.

* Don't compromise on the honey. It must be orange flower honey. It can't be substituted.

Going All Buff!

Toño still has plantar fasciitis and is not allowed to run more than 15 minutes a week on a soft surface (a thing we call here Finnenbahn). To compensate for this, a few weeks ago he signed up to a gym, which I'd recommended him (although I haven't been to a gym in 29 years).

To cut a long story short, Toño persuaded me to give it a try, which I did this morning. I somehow managed to get through this without having a screaming fit. Thus I signed up for a year.

While the fee is rather catholic baroque, the place is totally puritan protestant with strict attire guidelines (no wifebeaters, shorts at least to the knee). There is no background music, no bar where a sun-bed tanned fake-blond serves protein shakes, no fat-burn group workout, no free-weights, and no cardio workout equipment. There are only machines that build up brute force. My new mantra goes: Strength is not everything but without it we are nothing.

Russian Plait

I doupt that this cake has anything to do with Russia. I think it's just a name given by to it. At least my sister-in-law Татьяна does not know it (and I don't think it's because she's not really Russian but of Udmurt origin). But segs wies well (as we Swiss say), here is how to make a Russian Plait.

Everything starts with a simple sweet yeast dough: sieve 300 g flour into a bowl, add half a tsp salt, 3 tbsp sugar and 60 g soft butter. Dissolve 20 g yeast in 1 dl milk and add 1 egg. Pour the liquid into the middle of the bowl. Knead to a smooth dough. Let it rest covered at room temperature to double rise.



For the filling mix 150 g ground nuts, 3 tbsp sugar, 1 grated apple, zest and juice of half a lemon, 4-6 tbsp milk.



Roll out dough (rectangular, 3 mm thick, 28 cm wide). Spread first some apricot jam onto the dough and then the filling. Roll up neatly and cut almost in half along the roll.



Make a nice plait.



Bake for 30-40 minutes at 220°C/428°F. While still hot, glaze with a icing sugar and lemon juice mixture.

It is recommended to let yeast pastry rest for up to 2 days before serving. This intensifies the flavour (according to my sister, who knos such things).

Olives

I have a difficult relationship with olives, although our relationship started rather innocently. I heard the first time of olives in Sunday school, when our teacher told us the story of Noah and showed us an olive twig, so that we knew what this thing was that the dove returned.*

Olives were not a very common thing where I grew up. The next encounter I actually remember was about 10 years later during my apprenticeship, where I had to install a pump for a tank for blue lobsters, which was located next to five huge barrels of olives. The combination is haunting me ever since. In other words the odour of olives in oil I find rather revolting.

Nevertheless, I like dishes that are cooked with black olives. Although, I don't eat the olives.



But there is an exception to my avoidance of olives: Tapenade, the Provençal dish consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. It's just the perfect hors d’œuvre.



*In Sunday school we also had this collection box with a small black boy on the top, who bowed gratefully when you entered a coin. I don't think that is in use any more.