First pics of my new camera: Pumpkin soup

More than a month passed without me posting anything again. Will you believe me if I tell you school takes up a lot of time? But I’ve got a new recipe for you now!
Actually, it’s not a new recipe. But it IS a new camera! I finally got myself a Nikon D5100 and experimented with it a few times as well and it’s just amazing. It makes better pictures than my small point and shoot, which is still the loveliest in the world. This pumpkin soup was one of the first recipes I made again after I got my camera, so I’m sharing some of the first pictures I made with my camera along with an update of my previous pumpkin soup according to my mother’s recipe.

   

Ingredients: 
Pumpkin flesh 
Broth (from cubes or powder) 
Water 

Optional: 
Leek 
Garlic 
Herbs like parsley, oregano or basil 
Bacon (shredded or chopped) 
Cream (sour, whipping, double) 
Salt & pepper

1. Oil a pan with a bit of olive oil, or anything else you have, and add all the pumpkin flesh you’ll be using. Put the pain over medium to low heat and leave it, depending on how much you have, about 20-30 minutes. Although it might be handy if you check the pan every once in a while in case the pumpkin starts burning, there is no actual need to stir or even check. If you are using leek, add these after 10-20 minutes and you’ll be fine.
2. You will notice the pumpkin flesh is very soft after cooking all this time. Use a mixer or immersion blender to mash the pumpkin (and leek) to pulp.
3. Add the broth in cubes or powder. Also, depending on your pumpkin and how you like your pumpkin soup, you might want to add water.
4. At this time you can also add any of the optional ingredients for the pumpkin soup like garlic, herbs or bacon. Leave on a low to medium heat for another 10 minutes. I suggest frying the bacon lightly beforehand if you’re using any, but it’s not necessary.
5. As soon as you turn the heat off and the soup stops boiling, you can add your sour, whipping, double or any other kind of cream (almost all of it works lovely) and stir.
6. Serve directly after. Or wait until it cools down to eat this soup cold.

The soup you see on the pictures is made with garlic and cream. A week later I made the same soup and added oregano and a bit more broth and salt, as the previous was very sweet. My mom made another pumpkin soup after – we had a lot of pumpkin – and added garlic, bacon and oregano. Personally I think the bacon overwhelms the taste of the pumpkin, making the soup a nicer and edible version of the famous dutch ‘erwtensoep’ (pea soup).



Since we have so much pumpkin, and still do, I also decided to make some bread, which I will post later on along with roasted pumpkin slices with maple syrup. Perhaps I can also try a pumpkin cake. Maybe jams? Are there any suggestions on what to do with a lot of pumpkin?

 

Melon pan

I’ve made these lovely little buns a few times before (like here and here), but I decided it was time to try a new recipe. Especially because I found a recipe video of melon pan on youtube. Someone made a youtube channel entirely dedicated to food and recipes. It was amazing. A whole new world opened up to me. Did you know there are so many people on youtube with whole channels dedicated to food? It’s amazing! I never knew! It makes me want to give it a try as well, but I already know I wouldn’t very much like seeing my face on the internet or hearing my voice nor my talent for filming or my editing with windows movie maker. No, the whole thing is just a terrible idea. I’ll just stick to watching other people.



Back to the lovely bun. I finally know why it’s called melon pan. I’ve always thought it was called melon pan due to the taste. (I still wish it was.) I was totally wrong. The buns are called melon pan because of shape, which is supposed to resemble a melon. I’ve seen this being called pineapple bun, which I believe would be more accurate. I wonder how it would taste with a hint of pineapple. Oh, I wonder about all the different tastes I could put in it. So far I’ve tried banana, chocolate, vanilla –of course- and mocha. I’ve also finally made my turtle melon pan’s! Next time the shells need to be green. What taste can I try that goes with green? Green tea? Pandan? Oh, the possibilities are endless!

