Potato Cakes With Ground Beef And Pine Nuts

While Wil is ripping the kitchen apart in order to install our dishwasher (finally), I decided it's time to sit down and write a new blogpost.

It's been too long again...

I have been cooking a lot lately, mainly from my new favorite cookbook "Casa Moro - The second cookbook".
You can find more information about the restaurant and published books here:
http://www.moro.co.uk/shop.php

No, I don't have their first cookbook. But I will probably get it very soon, given that their Spanish and Middle Eastern recipes are sooo delicious.

This one here is going to be part of our summer party next Saturday.
It's a bit of work, but it's totally worth it.

There is (almost) nothing better than cinnamon spiced ground meat.

The original recipe which is assumed to have originated from Iran, or Lebanon, or Syria called for lamb, but we used beef instead, simply because we didn't have lamb at home.

Here is what you need:

Potato Dough

700g potatoes, skins on
sea salt
1 rounded tablespoon plain flour (plus extra for dusting)

Meat Filling

25g butter
2tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 pinches freshly ground pepper
2 pinches freshly grated nutmeg
3 cardamom pods, black seeds only ground to a fine powder
3 cloves, ground with a pinch of salt to a fine powder (together with the cardamom seeds)
200g finely ground beef (or lamb)
50g pine nuts, lightly toasted
1tbsp tomato purrée
3tbsp roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
sea salt and black pepper

Instructions

To make the dough, boil the potatoes in salt water (with skin on!) until cooked, but not mealy and mushy.
Drain well in colander for about 10 minutes.
While they are still warm, peel, then mash thoroughly.
Stir in the flour and season to taste with a little salt.
The dough is now ready.

While the potatoes are boiling, make the filling.
Melt butter with olive oil over medium to high heat.
Add the onions and soften until it is translucent and lightly browned.
Now add all the spices and cook for another minute.
Add the ground beef, stirring and breaking it up.
Stop stirring and let it stick for a minute or so. That way it can stick to the pan and brown a little, which adds more flavor to the meat.
Cook for about 5-8 minutes, until the meat is nicely browned.
Finally stir in pine nuts, tomato purée and parsley.
Season with salt and pepper.

Now to prepare the potato cakes.
Make sure your hands are dry.
Then flour them, as well as the working surface.
Divide the dough into four balls.
Flatten one ball to a disc of about 1cm thickness.
Place two tablespoons of filling in the center, then bring up the sides of the dough-disc, in order to enclose the meat filling.
Neaten the shape and patch up any cracks and gaps.
The result should look like a round patty, 10cm across and about 3-4cm thick.
Repeat with the other dough balls, always making sure that wherever you place the dough/patties the working surface is well-floured, to prevent the dough from sticking.

Generously cover the bottom of a frying pan with oil, about 3-4mm deep.
Place over medium to high heat, until hot and nearly smoking.
Gently lift up the cakes with a spatula and carefully lower into the oil, one by one.
Do not disturb until they are a dark golden color and crispy on the bottom, then carefully turn the cakes with the spatula, in order to brown the other side, as well.

When done, take out and using kitchen paper gently dab off any excess oil.
Keep warm in a low oven, or serve immediately.

We served our potato cakes with:

200 g Greek yoghurt, thinned with 2tbsp of milk and seasoned with one garlic clove crushed to a paste with salt using mortar and pestle.

Notes

For the party I will try to turn the cakes  more into bite-sized balls...We'll see how that goes.

You have to be quite careful not to make the potato dough tear apart.

Also, make sure the potatoes don't cook too long.
If they get too mushy the dough will be much more difficult to handle.

Red beets salad with caramelized pecans and dill

After travelling and extreme floods, here is finally a new blog post with a fantastic summer salad.

This red beets salad is super refreshing and a perfect way of getting all the raw vegetables and nuts you need.
It's a nice addition to all that meat at your barbecue party and can also be served as a nice and healthy appetizer or as a light lunch or dinner.

I cannot wait to use the beets from our garden for it! Still have to wait a little on those ones...

