My Red Kitchen

M&M Chinese New Year Cookies

Posted on 24 January 2012 by Cerise

Ok, so, this is definitively not the most chinese way to start my life in Shanghai :p

Actually, Chinese New Year is a big BIG deal here. It’s way bigger than our Christmas holidays (and less commercial too). Everyone goes back to their families during that time – Shanghai basically emptied out. And everything closes down for about a week.

My internship tutors were absolutely lovely and invited me over to their home last tuesday to celebrate this new year with them and their family around a traditional meal of jiao zi.

I didn’t want to arrive empty handed, and thought making something myself would prove a more thoughtful gift than just going to the store to buy something (and they were all closed anyway!).

I somehow got obsessed with making M&M cookies … so here they are!

I used this recipe – I’ll probably cut the sugar doses by half next time though, they might have been too sweet!

Oh and talking about l’Atelier des Chefs, I have a pre-departure post lined up about that too!

Posted in Chine/China, dessert, Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, goûter/snacks, sucré/sweet | Leave a comment

May the Year of the Dragon bring you prosperity!

Posted on 23 January 2012 by Cerise

I wish you all a wonderful Year of the Dragon!!

What? Now what’s wrong with her? She’s disappeared from the blogosphere since the end of the year festivities, and here she comes back, completely out of it, almost a month after New Year and wishes us a great Year of the Dragon?? What in the world is going on?

My dear friends of the culinary blogosphere, I am coming back to you for this new year (2012, of the Dragon, all in all, it doesn’t really matter) live from Shanghai!!!

Yups, Shanghai, China, you got me right

I won’t get into detail about all that has happened to me since mid-december 2011, for that’s not the purpose of this blog. But just to give you a bit of context, I passed an exam that was extremely important to me, and for which I spent an entire summer and autumn literally glued to my desk chair. (It is also during this same autumn that this blog was born – cooking proved to be an incredible stress reliever at a time where I was seriously starting to go nuts :p)

Following those excellent news, it all went pretty fast for me : the enrollment protocol, choosing between different options, and most of all, choosing my first mandatory internship.

China has always been a passion of mine, and it’s not my first time in the Middle Kingdom. But never have I come with the intention of setting my bags down for 6 months to work there. It’s a totally new side of this magnificent city that I am getting ready to discover.

I have since moved into a great internationally shared flat, 2 minutes away from the very well known « People’s Square », my internship is starting out wonderfully … and I have a new kitchen.

MyRedKitchen has temporarily relocated : the kitchen cupboards aren’t red anymore, the hotplates aren’t induction anymore but gaz, the fridge is smaller, and shared by three persons, each with tastes and culinary habits from very different horizons, I don’t have my cute plates anymore, but most importantly : there’s no oven!

Well, there wasn’t any stove, for one of my first buys was a teeny tiny electric stove (not even 20 bucks … who can beat that?!). It must be said that asian kitchens aren’t really equiped for stoves : it’s not a very popular cooking method here.

Anyway, all this to tell you that I am still here, and that I very much intend to let you know all about my asian adventures for the next 6 months!

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

And I’ll see you all very soon

Posted in Chine/China | Leave a comment

Christmas Lunch 2011 #1 (entrée and main dish)

Posted on 27 December 2011 by Cerise

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope Santa filled your stockings with beautiful things and that your plates were full of beautiful and delicious things!

For my part, I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, was very much spoiled, and I also discovered the joy of cut-out circles used for a better presentation of the food (yes, I’m a little late … but there is no age to make discoveries that change your life!)

The highlight of this meal was, at least in my case that apple tatin with foie gras that I mentioned previously. A revelation! Amazingly simple, for a WoW result, for the presentation of the dish as well as its taste!

Everyone was delighted with this entrée – and I think that apples might actually go better with foie gras than figs do !

For the main course, there was no real kitchen disaster, but a tight schedule, and a large surplus of sweet potato cream(which was part of the entrée for the Christmas eve dinner – I must see if I can get photos of that dinner by the way, I had forgotten the camera for the 24th). So I replaced the butternut with the sweet potato cream, added a couple eggs and some cream cheese. The pie doesn’t appear on the picture because it was cut and distributed at the table (and let’s be honest, it would have been too crowded on the plate for the picture :p) To see what it looks like, I can refer you to the pictures I took of my very first butternut cheesecake, which is just a shade darker !