Ingredients for the bread dough:
140g bread flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons milk powder
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon beaten egg (about 1 small egg)
70ml lukewarm water
15g butter

Ingredients for the cookie topping:
25g butter
35g sugar
25g beaten egg
80g flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1. Start with making the bread dough: sift the flour into a bowl.
2. Add the sugar, salt, milk powder and instant yeast and mix it with a whisk.
3. Beat the egg and the water together and pour it into the bowl. Mix it in with a fork and then knead until you have a slightly sticky dough. Add more flour if needed.
4. Place the butter in the dough and knead until it is fully incorporated. Then leave the dough to rise (in a greased bowl with plastic wrap or towel over it) for about 40 minutes or until doubled in size.
5. Knead the dough to remove the trapped gas and roll it into a cylinder. Cut the dough into 6 or 12 equal pieces. (Or any other amount depending on the size you want.)
6. Roll the pieces into balls and put them on an oven tray (greased or lined with greaseproof paper). Let them rise for another 20 minutes.
7. Now comes the tricky part: we’ll cover the dough-balls in cookie dough. You can see a picture of it on an older post of mine on melon pan here or watch this youtube video for a good explanation. Start with putting sugar in a bowl and cutting two pieces of plastic wrap.
8. Take a bit of cookie dough and shape it into a ball. Place it on a piece of plastic wrap and cover it with another piece of plastic wrap, then flatten it into a large circle with your hands or a flat object. The plastic wrap will prevent the dough from sticking to everything. Then take one of dough-balls we shaped before and roll it again. Take the flat cookie dough and place it on your dough-ball, wrap it around the ball, leaving only the bottom open. ‘Pinch’ the bottom with your fingers and hold the dough-ball in one hand like that, and roll it into sugar. Then place it bake on to the baking sheet.
9. Repeat step 8 to cover all the dough-balls in cookie dough and sugar. Take a knife and make 2-3 diagonal cuts on the bun and another 2-3 crossing those (think melon/pineapple!). Leave them to rise again for another 40 minutes.
10. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius or 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Leave the buns in the oven for 12-15 minutes and voilà!



These are without a doubt the most fluffy little buns I’ve ever tasted. I’ve made them so many times now I can’t even remember. Did you follow step 7 and 8? I honestly didn’t know how to put it down in words so someone would understand. When you don't understand, just watch the video. It's very easy to do, just hard and long to explain. Don't let this hold you back from making them because you're seriously missing out if you haven't tasted them before!
If you’re wondering which of the recipes to go with, I can tell you they’re not that much different. I realized the cake topping is practically the same. The recipe for the sweet bun is also very much alike. However I did get more success with this recipe rather than the previous ones. Whether that is due to practice, the flour I used, the way I baked them or the minor changes in the recipe, I wouldn’t actually know.

A note on the turtle melon pans: if you want to make your own, make the bun first and cover it in cookie dough. Then add little balls for the feet and head later. It comes out prettier that way. I didn't add any pictures of these totally cute buns, mainly because they came out completely horrible on the picture. The day I made these was the second day in a row that I was "forced" to make melon pan and the whole family attacked the food as soon as it was out of the oven. I barely had any time to save my life let alone my buns to take a picture.

Aglio et olio

I’m all exited about blogging again. I’ve speed-posted five recipes in two days! If only I had sat down to do this before. I’m also still very excited about my camera and all the things I can do with it. I spend about 10 minutes making this recipe and at least another 20 trying to make a good picture. Just looking at them makes me feel like I’m not even close to a perfect picture and I can’t wait until I make something truly wonderful. Not just the taste, but also the looks of it and then also the way I put it on my camera. One day it’ll be amazing! Maybe it'll be after I buy a new (bigger, better and more expensive) camera and get myself some photography gear (I want, I want!). But you just watch! I will do it!



Okay, now I’ll stop ranting on about my dreams of food photography and styling and share a very easy recipe. It’s perfect for any leftover spaghetti you have that you didn’t throw into any sauce yet.

