Cat Sitting

This weekend, I am back at my mum's house cat-sitting Muffin for her while she's in Amsterdam.  My first week in my new home and a bit of a busy week at work, made this the perfect plan.  We lit fires, made apple crumble and gave Muffin lots of TLC.  I did squeeze a little housey-shopping in and got a heart shaped bath mat and some colourful knifes.

 Apple Crumble straight out of the oven, ready to be devoured 

So comforting on a cold and windy day

 Admiring my work in-front of the fire which we kept on the whole evening

 Sunday morning, woke up to muffin snoozing on my make-up bag in the bathroom

To make a comforting warming crumble you will need:

100g Butter

100g Flour

50-75g Sugar plus 3 table spoons for the apples

3 Apples

2 tsp Cinnamon

2 whole cloves

This is a very quick and very tasty recipe. Pre-heat your oven to 180°C, then peel, cut in half, and slice the apples.  In a blender, or by using your fingertips, mix the flour, sugar and butter until you get dry yet buttery crumbs. Add the apple slices to a bake-proof dish and mix 3 tablespoons of sugar, cinnamon and the two cloves so each apple slice has a bit of both.  Pour the crumbs on top and pop into the oven for about 45 minutes until golden on the top.

On a cold day, anyone you're with will be thankful for this, and they may even stroke you to sleep in return

Let's get this Ball rollin'

Hello Everyone,  I'm back in the game!

Now that I have been a strong independent women by moving into my new Swiss chalet-style cosy studio, accomplished a month of work in my new job and loved every day so far... and finally setting up my internet all by myself (8 days late) i'm ready to re-establish my presence on CookMeASmile.

my new home the day I moved in, at the end of September/ looks more homely now

Still not sporting a swanky camera yet but my new phone will have to do. It's Halloween today, and it's kind-of a tradition of mine to make Pumpkin Pie around this time.  I've been on a mission to get to the shops after work in time all week for the missing ingredients to my pie..spices.

 the Jack-O-Lantern in my offices cafeteria on Halloween: Every dish contained pumpkin!

Mashing by Hand

 My pastry Jack-O-Lantern which I forgot to put in the oven after my pie was cooked

 Baking Away in the free standing oven my mum donated to me when I moved

Cooling Pie, ready to be eaten

To make my Halloween Pumpkin Pie you will need:

Enough Shortcrust pasty to fill your pie dish (mine was 9")

Big Slice of Pumpkin, 

2 Eggs, 

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon, 

1/2 Teaspoon Ginger, 

1/8 Teaspoon clove, 

1 vanilla pod or teaspoon of vanilla essence, 

1/8 Teaspoon Nutmeg, 

140ml Cream,

Cut the pumpkin into cubes and simmer for 15 minutes until soft. Drain then blend or mash with fork into a purée. Wait until the purée has cooled before mixing all the ingredients together in a big bowl. This can then be poured into the shortcrust pasty-lined baking tin and popped in the oven for an hour at 180 C.  Was great served with Crème brûlée flavoured ice-cream.  Monday night indulgence !

Birthday 27

Last week was quite busy and exciting.  It was my older Brother's birthday on Saturday and we had a mini BBQ party for him at my mum's house.  I volunteered to make him his cake this year and thought long and hard about what he would like.  I chose to go with a light raspberry and cream sponge with was inspired by the classic British Victoria Sponge (Which my mum used to make us for many birthdays).

I used the wonderful weather to ride my bike, a 21st birthday present to Coop to get all the goodies. One of the perks of living in Switzerland - everywhere is accessible by bike !

On my bike, the Roadcat with ingredients on the back

 The cake in action with the candles

 Fresh raspberries, white chocolate '27' and a star on top

200g Butter make the cake yummy !

 Mum's cat Moon Muffin

 Found a snail on the way back to the car

To make this summer celebration treat:


200g (~1cup) Butter at room temperature
200g (1cup) Sugar
4 Eggs
200g (1.5 cup) Flour
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon of Orange Zest/or Lemon
as much Vanilla essence as you wish


For Filling/top
250g Raspberries
500ml Cream
1/2 cup icing sugar
white chocolate
50g butter

Pre-heat oven to 180 °C (375°F). Cream butter & sugar, then add each egg one by one and mix (if it curdles, add a spoon of flour with each egg). Stir in the essence & peel,  then sift in the flour & baking powder while carefully folding it into the mixture.  Bake in oven for about 20 min if you split the mix between two cake tins.  If you choose to split the cake later, bake for about 25 min, then lower temp to 130 °C for another 15-20 min.

 To decorate add generous layer of whipped cream on bottom half and sprinkle raspberries all over. To ice, mix a few blended rasberries & a spoon of sugar & vanilla essence with the left-over cream and spead all over top. Add last rasberries & to make decorations, melt some white chocolate, spread on a greased plate/surface & mould with cookie cutters, or cut out number/letters with knife and cool in fridge until needed.

P.S Because of all the baking on Friday, my love suggested that he make his special southern spiced burgers for dinner.  We did a bit of teamwork and I made these lazy amazing 'chips'. Par-boiled potatoes for 15 min, slice, then drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt & fresh rosemary and pop in the oven until golden! hmmmmm! 

 Lazy but amazing 'chips'

The l'orange to my Duck

Just as I was pottering about the house all unaware, my love comes home an hour early with a bag of surprises and made my day.  It's a national holiday in Switzerland tomorrow (Auffahrt) and he got off from work until Monday!  He brought with him some oranges and a big duck breast. My smile was huuuuge !!! His plan was to make Duck a l'Orange.  It's the second time we made it together - would have been the 3rd but we had trouble tracking down the Duck breast on the North shore in Louisiana back in January 2010.

He also brought something very special just for me, the "Schnügel des Tages".  Every day in the free Swiss newspaper, the 'Blick am Abend" there is a cute photo of a pet.  Today it was a little turtle which is as big a 5 rappen coin !

This little guy found a home on my fridge

Common occurrence: cooking in pjamas

Note my dad's fancy juicer contraption in the background

So here is what we needed for a romantic meal for 2:

1 large duck breast (or two if you're hungry)

66g (1/3 cup of castor sugar)

2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar

1 cup of chicken stock

1 big cup of juice from fresh oranges (we used 2)

the peel of 1/2 an orange

1 tablespoon of flour

1 tablespoon of soft butter

salt

Firstly to make the sauce, put the sugar & vinegar in a saucepan on medium heat.  You want to let this simmer down from bubbly clear (2) into a deep caramel colour (3).  Keep stirring so it doesn't stick. Take off the heat & add the orange juice. It will spit at you and make noise and the sugar mix will appear to solidify, but don't worry,  it's normal.  Put back on the heat and shortly after add the peel & stock and whisk. Keep this on a low temperature during the next step.

Now we can concentrate on the meat.  Make sure to remove any pieces of white fat from the fleshy side of the meat.  These will prevent the duck from being as succulent as can be (see my love in image 4). Then turn over & score the fat (5),  this will allow the heat to reach the meat more easily and promote crispiness.  Salt all over & pop on a hot pan fat side down (no oil needed as you get enough from the meat).  Cook for about 3 min or a little longer if the breast is big, then turn over and cook for about a minute.  It is then ready to be taken off the heat.  To complete the sauce, you can add some of the juices from the pan, the flour & butter & simmer it up until it has a slightly thicker consistency.

We served it on a moon of Jasmine rice with a small side salad with a simple honey vinegar & lemon oil dressing.  Voilà!

P.S Jasmine rice is perfectly mould-able (see 6) and this creates a posh-restaurant effect.