For the turkey stuffing it’s an approximative recipe of my moms, so I have no particular proportion of ingredients to give you. I just know she mixed boudin blanc, sausage, eggs, a little bit of port (I poured some over the turkey afterwards – a drunk turkey always has tender flesh I find :p) parsley, Granny Smith apple and yogurt. She prepares it the night before and adds bread soaked in milk on the D-day, and mixes it all together one more time before putting the bird to cook.

With a little fig chutney to enhance the whole thing, it was absolutely perfect:)

The desserts will be for a future post!

So, what are your holiday food delights?

Posted in Soupes/Soup | Leave a comment

Happy Holidays!!

Posted on 24 December 2011 by Cerise

May the merriment of end of the year festivities begin!

I wish you all happy holidays, filled with presents, family fun, and good food!

I’ll be posting the results of my Christmas meals later on this week (I hope), but for the moment, all I have to show is the menu (as planned so far – no kitchen catastrophies have required last minute changes so far, I’m keeping my fingers crossed )

It has been a couple years since I’ve auto-proclamed myself Head of the Family Kitchen during the holiday season. I manage the whole thing with the iron grip of a veteran dictator (according to my family – how sweet )

For this year’s menus, I found inspiration in many and wonderful recipes found a bit everywhere (in magazines, on blogs, at the table of friends … who will, I hope, forgive me for stealing the recipe from memory before sending them the recipe of my apple cake in exchange :p)

Christmas Eve dinner :

Entrée : scallops with crunchy nut topping and sweet potato cream soup (recipe here)

Main course : Salmon with curry sauce, and polenta with dried fruits

Dessert : Chocolate pear with nut crumble (recipe here)

Christmas lunch :

Entrée : Foie gras apple tatin (recipe here)

Main course : Turkey (with my mom’s special home made stuffing) and butternut cheesecake (one of my soon to be classics if I keep at this rate!)

Dessert : Home made Bûche de Noël

I’ll keep you all posted!

Until then,

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

(Hey, have you heard about Vazquez Sounds? They’re amazing )

* found them on the net, don’t know about the source!

Posted in dessert, entrée, plat principal/main dish, Poisson&Co/Fish&Co, Soupes/Soup, Viande/Meat | Leave a comment

Stuffed bell peppers with yellow lentils and spelt

Posted on 16 December 2011 by Cerise

This is one of my favorite recipe (thank you Saveurs Magazine!) It’s a recipe after my own heart : simple, fast and always met with success around the table. I think it’s because of the small pepper hat)

So : you have friends coming over for dinner, and only little time ahead of you? Put a chicken in the oven (or not, actually for this is a quite consistent dish:)) along with the stuffed peppers and voilà – what else could anyone ask for?

For 4 people:

200g of Ebly (I wanted to make this recipe to a friend in London recently: I couldn’t find any Ebly at all. How do the English do it? We used chick peas instead, but the stuffing became kind of mushy, it was much less convincing). So for those of you who haven’t yet discovered the joy of Ebly, it’s pre-prepared spelt : instead of having to wait 12h for it to be cookable, you cook it five minutes. Timesaver! Oh, and it’s spelt without the husk as far as I’m concerned.)

200g of yellow/tan lentils

2 large onions

Olive oil

Coriander

Basil (I always forget it – doesn’t change the dish much if you ask me)

Curry powder

Cumin

4 bell peppers (the red, yellow and orange ones are more pleasant than the green ones when cooked I find)

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180 ° C.

Cook the Ebly in the manner indicated on the package (the original recipe uses spelt, but who has time to let anything soak for 12h nowadays?)

In another pan of boiling water (or if you want to save using a second pot, add the lentils at the end of the Ebly cooking time. Do not put the two together to cook at the same time.)

Cook the lentils for 10-15 minutes, until they slightly break. Keep an eye on them while they cook, for they cook very quickly, and will quickly turn to paste.

Peel and slice the onions. Sauté them in olive oil.

If you have basil and fresh cilantro, wash and chop coarsely. (If you have all this in powder form, that’s fine too).

Drain the Ebly and lentils and rinse them.

Add them to the onion along with the herbs, curry, cumin, salt, pepper and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Stir gently, and cook for about 10 minutes.

Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Wash the peppers.

Cut the tops of the peppers off to make hats. Remove the seeds inside.

Fill each pepper with the spelt and lentil stuffing, and place the peppers in a large baking dish.