Ingredients:
Spaghetti (leftovers or cooked and cooled)
Olive oil
Garlic or spring onions
Parsley or basil
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Pour the olive oil over the spaghetti until it’s ‘wet’ all over. It all depends on the amount of spaghetti you’re choosing but you’ll probably end up with a spoon or three. Just add one and mix and add more until you’re satisfied. Remember it’s easier to add than to take out!
2. Cut your garlic or spring onions – not both, it’ll be too strong – and mix them into the spaghetti as well.
3. Chop up your basil or parsley and throw those into the spaghetti as well.
4. Lastly add the salt and pepper to taste. My taste requires quite a few pinches of salt and no pepper at all, but you’re probably off best adding what you’d normally add to a dish.
5. Serve cold with tomatoes (cherry tomatoes, mmm) or a salad. This is a very plain main dish so make sure you eat enough vegetables on the side!



And there you have it. I couldn’t really choose an easier recipe to make today. I didn’t put all the spaghetti I had on the plate and I was quite happy I could eat those leftovers of the leftovers while taking pictures. And after that, I ate it all. With some help.
A little note on the recipe: use good, high quality, olive oil. You can buy an olive oil, with a taste like pepper, lemon or basil and you might even get away with a completely different oil like walnut oil (although I wouldn't think so). However, don't use any oil you don't like the taste of naturally. Some cheap chemical-tasting olive oils will do fine for cooking, but the taste will be too prominent in this dish and in the worst case will make it taste horrible. I also really wouldn't recommend sunflower oil, but if you're desperate I suppose it might be worth a shot. Just be sure to use as less as possible when you don't like the taste or you're unsure.



Maybe you noticed but I posted this recipe before, with not so many words. But I felt obliged to post it again, especially after all the inspiration I got which has no where to go.

Eierkoeken – Dutch “eggcakes” – with Peach Trifle

Eggcakes would be the very literal translation. If I ever come across a better word for it, you’ll be the first to know. I do know that there isn’t really anything like it in English. Having that said, even this recipe is nothing like the thing you’ll find in Dutch supermarkets. The ones you find in supermarkets are super big, fluffy and don’t dry out easily. This recipe, when baked slightly too long or when not eaten the same day will dry out into biscuits. Mind you, they won’t be bad biscuits. They’re actually very tasty, but they won’t be what we originally had in mind when baking.



I really wanted to make a trifle so I decided I needed these for in between the peach and cream. I have made a Peach Trifle before, in which I used eierkoeken from the supermarket. This time the trifle I made turned out completely different.




Ingredients:
3 eggs
150 grams sugar
1 bag vanilla sugar (7 grams)
150 grams self-raising flour
30 grams maïzena

1. Separate the eggs and whisk the egg whites until fluffy.
2. Add both sugars to the egg yolks and whisk until the mixture becomes creamy.
3. Add both egg mixtures and mix again.
4. Sift the self-raising flour and maïzena over the egg-batter and mix again.
5. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius or 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line an oven tray with greaseproof paper and spoon the batter onto the tray in circles the size of your fist (but then flat, actually, just think of the palm of your hand).
6. Leave the “cookies” in the oven for about 20 minutes until the edges become brown and the middle is fluffy.

Don’t worry if the eierkoeken don’t turn out soft and fluffy. I’ve tried different recipes for these cakes and they all have the same flaw.
So then I made the trifle, which was really nothing more than layering the cookies we just made with slices of fresh peach and a home-made cream. Home-made cream sounds nice doesn’t it? It really wasn’t more than mashed bananas with a bit of peach puree I had left from making peach lemonade. I also added a bit of Philadelphia cream cheese. I think I stopped there, but I felt like proper scientist making this cream (a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, oh! Some more of this one too..). And then it was time to stack. I tried to do it really nicely as these pictures were the first in which I tested my camera settings and several lighting options. Say, they didn’t turn out too bad right?



Maybe you noticed, but I also tried to photoshop two of the four pictures. Can you tell which ones? I really hope my peach doesn't look chemical now! There's really so much for me to learn.