What you need:

4-5 red beets (fresh)
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
5 spring onions, chopped into fine rings
300-350 g (approx.) 1-1.5 cups of yogurt (around 3.2-3.5% fat)
150-200ml (approx 0,25-0.5 cup) heavy cream
150g pecans chopped
1 bunch of dill, roughly chopped
1 bunch of chives, roughly chopped
salt, pepper, honey/sugar
olive or carmelina oil

Directions:

Peel the red beets.
You may want to use gloves for that because of the red dye. I didn't and it washed off my hands quite easily.
With the grating attachement on a food processor (ideally) roughly grate the beets.

In a pan slowly roast the chopped pecans.
When browned, add some honey or sugar and caramelize the pecans with it.
Remove from heat and set aside to cool down.

In a pan heat up some olive/carmelina oil at medium heat.
Add the garlic and spring onions and sautée for a few minutes, until soft (do not fry them!).
Set aside and let cool down.

In a big salad bowl mix together grated red beets, yoghurt and cream.
Add dill and chive, as well as garlic, spring onions and roasted pecans.

Mix well.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and maybe a tiny bit of sugar.

The salad tastes even better a day later, after it has been sitting in the fridge for a while.

Notes:

All the measurements especially for the yogurt and cream are pretty much measured by eye.
I don't follow a recipe when doing it.
It always depends on how big the beets are. The beets should be nicely coated with the yoghurt-cream mix.
And regarding the dill and chive: Be generous! You cannot really screw anything up by adding 'too many' fresh herbs.

You could use sour cream instead of yoghurt, as well.

Making yoghurt!

One of the first things I realized after moving to Canada was that it seems to be incredibly hard to find good yoghurt here. 

Whether you look at the dairy section at Coop, Sobeys or Safeway, most yoghurts here either have 0% or 1% fat. 

You can even get Greek Yoghurt with 0% fat (???). That, my dear friends, is not yoghurt. This is bullshit.

Well, I can hear you saying: But we do have 10% Greek Yoghurt, as well! 

That is correct, but have you risked a look at the ingredients list? 

Most of them are made with skim milk (powder) and other awful things. 

No whole milk or cream at all! 

I even once bought a vanilla yoghurt that didn't have vanilla aromas in it, but caramel flavoring (???).

Ok, yoghurt should always, ALWAYS be made of whole milk, means the fat content should be at least at around 3.5%.

I read that you can use milk powder to thicken the yoghurt and make it creamier.

I prefer letting the culture grow for longer, straining it and/or replacing parts of the milk with cream.

Homemade yoghurt can be a bit runnier, indeed. But it's still yoghurt and tastes fantastic.

Making your own yoghurt is fairly easy. And no, you don't need one of those bulky yoghurt machines to do it.
All you need to do is to make sure that you follow the instructions correctly, that your preserving jars are clean and sterilized,
and that you use exceptional good yoghurt and whole milk.


For 1l of homemade yoghurt all you need is:

2-3 tbsp plain yoghurt made of whole milk
1l whole milk
preserving jars

Sterilize your preserving jars and the lids by putting them in a sink with boiling water.
A few minutes should be ok. You can also wait until the water has cooled of a bit.
That way you don't burn your hands. Let them dry completely.

Heat up the milk to about 35-38°C/95-100°F.

Then stir in the yoghurt.

Fill everything in the preserving jars, close the lids and put the yoghurt at a warm spot for at least 8 hours.
I usually let it sit for about 24hours. That helps making the yoghurt firmer and thicker.
You can wrap the jars in a towel and put it next to the heater or even put them in your bed with a hot-water bottle next to it.
Just make sure that the yoghurt doesn't get hotter than 50°C/122°F!

Once you have yoghurt, you may want to strain it (not always necessary) to get rid of surplus whey,
in ordert o make the yoghurt firmer.
Let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours and it's ready to be enjoyed.

Eat it plain or add fruits, granola, sugar or maple syrup...whatever you prefer!

The yoghurt cultures you grew by making your own yoghurt will last 5-7 yoghurt-making sessions.

Notes:

As you can see, making yoghurt is really easy. Still, sometimes it just won't work, for a reason. Could be the milk, could be that the yoghurt you bought wasn't fresh enough, the jars were dirty or something went wrong with the temperature. I don't know.
Just try again! I promise it works.

Instead of using store bought yoghurt you can use yoghurt cultures.
They come in a bag, are usually more expensive, harder to get (I saw them on ebay), but the result may be firmer and more dense and intense...