Drizzle with olive oil, and bake for 30 minutes. (10 minutes before the end of the cooking time, replace the pepper hats on top of the peppers. This will prevent them to be black like on my pictures )

So? What do you think?

Posted in Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, Légumes/Vegetables, plat principal/main dish, salé/salty, Végétarien/Vegetarian | Leave a comment

Stewed tomatoes with parmesan crumble

Posted on 14 December 2011 by Cerise

A few tomatoes and a leftover of grated parmesan cheese in the corner of my fridge … and nothing else. Oh yes! And a huge wave of laziness, preventing me from going out to do some groceries shopping. That’s how you end up with an improvised recipe, which ultimately was much better than to yield to the temptation of ordering pizza!

For 4 people:

6 – 8 large tomatoes

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

50g of parmesan cheese

150g of flour

80g of unsalted butter

Cornstarch (can be replaced with flour, although cornstarch is better)

Salt and pepper

Mustard

Ketchup

Remove the butter from the fridge to let it soften at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.

In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, and grated parmesan and a little salt until the mixture turns into crumbles. (The quantities indicated in the recipe are very approximate. Generally, I watch over my mixture and add a little butter here, and a little flour there, and also a bit of parmesan cheese until I get a suitable result).

In a pan, sauté the minced garlic and onion with a little olive oil.

Peel the tomatoes (a few minutes of immersion in boiling waterworks very well!). Keep only the flesh (try to remove a maximum of seeds), and cut into thick slices. Put into the pan with the onion and garlic. Add salt and pepper.

Add a tablespoon of ketchup, and a spoonful of mustard.

Let the whole thing simmer a bit.

The tomatoes should let some water out. If the mixture in the pan seems too liquid, sprinkle with cornstarch in small doses, and mix well so it thickens a little.

You can also put a sprig of thyme in the pan, for flavor.

Fill small molds at 4 / 5 with stewed tomatoes. (If you make individual servings. But it also works with a unique dish)

Finish filling to the brim with parmesan crumble.

« Hydrate » the crumble with a drop of olive oil before baking 15 minutes approximatively.

Remove from the oven once the crumble has slightly browned.

Let cool ten minutes at room temperature before serving.

Posted in entrée, Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, Légumes/Vegetables, plat principal/main dish, salé/salty, sucré-salé/salty-sweet, Végétarien/Vegetarian | Leave a comment

Durum semolina muffins with mozzarella and black olives

Posted on 4 December 2011 by Cerise

I had spotted this polenta muffins recipe on Fourmi‘s blog a while back.

The first attempt led to a second : the sesame oil was much too strong for my taste. Which is why in my second version of these muffins, I proceeded to make some changes : as I was out of polenta, I replaced it with fine durum semolina. I garnished the muffins with mozzarella and black olives, and the sesame oil was replaced with peanut oil.

For about 8 muffins:

100 g of fine durum semolina

120 g of flour

15cl of milk

6 cl of peanut oil

10g of brown sugar

Salt and pepper

1 ball of mozzarella

1/2 can of pitted black olives.

Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.

Mix all the dry ingredients in large bowl.

Form a well in the center and pour in the milk and oil.

Mix well with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth.

It should be slightly elastic, not pasty.

Cut the mozzarella and black olives into small pieces.

Fold into batter.

Pour the mixture into the muffin tins. (I’m still a fan of my little paper cups).

Bake for about 20 minutes.

Let the muffins cool to room temperature.

This second batch of muffins disappeared so quickly, I had to fight to keep a couple for my pictures!

Posted in accompagnement/side-dish, entrée, Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, goûter/snacks, salé/salty, sucré-salé/salty-sweet, Végétarien/Vegetarian | Leave a comment

Redcurrant and white chocolate muffins

Posted on 29 November 2011 by Cerise

There are times, where it is the combination of colors that matters, more than the ingredients. With December approaching fast, I had cravings for red and white. And for sweets of course, hence these little currant-white chocolate muffins in my kitchen.

For 12-18 muffins:

150 g of brown sugar

4 eggs

300g of flour

baking powder

100g of milk (yes that’s the way it was written in the recipe grams, so I didn’t complicate things, and just continued to watch the grams on my measuring cup)

50g of cream (I didn’t have any on hand so I left that out when I mad the muffins – but it was too bad, they were a bit drier than they should have been).

120g of sunflower/peanut oil.

