Preparing todays dinner
Not really gonna give you a recipe on this, as it is just a matter of frying up the vegetables of choice and then adding a can of cherry tomatoes. Let it all simmer until it thickens by it self 
I used oregano, fresh chili, one clove of garlic, couple tablespoons red wine, and roughly one tablespoon of honey, salt and pepper to flavour it.
My vegetables were: squash, red onion (half), mushrooms, celeriac and the above mentioned canned cherry tomatoes.
Todays dinner.
I served it together with fried chicken breast (just seasoned with salt and pepper) and couscous. I also added a small amount of crème fraîche to add some freshness.
Delicious yet simple.
The dough ready to make buns
For all of you that think baking your own bread is hard, this is the crash course on how to make it easy. It will still require some time though, mainly for the dough to rise.
I’m gonna tell you about the base recipe for bread. The dough I use for pictures is purely a wheat dough, that was left to rise slowly for about 3 hours. I then made three variations, just by splitting the ready dough up and adding seeds to one part (buns). One part were made into flat bread cakes, that came out very nice with a great “tough” bite to it. The last portion of dough were made into buns with sesame seeds as decoration, apart from that they are natural. The dough in the picture was made with 1.5 liter of water and 50 grams of yeast. Read the rest of this entry »
I switched to a paid plan at my host recently. I hope everything was transferred smoothly and that all things still work as expected. Should you ever run into any problems, be sure to let me know. You can use the form under Contact Us or send an email to: webmaster[at]annas-playground[dot]info.
Within the next few days I hope that I will relaunch this blog with a new and updated theme, it’s long overdue already.
I’ve been exploring the use of dried fennel seeds lately, it’s a licorice flavor spice so it is rather hard to find a good use for it. Unless you wanna make something taste licorice that is It has to be used with caution to just give that little vague extra touch that is hard to pin down.
So far I think I’ve been a little too cautious though, but I will get it right eventually.
Today I made whole sirloin (that’s what I think the part is called in English at least). I used black pepper, salt, fennel seeds and dried chervil to season the meat before putting it in the oven on low temperature (125 degrees Celsius).
When the inner temperature of the meat reached a little over 85 degrees Celsius it was done. Turned out lovely, and the “stock” that had formed in the bottom of the pan was full of flavour, perfect as a base for sauce, or to be used as is. I served it with potatoes au gratin, but I guess other variations of potato dishes will work well also.
I guess you’d like to know what amounts of spices I used as well I used about 15 whole black peppers, roughly half a teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of chervil and around 10 fennel seeds. I crushed all the spices in a mortar to a rather fine powder and covered the meat with the spice mix. It won’t be a thick layer, just enough to rub it around the meat. The measurements aren’t exact as I didn’t check the amounts while doing it, they are just estimations.
Pannacotta is a dessert made of cream flavored with different things. The most traditional flavor is vanilla. Here is an alternative flavoring, together with the vanilla flavor.
To make a two layered pannacotta you need to think ahead and do the first part at least 10 hours before the planned serving time. This is because it needs 3-5 hours in the fridge to stiffen before you can poor on the next layer.
You can of course chose to serve any of them as a single layer, they are then enough to serve 4. The vanilla flavored can basically be served with any fruit you like.
Read the rest of this entry »