1 pinch of salt

1 punnet of redcurrants

180g of white chocolate

Preheat oven to 180 ° C.

Beat the sugar and eggs.

Add the flour, baking powder, milk and cream.

Mix well.

Then add oil and salt.

The dough should be smooth.

Adjust the consistency if needed, should the dough be too compact or too liquid.

Stir in the coarsely chopped white chocolate(personally I like bigger chunks that don’t melt completely in the cooking process)

Then gently mix the dough with a wooden spoon to incorporate the previously washed redcurrants.

Pour the dough into the molds (previously floured or protected with small paper cups).

Bake for 25 minutes.

Remove the muffins from the oven and let them cool to room temperature. (my recipe said to turn out the muffins still warm – that’s why I like my little paper molds – it keeps it all nice and clean).

Posted in dessert, Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, goûter/snacks, sucré/sweet | Leave a comment

Christelle’s fennel cream soup and pesto scallops

Posted on 27 November 2011 by Cerise

I’m siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick !

I basically spent the weekend huddled in a corner of my couch, hiding under a huge blanket, with a box of tissues, cough syrup, the tv remote, laptop and book handy. Apart from the not being able to breathe through my nose part, it was a pretty good weekend

In between liters of home brewed infusion of fresh ginger, lemon juice and honey (which I highly recommend to all cold & sniffles-candidates), I felt like « comfort food ». Something warm and healthy, uncomplicated and most importantly, who would not require any grocery shopping … going out, in the cold, with people brrrrrr! No way!

I had kept in stock Christelle’s recipe: fennel soup (yes, again!) and bay scallops with pesto. I didn’t have bay scallops, just « plain » scallops, but it’s just as good right? … A little mixing, and a bit of toasted baguette later, and I was in heaven.

I’ll refer you to the recipe for the rest, and I will now return to the depth of my couch. I have a few tv series episodes waiting for me …

Good Monday everyone!

Posted in Facile et rapide/Quick and easy, Légumes/Vegetables, plat principal/main dish, Poisson&Co/Fish&Co, salé/salty, Soupes/Soup | Leave a comment

Zucchini and bacon cheesecake

Posted on 25 November 2011 by Cerise

There are times where two ideas come to obsess you so much, they eventually merge and make one new idea, a sort of hybrid version of the two initial ones.

It’s kind of what happened to me: Parisdansmacuisine’s article about those individual maple syrup cheesecakes, using magic tupperwares (I-must-get-them!) And the Gourmandiseuse’s butternut, that I already talked about recently here, were side by side in my mind. But it wasn’t until a couple of zucchinis made their way into my fridge that it all went tilt! I needed a cheesecake with Parisdansmacuisine’s presentation, and I had to use the Gourmandiseuse’s cheesecake friendly way of preparing veggies. There it was!

Impatient as I am, I couldn’t wait for the EmpilOdéco tupperwares to be put up for sale, so I just went with the equipment I had available in the kitchen to get to my goal. A savory zucchini and bacon cheesecake.

I really wanted to be able to turn the cheescakes out (photo requirement) but assume that in small ramekins, it will be just as good (and less hassle: p)

So, let’s get down to business:

For 4 to 6 people:

4 zucchinis

200g of bacon (optional)

3 eggs

200g of Philadelphia cream cheese (or equivalent)

McVities Shortbreads

70g of butter

Salt, pepper, ground garlic, ground nutmeg.

Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.

Wash the zucchini, cut it into pieces and put it to cook in a pan with a little water.

Meanwhile, prepare the cheesecake base: Melt the butter in the microwave.

Then with a mortar and pestle, mix the melted butter with the McVities until you obtain a malleable paste. (Neither too sandy nor too oily – I know, I’m being super accurate:))

Grease and flour your ramekins (if you want to try turning them out afterwards …)

Press your McVities paste at the bottom of the ramekins (fill them up to about 1 / 3). Reserve.

Once your zucchini is cooked, remove it from the heat and drain. Add the salt, pepper, garlic and nutmeg. Mix. Add the tray of Philadelphia, eggs, and mix again.

In a small pan on the side, cook your bacon and add them to your zucchini preparation. (Optional)

Finish filling your ramekins with the zucchini.

Bake 20-25 minutes.

Remove from oven when the preparation has turned a light golden brown color.

Cool to room temperature.

Reheat in the oven a few minutes before serving ( I always find it better to reheat than to serve them immediately. It gives the zucchini time to solidify a little).